Image by Karen Pouls from Pixabay

Talia and her team landed on the planet and began scanning. “We’ve got Earth levels of gravity,” Simon said.

“O2 levels are similar to Earth’s,” Helena said. “Nitrogen levels are a little higher, but nothing we can’t compensate for. The rest of the air mixture is comparable to Earth’s as well.”

“It’s green, and not just with algae,” Vahan noted, looking around. “Those actually look like trees.”

“Take samples and we’ll scan ’em when we get back to the ship,” Talia ordered. Vahan and Esther went over to the nearest stand of tree-like objects and began taking samples.

Talia began sampling the other plants in the area and took some dirt samples while she was at it. “Scanner’s picking up a large body of water about three kilometers east of here,” Helena said.

“We’ll check that out next drop,” Talia said.

“Right,” Helena said, marking it on the map.

They gathered their samples and took them back up to the ship. They ran their tests and found that the alien plants were similar in composition to those found on Earth, though there were some interesting differences.

“High water content in all of them,” Vahan said. “But that lake was three kilometers away and I didn’t see any rivers or streams nearby. Underground maybe?”

“Maybe,” Talia said. “Run some deep level sonar when we get down there. See if there’s anything under those roots.”

“Yes ma’am,” Vahan said.

They returned to the surface and landed near the lake. The biodiversity in the lake was astonishing. The aquatic life there was nothing like what it was on Earth, but there was a staggering amount of it. They took samples back for study while Vahan did his deep penetration study of the ground.

“I don’t like that cloud cover moving in,” Talia said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes ma’am,” her team said.

As they boarded their ship, the clouds completely obscured the sky and a downpour started. Rain pounded the ship obscuring everything. “Visibility is gone,” Esther said. “We’re going to have a hard time taking off in this.”

“Switch to infrared and get us off this planet,” Talia said. Esther did as she was told and soon the shuttle was making its way through the clouds back to the ship.

“There were some underground streams, but I think we can see where the water comes from,” Vahan said. “If rainfall like that is common.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Talia said. “Let’s get these samples stowed and dry off.” The survey team stowed their samples and then dried off before getting to work on their latest round of tests. This world was the closest they’d come to an Earth-like on their five year mission so far, and it would be a shame to let a little rain jeopardize the chance for a potential colony.