The Most Powerful Little Blue Cube in the Universe
View Online
The Most Powerful Little Blue Cube in the Universe
After so long in space, the sensation of being on a planet again was refreshing. Like all biologists, Tirek was mostly interested in organisms that had yet to leave their own planets; those who had were usually met with diplomats first. The Shorm-ha's artificial gravity felt weak compared to that of a real planet, and although this new world was still slightly lighter than their homeworld it was much more comforting. Space always left him with the disturbing, not-quite-irrational fear that he would one day float off the ground and be unable to return again. Similarly, the turbulence of crashing through the sky at thousands of meters per second had carried a tinge of excitement about it, the knowledge that if the engines failed, their charred corpses would land on an inhabited world and not float eternally—
Scorpan asked irritably.
That was the problem with thinking about your problems; sometimes you thought a little too loud. This was why most Andalite cultures took privacy quite seriously; unfortunately, being in space made it rather difficult to get away from other people. Yet another reason to be thankful that the voyage was over.
Scorpan suggested, perhaps a touch mockingly.
Tirek argued, though his hearts weren't in it.
Scorpan shot back.
<... A forest...?> Tirek wondered, half to himself. He wandered over to the nearest viewscreen and called up an external video feed. Sure enough, visible in the dim light from the still-cooling reactionless thrusters was the forest. Forests looked about the same no matter where in the universe you were, so he felt uninclined to question his brother's phrasing.
Of the five life-sustaining planets which Tirek had studied in depth, forests looked pretty similar on four of them. The fifth, home to the Taxxons and a number of equally destructive species, had no forests to speak of anymore. The plant life was predominantly green, though the taller plants here seemed to have brown sections made of different material for structural support. Smaller plants had contrasting colours, another common feature which helped the important sections stand out. This made sense; most plants that reproduced sexually used the wind to disperse whatever capsules held their base polymers, but where the wind was insufficient they sometimes relied on fauna as pollinating agents. Various holes in the ground (warrens) and unnatural constructions in the trees (nests) were more than enough evidence that diurnal animals lived in this particular forest.
Tirek surmised.
Andalites living on foreign worlds typically used more familiar units for time: evolution had granted them perfect senses of the passage of sidereal time, attuned to the omnipresent movements of their own sun. Synodic time usually required specific mention (their language had not yet acquired any unambiguous ways of incorporating this information more quickly.) To use standards based off universal constants, Andalites typically explained that their days were equal to the time it took for light to travel from their sun to the planet 171.5 times, and their years almost exactly one third the half-life of hydrogen-3. Tirek had hoped to make a few rudimentary calculations about the planet's day and year, but for obvious reasons, it was impossible.
said Scorpan.
Scorpan gestured toward the exit.
Tirek snorted, an errant thought commanding the personnel entrance to lower and allow him out, the mechanized whoosh of the equalizers dropping the cabin pressure almost noticeably.
