And that's when you see it– a world, the shape of a world crossing the brilliant face of the star. From here, it looks like a silhouette, like a little black spot on the sun, but as you get closer, other features start to resolve, form, become apparent. Initial scans bring back reports of high temperature, high pressure, a blindingly fast spin and a quick year– only twenty-eight days for a complete orbit.
When you release a mote-probe, it sails in quick, then holds up short, only skims the highest reaches of the atmosphere. Further down, beyond the point where the heat of the star and the vacuum of the void are overcome by the pressure and gravity of the world, the atmosphere is thick, almost gelatinous with humidity and boiling steam. The readings are interesting– the world is composed entirely of water. It's a droplet racing through the void, a droplet with such high pressure that even at the core, where the temperature approaches seven hundred Kelvin, the pressure has created an impenetrable ball of ice, of compressed water that shines on your sensors like a diamond of hydrogen and oxygen. It's an incredible sight, a testament to the beauty of physics and physical laws if nothing else. Fascinated, you pour over the data, then let the mote-probe drift away, set it on a return course for your ship. Notations go into the network, and as you watch the planet race toward the end of its transit across the face of its star, you smile, spin up your ship's phasedrive and prepare to make your way on to other worlds, other wonders waiting to be seen, to be discovered.
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