Part 2
GAR'S STORY AS TOLD TO LYGEIA

My story really begins with my birth, but in order to clarify certain
questions I think I should start by explaining a bit about my people.  I
say 'my people' because, well, how can I put this. I am an alien, Furcadia
is not my home planet.  My home is far from here in another solar system.

My solar system is something of an oddity. In the past it was made up of
four, gas giant class planets without a central star. The relatively equal
weight of these planets caused them to orbit around each other in a chaotic
fashion. But eventually, (about 45 billion years ago by our estimate) one
of these planets suddenly became a solid mass by sucking in large amounts
of gasses from its sisters.  This odd planet thus became much heavier than
the others, and established itself in the centre of the system, causing
the other three still-gaseous planets to rotate around it.

However this sudden shift in orbital positions had other effects as well.
Something in the other three planets snapped, and all of them suddenly
combusted, turning into regular stars much like Furcadia's own. So it was
that my home world came into being: a strangely huge world surrounded by
three stars, a planet devoid of night or shadow.  If it had not been for
the great distance between my home and its sisters my world would be cooked
like an egg, and most certainly would not have been blessed to possess
life.

My people, who long ago named that world Fierras, are a race of cats who trace
our evolution along the same lines as dragons.  All my race possess large wings
and the ability to project fire from our throats.  (As you may notice I have
neither of these qualities. I ask you to be patient, all questions will be
answered by the end of my tale.)   Because of this inborn knowledge of flame,
my people the Fierrans, mastered metalworking long before most other races. In
time, our culture became hyper-advanced and achieved things far beyond that of
almost any other planet.

We discovered not too long into our development how our planet had been
birthed.  It was only through a marvellous invention: the Antigraviton
Emitter that we kept our home from following in its sisters' footsteps.
The one shortfall of my people's development was our complete lack of
fascination for space.  We had not the usual moons or other planets to
intrigue us into space, and with sunlight 36 hours a day 1460 days a cycle
(I'll get to our time later) we had never seen stars.  It was not until we
were contacted by another race that we even considered there was ANYTHING
out there, let alone life.  With my people's natural flying ability, the
farthest we'd gotten in aviation was to invent cargo lifters to transport
goods around the planet.  As far as colonization, even with seventeen
billion inhabitants we had only colonized about forty percent of our own
planet so the stars were a long way off.

As I mentioned earlier, the time frame on my home was rather different from
here.  With no day and no night with which to tell the hours, and no
seasons to mark the passage of years, my people went a long while with no
time constraints. It was not quite a hundred years before my birth that our
scientists developed a method of measuring time.  They calculated days
(equal to 36 of your hours) and years (equal to 1460 of your days).  This
was done solely to help in communicating with other time-controlled sentient species.

Gar suddenly stopped his narration turning to his listeners. "It appears
that I should cut to the chase.  My listeners are going on with their own
stories."

Someone gave Toban an elbow in the ribs as he had been drowsing and talking
to himself quite noisily.

"Huh? What? What did I miss?"  Toban grasped desperately at straws to try and
make it appear that he actually had been paying attention.

"Very well." Gar continued good-naturedly. "I'll jump right to the time of my birth."