The science log can tell you anything you absolutely have to know about the last 100 days.
I have an apartment, of sorts, in the second tallest building. I have to climb 109 stairs every time I want to get to it, after a ladder. A hexagonal ladder.
It’s worth it.
We’re pretty sure what got the Hexagonals now. It hasn’t gotten any of us, but there were a couple close calls.
On a clear day, you know, I can almost see the people on the other moon.
This planet looks as if it was habitable – and habitated! – at some point. Vast structures stand empty on the highest points, while much of the rest of the planet is covered with a rust-red scum.
Three small areas still looked livable, and on two of those, we found much smaller civilization-signs – tiny buildings and green-stone roads. We sent down a couple cautious probes. There is insufficient land for a colony, but we might be able to learn what happened here.
After a certain point, you learn to recognize the look of a colony settled from another planet. You end up with a high-tech grouping in a small area.
This is the first such we’ve seen on this circuit, and to be honest, although it fits in our qualifications, these colonists are welcome to it. The land is half desert, half ocean, with a cold tundra in the middle riddled with rivers. Humanoids could live there – but the six-limbed creatures who are farming it seem to thrive.
I wonder, though, where the rest of their species is. I don’t see any base of production for those plows or the plascrete buildings.
This planet was one of those “If we didn’t know it was inhabited, we’d never believe it” sorts.
Initial scans show a swampy, wet planet, with no real oceans but several inland seas and a great deal of murky swampland & dark, damp forests. They also showed very few heat signatures and almost nothing in the way of construction.
Our first probes, on the other hand, showed a large and sprawling population of damp, green, cold-blooded people living in short, mostly-buried buildings in and around the swamps.
We sent a polite greeting, but not before they had sent one to us.