Becky Chen noticed that even Glenn Harold kept his helmet securely fastened onto his uniform as their boots sloshed through the landscape of yet another alien world whose variables met the criteria for a potential settler planet as established by the lottery offices. The gravity was nearly a perfect match with that of old Earth’s. It took nearly the same amount of days for the world to rotate around its sun. There was day and there was night.
Yet Becky doubted the planet would be a comfortable one for even the hardiest of settlers. Swamp covered the entire globe. The environment provided ample supplies of water, but without any rivers or large lakes, that water supply festered. Becky would note that robust filtering systems would need to be included in the settler kits the lottery offices provided for the humans who would attempt to tame that world. A high presence of sulfur laced the breathable air with a foul stench that made Becky very thankful for her sealed surveyor’s uniform. For the entire morning as she had trudged behind Glenn through the sticky and moist fern-like trees that veiled the humid swamp, Becky had believed that they might’ve finally discovered a planet her heart wouldn’t break to see gifted to ruinous humankind.
But then Becky discovered another wonder hidden among the stars.
Glenn held up a hand so that Becky paused. “There goes another bubble school floating across this stretch of marsh from one pool to another. They really are something.”
A part of Becky’s heart hated to look, but the more powerful part demanded to see. Large bubbles rose from the pool of stagnate water ahead and to Becky’s left. Each bubble encased an eyeless, strange fish, whose fins curled upon its body so that the animal rode within the bubble like a coiled snake. The bubbles rose to a height slightly above Beck’s helmet as they drifted over the narrow isle of land that separated the pools. Becky suspected that some soft touch from the blind creature within guided the bubbles through the still air. Dozens of bubbles rose from the pool, moving together as a floating school as Becky and Glenn stopped to watch and wait for them to complete their journey above the water. Upon hovering to the other pool, the eyeless fish within twirled and uncoiled to break their bubble. The shattered bubble chimed just as the creature within plopped into the water below, and soon a strange melody formed as one bubble after another busted and chimed, with no two notes matching any that before sounded. The sight of fish flying within bubbles was wondrous enough. The music that accompanied the spectacle thrilled Becky’s heart.
Glenn turned towards Becky the moment the last bubble broke and chimed to drop the encased fish into the water, and he took Becky’s gloved hand into his own.
“You can’t let it break your heart,” Glenn sighed. “You can’t look back.”
Becky leaned upon her toes and pressed her helmet’s visor against his. “I know. We’ll just keep floating further and further out into the stars so that we never have to look back.”