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ATLANTIS
During the time of late Lemurian reckoning
The God who became known as Poseidon
Was apportioned his Earthly lot
And there loved a mortal woman Cleitos
Then, as one turning a lathe,
He formed around her the fabled and magnificent
Lost Isle of Atlantis
Concentric-Isled Atlantis
Ringed by sea waters and precipitous cliffs
That lofty climbed tier within tier
To where Posedion's Grove
And the Temple of Cleitos
Were crowned by a golden walled Citadel
Atlantis!
That from Gondwana had drifted
To lie past the Pillars of Heracles
And catch Posedion's eye
Populated later than Lemuria
From dynasty of God and Mortal
Those fleeing Mu blindly found a Continent
And joining with that seedling Empire
They brought wisdoms from the former World
And civilisation thrived with life in diversity
Mercantile trade along sea-routes
With Egypt and Tyrrhenia
Libya and Asia were established
Bringing abundant fortune to Atlantis
Poseidion marshalled from the mountain
Two mighty springs one which ran hot
The other which ran cold
Both which in gracious plenty flowed
And made conduits and cisterns
Integral to his architecture
That conducted their motion
Royal bath-houses and rooms there were
Also for private people and public masses
Some enclosed and some open to heaven
There were seperate baths for women and men
Also bath-houses for cattle and those for horses
Each adorned suitably for their use
Elephants roamed the gardens and wild places
And beasts of the most meek and most voracious
Were to be found, both feral and tame
Indeed there was room for all
Flowers and fruits fragrant there were
In plentitude that provided full supply
Of drink, meat and ointments
There was great wealth of minerals
Whose trade made Atlantis fame and fortunes
Beyond all other Kings and Potentates
They quarryed stone of white, black and red
Constructing dwellings both simple and fine
Whilst others more complex and colourful
Brought intrinsic pleasure unto the eye
There were stadia for games and races and death
Yet the bull the Kings fought nearly weapon-less
Using but prayer, stave and noose
The sacred beasts did range the temple loose
And when it's blood was poured over the Law
Engraved upon a bronze pillar in the Grove
Azure-gowned priests augured beneath the stars
High indeed was this culture as it resplendant flowered
Torqued by teluric clear-minded powers
Coursing through meridiens within the plexus sun
An energy shared by almost everyone
Crystals in waters and minerals rare
With plenty of everything everyone shared
Content with the wealth their lives were fair
Healed by waters of the Gods pure intent
It was a shame the way it all went
And they had armies but fought not themselves
And the King was supreme so the records do tell
Yet only with assent could he his kinsmen kill
So from high the fall at last it came
From misuse of crystals I've heard it blamed
Corruption in Court the God-head got weak
Atlantis's good fortune was broken and leaked
Or maybe it was the way they sacrificed bulls
That emptied their cup from brimming too full
In belligerance they sailed armada forth
Ancient Athens to assault
Yet this was to be their final war
A tsunami struck and Atlantis drowned
Not a trace of her Isles were left to be found
BOK GOES AWOL
Bok had been around a long time, his gelatinous congeal also long ago deposited spore of his offspring Pok in the unechoing nothingness to naturally express as voice of his father for that horned blobby mutant toad had little speech or none of his own.
It was that he had been lingering from longer ago still for aeons in fact, it was yet at a point in the early ninetees of the Twentieth Century CE, he somehowes mustered a mighty herd of dissident Spacegoatsunto his floating and irridescent egg. It is told in the annals of Bok of these times and some of the adventures that the Goats had on Earth and are recorded there and in other journals.
How it is that Goats went through a loop in time from the seventeenth of August 1992 until one or the other of the late Frazer Clarke's fortnightly collosal shogolloth of a literally Underground festival rave theatre bash called The Warp.
Bok had been last seen in the Sacred Bordelle Hot Tub Room gurgling joyously, dissapearing slowly beneath the healing and steamy water after being administered to by a salty but luscious three headed merwomen from the oceans of Venus.
All we saw was the rippling water and bubbles that rose to the surface to burst full of exotic gases in pastel shade colour. Bok had left John Crow's boudoir to the Whore-Goose and filtered through the drains of the car park under London Bridge Station which was a fabled half forgotten club of mysteries and Bacchic celebrations called The Drome. He had oozed into the sewers and released himself into the Thames. The luscious sea maid dressed in her own time and left the club to be last seen stripping off and diving into the murky Serpentine in a patch of bubbling water that released colourful smudges of thick gaseous almost-liquids.
Whence from here he travelled was a mystery and it was that the felloweship of the Goats was parted on Earth, yet for that the souls of Spacegoat herd travelled further on to find Bok, for they knew not where he had gone.
Then, the human componants of the Spacegoat sonic vibration returned to merely earthling status, variously becoming street cleaners, hobos, gardeners, bards, sucessful touring musicians, mothers, fathers, estranged, emigrated and so forth. Yet a time of curious magic had subtly left. Bok had gone AWOL.
Not to coin a phrase but it had been an epic journey that here seemed to draw to a halt as reality kicked in for the band. It had been a magnificent dream but it had had it's time.
Or so they thought.
Yet on through space had these Goats searched and, reverted to their core beings, forgetting the enchantments and ettiquettes of Terra Firma the whiles. For they were Incredible Planet Eating Spacegoats and their role in Space altered to a kind of God-like one. Indeed, true to their name they devoured the cellestial bodies, matters and gases as and when hungry, which often is the case. They also spent a lot of time getting stoned.
Goatborg was not at all stoned and by far the most prestigious of them having come out not at all like himself, so the other Goats thought at first when he had returned to the astral herd sometime after being enhurued and seduced by the Earth Goddess Inamorata.
For indeed, Goatborg had changed, and begat of himself a daughter by Inamorata, who had seeded Goatborg's fifth eye mind-time biocircuitry.
In due time and complete from his pentacular eye at the centre of his other four eyes on his forehead was born Xana Ray, bio-cyber scanner and her father's co-pilot.
For Goatborg had crafted inventions the meanwhile and built upon the basic received measurements a vessel for transporting the seeds of life through circumstances.
He had not joined the herd at their exodus for he was with Inamorata in the woods. Beneath there in great chambers under the earth's surface connecting through pot holes and chasms in it's bowels to other places many around the globe where he has created a great technology of his own silver mind.
And that a Temple surrounding the sacred enbolu of the first Spacegoats was erected in the woods that became noded to cosmic energy and adaptable to it's various levels.
And that later the Temple took into the air 30 feet and hovered there, it's energies purring with the prototype enbolu-powered engines then later with a selection of take-off tones including (nearly) silent, this craft that Goatborg had constructed would rapidly move off out of the stratosphere. It became to be know as The Resonator, a future echo from past possibilities. A vessel to shift seed through sustained attack of it all going down the pan big time.
Xana would be by his side at the control desk most times on the bridge, like on Star Trek but not. They were linked by electro-magnetic brainwaves and usually anticipated each other's actions and reactions. Goatborg generally maintained a serene exterior in all circumstances whereas his daughter would curtly display her chagrin and pique whilst remaining efficient.
It was Xana's manner to instantaniously scan the DNA of all she met with her retina to fibre optic eyes that could see through all falsities, shields and decoys.
There had been no call from the earth-exodusing Goatherd. Legend has it that once Bok brought the wandering hooves together by displaying a golden glowing lion's mane lit up in space as a great beacon.
He was not doing that this time. A lost herd of dilinquent goats had been going round in great circles travelling many interstellar leagues, but to no avail.
“Where was Bok?” was the question and they were discollected in different quadrants of the Universe. Goatborg had by this time begun to wonder where Bok was as well. In fact, everybody was wondering where everyone else was.
Since Xana had been a young cybe-nanny, Goatborg had been tinkering with various computers and mobile phones he had found in nearby landfills then reassembled basic circuitry and wired in bio-diodes that allowed another frequency to flow through them.
Thus it was that Goatborg connected special interfaces into the ancient and revered sacred Enbulos that had been preserved in the earth by Gnomes living in the burrows of their deep Kingdom.
They brought it forth for him because it was the time to use it for what it's purpose was. But it was not the only one and there were none quite alike.
With metals wrought of hemp fibres groomed from the hair of the trees in this ancient and sacred forest where it was that Goatborg and Inamorata had gone, the pair matted together a hull for a space-going vessel that would house the gnomic enbolu energy to flow within his fine machine.
Yes the craft was basically bong-powered yet that it would need a stout crew to fire up the engines.
Goatborg knew just the types.
But where were they?
Goatborg learnt much from the gnomes for his passion was drawn to study every aspect of their metal-craft and working of the subtle forces in the ground. So under the tuteledge of the Gnomic Underworld Goatborg soon accustomed himself with arcane and effective technological wonders or magical artefacts. He looked within himself, as Inamorata had forced him to see when in black caves no sight in silent communication with his neural pathways and he became a navigator of his own inner space.
Thus mapped inside himself, Goatborg became proficient in his own internal cyber-soul travel and, returning overground to the dappled light of the wood, he down loaded a star-map that he might know his way there out in the cold reaches of infinity too. For as the Gnomes told it,the outer Universe was as the inner one reflected in a pool where actions are the droplets of our joy and sorrow.
So, turning on his inner mirror and switching on the enbolu, which Inamorata gave a deep chuff to crank-start, it was on Xana's 15th birthday that the Temple took off and became a space-craft.
At first they would check out the solar system, Xana learning all the time the aspects that her scanning could be used for.
It was at the time of Xana's 9th birthday that Goatborg realised that Bok was not around any more, and neither were the Spacegoats. It came as quite a shock. It had been all this time he was occupied bringing up Xana, building a space-craft with ready access to antideluvian gnomic technology, and not least in any measure, being with Inamorata and constructing with the gnomes and quite a few humans who were aware of the need, great underground chambers they faced with a curious substance made from hemp, clay and tumeric powder.
When Xana reached 17 it became imperative to Goatborg that he go round up all who might be lost from out of his fated herd.
Xana was ready and willing to go with him and she had reached in her short years a wealth of skills that would go to waste if not utilised.
With Inamorata happy as she wished some time by herself in the catacombs where she wanted to do paintings of star maps. She had built her own quarters where she could be secluded but it was not uncommon that she would go down to the main hall and discuss strategy beneath the sprawling roots with the subterranean dwellers and her Gnomic Champions.
With a wave and a wink from the Goddess on the ground and a Xana fired up the enbolu and Goatborg lifted off for the what was intended to be their first flight out of the Solar System.
“Fly oh Craft of hemp and sound, lift your self up off the ground. See you later alligator, fly through space be resonator.” called Inamorata as she smiled at them through the bridge windows.
Goatborg smiled to himself “ That's a great name for the ship, I must write it on the side somewhere. 'The Resonator', yes I like that.”
They lifted off into the atmosphere and Inamorata went in and downstairs.
It was a weary time that Xana and Goatborg spent herding the lost Goats together and at first they were not too happy to be found, having gone even more feral than they had been on earth and really it was Captain Capras's job anyway, but hey, the goats were not too hot on authority, obeying or being one.
Yet one by one and in little trips of threes and fours, they found and gathered all the Goats and managed to plonk them safely into The Resonator's lounge, where they sat on the various chaise longue and pouffs about the place.
Capras was there spouting about his recent conquests he had had, but was talking to no one, obviously completely off his tits.
Pokkus and Zegthukku were both sitting bolt upright each with an impenetrarable stony glaze to their eyes which stared directly forward unblinking.
The old one had fought with a huru-man on the subcontinent and been cursed to become lame, yet here he sat quietly composed within his hooded cloak, his handbags of seed to hand, the very air of dignity all about him.
Suddenly the cowl fell and he stood up randomly.
“I was the old one” he announced in a croaky voice, a flash of silver light reflecting off from his pate from the overheads, a lustrous onyx glinting deep in his eyes.
“But now I return! The ancient one!” He looked around, pausing for effect, then continued “I have cast off the old and become venerable beyond years for I have seen the Eye of Sound”
There was general applause from all but Pokkus and Zeg as the ancient one regained his seat.
Khrishmael was sat next to the ancient one and pulled from his travelling case, the trapezoid chiming instrument with many strings which everyone asks the name of and it's name is a hammered dulcimer. And he took out his tiny light hammers, and he struck them with precision upon the instrument's strings so that they did bounce.
And so forth came a music like a rain of gentle diamonds and the goats did perk up and looked most ready and able all of a sudden.
And they set to work upon The Resonator doing the jobs that needed to be done. All but for Pokkus and Zegthuuku that is to be said. They were left where they sat catatonic and the rest of the crew dusted them every so often.
By the time Pokkus and Zegg returned to any state fit for work, The Resonator had toured, with Sirius B as the radius point, 54 parsecs in a spiral, in and out, visiting the Rainbow moon in that time. Here they picked up Merleddyn Wolfindog, a canine mystic adventurer who had been charting trajectories between Sirius and Earth at different times of year. He came along for the ride as it was eventually the idea that The Resonator return to Earth, at least for a while, which was where Wolfindog wanted to go anyway, and as Xana and he seemed to have formed an instant bond, as if they had known each other before, and so it was all agreed.
Still they had no clue at all yet where Bok might be. Xana suggested they head towards Venus and see if they could pick up any news from, well it was a long shot, but of or from any jet-setter merwomen who might be stalking the bars, who might have been promanading with a grotesquely ugly toad-fungus daemon, or any one who might have heard any news at all. Xana winced a bit when she put her idea forward to the crew. Then when she cunningly added that they might get some leave down there, goats started to get up and prepare and Xana smiled a little smile to herself.
Later Pokkus came to Xana and showed her something. It was a scrap of radio-active seaweed that had been part of the tri-headed Venusian sea-wench's scanty costume that she wore at the Warp.
“It must have got caught in my belt-buckle you know” said Pokkus “It reeks of her sea-foam perfume.” I wonder if we gave it to Merleddyn to get the scent? We could at least find her, and , you know, they might still be together?!?”
Xana looked at Pokkus a bit distrustingly for a moment, but she could see there was sense in Pokkus's suggestion.
“It's worth a try” she conceeded.
When Merleddyn was given the seaweed to smell he started going frantic and with Xana following his barked directional commands at her desk, The Resonator started lurching along trackways that only Merledynn could sense and it led to them hurtling hither and thither from one quandrant of space to another. For it seemed that Bok and his sea-wench had been on a grande tour that zig-zagged vast terratories and had several times crossed path with their own reconnaisence but not at the same time. However at length, Wolfindogg's nose turned a particular corner and his ears pricked up and his body pointed like an arrow. His ardent gaze was regarding Venus herself. Yet when The Resonator came into a near orbit the trail became confused and Merledynn lost his direction. They spun in Venus's orbit for a while, having no idea what to do and wondering if they'd been a bit rash following the perfume lead when it had only brought them to where 'They must all smell like that.”
But it was no time for being bored for suddenly an enormous eruption occurred on the surface of Venus, and a great ball of flaming spume was projected radically up and out. This came unfortunaltly fortunatly as it's direction of rapid motion looked to all aboard the Resonator as it they were going to coincide with it as they swung round the planet.
A great glob of feiry compound expulsed from the lanced boil of some volcano like phenomenon down below the Resonance.
Instantly Xana scanned all relevant data to scale, velocity, composition and this she relayed to Goatborg, whose hoof consequently passed in sequence over a panel of colourful light-sensors. Ray lights suddenly shot forth from the hull of the Resonator down at a 75 degree angle to the surface of Venus as she flew over and covering an area that Xana picked out that included the flaming spit-ball.
As soon as the rays met the ball, the doom projectile turned to a fine golden dust that was inert except for making a pleasant small tinkling noise that could be heard on the hull due to the air inside the ship.
'Look out!' cried Xana. Another globule was firing from Volcanic Venus. Scanning this one, Xana drew the non-alert, for the ship had moved on now and though the splurt went off at a slightly different angle, had got out of range and the fair-sized chunk of Venus sailed past where they had been. Xana's sensors were moving on now, scanning the volcanic zone and depth, which seemed to be shaking and quaking like billy-ho and she suddenly exclaimed what Goatborg, a slightly pannicky look flickering for one billionth of a split second in all five of his eyes.
“Higher orbit Father, sh-he's going to really blow!”
But Goatborg's left hoof was already making movements across the light-source controls in front of him that activated motion vectors which smoothly but rapidly boosted The Resonator to a safer level above Venus.
A great purple gas broke forth from the gaping gash of infernos which was the volcano's mouth, which obscured it's vicinity with great plumes of it, as from deep underground ran a great rumbling that shook with terrific shuddering of soil, ripping, tearing and rending of rocks, all the while rolling louder below with a baleful underworldly thunder, as a vast malificent molten boulder of magma birthed violently from a slowly buckled then forever cracked chasm of Venus to career space-ward smoking with purple, red and black fumes and variegated with flames of blinding colours.
Some great disgorging of a incendiary ball of choking vomit, free at last and soaring void-ward with the speed of a silver and red rabid greyhound and the size of an ocean liner pouffed out of the purple shrouding smoke a massive head of burning death.
The outer surface of the Resonator was sprayed in a variously textured and pigmented spume and not having got that far away enough in time, was somewhat wobbled in it's acceleration getting the hell out of there. That which had extruded from the volcano so feirily and forcefully spacewards hurtled on out but thankfully did not splat into the Resonator.
A ginormous greeny black glob bubbling and excreting clots of magma was rocketting into the silvery black alive with a corona of fires that ranged in fearful hues as it sped by swerving the Resonator with it's spacewake. It was duly scanned by Xana who correllated intelligence of what she did not know with Goatborg's memory banks. They stared at each other. The intercom was picking up static. There were a few voices crackling over the intercom. Most of it was in Venusian and it was certainly women's voices. They did not seem very pleased and were carping and shouting and harping and sharpening knives too it sounded like so Xana didn't translate, for there was another sound, another sort of voice. It seemed to be the voice fading in then out on the band, of someone or something exceedingly drunk and stoned singing in a language unfamiliar to you but by which tones one hears can make fair guess there is lewd content in those there rhymes.
“Where's that coming from?” Goatborg checked his screens. They looked at one another. The other noises on the intercom were over ridden by a static distorted but definate belch.
Xana and Goatborg looked at one another. It had to be Bok, but all that Goatborg said was,
“The Grabbers!”
The Grabbers were one of the Bok catching devices Goatborg had fitted onto the Resonator one way or another. There was the Boknet but grabbers were first line of protocol in volcanic circumstances and these were large enough but humane things on the front of the hull just below the deck.
Pokkus and Zegthuuku had been sent out in two pods and Goatborg sped the ship towards the Bok-premised blob streaking out in front of them in variegated flames and shedding a great deal of the matter of Venus in molten clods as it went.
Keeping the Resonator to the rear, Pok and Zeg rode on ahead with turbo spins in their pods and produced lassooes made out of spun together fibre-optic and space-ox sinew.
They zoomed past the hurling ball of probably Bok and then turned suddenly on their hoof-heels to hold still in space and wind up their lassoos to throw. With a twin twerk, duel lassos tangled two projecting craggy protrusions on the mightily forward thrusting blob and with a twist and a twirl of their hooves and moving with Bok's volition as they took the strain, Pokk and Zeg soon rounded up the speeding mutant toad-fungus. Goatborg had narrowed in on the vapour and fumes trail of the Bok projectile and, scooting forth from the heat of it, was liberally dousing the combusting Venus-excreted matter with foam from various hull nozzles. The twin pods steadied Bok with their lassoos and Goatborg came near and took him carefully with a grasp of the Grabbers.
Bok was not much visible beneath the foam, and when that fell off you could see that he was still caked in the matter of Venus, I won't say earth but could say he was smothered in the Venus of Venus, for beneath all the layers of smouldering cak on Bok's toady hide, you could hear him him giggling and gurgling in evident great satisfaction, his Bok-belly undulating with tides of vibrating peristaltic pulses that toned pleasantly with the what was turning out to be somewhat musically toned hull of the ship.
Bok would sing or slur maudlin-sounding snatches of balladry that seemed inevitable in their meaning though they were incomprehensible. As he was cleaned up there were found to be singed garments festooning his neck and he wore a capacious and tacky Hawaiaan shirt, pink and while now somewhat soiled frilly undergarments similarly worse for wear from the flames. Smudged on his face were thick layers of make up and lipsticks partly caramelised by the molten firedollop he had just been.
“Great balls of fire!” said Captain Capras who had been wandering corridors absently composing a poem and finally heard the report at mess.
The Bok-Pulse was felt through the ship and for a moment Capras looked a bit uneasy but then seamlessly settled back into his gin and tonic.
Goatborg and Xana saluted their Captain but no-one else bothered. Having found Bok they were not sure what to do next. But Bok seemed happy enough so lacking any directive from their Captain, the crew just had a massive session and lulled around for a while without going anywhere
anywhere too fast.
Resigned to this, Goatborg and Xana went and cleaned the hull. Down beneath the deck outside in their silver suits cleaning the hemp-metal weave casing of the Resonator, it seemed that Bok was trying to say something to them as they scrubbed off his cak and spume. Bok leered at them as was his fashion, yet he was clearly exhausted and still smouldering from the lava and his flatulant answers were unintelligable.
They noticed he was covered in myriad spores and these they left on his body yet with brushes they carefully swabbed down Bok's really dirty parts after mounding up the Venus Earth in greater piles where there were spores growing already. As said, these they did not touch, but that they got mounded up with the other Venus Earth, or Venus Venus where there were grown spores thereon onto those areas and so made spore beds. Then after some routine checks and cleaning the other side of the hull and buffing it all with some massive automated rollers, they set back for their quarters, did ablutions, then got into their uniforms and up to the bridge.
Xana looked at her desk. There was an incoming code appearing as a pulse on her codeogram that she did not recognise though the way it made it's signal, which was an repeated abrupt attack decaying at length to silence that had an urgency to it she thought. She could find no auxiliary data on the matter at that point but the signal kept coming from the direction of the constellation of Leo and she informed Goatborg who set his central programmers on it. After some processing Goatborg said to Xana that they should set course to find out about this signal because it seemed like a distress call. The Captain was called up but he was having a bath and wouldn't be out for a couple of months and would GoatB mind terribly if he step up as deputy for the interim and, well “do whatever he damn well wanted to, what ho!”
Goatborg acceeded a small, crinkled smile and resumed his duties. Yet now he and Xana swung the Resonator round with a new set of co-ordinates that took them towards Leo.
It was taking weeks of astral flight towards the strange pleading signal and the crew were getting somewhat idle and dimly mutinous speculation about the tastieness of certain star-clusters not on course with where they were heading was rumoured to be occuring at the fringes of command.
It had been a long drive in space and things had been getting very boring so Pokkus and Zegthuuku snuck down to the bar to play dice and get wasted.
It was soon after this that a lot of things began to happen all at once.
The most significant of the events was the first, or it was at the time, for out of space slid a storm of gigantic black rocks that was so utterly intense that Goatborg and Xana has to apply all their video-game skills, slamming the ship this way an that to avoid the sudden, silent projectiles. There was nothing for it, it was all out slalem a hideous game of hidden asteroids. Goatborg had all his rays out front, vaporising the oncoming rush of most of them but still the hull sustained a good few glancing blows. Fortunalty, seeing as they had had the insight to built it out of good old hemp, the thing held sure under this rigourous trial by meteior. Others of the goats had clamebered out side the ship and were taking out as much as they could of the cosmic debris orally, but it was really even more than the planet eating spacegoats could deal with at one go. Merledyyn was crouched beneath a cabinet not sure what to do but quite excited.
Xana was busy sonar-scanning the storm and indictated to Goatborg that the stream was quite wide, but that they were near the edge of it and Goatborg took that information and took the Resonator into a sharply obtuse angle, which with the blast of a retro angular jet he did very efficiently.
“What is that?” Xana said, more or less to her own scanning circuits when they had emerged from the deadly surging flow. She didn't have much time to think because suddenly the area was filled of hundreds of giant blue cats with wings who were all suspended within transparent space-travel bubbles, and looking rather surprised.
Xana confirmed they were the source of the signal and established a channel of communication out of the various available to her. There followed a mewling and caterwailing that was rather difficult on the ears and which left neither Xana, nor anyone else, any the wiser what had been said. Meredyyn the Sirius dog wore a resigned look. The cats were all much bigger than him, but all seemed too noble to try and cat-fight him.
“Do they need feeding” someone suggested, but this was ignored, it all seemed far too serious for that.
Yet the cats seemed very earnest about their plea but no one knew what it was. Their commander Meiou was very patient but it was clear that his hordes wanted to move on, and already were, in the direction of what Xana calculated was that where the trail of metiorites had gone. She accessed a deep file, one from the ancient records that had been in her DNA. She quickly ascertained that these rocks were the Taurine meteor stream that struck Earth 26,000 years ago, ending the last ice age and subsuming Atlantis. Further circuits ran.. The wing men, cats and other beings had left Atlantis to different ends, following the cluster passing through Earth's circuit and hammering into it el profundo.
They had burned suddenly brilliantly in the sky and struck causing a flood of proportions incalculable that brought near extinction of all earth's creatures...and could again !!!
Of course, thought Xana, the meteor stream is in a massive orbit and will eventually coincide once again with Earth on it's onward path perhaps causing similar mayhem. It would be the return of the great leaping serpent, the feared comet that came and changed the face of Earth before.
Meiou was looking at her pleadingly as if he could see that she understood. But his felines were all for the chase and so too, if she could have known, was Meiou, though he was also thinking diplomatically how to pull the Goats to their cause. It occurred to Xana that he was asking for help. It was her home planet too, Earth, she thought, however extracted she had been from it, she still came from the Pearl Planet of Terra Firma. It feeling passed through her guts of future remorse. It would all happen again and there was nothing that could be done about it. The comet would come and raze the civilsations of men by ice following fire, all would be wrought in chaos through which violence something would perhaps supremely emerge anew. Would there even be any survivors this time? Would new life, if any, have to crawl from vestiges of DNA left blasted for near boundless reaches of time in molten metal oceans?
It seemed that in the ages before there had been those who had come before to the aid of those few survivors dislocated by the changes. Xana probed primary memory penetrative files accessed future recollections going down to her core DNA and suddenly she seemed submerged somehow and she saw seven sages with shining scales who sailed silver ships, showing survivors to sow seeds from their special sacks, their bags that brought beneficient dividend to the land once again as agriculture. Xana felt a tear well up in side her. She had glimpsed the near future apocalypse of her home planet and it made her gulp. She had to take a deep breath of the reconditioned air. Xana turned and interfaced Goatborg in all of his eyes with the data she had received from the past-log journey she has just experienced.
“Oh shit” said Goatborg as it's import hit him. Goatborg had been born on earth as well and as far as he was concerned, it was not just another planet to munch upon, though he knew that was not the opinion of all of the crew.
Goatborg was Acting Captain at the time, a fact reinforced by the over-loud singing reverberating round the corridors of each deck emanating from the ship's bathroom where Capras himself was splashing about completely immersed in bubble-bath.
He made a quick executive decision and began a discussion with Xana about the most effective way to over-ride the Taurid Stream and arrive on Earth before the comet and maybe stand a chance of awakening a few to the approaching calamity and hopefully take some to safety on board with them. He would never have had such thoughts in the days before he met Inamorata.
Xana was exactly calculating routes, here eyes gazing up into the roof of her head for the meteors were travelling at a fair rate and had already made quite some distance in a direction out of there.
Commander Meiou was still hanging around, his big eyes imploring Xana in some way that she couldn't ignore. Only his elite guard stayed with him, silent, their wings folded as they crouched in their spore-bubbles on the Resonator's exterior.
Xana looked deep into Meiou's eyes and tried to say with no words that they were going to do what they could.
Yet all the while they had been mulling this over and trying to understand what each other was saying, a small party of the Great Spiders of Zzelg had been returning from a clandestine meeting on Earth with the British Government. They were shuttling back to their home with some British VIPs and seen the Resonator not been observed themselves, for they were in talks with Commander Meiou and the Spiders were a very long way away. The Spiders anyway switched on their shrouders and clakked their mandibles at each other in horrible celebration that they would now not be seen at all until the last moment when they attacked these invaders to their terratory! Then they had rung through for support to Zzelg's Central Web Control in the Red Spider Nebula when they had spotted Goatborg's craft and the cats coming by, the rather obvious blue cat contingent and the hempen hull of the Resonator, the shining slime on Bok's belly reflecting the sun vividly.
This had duly come as they waited concealed behind a large area of gaseous haze for the rest of the Spider force to sneak up.
And it was pretty much when the Spider back up arrived that they made an ambush on the Resonator. Suddenly they ran along little threads and sprang as if from all points at once to converge on the Resonator like the coming of night. The elite guard of XararaX lept to the fray instantly and effected a terrible carnage on the spiders as is told, but in the process, the Resonator was gripped in such a terrifying battle in space that very soon
The Spiders were winning, the Resonator was being taken hold, yet the cats held their ground, the fighting ranged back and forth for hours of spacetime. Then it seemed that all was lost as the space ship began to careen out of control down a plughole in the cosmos.
Meanwhile in the bar, oblivious to their craft spinning off-course in space under attack from several thousand Giant Spiders creeping and crawling grotesquely over the entire hull of their craft, two somewhat worse for wear veteran Spacegoats were still deeply engrossed in an insober joke, the clunk of their heavy dice hitting the cantina table.
“..and she said, “Not without a three-way split.”
Insalatious guffaws acceeded Pokkus's punchline.
C-clunk, the die were cast again.
“Arsehole” said Zegthuuku.
Pokkus took a hit of spacewhack and grinned abysmally.
“That would have cost me a ha' planet in the old days” he slurred shaking the dice thorougly in his hoof-nailed hands.
“We could have have shared it man” said an equally stoned Zegthuuku.
Clunk, clunk. The die hit the table.
“No quarter. Double 20. I get a quazar” bellowed Pokkus truimphantly.
Pokkus continued after a pause, “It'll be te end of all this fun while we are back to Earth in that zone where we have to play. I'm not so sure I'm looking forward to it.”
His concern gave way to abandon as he scooped up the laughing bones. “Watch this I'm going to go super-nova”
Pokkus cupped the die and kissed his hand hooves before casting. He sighed, a mere 5.
“Your arse. Yeah, we're having to alter our remaining gray matter at the diode-breach and it ain't funny” said Zegthuuku, his eyes dilating.”
“It's sort of against my nature to make music and not munch out on star clusters.” he ruminated sourly.
“Aren't you the lucky one!” ribbed Pokkus “Just 'cos it's a delicate transition for us to make for ol' Terra Firma. Down in that Morph Tank I'm told they really got it bubbling.”
“Yeah I've heard that we actually have to submerge in it, like a quantum baptism.”
Zegthuuku mock quailed at the thought. “I've been through worse” he said.
It was just at this point that the spiders assailing the craft were jettisoned into deep space and the craft stopped spinning, its passage levelling out into a steady swoop through the void.
Some corridors and glides away on the ship's bridge, Goatborg and co-pilot Xana Ray were crashing about trying to control the ship. They had just struggled to their hooves having been staggering around attempting to steady themselves as their craft whirled, hurtling out of control through space. Gripping anything near to hoof or extender, they had battled to regain control of the ship's stabilisers, all the time being repeatedly thrown from side to side and up and down, crashing around the spinning Bridge like clothes in a tumble-dryer as alarm lights flashed, sirens wailed and machines exploded. They had grasped hold of columns or consoles struggling to drag themselves to the correct controls in their attempt to regain mastery of the ship's guidance.
The spiders had seemed to come from everywhere at once and now the crew had subsequently become disoriented by myriad hypnotic eyes that had rotated irridescantly in the glimmering, confounding the entire crew. All except Pokkus and Zegthuuku that was, who had carried on below unaware the turmoil, slamming their game dice down hard on the much scolloped table and cursing in gruff atonal bleats.
Desperatly clutching the Bridge's furniture, Goatborg eventually crawled up to his console and leant forwards returning his attention to the console. The screen was smashed and flickering but still miraculously functioning in defaulted mode. He interpreted the signal. With a few small motions of his fore-hooves the ship righted it self and returned to a graceful sweeping arc through space.
“I have no clue where the fuck we are” he stated monotonally.
Xana Ray was shaken but soon got up, looked round and started scanning. Beneath her shimmering blue red and white tunic, her lithe derma-plas limbs were indeed realistic to the touch, though all who reported so had received a series of nasty stinging shocks. Streams of tiny lights moved in changing sequences across her forehead and down her supple shoulders'.
“Insufficient data” she said. “That's what they say in the movies.”
Xana clicked a button and a screen by her console flashed to life. It showed one large arachnid and two human hostages who were bound and gagged suspended in a lazar cage in Hold 9.
“Still there” she purred.
Through the forward screen thousands of blue cats were returning to their separate or combined diaphonus mushroom spore-cannisters and were continuing gracefully through space on all sides of the craft like a feline river.
“They seem to know where they are going” she smirked.
It was then that their Captain entered the deck, half-blindedly pulling on his bath robes, which were inside out. His horns were still in a large flower-patterned bath-hat, his eyes painfully squinting with bubble-bath bubbles. The esteemed Captain was wobbling on his legs all over the place. He was followed at intervals by other Spacegoats also struggling to find their balance.
“Captain Capras” said Goatborg and Xana together, saluting as that goat and the others staggered onto the Bridge.
”Are you malfunctioning?” enquired Goatborg, hinting unironically at the compassion from within his part-human, part-goat circuits.
“No I'm Ok” said Capras who steadied himself and, leaving a trail of bubble-bath, aimed a straight line at his own console which stood on a platform behind and overseeing Goatborg's to starboard.
By now all the other crew had wandered onto the Bridge. Goatborg and Xana had been facing the entrance still stood to attention but now turned with the Captain as he stumbled.
Even Pokkus and Zegthuuku had broken off from their game and come up from the bar entering the Bridge, cybermultaniously to utter the timeless words
“What's happening man?”
“Good evening gentlegoats” said Capras ironically “I see we are all present and incorrect”
A few guffaws and simulated farts quietly rumbled from uncertain of the gathered.
Capras finally got enough soap from his eyes to see properly. He took a quick look at some charts in an overhead memory bank. He studied his monitor. A look of delight and intrigue flashed over his face.
.
“And whom might I have the displeasure of making aquaintence with here?”
With a bony digit hoof, Capras indicated the three hostages with a distainful waft of his fore-hoof.
The slightest hint of pride flickered in Xana's jeweled eyes.
“It's Ambassador Klak and a couple of his British cronies” announced Zegthuuku, who had strolled up to the Captain's platform squinting at the screen and generally taking an interest, his mouth gawping. “He's recently been reported as having been in the House of Lords and of having made a deal with Gideon and David here. Looks like Xana caught them in an unfortunate moment and bagged them real good”
“Entirely” said Goatborg “Before the Spiders mesmerised us, L.G. Bloomer and Xana Ray went out in a stealth-pod on a snatch mission when we saw that Zzelg himself was flying near.
“Yes” said Xana “ I scanned their personel and we saw there were some Very Important Parasites on board. We managed to penetrate Zzelg's Death-Egg. Though his own bodyguard proved too hard to pierce, we managed to get these three.”
Capras rubbed his neatly tufted chin. As Goatborg, the Captain and Xana studied various of the intact screens, they discovered that their craft, The Resonance, had been badly shaken but sustained little serious structural damage, it's surface being designed to withstand warfare in deep space with such as the Great Spiders. As already mentioned, the entire hull of The Resonance had been covered with thousands of gigantic belligerant arachnids for several hours in a pitch battle. The spiders had been travelling a trajectory that Goatborg calculated had just come from Earth and that which had unexpectedly crossed with the path of The Resonance, which was returning to Earth along with tens of thousands of Lemurian XararaX, the winged blue cats who were returning from their other planet, known as Magmu in our tongue. It was the Commander Meiou's elite guard of cats who on first sight of Zzelg's arachnid army had instantly emerged from their mushroom spore cannisters to descend on the migrating Spiders bearing claws that sprang from their paws a full three meters. With deadly precision, the XararaX severed thick black-haired aracnid legs and slashed their bulging bodies so they bled mortal blood that was yellow and sickly looking.
While this sudden cat to spider attack had been fascinating to watch, even for cyborgs, Goatborg had found himself thrumming his metallic fingers on the dash in what might have appeared impatience.
He could have fried the whole lot in one go with any one of a variety of rays or acids but it seemed that the cats were on the pounce and it would not have been fortuitous to sizzle them to a crisp at the same time as their enemies.
It was true however, that the XararaX had been doing a magmuficent job. But the cats did not know of Zzelg the Spider God's extra-ordinary hypnotic powers, which were shared to some part, among all his kind.
Zzelg had sent a crack team of trained mesmarachnids who had attached themselves near to where the outer portals through which the crew viewed space were fixed. A few dozen of the squad were hidden waiting crouched in position while the larger warring faction gave them decoy. Upon Zzelg's transmitted signal the arachnid action squad had sprung onto the external space-viewer hatches and goggled hideously into the surviellance systems of The Resonance. This somewhat magnified their glinting, rotating eyes on the internal screens of all the ship's viewers with mesmerisms that spooked the entire crew including Xana and Goatborg and the other ten Spacegoats but not including Zegg and Pokkus who were still down in the bar, stoned out of their gourds and much too involved with their simple game to notice.
The ensuing moments on the bridge involved nearly all those aboard The Resonance stumbling about mindlessly with a lot of shaking of limbs and shouting .
Out in space, Zzelg's men grimaced their grisly mandible-jaws and clakked at each other in black mirth.
Yet all had not gone well for the Spiders, for as The Resonance sped out of course, the mind's of it's valient crew putty in the stalky legs of their God-Emperor, something unexpected occurred.
It was the retro-glasses that Gignatus, Goatborg's gigantic blind friend had used for eyes that saved them. He didnt need them anymore because he had returned into the Earth and he said they kept slipping off when he dug.
Goatborg had not been sure what to do with the glasses so had made a bracket above the central control on which they hung neatly as a sort of lucky charm or talismen for the others, though that meant little to him. They were old tech.
One of the Spiders had fixed a ray into Goatborg's cyber mind.
Goatborg was not captain but at the time of the attack had been flying the craft. He generally took care of most things, having built the ship from scratch with his bare hooves.
The spider was using the ray magnified through the viewer to scorch through the ship's systems prisms in a concentrated lazar-like beam to bore into Goatborg's cyber-breached mind. It was an information-to-light-torque tube and once penetrated, the lazer began sucking data out of him.
Though his mind was phantasming all around him like a million layered cloud shot through with dazzling shafts of differently coloured light suddenly appearing and dissapearing which nowhere revealed any ground, Goatborg had been in this sort of situation before. He fought within himself to gain power over the outflowing stream leaving his diode-breached consciousness and at length, tore his own eyes from the eight circling ones of his eight-legged assailant on the outside of The Resonance.
As he involuntarily threw his head back, the still issuing stream of light information leaving his brain happened to hit the glasses above him as immediately the entire ship began to shake and rattle even more out of control and all but the two dice throwing goats were thrown about their respective decks in different sections of the Resonance.
Yet at that point a look of pure glee had induced on Goatborg's features, for in his mind's eye he saw his friend Gignatus grin somehow from millions of light years away and stretch his own mind's arm into Goatborg's and out of his fourth eye and indeed out of the screen of The Resonance into his attacker. This had acted as a lazer crane beam that, due to their intense group concentration and spider-linked brains, had counter-mesmerised the entire elite squad and with a twist and a kick and a fry, they had been thrown off into the depths of space, their own minds erased by a torturous trick known only the Giant.
With this mission failure from his mesmer elite and the Magmusian Cats pretty much finishing off the Spiders once the Resonance had got out of spin-dive, the Mother-Egg Ship of Zzelg had drawn off, scuttling through space back to a zone which was grey looking and indistinct.
Back on the Bridge, the Captain was drew breath and announced :
“Xana, Goatborg. Everybody”.
Capras drew himself to his full height, his horns gleaming. The majority of the crew were slouched about the place looking vague but Goatborg and Xana stood alert, the cyber-girl's fibre-optics sequencing cognitavely.
He was the acclaimed and chronicalled Captain Capras Goatek the Herder, Caprine Supreme of the Incredible Planet-Eating Spacegoats, yet in spite of these monikers, the meander-some Spacegoats still on the whole held him in respect.
“Our craft The Resonance” he announced “Has been travelling since we set out to find our Father Bok after he slipped out of his riotous four thousandth eight hundred and twenty ninth birthday party for 'five minutes' with that Venusian three-headed Sphinx, which took him several parsecs out of our reconnaissance. As we all know, it has taken some time to gather him together again.”
Grunts from the Herd showed that they were in fact listening.
“Now Bok is grasped in the center our hull's doughnut torque we doubt he will elude us further and his added energy is likely to enable us to rendevous with Earth a lot quicker. We all had a good time didn't we!”
There were general bleats of approval from amongst the crew but if one had been observant, Xana looked less pleased. She had been serving in the cantina throughout the festivities and had found the place most insalubrious.
Capras continued, “I know that more than a few of you found the arrival of the Magmusian Cats a surprise. It certainly was for me.
“We were not to know that they were following a signal they had heard from Earth calling them back there, away from their assumed habitat, Planet Magmu. When in the ancient of days, the XararaX finally left Earth after both their Mother Land Lemuria and then Atlantis crashed into the depths of the ocean, they set off to find the holy planet Magmu that the Cats at length discovered and colonised. They have lived there twenty six thousand years and excepting space-time lag of a few hundred at the most, they are returning to Earth as it wobbles into Aquarius
“For in the mean while the cats had been away, new times of low-depravity have grow again on Earth. And we all know about that. Regular Caprine law stipulates mandatory consumption of gone sour humanoid farming planets such as Terra but Maeaioukat the 26thof Magmu has impressed upon me as an envoy of the lineage of the ancient cats of Lemuria that we basically do them a favor or they will turn on us. I think we all know who will come off worse as well”
Capras paused slightly nervously looking out at no goat in particular, who were also each avoiding one another's eyes.
“They like their home planet and have asked us to help them rehabitate it rather than making a tidy meal of it. Seeing as we are Children of Bok...”
The Herd seemed to resonate strongly with the reminder of their lineage and visibly drew their listening nodes nearer to their Caprine.
“...I feel that the Herd entire should enter the Tank and shrink down to our sonic mode”.
Capras knew that his proposal was not going to go down well with everyone.
“I know you are thinking 'What's in it for me'” Capras then used purple narrative “But can you remember the thrill of the vibration of the tune of the ancient goatsong? The first and last telling the tale of all that is old and all that is to come? Though this world of worlds is a base place of low cravings and desires, is there not a goat among you who remembers that that there is more to life than roaming space and scoffing stars?”
Capras didn't feel he was winning, but carried on anyway.
“Do you remember the Muse? Do you remember when you made bleat upon the sheer cliffs of Atlantis? Did you know the people down there are starved of mind? They cannot look up and see the sky nor do they know the ground beneath their feet. With our lost and for gotten goatsong we can rehabitate the hills dales streams rivers mountains clouds seas and all atmospheres and zones of mind and earth upon a sorry state of a sphere known sometimes as the blue pearl!”.
Half of the Goats had wandered out off the Bridge again by the time Capras lowered his loftily gazing head after his pep talk speech. This faction were simply not impressed and would rather avoid the Tank and the Cats by not going to Earth at all.
The others were slowly beginning to grin and nod their heads and there was a good bit of tuft pulling as well and I also might as well add that there were some dangerous space-bucaneer's sidewards glances.
It was a time for their own crack team.
Those left on the Bridge all shared something in kind. They were all to Capras's trained mind, total posers.
With a weary but experienced glance at Goatborg and Xana who were processing the data of this new exchange, he thought
“Ok we need to knock this merry little shower into shape.”
Bok all this meanwhile had been squished into the middle of the great doughnut ring that comprised the hull of The Resonance. He had been a flurry of white as white brethe ether ribbons during the fight and panting heavily, but now was glowing a dull red and gurgling to himself. He heard some drones coming from the crew's voices deep on the inside of the spaccraft. Though he could not understand what the little goats were talking about, he had a sense of the drift of it and produced a sinewous harp from within the folds of his epidermis.
For several space weeks The Resonance flew through space with the straem of flying cats and nothing much happened. Their course was set and Capras and Maeioukat had entered into further negotiations
Roughly half the spacegoats of the crew were in favor of immersion and putting the band together for they knew the perks could be considerable.
This was not seen in the same way by the half in disfavor for whom it was thought there was much more in the succulent taste of a dying planet that could be obtained as a musician. There was a quiet resentment towards the Cats for diplomacy that did them out of a good feast, but these feelings did not show themselves publically.
Save for the gurglings of Bok, The Resonance continued it's quiet running, the crew being primarily a functional herd unit with a purpose, even though ahead there were to be seen some confusions, for the time being, cyborg-mode was prevelant and intrapersonal issues were out-serioused by sundry technical nessicities encountered on space-drives.
Having been seduced by the Earth Goddess Inamorata which re-routed his destiny of murderous abandon to one of engineer and builder of inter-dimensional crafts, Goatborg was behind the Captain's proposal and much favoured joining with the Cats in their mission of returning to find Lemuria, though he knew very little about music.
The nebulae lay eggs of stars, planets climb to their Zodiac positions and twirl within oval overlapping cycles and through this The Resonance proceeds toward Terra Firma.
Well Goatborg remembered Earth where the Nargourds romped and Inamorata blew her son dragon Sagnuru into the sky.
Well he remembered rending Earths at Twyford. Well he remembered the Goddess's remonstrance as he tripped with no hooves in a fragmented dream of himself. But that was all long ago. Now he lived only to serve her.
Xana too, born for that self same purpose serving an intergalatic mother-egg, was Goatborg's expression to the Universe of his alter self. But though she was free to roam as she would, oft it was that they adventured together. This had been a routine mission tedious for Xana apart from the kidnapping. Goatborg seemed more able to remain in prodominantly cyber-mode wheras, never lacking in efficiency, Xana felt she felt more boredom than her father's circuitry allowed him.
As they travelled, Xana researched the origins of Zzelg. From former subterranian glory, Zzelg had been banished from earth long ago in the days of Boris and Thomo by the cleaving axe of Thog lizard man. Yet though his body had been separated to the eight corners of the Universe, though aeons it had secretly re-constituted and was evidently finding cronies like Klak, an army and conducting shady talks with dodgy prominent Westminster politicians.
Sources intimated at an Anglo-Arachnid summit that had been held beneath the river Thames for the strategic colonisation of a new network within the Red Spider nebula. Xana read-scanned between the lines of the subtext. It seemed they were recruiting and using the Immersion Tank to morph humans to half or full arachnid and dissappearing them in thousands from countries all over the World.
'Urgh' she made an involuntary sound.
With a flick of her fore-hoof she cut her over-head imager to the hostages and closed in on the two humans. Both David and Gideon had remarkeably tight skin, shiny and displaced-looking, as if a decoy. These were painted mask faces that with the veil-thin insolence of power, slightly smirked contempt. These, her scanner's tri-diode senses all told her, were faces of those caught in a puppet play.
Xana scanned deeper into the Gideon's skin. Very soon it became clear to her that he had already at least half submerged in the vat, still enough to make public appearances, but though all seemed disturbingly normal on the surface, beneath the smooth exterior, a baleful plasma was throbbing through arteries and veins glowing with both human and arachnid blood cells. She shrivelled her nose as her multi-faceted eyes were drawn to the hideously bulging and deformed structure of the homorachnid's heart organ, which was gorged with the sickly pale radio-active ichor. Then she scanned out again with control but quickly, her wrist and fore-head light sensors overloading slightly, pulsing a mild 'Alert' signal.
Goatborg swivelled round.
“Are you ok Xana?
“Yes I'm fine.” She answered. “It's just these politicians are gross. I hope the Spacegoats are going to come out of their Tank a bit finer than this”
“I don't know how much finesse you forsee,” Goatborg quietly sniggered, before continuing;
“Don't expect too much. They need to be all in if they want this thing to work relatively smoothly or nothing will happen.”
“What could possibly go wrong” Xana said ironically.
Goatborg's attention was drawn to a detail on his control board and he did not reply.
In the previous Isle of Lemuria the cats had origin before Atlantis was raised by Poseidon around Cleites and peopled when they flew and helped the new Atlantean colony with knowledge of older ways.
Yet; when Atlantis overstepped and by the seas was beaten down to the ocean bed, the cats knew why. From space a great comet-shard had evaded Jupiter's mass gravity and hurtled through the Solar System to impact Earth's ocean and cause a great Cat Aclysm.
Having gone through this ordeal in part once already, the XararaX were disinclined to endure flying around the sea-covered planet searching for a new home a second time. At least a little dry nook to curl up in?
Knowing that they had been comet-struck to near oblivion the cats instead took after the glowing tail of this one
as it arched away through space.as like a great ball of flaming wool.
No one has yet translated the log of Captain Meiouw rendered in Catrunic glyphs on the walls of the catlitter which was all they had salvaged to shelter from the harrowing of cosmic rays.
The script scratched by his famous claws when first the cats had clustered upon their tray and been lifted by the mounting lava that herded the massive steaming of the rising sea waters then came winds swirling to such velocity that the winged felines were given propulsion to break free of the gravitational pull of Earth.
Finding vestiges of Bok's old spores mixed in with catnip trimmings in the corners of the tray, the stool of the cats and, reacting with the radioactive rays of unshielded Outer Space, formed an evolutionary event horizon of that era – the advent of the space mushroom capsule.
With the aid of these compact yet expanding survival sacks, thousands of cats were able to venture far, far into the arms of a cold unwelcoming emptiness with a soaring sense of infinitude in their catnip-powered pods.
They followed the heat flare of the host of feiry metoirs past, past stars, nebulae, quazars, white dwarves, black holes, pawn shops , parking meters and bizarre inexplicables on on in their elliptic hoop, speeding on inexhorably ever. Curious and drawn by the rocks that had cannonaded their homeland the Earth and caused Atlantis to be washed over with waves from the molten ice-caps of the dread Younger Dryads...
What was happening with the Spiders that, as per usual at that time of aeon, they were scuttling about looking for food.
Their home in the Red Spider Nebula; a vast web nest of neural space connectivity that birthed stars and which had various uses nurturing strange phenomena; was having a Spring clean and many Spiders were out hunting.
As they went, they strung great sticky web-nets between whatever they could find to hang them between. Thus the webs of the arachnids flapped slightly in the astral breezes, mostly invisible as the great bodies of the spinners ran adroitly to and fro across enormous tracts of space with stealthful ease.
They were not evil, they just looked terrifying and hugely unpleasant, but their leader, Zzelg was another matter entirely.
Zzelg had once lived under the Earth in a subterranean city that the Mesmerats had built for him.
Yet that had been smashed space-decades ago in the Nineteen Octies during the raid of the Lizard men.
When the lizards routed the city, two of their number did for Zzelg with their massive axes. The Spider God-King had been blasted severally to the corners of the Universe.
However, that banishment was not enough to rid the Universe of Zzelg, and his corporeal parts had eventually regrouped and slunk-scuttled back into a grotesque unity one again.
He had made for the Red Spider Nebula from whence he had heard the tremulous vibrations of a colony of his own species.
With clever guile he had brought legions of different types of Spider into an integrated though unknowing army, unaware of his nature of evil intent.
They had travelled out hunting in various different directions, but Zzelg made sure that a possee had ventured out in the direction of Planet Earth, for he had unfinished business there.
Within the combined focus of his eight eyes, Zzelg looked far into the distance of space and saw there the smoking carbuncle known as London, and there the jewel of his obsessive desire, the House where the politics festered and laws were bent out of shape. When he had done this, the evil Spider Lord grinned a gruesome grin and clacked his hideous mandibles together.
He had sent Ambassador Clakk and some menials in a spider-pod on a mission to the English Capitol. On arrival, they massed the city in a net of such sticky confusement that no light reached the pavements and under direct orders from Zzelg crawled over the Houses of Parliament, bursting in at feeding time and strung up from all the belligerent influential grasping politicians in little bundles which they strung up from the ceiling.
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The Spiders had been mesmerized by their leader who had been secretly plotting with Clakk a revenge on Earth that was just about to go wrong.When Londo.n had become enwebbed in obscuring silk threads, a darkness began to encroach on the minds of most beings.
The majority of animals had fled the city, knowing in their breasts that something apocalyptically horrid was occurring. In fact a great shadow loomed evermore blackening the minds of humans who crawled to work the City Mile or begged the streets of Southwark below.
And meanwhile within the House at Westminster, the shadow was the darkest, for there the most hidden of secret announcements were spoken in an atmosphere of poison distrust.. From within the Spider cacoons, the words of the entrapped politicians still continued their manipulations undeterred. Endless monologue flowed from two cacoons in particular. AN elite Spider-guard had cordoned off the house which Clakk was presiding over in grim eight-leggedness. His brief from Zzelg had been to bring these two back to the Red Spider Nebula and forge an Anglo-Arachnid Alliance that would spread a deadly scurge of power throughout all non Arachnid terratories.
Such was Zzelg's wicked enterprise that he wished and through his evil mind's eye he exacted orders to Clakk's Spider brain to render their captives insensible and to get them to shut the fuck up.
So it was that a confident Clakk ran along a tiny thread to the bundles which contained the at that time Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Their names were David and Gideon.
Clakk licked his black lips as he paused before sinking his sting into what he thought would be succulent human meat. However Clakk had not anticipated the evil blood that coursed through the veins of his erstwhile dinner.
He had wished merely to paralyse his prey to end it's loquacious toxicity but when he dipped his hollow arse fang into the rump of his victim, Clakk received a nasty shock. His own levels of serum were not in quantity or quantity sufficient to give it's recipient more than a slightly jolting nip that, rather than further sedating Gideon, opened a flood gate of poison within the politician, reversing the flow of neural anaesthetics into Clakk's own bodily ventricles.
The Spider-envoy, crouched over his gloating would-be meal suddenly started, his wriggling legs shot out ridgedly from his bulky body, which normally night black, turned suddenly inky blue.
Foul creaking,retching sounds issued from somewhere within the Ambassador. A milky substance secreted from his gasping craw and from joints and chitinous casing in his exoskeleton. Clakk's eight eyes bulged and foamed as a tide of immeasurable hatred coursed into and saturated his entire system.
Insidious laughter poured from gaps in the s .
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