They came into orbit There were no lights on nightside, on the continents none of the lines and clots made by animals who build.
"No men," Harfex murmured.
"Of course not," snapped Osden, who had a viewscreen to himself, and his head inside a polythene bag He claimed that the plastic cut down on the empathic noise he received from the others. "We're two light centuries past the limit of the Hanish Expansion, and outside that there are no men. Anywhere. You don't think Creation would have made the same hideous mistake twice?"
No one was paying him much heed; they were looking with affection at that jade immensity below them, where there was life, but not human life. They were misfits among men, and what they saw there was not desolation, but peace. Even Osden did not look quite so expressionless as usual; he was frowning
Descent in fire on the sea; air reconnaissance; landing. A plain of something like grass, thick, green, bowing stalks, surrounded the ship, brushed against extended view cameras, smeared the lenses with a fine pollen.
"It looks like a pure phytosphere," Harfex said. "Osden, do you pick up anything sentient?"
They all turned to the Sensor. He had left the screen and was pouring himself a cup of tea. He did not answer. He seldom answered spoken questions.
The chitinous rigidity of military discipline was quite inapplicable to these teams of mad scientists; their chain of command lay somewhere between parliamentary procedure and peck-order, and would have driven a regular service officer out of his mind. By the inscrutable decision of the Authority, however, Dr. Haito Tomiko had been given the title of Coordinator, and she now exercised her prerogative for the first time. "Mr. Sensor Osden," she said, "please answer Mr. Harfex."