“Ah, I assume you saw the tissue,” said Jordan from her post at Comms.
“The… tissue?”, I asked, bewildered.
“Well, we spotted it approximately 4 hours ago and Sven commented that it looked like a massive tissue.”
“I guess?”, I hedged. “It’s not really square shaped, it’s just kinda… vaguely circular.”
“Yeah. Anyway, Damien, this thing is fucking massive. We did a quick low power directional laser ping to see exactly how far away it is and it’s almost 400 thousand km away!”, she exclaimed.
I gaped at the blotch of color in shock. “So how big is it?”
“Well, we’re only doing passive sensors on it right now because the laser burned a hole in the thing, but from what we can tell it’s around 3000 kilometers across at its widest.”
“...Holy fuck.”
“Yup. Doc went into a frenzy when we saw it. Whatever that thing is, it’s awakened his inner scientist. He begged the Captain to send out a probe to get a sample, but she denied him, so now he’s hovering over Sven’s shoulder muttering to himself and typing stuff down,” she laughed. “Next time we have shore leave a report is going to be filed with its location and trajectory, and I imagine a research vessel will be sent out.”
“Damn,” I sighed. “It’s got me real fucking curious too, that’s a bit disappointing. Does Doc have any theories?”
“He thinks it’s some sort of bacterial colony or fungus or something. He said something about feeding on the interstellar medium, but honestly, he can’t do anything other than theorize without samples, and well.”
“Yeah,” I said, gazing for a moment longer. “Damn that’s infuriating. Ah, well,” I turned back towards the aft of the ship and began making my way towards the faulty RCS unit. “Thanks for telling me, Jordan.”
“Yeah man, Doc’s planning on sending out a ship wide memo about what he finds from the sensor data if you’re curious.”
“Alright, cool. Talk to you later.”
“Likewise,” she said, and the channel was cut off.
—
The RCS unit wasn’t the hardest fix. I simply connected a canister of chlorine gas issued specifically to detect leaks to the feed after opening up the base of the unit and waited for it to start escaping from the pipeline. Then, I welded a patch in place and checked again with the gas, using a scanner to make sure that no particles were escaping from the line. Of course, after that came the tedious part.
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After flushing the remaining gas from the feed and moving away from the RCS unit, I contacted the bridge once more and they began running through checks. After 20 minutes of standing there as they went through checks of its support systems, the thruster on the unit began rotating in a circle then fired a couple times before I was pinged by the bridge.
“All systems green Damien, we’re good to go,” said Jordan.
“Fantastic,” I sighed. “The existential dread was starting to get to me.”
She chucked. “Come on back in, Damien.”
I clanked my way back down the length of the ship, then tipped forward into the waiting airlock and waited as it cycled. The moment the cycle finished and I unsealed my suit as the door opened, Layla jogged over and grabbed me by the arms and began to babble.
“I just got a ping from the bridge that we might have stumbled on genuine spaceborne life, is it true!? Did you see it!? What did it look like? Did you take any pictures or video or anything? Can I see? Is it-”
“Whoa, whoa, easy, slow down,” I said, gently prying her hands off of me. “Yes, I saw it. It looked like an enormous yellow sheet of wet paper off in the distance. It’s apparently around as wide in diameter as Luna. I took a picture, I’ll send it to you. Doc’s gonna put together a memo and send it around. Okay?”
She stood there breathing hard for a moment, then took one deep breath and steadied herself as I sent my picture to her. She pulled out her tablet and stared.
“This is the coolest fucking thing that’s ever happened…”, she whispered, half to herself.
“Come on, let’s go to my berth,” I suggested. “I think our suits take video when they’re sealed up, we can pull what I saw and go over it.”
She nodded mutely and we set off.
—
The next hour had a good number of people coming in and out of the berth, marveling at the picture and video that I had. Soon enough, mine and several other tablets beeped at once and the promised memo from Doc arrived and I began to read.
To all members of the crew,
At 0746 our sensors detected a large mass at a great distance from us. Our external cameras revealed a large yellow shape within view, and given its apparent size, there were concerns that perhaps our passive sensor suite was faulty. To verify, we tagged the object with a low powered laser to determine its distance. The distance between us and the object is confirmed to be approximately 400 thousand kilometers before the laser burned through the object and ceased returning to us. We immediately terminated the laser and returned to passive scanning. Given the information we had and its profile according to our cameras, the form of the object to be that of an irregular yellow disk, approximately 300 kilometers in diameter. I have theorized that this object is a bacterial colony of prodigious size, or perhaps a fungal colony. Based on what our sensors can tell us about the composition of the interstellar medium in its wake, I believe that it may feed on the hydrogen of the interstellar medium, and perhaps utilize an exotic form of photosynthesis to process cosmic radiation. I believe this to be perhaps one of the greatest scientific discoveries of this century, and I am honored to share it with all of you. All of the data we have gathered is attached to this message. Take heart, all of you, for there are still wonders to be found in this universe.
Dr. Takeda Hitoshi