Star Fields

Chapter No.107 The Search.

Chapter No.107 The Search.

A needle in a haystack is found only with pain.

I arrived on the command deck and took my usual position. Everyone was in their appointed positions.

"It's time for us to search for the real Tyco, but I don't have a clue as to where he is."

"I would think he'd be somewhere in a massive galaxy cluster in the Great Attractor region, maybe in an older spiral galaxy," Molly said.

"How many of those are in there?"

"Probably about a billion."

I leaned back in my chair. "I don't think I would place a wager on a choice with those odds."

"No one said this would be easy," she said. "However, I've found a galaxy that appears to be in its death throws. Most new star formation has ceased, and its supermassive black hole is in the process of consuming what little gas is left."

"Any specific location in that?"

"We're too far away for that."

"Take us there, Judy."

Within a few minutes we were positioned above a spiral galaxy that glowed mostly red, a solid indication that it was a dying galaxy with only red dwarf stars remaining.

"Not much in the way of pickings in this mess," I said.

"There are lots of planets around the red dwarf stars," Molly said. "I'm sure we can find one that might be inhabited."

"I have detected a signal from a star in the outer arm of this galaxy," Margaret said. "It might have video data in it."

"I think we'll wait until you have something before we go there," I said.

"Getting a bit cautious in your old age?" Molly teased me.

I chuckled. "Yeah, how old are we now?"

"I estimate it's about 789 years."

"Is that older than Methuselah?"

"Not quite. I think he lived 'til 969 years. It doesn't matter because his age is questionable."

"I would think that our ages are questionable. It's mostly the result of time dilation."

"I think I've got the video resolved," Margaret said.

The image on the main screen was both disturbing and fascination."

"That's a robotic species," I said. "They're totally metallic. Is this part of Tyco's collective?"

"I don't think so," Molly said. "I doubt that Tyco would be advertising his possible location."

"Maybe he's doing this to entice us into a trap."

"Maybe it'll help when the universal translator gets a good translation," Margaret said.

"How far away are we?"

"The source is ten thousand light years away," Judy said.

"This video data is coming from a radio signal, which makes it completely outdated." I turned to Judy. "Take us to within a million kilometers of the planet but keep us in stealth mode."

We arrived at the solar system and moved to a position a million kilometers away from a planet that was almost two times the size of Earth but with a thin atmosphere of mostly nitrogen and around two percent carbon dioxide. It orbited a red dwarf star at the outer edge of the habitable zone.