Boarding party

The fey Mr. Young continues his scholarly researches in the scientific origins of our myth and legend with this tale of an agile—and avaricious—one-man
By ROBERT F. YOUNG
Illustrated by FINLAY
(Translator's note: The original of the following report was recently acquired by the Terran Industrial Library through the Interstellar Historical Exchange Society, into whose illustrious fold the member nations of the Terran Economic Bloc have at last been admitted. The narrative is of primary interest to the library officials because it provides unequivocable proof that, long before the Interstellar Economic Community took official cognizance of our existence, several articles of Community Commerce found their way into our culture. To the layman, however, the narrative is of primary interest because it provides an intriguing parallel to a narrative of an altogether different nature. )
TO: Interstellar Nurseries, Frimm 4
FROM: Captain of the Greenship Uxurient , Urtz 2
SUBJECT(S): (1) Why the Uxurient put in to an out-of-bounds system during the Frimm 4-Urtz 2 run; (2) how a boarding party of one gained the greendeck and made off with a Uterium 5 snirk bird, a toy friddlefork, and two containers of yellow trading disks; (3) why the Uxurient's flexible ship-to-ground capillary tube is ten exids shorter than it used to be.
(1)
Why the Uxurient put in to an Out-of-Bounds System during the Frimm 4-Urtz 2 Run
Two light-cycles out from Frimm 4, the first shoots of the yumquat trees broke through the greendeck precisely on schedule. A little over a light-cycle farther out I noticed during one of my periodic inspections that the young leaves were beginning to turn yellow, and subsequent tests of several greendeck soil samples revealed an acute deficiency of mineral elements D-2 and Z-1, plus an advanced aridity. I immediately retired to the greenship's subdeck, where I found the contents of the soil-solution vat to be at a shockingly low level. An analysis of the contents indicated a near-total absence of mineral elements D-2 and Z-1.