Unbounded

Chapter Five: Menhir Waters

Mission Time: +339.75 Earth-years

Hard shadows cut across metal surfaces in the recovery room. Mbali squeezed her eyes shut a moment, then opened them again. Cold steam billowed from her recently vacated cryostat. Herds of Custodians swarmed the bulkhead around the bright opening, then poured over the lip. The robots' small, pyramidal bodies slid over the cryostat's interior lights and mottled the opposite bulkhead with dancing, fuzzy shadows.

Clean, warm, and dry, Mbali stared into a mirror for a moment. Her eyes pierced the gloom. She left the recovery room and walked along the ring, past other recovery rooms leading to other banks of cryostats, to a radial hatch. The spinship was mostly dark, but spotlights always kept her illuminated, fading in and out as she headed towards Command Sector. Red lights glowed in the black, marking the location of every door. She passed into Command Sector. The consoles of command began to glow; she ignored them and entered her office. The curved surface of her desk dripped with streams of data. Mbali looked at the flowing numbers and oscillating graphs, but her eyes soon wandered to the black door. It opened without manual effort, and she entered.

The chamber was an icosahedron of black, triangular paneling, studded with an occasional blue light. There was nothing in the room except one humanoid form standing in the center.

"Fai-tsiri. Why have we stopped here?" Mbali asked.

Dark carbon nanofibers snaked under a gray shell. "The relevant telemetry from the integrated Shimmercast probe received by Control four centuries ago has been sent to your desk," Fai-tsiri said.

"Just orally summarize the important data for me, if you would, please."

Fai-tsiri oriented her metal body towards Mbali. Finger-thick fibers ran out from under her pearly translucent face. " Unbounded orbits a 1.784 Earth-mass planet, 1.164 light-minutes from Gliese 674. Control deems this planet interesting. Unexpectedly, it is not tidally locked, with a day length of 15.5 Earth-hours. The maximum day surface temperature is 26.8 centigrade, whilst the minimum at night is -8.8. Surface gravity is 1.2 g, and surface pressure is 3.977 atmospheres. Cloud cover is 51.4%, hydrosphere cover is 100%, ice cover is 3.3%. Atmospheric composition is 96.8% nitrogen, 2.6% oxygen, 0.5% argon."

"So it's habitable but completely covered in water? We can't make arcologic sea-floor habitats."

"Correct. But sea-surface habitats can be built. However, the nitrogen and oxygen components of the atmosphere are most likely biogenic, though skiffs should be deployed to sample sea-water and confirm the presence of a microbial ecology."

"Very well. I shall send down a team as soon as they are awake and pass medical." She walked towards the door. It did not open.

"There is one more thing," Fai-tsiri said. "Shimmercast transmitted these images from the surface." Several triangular panels flipped to their opposite side, and a sunny seascape lit their surfaces. But something else was there.

Mbali's eyes widened. "What the hell are those?"

"Unknown. That is what Control wishes you to find out."

"Mbali?" The muffled voice called distantly from the other side of the metal door. It slid open.

Mbali came out and the door closed behind her. Ryder stood near her desk. Mbali positioned herself behind the desk. "What do you want?" she said quietly.

"To talk to you about what you asked me to do earlier. We should discuss--"

Her main office door opened, and Zhong entered. "What's he doing here?" he asked, frowning at Ryder.