We found no large animals on Aecor during the extent of our survey. This does not mean they do not exist, but we found no supporting evidence that they do. The largest organism we found is Doliopiscis aecorii, a fish-approximate species that can reach about half a meter in length. We surmise that Aecor’s challenging aquatic environment has hindered the evolution of larger creatures.

We found that much of the life on Aecor is nocturnal. Why this matters at such a great distance from the sun and beneath an ice cap, we don’t know. (Chikondi is still stuck on – and agitated by – this puzzle.)

We found enormous mats of an algae-like organism (Pigertapete aecorii) that ride the convection currents in a predictable circuit. A host of animals cling to these mats as a means of rather sedentary migration.

We estimate, from the ice cores, that Aecor’s surface replaces itself at a regular rate every six thousand years. An impact event appears to have interrupted this cycle some two thousand years ago. Determining the ecological effects of this would require greater study. Based on satellite data, we believe this impact occurred near the Jemison Peninsula, in the southern hemisphere.

We catalogued nine hundred and twenty-six species of multicellular organisms, including thirty-two we happily classified as NP. We additionally catalogued over three thousand species of bacteria. These are not final numbers, by any stretch of the imagination.

Based on our findings, we recommended Aecor as a future site for long-term, dedicated ecological study.

It’s staggering to see these things written out like that, because in reality, those seven short summaries represent four Earth years spent on that little moon. Science, you see, is boring. I don’t mean discovery, and I don’t mean knowledge. I mean the activity of science – the process, the procedure. That list above can only be written thanks to four years of ice cores, of photo captures, of wind logs, of melt measurements, of databases, of arguments, of launches and landings, of packing and unpacking and repacking the lab, of washing pipettes and stacking slides and decontaminating gloves and goggles exactly the same way every single time. The work is tedious. It is slow. It is not for everyone, even though the end results are.

I took solace in that work, monotonous as it was. The Merian ran so beautifully on Aecor that I had little to do for her beyond standard maintenance. I spent most of my time in the lab, helping to process brine samples and program image recognition software (which yes, we were able to use, after about a year). Any task that needed an extra pair of hands, I was there for.

I remember one night in particular, when we were stationed in the place we nicknamed the Misty Plateau. It was late, and the lighting of the Merian’s interior wrapped us in warm contrast against the pitch-black beyond the windows. Geysers burst outside at a safe distance, a scattered bouquet of them spreading out across a frigid plain. There was always one going off – sometimes two or three at once, their boiling water hissing loud enough against the stubborn ice for us to hear it through the hull. But there was nothing threatening about the sound. It was a wave crashing, a wind blowing, a geothermic lullaby. I was alone in the clean lab, but I knew where the others were. Elena and Jack were in the data lab, in the throes of a passionate dispute about the nature of the moon’s core (I am sure they both relished every second of it). Chikondi was in the greenhouse, tending his leafy crop with care. And there I was, washing Petri dishes – the most mundane, new-kid-in-the-lab chore there is. I stood there, scraping out stubborn growth medium with my gloved fingernail, and I was happy. Content like I could never remember being. I was surrounded by people I loved, safe in a place free of noise and performance and the empty trappings of civilisation. Here, nobody cared about status or money, who was in power, who was kissing or killing whom. There was only water, and the wonders living within it. The right things mattered on Aecor. I’m a secular woman, but that moon felt to me like a sacred place. A monastic world that repaid hard work and dogged patience with the finest of rewards: Quiet. Beauty. Understanding.

‘I want to stay here,’ I said to Elena one night as we lay nose to nose in her cabin. ‘If they’d sent us here just for this, that’d be enough.’ Her face shimmered, and I imagined the light waves bouncing from the reflectin in her skin to the reflectin in mine, then back to hers, then back to mine, an endless reciprocity.

‘Mmm,’ she said. She thought for a moment, stroking my cheek with her thumb. Something shifted in her, and she smiled. ‘But think about what we get to do next.’

Mirabilis

The glitter was gone from my skin, but something new had rooted itself beneath. Remember: the human body evolved for Earth gravity and Earth gravity alone, and its internal structure has adapted for that specific force. Just as too much time in microgravity can pose problems without supplementation, so it goes in the opposite direction. Mirabilis is what we call a ‘superearth’ – a rocky giant nearly double the size of our home-world. On its surface, my body’s weight would double (even though my mass would not). So, too, would the weight of everything I needed to lift – crates, tools, toothbrushes, the clothes on my back. Even in the best of shape, the strain would chip away at me if I were unaided. Tears and fractures and stress injuries galore, plus the very real, very frightening likelihood that my circulatory system would eventually give up the laborious task of pushing blood to my brain. That wouldn’t be particularly conducive for mission success.

So for Mirabilis, I’d been given extra muscle fibre. Lots and lots of extra muscle fibre.

I am well aware that we Homo sapiens are great apes. Even if gene sequencing hadn’t proved that fact long ago, it’s evident in everything from our grasping hands to our lanky limbs to our fat, omnivorous skulls. There’s an anecdote about Queen Victoria visiting the London Zoo and becoming repulsed at the obvious familial resemblance of an orangutan (‘frightfully, and painfully, and disagreeably human’ was her verdict). But I’m sure she went back to her gilded palace full of tea and paintings and whatnot after that, thus assuring herself of her God-given degrees of separation. Even today, while we largely view our forest-dwelling cousins with far more affection and respect, we like to think we’re immeasurably different from them. After all, don’t we wear clothes and build houses and talk at length about how very smart we are for understanding that we’re apes?

When I looked at the body OCA had given me for Mirabilis, the real difference was made plain: human beings are the runts of the ape litter. We’re scrawny. We’re sickly. You’d need to be a champion weightlifter to get within spitting distance of the strength possessed by the most wilting gorilla. Perhaps you’ve seen an ape in a zoo – a chimpanzee, let’s say – and noted, as they shimmy up two-storey ropes with the ease of strolling through a park, how ludicrously ripped they are.

Trust me when I say you can’t begin to understand muscles like that until your body is made of them.

I’ve been in 2Gs for brief periods countless times over – launches, landings, sharp turns in training planes. It’s a squeeze, a pressure. Like being underwater, but without the benefit of buoyancy. That feeling still existed on Mirabilis, but thanks to somaforming, I had the means to work within it. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. It’s often misused, operating on the false interpretation that fit means physically fit, therefore expressing a dog-eat-dog ethos. The strongest wins the day. But that’s not what Darwin meant, not at all. He meant most suited to, as in, the creatures most suited to – or most fit for – a specific environment are the ones with the best chance of passing on their genes. A sloth is fit for a slow life in the branches. A worm is fit for chomping decaying leaves in the damp dark. A tick is fit for patiently waiting on a blade of grass, waiting for a sanguineous passerby to drink from.