Untitled Story
Warning: This is a sci-fi story.
Prologue
It is said...that there is a tale...so dull, that...if anybody were to discover it...there would be a story told...with an unbelievably cheesy and possibly...plagiarized beginning. But enough about L Ron Hubbard. Onto my story. Which is better. Neener.
"Nope, everything's just fine up here. Why'd you ask?"
"Well, the surface probe just sort of vanished."
"What?!"
"Um, yeah."
"Well, what happened?!"
"Well, uh, we really don't know."
"WHAT?!"
"Yeah. Confusing, ain't it?"
"A couple million dollars worth of electronics just vanished, and you have NO IDEA?"
"Well, there was some sort of flash of light. You don't think it could be..."
"The planet's uninhabited. I can guarantee you that."
"OK, well..."
"Get a team down there. I want you personally to be with them."
"Don't you think that could be...dangerous?"
"The planet's uninhabited. What could there be?"
"Well, I don't know..."
"Are you getting superstitous again?"
"Well, you know, I..."
*sigh*"I thought we were over that. Anyway, get to it. If we can recover the probe, that's a couple million dollars I won't have to justify losing."
"Okay, then."
About thirty minutes later...
"Okay, we're on our way down. We're now entering the atmosphere...*crackle*...lots of static...oh, (darn), the electronics are shot. And it's getting hot in here. And-*ZZZZTT!*"
"Hello? Hello?...yep, we've found it. And they said it was a myth..."
Chapter 1
Planetary Expedition I43JF42 had departed from Earth several thousand years ago. They came back the next week because some joker had swiped the engines. Ignore the paradoxes. After this somewhat bad beginning, they left again. They were headed off to a planet which looked habitable. A nuclear war had reduced the livable space of the planet to South America, because nobody would dare bomb a rainforest. There were too many environmentalists with Uzis hanging around. So, after much delibaration, the survivors decided to send people out into space to look for habitable planets. The first probes were disastrous, and ran out of fuel just past the orbit of the moon, thanks to rampant cost-cutting. The government was sacrificed to the environmentalists(who had started forming cults, and committing mass sacrifices at everyday occurrences["The sun is rising! The Ghods must be displeased!"] and were in desperate need of bodies), and everybody was happy. The colonization of other planets continued happily along, with occasional myths arising. Which is the point of this story. There was a myth of a world, a world so dangerous, that merely entering the atmosphere would lead to your total destruction. This was dismissed as being brought on by three bottles of beer, which the captain was for some reason allowed. So they made a new law(Captains of starships are hereafter restricted to two bottles of beer), and eerybody was happy. And nobody realized that the planet was more than a myth. Until now.
To be continued...