"Its a little early in the game to have something like this happen."

With Anfo and Bavmet both confined to quarters for an altercation that exceeded the parameters of their agreement with the Captain, Archer and his Bridge crew stared at the viewer, fixed on the planet's surface, focusing on fine detail as it never could on the vast expanse of space. Problem was--there was nothing to focus on. Tucker held up an opened palm as he shrugged.

"No colony flag, no center of town. Hell--no town. First thing the yokels do is proclaim that they have a place. But they don't. They don't even have a they."

Reed read the same scans, and repeated it all from his angle.

"No sign of weapons' discharge. There's neither plasma, sulfur--or for that matter, sulfa. No signs of a fight, or the things people do after a fight. I'm tempted to see if anyone inscribed 'Crotoan' on some of the trees. Except we can't go down there, can we?"

Hoshi spoke of the incredibly obvious, but no one at all pointed this out.

"There is no human above the age of two who doesn't carry multiple forms of communication technology, either on or in their person. Even when we die, many of these things are designed to continue at ridiculous ranges and through insane obstacles. Except--except right now."

Doctor Phlox was a man who prided himself on the thought that every mystery had a solution, or the pieces of a solution. Pride goeth before, and sometimes it goeth after.

"You humans make your presence known. Once you have been someplace, no matter how cleanly you might be, something of you remains behind. But I'm not even reading dandruff flakes, and I know something about that residue. A report on it formed the basis of my final thesis paper. I have to wonder if I'd deserve that high grade now, in light of this."

Mayweather put the final nail in the search for Terra Nova.

"Colonists always have a stash of junk food, meant to be opened when planetfall is made. We used to trade well when one of them would pass us by. In fact--we met these people. You'dve thought dill garlic pickles were spun gold. But garlic isn't native to this world, and I am not reading an herb that is not exactly known for simply dissipating. Trust a man who's born to shipboard life. Even a single garlic pickle will make its presence known, and rapidly."

Archer sighed, and performed yet another grim task. He shuddered at how he no longer shuddered at such things.

"Then let it be known that on this date, the Earth colony Terra Nova Tin--I mean TerraTin--"

He breathed in, and tried again.

"..Terra Nova Number Ten was found to have vanished without a trace. Fearing a similar fate from a force we cannot at all define or detect or confirm the existence of, we are breaking orbit and recommending against further colonization of this world. Creation bless and keep these lost souls."

The second shift came up, a group of junior officers Archer wanted broken into Bridge duty as soon as possible. At Mayweather's suggestion, the movie that evening was a double feature - 1957's 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' and 2017's 'Superman and The Rescue Of Kandor'. But as the latter feature's primitive Tri-CGI drew the accustomed guffaws, Archer's mind was still on a mystery that was not his to solve, the fate of a lost colony.

"Its a little early in the game to have something like this happen.