They gathered in the cramped conference room.

Antony leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the table. Next to him, Seph sat with his shoulders hunched, flipping through documents on his tablet and occasionally glancing at the door. Kendra sipped from her mug, ignoring the tension coming from the other side of the table.

The door creaked open and Bria strode into the room, her auburn braid swishing behind her. “Morning everyone,” she said and stood at the head of the table.

“I want to thank you all for bearing with me these last few months while we planned this expedition,” she continued, folding her hands in front of her. She spoke carefully, as if she had rehearsed every word. “But we’re here, and I am ready to make the most of this expedition.”

A hologram of the research station rotated in the air before them. “This is what we know. About twenty years ago, the funders’ company installed this research station here to test sand weathering on their line of prefabricated buildings. They picked this planet because the atmosphere is breathable to most, and the lack of inhabitation meant fewer regulations.”

She tapped at her tablet and a model of the entire planet appeared, rotating in the air. Sand and rocky plateaus covered much of the planet, with few green areas. “Travelers from the first spacefaring age, around 7,000-8,000 years ago, charted this planet. Most of their satellite footage was lost, but early expeditions noted no signs of inhabitation, then or in the past. Seph, do you want to continue?”

Bria took a seat next to Kendra.

“Sure!” he said, standing up and walking to the front of the room, bumping Antony’s chair as he passed. Antony shot Kendra an offended glance. She covered her mouth, looking away so he didn’t see her laugh.

“Like Bria said, early spacefarers more or less dismissed this place as a big, sandy rock. Bria and I cross-referenced the records we found, using algorithms for detecting putative architectural features. There was little to note.”

“So, this planet hasn’t been home to intelligent life,” Kendra said.

“Right,” Seph said. “And despite the effort spent setting up this station, the company did little formal follow-up. They programmed a rover to follow a predetermined route every six months, taking video and soil samples, and scanning the research station itself for deterioration. These videos were the only thing from the station the company monitored.”

He brought up a video. “So it was astonishing that the base’s unmanned rover picked up footage of this temple.”

The footage was grainy and shook as the rover moved. Kendra leaned closer. She had seen the video before—they all had. But it was still astonishing in its simple revelation. From the empty sand, stone columns appeared. In the center of the columns stood a pedestal accompanied by other blocky structures. The rover hit the base of the temple, trying unsuccessfully to drive forward twice before it circled around and continued on its way.

“And of course,” Bria cut in, “then the funding company published this footage, providing dedicated money for both an open-ended expedition to the ruins and analysis of the research station itself.”

“Yes, right,” Seph said. “And the ruins also show up on some of the footage we grabbed from recent probes flying past the planet.”

“This site wasn’t visible a couple years ago,” Antony said. “This is the first set of ruins found on this planet.”

“Right. We know next to nothing about them. The image quality from the recordings wasn’t good enough to use architecture recognition software,” Seph said. He swept his blond hair back up off his forehead. “I think that’s all for my updates. We’ve already discussed the research plan on the trip here, but does anyone have questions?”

“I’m good,” Kendra said. “We’re using standard, noninvasive techniques.”

“So, are we ready to head out?” Antony asked.

Kendra clapped her hands. “Yeah! Let’s check out these ruins.”

Seph shifted in place and nodded, chewing his lip.

Bria nodded back at him as she stood, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder. “I think we’re good. Is there something else?”

“Well, no. Just logistical things.”

A pinched expression passed over Bria’s face and she rubbed her palms together. “I wasn’t going to get into this now, but we may as well put matters to rest. I will lead analysis of the research station exterior, since weathering and materials analysis are my fields. Kendra will lead diagnostics on the equipment.”

Seph opened his mouth, looking at Kendra, but Bria cut him off. “I believe Antony’s skill set is best suited to helping Kendra with diagnostics. Seph, you can help me.”

“Okay, sure,” Kendra said, her eyes flicking between Seph and Bria—she couldn’t decide who looked more uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Seph said, the word dying in his throat. He cleared it. “That… works. I was actually going to ask about logistical things for today. Whether we ought to bring the rover.”

“Sure, why not?”

“I haven’t set up the field microscope. Completely forgot to do it. Should have done it yesterday—I can’t believe I forgot. I don’t want to slow us down,” Seph said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“There was a lot going on yesterday. It’s all good,” Antony said.

“Yeah, we can wait. Otherwise, leave the rover and take the extra bike today,” Kendra said.

Bria nodded towards them and then at him. “I’ll check out the rover with you. How about we plan to meet up outside in an hour?”

Kendra wore a light gray suit of tough, woven material with reinforced padding and armor around the elbows and knees. Her gear was functional in a way she found comforting. As she zipped and buttoned the suit, it reminded her that she was about to explore something new.

She met Antony outside the research station. He sported a similar outfit in a darker gray, and he waved to her as she approached. He heaved a sigh. “I am not looking forward to being trapped in that tiny conference room. I didn’t feel like arguing about diagnostics yesterday, but I don’t like how Bria handled that either.”

“Yeah, I know. But maybe it’s settled and we can move on.”

“Made me feel like she didn’t trust us to figure things out on our own,” Antony said.

She nodded. “Hopefully that was a fluke and not a pattern. You know how long it takes to get into a groove on expeditions.”

The sour expression remained on his face, and she bumped shoulders with him. “Hey, we’re gonna see some ruins today. Something untouched for thousands of years.”

“No, don’t remind me, I want to stew in my irritation.”

“Uh-huh. So if I beat you to the ruins and find something cool enough that I get first author on our paper, you’re okay with that.”

He swatted her playfully on the arm. “Oh, shove off.”

The door to the garage opened and Bria waved to them. Seph drove the rover a few feet forward out of the garage, his hands clutching the steering wheel in a vice grip. Kendra, Antony, and Bria rolled their bikes out onto the sand.

Kendra hopped onto her bike, and it hummed and lifted off the ground, hovering a foot above the sand. Her helmet clicked as it attached to her suit, the HUD popping up in front of her eyes. Antony pulled up next to her.

She pointed at herself. “Remember. First author,” she said, and took off into the desert.

Antony rode behind her, laughing over the comms. Kendra spotted the rover in her side mirrors, kicking up a trail of dust. At first, the horizon was a flat expanse of sand until the dunes sloped downward, and cliffs emerged in the distance. Kendra rode up a large dune, launching herself off a long rock at the top and sailing into the air. Antony followed her, bike landing nearby as he rode alongside her.

Rocks punctuated the sand as they drove; most were small and gray, like the cliffs. There was another, more abrupt dip downward as they reached an area with rocks formations—odd rounded shapes about waist high.

“It should be just ahead,” came Bria’s voice over the comms.

They stopped their bikes in front of a pile of boulders and dozens of smaller rocks. These rocks lay at odd angles, as though someone had tossed them there. Past them, the temple stood out, golden against the gray sand.

“Oh gosh, that’s fantastic,” Seph said, tripping as he clambered out of the rover.

“That footage didn’t do this place justice at all,” Kendra said and removed her helmet, hooking it on her bike. Her ponytail fell back down to her neck, and she tucked a few strands of brown hair behind her ears. “The temple floor wasn’t visible in the video.”

“You’re right, there’s an entire platform here,” Bria said.

A series of pillars lined the platform, making up a colonnade. They were carved from rich, golden-orange stone. Many columns had cracked and fallen, the remnants scattered around the platform. Several of them still stood, attached to the base itself.

The group circled around the platform of stones.

Antony knelt down, passing his gloved hand through the sand, digging a small hole. “There’s rock under the sand here. Matches those big rocks over there and the formations we’ve seen. Doesn’t match the ruins.”

Kendra examined one of the fallen columns, dusting the white sand from it. It was twelve feet long, with a square base of three feet on each side. “Yeah, I doubt this was built here.”

Seph whirled around to face them. “I ought to bring the rover closer. Get the field microscope out,” he said.

“Sure thing, dude,” Antony replied, stepping over a column that was partially buried under the sand.

Seph hurried back to the rover, only to catch his boot on the column. He stumbled, nearly toppling over.

“Hey, careful,” Antony said.

“Ah, yeah,” Seph said, standing back up. “I think the tint on my visor is too dark.”

“That shouldn’t be hard to fix.”

“Well, can you help me? These things are so fussy,” Seph said, and Antony followed him back to the rover.

Kendra snorted at them and crouched near the ruins, brushing sand from the base.

“Bria, have you seen these inscriptions? There are carvings here,” Kendra said, tracing her gloved hand across the swirling marks that adorned the stone.

“Oh my,” Bria said. “I don’t recognize the language.”

“I’d guess some of this is decorative,” Kendra noted. “They must have liked floral motifs.”

“You’re right, there are tons of them.”

Intricate carvings of flowers decorated the base of the temple and the columns. The flowers intertwined with the accompanying leaves and ferns, creating beautiful swirls and curves. They wrapped around the columns, culminating in carvings in bas-relief at the top. These were even more intricate, depicting overlapping flowers and curling leaves.

“Wait, let me see,” Seph said as he returned, his visor clear. “Why does this look so familiar?”

“I don’t know, do you really like daisies?” Antony asked. “Wait, no, it does look familiar; I swear that I’ve seen something like this before. Read a paper or something.”

He gestured at Seph. “What’s the taxonomy for, like, daisies and sunflowers?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“It seems like something you’d know.”

“I’ve got background in zooarchaeology, not archaeobotany,” Seph said and paused. “Oh shoot, I do know the order. It’s Asterales.”

“Okay, not the order. What about the family?”

“Asteraceae?”

“Oh my god. Asteracea,” Antony said. “Have any of you heard of that planet?”

Kendra shrugged and Bria shook her head.

“There was this planet that early spacefarers wrote about,” Antony continued. “No inhabitants. They were long gone, and so was pretty much every other form of life. But there were floral motifs everywhere in the surviving architecture, depicting plants similar to daisies. The motifs were so prevalent that the explorers named the entire planet after the daisy family. Asteracea.”

“Oh wow, I have heard of that—I remember somebody mentioning it at a conference talk,” Seph said excitedly. “Isn’t that the place with crazy high levels of cadmium in the soil?”

“Yeah, that and some other ion channel blockers,” Antony said.

“Could these ruins have come from there?” Kendra asked. “What’s the time line of the people from Asteracea? They were pre-spaceflight, right?”

“Well, as of 8,000 years ago, their planet wasn’t inhabited,” Antony said. “I’m a little fuzzy, but I want to say the spacefarers who visited Asteracea dated the end of their civilization to around 10,000 years ago. So yeah, they were pre-spaceflight.”

Seph was typing furiously into his tablet. Bria peered over his shoulder. “Are there any current experts on Asteracea?”

“Well, the most recent paper seems to be from 200 years ago,” Seph said. “And that’s about the specific ion channel blockers isolated from the soil, not archaeology.”

“At least that’s probably long enough for any gatekeepers of Asteracean research to have retired,” Kendra said.

Bria crossed her arms. “This is an interesting connection. Given what we know, it’s possible that these ruins don’t belong on this planet. Whether they’re Asteracean, let’s keep open minds.”

“Of course,” Seph said.

“Let’s document these ruins,” Bria said. “See what we can learn.”

Kendra dropped into bed that night with a profound sense of satisfaction at what they’d discovered, and yet sleep failed to come. The sound of someone else snoring across the room was comforting compared to the rattling of wind and sand battering the outer walls. But the room was unfamiliar, and the shifting and creaking brought back the memories from the trip here.

They each technically had their own space, though it was arranged into pods stacked two high. The pods were nearly soundproof and deeper than they were wide; Antony had repeatedly compared them to a morgue refrigerator.

That night in the small room of the research station, Kendra’s dreams were strange. She dreamt of the flight down to that pale, dusty planet. She floated over the dark gray cliffs that lay miles away. The pillars of the cliffs reached up into the sky, to vast nebulae that she didn’t recognize. There she felt a presence, as though someone else slept within the nebula itself.

She woke, forehead damp with sweat. The images failed to leave her mind, and so she headed into the lab. Collecting diagnostics data was monotonous, and it calmed her nerves.

Bria knocked on the door frame.

“Hey, Bria. I was getting a start on equipment diagnostics to bore myself to sleep.”

“Fair enough. I hope you aren’t feeling obligated.” Bria paused, running a hand through her curly auburn hair, which now hung down freely across her back and shoulders. She wore a long-sleeved teal shirt and matching sweatpants. Her casual appearance did little to hide the tension in her frame, however.

“What’s keeping you up tonight?” Kendra asked.

“Oh, well, trying to make a few calls. Hard to get the timing down, being on the other side of the galaxy,” Bria said with a forced laugh.

“I can imagine.”

“I was wondering how you’re doing,” Bria began, before Kendra could ask who she was calling. Bria rubbed her thumb over the palm of her other hand. “But I wanted to check in, since these are close quarters.”

“I appreciate that,” Kendra said. “I’m fine. We all need time to settle in. Get used to working with each other. I know Antony is coming into this after being isolated on a long expedition. You forget how to interact with people.”

Bria sighed. “Yeah, I’ve noticed that about him.”

“You know, I’m surprised I haven’t worked with you before,” Kendra said, leaning against the lab bench. “You’ve got a lab, right? What’s your lab up to while you’re away?”

Bria leaned against the opposite bench, crossing one leg over the other in an attempt at nonchalance.

“My oldest students graduated, so I’m left with two grad students and a postdoc. My postdoc and second year are out on their own expedition. And my fourth year is doing experiments in the lab,” Bria said.

“Connection might be a bit spotty if you’ve got to do thesis committee meetings here.”

Bria laughed, though she continued to rub at her palm. “No, we’re good for a while. Our research has focused on studies in the lab, not so much in the field. This is my first industry-funded expedition, so it’s a big deal for the lab.”

“It’s a big deal for all of us,” Kendra said. “It’s nice to see an expedition with real freedom.”

“I know it’s only one set of ruins, but the funding company hoped we find more,” Bria said. “If we can find something convincing, it shouldn’t be hard to get the expedition extended. Or fund a new expedition.”

Kendra grinned at her. “That’d be amazing. Goodness knows I love the discovery. Learning something no one else in the universe knows.”

“There’s nothing quite like it, is there? Whether it’s in a lab or out here in a place like this.”

“Makes everything else worth it.”

“Indeed,” Bria said and yawned, covering her mouth delicately. “Gosh, excuse me. I think I’ll head off to bed.”

“Naturally. I think that’s enough diagnostics for one night,” Kendra said, and shut off the lights.

When she slipped back under the covers that night, she finally found rest.