When human beings first set eyes on Ringsdunkelt 15, and heard the lore of the local space-going civilizations, it started a panic all the way back to Earth, with its deep blue seas.
The lore went in those days that each of these utterly massive beings of spectral fire represented a continent-eater, for a proud and careless people had lived on the world, and were punished by their gods by these fiery creatures from the deep eating them and the land they were on. The beings had been brought from the asteroid belt ringing the system.
Since the ships that came from Earth had to pass through that asteroid belt, the idea of a deadly contagion that could latch on those ships and get into the oceans of other seas caused a panic – all kinds of decontamination schemes and quarantines …
But in reality, the locals had not liked the high-handedness with which the first humans they met had treated them.
The professional explorers of the consortium's space fleet came much more diplomatically, and so were told the truth even as they discovered it.
The seas of Ringsdunkelt 15 never had continents – it is about as far from its sun as Saturn is, and its seas are largely liquid methane, hundreds of thousands of feet deep to its small rocky core. These great creatures are symbiotic colonies of photosensitive bacteria and phytoplankton, invisible during the day, rising to red heat in the dusk and to blue heat at night to stay warm. Methane has a blue flame, so, in essence, the creatures warm themselves in their own fire against the extraordinary chill of the near-frozen ocean of methane around them.
“So, what you're saying is, your choices are quick-freeze or burn alive down there,” Ensign Pushkin said to Lieutenant Morimoto about it as one of the creatures danced in blue on our viewscreen.
“Right,” Lt. Morimoto said. “See, ancient musician Johnny Cash knew what he was talking about when he sang about the dangers of falling into burning rings of fire – he just didn't know he was talking about this here.”
“Right … throw in the hexagonal symmetry and the tentacles and you would never get out of there, never mind the quick-freeze option,” Ens. Pushkin said.
Deep bass-voiced Helmut Allemande, my first officer and chief science officer for our vessel, could never chuckle at his crew mates on duty and get away with it, but his blue eyes and blooming face were laughing, long and loud.
“Humanity and its ever-burgeoning imagination and misremembering of the meaning of song lyrics are still all undefeated,” I said when I caught him off duty coming from the ship's gym as I was going in for my workout.
Cmdr. Allemande at last laughed out loud.
“Aye aye, Captain,” he said at last. “Still all undefeated!”