On A Distant Shore.

Hammar stood, or at least their Avatar stood, on an outcropping of coral in the midst of a bright blue ocean. Some way distant, although Hammer was being relayed information across the whole electromagnetic spectrum - so distance was largely irrelevant, the coral blossomed from the sea in a mound fifteen kilometres across. Rising at first gradually as it narrowed, the coral stretched upward. At a height of five thousand metres, its width was down to six kilometres, five thousand more and it narrowed to three. At three kilometres wide (or diameter as the coral column was cylindrical) it stayed, as it disappeared up in to the haze of a pale teal sky streaked with thin clouds tinged pink by the impending sunset. Hammar, sight augmented by the full sensor array of their ship in orbit, could easily penetrate the haze and the distance. To Hammar, the full length of the column was visible as it reached up, puncturing the atmospheric envelope of the planet, and - needle-like - stretching almost 40 thousand kilometres, until it reached, and bonded with, an impossibly spherical moon.

The inhabitants of this world, water-dwellers, rarely spending more than a few hours on land at a time, had absolutely no idea of the sheer scale, or indeed the purpose, of the coral monolith. Nor could they guess at its age. Hammar’s sensors - for the ship and Hammar were essentially one - could date the coral with an accuracy of +/- 200 years, which was a degree or two of specificity unneeded, when all the data suggested the column was over thirty million years old. Of course, it wasn’t simply a column, it was the remnants of a space elevator. Built by an alien civilisation long lost in time, able to harness and control the power of tiny sea creatures, to build a device to grant access to the stars.

Hammar was impressed, and they weren’t impressed very often at all.

Having seen enough, and aware that all the data that could be collected, had been collected, Hammar triggered their return code. At a thought, although that term was insufficient, Hammar’s body on the surface of the planet dissolved in to the air. A kilo, no more, of smart matter, swirled with obvious purpose and coalesced in to a small dense dart. The dart hovered, roughly where Hammar’s head had been, and vanished leaving nothing but the crack of a sonic boom in its place.