[Communication received from Milo]
“Right on time.” I grinned at Guppy. Predictably, he returned a fishy poker face. “I wonder if he found Vulcans.”
[Not quite]
I raised an eyebrow. That was a far cry from the flat “no” that I’d normally expect from Guppy. If he responded at all. Now my curiosity was way up.
I’d been deep into one of my pet projects—creating realistic artificial bodies. The ultimate problem was producing a muscle analog that worked, looked, and generally acted similar enough to the natural thing. Gears, pistons, and cables would never produce a workable android.
I forced myself to close the project folder, invoked a coffee, kicked off a goose that had settled into my lawn chair, and sat down. Spike ambled over, ignoring the angry goose, and set up shop in my lap.
“Okay, Guppy. Let’s see it.”
Milo’s report spread before me in mid-air. System schematics, close-ups of the twin planets—two habitable planets!—and biological analyses. I chuckled at his insistence on naming them. I’d have done the same. Probably would have picked the same names, come to that.
I sat back, staring into space, so preoccupied that I stopped patting Spike. I was reminded of my primary duty by a furry head butting against my chin.
Two planets. In a system that was generally considered a marginal candidate for any habitable planets. Were the astrophysicists wrong? Granted, so far we only had three data points, including Earth. But that’s three out of three, if you were willing to be generous with Ragnarök.
Well, first things first. I queued up the report to be forwarded to Earth, just in case Milo hadn’t sent a copy that way. Hopefully, Riker would be listening.
That left the million-dollar question, which was whether there was anyone left back at Sol to take advantage of this. I was periodically transmitting the plans for the SCUT to every system within thirty light-years, just in case there was a Bob there at some point. But the first transmission to Sol wouldn’t arrive for another nine years or so. I was going to be chewing my nails for a while, looked like.
I pinged Garfield. “Hey, Gar, have you read the latest from Milo?”
He popped into my VR and pointed at his face. “Does this look boggled enough?”
We shared a laugh, and he continued, “It’s awesome. We have a place to put people. Assuming there are still people.” Garfield grimaced. “That would be just the kind of sick joke the universe likes to play. Let’s hope not this time.”
I nodded. “Yeppers. You know, it’s funny. When I left Earth, I just wanted to get away from humanity. Now I find myself acting like some kind of, I dunno, shepherd or something.”
“How does the old joke go? I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”
“Hmm, well, we’ll know in a few years. Meanwhile, how’s the Kuiper mapping going?”
Garfield popped up a schematic. Because of the time required to get a chunk of ice from the Kuiper to Ragnarök, we were taking the time to look for the biggest chunks. The extra effort up front would pay off later. Most chunks seemed to be too small to bother with, but Gar had found a couple of good icebergs and dropped beacons on them. I still hadn’t quite decided how I was going to get them moving in the right direction. ṜаNՕ𝖇Еṥ