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QEC ACTIVE
SHIP: Silt Aria
SYSTEM: Carina-441

Carina-439 was gravel. 440 was gravel with
trace lithium, not enough to flag. 441 has a
binary pair of rocky bodies in a slow mutual
orbit, tidally locked, close enough that you
could probably throw a rock from one to the other
if you had a good arm and no gravity to fight.
Odelya thinks they might have been a single body
once. She's talking to the spectrometer again.

I went back through the data from 438 last night.
Not for any reason. Couldn't sleep, and the survey
files were already open from the day's work. That's
what I told myself.

The absorption lines from the lakebed don't just
fail to match known materials. They shift. Not
instrument drift - I checked Odelya's calibration
logs, which she runs with a regularity that suggests
either profound dedication or a specific kind of
anxiety. The readings from hour one and hour eight
show the same unknown signature, but the peaks have
migrated. Like whatever's down there changed its
composition while we were watching.

I have not told Maret. She would point out that we
are now three systems away, that the contract terms
are clear, and that I agreed to her timeline. All of
these things are true.

I have not told Odelya either, but I think she
already knows. She asked me yesterday if I'd ever
seen regolith behave like a liquid. I said no. She
said neither had she, then went back to her
calibrations. That was the end of the conversation.

The twin bodies of 441 are interesting in their own
right. Their shared orbit is decaying - they're
going to touch in about 90,000 years, gently, like
two people leaning into each other on a long trip.
The mineral survey says nickel-iron cores, rocky
mantles, standard composition. Nothing that doesn't
match the index.

I should be relieved. This is what the work is
supposed to look like. Systems with answers.
Materials that have names.

The thing about 438 is that it wasn't hostile or
strange. The gas giant was ordinary. Ten of the
eleven moons were ordinary. Only the fifth one had
something to say, and we left before it finished.

Maret cooked tonight. Protein blocks, cubed, in a
sauce she made from the flavor packets we were
supposed to be saving. It was good. She didn't
explain why and I didn't ask. We ate in the galley
where the acoustics are least bad, and Odelya hummed
something I didn't recognize, and for about twenty
minutes the ship felt like the right size.

- thresh3, Silt Aria