On board the Star-Cruiser Comet                     Ga: 05, 11, 19391

Dear Friend,

Our ship has just left Gardia, the fifth planets on my ‘Completion Tour.’ So often I have wished you could have been with me, but it will be your turn next. Of course, the planets they pick for you will likely be different from mine, since our area of study differ.

But, Gardia is totally different from our dry and rocky planet, and from any other planet that I have ever seen. It is so green, there are green things growing everywhere. If you are very quiet, you can hear the whole planet grow. It is not a wealthy planet like ours. Gardia has no minerals, they export plants, flower seeds and bulbs; perfume and luxury foods. It is also a rest and recreation planet. The most incredible thing is that it has ten times our population and that is without having to import any food; they are self-supporting. I have also found out that few planets are rich enough to send their young on a ‘Completion Tour’ at the end of their education years; we are privileged. But, the latter is only because our leader had the foresight to keep our population at a level where we do not have to import food and therefore can afford a higher standard of living. I have seen planet where their population exceed their food production and where they cannot afford to import food; it is a terrible sight, my friend, to see people starving.

I must tell about the most impressive thing about Gardia - water. They serve water in the refreshment places without charging for it. And, it rains all over the planet, all the time, not just in one season. I spend 3 solar-months on Gardia and I have never seen water in so many forms, it dazzles my mind. The drops when it rains range from huge ones to very tiny ones. The huge ones often comes in what they call “Shower” or “Thunderstorms”, it is a heavy torrent, as someone opened a water tap. And, when the Shower is over, their Sun shine and the whole planet is alive with the odor from green plants and flowers. It is really intoxicating planet. What you would really like is what they call “Misty Rain,” the rain drops are so fine they hang in the air and you can actually breathe them in. For the first time in my life, I was totally moist inside and out; this was wonderful. But, as much as I liked it, I don’t think that I could have or wanted to live this way. We have adapted our bodies to our dry climate.

Then there is a form of even finer mist, they call that “Fog,” this form of water is much colder and have a strange solid white consistency to it. I have holographs and memory cubes of it all, so you can see everything.

I forgot to tell you, when it got colder, all the small ponds froze and they looked like they were covered with sheet of glass. The other solid forms of water I saw they called “Snow” and “Hail”. The snow appeared to be white and fluffy, but, consist of individual flakes and each one has a different shape. They are cold, but, do melt in a hand with higher body temperature like the humans, but stayed quite frozen in mine. Hails are round-like solid things that come in different sizes and remind me of river-stones. I have sensu-recordings of everything I saw, so we can share when I return. I should be home in one solar year. Until then, Keep Moist.

Hzisstl

Ps: The tall inhabitants call themselves Humans, see Humans and Humanoids in the “Galactic Species”, page 97. Although, they are a different species from us, as we, they are carbon-based. But, would you believe instead of “ultra-sound” they shower in water. It is quite obscene and such a waste.