Snowflake snapped to wakefulness when the interior panel lights came on with a click. It was dark outside the cockpit and it had a tilt with the left side up about twenty-six degrees. It wasn't a volcano they sucked into, it seemed. She hurt all over, but was thinking clearly again. She unstrapped, and called out,"Pazu? Pazu? PAZU?!" She crawled over to him and unstrapped him gently. She pulled him over to the rear hatch and got him out of the downed cockpit. She was dizzy as she set Pazu down on the worked stone. She looked at the only patch of sky in the darkness. It looked like they had landed in a thermal vent of a city buried under the ice. Pazu groaned, and rolled over to all fours. After a moment, Snowflake helped him to his feet. He sighed,"I needed that nap. I...am NOT dead, I think! I hurt to much. Nope, not dead. Not molten magma, always a bonus! Glad to see you agai...n. What happened to YOU?" He looked surprised at her. She looked blankly at him,"What? What do you mean?" He looked at her face intently, and said,"Your FACE! My god! You don't know? How can you not know?" She had been scratching where that artifact ring had embedded into her left index finger, when he had asked that. She looked around and found a shiny metal circuit box that reflected one of the lights nearby. She went over to it and pulled off her helmet and looked at herself. She dropped the helmet in shock. "My face! What happened to my face?" She was more wondering, than horrified. Pazu laughed,"Now you can suck face with 518 easier now! You murmured,'Oh,518!' just before or after you passed out." "We've been out for almost three hours by my internal clock. Must have been some kind of self-preservation system in that artifact ring! But why a human like face?" SNowflake turned to Pazu and saw movement in the distance. Maybe three humanoid figures on a bridge, hauling cables and looking at them. They were swaddled in cloth against the cold and were closer to the chimneys shooting steam into the void below the thermal vent that carried the steam away. One was at a hand rail closest to them and watched motionlessly. Pazu shrugged. "Perhaps to facilitate communications with 'Human-like' people. They might have been MORE hostile to Cyclops with Machine-life faces?" Snowflake shook her head, her white hair falling in her eye, to her surprise. She blew at it, and finally pulled her helmet back on, over it. Pazu said,"If you're through screwing around, let's grab our packs and sidearms and say 'Hi' to the friendly...well...not hostile natives." Snowflake nodded nervously, and followed Pazu back to the back hatch. ==TO BE CONTINUED!--