And so once upon a time, the bird creatures of Ransom could not communicate with the volcano god either, as he didn't know their language, and they couldn't read any of the ones he tried to use. Ransom wasn't called Ransom back then. In fact, they didn't have a name for their planet, and they were quite distraught about it. "What will other civilizations think, if we can't even name our own planet?"

"Maybe that we had better things to do, like, science?"

"Yeah Carl, I'm sure they'll think that."

"Shut up! My ideas are fine!"

Many people - er, birds - had ideas for how to name their planet. "Birdia" was the best they could come up with. The other ideas were things like "Seed" and "Awesomeplanet". Until a routine observation mission above the volcano planet went awry. Five birds were lost in an explosion. One survived, and fell to the surface.

Now, the thing you should know about the volcano planet is, it was dead and lifeless. It wasn't really that hot, in fact it was quite moderate in temperature. It still had an atmosphere, though it was mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The ground was dusty and solid rock. The one active volcano remained, where the lava creature lived at its base. It was a shield volcano, and didn't really erupt lava - it just sort of ... oozed it once in a while.

The lava creature had been looking up towards the ship when it exploded. He knew by now they couldn't understand him, but he still wished he could communicate. That was when one of the ship's fuel lines decided it had grown tired of life, and exploded. Then the rest of the ship thought that was a mighty fine idea, and also exploded. And Henry, the sole survivor, went hurdling towards the ground.

His name wasn't really Henry, it was something like CHIRCHIRRUP, but that's hard to type. Anyway, as Henry was hurdling towards the ground like a nursing home resident on acid on the side of a cliff, the lava creature saw him and went into action. Suddenly, he moved across the surface at such a high rate of speed that mission control lost sight of him.

"Oh my god."

"What's he doing? Where'd he go?"

"That poor bastard. I can't watch this."

And sure enough, when Henry was ten feet from the surface, the lava creature was below, waiting to catch him.

Now, if you've never taken a bath in lava, let me set the picture for you - it's hot. Usually a couple thousand degrees. Not something you want to step in, or touch, or be next to. Let alone fall into at terminal velocity. Which, since the volcano planet's gravity was twice that of Earth, was quite a lot.

There was nary a sound. Henry disappeared into the lava creature. He looked up, kind of swirled around a bit, and went back to the base of his volcano. Much slower than he'd left.

"It ate him. That motherfucker ate him!"

"Calm down. Maybe he was ... trying to help."

"Trying to help?! He's made of fucking lava! How is that supposed to help?"

"I don't know! That poor bastard.. what are we going to tell the people about this?"

After a few more minutes of arguing, the creature had returned. A probe at the base of the volcano, sent years earlier in an attempt at communication was turned on.

"Hey! Hey you, what's the big idea!"

The volcano god seemed startled, as much as a pile of lava can seem startled. Then, he slowly turned to face the probe and wrote something on a sign, in the native language of the bird people.


I HAVE YOUR MAN

"What? He what? Don't ... don't tell me he's alive in there! How did he learn our language?"

"Oh god he's holding Henry for .. for ransom? Boiling alive in lava!? I'll kill that son of a bitch!"

"Calm down Carl, take your goddamned pills!"

"I will not calm down! What the fuck kind of ransom do you pay to lava?"

Then Carl grabbed the mic and shouted at the creature. "Give him back you son of a bitch!"


I CAN'T

"Fine, what do you want for him?"

WANT? NOTHING MAN

"Oh, playing hardball are we?"

WHAT'S HARDBALL

"It's .. shut up! Give him back or I'll come down there and make you wish you had!"

I SAID I CAN'T, CAN'T LEAVE PLANET

Just then, the lava creature ... spit Henry up. He was covered in lava goop, but seemed no worse for the wear. He brushed it off, and it seemed to rejoin the lava creature on its own. Henry looked around, saw the probe, and waved. "Hey guys! I'm ok!"

"See Carl? I wish you'd relax. Jesus, lava holding somebody for ransom, I swear ... let's get a ship out there to pick Henry up.

Hey uh .. vol.... l... hey you, what's your name?"

The lava creature stewed for a bit, and slowly wrote

DUDE, CAN'T REMEMBER

Then Henry piped in. "Hey, thanks for catching me over there!"

NO PROB.

"Okay uh ... volcano god, I guess, can we call you volcano god ... "

YEAH BUT I'M NO GOD

"Okay well .. is there anything we can do for you? We have a ship coming to pick Henry up."

The creature thought for a minute, and then responded:

YOU GUYS GOT ANY GOOD BOOKS