Space is empty – dark, vast. But the ocean is actually teeming with life. There are monstrous animals in there… in all oceans, I have heard! Huge storms seethe with activity as they cross its expanse. Fleets from exotic ports sail the sea carrying their wares. Perhaps, space may be the same. There is only one way for me to find out.

  Daved Breggs

  History of a Galaxy: Book II - Greenchair

  Daved Breggs waited with paused breath as his x-craft descended into the thick, curling clouds of Gabbledom. They swirled around him, gray and winding, like the dragons of old, those ancient ancestors of the rabadons and V’hogle. He could almost hear their voices hissing in the winds: Another planet, they breathed, heads merging into tails, feet merging into wings. Another adventure.

  At last the ship, the – well, he hadn’t bothered naming it yet, which he suddenly thought odd, given he was two centuries into his journey – it broke through the layer of mist. He exhaled with relief at the flashes of blue and green below. Habitable. Finally. Fresh food and water. I hope.

  Reaching to a ledge on his left, he snatched an orange bag labeled "Casuran Corne Chups". He couldn't read the squiggly alien script, but the picture on the front was already making his mouth water. He held it upside down over his other outstretched palm and shook. A few withered, brown kernels dropped out. Sighing, he tossed the kernels and the bag behind him where they fell amid a heap of trash and tallgrass twine.

  Returning his attention to the front window, a wide pane of glass on the nose of the x-craft's forewing, he peered intently, hoping for some sign of civilization and a chance to socialize. According to the Manual, the planet was uninhabited, but that didn’t mean much. The Manual was abysmally out of date. He’d found a settlement of Casurans at the last “uninhabited” planet. Casurans weren’t the greatest company, but they were xeno-aware, which was as good as anything.

  The term meant they were familiar with Xenonites and other interstellar species. More specifically, it meant he could land in an airport, or at worst some farmer’s field, without the risk of getting shot or stabbed on the spot by some bloke who’d never seen an alien.

  He leaned forward, brushing his white, wispy hair out of his eyes, taking in the overall flow of the hills and valleys unfolding beneath him. He tried but failed to suppress a grin that broke out with no one to enjoy it. Yes, he was lonely for company, but he’d known that cost from the start and had expected it. It was the loneliness for land, for solid dirt and rock and grass that really got to him as he drew ever farther from his home.

  Shamonj. So far away, he reminisced.

  Daved was an uncommon alien with a common face. Uncommon, because he was one of only a handful of Sheeple who had ever left the little-known world. But common, because he had a likeable face, now locked at the young age at which he became a Ciri. He was regarded by all he encountered as friendly and inviting, the youth of his face juxtaposed against the naturally white hair of a Sheek giving him an air of both innocence and wisdom that transcended his otherwise alien features. All instantly named him their friend, positive they had “seen him somewhere before” and would certainly continue to see him again. But Daved was by occupation a Ciri, and by birth a Wanderer, so he was never around for long.

  For over two hundred years, he had hopped from system to system, exploring as many planets as he could, all the while maintaining his course for the End of the Galaxy. What he would find there, he did not know. All logic and reason said “absolutely nothing.” But that was tomorrow’s problem. Today… Gabbledom.

  Peering out the window, he scanned the surface for anything of interest. Each planet was unique; already he had discovered countless wonders, documenting them in his log. For example, there was Magdura-4, where great red heaps of rock battled each other, mountain ranges rising and falling in only days as the living crystals formed alliances, mounding into faces reaching miles into the sky before buffeting against each other, the victor grinding the other rocky face into orange dust.

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  Orbiting the star Piliwyr he found a binary planet system where two orbs rotated so near to each other that the inhabitants had built a space elevator connecting them, complete with a restaurant and disco club at the halfway point.

  Then there was Tiriene, a planet so tiny it had not appeared on Xenonite maps, but approaching it, he found the entire world covered by a single city populated by an alien species unknown to any Ciri. The Tiriene apparently favored hexagons, for all of their buildings were of this shape, built up against one another to form a perfect honeycomb. Something like railways spanned the tops of the shorter ones, with small black shuttles moving goods and aliens around the megalopolis.

  These and a thousand other wonders had Daved seen as he hopped from planet to planet like a frog across stones. As instructed, he reported what he found to the Xenonites over com-link. They had authorized the mission in return for his work performed on Shamonj. While they thought the Sheek was insane to embark on such a foolhardy quest, the Xenonites were in a drought of information with their space-time ships gone. They were thrilled to have a Ciri check up on Vorian space, even though it was certain that such a Ciri would not escape alive. Each week, their technicians pored over the recordings and fotos Daved beamed back, but never did they offer him any reply or analysis on which things he discovered were new to them, and which things they had expected.

  Daved cared not what the Xenonites did or did not do with the information he so faithfully relayed, for he knew full well that he would never see a Xenonite face to face again… and once he passed the range of the com-links (for every day, their signal grew weaker), all communication with them would end. Until that point, he was content with the hope that they would update the Security Manual for Xenonite Spies with the information he had gathered, for its outdatedness was laughable.

  Take Gabbledom, for instance.

  The manual stated that the entire Kol Sha System was uninhabited. Yet, this was a clear error, for as Daved neared the surface of its fourth planet, he saw that a great race had once ruled the world.

  Massive stones lay scattered in heaps, black and charred from fire. Weeds and shrubs grew about them, but it was clear that great cities had once stood, and fallen only recently. A few structures remained; all these were immense. Their entryways were like garage doors – a few feet wider and Daved could have flown in his x-craft, though he dared not park under the crumbling roofs of stone.

  A technology scan of the planet revealed that whatever beings had constructed these great cities were no longer to be found. Daved circled the equator, but everywhere the technology reading was zero. A search for life forms gave similar results, reporting few animals on the planet save the upper stretches of tundra where long patches of blue appeared on radar, indicating herds of large, cold-blooded animals. Daved brought his x-craft north to see what they were, though he was to regret this, for what he saw turned his blood as cold as the creatures he found treading the tough grass of the northern plains.

  Great herds of Doxx stretched from one horizon to the other. Though not sentient, Doxx were highly intelligent and terribly powerful. Various types had been reported on many planets. On Shamonj, the rabadons were hunted to near extinction. On Earth, tyrannosaurs and their smaller cousins long ago roamed in large numbers. The Doxx were no eaters of grass, and Daved’s stomach turned as he beheld the scene below. For the Doxx were alone on the desolate plain, and feeding off each other. These were the only large animals left on the planet, apparently having hunted every other species to extinction, the reverse of what typically happened to the Doxx. How long the herd would survive in such a state, Daved could not guess. Nor did he know how long ago the carnivores had stripped the planet of every other food source. Depending on their original number, it may have happened months ago… or years. The Doxx were doomed without an outside food supply, slated for extinction. As to the planet’s inhabitants who had built the great cities of stone, Daved now wondered if the Doxx had played some part in their extinction. The cities lay in ruins from recent war. Had the Doxx attacked them, or did they fall into an irreversible world war from the stresses of the roaming Doxx? What had set off the fires, and why were they not checked?

  The planet Gabbledom thus brought Daved more questions than answers, and in his report to the Xenonites, he presented his findings with no hope of interpretation save this one:

  Here is a planet we thought to be unpopulated, a lifeless ball of rock orbiting Kol Sha. And indeed it is uninhabited, for its kind have passed away, their cities in heaps, and no large mammals or reptiles, save a few herds of Doxx which roam the northern wastes in misery. Of the Gabbledomites who fended off the Doxx for so many millennia before finally succumbing, nothing is left save a few charred ruins. How many other races are there who will pass away ere an emissary arrives to record their tale?

  Daved left the Kol Sha System in haste, eager to put light years between him and the cousins of the rabadons, for he detested their kind, and the herds seemed to cast a foul curse upon the ground as they strode westward. In his hurry to continue onward, Daved missed an important feature of the tumbled cities that he might have found had he lingered: the inhabitants of Gabbledom who raised those cities were the Doxx themselves – and as to the beings which besieged these cities and drove the Doxx out of their safe walls, these he would soon meet.

  For Daved had entered the outskirts of Vorian Space, a ring of destruction which every year grew larger as the Vorians secretly enlarged their territory.