Elias landed his skiff on a flat plateau. He stepped out in his pressurized suit, the silence of the vacuum ringing in his ears. He began drilling the pilot hole for the colonial beacon. But as the diamond-tipped bit hit the three-meter mark, the ground didn't crack. It flinched .
He looked up at the gas giant above him. In the shifting clouds of the planet, he saw the same patterns—gigantic, floating nervous systems miles wide, feeding on the radiation of the star. He looked at the asteroid belt, seeing now that the rocks weren't tumbling aimlessly; they were drifting like plankton in a cosmic current.
A low-frequency vibration hummed through the soles of his boots. It wasn't an earthquake; it was rhythmic. A pulse. "Command," Elias whispered, "the rock is warm." Elias landed his skiff on a flat plateau
The radio crackled with the frantic voice of his commander. "Elias, get out of there! The sensors are spiking! The whole sector is... it’s waking up!"
In the universe, there is no such thing as an empty lot. But as the diamond-tipped bit hit the three-meter
Elias didn't move. He realized then the gravity of the ancient law they had ignored. Space wasn't a void to be filled. It was a crowded room.
The mandate of the Great Survey was simple: find "vacant" ground. For three centuries, humanity had hopped from star to star, looking for worlds that were quiet, cold, and—most importantly—unclaimed. In the shifting clouds of the planet, he
"Check your suit sensors, Elias. It’s an ice-ball. It can’t be warm."
