unstable expedition 5

start https://pastebin.com/j81r9nCF
pt. 4 https://pastebin.com/JXgJ1Zqr

--One Month Ago--

Janet stood on the mountainous outcropping of rock, looking out into the frozen landscape, covered in tall green spires. The rover and her crew were down in the valley, but from up here she could really get a good look at the biome.

"It's incredible," Kevin said through the radio, "I never would have thought there'd still be this much living diversity."

"Life finds a way, doesn't it?" Marty said.

"But a whole forest, thriving in the harsh and ever changing conditions? I expected to be doing paleontology, not field biology," Kevin said.

"Hey, it's a good thing you're good at both," Marty said.

"That's what ninety years studying Luhmann 16Ab will get you," Kevin agreed, "I swear everything still looks awfully... cyan, nowadays."

Janet collected samples of rock and dirt from the outcrop, then checked the ice core sampler. "It's a shame the U.S.S. Watson didn't land any advanced robots," Kevin said.

"If they did, we wouldn't be here!" Janet said, reaching into the sample collector.

"Well I wish we had a better idea of the last few hundred years of evolution of this planet. A hundred years isn't much to most planets, but to a planet under as much change as Lyapunov--" Kevin continued.

"Right, but the climate records their probes did record have been invaluable," Bob said.

"We ought to set up a greenhouse full of local plants," Kevin said, "once we've settled in a little more to the planet, I mean."

"There won't be any settling in," Janet said, "I can assure you that."

"Well you know what I mean," Kevin said, as he collected samples from all the plants in the forest. "These samples will keep me very busy. Hey Janet, what do you make of the gorges all around here?"

"My guess is that they're recent phenomena, from massive melts of the glaciers. A lot of the dirt downhill from here is really soft, so it's not so hard to imagine that during periastrons, a lot of ice melts and there's torrential flooding. What I can't figure out is how that forest manages to stay up through all that," she said.

"I think all of these plants except for the trees are very young. The habitability of this area might be 'seasonal,' if you can call what Lyapunov goes through 'seasons,' anyway," Kevin said.

"What about the trees, then?" Janet asked.

"My scanners seem to be indicating that the root structure of these trees goes through the rocks to a depth almost as deep as their height aboveground, with complex interconnecting roots. These things are no pushovers. I'd really like to learn more about these things, so I'm collecting these structures which look like some kind of nut or seed, in the hopes that I can grow some back home."

The sun, or at least the one which was up at the time, began to set. "We should head back to the rover before it gets dark," Emily suggested, "Janet?"

Janet didn't respond, she was looking off into the distance.

"Janet?" Emily repeated.

"I see lights downhill in the peaks of those gorges," Janet said. "I don't think you can see them from your position. We should check them out."

"Bioluminescence?" Kevin asked.

"Looks more like fire to me."

"A wildfire!" Kevin said, "Splendid, we should go check it out as soon as possible."

"The first Sun will rise in 5 hours," Bob said, "and we're getting close to periastron with it, so it'll be awfully bright. Might start some melting."

"We should get away from the glacier soon, then," Janet said, as she began climbing down the rock.

The crew all boarded the rover, stowed their samples, and began typing up their reports. When the sun rose, they set off, driving in the direction Janet had seen the fire. Once they cleared the forest and entered the grasslands, they could clearly see that this was no simple fire. A tall green wall stood in front of them, made of the spire-trees of the forest, but packed close together with no gaps in between and trimmed to an even height. A ditch surrounded the wall. Janet remembered what had happened to Rover 2. She wasn't about to drive into another ditch.

Janet looked up through the cabin. "You all should see this."

"What on Earth?" Kevin said, at a loss for words.

"What on Lyapunov, you mean," Marty said while walking up to the cabin. She lost her jaw when she saw it.

High on a mound of dirt and grass behind the wall was a stone structure protected by yet another wall.

"Is that... a Motte and Bailey?" Emily said.

"What on Lyapunov is a Motte and Bailey?" Marty said.

"What on Earth, you mean," Emily said, "it's a way old medieval castles were built."

"Surely we'd have noticed a civilization by now!" Kevin said.

"Not necessarily. We weren't exactly looking for one, after all," Bob said, "and I'm not sure the weather satellites would have detected any lights."

"Maybe this is a natural formation?" Emily suggested, as a long-shot.

"I might believe the trees lined up like this somehow, but that stone building on the top?" Janet said, "Not a chance. I can't see it very well, but I can tell it's way too right-angled."

"Should we go and investigate? See whose inside?" Marty said.

"I'm dying to meet the builders of this thing," Kevin said, "but we're not at all equipped to make a first contact. Proper procedure would be to notify home and have them send an anthropology and diplomacy crew."

"After the four hundred years or so it'd take for them to get here, Lyapunov might not be around anymore, much less the civilization living on it," Janet said, "we have to make contact ourself."

"We know next to nothing about the animal life on this planet. We've discovered vertebrate-like things which I would call bugs," Kevin said, "but if there was anything larger they surely must have gone extinct when the climate changed, we definitely haven't seen anything."

"You had figured there wouldn't be any macroscopic life left when we were on our way to Lyapunov," Janet said.

"Look how that turned out for you," Emily said.

"We know nothing about the psychology of whoever built this. We don't even know if anyone still lives here, not for sure," Bob said.

"We know they clearly want to keep someone out," Emily said.

"Maybe if we had something to trade..." Marty pondered.

"We know that the biochemistry of Lyapunov life and Earth life are coincidentally mostly compatible. Maybe they could make use of our potatoes, we have some in the trunk," Kevin said.

"We could bring them one of our matter printers, I'm sure they'd love that!" Emily said, mostly sarcastically.

"We should go out and look around for an entrance. Maybe there will be guards and we can get an idea of what their species looks like," Marty said.

"Good idea. Let's suit up," Janet said.

pt. 6: https://pastebin.com/ah9B6Syr