All That's Golden Does Not Glitter

All That's Golden Does Not Glitter1

The space ship settled, canted somewhat toward the east, on a dusty field near a small town.  The brush fire it started ran down to the river and stopped.  After things had cooled down to planet temperature a hatch popped open about halfway, call it ten meters, up the side and a rope ladder was tossed out.  It came up just short of the ground.  Two scruffy looking men, looking like extras from a Bluebeard movie, climbed to the ground as a woman dressed like a doxy from Klondike Days covered them with a weapon that looked like something Toys R Us would sell for half the price of a beer.  The artifact was actually from the ancient Wubban empire and worth more than the ship and everything else on it.  It ran on nothing and on lowest power it was either a powerful flashlight or served to cook meat slowly, depending on how the secondary switch was set.  At five percent power it could burn a hole in the best armored tank in a half second or turn a fortified bunker into an oven.  At twenty five percent it could slice a small planet in half or melt an ice cap in seconds.  Derf, the larger of the men, had tried it on half power once.  The result is known as The Sudden Rift and is a perfectly clear route that extends right outside known space.2

Gorp, the smaller man, called up to the woman in the hatch, "Are you sure this is the right place Lucky?  It looks poor as I've ever seen."3

"Sure as shootin' honey.  The area reads almost solid gold.  You just have to dig for it."4

"I wonder why the locals ain't guardin' it better?" mumbled Derf.  Just then a group of said locals came out of the underbrush in the direction of town.  They looked kind of like Dino, from the old Flintstones cartoons.5

"Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip." one of them said.6

Derf called up to the woman in the hatchway, "Lucky, have Tiny bring us down that Universal Translator thingee."  Very shortly thereafter a woman, dressed like a flapper from the early nineteen hundreds started down the ladder.  Both of the men, and most of the creatures crowded around for a view of her bottom.  When she reached the ground it became obvious that she was only about four feet tall.  The fact that she was pure woman had never been in doubt since she started down the ladder.  Derf kissed her and she stood with her arm around him.7

Derf turned the instrument that Tiny handed him on.  He held it out toward the Dinos.  "Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip." he said, trying to sound just like the one that had yipped at the humans when they first came along. Immediately the Dinos began whistling like a bunch of mad raccoons, yipping at each other once in a while and rolling on the ground.  In a few minutes, as they calmed down, the translator began spewing out individual words, then finally full sentences.  It was only moments later that the humans and the Gronk, for that is what they called themselves, were communicating. They explained, as their whistling laughter erupted again, that what Derf had said sounded in their language like, "My noble sex organ spews beautiful confection."  It took a while for Tiny to pick herself off the ground and stop laughing that time.8

The humans explained to the Gronk that they wanted the gold that was so abundant on the planet.  The Gronk told the humans to take as much of it as they wanted; that they were actually native to a planet that didn't contain any heavy metals and the gold caused them to sneeze.  The Gronk had been planted on the planet as a colony sometime in the distant past and what with the presence of the gold, coupled with the lack of certain trace elements, they weren't doing very well, for each couple could only raise two, maybe three children to maturity, sacrificing their own bodies to give their offspring enough of the trace elements to survive and go through pulba, the change to adulthood.  The rest stayed plup, cute as kittens, about the size of a small dog and twice as dumb.  They had dense shells, like armadillos, but heavier and grazed on the local vegetation.  The colony was only able to absorb enough of the elements from the planet's9

vegetation to grow maybe two percent per generation.10

The humans, knowing nothing of biochemistry, set to dickering with the Gronk over the gold, buying whatever could be carried off in the space ship for a few trinkets and the promise from the humans to let the authorities know about their plight.11

As Gorp dickered Derf looked around.  They all drank a few beers and soon Derf, with the help of the Wubban device had a gold mine producing.  After a bit he stopped and before opening a fresh beer he went behind a bush.  A group of the ever present plup followed him.  When he came out they were still following him, but they were almost three times the size they had been and they were babbling the song he had been singing back there, Poona Poona Spaceway Trollop.  As there may be young eyes looking at this I won't write the words out.12

"Pulba!" cried out all of the Gronk in unison.  "You have synthesized the trace elements.  We are forever indebted."13

Eventually they pirates-turned-miners had enough gold to satisfy themselves and thanks to several beer runs the Gronk had enough trace elements to get their colony on good footing.  Somewhere, on a distant planet, stands a golden monument surrounded by sneezing dinasaurs.  It shows the four humans and bears the inscription, "MY NOBLE SEX ORGAN SPEWS BEAUTIFUL CONFECTION".14