Some of the Travels of Sophie

Zegrafa

Two months after Sophie's fifteenth birthday, she was on the planet Ralpcator, going through the notes she had in her backpack. She was sitting on a park bench and was comparing the notes to her space map, and she realised that she was soon going to reach the end of the line, the last planet the Eridanus had visited before vanishing. Sophie felt kind of hopeless. So far she hadn't found any trace of what had happened to the expedition and by now it had been four years since it had gone missing. She was scared that she wasn't going to find anything, ever.

Her teleport watch beeped on her wrist and she looked down at it, half-sadly. It would need charging soon, as the watch required a large amount of power to function.

Putting her notes away and sighing, she decided that she would traverse to the next planet before she went back to Earth and charged the teleport watch. She opened the compartment and put in the next coordinates, albeit distractedly, as the power indicator drew her attention once again. Once the coordinates were set, Sophie slung her backpack over her shoulder and stood up; pressing the button that caused teleportation, she disappeared for what felt like the hundredth time.

As she fell into darkness there was suddenly a loud snapping sound, and the darkness began to twist and bend. Sophie's scream was lost in the madness and then she landed; knee deep in a bog, at the edge of a rainforest. The teleport watch gave off sparks, and Sophie looked down to see it dripping with mud.

"No!" she exclaimed. "No, no, no, no, no." She tapped at the screen on the face of the teleport watch desperately, but even as she tried to fix it, the power flickered and then died.

"No!" Sophie repeated, trudging her way out of the bog, wiping the muck off of the teleport watch, but it was already dead. Sophie cursed, stamping the ground in anger. What had gone wrong? She knew that the teleport watch had been low on power but it hadn't been low enough for it to short out. She pulled her scanner from her backpack and scanned the surrounding environment. Squinting at the statistics she suddenly realised something. These weren't the coordinates she had set! It was a completely different planet! She was just trying to work out how she was going to fix the watch when there was a noise to her left through the trees, and not just any noise, the noise of a machine, almost like a hovercar.....

"Stay where you are!" a voice ordered, and Sophie jumped in surprise as a group of aliens burst through the trees with weapons pointed at her.

One of the aliens stepped forward, sneering at her. She stared back at it, taking in this alien's strange appearance. It had a humanoid figure, but speckled, reddish skin and two horns poking out from its slimy brown hair. It was wearing some form of army uniform, with a badge on the shoulder of its bright red shirt with white strips of fabric sewn on. The weapon the alien held was an energy weapon, like a spear packed with shiny blue firepower. Sophie stared warily at the spears of all the aliens, not just the leader's one, and raised her hands above her head.

"I'm sorry." She said quickly. "But what planet am I on?"

The alien smirked, its spear pointing straight at her chest. "You, foreigner, are on the planet Zegrafa, and you are trespassing!"

"Oh." Sophie didn't know what to say. She'd never been told that she'd trespassed on a planet before. "Sorry."

"Bind her!" the head Zegrafan said, and one of his buddies surged forwards and tied her hands with a length of rope. Sophie thought it was quite a weak attempt to subdue her until she tried to pull her hands back out of the rope. Man, it was strong.

"Do not attempt to escape." The Zegrafran who'd bound her commanded. "Or we will kill you."

Sophie gulped, and let them lead her away. They had a vehicle parked right at the outer edge of the forest and she was forced into the back of it.