ShepardThe three occupants of the spacecraft had little to do as the survey progressed. The surface below them was mostly featureless. Here and there, pieces protruded far enough above the surface to be noticed from a thousand kilometers. Since there was no sun to cast shadows, the only usable light came from Keid-B, currently forty AUs distant, and Keid-A, 400 AUs away. The two stars were bright, about one-third that of Sol or Ran, too bright to look at directly, but could not be resolved into disks with the eye. They created distinct shadows visible on the sphere’s dull surface. Most of the surface features were differences in shading. From Shepard’s height, they could not tell if the features were real or just artifacts their eyes created, trying to connect dots that were not really the
