Chapter 43: A Swiftly Melting Planet

POOF. Everything is white again, and the invisible invaders disappear, or at least, you are pretty sure they have disappeared, since there are no more laser bombs, and the stars have changed again. This time they are a strange soft purple color. You’re glad the Administrator made the jump so quickly – the invaders have gotten so fierce there is no way you could have held them off for long, especially when they are invisible. You slide the cannon up to the airlock, but when you open the door, you hear the squealing sound of air rushing out through fractures and cracks in the airlock frame. You scramble back into the main hall, and shut the airlock as tight as you can, but you can see and hear that air is still escaping. Chunks of pillars are cracked and broken all across the main hall, and even part of the Administrator’s grand desk has been smashed. He still is frantic as ever, checking screens and printouts. As you step over chunks of rubble on your way over to him, you are reminded of the ruined rainbow castle, and you realize that if this place collapses, not only will it be the end of the League of Civilized Planets, but also that you will never find the Starstone, and never get home again. But right now, the Administrator is before you, dust from the collapsed ceiling in his hair, sitting at his ruined desk, but working to save the universe, frantic as ever.

“Administrator,” you call up to him, “are you alright?”

He glances down at you. “What? Me? Oh…” he brushes the dust from his hair and shoulders, while his tail brushes larger chunks of rubble from his desk. These rain down on you and Melvin, and you cover your eyes and head. “I’m fine. We jumped away from those invaders just in time, I think.” He looks out at the soft purple stars. “And lucky for us, this universe seems safe. Protocol 17B insists there are no threats a thousand light years in any direction.”

Melvin speaks up. “But those invaders could find us again.”

“Yes…” says the Administrator, shaking dust off of some papers. “Yes, they surely will, unless we can find a way to stop them from coming.”

“How can we do that?”

“Well,” he says, “using protocol 4-17S, I believe I have determined their origin.”

“How?” you wonder.

“It’s very clever, actually,” he says. “It’s an obscure protocol that I recalled from the wormhole wars. Our sensors were picking up wormhole activity every time those invaders would appear. During the wormhole wars against Solaris, a technique was developed to determine the coordinates that a wormhole connected to, by analyzing the crystalline structure of nearby planets. It’s almost like a wormhole leaves a footprint. Once I realized that the invaders were getting here by wormhole, it made me think of my glory days in wormhole reconnaissance, and so I did a crystal analysis on the Mothership itself.” He rubs his temples. “I don’t know how I’d forgotten all that… it’s like something has been playing havoc with my memory.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” says Melvin. “The wars AGAINST Solaris? Isn’t Solaris on our side?”

“Puh!” the Administrator puffs in surprise. “Certainly, now they are. But that was before they came to their senses. You’re from Earth, surely you know the legend of the Starstone?”

“Queen Stella told us that it was a gift to Earth from the people of Solaris,” says Melvin.

“Yes… exactly…” the Administrator rubs his eyes. “Queen… Stella! Is that her name? I… guess it must be. Yes, I… couldn’t remember her name before somehow. But…” he looks at you both as if seeing you for the first time. “But talking to you has made me remember all kinds of things.” Something occurs to him. He looks at you, then Melvin, then at you, then at Melvin. “Wait,” he says. “You are a… Player, aren’t you?”

“Of course the Player is a Player!” Shouts Melvin.

A structure holding up part of the ceiling groans and falls, knocking out another part of the Administrator’s desk. He rubs his eyes again. “Yes… Players... we used to have Players here all the time… somehow, I forgot…”

“You forgot because the treasures were stolen from Queen Stella!” shouts Melvin.

The Administrator’s eyes grow large. “What, all of them?”

“Yes,” you explain. “Well, we’ve recovered a couple. But there are so many more that we have to collect.”

“But…” he says hesitantly, “not the Starstone? Surely she still has the Starstone?”

“What if she doesn’t?” asks Melvin.

The Administrator starts to stutter. “The... The Starstone is the most powerful object in the universe. It has no real power on its own, but a near infinite amount when on its home planet of Solaris.”

“Why, what does it do?”

“When it was in the hands of the Solarians, it had the power to reshape stars and galaxies. They were so captivated by its power, they started to take over the entire universe. They could steal stars and planets out of the very sky. The League of Civilized Planets was originally formed to combat them. When they saw that the whole universe was against them, they had the good sense to realize they had to give up the power. The Starstone is indestructible, but by entrusting the Starstone to Queen Stella, and keeping it far away from Solaris, no one would have such terrible power again.”

“What if someone stole it?” asks Melvin.

“It would do them no good, because it has no power unless brought to Solaris, which is the best defended Planet in the entire universe.” He pushes some buttons on what remains of his desk. The floor next to you makes a groaning noise and shudders. “Oh,” he says, peering down at the floor. “I was going to show it to you on the radar screen, but it seems to be stuck in the floor.” Just then, a large marble pillar tumbles down from the larger wall. “Look out!” shouts Melvin, and you jump back. It smashes the seal of the league, and creates a hole in the floor, revealing most of the radar screen to you and the Administrator.

“Well,” he says, looking up at the collapsing ceiling with some concern, then down at the hole in the floor, “at least we can see the screen. Anyway, you should see on the screen an image of the planet Solaris, surrounded by defense satellites and StarCruisers. It is an easy planet to spot, it is the only blinking planet in the galaxy.”

You look down at the bent screen in the hole, and see just stars and empty space.

“Uh, Greenie?” says Melvin. “There’s no planet there. I think the screen is broken.” 

The Administrator pushes some buttons. “No… no,” he says, “those are the right coordinates. It should BE there.”

“A whole planet can’t just disappear,” says Melvin.

“No, it can’t…” says the Administrator. “Unless…” his tail picks up a handkerchief and mops his brow. “Did Queen Stella say who stole the Starstone?”

“Yes,” says Melvin. “It was the Zylons, or Krylons, or whatever.”

“Great Neubauer’s Ghost!” shouts the Administrator. “Those invaders have been coming from a Zylon controlled system!”

“So?” asks Melvin. “What does that have to do with the Starstone?”

The Administrator starts pounding his head with both fists and his tail. “With all our preparation, we never thought of this! We always assumed by keeping the Starstone far from Solaris, and by guarding Solaris from invasion, we’d be safe! But we never thought THIS would happen.”

“Thought what would happen?” asks Melvin, confused.

“That someone would steal the planet Solaris!” he Administrator hisses.

“What?” says Melvin, completely confused. “How could anyone steal a whole planet?”

“With a wormhole!” shouts the Administrator. “Of course! Somehow, they cobbled together enough power to steal Solaris, keep it in a hidden location, and use the power of the Starstone to take over the universe. And they have been sending those invaders to attack our Mothership, because they know that we would be the only hope of stopping them.”

Melvin is panicked now. “But... if you know where the invaders are coming from, isn’t that where Solaris is?”

“No,” says the Administrator in frustration. “I’ve done a scan of that entire area back in our home universe. The invaders are coming from a digital factory planet the Krylons control near the Star Raiders sectors. I’ve already dispatched several Star Raiders fleets to try to stop them. But that tells us nothing about where Solaris is. If they have the Starstone and Solaris, they could reshape the entire galaxy… the entire universe… and there is nothing we can do to stop them.”

You are all quiet for a moment. Then the Administrator reaches up to what is left of a shelf, pulls down a book, and starts paging through it.

“What are you reading?” asks Melvin.

“Protocol 99Z,” he replies. “Self-destruct mechanism.”

“What?” cries Melvin.

“This place is about to collapse anyway,” he fumes. “If the Zylons are about to take over the universe, I don’t want to be here to see it.”

This whole time you are staring down into the hole, at the radar screen, at the place where Solaris is supposed to be. Something catches your eye, something flicking by on the screen. Is it just more rubble, falling into the hole? This time you see several weird looking ships fly by, or… are they creatures? “Administrator, you need to see this,” you call up to him.

“No,” he says, flipping a page in his book of destruction. “I don’t. I don’t need to see everything I have built up over a lifetime come crumbling down around me.”

“No! No… you need to see what’s on this screen – there are ships…or… something, where Solaris is supposed to be.”

He puts on his glasses, and peers down, puzzled. He turns some knobs, and the view on the radar screen zooms out. “That’s strange,” he says to himself.

“What?” cries Melvin.

“Solaris is gone… but someone is mounting an attack on its sister planet.” You can see, down in the hole, hundreds of rainbow dots streaming toward a striped, orange planet.

“What’s strange about that?” asks Melvin. “Seems to me these Zylons attack lots of planets.”

“Yes…” says the Administrator. “That’s true… but only planets that have value. Siralos, the sister planet of Solaris, is just a dull lump. No useful minerals, no atmosphere, no life forms. Why would anyone attack that?” He keeps peering at the screen. “And what a strange attack.” He pushes buttons and turns some knobs. He keeps staring at the screen. “They don’t seem to have a target. They are just shooting at the surface of the planet with heat lasers, and then crashing into it… like lemmings.” He flips some switches. “This makes no sense. Heat lasers, solar debris, sizzloids, and so many of them that… that, yes, the surface temperature of the planet has increased by… fifty degrees! And it’s still heating up!”

“But… why would they do that?” asks Melvin.

“I can’t imagine,” says the Administrator. “But… it’s the Krylons’ universe now. If they want to melt the whole thing, no one can stop them. That much is crystal clear.” He goes back to flipping pages in his book.

“Crystal clear!” shouts Melvin suddenly.

“What?” you say, confused.

“Crystal clear!” he repeats. “Administrator! What was that protocol thingy you used to trace the invaders?”

He looks up. “What? Protocol 4-17S? What about it?”

“You said that wormholes leave footprints on crystalline structures!” says Melvin excitedly.

“Yes, that’s how I traced them. So what?”

“The Planet Siralos is a crystalline structure!”

The Administrator leaps from his seat. Until now, you weren’t even sure he could stand up. “Yes… Yes… YES! If we can perform protocol 4-17S on Siralos, we will be able to retrieve the coordinates of wherever Solaris disappeared to! But… of course! We have to do it fast! This is why they are trying to melt Siralos! It’s the only way to erase their footprints!”

“But wait…” says Melvin. “If they have the Starstone, and they have stolen the planet Solaris, why don’t they just open a second wormhole to destroy Siralos?”

The Administrator hops back and forth excitedly, “I’m not sure… maybe something is slowing them down, or maybe they are just arrogant. In any case, there’s still time to find it!”

“So get with the buttons!” shouts Melvin. “Scan the planet, or whatever!”

“No, you don’t understand,” says the Administrator. “You have to be in contact with a structure to scan it. If we are going to scan it, we have to go there.” He is holding a wrench in each hand, and his tail holds a screwdriver, and he is unbolting equipment from the console that surrounds his desk. He suddenly shouts. “HERO JENNIFER!”

To your surprise, the Phaser Patrol instructor appears from the hallway to her Spaceport. “Yeah?” she asks.

“We need to execute some protocols that… violate protocol, as it were. I recall an incident where you… borrowed a Solaris StarCruiser.”

She looks irritated. “Don’t rub it in. You know it’s the only reason I’m only Hero Class B.”

The Administrator, several tools under each arm, scrambles down the battered spiral staircase that is adjacent to his desk. After seeming so large looming over his high desk, you see now he is only about four feet tall. He faces “Hero Jennifer” (as she is apparently named) and the contrast between his bright green skin and her bright red skin is surreal. “Listen,” he says, “No Solaris pilots are available.”

“Where are they? Those jerks don’t take breaks.”

“Their planet has been stolen.”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah, that’d do it.”

The Administrator looks at her earnestly. “The fate of the universe depends on your ability to hotwire a StarCruiser. Can you do it?”

“You bet your green tail-waving ass I can do it.”

He looks at you, “Like I said, ‘informal.’ Follow me!”

He waddles briskly toward the one door in the room you haven’t entered, one with a large flaming “S” that blinks on and off. He waves his tail, and the doors open, and you are in a place that looks like a Rolls Royce showroom, despite the cracks in the walls and floor. In the center of it is an amazing rainbow hued spaceship. He stops, panting, and looks back at Jennifer. “If you would do the honors,” he says with an ironic bow.

She snorts. “It feels weird to do this with people around.” She takes out a small device that looks something like a Taser, and pushes it against a small indentation on the ship. There is a smell like burning sugar, and she kicks the door, and it opens.

You all follow the Administrator into the ship. Inside it is very elegant, with dark leather and mahogany woodgrain on the console. You can’t help but notice there are two flightsticks for some reason.

“I’ll install the crystal scanner,” says the Administrator to Jennifer. “You show these two how to fly.”

“What?” she says, insulted. “Why shouldn’t I fly?”

“I need you to run the Mothership. Those invaders could come back at any time. You’ve hacked every system in the place, so I know you’ll be able to handle it. Unless,” he pauses ironically while he connects wires from his machine to the console of the StarCruiser, “you’re on break.”

She laughs. “Me in charge of the Mothership? I wouldn’t miss that for the world.” She turns to you. “You already know how to fly Starfighters, so a lot of this will be familiar. Photon torpedoes, yada yada.”

“Galactic chart?” asks Melvin.

“Galactic scanner. Same thing. Works with this button here.” She points to a button next to the second flightstick.

“Why are there two flightsticks?”

“It’s a backup in case the first one fails. Stupid system, you’d have to rewire the console. The main thing you need to know about is the hyperwarp.” She points to a gauge. “This number is your warp focus. StarCruisers have feature where if you can keep your ship in focus during hyperwarp, it saves a lot of fuel.”

“Does it have a torpedo sight, like your Phaser Patrol ship?” you ask hopefully.

She rolls her eyes. “Naw, those only work on Dracons, and Dracons never seem to bother Solaris.”

The Administrator breaks in. “Tell them about the laser cannon.”

“I don’t know what kind of mission you are going on, but there are two weapons systems. When you are flying, it’s all about photon torpedoes, but the StarCruiser also has a ground defense mode, where it fires a laser cannon, a lot like the laser cannon here on the Mothership.”

The Administrator interrupts again. “You’ll need that when we get to Siralos.”

“Why?” you ask.

“We?” Melvin says the Administrator. “Are… you coming?”

The Administrator rapidly turns a crank on his machine. “Scanning for wormhole coordinates is complicated, and it takes time. Siralos is being bombarded by solar debris, and… other… things that will make it melt unless we hurry. The only way we can find the location of Solaris will be if you man the laser cannon and I focus on the planetary scan.” He looks at the wristwatch on his tail, technically a tailwatch. “We don’t have much time. Hero Jennifer, can you activate the engines?”

“Did it while you were yakking, boss.” You had noticed her using her Taser device under the control panel. The normally elegant woodgrain and leather interior of the StarCruiser is kind of a mess now, between Jennifer’s console hacking and the weird contraption that the Administrator has wired up, not to mention the smell of smoke from whatever she was tasering. At least… you hope that’s the only source of the smoke.

“In that case, go execute StarCruiser protocol 27F,” says the Administrator, strapping himself into the rear seat in the cockpit.

“You mean go hit the button,” she says, rolling her eyes, and heading back out the spaceport.

“Yes, and Hero?”

She stops in the doorway, annoyed. “What?”

“We’re all counting on you. Without the Mothership, the League may fall,” the Administrator says solemnly.

“Yeah, and if you don’t find the Starstone, we’re all screwed. So get going!” She dashes down the ramp, and the door closes and pressure seals behind her. Out the vast windows of the StarCruiser cockpit, you see her standing at the launch console.

Following the Administrator’s lead, all three of you raise a middle finger and give her the Phaser Patrol salute. She bursts out laughing and returns the gesture with one hand, pushing the buttons with the other. All fades to white, and suddenly you are in space surrounded by weird debris.

“Yow!” shouts Melvin. “Look out!”

You grab the flightstick and narrowly miss colliding with what looks like part of a wrecked space station. All around, though, are hot, glowing meteors, and weird ships and creatures.

“When they sucked Solaris through the wormhole, it destroyed all of its defense stations. And, look!” He points toward the nearby sun, which seems to have some kind of blossoming boil on the side of it. “They’ve caused some kind of solar explosion – that could unleash anything!” You see a stream of flaming debris which curves like a river through space, ultimately leading to striped orange planet. “There it is!” calls the Administrator. “Siralos! Take us there!”

You lean forward on the flightstick, dodging debris and deltoids as the planet looms larger and larger in front of you. “Landing should be easy,” calls the Administrator. “It has almost no atmosphere.” As you get close, you see Zylon ships orbiting the planet. You also see a large sort of space station. “Ah!” Says the Administrator. “An orbital platform! Surely the Krylons are coordinating the attack from these fleet ships. If I can just hack into the orbital platform, we might be able to take down some fleet ships, and improve our chances. I’ll work on that, you land this thing!”

You whiz past the fleet ships, hoping they won’t pursue you, but they seem otherwise engaged. The ships seem to be emanating some kind of tractor beams that are guiding all the debris to the planet’s surface. As you coast down to the planet, you realize something terrifying. “How do I land this thing?” you ask, in something of a panic.

The Administrator is tapping on his portable console. “Got it!” he shouts. “Now we’ll have access to the orbital platform every time it passes overhead.”

“That’s great, but HOW DO I LAND THIS THING?” the blue surface of the orange planet is rushing up at you fast.

“Protocol 17-F-D!” He cries.

“I don’t know what that is!”

Melvin flies around a large button to your right that you somehow missed, labeled “LAND.” You punch it, and immediately autopilot takes over, the ship rotates into position, and executes a perfect landing.

You wipe your brow and breathe a sigh of relief. But not for long, for though your ship is on the smooth surface of Siralos, you face into the sky, and above you can see a rain of horrors headed your way. The flight stick retracts, and is suddenly replaced by a large knob. When you turn it, the ship whips through space from side to side, far faster than the Mothership laser cannon ever did. “Whoa!” you shout. “It’s so responsive!” A loading chamber for the laser cannon also opens in the cockpit, and Melvin flies into it. “Ready!” he shouts. “Aim!” you shout. “Fire!” you both shout, and with the sound of a chirping cricket, Melvin fires up into space and immediately reappears in the chamber. “WOW!” he shouts. “This ship is incredible!”

“That’s Solaris engineering for you,” says the Administrator. Suddenly a weird whine starts up. “Alright,” he says, “Protocol 4-17S is underway. I am scanning the structure of the planet, in an attempt to find the coordinates that Solaris was brought to by the wormhole.” On either side of your windshield, large video bars have appeared. “I’ve also set up the ship to display the planetary temperature. If it gets too high, everything melts, and we’re done for. Blast everything you can with your lasers. Pay special attention to the solar flares and sizzloids, they cause the most heat damage, and besides, if you hit the sizzloids, they will destroy everything around them.” Just then, a deltoid shoots a laser down at you. “Get him!” shouts the Administrator. “They can only shoot once, so after they fire a laser, it’s safe to get underneath them.” You zap Melvin up into a falling deltoid, which instantly vaporizes. “WAHOO!” shouts Melvin, instantly reappearing.

The Administrator taps a few things on this portable console. “When the orbital platform comes overhead again, I’m going to pass control to you, so be ready. If you can hold them off just a little while, we can survive this.”

You swallow hard, clutch the steering knob, stare up at the torrent of overheated death that plummets toward you, and hope he’s right.

Place the Solar Storm cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 1. Play until you score 2500 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.