Captain’s Log: A Curious Sight

We slowed to relatively conventional speeds as we approached the system, coming to… well, I want to say a complete halt, but in truth we are still moving at an appreciable speed – it just feels like a complete halt relative to the outrageous speeds we have been traveling at up to this point.

The reason for switching to conventional speeds is that we are now entering the range of our sensors (note: acquire better sensors) and Zephyr thought it might be wise to observe the state of the system before buzzing right in.  At the present time, they haven’t seen us at all, as light from our arrival hasn’t had the time to reach them.

However, the planet looks very strange.  From the last images we possessed, century old as they might be, the planet was a cold barren chunk of rock with oxygenless atmosphere and frozen oceans.  They looked to have a long way to go to terraform the planet.  Yet now, looking at it through the long-range sensors, it is entirely green from pole to pole.  No sign of cities, not even any oceans, just green everywhere.   Thermal sensors indicate that it a hot (though not uninhabitable) 40C on average. Susana and Maria were able to use the visual data to read the atmosphere, and it apparently is high in oxygen – not to toxic levels, but certainly beyond what we have, say, here in the ship.

I wish we had better sensors – then we could fly a dozen lightyears away, and then see what was going on a dozen years ago.  In fact, if we could somehow adjust the sensors to work while traveling faster than light, we could record the whole history of a planet (and, as Zephyr would no doubt remind me, sell it to the planet).

The case being what it is, we are about to transition back to using the alien drive, though only multiplying our speed to high sub-light levels.  Hopefully when we are closer, we can communicate with the colonists.  We haven’t seen any sign of satellites, but short of major orbital habitats, I suppose we wouldn’t, at this range.