The landing had been a smooth one, and so far, nothing seemed amiss. Denis reached up and pressed the button on his comm.

"Touched down smoothly on the ice field. GPR registers hidden crevices under snow drifts but they should be well covered. Got a strong breeze but good visibility. Preparing the sledge and buckling up for the ground mission now. Over."

"Alright, we see you on the screen, Denis. Take care and good luck! Over."

There was a soft hissing sound from back in the spacecraft as Denis' partner, Silvia, opened the hatch and began lowering the sledge. This mission promised to be an easy one - survey the planet, gauge how realistically suitable it was for life, leave.

"No worries, Captain, we got this covered. It's only ice and snow, right, Silv? Let's move! Over and out."

"Roger and out."

Denis eased himself out of his seat and strolled back to join Silvia, rewrapping his scarf around the lower half of his face. They nodded once to each other - a silent good-luck ritual of sorts that started each of their journeys.

They slid carefully down the slope of the lowered section of the spacecraft and landed in a snowdrift next to the sledge. Climbing in, Silvia in the driver's seat, Denis tugged off his scarf and folded it neatly beside him.

"Let's head out," Denis murmured and Silvia, never one for wasted words, nodded silently and pressed the gas pedal. Behind them, their spaceship closed slowly, prepared to open again when they returned.

*

"...Denis? Stand by, we read a strange signature near your landing site. Denis? Silv?"

**

"What are we dealing with here, Lucas?" Jordan asked, propping her feet up on the dash of the spaceship, which was currently running on autopilot.

Lucas rifled through the file again, although he had pored over the details enough that he knew the information by heart. "Captain hired a couple Explorers to gauge the hospitality of a Goldilocks planet. Everything seemed fine, they were all excited for the mission - which sounds like a sweep-in, by the way - and then their comms went offline, right around the same time when Captain started picking up some really weird signatures from around their landing site."

"What constitutes 'weird?'" Jordan asked dryly, doubtless remembering all of the strange things the pair had encountered over the years.

"Huge heat signatures. Some parts of the scanner actually went dark, like they died or something, but they went back online after a few minutes. They sent a couple crafts to do a fly-by of the zone, nothing serious, just to see what had happened, and nothing had changed. Heat signatures like those? It should have been a slushy, half-frozen nightmare. But it was snowdrifts, just like before. The snowdrifts hadn't even changed position if I remember right."

"So something's wrong with their scanners," Jordan tried, but Lucas shook his head slowly.

"They're brand-new - state-of-the-art - and they've been used on several missions just like this one before. Nothing like this has ever happened. In fact, nothing like this has ever happened with any scanner, unless it was on its deathbed. But these scanners didn't die afterward. They went back to functioning normally."

"What exactly do they want us to do about this?" Jordan asked.

"Launch a decoy ship, have it land on the planet, survey from above - stealth mode, of course - and see what happens. We'll be watching in-person, they'll be watching via scanners."

"Ah, yes. Their fully functioning scanners."

"It's all they've got."

Their ship slowed from jump mode as they reached the Goldilocks planet. Lucas tapped a few buttons and the ship began to descend into orbit - just enough that they could safely launch the decoy, but still high up enough that stealth mode would be effective.

He flipped the switch that would camouflage the belly of the spacecraft and then set about setting up the decoy launch. "Can you hop on the comms and let everyone know that things are going smoothly?" he asked Jordan, who sighed irritably but did as he asked.

In a matter of minutes, the decoy was launched, the captain was clued into their progress, and both Lucas and Jordan were using their Bird's Eye Viewfinders to watch the spot where - according to their maps - Denis and Silvia had disappeared.

It was odd, Lucas couldn't help but think, the fact that they were staring down at some ordinary-appearing snowdrifts where just days earlier, two competent Explorers had gone missing without a trace.

The decoy landed without an issue. Lucas kept his gaze trained on it, flinching when the crackle of his comm rang in his ear.

"Anything? Over."

"No. Anything on your end? Over."

"Nothing yet. It took a few minutes for the sensors to start acting up last time, so we'll give it a little bit. Over."

And so they sat. And waited. And sat some more.

And then there was a shudder beneath them that shook the snowdrifts surrounding the decoy spaceship.

Lucas and the captain tried to contact each other at the same time. Lucas let the captain go first.

"Our sensors are picking up on those heat signatures again. Something tells me we won't be able to watch for much longer through these. Over."

"...Lucas? What are you seeing on your end? Over."

"Jordan? Lucas! Someone, come in. Over."

"Sorry, Captain." Jordan picked up communications. For once, her voice wasn't thick with sarcasm or boredom. Lucas was too white-faced and shell-shocked to speak. "We, uh...the, the snow that's covering this planet?"

"Yes, Jordan, what is it?"

"It's not snow."

Lucas just kept watching the planet's surface as the snowdrifts - the things that they had mistaken for snowdrifts - walked around the spaceship, huge and fang-toothed and horrifying. Everyone was silent until finally, the snowdrift monsters turned around and returned to their exact former positions. They sunk to the ground, settled for a few seconds.

And then they were gone, melting back into the snowy tundra.

"Put this planet on the no-fly list," Lucas said, too terrified to care about ordering the captain around. "Your people are gone, Captain.

"It's too late for them now."