BRING ME YOUR 4TH GENERATION MUTANTS!!! screamed the Space Queen as the lid of the pod slid open with a waft of nitrous vapor occluding the bluish viscous fluid inside. Something moved. Was it a minute readjustment of the reflector microarray, or was it the first indication of some pulsing, oozing, jelly-like tremulation of the diaphanous substrate? 

A distant hum and a faint crepuscular glow unassumingly emerged from the cavernous, tomblike ink sac of eternal darkness. The atmophere had been seared off the planet centuries earlier. Giant sandstone pillars, sagging with the oppressive weight of millenia, languished at semi-regular intervals on the tarmac. Amid the dust of ages piled here and there were the rows of gleaming titanium incubators...