Our Roots, our Destiny (Chapter 1.5)

SKI Report. Mission Elapsed Time 25 years, 332 Fortnights, 1 hour.
Genefrod Mesoman reporting. I thought we'd find them. I really did. I thought we'd wake up today, deploy the Search for Kerbin Intelligence instrument, and we'd hear them chattering on the television and radio like it was nothing. I guess that was silly. If they were speaking, we'd probably have heard them from Mesbin. They would probably have spoken back to us when we shouted "are you there!" at them at the top of our lungs from the day we had radio telescopes powerful enough to ask. To hear total silence is, well, disheartening to say the least.

Planetary Science Report. Mission Elapsed Time 25 years, 332 Fortnights, 2 hours.
Crisby Soothe Reporting. I. Am. So. Excited! I'm writing from the observatory dome. We're less than 40 fortnights from the Jool flyby, and it's already GORGEOUS. I'm seeing a yellow-green crescent with obvious cloud banding, and three huge white satellites which I can just about resolve as disks. We've confirmed a popular myth about Jool! It really IS Green! Whether other unsubstantiated claims will hold true, like the blueness of Laythe and the peculiar ratio of orbits, we have yet to see. I'm setting up the long-range camera to keep recording Jool's moons as we pass. I am also looking forward to observing Sarnus, but it is currently behind the Sun. Urlum and Neidon remain bluish dots, though Neidon does seem to have a purple tint. I'm already looking forward to the probes we can send to the giant planets.

SKI Report. Mission Elapsed Time 25 years, 371 Fortnights, 5 hours.
Genefrod Mesoman reporting. Prehistorical records indicate Laythe was a colonized ocean world. Maybe something was lost in translation because all I see is a dead iceball. No signals coming from it. Actually that's not true, there's some totally natural auroral whistles and other phenomena which I sure Crisby is just eating up. We did detect a reflection feature, so we know Laythe has some metallic satellites around it. They aren't broadcasting anything. We have decided to send a probe at a later date, but against my suggestion we aren't going to brake into Laythe orbit to investigate it just yet.

Archaeologist Desfield Mesvoc's Personal Log. Mission Elapsed Time 25 years, 372 Fortnights, 1 hour.
The Jool flyby had no sign of active life. The SKI instrument detected satellites in orbit throughout the system. It feels too much like Lowel. I feel a knot in my stomach when I think of what we're going to find on Kerbin. I keep thinking back to those ruins on Lowel. Evidence indicates a slow decay of civilization there as conditions worsened. But what of Kerbin? Within a century it went from interplanetary and interstellar to... sounds like nothing.

Astronomer Crisby Soothe's Personal Log. Mission Elapsed Time 25 years, 390 Fortnights, 1 hour.
It was brown. I stared at the eyepiece for three hours trying to find some hint of blue or green. I tried filters, I tried video, I tried processing those videos. It's brown. I don't mean brown like Kerbmun's brown. I mean brown like Derbin is brown. I didn't bother observing Sarnus, even though Hudble insisted.

SKI Report. Mission Elapsed Time, 26 years, 27 Fortnights, 3 hours.
This is Desfield. I'm in the lab with Genefrod. We have just entered high orbit around Kerbin. It is bleak. Covered in thick brown haze. Crisby seemed a lot happier when I talked to her. Apparently in the infrared there's evidence of liquid water, which means there's a chance something is still living down there. We're tracking several large satellites. Some of these could be space stations or spaceships or shipyards. We decided to check on the one satellite in Low Kerbin Orbit. If it hasn't already deorbited, there's gotta be something interesting going on.

SKI Report Supplemental: 27 Fortnights, 1 hour:
Genefrod here! As we were about to rendezvous with the LKO object, we heard something! They're TALKING! We're gathering in the command deck to discuss.

General Report. 25 years, 27 Fortnights, 1 hour:
Hudble Mighe. We have made first contact with Kerbals from a star other than Kaywell for the first time in twenty four hundred years. However, it seems that they are not from Kerbin. They are a territorial bunch it seems, originating from a place they call SLIPPIST-One-Echo. Their captain agreed to meet us aboard our ship. Armed. Desfield joked he should get a rivet gun for self defense. I do not love the idea of aliens boarding our ship with a weapon, but this is our first lead. As a linguist, I have to be the one to do first contact. We seem to have agreed upon using Ancient Kerblish as a pidgin, which is fine by me. Seems like our language has diverged less than theirs, just from what we've heard so far. I can't wait to study their literature!