A Christmas Story
The captain was an expert at first contact; as intelligent life is as common as hydrogen, he’d had plenty of practice. His current assignment was to determine whether the inhabitants of the third planet of a minor yellow star qualified as intelligent life.
Unfortunately, his ship’s sensors hadn’t detected the microasteroid that had wandered far from the field between the fourth and fifth planets. The asteroid, however, found the ship without difficulty, causing a major engine malfunction. As his ship flamed out across the atmosphere, he regretted his mission’s failure.
On the planet below, three kings saw the star grow bright in the east, and began preparations for their journies.
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