Page 176 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

part of the expedition; what the Kryst funerary practices were, but that was some time off for now.
The information that came from the Shust expedition pointing to a colony outside the galaxy would
soon be confirmed in a very unusual way. The object orbiting around the sixth planet would be the
key to a more precise location of that world and a surprising encounter.

The Treasures within…

Hubris was feeling better now that She’brakda had moved out of P’rada’s strong influence.
Activity had also reduced on P’rada and this had reduced the interference affecting the long range
scanners. Clearer pictures of the object orbiting the sixth planet had been received and it looked like
a larger version of the Kryst prob. Hubris decided to take
a closer look at the Puzzle Box he’d received from Killiris.
It was approximately thirty centimetres in length and a
half of that in width and the compartment section
around twelve centimetres in height. There were four
bands about two and a half cm wide and 19 millimetres
thick wrapped around the compartment and roughly
equidistant over the length of the box. It appeared to be
made of some dark hardwood, though not a species that
would have been found on old Earth. It turned out to be
native to the planet the box was found on. As with nearly
all of these boxes; there was no obvious lock or hinged lid. The joints and bands offered easy no
clues either as to how the box could be opened. In fact; there appeared to be too many pieces going
by seams, so some of these must be fakes. Hubris tried sliding and tugging at various parts, but with
little success. Until; that is, he slid the face of one of the uprights to one of the bands. It moved open
to about half way and stopped. A small key dropped out. Sliding the section back Hubris tried doing
the sane to the other bands and found the top surface of one of the bands actually twisted away to
reveal a tiny keyhole.

“Now let’s see what’s inside of you” Hubris said quietly. He turned the key clockwise and there was a
click and a small sprung drawer popped open on one of the end faces. Inside were four thin
cylindrical crystal rods. They looked like the data rods that the Lemurr use, only these were a deep
blue in colour. He retrieved them and slid the drawer back. The key turned back as he did so. He
experimented by turning the key anti clockwise and the whole top; including the shallow drawer
lifted. He opened up this lid to reveal another larger compartment with a varied assortment of items

inside. All of them appeared ancient in
nature. He had seen images of one or
two of the items in ancient history
archives so could place them to the Pre-
Economy Wars period. They definitely
looked like they came from Old Earth. It
seemed such an odd collection of things.
Hubris decided to take the Box and its
contents to Engineering for Trok and
T’luha to examine further. The box itself
was more interesting to Hubris; he
wanted to understand the intricate
locking mechanism. As he turned the
Box over; he noticed that under the
layers of lacquer there appeared to be
faint symbols and numerals. He tried an alternative light source and they became more apparent. He
was about to go into this further when a call over the intercom summoned him to Krysta’s Ready