Chapter 56: Fantasy
The world spreading out beneath them was apparently quite consistent in its monochromity, dark plantlife that ate sunlight, even when all it amounted to was a carpet of grass or moss, the sections devoid of plantlife typically deserts, beaches, mountain ranges, the occasional salt flat, all either grey or off-white.
An interesting choice of color palette, but …
Derek’s thoughts were interrupted by Atticus’ shout of “Holy shit, is that a dinosaur?”, accompanied by an image being thrown on the main viewscreen that looked almost right, some kind of generic, long-necked dinosaur lacking anything that would let an exact name, or a “closest Earth analog,” for that matter, to be pinpointed. Yet …
“It can’t be a dinosaur, it doesn’t have any feathers,” Mimi groused.
“I don’t think sauropods had feathers,” Atticus said. “They were already on the edge of overheating as is; if they had feathers, they’d probably cook themselves.”
“Still, it’s probably just convergent evolution,” Derek commented. “But am I the only one for whom ‘proximity to the dinosaurs’ is the only thing that matters for our landing site?”
A chorus of nods was the only response he got, but it was also quite clear.
So the Dragonfly took a second loop around the planet, only the bare minimum of sensors watching for threats coming from deep space, every other one trying to scrape up every scrap of data possible from the planet.
“This is officially the weirdest planet I’ve ever seen,” Ye-in muttered, throwing yet another new image up on the main screen. “Is that a living cistern?”