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Book 5: Chapter 3: What’s Up?
Book 5: Chapter 3: What’s Up?
Book 5: Chapter 3: What’s Up?
Icarus
June 2312
Interstellar Space
Iwas reconfiguring my VR when Dae abruptly popped in. He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped and looked around at the black walls, floor, and ceiling with horizontal and vertical yellow lines.
“Cute,” he said. “Enterprise holodeck.”
“It seems like an appropriate metaphor for a VR reset,” I replied. “Although kind of meta, if you think about it. You generally ping me before popping over. Something’s up.”
Dae shrugged. Even from a Bob point of view, we knew each other’s behavior far too well. “Uh, yeah. The surveys I’ve been doing of passing systems … ”
“You found something? What?”
“Something.” Dae chuckled. “That sounded Guppy-like, even to me. Nevertheless. I need your eyes and your opinion.”
“Sure thing. Entertain me.”Dae growled under his breath but popped up a window. I spent several mils examining the telemetry. A system that we’d just recently come even with was emitting microwaves. Not a ton of them, and only from a couple of spots. But …
“That’s not natural,” I said.
“Yup,” he replied. “Remember we were talking about reasons to stop?”
“Uh-huh. Ask and ye shall find. GUPPY!”
Guppy appeared.
[You rang?]
Ignoring the gibe, I replied, “Begin deceleration, maximum safe rate. Contact Dae’s Guppy and coordinate. Let us know when you’ve established an expected date to have dropped to galactic orbital velocity, and we’ll set up our destination system.”
Guppy nodded and disappeared.
“He nodded,” Dae said. “You programmed that?”
“No, I think he just picked it up from us. But it’s an improvement from just disappearing, so I’m gonna go with.”
Dae chuckled. “I guess we should squirt a preliminary report back to Bill as well.”
“Yep. Looks like we’re back on the clock.”