Surfin' U.F.P.
After
Lothar's surprise appearance,
Starbase 668's personnel continued to track him as he swooped through the system. He was actually being pulled along by gravity plates externally mounted to a small ship named Surak's Razor; but the heavily-modified ship itself was proving difficult to track. Lothar, on the other hand, was easily spotted as he hung out in space behind Surak's Razor and controlled the ship's trajectory by moving himself back and forth and up and down behind it. The stolen computer core running Surak's Razor was attempting to fly in a direct path away from Lothar; so every time Lothar changed his position, the ship changed its course accordingly. And now, having bled off most of its velocity in the system's gravity well, Lothar and Surak's Razor were headed on a collision course with Starbase 668.
Captain Leslie Wong, formerly of the USS Cairo (before Lothar stole its computer core, captain, and a number of other components), managed to free herself from the "baby incubator" that Lothar had stuffed her into. (Lothar had stolen it after he misread the label as "baby incinerator" and thought it was a weapon.) It was she who had commanded her ship and crew to avoid Lothar when he approached, inadvertently providing the means for Lothar to surf upon the computer's avoidance. She tried to take control of Surak's Razor, but the helm would not respond to her commands. She next went to the communication panel to try to contact the starbase she saw on the main screen, but the communication panel refused to broadcast a signal. "Shhh!" it whispered to her. "Lothar might hear you!" Finally, she found the controls for the externally mounted holoemitters…
"Hey, I know you!" Lothar said as three identical duplicates of him appeared in front of Surak's Razor. With the real Lothar at the fourth vertex behind the ship, they surrounded it in a perfect tetrahedronal formation. The computer, seeing itself surrounded by Lothars, came to an immediate dead stop. Lothar, however, did not. He flew past Surak's Razor, barely missed the USS Formidable, and smashed into Starbase 668's docking area. An emergency force field came up behind the Lothar-shaped hole in the hull; preventing the loss of personnel, equipment, or atmosphere. Lothar bounced and skidded to a halt, at the foot of a security officer.
"Welcome to Starbase 668," the officer said in a deadpan voice, behaving as though people entered the station this way all the time. "May I assume that you're from the
USS Murgatroid, and here to see one of the Captains
Storvik?"