"A Blast From the Past"
                                 Part Five

                    AD 1989, that is 2364 Galactic Year

[Nomad of Norad]   [ (This segment was moved here in post-production) ]

    Suddenly, Insomniac fell through a trapdoor and found himself in another
closet-sized, dark, enclosed place!
    Much time passed.

[The Insomniac]    [Title: :-() ]

    (A strange narrarator type voice was heard saying:)
    "Alright! who put that RT in???!!!"

    "Hey, aren't there more pressing matters, like getting me out of this
closet?" said Th'Ins()mn|a[.  "I've been in here quite a while, and it's
fairly obvious that someone in their wanderings should happen to stumble upon
this closet-like-enclosure/alcove/cave/cell and let me out, only to find objects
with uselessness beyond their wildest dreams inside and carry them anyway."

    But for hours, nothing of the sort happened.
    Then finally, the Count sneezed!  Well, at least it broke the silence.

    While feeling around on the walls, Sleep found that strangely each wall
was made of a different material.  One was stucco, another wood, a third
brick, and the door was metallic, and kinda cold, too.  The room was really
more of a circle than a square; an octagon?  Perhaps. A brick slid in, and a
secret passage opened.
    "It's about time you found that thing!" said the narrarator.
    "Some secret passage!" blurted the Count in disgust.  "This is a doggy
door."

[Nomad of Norad]

    Meanwhile, at the box canyon, K-Bear was standing off a bit from his
wrecked shuttlecraft. It was going to take more work than he thought to fix
the thing. "Sheep!" he said. "It looks like I may be stranded here for days!"
He kicked an empty case one of the repair kits had been in, it flew through
the air and struck the wall of the canyon... with a clang?!?!?!
    Koala ran over to the spot to investigate. Close scrutiny revealed that
there was an upright rectangular crack around the spot that the case had
struck. It was about the size of a doorway. He looked all along the edge of it
and found a round indentation in the stone to the right of the door-shape,
about halfway up. He couldn't quite reach it, so he gathered some cases
together and stacked them up. They were small, but five or six of them made a
barely-stable step-up for him. He climbed onto them, reached up and pressed
the indentation, and then he and all the cases fell backwards onto the ground.
    He picked himself up, and saw the rectangular section slide back into the
canyon wall a bit, then slide sideways to reveal a lighted corridor.

    Koala went down the corridor. It had apparently been cut into the rock a
long time ago with some sort of energy beams. There was much dust on the
floor, dust that had been walked through by alot of feet recently, and alot of
wheeled carts.
    He came to a large, round chamber about ten meters across. On the opposite
wall from him was a big mural or artwork showing what appeared to be a large
spacecraft, or perhaps a starship. The ship appeared to have been damaged, the
framework that apparently held its warp engines were twisted and bent in some
places, and one place that looked like there should have been an engine had
nothing. What looked like a fusion ramscoop had been added to the front of the
vessel, apparently after the ship had been damaged.
    Between Koala and the mural, there was a strange cage-like structure
enclosed with glass or perhaps clearsteal. There were thick cables running
from it to the left side of the chamber.
    Koala went to the structure to look at it more closely, and at the rest of
the chamber.
    Around the chamber, there was evidence that there had been alot of things
removed: there were large blank places in the walls, and holes had been
chipped away here and there. The cables from the cage-like structure connected
to a large console to the side of the chamber. This hardware had apparently
been added after the place had been stripped. The console was patched into a
power-lead that had been exposed by one of the holes. Koala went to the
machine.
    It appeared to be a remote-controlled weapons or defense system. He saw
wording on the machine that looked similar to what he had seen printed in
places aboard Caldon's ship. So, the device was of Kryptonusian origin. There
appeared to be damage to the device. What looked like the trancieving section
of the device was blackened and pitted as if a powerful blast of energy had
coursed through it and blown it out.
   He pulled a translator unit out of his tunic and used it to read the text.
There were things like "ball-lightning generator" and "energy-field remote
transfer." Apparently, the device created super ball-lightning and shifted it
in space through something analogous to a teleport. Presumable, the weapon had
been fired once, on his ship, and then through some design flaw it had put
itself out of commission.
   They were probably looking for him now, he realised but they hadn't
thought to look for him right under their noses, so to speak! He looked around
the rest of the chamber. There was nothing else present, and there were no
other chambrs. He turned and headed back to the corridor.

[Koala Bear]

    When K-bear returned to the shuttle he decided to return and further
explore this wonder a little later on. His makeshift transmitter he had built
from various components of the shuttle, was working fine now, so he decided
to add a little message to his transmission: "Am fine. Need nothing. Great
vacation."  Koala chuckled ironically at his transmission. This was anything
BUT a great vacation.  After Koala finished that task, He began to mix some
repair compound from the remaining box of chemicals.  What resulted was a
thick gray-green glob.
    "Looks like ca-ca spelled with an S," said Captain Koala to himself.
K-bear twitched his ears impatiently; he knew that this stuff had to set
overnight to react properly as a repair compound.  He was somewhat tired, so
he took a nap.

                              *                   *

[Nomad of Norad]

    "Am fine. Need nothing. Great vacation," came over the comm unit aboard
the RED 417.
    "That sounded like Koala Bear!" said Verilox. "Did you get a fix on it,
'Nook?"
    "The ship did," said Pla'anuk, "in a vague sort of way. It came from the
south of us."  He turned the vessel around and returned it to autopilot, then
started pressing control dots on the comm board. "It was a very weak signal,
either his sending equipment is poor, or he's blocked by something."
    "Or he's very far away," suggested Pladgah.
    "I would bet, though, that the other ship detected his signal too," said
Verilox.
    "At least we have narrowed down the search area," said Pladgah, "I just
hope they don't find him first!"

                              *                   *

    "Nomad," said Joshua's digitised voice, "we have a visitor."
    "On screen," said Nomad. On a screen that was part of the wall, and had
its counterpart in every other room in the house, appeared a view of a pair of
Hondabeasts making great time heading towards the camera. The picture was
turned purplish-red by the force-dome between the camera and the 'beasts.
    "Can you make out who that is?" asked Nomad. The picture freeze-framed,
then zoomed.
    "Looks like The Flip and our freindly Kryptonusian defector," said Joshua.
    "They look like they are running from something," said Nomad.
    "Obviously," said Joshua. "They have reached the force-dome," he added.
The picture returned to real time. The two were standing before the force
dome, looking at it and glancing frantically back behind them.
    "Let them in," said Nomad.
    "Right away," said Joshua. A narrow swipe of the dome, forming a very
slender triangle up the dome, went clear. The two burst inside, pulling their
steeds behind them. The section of the force dome went back up.
    Nomad ran to the main entrance to great them.
    "Hello there," said Nomad as the door slid open. "What brings you two out
here at such a pace?"
    "Caldon," said the Kryptonusian. "He sent his goons looking for me. This
is about the only place I can feel safe." He looked around him at the corridor
which ran the entire length of the house. It was roomy, and one wall angled
down and away at a steep angle. There were large windows all along it.
    Within this slanted area, there were three long transparent tubes that
connected with each other every few meters. The alien went and stood before
it. Placing his hand on it he said, "I must say, I like this fish tube of
yours!" He looked at a large goldfish, it turned and looked him in the face.
    "Yes," said Nomad, "well I had to do SOMEthing useful with that space.
It's not a usable part of the corridor.... But we were talking about what
brought you here."
    "Caldon is trying to capture me," said the alien, "he doesn't want me to
be of any further help to you."

    Sometime later, Nomad, The Flip, and the defector - whose name, BTW, is
Larsbaan - all sat about in Nomad's main communication center. On screen was
the head scientist at Nomad's research and development center. There was a
computer diagram of a space vehicle displayed in one corner of the screen.
    "How many are ready now?" Nomad was asking.
    "We have about 200 ready for battle," replied the scientist, "and more are
being built as we speak."
    "Who's gonna fly them?" asked The Flip.
    "The best of the GE players," responded Nomad.
    "GE?" asked The Flip.
    "Galactic Empire," said the scientist, "like at Galactic Infintum. We
patterned the controls after the ones in the spacewar game. Of course, we had
to pay royalties to the developers of the game...."
    "Of course," said The Flip.
    "Thankfully though, we won't have to train a bunch of fighter pilots,"
said Larsbaan. "We already have all the pilots we need."
    "Yes, but are these game players up to the task of a REAL battle?" asked
The Flip.
    "Well," said Larsbaan, "I have a little device here that will help alot."
He pulled out a microscroll and held it up before them.
    "What is that?" asked The Flip.
    "It is the detailed plans to a temporal stasis-field device built into a
fast escape-pod. If the fighter is damaged badly enough, the stasis-field pops
on to protect the pilot, and the cockpit jettisons itself and returns to the
Earth. The pilot can then take another ship up into battle."
    "Just like in GE," said Nomad.
    "But the fighters are already built," said The Flip. "How is that going to
be incorperated in?"
    "Oh we already had some idea what it was going to be like," said the man
on the screen, "all we have to do is build the cockpits and plug them into the
ships. Are you ready to send?"
    Larsbaan handed Nomad the microscroll and Nomad plugged it into a reader
port. "Sending," said Nomad.

[Nomad of Norad]    [ (This segment was moved here in post-production) ]

                   *                   *                   *

    The RED 417 flew on toward where K-Bear was crashed. It seemed it wouldn't
be much longer until they found him.
    "I wonder where the enemy search ships are," commented Pladgah.
    CRAAARRRAAAASH!!!!! The ship shook violently, listing wildly to starboard.
Pla'anook frantically tried to prevent the ship from crashing.  Verilox and
Pladgah pulled themselves back into their chairs as the ship righted itself.
    "I think we just found out," said Verilox.  "Look!" He pointed to the
screen.  A vessel had dropped out of cloak and was tumbling crazily.  It
struck the ground and broke up.
    The RED 417 continued to shake. "Hang on!" yelled Pla'anook. "I can't keep
her in the air!" The ground loomed closer, closer, and then the ship
bellyflopped onto the ground.
    Everyone let out a tremendous sigh of relief.
    "I have sometimes wondered how cloaked ships would avoid collisions," said
Pladgah, "I guess they don't."

[Nomad of Norad]

         *         *         *         *         *         *         *

    POOF! Sleep suddenly found himself in a dark tunnel. "Oh no! Not again!"
he said. "Why do I keep getting teleported like this?" Just when he was
getting his bearings again, sheesh!
    "For your protection," said a voice in the dark.
    "Who's there!"
    "My name is unimportant."
    "Ok, Mr Unimportant, protection from what?"
    "Caldon, he has his agents after you."
    "Why?"
    "You know something he wants to know."
    "Ok, so why do you keep teleporting me, without warning?"
    "They keep tracking you down, and I have to move you again."
    "Ok..." Sleep looked around him, trying to penetrate the darkness with his
gaze. Where was the voice coming from, it seemed to be nowhere in particular.
"Where are you?"
    No answer.
    "Hello?" Sleep said.  The light level began to rise and Insomniak looked
all around him.  The tunnel was empty.

[Koala Bear]        [Title: Koala's Story-cont. ]

   As Koala awoke from his nap, he felt vibrant. He stretched, wiggled his
ears, and began his morning routine.  The morning sun was barely above the
horizon, yet it was already bright and warm outside.  K-Bear emerged from the
small yet well equipped restroom, clean, and as well groomed as if he were
having important guests.  His thick fur caught the morning light and made
even these work clothes look stunning.
    "Now to work," said Koala to himself.
    The gray-green glob, now was ash-gray, and quite dense.  Koala scooped up
the repair compound with a small metal trawl of sorts, and exited his shuttle.
Soon K-Bear began to patch up the gashes, holes and scratches caused by the
obviously artificial lightning strike a few days ago.  It was mid-afternoon
by the time Koala finished repairing the rather extensive damage.  So he
climbed down and had some lunch and a mid-afternoon nap.

[Koala Bear]        [Title: K-Bear story cont. ]

    After his nap Koala felt better, the sun had now passed its apex, and was
continually falling toward the west.  Captain Koala decided to explore the
wonders he saw the other day, but this time he took along his micro-recorder
to tape what he saw.  Maybe this would be link these people would need to
finally defeat Caldon.  As Koala explored and taped he found nothing of
interest untill he looked behind the charred remains of what was the
lightning generator.  There, by the aide of his recorder, he found some
hairline cracks suspiciously strait and connected in such a way as to indicate
a secret door.
    "It is probably the maintence door to a power supply, but it wont hurt to
explore!"  So Koala set down his recorder and began to feel around the cracks,
soon he found a small, oddly symetrical bump, which he pushed.
    Koala could hear a faint whirr, then suddenly the door dissolved!  There,
inside the cubby hole, was a black, slotted box with small tape-like
cartridges scattered about within the hole. Koala immediantly took the box
and the cartridges out of the hole and carefully pressed the bump again,
which replaced the hole with seeming unbroken wall.
    K-Bear took his treasure to his shuttle where he carefully concealed it.
He felt like a grave robber, but he knew he must get as much stuff as he
possibly could.  He returned to the cave, and continued to carefully explore
the walls.  Sure enough, he found several more cubby holes, each with
something different in them.  About an hour later Koala had discoveed three
cubby holes: one with the black box, one which concealed several scrolls, and
the third concealed some sort of portable control panel. Each of these items
he returned to his ship.
    Tonight he would get no sleep. So much to discover....

[Koala Bear]        [Title: And More Koala Story ]

    That evening Koala spent trying to figure out how the items worked.  About
midnight he discovered that the black box was a cartridge reader which was
solar powered (bright light made it work).  He also discovered that the
portable control panel could be connected to the black box.  The scrolls then
were the users manual, K-Bear logicked out.  Whoever was here before must have
thought that the information found in the cartridges were important enough to
hide.
    About the time of this discovery, the ships chronometer chimed 4:00am
local time.  Koala's eyes were bleary, so he went to sleep for the night.

[Koala Bear]        [Title: Continued ]

    The next morning, Koala skipped his usual routine (highly unusual), and
immediately began to work on discovering what was on those cartridges.  Captain
Koala uncovered as many windows as he could, and positioned the box and
control panel where the maximum light was.  Soon he was using his decoder to
decypher the scrolls, and he began to operate the equipment.  Hours streamed
by as Koala pored over all the ancient information.  He began to understand
what this establishment was meant to do, what it was, and how he could access
its functions, how he could actually use this structure to DEFEAT CALDON ONCE
AND FOR ALL.
    Thoughts of infinite power crept into Koala's mind, and the more
he would try to fight the feeling the stronger the feeling became. Finally,
out of desperation, he forcibly shut down the equipment.
    The feeling, the desire for infinite power, remained with Captain Koala
for several minutes, then just as suddenly as it came, the feeling left.

[Nomad of Norad]

    Meanwhile, back at Nomad's home...

    "So you are saying Caldon is in trouble?" said Nomad.
    "Basically," said Larsbaan. "He's walled in at both ends of the tunnel, so
to speak. Nobody likes Kryptonus OR Galdpromm, or the alliance between them.
The other worlds have been making life as difficult as possible for them..."
    "You mean sanctions and trade-bans?" said The Flip.
    "And attacks and blockades," added Larsbaan.
    "So they're on their last legs now?" said Captain R/C, who had shown up
earlier in the day and invited himself in.
    "Yes," said Larsbaan, "but Galdpromm is in even worse shape, they are just
barely hanging on."
    "So they are totally on their own," said Nomad.
    "Even worse... or better," Larsbaan grinned, "depending on your point of
view, their greatest enemies are Kryptonus' original homeworld, and
Galdpromm's original homeworld."
    "Oh?" said Nomad.
    "Kryptonus and Galdpromm both succeeded from their homeworlds so that they
could become allies to each other. The homeworlds have been battling them ever
since."
    "Hmmm," said The Flip. "Kinda like Romeo and Juliet, eh Cappy?"
    Cappy moaned, he never was going to live down that one-off story he told.
    "However," continued Larsbaan, "Kryptonus is strongly dependant on
Galdpromm... and as bad off as Galdpromm is now...."
    "Yes," said Nomad. "It can't be much longer now."
    "But there is Caldon's super-man project," said Larsbaan.
    "His what?" asked Nomad.
    "Well," said Larsbaan, "we stumbled across a spacelab that belonged to the
Ancients, where---"
    "Sorry to interrupt," interrupted Joshua, "but we've got company. A
Kryptonusian ship has just decloaked right outside the force dome."
    "On screen," said Nomad.
    The main screen lit up. Kryptonusians poured out of the parked spacecraft
and set up a large cannon-like device.
    "What is that?" said Cappy.
    Larsbaan stepped close to the screen to look. "It looks like... yes, it's
a force-dome disruptor."
    "It's a WHAT?" said Nomad.
    "It is designed to drain a force barrier until it collapses," explained
Larsbaan. Even as he spoke, the aliens activated the device.
    "How long will it... take?" asked The Flip.
    "It will take a little while," said Larsbaan, "we have time to prepare."