It is a better question, better chances at getting a better answer, because at first, it's a gut feeling. Clark moves to place his feet upon what he interprets as the floor, scanning around himself, at some of the old debris that still hangs here, suspended. "I recognise the alloy," after a few moments of thought. "And it just..."
Because as much as it has to be space craft, it also reminds Clark of giant, fossilised animal. Roaming a Kryptonian vessel feels a lot like taking the Magic School Bus through some colossal creature's arteries, or oddly empty chambers within an exoskeleton. They curve and wind, plant-like and efficient only in the way biological things are, not constructed. Probably because, like so many things on Krypton, it was grown, not built.
"Just looks like it," he settles on. "I can't tell how big it was, though. Or what it was for."
Maybe he's standing in a single-chambered boarding vessel, or a room from one of their bigger arks. He pushes off without redirecting that force into the debris, flying around it, looking back towards where he can see Bruce as a slightly distorted vision of heat, life. "Can we do anything with its trajectory? I altered it a little," apologetic, but hopefully they already got what they needed.
"It was being tracked before you got to it," Bruce confirms. Recorded since picking it up on long-range scanners; can't have Clark zipping out there to poke his fingers at something blind. Kryptonite, after all, comes from Krypton.
"Let's take some time to thoroughly look at it before we go down a rabbit hole, and travel for three weeks before we realize it ricocheted off an asteroid that hasn't been in the area for a hundred years."
Ever the patient detective. First, learn.
"Is it in one solid piece, or are there remnants of anything still attached?"
The patient detective might be sounding it out, might also anticipate Clark's desire to follow a trail, one that's as cold as it gets. No argument from Superman, though, capitulating from his unspoken suggestion to turn his focus back to this drifting piece of archaeology. No scrapes from extra debris, which is promising as far asteroid ricochet possibilities go (save for the fact that it's very much already a broken off chunk of a whole), but then again, Kryptonian material is built to last the ages.
Batrocket computers already have the basics locked in: the unit's dimension slot neatly into a forty by forty by forty cube of space, represented by one big piece with a drift cloud of debris which expands a further one hundred foot radius at the furthest point. Much of it can be clocked on the scanners as exploded metal fragments and little else.
This, though, benefits from a close up view. (Or, if Bruce is simply letting Clark participate, he appreciates that just as well.)
"This part's a door," he reports, drifting closer. "Might be some hardware I can pull out." A beat, and he adds, "No power sources, or they're fully dormant. I think this was part of a larger chamber. This wall's internal, but the floor is lower decks. Was."
Investigation very much requires Clark, as far as Bruce is concerned— both because his own ability to intuit what's Kryptonian and isn't is significantly less keen, and because he'd rather not bring the ship in closer to miscellaneous debris unless it's necessary. They're not on an aimless hunt, out here. Darkseid is on his way.
Bruce keeps things close in mind: One, the Mother Box feared Superman. Two, he has had no dreams of this. It's worth it to cast a line into space, and into what can be salvaged of Kal-El's people and their technology. He taps on the scanner interface, watching tiny numbers attach themselves to every bit of shrapnel, monitoring it. Go fish.
"Nothing's popping up on the scans as a power source either," he confirms. "Could still be dead converters, if it was near any kind of interactable panel. Doors. Hall closets."
Like outfit pods.
"Lower decks because of the contour of the remaining hull?"
Clark holds off on salvage for now, oh so gently placing a hand on excruciatingly cold metal. Both out of sentiment, logging to himself the tactile sensation of space-worn alloy, like feeling the weathered edges of an ancient grave, but also to see if there's any response. Listening, sensing, seeing for any indication of nanotech churning towards whatever possible signature his hand might convey.
Nothing immediately. He presses his mouth into a line.
"Yeah," he confirms. "So, a bigger craft. Most of them are, I guess."
Carefully, he sets his fingernails into the seam where the door slides closed, and he really only needs a fraction of a millimetre of leverage to apply his strength and start to force it open. He's been making good use of the space-age sunbed on the shuttle, and so in spite of Kryptonian sturdier make, the metal is forced apart until he can look through.
Less dense metal layering over his ability to see through it makes for a cleaner scan as he looks around a chamber. Not a whole chamber, cracked open like an egg with visible space showing through jagged gaps, but he moves inside of it anyway.
Momentarily, out of visual range of the shuttle. And then, over comms, "Think I found something."
Bruce dislikes Clark being out of visual range on principle, regardless of the fact that he can't really see anyway. He finds himself leaning involuntarily, like someone trying to get a better view of a fixed image in a YouTube video, and abruptly rights himself.
"If you think so, you probably did."
A brief pine for Diana's archeologist's eye, followed up by an immediate karma twinge to his lower back.
"If you can safely rotate it so the cavity is facing here," Bruce just goes ahead and points, since he knows Clark can see him if he wants to, "I can scan the insides."
Holding position until confirmation or decline. Distantly, he thinks about his back injury, and whether or not he'll survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere at some later date, and if this outing will have been worth it if he doesn't. The thought slips away from him, careless— if he minded the chance of his own death, he wouldn't ever leave the house.
A few pieces of debris connect, spin off in changed directions, but nothing fast enough to worry about as Clark slowly pivots the whole thing. Once angled where Bruce had indicated, he grips onto it to slow its momentum completely, a fixed point in space under his hand until he's able to let go.
The chamber has more panels, and several protrusions that look a little like the pods that housed Kryptonian armor (and Kryptonians), only smaller. Clark touches one of them, reluctant to brute force it open, and instead scans through the outer shell.
It only takes a moment before he reports, with a hint of wonder, "Android."
The scan begins. Bruce watches the holographic image begin to form in the air in front of him, shimmering, compiling with the scans of the outside of the debris. Piecing it together, even though he doesn't know how to categorize the sum of its parts.
Space is fascinating. Like dinosaurs. There's a spark buried under years of ash and soot, daring to be interested, to find it inspiring, and encouraging of creativity and imagination. In some other world, Bruce is a brilliant engineer and scientist because he wants to be, not because there's a knife held at his throat all day, ever day.
Now, Clark goes about extracting it, peeling back metal with watchful care that he isn't damaging anything important as he does so. Revealing the textured, hooded eye of the robot make, near identical to the one on board his ship back home. It doesn't activate in his presence, no ripple of life, but perhaps there's something they can do with it.
If not bring it online, then take whatever information it might be storing. He takes a little time in disconnecting it from its pod, making sure that anything he breaks or snaps is not actually an intrinsic part of the android.
"There you go," he says, as he pulls it free. Then, "Should I bring it in?"
"Yeah. If we can rev it up, it may be able to find the rest of its ship. And barring anything immediately useful, a great souvenir."
Batman doesn't have a sense of humor. Anyway. He does some fussing with the controls to prep opening the cargo chamber, where their inert new friend can be stowed for decontamination. Never know what a robot might have picked up floating in space— just because Clark is theoretically immune to subatomic germs that can survive in a vacuum doesn't mean Bruce would be.
"Is there anything else that looks unique? Even from a spare parts perspective?"
Half of his attention on the scanner, meanwhile. No one's crept up on them yet, on this journey, but he doesn't trust the quiet vastness of space now that he knows what's out here.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Because as much as it has to be space craft, it also reminds Clark of giant, fossilised animal. Roaming a Kryptonian vessel feels a lot like taking the Magic School Bus through some colossal creature's arteries, or oddly empty chambers within an exoskeleton. They curve and wind, plant-like and efficient only in the way biological things are, not constructed. Probably because, like so many things on Krypton, it was grown, not built.
"Just looks like it," he settles on. "I can't tell how big it was, though. Or what it was for."
Maybe he's standing in a single-chambered boarding vessel, or a room from one of their bigger arks. He pushes off without redirecting that force into the debris, flying around it, looking back towards where he can see Bruce as a slightly distorted vision of heat, life. "Can we do anything with its trajectory? I altered it a little," apologetic, but hopefully they already got what they needed.
no subject
"Let's take some time to thoroughly look at it before we go down a rabbit hole, and travel for three weeks before we realize it ricocheted off an asteroid that hasn't been in the area for a hundred years."
Ever the patient detective. First, learn.
"Is it in one solid piece, or are there remnants of anything still attached?"
A drawer, maybe. What does he know.
no subject
Batrocket computers already have the basics locked in: the unit's dimension slot neatly into a forty by forty by forty cube of space, represented by one big piece with a drift cloud of debris which expands a further one hundred foot radius at the furthest point. Much of it can be clocked on the scanners as exploded metal fragments and little else.
This, though, benefits from a close up view. (Or, if Bruce is simply letting Clark participate, he appreciates that just as well.)
"This part's a door," he reports, drifting closer. "Might be some hardware I can pull out." A beat, and he adds, "No power sources, or they're fully dormant. I think this was part of a larger chamber. This wall's internal, but the floor is lower decks. Was."
no subject
Bruce keeps things close in mind: One, the Mother Box feared Superman. Two, he has had no dreams of this. It's worth it to cast a line into space, and into what can be salvaged of Kal-El's people and their technology. He taps on the scanner interface, watching tiny numbers attach themselves to every bit of shrapnel, monitoring it. Go fish.
"Nothing's popping up on the scans as a power source either," he confirms. "Could still be dead converters, if it was near any kind of interactable panel. Doors. Hall closets."
Like outfit pods.
"Lower decks because of the contour of the remaining hull?"
no subject
Nothing immediately. He presses his mouth into a line.
"Yeah," he confirms. "So, a bigger craft. Most of them are, I guess."
Carefully, he sets his fingernails into the seam where the door slides closed, and he really only needs a fraction of a millimetre of leverage to apply his strength and start to force it open. He's been making good use of the space-age sunbed on the shuttle, and so in spite of Kryptonian sturdier make, the metal is forced apart until he can look through.
Less dense metal layering over his ability to see through it makes for a cleaner scan as he looks around a chamber. Not a whole chamber, cracked open like an egg with visible space showing through jagged gaps, but he moves inside of it anyway.
Momentarily, out of visual range of the shuttle. And then, over comms, "Think I found something."
no subject
"If you think so, you probably did."
A brief pine for Diana's archeologist's eye, followed up by an immediate karma twinge to his lower back.
"If you can safely rotate it so the cavity is facing here," Bruce just goes ahead and points, since he knows Clark can see him if he wants to, "I can scan the insides."
Holding position until confirmation or decline. Distantly, he thinks about his back injury, and whether or not he'll survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere at some later date, and if this outing will have been worth it if he doesn't. The thought slips away from him, careless— if he minded the chance of his own death, he wouldn't ever leave the house.
no subject
The chamber has more panels, and several protrusions that look a little like the pods that housed Kryptonian armor (and Kryptonians), only smaller. Clark touches one of them, reluctant to brute force it open, and instead scans through the outer shell.
It only takes a moment before he reports, with a hint of wonder, "Android."
kicks down door
Space is fascinating. Like dinosaurs. There's a spark buried under years of ash and soot, daring to be interested, to find it inspiring, and encouraging of creativity and imagination. In some other world, Bruce is a brilliant engineer and scientist because he wants to be, not because there's a knife held at his throat all day, ever day.
Ah, but the knife is its own inspiration.
"Like Kelex?"
Bruce's best friend!
no subject
Now, Clark goes about extracting it, peeling back metal with watchful care that he isn't damaging anything important as he does so. Revealing the textured, hooded eye of the robot make, near identical to the one on board his ship back home. It doesn't activate in his presence, no ripple of life, but perhaps there's something they can do with it.
If not bring it online, then take whatever information it might be storing. He takes a little time in disconnecting it from its pod, making sure that anything he breaks or snaps is not actually an intrinsic part of the android.
"There you go," he says, as he pulls it free. Then, "Should I bring it in?"
no subject
Batman doesn't have a sense of humor. Anyway. He does some fussing with the controls to prep opening the cargo chamber, where their inert new friend can be stowed for decontamination. Never know what a robot might have picked up floating in space— just because Clark is theoretically immune to subatomic germs that can survive in a vacuum doesn't mean Bruce would be.
"Is there anything else that looks unique? Even from a spare parts perspective?"
Half of his attention on the scanner, meanwhile. No one's crept up on them yet, on this journey, but he doesn't trust the quiet vastness of space now that he knows what's out here.