Perfect Answer

Two veteran prospectors travel between star systems cataloging human-habitable planets and debating whether to cash in or continue investigating a puzzling pattern: many worlds support human life but display either decadent regression or extreme reactions to off-world visitors. Choosing to investigate one more system, they land beside a large coastal city that looks openly civilized and potentially explanatory. A welcoming, diverse crowd surrounds them and they begin the slow work of communication, aided by a recording device, while the story explores the tension between profit-driven colonization and scientific curiosity and the mystery behind repeated cultural decline.