Introduction
  ------------
   
   You were performing a routine class III survey of the world 871-438
   (0710-E700000-0) in the Jewel subsector of the Spinward Marches. The
   world was thought to be a worthless hunk of rock and your survey seems
   to justify this belief. After eight weeks of intensive and very dull
   surveying of the world, you have produced a reasonable quality
   topographic map of the entire surface. Three locations generated
   anomalous sensor readings when scanned. However, due to a shortage of
   time Travil, the mission commander, decided to not investigate these
   aberrations. His recommendation is for a fully equipped survey team to
   be dispatched to perform a highly detailed investigation. Given the
   exciting quality of this world, such an investigation is unlikely to
   be undertaken for a very long time.
   
   The survey completed, your Serpent class Scout, The Blackened Asp,
   makes it way out to the hundred diameter limit in preparation for the
   jump back to the main stream of society.
   
   Reaching the jump point, you energise your jump drive and in a rather
   impressive display of pyrotechnics, nothing happens. No stomach
   tearing wrench as you leave normality for the soul rending emptiness
   of jump space.
   
   Actually quite a lot happened. The Asp's jump drive overloads and
   heaps of circuits fuse into a large molten pile. Your power plant
   decides that continued operation is not a good idea and it too shuts
   down generating a prodigious quantity of ozone and even more molten
   components.
   
   As the life support systems switch over to emergency battery backup,
   you hurriedly get suited up and watch as the barren lifeless hunk of
   rock below slowly but steadily approaches. The Asp's manoeuvre drives
   are still barely operable and the emergency battery reserves just
   might have juice to hard land the ship onto the rock.
   
   In a virtuoso display of piloting, Sherina, coerces the crippled Asp
   down onto the world's surface without causing much further damage to
   the already crippled systems. The down side to this fortuitous
   piloting display is the almost total flattening of the emergency
   reserve battery supply.
   
   A couple of days later Bob has fully accessed the system damage. Full
   repairs will take three to four weeks.
   
   Rather than get in Bob's way, Travil (the fearless) decides that a
   complete ground based survey of the triad of suspicious sites would be
   a splendid moral booster.