Deep-Space Codex

The count started from the instant of arrival. The seventh hour after arrival later became a moment brought up again and again — after it, people began to frown at the perfect data.

The first group to land on the surface after the Daedalus arrived, mixed from the security, engineering, biology and medical teams. They are humanity's eyes and hands on this planet.

People began going missing from the advance survey teams. The records were complete, the protocols were tight, and people vanished quietly off the roster.

The biology team took a length of grass; something in its leaf veins was pulsing. The findings: non-woody, non-cellulose, contains neurotransmitter protein. Plants should not have nerves.

Instruments picked up a regular pulse 37 kilometres down: once every 72 seconds, exact. No geological activity is that precise. And the interval is quietly getting shorter.

The forest on the surface is quiet in a way that is not right — no insect noise, no birds. Worse, the plants sway in a synchrony too neat, as if one thing were directing all of them.