Way back on Earth.Mission Control was keeping a eye on Max and
Ted.
The Eartjling managing the overall mission was a dolphin,ans she was
understandably nervous since this was the first
of the Orbital Compression powered spacecraft largely crewed by dolphins,including some of her children.
After the Hadron Collider had done its thing,were-humans had of course
not considered the possibility that though
dolphins still looked like dolphins
elephants looked like elephants
colonies of bees still looked like colonies of bees
right down the animal chain
the Incident had boosted the smarts of anyone who used to be
just another feeble minded animal.
Life was complicated enough amongst were-humans without having
to deal with cave-man foxes,dolphins and the rest.
So the were-humans didn't even bother thinking about smart dolphins until
the 3rd test ship had crashed and sunk with her crew of were-dragons aboard.
The were-dragons should have been crushed,drowned and everything else
but instead had watched in astonishment as the teams of dolphins had come to the rescue and attached the hoses that fed the compressed
air that kept the craft from flooding.
Basically whilst were-humans had played with their new tails,
everyone else,especially the dolphins,had quickly left their 'caves'
as they examined all the wrecked human relics lying around.
In the case of the dolphins,they had taken to salvaging all the nifty machines they'd
found aboard sunken freighters and submarines.
So by the time that third Orbital Compression prototype
starship had slipped below the waves,the dolphins had the equipment to launch a rescue mission.
So the were-dragons owed the dolphins one,and
so when
the designers of the Pluto X starship was being designed,they'd
bowed to the politics and built it for a combined
were-human/dolphin/Orca whale mission.
So it was that the Boss-Lady of the mission swam about in her watery tank as a were-dragon pushed the tank about on the Mission Control floor