The three of them sat, digging into their meal and watched the night spread from overhead to the horizons. No one admitted how uneasy it made them. Wrapped in their own thoughts, comfortably silent, they watched as the horizon began to glow.

The astronomers promised a good show. Greta studied the planet's moons on the way down, knowing she had to navigate between them. Six of them. The largest was innermost in orbit, but two more almost as big were on outer orbital paths. A pair had faint rings. The other three were tiny and unlikely to be visible tonight. She wondered if the twin suns would give them full moons at all times or if there were phases.

Orange fire peeked into the sky and the first sliver of the big moon slid into view. The crater pocked surface reminded her of a badly carved pumpkin her father made for fall harvest on Angora. Some traditions carried through from Earth no matter where humans had settled. The moon rose, dominating the sky and dimming the stars vying for recognition.

"Look over there," Rasta pointed to the right edge of the landscape where the cliff behind them blocked the horizon, and a smaller yellowish orb seemed to leap into view. Smoother, its pale lemony light elongated the shadow of their ship. They could track its arc as it sped across towards its zenith.

"I wondered if we would see phases. This one isn't quite full, looks to be waxing gibbous," Greta speculated.

"Well, that one is a crescent, and definitely waning," Rasta pointed to the pointed arc of the third moon poking over a hill. It floated into view below and to the left of the brilliantly orange full moon.

Freddie shuddered, the exoskeleton bones of his legs rattling under his chair.

"What's wrong?" Greta had learned to trust his instincts.

"I think we might have been very lucky to have a clear day. These moons? What are they going to do to the weather? Are we fools to be on the surface?" She could see the skin on his abdomen rippling as his whole body reacted to his statement.

"Rasta, you're going to take the intake tubes out to the nearest pool, right now." Greta ordered.

Training had him running out the side hatch, pulling the long hoses out from under the ship where they'd been coiled in storage. Winds buffeted him and small drifts of sand flowed over the tracks his explorer made.

As if the heavens had heard Freddie's comment, clouds were already floating across the illuminated sky. In the communications lab, the computer pinged an emergency alert.

Greta pushed up from the table, the sinister beauty of three moons glowing behind gilt edge clouds, instantly ignored. Quick strides took her into the lab, and the message glittering in red on the screen.

"WELCOME. WE HOPE YOU ARE A HEAVY SHIP. WE HAVE HAD NO VISITORS IN MANY DECADES OF OUR TIME. WE CRYSTALS, AS YOU CALL US, ARE THE EARLY WARING SYST FOR WEATHER AND SURFACE CHANGES. WE ARE EXPECTING A SONIC STORM. ARE YOU SOUND PROOFED?"

Rasta slammed the hatch door closed, snapping the interlocking clamps down as she emerged into the hallway.

"Damn, it!" He hissed in disgust. "I secured the hoses, and they're half buried in the sand already.

"Paradise has its draw backs," Greta said. "Our little crystal friends have spoken."

"They're all gone out there. Not one left on the surface and there were thousands," Freddie said from the window.

Rasta raced up the stairs to flight command and plopped into his sculpted seat. Flipping switches and pushing a complicated sequence of buttons, his long fingers danced across controls.

"What are you doing?" Greta understood it was a response to what he'd observed when he secured the water source.

"Setting the automatic stabilizers. We're in for a blow. We've got enough light reflected from those moons, and the suns are powerful enough during the day, even with cloud cover, our solar panel array is providing good energy. So, don't worry we're going to cut into the fuel supply," Rasta answered her unasked questions.

The rocking bounce stopped, and Greta eased into her command center. The message on the big view screen flashed red as the crystals transferred another message.

ORANGE MOON FULL. THREE DAYS, MEASURED IN YOUR UNITS, 78 HRS OF STORM.

IF YOU SURVIVE, DELEGATION WILL WELCOME YOU. OUR APOLOGIES FOR NOT WARNING YOU.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Greta stared out the diamond window hoping to see the pool they'd landed beside. Her ears were protected by a double layer of noise canceling headphones. The inner ones shielded the inner ear, the outer the eardrum. Fortunately, protective equipment stashed in the emergency kits inside the main ramp did the job. She read in the flight command center while anxiously making note of the countdown timer every time she flipped to a new chapter.

For some reason, reading old children's classics from earth soothed her during long down times like a baby sucking a pacifier. At this precise moment, the clock read 23:36:13 and the seconds seemed to crawl. For whatever reason, the crystals continued to communicate, and messages flashed on the big screen at irregular intervals.

Pictures of the creatures inhabiting the planet flashed across it, along with a brief condensed history of their culture. She read, fascinated at the parallels with Earth. Rasta buried himself in testing the stability system.

Sonic winds were rare. Only a few worlds were afflicted with them. The system was redesigned with a new set of servos to shift stabilisers with hyperlink speed. The flight computer responsible for megabyte calculations for hyper space, did the equations and ran the controls to counter the Mach 3 winds battering their ship.

An orange highlighted message flashed across her front screen.

MACH 4 WINDS EXPECTED IN 2.3 OF YOUR STANDARD HOURS.

The golden crystals were working overtime in the lab.

Greta pushed a button on her armrest.

"Rasta, get up here." Her voice a sharp bark she knew he would recognize as a no room for argument order.

She sighed, marked the page she'd been reading, and said a private goodbye to Meg, Jo, and Amy. Little Women would have to wait until this crisis was mitigated.

She heard the thump of Rasta's heavy tread racing up the stairwell.

"They know who does what aboard now," he said as he fitted himself into his seat. His fingers flashed across the familiar pattern she watched him use a dozen times over the last two days.

"I've had some messages from their leader." Curious looking creatures. Their long trunk like noses, with huge ears made her think of the extinct elephants. Well, not truly extinct.

Cloning conglomerates provided huge tracts of environmentally correct habitats for the major animal groups of each of the continents. When the polar ice caps froze over and exposed drowned cities, the Federation of Nations agreed to repopulate the areas as natural preserves. Starting with flora and allowing genetic engineers to reconstitute the appropriate wildlife from genome banks all over the world, extinct species came back to life.

"They gave me an alga rhythm to install which will account for the blast of wind we're going to experience for the duration of the storm. Mach 4 winds are unheard of. This planet is unique. Uninhabitable with out specialized equipment. Unless you go underground like they have." Rasta continued to deal with the computer as he spoke.

"How's Freddie doing?" Greta asked.

"I didn't think he could turn any greener. You should ask him if he wants stasis for the next few hours. The vibrations that alerted us to the storm are giving him sea sickness. Hearing him wretch and watching his skin turn every shade of green and puce is only entertaining if you have no sense of compassion."

"Careful, you might come across as human," Greta couldn't help the sarcasm dripping through her comment.

"Just go ask him. I'm going to be babysitting my stabilisers for the duration," he snapped back at her.