Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub.16-1
We almost missed this planet, hidden as it was behind its much larger brother-planet. The brother was barren, a frozen gas giant. The smaller sibling we resisted the urge to name Eden, if only because fiction has told us that’s a way to jinx it.
Its landmasses are small, barely bigger than islands, but many of them are so close together you can hop from one to the next.
We sent down several probes, and will come back with a team on our return.
Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub. 16-2
This planet, with its green seas and its golden lands, would look appealing if not for the strange rambling line of ruins. It is as if whenever something awful happens, the entire – if small – civilization just moves.
At least, the oldest ruins were crumbled almost to nothing, while the newest ones were quite recent, and they trailed in a line across the continent.
There is a lot of unruined land, but they appear something almost civilized, so we moved on.
Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub. 16-3
We haven’t left this subsector yet: if any of the inhabited planets manage to develop space travel, they will find they have many, many neighbors.
At first, I thought this planet was another like 7-12-1, smeared in brilliant color, but a closer look revealed that 90% of the color is rooftops!
Almost the entire planet – poles, equator, everything – is covered in buildings, all of them painted. Spectrography reveals that there are colors there we can’t even see.
We sent a greeting probe.
Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub. 16-yet still
This planet, so close to an asteroid belt that we nearly missed it, is fascinating. It was clearly very densely populated at one point – buildings cover almost every piece of land on its two largest continents, and trail into the water on what look like manufactured islands.
And the tops of nearly all the buildings are covered in dense greenery and grains.
Yet we show almost no life signs – a total of 312, scattered around the planet in groups of 3-10.
What happened here? Where did everyone go?
7.16.4
7.16.3