<USS Cervantes> Summary aka explanation

What's happened so far...

The Ss'thla asked us to leave their planet at nightfall so they could
observe a religious ritual. 
When we left, instead of leaving our sensors blind, we rigged them so that
they would observe 
surreptitiously and if anything went wrong, the sensors would tell us...

We know something funky has been going on down on the planet. There's this
whole thing with 
the statues. A corpse moved and became a statue, but also appeared to have
been in its spot 
for thousands of years. How is that possible?

Also, the Ss'thla had fur on their coats. There was an ancient painting of a
Ss'thla in a long 
voluminous black coat obviously done by the Khefiraa. Also, Ashne'e found a
piece of modern 
Ss'thla technology in the sand, aged like the other artifacts.

How is that possible?

Well, we've discovered there are wormholes. We knew this before, but not how
many there 
were. Now, after another ship flew too close to us (the Andorians) our
proximity alarm went off 
and we could see the planet below. It was wreathed in wormholes. Wormholes
are involved in 
two things: space travel and time travel. There was a population of 200,000
on the planet 
below. Clearly, the planet nightly travels in time to the era of the dead
civilization.

Which explains the fur, the painting of the Ss'thla, and the Ss'thla
technology. It also explains 
why the Ss'thla said they were going to the "Rites of Sand and Fur" when
this was a Khefiraan 
event. Obviously, they are traveling back in time and attending the Khefiraa
Rites of Sand and 
Fur.

But what about the statues and the corpse?

We know that the Ss'thla archaeologists are very poor. They can't afford new
technological 
equipment or good food. We know that Risah hissed to Ss'lih once,  "We
should have listened to 
Lisith and sold the statue!" - instead of sending it back to a museum. 

We also know that some of the lizards have money. They can afford to eat
good food. They have 
also been seen with statues, dragging them out of the catacombs and arguing
over events. 

The Andorians are around, and they're communicating with the planet, but not
with Risah, the 
communications officer. They are talking to someone else...

So it appears that only a few of the Ss'thla how are involved in this
selling of statues. But where 
do they get their supplies? How do they know to keep the statues away from
the other 
anthropologists?

Hisaj studies the rich, and Ssarish studies the intellectuals. Is it
coincidence that the statues are 
street people? That they seem to be... corpses?

And now, too, Rahssh is dead, though undiscovered, lying buried in the
hidden chamber with the 
statues...

-- 
GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
http://www.gmx.net

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