I felt as if we had slipped into a type of warped space, like a fractal structure whose surface is small, but whose perimeter is practically infinite – a true nightmare of insane urban planning. We might march forever and never get beyond this endless tract of boxlike houses. Captain Ohm shared my concern, and while the other demmies peered wide-eyed at shadows, he kept his sidearm nonchalantly poised toward Earl’s back, in case the native showed any sign of bolting.

I scanned selected dwellings with my multispec. Blurry infrared signals indicated humanoid forms within. From carbon scintillation counts, it seemed this part of the city must be as old as the downtown area. I wondered about the apparent fall in population. Were things like this planetwide? Or did these symptoms relate particularly to the local crisis our guide had mentioned?

Surreptitiously, I pressed my uniform collar, turning it into a throat microphone to call the ship with an info-quest. Soon, the nanos in my ear canal whispered with the voice of Ensign Nota Taken, now on duty at the Clever Gamble’s sensor desk.

“Planetary surface scanning underway, Advisor Montessori. Preliminary indications show that paved cities comprise over six percent of total land area, an unusually high proportion, even for a world passing through stage eighteen, though much contraction appears to have occurred recently. Gosh, I wish I was down there exploring with you guys, instead of stuck up here.”

“Ensign Taken,” I murmured firmly.

“Um… survey also shows considerable environmental degradation in agricultural zones and coastal waters, with twenty-eight percent loss of topsoil accompanied by profound silting. Say, will you bring me back a souvenir? Last time you promised you’d—”

“Ensign—”

“All right, so you didn’t exactly promise, but you didn’t say no either. Remember the party in hydroponics last week? You were talking about detection thresholds for supernova neutrinos, but I could tell you kept looking down my—”

“Ensign!”

“The worst environmental damage seems to have occurred about a century ago, with gradual reforestation now underway in temperate zones. Um, I’ve just been handed a preliminary estimate of the decline in the humanoid population. Approximately sixty percent in the last century! Now that’s puzzling, I see no sign of major warfare or disease. And there are some other anomalies.”

“Anomalies?”

“Bio section urgently asks that you guys send up some live samples of the planet’s flora and fauna. Two of every species will do, if that won’t be too much trouble. Male and female, they say… as if a brilliant man like you would ever forget a detail like that.”

Exerting patience, I sighed. Subvocalizing lowly, I repeated—

“Anomalies? What anomalies are you talking about?”