In the pitch-black Liquid Ammonia Ocean, a giant fish roughly two hundred meters long kept flexing its powerful body, diving ever deeper.
An entirely silver-white Exploration Ship struggled along behind it, its brilliant white searchlights blazing.
Every so often, the giant fish ahead slowed its descent and hovered in place, waiting for the Exploration Ship to catch up.
What a harmonious scene.
If one ignored the endless stream of disparaging remarks coming from the translation device, that was.
"I never thought..."
Hope slumped against his seat in despair, staring blankly at the orange-red ring of light flickering beyond the viewport. "These giant fish are chatterboxes too?"
Still, it made sense when he thought about it.
Living in such a vast Liquid Ammonia Ocean, perhaps talking to themselves was the only way they could ease their loneliness.
At that thought, a faint trace of sympathy rose in Hope's heart.
The descent took an extraordinarily long time.
As they went deeper, the pressure around the Exploration Ship rose sharply, and the temperature of the Liquid Ammonia Sea grew considerably warmer than it had been at the start.
Like Neptune, this ice giant had its own internal heat source.
"The Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism," Hope muttered as he watched the thermometer reading climb. "When the surface of a star or planet cools, its pressure drops, and that pressure loss is ultimately compensated for through contraction."
"During that contraction, the potential energy of matter falling inward is converted into heat, indirectly heating the core of the star or planet."
"It usually occurs in gas giants, ice giants, or brown dwarfs."
Hansent: "..."
My head itches. Feels like I'm about to grow a brain.
"Numerous unidentified objects detected."
The synthesized electronic voice interrupted their "discussion."
Hansent instinctively looked up toward the viewport.
"...Holy shit!!" both men