“Feri’Andi?” Lihandii called her copilot to the cockpit as Valkyr 52 exited its last hype out for the Deep Space Navigation Training Program.

“What is it, Liha?” Feri’Andi floated nonchalantly into the darkened cockpit, her towel wrapped loosely around her. She had just finished her shower moments before the hype, and her long, dark blue and brown hair was still wet and spread into tight locks behind her as there was no gravity to pull it down. As she slowed, her hands on the backs of the seats, the hair continued to float forward, past her face. “That was it, right? Now we just sit around and take readings for a few cycles, don’t we? Or are you already getting stir-crazy?”

Lihandii gave Feri’Andi a scolding pinch on the top of her hand for that comment, earning a satisfying hiss and recoil. “Look at that, Feri.” She pointed to one of her screens and looked back at her copilot, who leaned forward, squinting to keep the water out of her eyes. “What do you think we should do?”

Feri’Andi raised an eyebrow at the content of the display, frowning slightly in thought. She plopped herself into her seat, removing the towel and using it to wrap up her hair. She crossed her legs and started tapping her fingers against her knee. Finally, she said, “Well, obviously, we need to investigate it. Someone left that on purpose. Look, see?” She pointed to part of the screen. “The coordinates are changing. It’s in gravitational synch with something. What sort of readings do we have within the region it’s encircling?”

Lihandii swept through her controls with a conditioned precision. In response, the screens switched rapidly before them. After a few seconds, she stopped entering parameters, and they began inspecting the screens. “It looks like a standard stellar system. No, wait. Look.” She gestured toward one of the screens. It’s got a massive rime cloud almost in the interstellar region. Let me see if I can adjust the scans and eliminate the noise.”

“I’ll take care of that.” Feri’Andi deftly worked with her own control array, and a couple of seconds later, she leaned back, quite proud of herself. “I wrote a macro to take care of hydrous interference last month when we were passing that brown star.”

Lihandii gave an appreciating nod, looking back to the screens. “Just as I thought. It’s got at least three iron planetoids; they look like they could be pretty close to the Morridii range. We should probably get a closer look. Can you set up the hype and then get some clothes on? It’s my turn for a shower.” Feri’Andi nodded, and Lihandii unfastened herself from the seat, floating aft toward the showers. “We should both be in the cockpit for when we get out of the hype, so wait until I get back to actually hype out, ok?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Feri’Andi said. “Just hurry up with the shower, Liha. I’m not going to wait forever.” She then set about making the necessary calculations to hype just outside the rime cloud. They’d have to fly through manually, since hyping a long distance into another stellar system would play tricks on the Timids hype computer. It would be fine from a shorter distance, but a 50 light-cycle jump probably shouldn’t end inside a region where one can’t be certain scans are correct. Plus, planetoids move a lot in that time span, so Feri’Andi would have to take heed of more than just the interstellar drift of the system as a whole, which she could do if she were hyping just outside the system.

After setting the parameters, Feri’Andi left the computer to its own devices and headed back to her closet, where all her clothes were. She’d have to put her actual uniform on for this. She opened up the closet and tossed her towel into the washer next to it, where her previous outfit and Lihandii’s clothes were already waiting to be cleaned. As she dressed, the only sound was the low-density fluid pump that drained the shower and even dried off the user a bit. She had almost finished clipping together the outermost layer when Lihandii stepped out of the shower.

“Took you long enough,” Feri’Andi said as she finished the last of the clips. Lihandii gave her the usual look that said she was being immature and finished drying her shorter blue and blonde hair before tossing the towel into the washer and opening up her own closet.

“This is coming from the one who takes forever to get her uniform on,” Lihandii commented as she finished zipping up the Valkyrie undergarment. The zipper was a flexible plastic and had fabric overlapping under it to prevent snagging, but Feri’Andi had a habit of catching the zipper on the cloth, so it took her quite a bit longer than it should have to put on the undergarment.

“Hey,” Feri’Andi exclaimed. “That zipper has something against me.” At this, Lihandii rolled her eyes, and Feri’Andi snickered. While Lihandii finished putting on the uniform, Feri’Andi  headed back to the cockpit. “I’m ready to go whenever you are.” She secured the uniform to the bolts in the seat for security during the maneuvers she was hoping to try out after this jump.

Several moments later, Lihandii showed up in the cockpit and closed the door behind her. “You left your closet open, you know,” she commented as she secured her own suit to her seat.

“Thanks,” Feri’An
di said, nonchalant as usual. “Did you remember to set the washer,” she asked as the two started performing the pre-hype checks and making sure the Timids would be ready for high-speed maneuvering as soon as they exited the hype.

“Of course I did,” Lihandii replied. “You never do. Are we all set? My screens show that we’re good to go.” She activated her helmet and waited for a reply on the wireless.

“We are good,” Feri’Andi finally sounded serious over the helmets’ wireless comm. “Hyping in three, two…”

“One,” Lihandii finished as they both grabbed their flight controls, and she activated the hype, resulting in the typical but ever-unpleasant imploding sensation. Her stomach churned slightly as they exploded out of the hype, but she was ready when the screens showed that they had hyped in a little too close to the rime cloud. In fact, they were already inside the rime cloud. How they had managed not to hype straight inside an ice chunk, she didn’t know, but she was too busy maneuvering through the field now to find out.

She gripped the controls tightly as they tore through the rime cloud, dodging ice chunks left and right, some the size of a small planetoid. When they made their way through the cloud, the Valkyries went ahead and opened the viewports to look at the system for themselves. What they saw took their breath away.

Before them, a system of eight planets encircled a yellow star. The inner four planets were all iron cores, separated from the outer four by a planetoid debris ring which almost made the star look like a giant planet itself this far out in the system. The outer four were all massive, gaseous planets, a common sight that they both had seen as shadows in scans but otherwise had never taken the time to look at. Now looking at them, one of which was very close, the Valkyries understood how beautiful they were.

Snapping out of it, Lihandii said as the helmets deactivated, “How do those outer three iron cores look? They all seem to be inside the Morridii range.”

Feri’Andi took a close look at some of her screens before shaking her head. “No, there’s just the one inside Morridiian parameters.” Lihandii sighed at this news. The chance of a system randomly generating life when only one planet was in the Morridii range was almost zero. “But,” Feri’Andi said, interrupting Lihandii’s line of thought, “I’m picking up all sorts of broadcast signals from the one that is. We’ve got life! Third planet out. It looks temperate. Should we check it out?”

The question didn’t need to be asked. Lihandii gave her usual look and plotted the hype to the planet, which was within a close enough range that the computer wasn’t even needed. “Let’s do it,” she said, activating the hype without even waiting for a countdown.

When the ship emerged from the hype, the first thing Lihandii noticed was the unusually large satellite orbiting the small, blue planet. The first thing Feri’Andi noticed, though, was the ocean. “What do you think it’s called?” Feri’Andi looked excitedly over at Lihandii as she asked.

Lihandii grinned in a mischievous way that rarely crossed her face in the cockpit. She set the ship on course for atmospheric entry and looked back at Feri’Andi. “Let’s go find out.”