Captain Resquilatron and the others returned to the ship, object in tow. Starshoulder was still fixing the hyperdrive and, according to him, it could be a few days before they were ready to leave. In the meantime, the Captain had ordered the others to clean out the frankly horrifying state the inside of the ship had reached. Squareface, with characteristic resignment, completed his task reluctantly.
Meanwhile, Trianglechest was grinning, sipping some pink liquid with his helmet off, after having convinced Circleface that he was the spokesperson of Destiny and that it was fate that he should clean for the both of them. With a ramrod straight back and a serious expression (?) on his opaque, circle-marked visor, he gripped the broomstick akin to a warrior holding onto the final legacy of his peoples.
The Captain, in the meantime, had retired to his quarters, bringing the strange object with him. After his brief excitement, Squareface had returned to his depressive countenance, Circleface had long forgotten what it was and Trianglechest was more than happy to be as far as possible from that ticking time bomb.
Seated at his desk, a sorry chimera of salvaged equipment that looked as though it had been welded together by a blind five year old (in this case Circleface had begged the Captain to have a go). It was a chaotic patchwork of metals and the sheer fact that it hadn't fallen apart yet surely was the greatest miracle any of them had seen in their lives.
The chair, on the other hand, was Resquilatron's second-most prized possession. Stolen from an abandoned cruiser, its black surface perfectly molded itself to his body. He willfully ignored the strange black gloop that occasionally seeped from the bottom and had begun to mutate the floor of the room into some strange, indestructible alloy as well as the whispers he heard when his mind wandered while seated in that chair.
The jellyfish on his shoulder floated over and entered into a tank on top of a shelf in one of the corners of the room. The murky water made its figure indistinct as it settled down to do whatever it is brainless lifeforms do for fun.
Setting that sealed object on the desk gingerly, the Captain brought out his first-most prized possession - that strange looking instrument. He had taken to calling it the "thing-detector" due to a sheer lack of any sort of understanding as to what it did whatsoever.
Perhaps this kind of reckless abandon may shock you readers but Resquilatron was much more resilient than even he himself knew. The truth was that despite all appearances, Resquilatron actually hid quite a phenomenal ancestry. He was, in fact, the last living male-line descendant of Cthulhu himself (hence having Azazoth, The Sleeping Chaos as a great-great-great grandparent).
Unfortunately, after uncountable billions of years of mixing with more mortal blood, very little of his ancestry shone through. Instead of the ability to drive mortal masses mad with the merest sliver of presence, he instead gave an instinctively bad impression to everyone he met. Combined with his generally distasteful attitude, it was no wonder that he had been all but relegated from society to that rust-bucket of a ship. That, a strange affinity to jellyfish and an extremely, objectively hideous appearance are all that remain of the immemorial bloodline of the Ruler of R'yleh after a strange accident had wiped all the rest from the mortal planes.
As it was, the Captain's blood seemingly was about to react to the object sealed on his desk. Deep within his soul, an ancient, long-unmoving part had begun to shift. Several interested parties across the cosmos glanced in horror as ancient records and listening devices switched on unprompted, bleeding green mucous. Had it gone on for longer than a few seconds, perhaps the stars would have been bathed in blood. As it was, that long-waiting part of his blood, after exerting its maximum effort to react to that object on his desk, only really caused the Captain an itch on his left-underarm.
At this, his bloodline threw up its hands in exasperation and committed suicide. Those watching with bated breath heaved a sigh of relief as their instruments showed that no more of that cursed lineage walked among them. This was the final act of the bloodline of Cthulhu.
Instead, the Captain brought the thing-detector close to the sealed object carefully. A loading symbol popped up on the detector. As that circle's spinning kept going, a bead of sweat formed on the Captain's brow.
"It's never taken this long before", he mumbled. "What exactly is it that we've found".
Caution had long been surgically removed from every fibre of his existence, leaving only pure impulse to guide his actions.
The device let out a long beep, interrupting the Captain from his customary delusions of grandeur. He inspected it closely as it let out a series of beeps and dings. Eventually, it stopped and the Captain placed it to the side with his brow furrowed.
"Cabbage", his mouth fumbled and his mind itched with the unfamiliar word. "Strange, I've never heard of it". This wasn't really saying much.
He opened his draw with a rusty squeak, retrieving a small, greasy tablet. Navigating with a few swift strokes, he looked intently before powering it off with a sigh.
"Nothing there. I could ask the others but", he paused seemingly going through his motley crew in his mind. "Yeah, that's probably not a good idea."
It was not important or worth mentioning that at this exact moment, Circleface stopped what he was doing to look directly through several floors at the Captain for a few seconds before he jerked as though suddenly waking up. After looking around a few times and scratching his head, he continued to sweep with a shrug. Only Trianglechest noticed this anomaly, hiding his face behind a deep sip from his mug.
Unfortunately, his attempt to brood failed as he swallowed down the wrong passage, spurting out copious amounts of the liquid in a coughing fit. Circleface ran beside him in a panic attempting to help but had misunderstood the Heimlich maneouvre and instead started viciously pummeling Trianglechest until he lay twitching in an unmoving lump on the floor. Circleface put his hands on his hips proudly while Squareface stared into a corner, firmly holding the belief that what he could not see could not hurt him.
Back in the Captain's room, he had exhausted all avenues of research and, quite frankly, couldn't be bothered to do any more. The only other person he could ask was Starshoulder, but he dreaded the thought of conversing with that walking encyopledia and decided that it really wasn't that important in the end.
'After all', he thought with a malicious grin, 'I don't need to know what it is. I only need to track wherever it came from.' At that thought, he glanced at the thing-detector with malevolent glee, a neon-green arrow floating above it, pointing upwards, away from the planet.
'Like I said', he thought. 'No prey escapes me'.
He broke out into manic laughter, startling the jellyfish in the corner who fixed the glasses on his head demurely and returned to reading his book, 'How to Swim in Stars as a Living Creature, by Dr Not-Boney Definitely-Alive'. He pondered over the book's strange obsession with Calcium consumption and thought about getting some supplements for himself.
"Warble gargle gargle", it said.