|
Currently the control room is full of the usual suspects, looking over a variety of scanners, technical information, landing and takeoff requests, and so on.
Newt waits for the door to open and, once done, steps through the threshold, out of the way a bit and looks around quietly.
Swiftfoot pads in shortly after the Ungstiri, ears flicking as she looks about, then down at Newt. "Hey kit," she offers quietly, along with a lopsided grin -- or as close as she can get to one. It's toothy and faintly scary, actually. "Do you know who we'rre supposed to meet with?"
Newt nods and stands up on his tippy-toes, "Looking right now."
It takes a few seconds, but Gary stands up near what looks to be a specialized sensor array, "Over here!" he calls to Newt and Swiftfoot. "We got some things set up for you two to get started."
"Aha," Swiftfoot says, nodding toward Gary. She pads toward the sensor array, her tail flicking idly behind her. "This is... interresting looking," she observes, eyeing the array closely. Ooh. Shiny.
Newt drops down to his feet and follows along, trying to avoid grabbing Swifty's tail. Once at the array he positions himself to have a look in, "Wha-? Oh."
"This is as far as the locals have looked, best we know at least." Gary explains. "That leaves things mostly up to us. So far, best we've done is send out some scouts and used stellar parallax based calculations to plot likely distances. Anyway, I'm here to help with any technical assistance you two need to try and find some leads."
Swiftfoot nods. "Best not to wanderr *too* farr afield, especially with all of the pirrate attacks lately," she observes, perhaps a touch wryly. She peers at what Gary's showing them, one ear canting back thoughtfully. "Hopefully therre's some larrgerr planets. They'rre easierr to find."
Newt nods slightlym kiijubg at the display, "Not too big, though. Should be fun finding em."
The good news is there's a trio of stars that fit in the G0-5 range already located by the Svajone people. In other words, stars known to be friendly to most Orion Arm life. "Surprised the locals haven't looked that far. Imagine having to spend years to calculate locations like this and having only sublight drives." Gary comments.
"Hrrrrrr," the Demarian muses, pointing at one of the stars. "This looks prromising." It seems she's a little fixated on the first one, and so she hasn't noticed the other two yet. "Still. Being in the correct rrange doesn't mean it has planets, meh?" Swiftfoot shrugs at that, and then continues looking.
Newt looks over at the one Swifty is looking at and then changes ofcus on the other two, "They're class G, which helps alot. Less toastyness. They'll have a Goldilock zone. Seems good."
"Least we have that going for us. Problem is they're quite a bit away from each other. We'll have to send some people out to handle that." Gary ponders. "Be nice if we could eliminate 'em some other way."
Swiftfoot rubs a paw between her ears, thoughtful. "You don't happen to have sensorr data spaced out overr time, do you?" she asks, shrugging. "You *might* be able to see some slight varriance if therre's planets." She chuffs quietly. "Otherrwise, it looks like a bit of a hike, yes."
Newt says, without looking away from the charts, "Yeah. That'd be useful."
"Maybe." Gary says, tapping away. "We've only been out here a couple months, and this a pretty new project so we might have a couple time differentiated shots at best."
"Hrrf," Swiftfoot grunts in reply, wrinkling her snout. "Point taken. Still, it's worrth a shot." She shrugs, her tail swishing to and fro as she watches Gary unblinkingly.
Newt looks over at Gary, "Yeah. Least that way we might know where to go first."
"And an older map shows up, about a month old, unfortunately one of the stars (which the narrative poses shall refer to as Star B for now) isn't on this map. The other two do show up, at least. "Looks like we lost one of them."
Swiftfoot frowns, her ears laying back just a bit. "I wonderr why," she muses, her brow-ridges drawing down. "Is this just a visual scan, orr does it measurre otherr things like rradiation?" She shrugs. "The starr could've gone nova, orr it could simply be hiding behind a planet. Harrd to say."
Newt frowns, "Would have to be something either really big or really close to hide it..."
"Probably just hadn't tracked that one at all yet." Gary guesses. "We were trying to get reasonably long range scans. Any clues in the other two, at least?"
"That's a distinct possibility as well," Swiftfoot admits, nodding just a bit. She eyes both maps, ears forward curiously, and tail flicking from time to time. Let's hear it for intently concentrating cats.
Newt's already staring at the maps, almost totally still and definately silent.
Gary keeps typing away, setting the sensor to flip between the two timestamped maps.
Swiftfoot points to one of the two stars and shakes her head. "Therre's nothing therre," she mutters, ears flattening back momentarily. Her tail flicks irritably a couple of times. Finally, she just shifts her attention to the last one.
Newt says nothing for a while, just staring at the two. Eventually, though, he grins and excitedly points to star A, "That one looks interesting! The other one's boring but I betchya there's something with that one.""
"You sure?" Gary asks. "If you are we'll work on confirmation and getting a few more scans and sending people out."