They weren’t all here this time. Fluttershy refused to hear about leaving medical, and obviously Pinkie wouldn’t be able to join them. That meant only the three of them gathered together around the table meant to hold all seven, with Spike’s report in front of them and two prominent empty seats.
“You’ve both seen it,” Spike said, as soon as they’d finished with awkward progress reports. Hydroponics was coming along with more Geneseed, and there was still almost a full day before Spike’s project finished. “So I don’t need to tell you. We already got lots of great pictures to take back with us, to confirm for good that the Signal was sent by intelligent life.”
“Well yeah,” Applejack said. “Obviously. Ah know a city when I see one. But what else did you see?”
“Well…” Spike hesitated, shuffling through his papers before settling one sheet on the table between them. “Lots of things. I’ve been in the eye for hours, and…” he settled one large photo on the table between them.
It was obviously taken from the eye, capturing what it had been seeing at the time in perfect clarity, though only a few inches wide. This one showed the planet from above, with a perfect square cut straight through the metal buildings. From the scale Spike had scrawled on the image, Twilight could see it was a few miles across. A few miles of green trees and water and a single building in the exact center. “Eye found this—it’s the only place like it we can see plants growing down there, unless you count algae in the ocean.”
“Some kinda… palace, maybe?” Applejack suggested. “Maybe the princess lived there.”
“Could be,” Spike muttered. “But that’s not the only thing I found—”
Twilight cut him off. “What about messages? The signal is coming from somewhere, isn’t it? We only followed it here all the way from Equestria.”
Spike nodded. “From the ring. There’s, uh… a whole lot of energy coming off that ring. It’s almost five hundred degrees hotter than, uh… ambient.” He shuffled awkwardly through the pictures, depositing one on top of the first. “But that’s not the most interesting thing I found, Twilight. There’s…” he settled one slightly-ruffled picture on the table, then several more in a collage around it.
Twilight’s eyes widened as she stared. They were buildings that had fallen over, or been pierced by blows almost as wide as they were and severed. Huge craters that hadn’t pierced the thick city, but had certainly done terrible, devastating damage.
“Celestia above, it’s like we came here after a war,” Applejack pulled over one of the pictures, staring down at it. “Is the scale on this thing right?”
“Yes,” Spike didn’t hesitate this time. “I made sure. It’s all as close as the Eye can get.”
“How much of the planet looks like this?” Twilight asked, already dreading the answer. “And can you tell if it’s…”
“Recent?” Spike shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it is. Whatever that city is made of, it doesn’t rust or corrode, but where it’s been damaged there’s signs of… some kinda deposit. Looks like it probably took a long time.”
Was Cozy Glow right all along? The Signalers really were trying to destroy Equestria.
Except that when she thought about that, the dots didn’t quite line up. Wasn’t this the signalers’ own planet? If they’d been harvested for resources and the evil conquerors built the ring as a trap, why not harvest the metal from the planet below? And why build something so difficult and complicated anyway—even Equestria could build a big antenna.
“Maybe the planet is… uninhabitable,” Twilight suggested, voice timid. “And the survivors moved up into the ring. What do our scans suggest?”
Spike shook his head. “As far as I can tell, the planet is perfectly safe. Not too hot, not too cold, similar amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide.”
“There are worse weapons than guns, Spike,” Applejack muttered, pushing the pictures away. “Things that might sleep there, waiting for ponies to come back. I can’t think of why else they’d leave their fancy city-planet behind. They couldn’t come back.” She straightened in her chair. “Twi, I really think we ought to be thinkin’ about just how far this mission goes. We made it here, we got their message. When do we call it a victory and fire up the engines fer home?”
When we’ve signed a treaty of cooperation with the Signalers, she thought. But somehow she didn’t think saying it that way would be wise, not with morale so low. The paste was getting to them, and Pinkie Pie’s complete breakdown had not helped.
“The official doctrine of our mission suggested we should make peaceful contact with the Signalers,” she recited. “Then prepare any necessary supplies and return home in a period not greater than a decade.”
“Upper bound,” Applejack said. “I know she ain’t here, so I’ll speak what Fluttershy would be sayin.’ We’ve heard some mighty frightening things from Cozy—and now Pinkie Pie obviously needs the help ‘a real doctors. Now here we are, planet we came for all melted and broke.”
“Except for the ring,” Spike pointed out. “Obviously that’s still working. It’s still making the signal, and it must’ve sent the probe out to us. A probe that taught us how to build something amazing—how many more amazing things could the Signalers teach us?”
“Well, that depends,” Applejack sounded almost smug. “How many of our radio messages have they answered since we parked here?”
“None,” Twilight whispered. “The ring hasn’t signaled. And there’s no trace of activity from the planet.”
“Precisely,” Applejack took a deep breath. “Look, I know how much ya’ll came here to explore. I’m just wonderin’… when will we have explored enough? How much is left to figure out? The way I see it…”
1. Continue until formal diplomatic contact is established, or the signalers can be ruled out as definitely dead. That’s the real reason we’re here, even if it wasn’t written down quite that way in the charter. We’ve already sacrificed too much to give up now.
2. Dig a little deeper, but stop taking risks. We’ve sacrificed enough. We can keep scanning for a few weeks, maybe send out a few probes. If the signalers haven’t noticed us by then that must mean they don’t have anything important left to say. We can pack up and go home.
3. Make one last attempt to contact, then begin preparations to return immediately. Plenty of metal down on that planet to salvage for structural repairs. We can risk one more call, then we should get flying home. Equestria needs us.
4. Go right now. Whatever happened down there might be old, but it could be sleeping, waiting to kill again. We start accelerating right now without one more radio message. The risk of breaking apart mid-flight is nowhere near as high as whatever killed that planet finding us.
(Certainty 190 required)