The man had begun to smell faintly of cigarettes, this became instantly aware to him and at the same moment he became aware of the others who were beginning to show features. They were slowly taking shape. He reached out and with a brief moments hesitation flipped the next card...

"I don't understand this shit." A man was standing looking out through a vacancy in the ships hull at the world floating below them, "where's the glass?"

Behind him a young female stood, you knew she was female by the way her body was so elegantly curved and the two appropriately sized bumps beneath her skin tight green uniform. Her flesh was a pale blue and shimmered silver when light struck it at the correct angle. Her eyes were tilted upwards and carried a mystic purple tone with swirls of yellow dancing within them. She had no hair on her head and ears that were longer than a humans and ended in a shallow point. As he questioned her she simply smiled and spoke in soft and deliberate tones, like one would speak to an infant; "I have told you before Frank, it's a kinetic barrier."

The man, who was dressed in a similar uniform but of gray in colour and not nearly as skin tight, turned and faced the female. His face was twisted in a complicated expression of disbelief and confusion, "right right, I recall." He stepped to her side and turned back to look at the large green orb that hung in space below the orbiting ship, "so where are we now?"

The female moved herself to the cell door and waved a thin hand over a senor which caused the metal door to slide silently into the wall. Once outside the cell she beckoned for Frank to join her and proceeded to answer his question, "That is Coresian, a commerce planet. They are traders who gather goods from traveling ships and sell them to other ships. Of course there is a profit and that is what they live on. We need to resupply and the captain has decided you will accompany the ground crew." She turned and led Frank down the smooth hallway that had no visible torches but was somehow lit with pure white light.

"Right." Frank muttered under his breath, though he knew he was incapable of muttering silently enough for the females finely tuned ears to not pick up, "why was I going down again?"

"Because she feels you cannot live your life without experiencing the Universe. If you are a member of the ship you have to do something useful."

Frank rolled his eyes and rubbed his hand along his jaw line. His beard was once again returning, he would need some blades of some sort to attend to it again as the ones they got him at the last planet had dulled. "Think they'll have some smokes. I could go for some smokes." He though aloud.

The female just kept on her path, leading him to the docking bay where the ground crew had already assembled and was awaiting him. She would also be joining them as his personal bodyguard - or baby sitter more specifically. She didn't know exactly why the captain had decided this was the one they wanted, but it was not her place to question the captain's orders.

The crew was made up of six members including Frank and his female guardian. The other four were young males who were familiar with the procedure of dealing with commerce planets. They were all around six feet tall and carried the signature curved blade weapons of the ship on their backs. They had reminded Frank of a child's game wherein the children used these curved scoops to toss a ball back and forth, but in this case instead of a ball the scoops were used to throw these strange bundles of blue and yellow energy that disrupted the internal organs of biological organisms. He had only seen them used once and preferred not to see it again.

Upon the arrival of the two the crew ushered them into the landing pod, which reminded Frank of a dingy boat with it's black wooden hull and mast. Though he now knew the hull was not made of wood but instead a material called Tungterine which was more durable and reliable than the most expensive alloy back on Earth. He had taken in a lot of information from these strange creatures since they abducted him, and to his surprise they seemed to want to integrate him into their society instead of sticking probes and the like up his anus. Of course that wasn't anything he was unhappy about, but unexpected. He was even beginning to feel some kind of carnal attraction to this green uniformed girl who had been assigned as his guardian. She was like that hot baby sitter you had when you were ten that you thought new and dirty thoughts about that had never occurred to you before you accidentally strolled into the bathroom while she was making use of it. Or maybe that was just Frank. In any case he caught himself wondering more than once if she was similar in construction to a human female, and even if she wasn't what methods she would be able to employ to meet his male desires.

The pod rumbled for a second before it sailed out of the bay and into the depths of space on a collision course with the surface of the planet below them. Frank took a moment to examine the universe around him. He could see distant specks of stars and globes of varying colour that made up the planets of this particular system. He knew that somewhere in that blank vastness was Earth, that place that had been literally stolen out from under his feet. They had yet to tell him why the kidnapped him and when he was going home -- if ever. If there still was a home.

The planet loomed up before them and he sighed inwardly. He wasn't built for this kind of thing and the moment they entered into the atmosphere the g-forces that were pushed onto his body and everything therein forced him into the realm of unconsciousness.

The text on the card looked like it was dutifully scrawled by a child and read:

Lost in Space

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