Star Fields

Chapter No.153. Dyson

Chapter No.153. Dyson

You never know what you'll find.

We arrived at Andromeda and completed the final leg of the trip in warp. When we came out of warp, we were a million kilometers away from the location we knew the Dyson sphere was at.

"That damn Dyson sphere is hard to see," Molly said. "It looks more like a black hole."

"That's because they're using cloaking technology," I said.

Helen turned to me. "What kind of aliens live in a Dyson Sphere?"

"As I recall, they're sort of like the aliens on Talos IV in the Star Trek episode 'Menagerie'. They have large heads, which I assume means that their brains are large. When we came here originally, we assumed that was the reason they were able to construct something as complicated as a Dyson Sphere around a star."

"Did you make contact with them?"

"We tried but they destroyed our probe and tried to take out our ship. We decided to simply avoid any contact."

"How are you going to make contact this time?"

"I can handle their attempts to destroy me." I turned to Judy. "I'll need two battle bots to accompany me. Are they ready?"

Judy smiled. "Always."

I gave her a smile back.

"We are within safe distance of the sphere," Judy informed me.

I stood up. "Show time!"

"You need me?" Alexa asked.

"Nope. You stay here. If I need help, I'll give you a holler."

She smiled.

I could see the location that I wanted to go to and teleported the two battle bots and me to that location. Of course, when we materialized in an open area surrounded by tall conical buildings made from what appeared to be glass, two flying devices descended and began firing energy beams at us. I deflected the beams and the battle bots opened their visors and blasted both of them to pieces. Two others appeared and were dispatched before they even fired at us.

Then I did something that probably scared the shit out of the inhabitants of the sphere. I caused their sun, which was a G5 dwarf star similar to our sun, to dim. The immediate effect, actually after several minutes, was a temperature drop. I looked up along the curvature of the land inside the sphere, a spectacular sight that no human had ever seen. Our Helios station was a puny example of this amazing technology. Something this huge was almost unbelievable.

The sphere rotates to create artificial gravity, but gravity is only normal in a narrow five thousand-kilometer-wide strip along the equator of the inner surface of the sphere. As one travels up towards the poles of the sphere, the gravity would decline. The polar areas are where unimaginable numbers of the solar cells were positioned to provide energy to the artificial world. Despite the gravitational limits, there was enough land area to accommodate many trillions of aliens.

My dimming of the star caused aliens to rush out to me, but they were reluctant to approach.

I raised my arm and made the star return to its full brilliance. I figured that this would be sufficient to demonstrate that I was a god.

The aliens, both male and female, were dressed in one-piece silvery cloaks that covered everything but their hands and faces. Their faces were more proto-human like, but their large brains caused their foreheads to noticeably bulge. None of them had any sighs of hair.

I held up my hand, palm out, which is a universal sign of peace. "Greetings. I am Jason, leader of an android collective. I come in peace."

"How are you able to dim our star?" a male asked.

"I have powers over the quantum world. I could make your star disappear, but I'm not here to cause damage or harm anyone. I am curious about your world and how you constructed it. I wish to duplicate it for my kind."

That caused what I assumed was mind communication between themselves before the spokesman turned to me. "Our ancient ancestors constructed this world. We have ancient manuscripts which show how it was done."

"Excellent! May I see these manuscripts."

"Come," he said.

I followed them to a large domed structure that appeared to have no windows or doors, but when the alien approached it, a doorway appeared. Once inside, the entrance disappeared. The spokesman went over to a large display and activated a light that illuminated a glass enclosed case. Inside the case was a large document with both drawings and mathematical expressions.

I immediately realized that the individuals who had created this magnificent document were engineers, very good engineers. What I looked at would immediately go back to my ship as a data recording.

After looking at all of the documents, I turned to the spokesman. "Thank you for showing me this."

He simply nodded.

"I will depart now," I said before the two battle bots and I teleported back to the ship.

"We saw what happened," Alexa said. "I like that star dimming stunt. That really caught their attention."

I chuckled. "It certainly did."

"The document you saw is incredible," Molly said. "It not only contains how they managed to build the sphere it has the method that they used to obtain the material."

"Apparently, they mined it from planets that orbited the star," I said.

"What good would it do to build it around a G-class star?" Margaret said. "That star will eventually use up its hydrogen and become a red giant, engulfing the sphere."

"That's true," I replied. "But my intention is to build it around a red dwarf."

"That would preserve it for much longer, but what about the massive flares that red dwarfs emit?"

"We can mitigate that by slowing the spin of the star. We can also make the magnetic field that protects the sphere more effective."

"I have the best star for that," Molly said. "It's a thousand light years away from Earth and has six large rocky planets orbiting it."

"Is that like Trappist-1?" I asked.

"Yes, but it's a much brighter M-class star."

"Let's go check it out to see if anyone's living on those planets."

We used spin drive to return to the Milky Way galaxy and the star location that Molly told us about.

The star was definitely a M-class star. It was red and was full of sunspots that were generating plenty of flares. Molly was right. Six rocky planets orbited the star in the habitable zone. They ranged from nearly Earth size to several times Earth's mass.

"The more massive planets have heavy atmospheres," Molly said. "The smaller planets have atmospheres more like Earth's."

"I'm not detecting any radio wave emissions from those planets," Alicia said.

"None of those planets has any appreciable oxygen," Margaret said. "The larger planets have violent storms. Three of the planets are tidally locked to the star."

"Sounds like there's not much in the way of life on any of them," I said. "However, to make absolutely sure, we'll go to each one and send probes down to search for lifeforms."

I realized that it would be a tedious task, but I had no intentions of killing anything alive.