He tries to check, then pronounces, "I have no idea what I'm looking at. I couldn't tell you if they even have batteries, not without long-term and in-depth scrying. It's just - extremely foreign."

"Well, I don't see a lot of alien skeletons, carapcaces, or chitin around, and the cities are really, really overgrown - so I'm inclined to think it's not likely they're still working."

"Yeah. I'm intensely curious about what happened there, but I'm a little hesitant to just - go visit and see."

"If it was some kind of biological problem - I'm really not getting the impression that humans lived here, however improbably similar you and I are. If it was a disaster or a war, it looks pretty thoroughly over at this point."

"True. I don't know if there's a way to check for biological problems - the air's breathable, the ground isn't toxic to the touch, but if it's some kind of germ I haven't figured out how to get a scry to get that in-depth yet."

"How can your scry tell what particles are in the air and not look at the microorganisms?"

"Mostly because I didn't know they existed a few months ago and I haven't figured how to make it do that yet," says Adarin wryly.

"Oh. Yes, I suppose that makes sense. Well, we might have a problem with diseases on any planet with an ecology. We have here strong evidence that one species went suddenly extinct here, a long time ago, but any complicated set of evolved life is going to have a history of extinctions that just don't leave artifacts lying around. This one at least has the benefit of plausible explanations like 'they had a war' on top of the unlikelihood that we're susceptible to extraplanetary germs anyway."

"Fair enough. It's sounding like you'd like to go visit."

"I'm seriously tempted. If you want to wait a while trying to make your scrying work on viruses and monocellular life I won't fight you on it."

"It would make me feel better. I'd also like to prod my sister for a return teleportation if something goes horrifically wrong, so we're not stranded there if it turns out people do live there and they like to collect scalps."

"That's a sensible precaution, I support it."

He smiles a little. "Thanks. I guess I'll get to work on how to make scrying work on germs. We do have time, it's not like the planet's going anywhere."

"Except around its sun."

He snorts with laughter. "Well, yes. But it's not going to get up and walk away."

"It will not. Since we're being conservative about germs and most planets that are interesting have this concern, I guess we can call it a day on planet-shopping?"

"I think so, yeah. We got basically all of the planets that meet the requirements within one teleportation of Earth - there are probably others further out, but if we want to get to those we'll have to find a planet to stay at during the interim. Which has its own problems."

Isabella nods.

Adarin gives Isabella a quick kiss, then says, "Alright, I'll go mutter to myself about germ theory and scrying combinations. Wish me luck!"