FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Strapped into the aero-lift's troop transport container Doctor Sarah Jessica Michaels McPheron trembled in excitement, hands firm on the black and yellow restraint bar across her chest. Her grandmother would have called it an "auspicious assignment" for she had been selected to represent her ward as one of the first humans to visit the Shozi capital city of Tree'Tu. She'd heard so many rumors of these strange beings and the planets other inhabitants, she watched all of the footage of these aliens that Bridge Command was releasing for public viewing and all that her research clearance would let her access. Dr. Sendrik's footage of the surface tribes had been especially compelling to her. It was apparently her persistent curiosity of this species which earned her this opportunity above the other equally qualified professors in her ward.

She looked at the other occupants gripping their harnesses, chests heaving powerfully as they tried to focus, so unfamiliar with travel. Normally a mission of this importance would warrant opening a portal from the ship to the city for all of the researchers to simply step across the intervening space, or even use transporters to scramble their molecules for reassembly on the other side, but the Shozi had been most insistent that no transporters or portals were to be utilized within their most holy city. Elsewhere on Xamesh the use of such technology was highly restricted, but in Tree'Tu it was completely banned even in case of an emergency. The Shozi used scramblers of some kind to prevent teleporters, but for portals the humans had given their word not to use them in the city. Why the Shozi banned them was unknown, and while she was coming to study their species four sexes she hoped to find out.

Sarah wondered how humans had been able to handle the anticipation in the past, always traveling through all of the space between start and finish. So much of her life revolved around portals getting her effortlessly all over the ship in only a couple steps, and here she was, hurtling through the thick alien atmosphere at around 400 meters per second and it had already been a rather long journey from the shimmering blue light of the portal at the staging area on the edge of Shuzo, the continent of the Shozi.

The other researchers around her appeared to be of similar minds, faces of concern, anticipation, or air-sickness. One had already blown fetted chunks across the grating at their feet, the rushing wind thankfully blowing away the smell faster than it could rest in her nostrils. Sarah didn't have any problem with the movement of the container, she had her grandmas gene modifications to thank for that, engineered to travel on one of the earliest colonization ships, before inertial dampener fields had been invented. If only those could be activated on the lift and still let it fly.

A message flashed across the inside of her eye telling her they were about to drop the container. Moments later she could feel the craft slowing down to make the drop soon followed by the lurch as the securing bars were removed. Everyone grabbed their restraints as the countdown showed in their eyes. Finally reaching zero it felt like her stomach had driven up into her chest to snuggle up with her lungs and heart. The dampers eased them down until the container settled on a hard flat surface and the doors opened.

Processing their identities took longer than she'd expected, but these aliens didn't use computers. The large four armed feline beefcakes, the Kuna, were surprisingly efficient at cataloging everyone, checking ID holograms against their records, moving people from the platform into the gleaming tower through doors that slid open in all directions without a sound. It was the Shozi elevators which most caught Sarah off guard. Everywhere she looked was the polished white marble, glittering with the moving shafts of redirected suns light. The platform, the massive halls, everything looked so sterile until she looked at the gash in the wall that these aliens used to travel up and down. It was like an exposed muscle, no, not like, it was an exposed muscle.

The red and brown mass of flesh undulated, pulsing in and out of its marble confines as feline aliens of all shapes and sizes were pushed up from one floor to the next, occasionally one of them emerging and greeting their research partners before they all returned to the muscular transport tube. Some were 30 feet tall and twice as long, standing on four powerful legs reminiscent of lions back on Earth, her colleagues notes called these Toan. One was like a long serpent, fur shimmering like a rainbow down the hundred or so feet of tail, emerging from the muscle wall like a Hindu deity with six arms and gleaming gold eyes. This was clearly the nomadic Anto. Most, however, came up to just above Sarah's knees as they hopped along the floor between the researchers, each looking for their assigned partners.

It was a pair of these smaller aliens, the ones called Naku, that came to Dr. Michaels McPheron. One critter tugged on her civilian uniform pants so softly she might not have noticed had she not already been looking down at them. It, no, shi, chirped and churred before speaking in a high pitched voice, "Doctor Sarah, I presume? Me Teacher Kindra'Naku." The other jumped forward on hir long rodent like feet and chittered in time with the flicking of hir three long tails trailing behind hir. "Me Teacher Amot'Naku. Come come. Much to learn, much to teach."

Kindra and Amot guided her through the cities shining halls and organic structures, eventually arriving at a suning garden where dozens of groups of the aliens, the Shozi, lounged on blue and green grasses in the light of Alef and Bet, the twin stars that provided Xamesh with heat. Sarah always loved watching from her balcony as the suns eclipsed each other at the start of every day, but here it was, high noon and they were about to start crossing. It reminded her of just how far east she was from home, a quarter of the world away.

Home?

Only four months since the crash landing and already she had accepted the jungles of Volda as her home. Xamesh was her world now, the Shozi, her neighbors.

Mentally she reached up in her interface and took a picture of the many sunning felines under the waning light. She saved it locally to the implant since there wasn't an open CivCom channel to her computer back aboard the Aeternia.

As the light darkened more and more groups gathered to lounge in piles under the suns. She marveled at how physically affectionate their species were as the two Teachers nuzzled each other in her lap, starting their noon sleep hour. If only her grandmother could see her now, in the Monastery of the Teachers petting the two little aliens who would soon teach her so much about their culture. An auspicious assignment indeed.