Chapter 8: Planet

A year later they were in orbit round the planet, which was distracting them from the part-finished cock project. It had two moons that were quite small, and only seven degrees of axial tilt, which meant no freezing winters or blazing summers. Surface temperatures were on the high side at 30 degrees, but 53% of the the surface was ocean, and there were mountains that would be cooler. The days were short as they knew, and gravity was only about a quarter of Earth’s, but the thick methane upper atmosphere was keeping radiation levels moderate, while winds were generally below 5 metres a second.

“It looks perfect, apart from the atmosphere,” Leila observed as they clustered round the display to examine the latest scan results. “And still only plant life, as far as we can tell.”

“No insects even?” queried Susan, “for pollination.”

“No, not that it’s detected. There are lots of other ways for plants to spread though. And look, I mean there’s lots of forest, on land.”

“So, shall we send the rover down?” asked Izzy. “Let’s not give up. I’ve had pretty good results on converting carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide plus oxygen. I think it could be doable.”

The rover could be sent down in the lander to look around, take samples and video, and draw attention from any intelligent life. The lander had been a major achievement of its time, back in the day: being able to land and take off to return to the ship, using methane harvested from the upper atmosphere and converted to hydrogen.

There was a general nodding of heads. Now, after all these hundreds of years, the prospect of having a planet was making everyone impatient. They’d watched so much of life on Earth, and some of it looked a million times better than life in their miniscule metallic spaceship!

“There’s really no-one there,” Melissa was looking with the others at the screen, on which there was live video from the rover, 400 kilometres below. In three days it hadn’t seen anything but vegetation, and nothing had approached it. Nor had the ship’s scanners detected anything animate. They’d mapped the whole planet in high resolution, and there was no sign of anything that would have been called intelligent life.

“I love that beach,” grinned Izzy. It was an expanse of pale yellow sand, strangely similar to videos of beaches on Earth, with clear water lapping onto it.

“We need food,” Susan had to point out, again. “Fish and fruit and edible plants.”

“No sign of any fish,” Leila checked for the fiftieth time.

“No sharks,” Izzy prodded Susan to lighten her up a bit.

“No predators of any kind,” Susan smiled. “Or parasites. Nothing that breathes oxygen, of course.”

“We’re vegetarian already so that’s good,” Melissa pointed out. “We wouldn’t want to start killing any animal type beings anyway: even fish, they have feelings don’t they. We just have to find some edible plants.”

“That aren’t poisonous,” Susan had to add.

“We can take some down from the farm and cultivate them. With that climate and atmosphere they’ll grow like crazy.”

“With no grazing animals,” Isobel mused, “plants won’t have any reason to develop poisons, or even thorns, or stings. Or berries or fruit either I suppose, but we can see what leaves and seeds there are, until our own crops get going. Some roots, maybe.”

“Okay,” Leila offered the decision, “let’s one of us try Izzy’s lung conversion and see if it works, first of all.”

“I’ll try it, if you like,” offered Melissa. “I wanna get onto that beach! Apparently it used to feel great with the star radiation on your skin, and water. And the water’s twenty-six degrees, that should be perfect.”