At the sudden noise of the reinforced door cracking, the rest of the trapped creatures surged from the hole and out into the stadium. I backed away as a herd of Cralwer emerged, large animals with eight eyes, six legs and hairy bodies. There were Trellis, grey, adult-sized humanoids with four arms. And there was a creature that I had never seen before. It was huge! Larger than any other living thing in the stadium, and it was covered in what looked like flaming ice (this should be impossible, but the Ice was not melting!). Its huge hands pounded the metal grid that enclosed the deep sandy pit. The audience screamed and the icy creature emitted a long ear-splitting noise that came from its black, tunnel of a mouth. It raked its claws across the grid that enclosed the sandy arena and the grid immediately gave way, collapsing with the loss of structural support. Around me armed Trellis charged the dazed arena guards, while a cohort of fully armed security guards tackled more Trellef that had invaded the stadium's top box. The guards sent out a distress call, then started to round up all the citizens and direct them to the safety pods - all spaceships of the XY-232 class, including the Kantalan, had a gallery of safety pods in the same design as those used as escape craft in the war after the Galactic collision. The pods had small rockets on long wings and an aerodynamic cockpit that could house up to forty people for long flights and sixty people for short flights. The pods would navigate themselves to the nearest planet or moon with an atmosphere containing the vital ingredients for life. As I ran to the trainees’ pod, I saw people from various planets starting their safety pod escape programs. Looking back I could see the large icy creature tearing several girders from the ceiling. As I watched, part of the ceiling collapsed, spilling space’s cold vacuum into the once-warm corridor…