Class Zero Planetarium
It was the way the light bent, that worried him.
They were coming low into the atmosphere, slowing their descent enough that he could look out the double-reinforced window no longer enveloped in flames. But everything about the planet was wrong.
"The sensors are still reading all ocean," Dr. Hoffen stated with brief annoyance. He made a show of looking out his own window and grabbing his face in mock surprise "Land 'ho!" He exclaims sarcastically. Below is the face of a purple desert, as far as the sardonic eye can see.
"I don't know why they're doing that," Mechaster growls. Mechaster is a thin man with a sharp face and beady eyes. He is a hallmark example of growing up on a low gravity planet and one of the best mechanics N-Star has to offer. He crosses four disciplines as a mechanical, electrical, and software engineer with a PhD in AI analytics. This is a merest of overviews to his accolades. In short, he handles all the computers and machinery.
"SALEEM," Mechaster growls again to the shuttle's AI, "Have you come to a diagnosis yet?" The man himself is reading through the system report
"Negative Mechaster. Proposing a Class Zero Planetarium." The words are hard and frigid, robotic. It creeped Trank out when the AI spoke like a human. Bad memories from his soldiering days, he says. Mechaster scoffs.
"You just don't want to admit you're screwed in the head SALEEM." SALEEM does not reply.
Ever since the planet got "close" the crew has been extra snappy. This has bothered him too, though he's chocked it up to the home stretch jitters. "Close", of course, being the arbitrary point where one decides the trip is "almost finished". He hasn't felt like they've been "close" yet. He never feels like they're "close" until his feet touch the soil (or whatever passes for soil). And then he isn't "close", he's "here". They are not "here" yet.
"A Placa might be beaming us with something," Trank yells, getting a wave of curses thrown back in his direction.
"Pipe down Trank, some of us are trying to work here," Mechaster snaps.
"Sorry, my tinnitus must be kicking in," Trank mumbles quietly and distractedly. He's still thinking about the Placas. It's from his soldiering days.
"Or it's a Class zero," Sharon replies. She's a well-worn vaguely-plump semi-pleasant kind of woman. Sharon is the crew's astronomer, planetologist, and botanist. She's easily excitable and generally considered as boring as the stars she studies. The only reason she's on this particular mission is it brings her within fifteen light years of an understudied neutron star she believes is the key to a strange quasiwave pattern in the Quantum Foam that's been puzzling Tunneling Technicians for decades. She's doing her Peritius Doctorate (PeD) Thesis on this phenomena and hoping to bring neutron stars and their previously underutilized impact on the Quantum Foam to light. Ideally, the Tunneling Technicians take heed of her research and alter the routes they forge based on her discovery. This is her wet dream. She couldn't care less about the current object of the crew and the mention of a Class 0 planet is the first time she seems to have noticed there exists anything outside of her own research.
"Everybody shut up about the Class zero!" Mechaster snaps, violently clicking the refresh button; he's found nothing. "SALEEM has an error in the dirt and I'm going to find it. It's our data that's the problem."
He continues to watch out the window as the purple-sand-that-should-be-ocean grows ever closer, listening to his crew bicker. They're all wrong, he's sure. It's the way the light hits the atmosphere. It bends weird. But why?