Boop-bah! Doo-dee! Bop! Deah-dah!

In the 3d octavo of the 271st year of the Slick era, thousands of volunteers, myself included, were scurrying up the famous Kalopyango canyons. Our army was flashing forward like a crazy multicolored stream of liquid toward a complex of space catapults above us. Surrounded by a crowd of fellows from across our nation who had come to say goodbye to us, we were performing sophisticated aerobatics on the slope. Telescopic arms from within the crowd were darting among us. Everyone wanted to pat a hero, to twitch his proboscis, to poke their finger into the pudgy eye of a space traveler. There was no doubt — we were making history.

“Agent, Wantoopian!” someone who was watching, shouted at me. “Find out out how those chaps gather seeds after it rains!”

In a friendly gesture, somebody’s hand pulled back my eyelid and it smacked loudly back onto my eye-globe. The world around me vibrated and morphed into colorful ink blots. I waded in the air, ran into someone, then bounced down into the crowd and rolled head over heels. The gleeful blots hurled me back into the sky. I overshot a jut that was between me and the top of the canyon and finally saw a huge plateau with catapults. I heard a huge uproar coming from the crowd and the voices of the loudest guys.

“Ascertain what kind of aerial dances they practise, there’s a good chum!”

“And happiness sprays! Do they use them?”

These kind of metaphysical issues had been preoccupying our insatiable minds and non-stop talking proboscises for a long time. We were worried whether inhabitants of the Third planet were peaceful and civilized or if they were a primitive race with protobrains. Would we be able to colonize them?

Two stewards pulled on my willow spacesuit, hair reed gloves and clapped a berry helmet on my head. Several telescopic arms grabbed my body and threw it out into the center of a vast area of vegetation.

I focused my eye and saw a magnificent catapult. It was an enormous stem rooted into the wasteland and topped by a spacious cup with bearded petals. Undoubtedly I was looking at Soul Spitter XS450 that was one of the appendixes that had been optimized by our engineers after a colonization of the Akvayonix planet. The sight of those huge botanic things had inspired generations of my kinsmen to perform many deeds.

The assistants on the top of the catapult threw the bushy stamen over to those helping on the ground and tied an anther around my waist. Without ceremony I was quickly pulled up and dragged onto the cup. Standing on the top I saluted the world and heard thunderous applause in return. I felt very proud that I was alive and that I was a part of the glorious Kintoopian nation, a representative of our culture in other galaxies.

Aptoop, an instructor of “extraterrestrial dangers” (and a future captain of the colony), welcomed me on board. He sat me in a spare place and fastened a hairy safety-belt around my shaggy paunch. He may have felt my anxiety and he rubbed his heel against my hairy side to buck me up.

“Pull yourself together, old bean! Remember what you’ve learnt during the sacred training”, he said. “The first thing you must do is to find me there.”

“Yes, sir!” I answered. “I swear on my honour I’ll search for you among all the creatures.”

Later we discovered it was easier said than done.

The head of the operation, General Tranktoop, took a quick look at the starry sky and notified us that six minutes remained until Kintoop reached the apsis, which is the farthest point of our planet’s rotation around the Kintoopian sun. It was a unique moment in a year when the Full eye of our planet was focused on the star we wanted to capture. If slick-in failed, then all our efforts would have been in vain. The next opportunity would not be until the following year, when Kintoop completed its next rotation around the sun.

A Slick, or the transfer of a Kintoopian soul into the body of a creature on another planet, was very popular on Kintoop. So far our civilization had already developed two planets and several asteroids. Every year thousands of tourists slicked to these remote worlds. However nobody knew anything about the new planet where we were going to emigrate. The Third planet of the Slick Era had our space experts awestruck. They continued to conjecture about its possible physical structure, the mysterious creatures living there and the potentially barbaric society. In general it was expected that we would meet a rather primitive civilization. Kintoopians joked about how funny it would be to settle in the new vacation-park.

I was wary. My intuition told me that it would not be easy out there. My foreboding was so strong that, when the steward of Soul Spitter reminded us about emergency exits, my ears were itching. I tried to focus on all the greatest elements of travel. Living on the Third planet would definitely compensate me for the time I had lost during the mission to the planet Akvayonix (when due to a stupid accident I was slicked into a bladdy coral body). This time I was going to do the Slicktrace Agency, and Kintoop, a service. My journey was a great chance to make my way up!

“By all the power of the Dark Pole!” I hooted and banged the fist of my left hand into the palm of my right one. “I won’t be Wantoopian if I don’t spread the glory of Kintoop beyond the horizons!”

At that very instant Soul Splitter winced. The assistants grabbed the long eyelashes of the catapult that trailed from the cup along its perimeter and started to rotate the appendix around its stem. When they had made several turns the stem curled into a tight plait and the cup sat on the ground. The assistants froze in order to keep the appendix in its precarious state. Then there was an uneasy crackling that deformed the fibers of the appendix. The catapult was ready for intergalactic traction.

“One minute to the slick, chaps.” General Tranktoop bawled.

The crowd was honking like a giant refreshed. Someone started to conduct with his proboscis and the noise turned into the anthem of Kintoop.

“Ten seconds.”

An incredible hubbub cracked the dome of the sky. It seemed that the whole Kintoopian nation had joined in the countdown to honor the brave spacenauts.

“Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Zero!!!”