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Next: The unknown planet Up: No Title Previous: A healty morning

The freezer close to the sun

In the spacecraft 5 body builder like figures stood. One of them, apparently the leader, looked at Jesper and said:
"So, it was as we suspected. There are no intelligent life forms on earth."
"Jesper is intelligent, at least he can be sometimes.", Beetjoo defended Jesper.
``Sure! Well, we'll bring him home anyway. If nothing else it's going to be interesting to see what some Bleepic gravity will do with his fragile body."
"Home? Gravity? Fragile?", Jesper said to himself without bothering about the meaning of the sentence that contained these words. Then he started to examine the space craft. He was just about to 'examine' a stick near a sign saying 'Do not move! (Catapult)', when he was thrown backwards by a force caused by the take-off of the extra terrestrial space craft. When Jesper realized that the saucer had started, he said to himself:
"Shit! They leave already, and I really had hoped to look at the interior of the flying saucer for a long time first."
A few minutes later, Jesper begun to be very confused. Even though the saucer had left, he still looked at the inside of it. How was this possible? Unless.... A creeping feeling of horror came over Jesper. He was onboard a spacecraft, that was heading for Bleep. This could only mean one thing; The aliens had forgotten to let him off before take-off. Jesper walked to Beetjoo, and said:
"Oops! I have just realized that there was one thing that we all seem to have forgotten."
"And what might that be?"
"Letting me off before take-off!", Jesper said with a triumphic voice, proud to be the first one to realize the mistake.
"No, we didn't forget to let you off."
"But....", Jesper begun. Then he looked for an empty corner to stand in to collect his thoughts. Due to the lack of corners in the circular space craft, Jesper instead started to walk around in circles, trying to sort out all facts:

Less that 15 minutes later, when Jesper had tried all possible solutions to the situation, he understood what had happened; he had one of those crazy, illogical dreams again. And, since it all was a dream, he didn't have to bother about what happened anymore. He walked to the leader and said:
"So, how long is this trip, and how long time will it take?"
"Well, the distance between earth and Bleep is exactly twice the distance to the sun, if one take the shortest path, which we obviously don't do. The trip will take about 5 hours."
Jesper just had to ask the obvious question:
"Why don't we take the shortest path?"
The leader looked at Jesper, then at Beetjoo and Tjoobee:
"The most intelligent creature on earth you said. He just asked me why we don't travel through the sun to get to Bleep!"
Beetjoo started to feel fed up with the leaders insinuations that Jesper was not so intelligent. So, he said:
``To prove that this creature is smart we (the earthling and me) challenge you in a card game that the earthlings call bridge. It's a fairly simple game but it demand some intelligent thinking. We play you for a Bleepic poundgif a point. Ten minutes later, Beetjoo had explained all the rules, and the games begun. Two hours later, and 5000 Bleepic pounds poorer, the leader was not supercilious any moregif.

Jesper had just noticed that it started to get really hot when the leader said:
"Okay, we are approaching the closest passage of the sun. Everybody must put on their tailor made cooling suits."
Jesper worriedly looked at the leader and said:
"Excuse me! Hypothetical speaking, if someone, let's call him Jester, hasn't brought a cooling suit. What would happen to Jester then."
"Well, pretty much the same that happens to an ice-cube on a stove. Fortunately, we have hired our best scientist to make theoretical calculations and computer simulations to predict the earthlings' anatomy. From his calculations we have made you a suit that should fit your body."
The leader opened the huge suitcase that contained the eight cooling suits. After handing out all but the one to Jesper, he picked up the last suit and looked at it, then at Jesper, and then at the suit again. He then said, holding his right palm against his forehead, and with a low-spirited facial expression:
"Oh my God! Remind me to fire our scientist when get home to Bleep again!"

All the aliens now understood that Jesper's life was in serious danger, since there was not enough rocket fuel to change the route, and since Jesper's suite fitted no better than a six legged giraffe suite to an elephant. They also realized that if they came back with a dead earthling, especially a well done one, it would be considered as a great failure. The earthling's life just must be saved, and a plan of action was urgently needed. But how to keep Jesper cool? After some heavy thinking they realized that the freezer was the only solution. The quickly wrapped out the shelves in the freezer and pushed Jesper in it with the words:
"Unfortunately you can't keep the door ajar."
"Yes of course! I know that!", Jesper said sounding almost like a teenager after his/her parents had told them to do something very obvious.
"Maybe he can be quite smart after all, since he realized that the extreme heat would cause an electric overload in the freezer, if the door wasn't totally closed.", the leader said thoughtfully, but hesitating.gif

After less than two minutes in the freezer Jesper couldn't stand it anymore. He was almost freezing to death. He pushed himself out of the freezer, and into the hot room outside. Less than a minute later the heat was to much for him so he jumped inside again. During the next 37 minutes Jesper moved in and out of the freezer no less than 124 times. What poor Jesper experienced can best be described as a really bad case of malaria, with alternating sweating and shivering. When the space craft finally was so far away from the sun that the aliens could get out of their cooling suits, Jesper fell down exhausted on the floor. When he started to recover he realized something that medical research had known for ages, namely that repeated heating and cooling of the body is very efficient if you want to catch a cold.

Jesper's running nose and sneezing puzzled the aliens, since something like a cold was unknown on Bleep. They all watched him with amusement, and started to place bets on how long time it would take to the next sneeze. However, Beetjoo started to feel sorry for Jesper and decided to talk to him:
"Now when we are approaching Bleep, I think there are a few things about Bleep that you should be aware of: There is also a lot more things I should tell you, but I have no more time, since we are just about to begin our in-flight to Bleep."
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Next: The unknown planet Up: No Title Previous: A healty morning


Patrik &
Thu Feb 26 10:10:12 MET 1998