Kira looked at Vishal. “I’ll need a new set of contacts. The suit disappeared mine on the way here.”

The doctor pushed himself out of his chair. “Come with me then, Ms. Kira.”

As she followed him to sickbay, Kira couldn’t help feeling a sense of unease and displacement at how far they were from the League. Not only that, it was alien territory, even if the aliens were long dead.

The Vanished, she thought, remembering the term from the Jelly ship. But vanished to where? And were the makers of the Soft Blade members of the Jellies or the nightmares or some other, older species?

She hoped they would find the answers on the planet.

In sickbay, Vishal gave her another set of contacts, and she said, “Can you print up another few pairs? I’ll probably lose these on the way back.”

“Yes, yes.” He bobbed his head. “Do you still need your nose to be reset, Ms. Kira? I can do it now. Just—” He held his hands parallel and made a short jerking motion. “—schk and it will be done.”

“No, it’s okay. Later.” She didn’t want to deal with the pain at the moment. And besides, she felt a certain reluctance to do anything to fix her nose, although if asked, she couldn’t have said why.

2.

Back in the galley, Kira made herself some chell, and then she sat at one of the bench tables and inserted the contacts. Fortunately, all of the data from the previous pair had uploaded into the ship’s servers, so she hadn’t lost anything.

She made a note to back up everything in at least two different places.

Once connected, alerts marking incoming messages from both Gregorovich and the Darmstadt’s ship mind, Horzcha Ubuto, appeared in the corner of her vision. Kira opened them to find a collection of telescopic images of the fourth planet—or “planet e,” as it was labeled—from both ships. Appended to the first set was a note:

If you need a different type of imaging, just ask.—Horzcha Ubuto

Then Kira settled in to study the surface of planet e. There was a lot to study. It was 0.7 the diameter of Earth and nearly the same density. That meant water. And possibly native life.

She felt sure the planet had a proper name, but no sense of it came from the Soft Blade.

The pictures she had were mostly from the dark side of the planet. Only a sliver of the terminator between night and day was visible from their current position. The terminator was the most likely place for a city or installation of some kind, as it would be the most temperate area, balanced between the scorching heat of one side and the frigid cold of the other.

The near side of the planet was brown and orange. Vast canyons scraped the surface, and blackish patches marked where Kira thought giant lakes might lie. Ice crusted the poles, more away from the star than toward.