TEFL: CHAPTER 1 ON BOARD THE SCUD

A VIEW FROM THE SPACESHIP
"Scud, This is N.E.S.A. speaking from planet Earth. You are now 750,000 km. from Saturn's orbit. The second part of your mission is about to start. Set all timers for a 24 hours final countdown. Wake Dame, make sure that all systems work properly and be ready yourselves for landing on Titan's ground. Operations will start tomorrow at 14:00 h. Greenwich Meridian Time. Answer Scud! Over."
An image of a man wearing an uniform had appeared on Eddy's screen and Tow could hear that voice loud and clear. Although he was more than one and a half billion kilometres (1,500,000,000 km.) far from the Earth, messages didn't take long to arrive there, only slightly more than half an hour. Using a newly developed technology, they travelled as lightwaves but at a speed twice that of light.
"N.E.S.A. This is Scud answering." Said Tow. "All systems and timers are working and ready. Eddy's going to wake Dame and we'll be ready for landing. Over."
Tow was on board the Scud, a Spaceship of the Council for Universe Development, a spaceship launched by the N.E.S.A. the New European Space Agency. It looked like a vacuum cleaner and it was as long as ten football pitches. It used solar energy as fuel. It had lots of rooms and services.
The Scud, travelling at a speed of 50 kilometres per second, was on its way to Titan, one of the ten satellites that moved around saturn.
Tow was one of the ultimate versions of the N.R.G. series of robots. These robots had been built up in a country called Spain by a group of different enterprises from different countries: Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Eire and, of course, Spain. These countries were the six members of the strongest Economic Community in the world: The N.E.A. New European Alliance.
N.R.G. robots looked like men and women. They didn't breathe, eat or drink but they seemed to do it in order to live with human beings.
They had no feelings, emotions, dreams or childhood memories. They hadn't got blood, sweat or tears neither. They could stand the lowest and highest temperatures. They were four times stronger and more agile than humans. They were able to jump higher and longer than any man and run three times faster than the fastest man. They never got tired. Their artificial brain was 20 times more intelligent than that of a human's.
They only needed sunlight or electricity to carry on living. They were created just to help humanity.
Tow was three years old. He looked like a man in his early twenties. He was very tall. He had short brown hair and big brown eyes. He was wearing brightly coloured tight clothes.
"Eddy! Wake up Dame."
"All right, Tow."
Eddy was Scud's main computer. It had been Tow's only fellow traveller for the last 294 days when the Scud took off from the Moon.
Eddy was the last generation of the MATE Series III Computers and was very similar in its spirit to those old Amiga computers of the late eighties. It hadn't got a keyboard nor a mouse. Neither Ram nor Rom. It didn't need floppy or hard drives and it didn't use C.P.U. or CD ROM. All you could see on this almost ultimate computer was a screen. There was one in nearly every compartment of the ship, on walls, on tables or on desks. Its screens looked like posters and they could be as wide as you wanted. From these screens, Eddy controlled everything on board. You could also do a lot of things with Eddy: You could listen to music or watch 3-D movies with superb quality of sound and vision, read every newspaper or book published in the Earth, chat, play games and so on.
"Dame's awake. She's waiting for you," said Eddy.
"Where is she?" Tow asked.
"She's at the infirmary. She doesn't feel very well."