8-292: Merchant Freighter Spanial – Control

Karmen looks at Kort for a long moment, then out the view port at the churning rust-coloured cauldron of clouds below.  

“Jennie, have we done a complete orbit of the planet?”

“Yes, almost two at variable speeds.”

Karmen continues, “Ipan, switch to active scanning.”

Kort says, “Lizards Karmen!  You want to go active?”

Lia knows from her pilot training that spacecraft usually rely on passive sensors, ie ones that detect incoming radiation such as heat, radio waves or light.  Most spacecraft have active sensors, but they aren’t used all that often.  An active sensor works by putting out radiation and bouncing it off a target to return a signal, but as soon as a ship goes active that radiation makes it readily detectable by other ships’ passive arrays.  

Karmen ignores him, “Ipan, tight focus, radar bands.  Try not to let anything leak off into space and keep the planet behind the search zone.  If it’s as electrically active as Lia says it is, it will hopefully mask our active scans.”

Does Lia want to do or say anything?