Means that the orcs have free will. Or - they might use different vocabulary for it but I bet that's the core thing.

<Mmm. Maybe. Is there anything else you think we ought do in the city, before we go?>

I don't think so? There might be more here but I don't know where to look for it.

<Back to the ship, then? We should have data by now on the nearest neighbouring star systems, we could go see if Valinor is in fact a planet.> 

Sure. 

Mhalir follows instructions from the cloaked shuttle to head to an isolated-ish area, where they can get a ride back up to the ship in orbit. 

...He's feeling some sort of mild background frustration about the entire trip so far. The planet is a resource, obviously, worth exploring, but - also has its own complications, and he feels vaguely uneasy about the concept of interacting with it more. 

If you get a lot of Yeerks on the ground it'll be easier to tell if anything weird is up, and the orcs seem like they might go for it?

<True.> 

He asks his staff for a summary of the nearest stars that they've been mapping. 

Nearest star is 25 lightyears out; after that there's a couple that are 40 and a couple that are 70 and then lots past that.

Well, they can plan a hyperspace jump to the nearest one, then, at least as well as possible without having good charts of hyperspace in this region. 

It's a long way, though, if they're still assuming that even the gods don't have faster-than-light travel. Maybe they can also collect data from the hyperspace side, which sometimes has fluctuations that show where nearby masses are. It would seem surprising for there to be an invisible planet or star system, but - maybe not unimaginable, for very powerful alien gods. 

They get to work planning the jump. It'll take longer, because they have barely started with charting, but doing the charting will also let them make progress on finding invisible star systems, if there are any.

"There aren't any," his pilot says after a few hours of this. "Nearest star's actually a binary system, though. That presumably means it's not Valinor? I've never heard of a binary system having a habitable planet."

Mhalir waits. Reads through some of the photographed books a bit more while they're waiting. 

He nods. "Neither have I, but I would still like to swing by there first." 

"Sure thing. We can jump in half an hour."

We should be more careful in Valinor. I think if I use Disguise Self then I'll be relying less on everyone's obliviousness to pass for an Elf.

<That makes sense. And we can maybe do more cloaked aerial surveillance first, or send down small drones to get recordings. Not that the Elves speak out loud most of the time, which makes that less useful.> 

It is too bad that there's a peace treaty now and they can't just grab an Elf. Not that they should do that, because it's mean, but - she'd feel so much less uneasy if Mhalir had really gotten a good look at one of them.

<I know what you mean.> 

He...doesn't exactly regret the existence of the treaty blocking it as an option, though. It's a bit hard to explain why, because it would make strategic sense otherwise - but, at the same time, it's not like he's ever liked kidnapping people and hurting them in order to accomplish his goals, and so...there's some sort of relief, in the fact that a treaty exists, its existence benefitting both parties to it, and means that kidnapping is no longer an effective strategy here. Mhalir isn't sure if he expects Carissa to understand this, though. 

Carissa thinks that he has a notably stronger preference to not hurt people than her and if his point is more complicated than that she doesn't get it.

"Jumping in five," the pilot announces.

Mhalir sits down and waits. 

They jump. 

One of the stars is visible out the window; the other is, from this position, behind it.

Mhalir would like them to spend a few hours gathering sensor data and decide if there's anything interesting enough in the system to be worth investigating closer up. 

"- there is an inhabited planet," someone reports after about ten minutes. "What kind of orbit would possibly - but look -"

Mhalir doesn't feel all that surprised. "Maybe some sort of divine magic is involved. ...I want us to be careful, here. Get as much sensor data as we can, including for magic, before we move in closer. The gods are powerful enough to travel between worlds, and they live here..." 

"Yeah." 

They get pictures. It could be Earth or Velgarth or Golarion, from this distance. Blue oceans, green and brown land. A few cities, though they're not getting close so the cities are only barely outlines against the shores they sit on. 

There's magic. The same pattern as Endorë, spots of magic everywhere, though some of the spots seem larger and stronger than the ones on Endorë.