Microbe by Joan Slonczewski (Analog, August 1995) is one of the author’s ‘Elysium Cycle’ stories, and opens with an exploration team discussing the biochemistry of the alien planet, IP3, that they are orbiting. The team are Andra, a human female; Skyhook, a sentient space shuttle AI; and Pelt, a sentient nanoplast AI who also serves as a protective suit for Andra.
Their discussion, in particular, focuses on the alien cell structure of life on the planet, and they watch as an alien cell splits into three. Unfortunately these discussions (there are more later on in the story) tend to result in writing like this:
“The usual double helix?” asked Skyhook. The double helix is a ladder of DNA nucleotide pairs, always adenine with thymine or guanine with cytosine, for the four different “letters” of the DNA code. When a cell divides to make two cells, the entire helix unzips, then fills in a complementary strand for each daughter cell. p. 372 (Year’s Best SF, edited by David Hartwell)
The second act of the story sees Andra, Pelt and Skyhook exploring the surface, where they discover a herd of strange rolling aliens which are later attacked by a much larger one. Then Pelt starts malfunctioning, and Andra (spoiler) barely makes it back to the shuttle before Pelt shuts down. There is some further discussion about the way that the alien microbes attacked Pelt’s nanoplast structure, and the crew’s solution.
This reads like part science lecture, part story, and has an open ending that suggests it is the first chapter of a novel. I’d have preferred a longer piece that was more of a story, but overall this is okay, I guess.
** (Average). 4,200 words.