All thirteen crew members of the Aegean wake after Baltiel and Senkovi finish their secret preparations. Senkovi reflects that he privately renamed the ship from the Maratha, while the crew tries to bypass Baltiel’s data embargo or understand why their commander has withheld information. Before waking the others, Baltiel and Senkovi built and sterilized an atmospheric scout remote so that Earth microbes would not contaminate Tess 834h’s existing biosphere.

Baltiel gathers the crew and shows footage from the remote. The first images reveal a harsh desert world with mineral lakes and strange radial patterns that may be bacterial colonies or inorganic formations. The footage then reveals unmistakable complex life: huge airborne jellyfish-like organisms that alter their forms to ride the winds, sun-drinking sessile structures on a plateau, possible sea life, polar tangles, and a high-latitude marsh full of low alien growth and small moving creatures.

The presentation transforms the crew’s understanding of their mission. Tess 834h is not a barren candidate for human remaking but a living world with the first complex alien life humanity has ever seen. Baltiel then displays the original terraforming mission statement, making clear that following orders would mean destroying the very biosphere they have discovered.

Baltiel argues that their briefing gives no useful guidance, Earth is too distant for timely instructions, and the decision must be made locally. Baltiel proposes abandoning terraforming on Tess 834h, preserving the planet, and converting their efforts into a scientific survey. Most of the crew supports Baltiel, though Maylem, Han, Lortisse, and Poullister seem more inclined to carry out the mission they came for.

Senkovi presents a compromise: leave Tess 834h untouched and terraform Tess 834g, the next planet out. Tess 834g is an ice world at the edge of the liquid-water zone, but Senkovi argues that controlled geological intervention could warm it and produce a viable ocean world for colonists. Han notes the planet would have very little land, but Senkovi counters that colonists could live on boats and that leaving future humans beside the alien biosphere would be dangerously irresponsible.

Baltiel endorses the split plan. Baltiel will remain in orbit around Tess 834h with volunteers to study and protect the alien life, while Senkovi will take most of the Aegean’s resources to attempt terraforming Tess 834g. Senkovi ends up with Maylem, Poullister, and Han, while Lortisse chooses Baltiel’s team. When Sparke asks what happens if life is found beneath Tess 834g’s ice, Senkovi bluntly admits it will likely be sacrificed unless it can somehow communicate.