Kerulithars’ apartment was six floors up inside one of the myriad crystalline towers, and it was located close to the centre of the city. The Solarian opened a door and beckoned the two men inside. “Come in, this is my place, you are most welcome to spend the night here.”
“Nice place,” Michael said as he looked around.
“I like it; it was passed to me when my father died ten years ago,” Kerulithar replied.
The Solarian was busy making them both a drink when Vargev beckoned to Michael. “Over here; come and have a look at this.”
He was stood at the edge of the room, looking out over the city, Michael walked over to join him.
The streetlights on all of the archways had lit up gradually; bathing the archways in a soft light, as well as the parts of the buildings that they interconnected with. Occasionally the lights of an anti gravity vehicle could be seen as it traversed one of the archways. It was a calming yet beautiful sight.
“You are so lucky to live here Kerulithar,” Michael said. “After what I’ve seen of this city, I understand why the property prices are so high.”
“Thank you; here try this,” Kerulithar said walking over to them and handing them each a glass of a bright blue looking liquid. “It’s called Solarian Atollos.”
Both Michael and Vargev held the glass, eyeing it ever so suspiciously, Vargev sniffed it. It gave off a strong alcoholic smell.
In the end, both men gave in to politeness and drank from their glasses.
“Tastes a little like gin, or perhaps whisky,” Michael said.
“It reminds me of drinking the finest of vodka’s back in the motherland,” Vargev replied.
Kerulithar took their glasses from them, and after barely a single glass the humans began to stumble across the room as if barely able to stand, before finally collapsing onto their beds.
I must remember not to give the humans Atollos in the future, Kerulithar thought.
“Good night,” The Solarian said to the two inebriated humans as he pressed a control that made the crystal walls go dark. Vargev and Michael simply grunted their responses.
Next morning they awoke, Kerulithar was already awake and had been for some time, he was looking his typical cheerful self, both Michael and Vargev hurriedly got dressed and staggered out of the room groggily.
“What was that stuff you gave us last night?” Michael asked.
“It’s called Solarian Atollos.”
“Goddamn it, that stuff is lethal.”
“It is 98.2 % pure alcohol; however it also has a herbal extract, which only grows on Solaria. It is that extract which interacts with the taste buds and the areas of the brain that determine taste; fooling them into thinking that it’s the subject’s favourite drink.”
“Is that stuff legal?” Vargev asked.
“Yes. But only in Solarian territory, it seems we are the only species that can handle it, anywhere else and possession of it carries a heavy penalty. It has also been used by unsavoury characters to mask the taste of certain poisons.”
“Then why try it on us?” Michael asked.
“It has never been tried on humans before, I was curious to see if you could handle it; it looks like you’re intolerant to it also,” Kerulithar answered. “I thought you might like breakfast, we have a big day ahead of us today.”
“What is it?”
“It is a Solarian breakfast called Sorgrest, it is very sweet and full of energy.” The Solarian replied.
It looked like mashed up fern leaves, both Vargev and Michael eyed their bowls suspiciously. Not quite believing what Kerulithar was telling them, gingerly they tried some. And to their surprise they found that they liked it.
It tasted sugary and seemed to give the body an injection of energy which human breakfasts could only dream of; they quickly finished the bowl off and felt highly invigorated.
“This stuff is great how do you make it?” Michael asked.
“We found it purely by accident; a Solarian transport ship was damaged and crash landed on the moon Saris III; a planet within Solarian space. The moon did have an atmosphere but only small amounts of oxygen; enough to breathe but only barely,” Kerulithar paused for a moment. “The rescue vessel was weeks away and with little food the choice was either to eat the native Sorgrest plants or starve to death; and that is how we came upon it. In time we set up production facilities on that moon, and began to cultivate crops of it on other planets. It has been a staple breakfast food of our people ever since.”
They finished eating and found that they had some time to kill, so Kerulithar offered to show them some of the sights of the city.
The Solarian also pointed out that Michael and Vargev could do with some new clothes to wear; since the filthy and battered landfall uniforms looked horrendous.
He showed them to an advanced looking machine within his apartment. It had a display written in Solarian script, and what appeared to be a scanner.
Kerulithar told the two humans to remove their clothes so that the synthesiser could scan them into its central database, since there were no records of human military uniforms Kerulithar would have to create a new file based on the design of their clothes.
Michael and Vargev managed to grab a towel each to cover their modesty as they stripped and handed their clothes over to Kerulithar. Who touched a few controls on the panel and held each item of clothing up to the scanner in turn; within seconds of the synthesiser scanning a dirty item of clothing. An exact clean copy was created, which Kerulithar handed over to them before placing the old battered items into the synthesiser; which rapidly broke them down into their constituent molecules and reabsorbed them to be used again later.
Both of the men were overjoyed at having brand new clean uniforms instead of the dirty ones they had been tramping around in, in recent weeks. Once the humans had dressed again, they headed out of Kerulithars apartment.
They looked upon the huge Grand Sargrond theatre house, where an open air play was being performed; and the Elgrath stadium where Stallos is played.
“What is Stallos?” Michael asked.
“It is a popular sport here on Solaria, there are nine players to each team; they have to hit the ball with the forearm. If the ball drops to the ground the opposing team scores a point; there is a net in between the two teams, and they move around the field of play on small anti gravity boards,” Kerulithar pointed out to them.
“Kind of like volleyball, but with hoverboards,” Vargev filled in.
They continued walking along another of the giant archways, “do you show lots of plays on Solaria?” Michael asked.
“Oh yes; it is one of our primary forms of entertainment. We once had television like you do, however it fell out of favour on our world. Now we go to the theatre instead. There are still some small T.V. networks that do exist, but as a rule most Solarians don’t watch them,” Kerulithar checked a small pocket watch that he pulled out of a pocket in his robes. “It’s getting close to the time we must be getting back to the council building now.”
As they began to make their way back to the council building, Vargev pointed out the large black birds flitting from tower to tower.
“What kind of birds are those?” he asked watching them.
Kerulithar looked up and said, “they are the Logethi birds; they represent freedom and peace amongst my people, it is an offence on my planet to kill one.”
“They look really nice,” Vargev said.
After a short walk they made it to the entrance of the Solarian council building once again; walking up the marble steps for a second time. A large crowd had gathered for this momentous day.
“Obviously our story had generated some interest,” Michael whispered to the others.