(So, um, I don't ever mean anything by these silly post titles. The last one wasn't meant to prescient, I swear.)
Our heroes are in an underground laboratory and, while they are victorious, they're pretty beat up. Abbas regains consciousness as Zeenia is tossing medical stuff around looking for something to help these solids, and bandages up himself and Iris. Zeenia searches the area, and finds a ray gun (perhaps a little heavier than the standard?), a couple of weird glass canisters with amber liquid and nasty-looking needles, and a metal container labeled "Death Dust: Antidote." Abbas also grabs the big ol' rifle that the Primal captain used against them - he won't be needing it!
The heroes are elated to have found the cure (if that's really what it is), but they don't have time to savor the moment. Iris feels a weird rumbling, and then the ground starts shaking. The heroes find some glass tubes in the next room with big red buttons inside. Abbas shoves a Primal corpse into one and hits the button, and the tube jettisons out of the caverns with a shoop.
The heroes pile into the other two and escape just as the tunnels cave in! They shoot up into the air and the tubes deploy parachutes, carrying them gently to the ground. But now they're in the middle of Boroosh, the rocky, inhospitable fragment, and they don't know where their ship is.
Zeenia activates her radiophone to send out a ping, and Iris flies up into the air to get her bearings. She can't see the ship, but figures out which way to walk. Abbas shoulders the canister and they start trudging. Zeenia laments that she has lost her scooter again.
They come across a patrol of Borooshians and try to hide, but they're spotted. One of the Borooshians points a rifle and demands that they identify themselves, which of course thrills Iris because she would have done that anyway. The patrol finds Iris a little too intense to want to pick a fight, and after a little questioning, they believe the characters' story about having to abandon their ship and then getting lost in the caverns.
Another few hours of walking later and they come to a crevasse - to wide to leap and too deep to climb through. Iris decides to fly ahead and see if she can find the ship, while Abbas and Zeenia head along the crevasse to a point where it narrows enough to jump. They do find that point, but just as they approach it, a Borooshian quaker, a huge lizard-carnivore, leaps from the sand and snaps at them!
Zeenia strikes at its underbelly, but Abbas just shoulders that huge gun she took and fires at it twice. The first shot stuns it, and the second one blows out the back of its head. The creature slumps forward with a thump, and Abbas grins. "That's two!"
Meanwhile, Iris arrives back at the ship, but something is wrong. It seems to be surrounded by smoke. As she gets closer, though, she realizes that it's actually a swarm of little golf-ball sized insects, and Rill, one of the Bird-Man crew, is lying on the ground motionless. Iris fires the pistol that she took from the lab and discovers that it's a plasma pistol, burning through the bugs and scattering them. They swarm over and sting her, but she fires a couple more times and disperses them. She drags Rill (fortunately still alive) inside, where she discovers the other crew members unconscious and surrounded by bug corpses.
Iris fires up the ship and homes in on Zeenia's ping, and picks her two companions up. They get the hell off this fragment and head for Avia for help.
There, they learn that these little bug things cause allergic reactions in Bird-Men, but the crew will be fine after some injections of the anti-toxin. The heroes deliver the antidote to King Boolar so his scientists can try to analyze and replicate it, along with those weird amber-liquid things.
The next day, Boolar takes them to meet Dr. Macaw, the Bird-Men's most brilliant scientist. Macaw explains that the injectors are "Lazarus injections," capable of restoring the recently dead to life. What's more, the antidote will work, curing a poisoned fragment in a matter of hours. Boolar says that Simba is under siege by Queen Anathraxa's forces, but he can provide 30 warships as well as ground troops. Dr. Macaw confirms that curing Simba will use up the canister, but he already has a batch of the antidote cooking.
The heroes decide that waiting is unwise - every day they delay, more Lion Men die. It's time to save Simba!
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