Lee awkwardly brought himself to a halt in front of the door to captain Myles’ quarters. He wondered how long it would be before he would become just the slightest bit more graceful in low gravity. Straightening himself, he took a deep breath and pushed the door chime.

“Come in”, the answer came through the door. As he entered the quarters, he saw the captain sitting at a small table with two chairs, a data pad in his hands. Lee was surprised to see that the quarters weren’t much larger than his own. His quarters of course were shared by four people, but still. Maybe the military budget wasn’t infinite after all.

“Ah, Mr. Cossat”, the captain said on seeing him enter. “What news?” He motioned to the chair across the table and Lee sat down.

“Well, the transmission device is coming along nicely, captain. But that’s not really what I’m here for.”

“What are you here for, Mr. Cossat?”

“It’s about Kenta. If you know she’s still alive, why aren’t you sending a rescue party? Who knows what’s happening to her? She might have survived the attack, but she might be dying out there right now for all we know! Long term exposure on the surface of this planet is dangerous.”

“I know that Mr. Cossat. But Ms. Adams is a highly trained professional who is capable of dealing with situations like this. At the moment...”

“But captain,” Lee started to interrupt. The captain raised his hand to stop him.

“Let me finish. At the moment, we cannot send a rescue party. We are dealing with an alien encounter and there are protocols we have to follow. I would prefer to have Ms. Adams up here as well, but my hands are tied. I cannot send a shuttle to the planet under these conditions.”

Lee let that sink in for a while. “You have protocols for alien encounters? Does this happen a lot?”

The captain chuckled. “No, it doesn’t happen a lot. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a military ship has run into this situation, and I actually had to review the regulations to bring myself up to speed with these protocols again. They were established after the artifacts were discovered on Procyon III, but as far as I know, this is the first time they’re being implemented.”

“So if these protocols are untested, wouldn’t it make sense for you to have some leeway and be able to use your own judgment, since you’re the one actually dealing with the situation?”

“They do allow me some leeway. But very smart people came up with them and I don’t intend to go breaking them if I don’t have a very good reason to do so.”

“Kenta’s situation isn’t a good enough reason?” Lee countered.

The captain made a face. “I don’t know Kenta’s situation, and that’s part of the problem.” He sighed and looked down at his pad. “Here’s another part of the problem.” He turned the pad around so Lee could look at it. It showed a fuzzy image but he couldn’t really tell what he was looking at. “What is it?” he asked.

“The alien vessel had been steady in its established behavior of sending bursts of coherent light toward the planet. Then half an hour ago, the light bursts increased in intensity and became more focused, and it kept going steady for about 10 minutes. During that time, we noticed this happening on the planet.” He pointed at the fuzzy picture. “It was as if the vessel was somehow whipping up a very local dust storm.”

“Extraordinary,” Lee said. “Where was this happening?”

“Pretty much right on top of Hab-4,” the captain replied. “A very small area too, definitely smaller than a square kilometer.”

The captain continued. “Now if I was Kenta, I would have headed toward Hab-4 after the attack on Hab-3, since it would be the closest source of supplies. I don’t know if she was there or not when this event occurred. I also don’t know if this can be seen as a hostile action by the alien. But it definitely was doing something there. And I can’t risk exposing more people to any such action until we know more.”

Lee sighed. “I can see your point captain,” he said, giving the pad back. “I just hope she’s alright.”

"Agreed," the captain replied. "I'll keep you posted if anything new happens."