With them came several Sailors and the daughter of the Queen of that world. Serenity the First.
With them also came the visions of the war that had devastated their solar system, causing them to come here where primitive human life had begun its struggle. A single scout had made it to the planet and found two races intermarrying for survival. Cromagnon and Neandrathal. Cromagnon was the more successfully adaptive, the greater number, and so would be the stronger of the two gene pools.
The people of the Castle were divided in their ideas of what they should do and so a compromise had been made. They would land on that world's moon and build their bases there. After their completion, further observation and decisions could be made.
Except that a Wizard used a spell. The course was changed slightly. The ship landed in a massive impact on the side of the moon facing away from the Earth. Queen and Senshi and commoners - all slept on in suspended animation. Awaiting their arrival at the landing site or the scout's signal or a timer to go off that was now offline.
And they waited.
And the scout found herself a nice tribe and began the stories of queens of the elves and spirits bound to trees. Eventually her children spread across Asia, into Japan and along the waterways of the Far East.
1966 AD
The Lunar Orbiter spaceprobe was state of the art, all things considered. The first pictures of the "dark side" of the moon. Everyone expected spectacular craters - since that would be the side most expected to be hit by the errant piece of space debris. Possibly some interesting mountain ranges.
A five mile wide crystal castle? Nope. Not something anyone had expected to see.
It was sufficiently shocking and startling that NASA almost didn't stop the images from going out.
The images, however, DID get leaked.
At the time, the press had been at best lukewarm or downright derisive of going into space. The idea that the "Russkies" might get there was ludicrous. Finding something like that, however, basically threw everything into a mix of paranoia and outright wonder. Some argued for blowing the castle up. Some argued for ignoring it. Others insisted it was all a Hollywood plot and the Earth was really flat and space travel was impossible.
As always, the power of human idiocy remained a potent force. However, there were others who saw this as something else altogether. To whom this event had ignited their imagination and more - had thrown them a challenge.
So the first Lunar Orbiter was followed by a Lunar Orbiter with a Lander that uploaded pictures when the Orbiter was above it so that when the Orbiter was on the other side, pictures could be transmitted.
This was spectacular considering the technology of the time. It merely served to whet the appetites of those watching. The Russians declared that they would be claiming the castle - after all it was a European castle and they were best familiar with such things in Russia. The Chinese were scrambling to put together something themselves rather than be left in the dust.
With that incentive, the nay-sayers were kicked out of the way by those in America who wanted to see exactly what that castle was. The popularist press was depicting the castle as Pandora's Box, filled with things best left undisturbed (including little green men) - but nobody knew - yet.
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(Posted Tue, 29 Jul 2003 13:27)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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