Today's Reading

Opening the message, she scanned the single chart: the atmospheric composition of the planet. The computer had run the numbers already, of course, but that didn't stop her from checking them manually. She knew the parameters by heart at this point, and she held her breath as she read the first new analysis of Prom's atmosphere in more than two centuries. The information gleaned all the way from Earth had been promising—they wouldn't have launched if it wasn't. It had indicated that the planet was 97 percent likely to support human life. Good odds—enough to launch the first-ever colony ship—but now, just over a hundred days out from arrival, that 3 percent chance that it wouldn't support life loomed larger.

But this, the data in front of her now, would be more accurate by over an order of magnitude. She skipped over the major components, oxygen and nitrogen. They knew with pretty high confidence those to be close to 20 percent and 79 percent, respectively. Argon read at just under 1 percent. She read through each of the trace elements, moving her finger across her screen as she did to be absolutely sure she had them right. She almost squealed. The trace elements accounted for just over one tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere, but the wrong things in just the right amounts could doom an otherwise breathable atmosphere.

This probe was saying they didn't.

The planet, from an atmosphere perspective, would support human life.

Sheila found herself on her feet without realizing how she got there, and she forced herself to sit back down. She took three slow, cleansing breaths and then checked the data again, line by line.

It wasn't until the second time through that she saw the anomaly. She'd been focused on the data, but this was in the transmission message itself:

Unexpected truncation of data. Error code 5xB27.

Her heart started pounding to the point where she could hear it in her ears.

What error was that? She opened a file and looked up 5xB27.

Loss of signal.

Okay. That could be normal. Maybe this was just the signal loss they'd expected due to the ship's high velocity. But the computer would compensate for that, wouldn't it? She was pretty sure. She put that behind her for a second, however, and forced herself to look at the figures again, and then bounced it off what the computer models said. They agreed with her.

She had it right. She picked up the comm and hit the first contact in her list.

The other end picked up almost immediately. "Dr. Carroway."

"Boss, it's Sheila. We got a report from our first probe. You're going to want to see it."

"You know it's really hard for me to enforce work hour standards when one of my own deputies won't follow them."

Sheila could almost hear Lavonia shaking her head and was glad that she hadn't opted for a video call. "This is important."

"It's always important."

Sheila shoved down her frustration and kept her voice level. "I have the atmospheric composition from Prom."

"I'll be right there." The connection went dead.

Four and a half minutes later Sheila's door slid open to reveal her boss standing there in a workout version of the vac suits that everybody wore on the ship. It fit snugly and featured athletic footwear, but it would still seal in an emergency and would fit to any of the helmets stored in brightly marked lockers throughout the ship. Lavonia stepped inside and held up one hand for silence, waiting until the door slid all the way closed before she spoke. "Don't mind the clothes. I was headed down to the workout level. A place where you yourself will go, immediately after we finish here."

"Yes, ma'am." Health regulations required every resident of the ship to spend ninety minutes per day on one of the outer levels of the ship where the gravity reached 0.90g or higher. Many used that time for workouts, but Sheila came up with every possible excuse to avoid it when she could. Thankfully there were recreational areas, reading nooks, and food shops on those levels as well, to accommodate the less athletically minded of the crew. "Sorry to bother you. I could have given you the data over the comm."

"No, you did the right thing. I don't want this widely released until we know what we're dealing with. What have you got?"
...

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