The shakshouka was a marvelous success. Tsuga’s hab was filled with the rich odors of simmering tomato and sharp, savory spices, the eggs gently poached in the thick sauce standing out against the deep red. It had been decades since Cass had been able to find the right spices – importing anything to Solstice multiplied its price exponentially – and the taste dug up an ancient memory. She vividly remembered the kitchen in her father’s tiny apartment, as enormous in her memory as Tsuga’s hab was to her now, him standing in front of the stove, her on a stool watching him crack eggs one-handed to drop them into the pan. His kitchen always smelled so good, even when he barely had enough to feed the two of them – a professor’s salary, even if it was more than most had, didn’t go far, but he made it count, and he always made sure that his beloved child got enough. She remembered his smile, and it brought a tear to her eye that had nothing to do with the onions.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Tsuga said as she watched Cass eat, squatting down beside the short little table she’d compiled. It was more comfortable than the high chair, but it stil felt rather like Cass was sitting at the kids’ table.

“Cooking is as much an art as a science,” Cass replied, taking another spoonful of the sauce – it was heavenly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten something so rich, so wholesome. “You have to develop a feel for it. I messed up a lot when I was just starting out, too.” She’d messed up more than a few times on this attempt, too, just from being rusty. She was particularly on the lookout for a bit of eggshell that had escaped into the sauce and eluded recapture.

“Unfortunately, I’ve never been particularly artistically inclined,” Tsuga said, ruminating . “I’ve been a scientist or an engineer of one kind or another my entire life. I prefer systems that operate in an orderly, predictable fashion.”

“Oh, I do too,” Cass said, splitting one of her eggs with the edge of her spoon and letting the yolk spill out onto the surface of the sauce. “I hate not having a plan for things. The only thing I hate more is when I have a plan and then the plan has to change.”

“Mmmm.” Tsuga nodded. “That is very frustrating, yes. I find it odd that you should be an anarchist if you feel that way, though. Wouldn’t an orderly, structured, predictable government be preferable?”

“Anarchy isn’t the absence of government,” Cass replied before tucking half an egg into her mouth – absolute bliss. She swallowed and continued. “Remember all that Berkman I quoted at you? Anarchy is the opposite of disorganization, we have to organize constantly. We just don’t tolerate coercive hierarchy. Honestly, as far as I can tell, you’re very close to that ideal. If it weren’t for this floret business, you’d be dead on, and I’d have no reservations whatsoever about recommending evacuation.”

“The ‘floret business,’ as you put it, is the primary motivating factor for our entire society,” Tsuga pointed out. “The entire purpose of the Affini Accord is to ensure that little sophonts like yourself are taken care of. Sometimes that requires intensive individual domestication, and frankly, most Affini consider that a positive rather than a negative. We are, generally speaking, biologically impelled to adopt florets.”

Ah. Now there was a interesting choice of words, Cass thought. “Most Affini? Not all?”

Tsuga paused for a moment, adopting a stillness so unnatural that if Cass had passed by her in a forest, she’d have mistaken her for a very misshapen tree. “Not all,” she finally said. “For instance, myself.”

Finally, some headway. “So you don’t think making pets out of other species is a good thing?”

“I didn’t say that,” she replied gently. Cass had begun to think of this tone as her explaining-to-a-five-year-old voice, and it was becoming mildly annoying even if it did mean that, for whatever reason, Tsuga thought it was worthwhile to actually explain something. “I do, in fact, think it’s for the best in many cases.”

“But there are Affini who disagree?” Her shakshouka was going to get cold, but that was a very distant concern – this line of questioning had her full attention.

She gave a creaking shrug after another short pause. “Perhaps, but I doubt it. I simply meant that not all Affini personally want to take a floret. Again, for example, myself. My apologies if I confused you.”

“Mmmm.” Cass took another spoonful of the shakshouka and thought it over. “I suppose that’s internally consistent, at least. Why not?”

“Why don’t I want a floret, you mean?” When Cass nodded, she said, “Those are…personal reasons. I would rather not talk about it.”

“Fair enough.” Cass regarded Tsuga, her brilliant eyes shifting through shades of orange and gold. They always looked so much larger than they really were. They were large, of course, everything about Tsuga was large, but the more she looked into them the more of the world they seemed to occupy. Their hues bled out across her bark, vines and leaves, then stretched out into the rest of the hab, rainbows within rainbows like oil glistening on the surface of water that Cass was slowly drifting on the surface of, warm little waves lapping at her skin as they pulled her deeper and deeper into–

And then suddenly Tsuga’s enormous hand was right in front of her face, and Cass’s skin tingled in dread. She leapt backwards, her chair creaking and scraping as it slid across the floor. She very nearly fell out of it, but regained her footing at the last moment. The adrenaline washed away the lingering feeling of placidity and comfort almost instantly. “What the hell–?!”

“I think I may have inadvertently enthralled you just a little,” Tsuga said. Around her palm and splayed fingers, she could see Tsuga looking away, vines and needles coiling like eyelids over her eyes. “I’m very sorry, I wasn’t trying to–”

“What do you mean, enthralled?” Cass got to her feet, but Tsuga continued to keep her hand between the two of them.

“I told you, we’re biologically impelled to take florets. Our ancestors evolved hypnotic appearances, biorhythms, even chemical secretions all geared toward that purpose.” Tsuga relaxed a little, but still kept her hand splayed out. “You seem to have come out of it quickly, at least.”

“You can just hypnotize people?” Cass glared up at Tsuga. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“You didn’t mention your species’ ability to walk distances that would kill many other sophonts,” Tsuga said. “…that was one of the ‘fun facts’ about your species in the pamphlet I read when I relocated to this galaxy, I don’t actually know how critical that is to your everyday culture.”

“It’s not.”

“My point is that, to us, it’s autonomic. Like how you breathe, I suppose, that was also in the pamphlet. You don’t think about it until something makes you think about it.” She finally lowered her hand, but Cass could see that she still had her eyes almost entirely covered in foliage. “Like, for example, the clever little sophont with a great many opinions suddenly falling completely out of the conversation.”

“…how long was I under?” She pulled the chair back towards the table and sat again. The shakshouka was still warm-ish, so it couldn’t have been long.

“No more than a minute. How are you feeling?”

“…fine, honestly.” Cass turned the situation over in her head as she ate another spoonful of egg and sauce. She didn’t like that she’d been under for any length of time, but Tsuga seemed genuinely remorseful over it, and from what Cass had seen of her, Tsuga was pathologically honest. If she didn’t want to talk about something, she said so. It was downright refreshing. Now that she considered the question, there was no doubt that Tsuga was her favorite Affini thus far – she may have had unexamined opinions informed by her society’s ideology, but she was at least willing to discuss them. The others, for the most part, seemed to talk at her rather than to her. If she was going to forge a positive relationship with any of these bizarre xenos, Tsuga was probably her best bet. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Though, if there’s any tips for how to avoid it happening again, or special sunglasses I can wear, I’d appreciate a heads-up.”

“A heads-up…does that mean you want to be told?” When Cass nodded, she continued. “Well, you seem most susceptible to visual stimuli, so I’d suggest not looking directly at my eyes for more than a second or two if you can avoid it. And, if possible, we should probably spend several hours a day at a minimum in separate rooms, or ideally in separate structures, just to be safe. Even if you’re less susceptible to aural or olfactory fascination, that doesn’t mean you’re immune.”

“Hmm.” Cass nodded and was silent a moment as she finished off her bowl, savoring the last bite and running the spoon around the inside to capture every last bit of sauce. The stray eggshell was nowhere to be found, and Cass hoped she hadn’t swallowed it. “I wanted to check in with my comrades, anyway. Where’s th– our hab at?”

“Not far. You might be able to walk it, though I should probably walk you over anyway,” Tsuga said. “Other Affini might see a terran walking alone who, when prompted, claims not to be a pet as… well, as something of a challenge, I think.”

Cass pinched the bridge of her nose. There was just no escaping it, was there? “Is there, I don’t know, a particular color or pattern or something I can wear that is the universal Affini sign of don’t try to make this one a pet?”

“I don’t think we have something like that,” Tsuga said, contorting her wooden face into a reasonable facsimile of confusion. “It’s not something I ever really thought about, and I can’t really imagine it catching on.”

The old jacket, an Osborne-Clark all-weather model, had served Cass loyally for more than two decades, and would certainly be threadbare by now if she hadn’t mended and reinforced it regularly. The branding was all gone, either defaced or patched over with red-and-black flags, circle-As, and the most recent addition, a seal of the Pan-Elysian Anarchist Confederation on the back. It also tended, alas, to be a little funky, since it now spent the better part of the year on Cass’ body and there were precious few days outside summertime warm enough to go without it while it dried after a thorough washing.

The Tillandsia, on the other hand, was perfectly climate controlled, so Cass had taken advantage and given the jacket a good scrubbing in the bath, then hung it on a convenient branch outside Tsuga’s hab where it caught plenty of light from the brilliant artificial sun that stretched down the center of the ship’s open interior. By the time she and Tsuga returned from the grocery, it was already most of the way to dry. She wore it over the compiled clothes when she and Tsuga left for the other hab. It smelled a little floral from the soap, but it was still an improvement.

The entire residential block was absolutely beautiful by any aesthetic standard, Cass thought – foliage everywhere, and the scent of the earth and green things abounded even on the broad avenues between clusters of habs. The avenues themselves were like collages of thousands of perfectly formed stones loosely arranged, with moss and tiny flowers growing between them, as if to gently encourage one to walk there rather than to demand it.

She had to remind herself that, beautiful as it all was, it existed solely to serve, as Tsuga described it, the “primary motivating factor” behind the Affini Compact. She was still uncertain how to square the apparently selfless desire to provide for all sophont life and the incredibly selfish desire to possess that life as pets, but she couldn’t deny that the standard of living, at least in terms of material conditions, seemed to far exceed anything that any terran save the wealthiest quadrillionaires could ever hope to experience.

She had yet to resolve the conundrum when Tsuga turned down a branch of the path that led to hab indistinguishable from many of the others. It had been a short walk indeed – Tsuga had only had to fend off a handful of Affini eager to pet Cass over the journey, and the whole cluster of habs seemed lightly populated. One more thing to dig into later, she thought. “This is the place, I take it?”

“It is,” Tsuga said. “The door should recognize you, since–” Before she could finish, the door slid open, the form of another Affini emerged.

“Oh! Tsuga! Hi!” Pisca said, her face shaped into a delighted grin, her needles shivering. “The hab said you were here. And Cass!” She leaned in close, her grin growing so wide it was almost menacing. Cass could see the little needle-like thorns that stood in for teeth in the mouth. “Finally! I was wondering when I’d get to see you again!”

“It’s been less than a day,” Tsuga said. “What are you doing here?”

“Tsuga, come now,” Pisca said. “Phylla’s got one of her own, and now so do you, but where does that leave me?” She made a performative little (not really that little) pout. “So I’m keeping these cuties company! We’re talking about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat!”

“I’m not hers,” Cass insisted, which only made Pisca look confused.

“And the report on the upper-atmosphere particulate composition I asked for?”

“I’m working on that too. I can multitask!”

Tsuga’s foliage rustled totally absent any breeze, and Cass wondered if that was a sign of annoyance or resignation. “Go on in, Cass. I need to talk to my protege for a bit.”

“Have fun,” Cass said, slipped past Pisca and into the hab. It was, at least in the broad strokes, similar to Tsuga’s, though the ceilings were a touch lower and there was far less plant matter integrated into everything. It had the feel of a hotel room more than anything, albeit one twice the size it should have been. In the middle of the common room, there was a small table much like the one Tsuga had compiled for Cass, in addition to a sofa, coffee table, several lamps, and what looked like about a dozen kitchen appliances in various states of disassembly.

“Cass!” Blaine was lying on the sofa, wearing a pair of shorts and incredibly bright floral-print shirt; he sat up as soon as he noticed Cass.

“She’s here?” Nell’s voice came from behind the counter in the kitchen. “Good! Hab, I need an espresso machine, minimum throughput six liters!”

“What’s the magic woooord~?” the hab responded.

After a loud groan, Nell yelled “Please!” The compiler began to rumble, and soon Nell came around the counter. “Fucking thing will not shut up about that,” she muttered.

“I see yours is in kids’ show host mode too?” Cass said, putting a wry edge on her tone.

“Pisca says she can’t figure out how to turn it off,” Nell said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just putting the thing through its paces by asking for the most unreasonable and random things I can think of, things they couldn’t possibly have waiting. So far it seems to be the real deal.”

“I can report that it makes some very good pancakes, too,” Cass replied.

“Pancakes, hell,” Nell said, grinning. “I made it gin up a chocolate souffle, croissants, all kinds of complicated stuff.”

“And it nailed it all,” Blaine added. “It was really good.”

“Hmmm.” Cass nodded. “Well, one more for the road. Hab, when you’re finished with the espresso machine, can I get a plate of baklava, pistachio and almond with rosewater syrup?” Just the thought of it brought back more memories of her father’s kitchen. If she wasn’t careful, the Affini would hook her by her stomach – they needed to get one of these machines in Bulwark that they could operate on their own.

“Oooh, rose water,” Nell said approvingly. “Good, good! That’s outside-the-box thinking.”

Cass shrugged. “I just miss good baklava. So, what have you two been up to besides trying to confound a magic box that makes anything you want?”

“It’s not magic,” Nell said. “No such thing.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology–”

“Stars, Cass, must you?” Nell groaned, rolling her eyes.

“–is indistinguishable from magic,” she finished.

“Look, even I know that one, just put the brakes on your nerd shit–”

“Language!” the hab’s voice chided.

“There’s not even any Affini here to care!” Nell yelled at the ceiling.

“I walked around a little with Pisca,” Blaine cut in. Good, Cass thought. He’s learning how to head off a Nell rant. “We went to a little pizzeria, and then we took a ride on the transit system and she showed me all the different rings. It… seems really nice here, actually,” he added. “It’s warm, and everyone’s really friendly, and we have so much food I literally can’t even finish it, and… and it’s just nice. I keep worrying I’m going to wake up back at Bulwark and find out I just nodded off during watch.”

“Alright, sounds like Blaine’s initial evaluation is that it’s nice here.” Cass couldn’t blame Blaine for the way he felt – part of her felt the same way too. After twenty years of Osbourne-Clark and three years of hell after the Pillar of Fire, it was hard not to want to stay in the lap of luxury. But he was young, and he didn’t think long-term the way she did, and that was what made the niceties of this place so dangerous. She’d need to keep an eye on him. “We’ll keep digging, but it’s good to know where we stand to begin with. How about you, Nell?”

“Mostly taking these things apart to see if they work like they should work, and digging around on their network. I don’t know if they’re just bad at propaganda or they rely on the recipients being baked out of their gourds, because it’s not terribly convincing stuff. Mostly, they just parade a toasted wormhead out to talk about how happy they are, how nice the Affini are even though they were quote unquote ‘bad’ before, and things like that. Bored me to tears.”

“I ran into one when Tsuga and I went to the grocery,” Cass said, nodding. “She was definitely high. Very bubbly, very outgoing, very clingy, and has probably already sent me five or six messages wondering why I haven’t messaged her back.” She shrugged. “Apart from that, she seemed like she was well taken care of. On the upside: they are communists. Tsuga was genuinely shocked when I asked how we should pay for things.”

“Uuuuugh!” Nell groaned and let her head roll back. “On one hand, good, a species this advanced should be communist, but on the other hand I’m just mad now because this means the Posadists were right the whole time!”

“Well, I don’t think the Affini used nuclear weapons to wipe out capitalism,” Cass replied, “so if it makes you feel any better, they were only half-right.” It seemed like a good time for a joke, and she smiled to make it obvious that it was one. Better than than a long argument about the relative merits of Leninism vs Trotskyism. “Still, this is a good thing. If we’re economically aligned with them and aim to maintain an equivalent standard of living, and we make that crystal clear, they might back off on the whole pet issue.”

“I just don’t see how they can have abolished class only to reinstate it like this,” Nell grumbled, crossing her arms. “It’s not that I’m opposed to chemically managing antisocial behavior, it’s probably the most humane way to deal with the issue of counter-revolutionaries and revisionists, but I sure don’t see them doing it to each other – or us doing it to them!”

“Maybe we should ask if that’s a thing,” Blaine said. “I mean, just because we haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”

“We can, but I very much doubt that it’s the case,” Cass said, thankful to steer the conversation away from Nell fantasizing about medicating opposition into submission. “Apparently it’s an innate drive with them, something they evolved to do. But just because it’s an impulse doesn’t mean they can’t govern it, as long as we give them reason to. If we’re capable of resisting instinct, and we absolutely are, they should be able to as well. Right?”

It didn’t feel to Tsuga as though they’d spent the better part of a day with Cass, and yet the sunline was already beginning to shade itself in hues of reddish-gold, dimming as it counted down to “sunset” according to the 24-hour cycle terrans preferred. They felt at once relieved and unsteady not to be looking after the little terran, but it was for the best, as they had said – time apart would ensure that they didn’t accidentally give Cass a dependency on their biorhythms, something neither of them wanted. Time apart would also give Tsuga a chance to clear their head, to think about something other than the very cute, very headstrong little sophont.

Besides, they had work to do. A day of watching her had convinced Tsuga that Cass would be fine under Pisca’s care for a little while, at least. Unlike so many horror stories they’d heard from the crew of the Tillandsia about feral terrans, Cass didn’t seem the sort to actively get herself into trouble, an independent sophont if ever they’d met one. A charming one, to be sure – somewhere, an Affini would be missing out on a marvelous floret, alas, and Cass would be missing out on the care a proper owner could provide.

“Hmmm. I don’t see a report on the high-altitude particulate content.” The Affini sitting next to them, shorter but broader, with wispy ferns and a mossy underlayer lending eir silhouette a fuzzy, blurred periphery, was paging through documents on eir tablet.

“My protege is still collating that information, and I’ll need to look it over once she’s done,” Tsuga said. In the distance, they watched another Affini playing with her florets, slinging a soft discus that glided silently through the air for them to chase after. They were dressed in matching sundresses, and to Tsuga’s eyes looked absolutely identical, right down to their hairstyle. It was extremely cute, and Tsuga felt a momentary pang of jealousy and frustration at their own shortcomings. “You remember Pisca, I’m sure.”

“Oh, indeed. She certainly made a splash during the briefing.” Andoa said. E shifted on the bench and transferred the tablet from one green-furred hand to the other; the empty hand, e rested on Tsuga’s shoulder. It was a very terran gesture – Tsuga had seen Cass using it, and they supposed it was intended to be comforting. “Relax. Sprouts are just like that. I’ve been captain of the Tillandsia for some time, you know, and front-line ships like these see plenty. They always find something to help them settle down eventually. You’re doing fine with her.”

“I hope so. She’s not my first student, but she’s one of the younger ones, and certainly the most distractible one I’ve ever had. She’s with the local terran delegation now, actually.”

“Well, best that they’re looked after,” Andoa said, nodding. “The atmospherics aren’t a priority anyway, the evacuation and aid process is – and what a thorny, tangled mess that’s turned out to be. You three told me these terrans were cooperative.” Eir tone of voice made it clear they hadn’t been.

“They were, if not perfectly cooperative, fairly reasonable for us,” Tsuga replied. “They didn’t want to leave, but as I understand it that’s mostly because of how miserable the trip here on a terran ship was for them. Hence, the three they sent up to look the Tillandsia over.”

“Be that as it may, my teams on the ground are reporting that they’re being highly evasive about practically everything, and insisting upon distributing the emergency supplies themselves. It’s classic terran hoarding behavior.” E offered the tablet to Tsuga, and they took it – true to the captain’s word, it was filled with incident reports regarding the ferals on the planet.

“That’s odd. They seem quite opposed to that sort of thing. When I told Cass that we don’t have money and that all material needs are provided for, she was overjoyed rather than terrified like the guidebooks all say they’ll be.”

“Cass is the loud one, yes?”

“No, the grey-striped one. The alpha.”

“Mmmm.” E nodded and took the tablet back. “I do want to meet these terrans. Tomorrow, perhaps, if Polyphylla is feeling up to it? If this lot as are reasonable as you claim, maybe we can finally start moving on the evacuation and get all those poor little creatures off that damaged planet.”

“I certainly hope so. I should caution you, though, they’re very independent-minded. Well, two of them are. One of them is a massive seed.”

Andoa laughed. “Tsuga, please, I know you’re new to the ship, but I’ve been dealing with terran feralists for years. Besides, terrans are easy. You’ve heard the joke about them, haven’t you?” When Tsuga riffled their vines in negation, e added, “They’re all seeds until you give them the care and attention they need. And you should shake your head when you mean no. Like this.” E pointed as they smoothly rotated eir head from left to right and back again. “You see?”

“Mmmm.” It was a pretty funny joke, Tsuga had to admit, but they didn’t see the point of mimicking terran expressions when there weren’t terrans around. “Well, I yield to your greater experience with terrans, then. I haven’t even figured out their gender schema yet.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Andoa said. “They claim to only have two, even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. At least, until you domesticate them, then they figure it out all by themselves and will tell you exactly what their gender is. It’s strange: feral terrans seem to love self-contradiction, which would be almost charming if it didn’t keep producing systems that make them miserable. Anyway, my advice on picking a terran gender to emulate is to just find a pronoun you like the sound of and use that. It’ll all sort itself out from there.”

“I don’t think terrans can pronounce thk'tch'kr'tlkkt pronouns.” It had been a long, long time since she'd moved the parts of her that made the rasping, clicking noises the thk'tch'kr'tlkkt used for speech, possibly not since her last bloom. She had conserved them nevertheless; pruning or shedding them felt wrong, somehow. 

“I meant pick a terran pronoun, Tsuga.” E paused, the hand returning to Tsuga’s shoulder. “Are you currently grieving? I didn’t see anything in your file about a floret when you transferred, but–”

“Thkl'tk'tk'tch was not my floret,” Tsuga said quickly. “Just a sophont I knew briefly, when I was still working in archaeology.”

“….ah,” Andoa said. Tsuga could just see, in their peripheral vision, the stilling of the vines and ferns even against what breeze there was. “I’m sorry, I didn’t make the connection. That was blooms ago, and I was on the other side of Andromeda. I’d read about it, of course, but I hadn’t realized you were there.”

“I’m the one who found them,” Tsuga said, “and I’d rather not talk about, if it’s all the same.”

“I understand,” Andoa said. “If there’s anything I can–”

“Like you said, it was a long time ago,” Tsuga cut em off, rising to their feet and towering over the captain. “And I believe you have a concert to be attending. I wouldn’t want you to be late.”

Andoa looked up at Tsuga, eir eyes catching the light of the sunline. “You could come, you know. Ixia’s floret has such a lovely voice. She’s such a sweet little thing, too, you’d never think she used to march around barking out orders at the top of her lungs.”

Tsuga unwove their form for just a moment, a brief respite from having to consider shape and expression in a terran mode. It was a kind offer, and Andoa seemed quite genuine, but sometimes that was precisely what got under their bark. They knew what would come next if they went to the concert: lots of cooing and admiring a talented floret, followed by lots of Affini they barely knew (or didn’t know at all) telling them that they were in luck, the planet below had lots of adorable terrans and they’d surely find a floret somewhere among them, and that would certainly cheer them right up.

“That’s very kind of you, but I have work I need to do. My hab is not suited for terrans, not even temporarily, and I… I need to fix that.”

“I understand,” Andoa said, giving Tsuga a gentle smile. “Just remember: I’m your captain, and I will always be here for my crew, and that includes you now. Alright?” E let eir form slacken slightly, the terran shape losing even more definition and allowing eir vines to emote in a more natural way. Genuine concern shone through, but so did a willingness to stand back until needed. Tsuga always found it so much easier to read their fellow Affini when they weren’t trying so very hard to be present in a way that was comfortable to other species.

“I appreciate it,” Tsuga said, and it was true. “Front-line ships are a new experience for me. I’m sure I’ll adjust eventually.”

“No doubt,” Andoa replied. “Go see to your hab and your little grey-stripe terran. I’ll take care of setting aside a meeting room for tomorrow.”

“Again, appreciated,” Tsuga said, bending their towerlike form in a respectful way before dividing their lower body in thirds and setting off in a rolling tripedal gait, one that let them make good speed without seeming hurried. They wanted to be as far away as they could be from others, for memories were welling up from deep inside them now, the world receding like the drawing out of the tide before a tsunami, leaving the beach dry and empty, only for thought and emotion long buried to come crashing in and sweep everything away. Their body knew where to go, while their mind wandered millions of light years away to one of Andromeda’s cloud of satellite galaxies. There, around a pale K-class star, there was a green and happy world that Tsuga remembered as grey, cold, and silent.

The caverns beneath the dead cities were still warm from geothermal heat even though the surface was a frozen wasteland. They stretched for miles, lined with collapsing infrastructure and an archaeological treasure trove of artifacts from a species the Affini had been too late to save. This was not Tsuga’s first dead world, nor would it be their last – but by learning what had gone wrong here, the Compact as a whole would be better prepared for disasters in progress they might come across later. They would know, then, how to respond in the moment, what could be done to expedite evacuation, remediation, reconstruction – what would be done to help the living who, absent intervention, might go down this sad path. There were other concerns, too, but that wasn’t Tsuga’s specialty. They did field world, not lab work.

They paused at an interesting formation of resin, some kind of tubing or piping, possibly biological in origin – similar structures, though much degraded, had been found on the surface. This one looked in much better repair, and might yield more illuminating results in testing. They took the appropriate tools from their bandolier and began to chip and cut away at the tubing – despite its likely organic nature, it made a clear, high sound with every strike, a sound that echoed throughout the cavern and down the tube itself. They cut away a suitable sample, tucked it into a container, sealed it, and began to move on.

And then, long after the echoes of their work had died away, they heard from the tube a faint and distant tapping answering them.