‘That’d be consistent with an impact event,’ Jack said.

‘Or any number of things.’ She gestured emptily at the map. ‘We don’t have any data. There’s no visible crater. There’s just . . . water.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘we’ll solve this mystery later. We can sic the cubesats on it. For now . . . foul weather protocol?’ Foul weather protocol is a fancy way of saying that the landing schedule OCA provides us with is a guideline, not a mandate. They know their info will be outdated by the time we arrive, and as with all things, we have autonomy over making changes as needed. If a landing site doesn’t work out for any reason, we have the freedom to mix things up.

‘About that,’ Jack said. He rotated the satmap on screen so that we could see the other three islands. Except we couldn’t see them, because of the second problem: the grand majority of Opera was choked with raging storm clouds. We could see flashes of lightning, grey swirls of hurricane. The textbook example of what foul weather protocol was intended for. We’d seen storm clouds out the window, naturally, but we hadn’t realised the global scale we were dealing with.

Elena was fixated on the cloud patterns, her expression conflicted. The meteorologist in her was fascinated. The astronaut who needed to put a spacecraft down was concerned.

‘What if I put us into a stationary orbit for a few days?’ I said. ‘We can collect more satellite data, we can see if the storms ease up, and we can make an informed decision from there.’

‘Agreed,’ Elena said.

Jack was antsy to land, but he nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s smart.’

I turned my head. ‘Chikondi? Consensus?’

Chikondi blinked himself back from wherever he’d been. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘That’s fine.’

For ten days, we waited and watched.

The storms did not ease up.

Our island did not reappear.

Our comms folders remained empty.

‘We’re wasting time,’ Jack said. ‘We’re not learning anything more than a probe would.’

‘Those storm systems are going to last weeks,’ Elena said, standing on solid data at last. ‘And those wind speeds—’

‘Are something we know now. We can do the math.’

‘This isn’t landing a fucking rover packed in airbags. We’re talking human bodies.’

‘Yeah, my human body, I’m aware. It’s not doing anybody any good just dicking around up here.’

‘It’s not going to do anybody any good smashed to shit down there, either.’

‘Will you both please stop?’ I said wearily.

Jack folded his hands around the back of his head and exhaled, looking at the satmap. His face shifted.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘What about the shallows?’ he said. He pointed at a region in the planet’s northern hemisphere. ‘This whole stretch right here. Radar says the water there’s – what? Between one to two meters deep?’

Elena squinted. ‘You want to land in the water.’

‘I’m saying we could land on the rock that’s under a small amount of water. Look. The weather’s not as bad there.’

‘It’s still bad.’

‘But not as bad. You can land in those wind speeds. And the worst of it’s way up here, yeah?’ He circled his hand over the angry swirls on the map. ‘That’d put us out of harm’s way.’

‘No,’ Elena said, speaking to the idea in general. ‘We could land the main craft in shallow water, we could anchor it to the rock, but we can’t inflate the modules. They haven’t got solid floors, nothing would stay in place.’

‘We can set up some of the lab equipment up here. We just won’t bring samples inside.’

‘I’m not thinking about the lab, I’m thinking about the greenhouse.’

‘True,’ Jack said, ‘but I’m not saying we stay in the shallows long term. Just until one of our other sites opens up. You said the storm systems could last weeks. So, we go a few weeks without eating our vegetables. Sounds like my childhood.’

‘And your adulthood,’ I added.

He shot me a quick wink. ‘We’ll live.’

‘What about the airlocks?’ Elena said.

‘What about them?’ he said.

‘Two meters at high tide, estimated. That means we can’t go outside during that time.’

‘We can schedule around it. Fieldwork during low tide, lab work during high tide.’

‘Partial lab work. You won’t have a full lab.’

Jack groaned with frustration. ‘Fuck me, can you please try to focus on the possible here? We’re allowed to be flexible with protocol when the situation demands.’ He gestured at the satmap with both hands. ‘This is a bad situation. I’m trying to work with it. Our other option is to orbit indefinitely, which would continue to be a waste of time. Or we can just leave and go on to Votum, which would be a colossal waste of time.’

Elena let out a long sigh and looked at me. ‘What about propulsion?’ she asked.

I thought about it, carefully. ‘It should be fine,’ I said. ‘The engines are designed to get wet.’

‘They’re designed for rain and snow,’ she said, ‘not sitting in a tidepool for a few weeks.’

‘I’m aware. And granted, it wasn’t tested for that . . . but it should be fine. I really think so. We can seal the engine bells as soon as they cool off.’

Elena looked at the map for a long time. I could see her mentally going through the Herculean task of changing a plan. ‘We need four for consensus,’ she said. I had a feeling that was as close to yes as she would say aloud.

‘Is he still taking a nap?’ Jack said.

‘I think so,’ I said. I pushed off from the wall, angling myself toward the cabin deck. ‘I’ll go get him.’

We landed at night. We could see nothing out the windows, but the sounds from outside told me much. I heard the wind whipping around the inconvenient obstruction of our hull. I heard the lapping of the disturbed shallows. I heard rain drumming like impatient fingers. It was not a cosy storm, a curl-up-with-a-book-and-a-blanket storm. This was weather that resented us.

Heading out into an unseen landscape, even with headlamps and flashlights, is a foolish idea, so we spent the dark hours assembling a ramshackle lab. The end result was cluttered and vaguely irritating, but it was only for a few weeks, we said. We could deal with disarray for a few weeks.

I dozed off in my cabin for an hour or two before dawn. The morning light wasn’t what woke me. It was a sound. A shuffling sound. A sucking sound.

I sat up and looked out. There was an animal affixed to the outside of the porthole, roughly the size (and to a lesser extent, the shape) of a rugby ball, its sandpaper skin a limp lint grey. My first thought was slug, but that wasn’t right, because its belly was not a foot, and that’s not what it was holding on with. Its point of suction was its mouth, an ovular orifice surrounded by a shaggy fringe of feelers. I could see sharp structures waiting within. It had limbs as well – twelve feeble-looking legs. The animal did not appear to use its legs for bodily support, but rather to scoot its anchoring mouth forward.