The teacher took a while to catch his breath, then explained, “The reason you hurt is that your cheek is softer than Quangui’s fist. They exerted equal forces against each other.”

He wanted to make a gesture to illustrate his point, but he couldn’t lift his hand anymore. His limbs felt as heavy as iron, and soon his whole body felt heavy enough to collapse the bed and sink into the ground.

There wasn’t much time.

Target Number: 1033715

Absolute Magnitude: 3.5

Evolutionary Stage: Upper Main Sequence

Two planets found, average orbital radii 1.3 and 4.7 Distance Units

Life discovered on Planet One

This is Vessel Red 69012 reporting

The hundred thousand warships of the Carbon Federation’s interstellar fleet had spread out across a ten-thousand-light-year-long band of space to begin construction of the isolation belt. The first stage of the project was the trial destruction of five thousand stars. Only 137 of those star systems had planets; this was the first planet they had found with life.

“The first spiral arm is truly a barren place,” said the High Archon, sighing. His smart field vibrated, initiating a holographic projection that concealed the floor of the flagship and the stars overhead. The High Archon, the fleet commander, and the senator all appeared to be floating in a limitless void. Then, the High Archon switched the hologram feed to display the information sent back by the probe, and a glowing, blue fireball appeared in the middle of the void. The High Archon’s smart field produced a white, square box; it adjusted its shape and moved to enclose the image of the star, plunging the space into near-darkness again. This time, however, a small point of yellow light remained. The focal length of the image adjusted rapidly, and in an instant, the yellow dot zoomed into the foreground, fully occupying half of the void. The three of them were bathed in its reflected, orange radiance.

It was a planet covered in a thick, tempestuous atmosphere, like an orange ocean. The motion of the gas produced an extremely complex, ever-changing lattice of lines. The image of the planet continued to grow until it seemed to occupy the whole universe, and they were swallowed by its orange, gaseous ocean. The probe took them through the thick clouds to a place where the fog was slightly thinner, enabling them to see the planet’s life-forms.

In the upper part of the thick atmosphere floated a school of balloon-shaped animals. Their bodies were covered in kaleidoscopic patterns that changed from stripes to spots to all sorts of wonderful designs—perhaps a sort of visual language. Each balloon had a long tail whose tip occasionally produced a flash of light that traveled up the tail and into the balloon’s body, where it became a diffuse fluorescence.

“Commence the four-dimensional scan!” said the pilot in command of Vessel Red 69012.