The mosquito jet offered accommodation for three spacemen. It was a fast vessel and could travel at ten million times the speed of light. Colonel Heller occasionally exchanged his secure seat on board the Swedish flagship against the pilot seat of a mosquito jet. He enjoyed the company of a close friend, Major Joe Loki. One of the three spacemen of this crew was actually a woman. Joe had insisted that he needed to bring his girlfriend along. Carolyn and Colonel Heller were also on very good terms. Back home on the MAGNUS ERIKSSON, they served in the same shift, and Carolyn liked to do a lot of favors for the rather generous, but sometimes a bit negligent Colonel. Carolyn was also a very good pilot, too.

Today, however, Colonel Heller had decided that he wanted to fly the mosquito jet himself. His two fellow crewmen had willingly agreed to this proposal.

The blue planet came closer. It was the fifth planet of a large blue sun. The inner planets were so hot that they were clearly unsuitable for the development of life. The eight outer planets were too cold. However, the fifth planet seemed to be just perfect. It had twenty-nine continents and a seemingly endless variety of small and medium oceans. The scanners reported the existence of primitive life forms. When the mosquito jet finally entered the atmosphere, the scanners had already analyzed that there were twenty-thousand different species of birds on this planet. There were also a large variety of fish and seafood, but the continents were apparently uninhabited, except for the birds.

"It's always nice to land on a beautiful planet," Carolyn said. She gave Joe a big hug. "Please, we'll be down there in a few minutes," Colonel Heller interfered. "Why can't you fellows wait for a bit longer?"

"I'd like to know what we're going to do down there," Joe complained.

"Well, are we going to do anything at all?" Carolyn inquired.

The mosquito jet slowed down with perhaps forty percent of its engine power. Colonel Heller took quite a while before he picked a suitable landing place. He smoothly landed the mosquito jet at the shore of a tropical coast. He actually landed in the water and then used a few final thrusts of the engine to correct the position of the mosquito jet until it drifted slowly ashore.

"Here we are," he said.

The atmosphere had thirty-five percent oxygen, forty percent nitrogen and more than twenty percent krypton gas. The scanners said that the atmosphere was breathable and should pose no threat to the human crewmen.

"I'd like to go for a good swim," Joe suggested.

"Maybe we have more important things to do," Carolyn disagreed.

Colonel Heller put on his spacesuit and entered the airlock.

"I guess he's not going to take any risks today," Carolyn said. She contacted him on conventional digital radio. "Good luck," she said.

"Would you do me a favor?" Colonel Heller asked politely.

"Yes, of course," both Joe and Carolyn agreed readily.

Colonel Heller asked them to stay on board the mosquito jet until he would have safely returned. Carolyn promised that she would do nothing funny. She would not leave the jet until Colonel Heller was back.

Major Loki checked the scanners again. Then he prepared a brief hyperspace message to inform their friends back home at ZETANOC THREE. He was able to get a carrier signal from a hyperspace relay station that was three thousand light years away. He contacted the station and transmitted the instructions how his secretly encoded hyperspace message should be routed.

Carolyn was angry when she heard about the outrageous amount of money which this hyperspace relay station charged for transmitting a simple, brief message.

"Are we going to send it or not?" Joe inquired.

"If you are going to tell Colonel Carter that it was your idea and not mine, you can transmit as many messages as you like," Carolyn explained. "It's always Colonel Carter who complains about our travel expenses, and I certainly don't want any more of his sarcastic remarks than I usually get."

Joe decided that he wished to transmit the message after all. His contact person at the hyperspace relay station had already checked the validity of Joe's interstellar credit card. The man was obviously quite pleased. After he had received and confirmed Joe's message, he closed the connection.

Joe and Carolyn were alone again in the mosquito yet.

Meanwhile, Colonel Hanno Heller had reached the shore. He walked along the coast for at least a mile and enjoyed the beautiful landscape. Every planet was different. That was one of the most fulfilling and satisfying aspects of interstellar space travel.

The three human crewmen seemed to be the only intelligent life forms on this planet.

Colonel Hanno Heller spent more than three hours on the coast. However, he was a careful man. He did not even open his helmet. It was his first visit on a strange world. He had never been here before, and, as far as he knew, no other human being had hitherto set foot on this planet.

After three hours, Colonel Heller returned safely to the mosquito jet. He used the airlock for a complete disinfection, and then he removed his spacesuit.

"So how do you like it?" Joe asked him when Colonel Heller finally entered the main compartment of the mosquito jet.

"Splendid," he said. "It's simply splendid."

"You could have opened your helmet," Carolyn said. "There's nothing wrong with the atmosphere. A bit of krypton gas doesn't hurt."

"No, it doesn't," Colonel Heller agreed. "I'm more afraid of parasites or other life forms that might threaten our health."

"You're always afraid of something," Carolyn grumbled.

"Yeah, I'm a careful man," Colonel Heller agreed. "But you knew that when you signed up for this mission, so why bother now?"

That was a good point. Carolyn focused her attention again on the results of the astronomical studies which she had performed in the last three days. She had loved to watch the stars since she had been a child, and she still enjoyed to sharpen her skills and to increase her knowledge.

"If nobody else has plans for today, I'd like to take a walk outside," Joe suggested.

"I'd like some seafood, please," Carolyn begged.

Colonel Heller agreed that Joe should go outside for a while, but he insisted that Joe had to be very careful. Joe put his spacesuit on and went outside.

* * *

The hyperspace receiver gave a brief alert because a message had arrived. It had come from the same hyperspace relay station which Joe had contacted earlier, and it was indeed a reply from ZETANOC THREE.

So what's in the radio message?

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