Flidoring The Early Wars by Roger W. Hayes

looked out at the beautiful, pale blue-green water and started ticking and clicking as he leaped headfirst into the clear water. The ship’s translator did not work once his head was outside the door, but Bellmus thought he said something about ‘one big splash for our kind’ or something like that. Once in the water, Slabriel headed straight for the bottom holding a rock-pick in his tentacles. When he made it to the bottom, he found a thick layer of white sand covering it. Using his fins and webbed legs, he moved swiftly across the bottom until he came to the edge of the impact crater that dropped down about two hundred feet. There he was able to chip off a large piece of the ore and head back to the ship. He was just about back to the hatch when his gills started to burn from the chlorine. He popped up out of the water and gasped for air through his mouth while tightly pinching his arms over his gills—trying desperately to keep any more chlorine from getting in them as he cringed from the pain.
    Bellmus had lowered a rope ladder from the hatch but Slabriel was struggling to climb up it. His finned feet made it nearly impossible. He finally had to go up backwards and use his heels on the ladder. As soon as he was in the hatch, he said, “I need some fresh water to rinse out my gills. They feel like they are on fire.”
    Tucked down in the crotch of his tentacles was the piece of ore, which he handed to Bellmus. Carefully examining it, Bellmus replied, “Thank you Slabriel, this might prove to be very useful someday. I will take it to my lab and study it later. Why don’t you go down to the exercise room and use the showers, that should help rinse out the chlorine from your gills.”
    Immediately Lyemad called down from the bridge yelling, “Father! There is a big chunk of rock from the planet’s debris rings headed right for us!”
    After closing the hatch, Bellmus pushed a button on the COM panel and said, “Tessslan, get us back into orbit, now!”
    Right after they left the surface of the water a rock about the size of a Graznosian child slammed into the water right where they had landed. The force of the impact sent sand and water hurling into the air and bouncing off the bottom of the ship. Again Lyemad yelled over the COM, “More incoming debris. Tessslan is taking evasive maneuvers. Hang on!”
    Timsssack and Bellmus arrived back at the bridge only moments later, and Bellmus ordered, “Status report!”
    “The debris rings around the planet are unstable. We suffered no damage, but we might need to stop at a “Ship-wash” to clean the sand off the bottom,” Lyemad said lightheartedly, trying to alleviate the stress of the situation.
    “That wasss a clossse one, the Creator isss watching over usss,” said Timsssack.
    “That may be,” Lyemad rebutted, “but I thought that I was the one that spotted that rock. I did not hear the Creator call down to warn you.”
    With that almost blasphemous response, Tessslan jumped in with, “It wasss the Creator who causssed you to sssee that rock, you could have been busssy doing sssomething elssse.”
    “You are welcome.” Replied Lyemad sarcastically.
    “All right now, lets just be thankful that we did not get hit and leave it at that,” interrupted Bellmus. “Set in a course for the Paylee star system. I think we have seen all there is to see here. Engage.”
    Upon saying that Bellmus noticed Timsssack’s tail pointed toward the front of the ship. “Interesssting,” Timsssack muttered, while most of the bridge crew looked at him with smiles.
    Tessslan and Lyemad were not smiling, they were both feeling slighted by the other. While they were stewing over the whole Creator issue, Slabriel entered back onto the bridge. Returning to his seat, he told everyone of his victorious mission to the bottom of an alien world. Angelians can be quite good storytellers, especially when it involves something in which they played an important part. The event only took