SF Detective Fiction

Both the external features and the internal environment of a spaceship furnish clues as to the nature of the space travelers and of their home environment. Approaching a hostile battleship by gravsled, David Falkayn photographs, studies and commits every datum to memory. The attendant ships, in a tight formation, look too small to have crews and he deduces that they are entirely robotic. Maybe the battleship contains just a single alien commander and the one human being that has communicated with Falkayn?

Entering the airlock:

Falkayn's instrumentation confirms that the artificial garvity is 1.07 Terrestrial;

illumination is a third as bright as Terrestrial;

spectral distribution indicates an F-type home star although you cannot be sure with fluorescents...

Every detail matters. Any single datum might turn out to be crucial later.