"Mission Control to Horizon. Horizon, do you copy?"
Alsted jumped at the transmission, nearly hitting his head on part of the ship's hull. He quickly scrambled to put on his headset.
"Uhhh. Copy, Mission Control." he said once he'd finally put it in the right place. "What do you need?"
The radio went silent for a moment. "There've been some... major changes to the Space Program back here on Kerbin we've decided you should know about."
"Such as?"
"For one, the government finally put us on a budget. Now, we're going to have to have you send in mundane things like temperature readings or gravioli emissions or such from above Skolo-138."
"Why?"
"Because the companies are giving us money for the most mundane of things. They're paying us to fly over places that airliners pass daily."
"Any other changes?"
"Well, they've built a new building behind the main launch complex. 'Administration' or something like that. They're using it to give us these new 'strategies' that are apparently supposed to increase profitability and science gain or something of the sort."
"Do you need anything from me?"
"Yeah. Do you have that spectroscopic analysis of Equestrian DNA yet? The boys in the lab have been hungering for that all week."
"Well... not quite." Alsted sighed. "We aren't just going to go and pluck a hair off one of them. Or, at least i won't. You could probably get Jeb to do it if you gave him a wager."
"I'm NOT giving him any more bets to brag over." Gene's voice had an air of finality to it. Alsted sighed.
"That all?" he said.
"For now, yes. Keep the communications open, we don't know if we'll need to send you something."
"Aye aye." Alsted hit a button to end the call and, making sure the comms-bank was still running and ready to go blaring through the ship with flashing red lights and an annoying voice that was far too loud whenever there was an incoming communication, headed to another part of the ship through the main reactor room. He glanced at the storage tank as he floated past it, to gauge how much juice he had left for the antimatter reactor. If worst came to worst, there was always the solar panels and Tokamak reactor that could keep the ship powered, and even charge the warp drive over a period of a few years, but he much preferred to have the main energy system online. He floated by it indifferently, but quickly looked back at it when he realized it was much higher than it had been. In fact, it was almost like...
"There's no explosion, so I think it was a good teleport," Jeb said. "Might have been a good idea to warn Alsted first, though."
Celestia chuckled. "Do not worry. After all, thousands of years of practice makes one fairly accurate with their teleportation."
"Speaking of teleportation, we might need a lift back to Ponyville." Rainbow Dash hovered next to Jeb.
"Of course, my little pony." Celestia's horn lit up and the two were off. As soon as they'd disappeared, two stallions appeared. They both wore frazzled lab coats, and stood fairly tall. One was a faded red, the other a faded blue. They both bowed before their princess, before standing up.
"Princess Celestia. It is an honor to meet you. I am Head Researcher Freelance of the Equestrian Anomalous Material Foundation, and this is my associate, Dr. Starlight."
Starlight bowed again. "I am humbled by your presence."
"We have some rather... shocking news. Very recently - within twelve hours - our facility in the mountains was attacked, and many of our guards were slaughtered. Our research was only saved by the good graces of Mr. jebediah Kerman, the Kerbal you just sent to Ponyville. He came to our site in order to procure some 'Antimatter' that had been stolen from his... spaceship, I think he called it. Anyway, it was by his suggestion to lock down the doors that we were saved."
Celestia's eyebrow rose with interest. "But who would steal from an orbiting vessel?"
"Princess... we have reason to believe that this criminal is Discord."
Celestia's face turned from surprise to rage to acceptance within the span of a second. "Very well. I shall have him brought here and interrogated. You are free to go."
The two scientists looked at each other, before bowing to the Princess and making an escape.
"I'm back!" Jeb shouted as he materialized into the center room of the library. "And better than ever!" Bob, Hanald, and Bill, who'd been sitting on the couch watching old movies on the communicator's screen, all jumped back at the sudden light. Hanald was the first to recover, looking to Jeb.
"How'd it go?"
"Went well, I'd say," Jeb replied as he took a seat on the already-crowded couch. "Got the antimatter, saved some scientists, and had the Princess warp it back into containment."
The other three kerbals balked at that. "Why would you have her do that, instead of just bringing it up in the lander?"
Jeb went quiet for a second. "Rainbow Dash bet me that Celestia couldn't put it in without the ship exploding."
A round of groans came up from the kerbals. "Well, at least the ship's still there." Bill said.
"I mean, it's still a mission success, even if it could have gone horribly wrong."
"And you did it without wasting fuel, to boot."
The four Kerbals went quiet after that, sitting on the couch and watching their movies, only talking in small, sporadic bursts. It was a stereotypical movie about the early space program, consisting mainly of launch failure after launch failure after launch failure with Gene growing more and more annoyed after each one, until on the tenth launch attempt of the first Mun landing, he didn't even show up at Mission Control - only for it to go perfectly. He'd never live that one down, and he knew it.
Soon, though, the door opened and Twilight walked in carrying some bags of groceries. "Oh, Jeb. You're back." she said somewhat enthusiastically. "So, how'd it go?"
"He almost blew up the ship," Hanald said before Jeb could get a word in."
"I did not!" Jeb said. "Celestia did."
Twilight sighed. "Well, I'll be upstairs. Jeb, come see me in about twenty minutes. There's something I need to tell you."
Twilight dumped the groceries in the kitchen and made her way up. Meanwhile, Jeb just looked to his comrades and shrugged.