Proxima Adventure

Chapter 19. Confusion

Chapter 19. Confusion.

Charles allowed Alice to pilot the ship on its voyage to the N2 Lupi star system, which is 48 light years away from Earth. She activated the faster than light tachyon system that got them there in just two days. They could have cut down that time, but they agreed that it might push the engines too far.

"This is a G-class main sequence star that's much older than our Sun," Alice told Charles. "It has seven planets orbiting it. The one we want to examine is a super earth orbiting in the habitable zone. It appears to have an Earth-sized moon."

Charles rubbed his jaw. "Yes, I doubt that it had life on it, but it's still possible."

"What exactly are we looking for?" Carl asked.

"This system is directly in line with the space rift that caused our blackout. Even if it had no intelligent life, it probably had some sort of living creatures. If we find that it was vaporized clean, it will be verification that the disaster that condemned us to everlasting life in purgatory was from the space rift."

"Is the rift still active?" Dave asked.

"No," Vicky replied. "However, we should still be able to see it." She adjusted the telescopic view of that part of space.

"It looks like a black hole that's been squashed into a black slot," Charles commented. "Maybe it's a wormhole."

"That's a possibility," Judy said. "But that would suggest that the energy beam that caused the blackout came from somewhere much further away."

"Maybe it came from the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy," Beverly said. "They tend to get active and emit relativistic jets."

"Yeah, but they emit from the poles of the blackhole, which wouldn't be pointing in this direction."

"The blackout event was short lived," Charles said. "That's also not consistent for a relativistic jet."

"Maybe we'll get more evidence of what it is by examining the moon orbiting the super earth planet," Carl suggested.

"Who's going down on that?" Vicky asked.

"I think it's my turn," Charles replied. He turned to Alice. "How about you?"

She gave him a brief smirk. "Yes, I will go with you."

No one complained.

After the ship was in orbit around the moon, which was orbiting a rocky super earth planet, the view of the moon revealed some interesting artifacts.

"Well, that's not what I expected," Vicky reacted. "It appears as if this was the home of an intelligent species."

"I believe you're right," Alice said. "'Those structures are not natural. However, the moon's land masses look rather odd."

"They were probably stripped of any life, but the atmospheric heating didn't destroy their structures."

"Should we go down there?" Alice asked Charles.

"I believe we should." He stood up, and she joined him.

"Hold the fort," he told the crew.

They walked to the elevator and went to the hanger deck, leaving the others to wonder why the two leaders would go together on a possibly dangerous mission.

After boarding a shuttle, Charles began the process of traveling to the moon orbiting a large planet.

"Do we need spacesuits?" Charles asked her.

"Not really. This moon has six percent oxygen. We should be ok."

"When did you find that we aren't breathing much oxygen?"