It took about nine hours before I was deemed ready to leave the medbay.

Amavasya gently guided me to the command center, located in the very heart of the ship. It was about as spacious as the old capsules the long-dead pioneers had to contend with- definitely meant to be worked in, rather than lived in. Four seats, little more than frames with webbing, now faced away from the computers lining the walls. Three of them were occupied, and Amavasya let me take the spare one as I regarded the crew.

They looked so much smaller than I remembered. And not just because candidates had their height and weight considered for the mission, seeing how an extra kilo of baby fat could literally cost the mission as much energy as produced by a one megaton bomb. No, their posture was a little more deflated, their cheeks more sallow, their hair grayed. Even with alternating shifts in suspended animation, they had all aged a good ten years.

I tried to read their expressions, Suprapto's and Nguyen's and Bisi's. I had trained with them for a good two years before going under, but I still didn't feel like I knew them well. Seeing my face, as youthful as it was fifty years ago, must've elicited some sort of emotion, even if they were too professional to show it. They might've been feeling quite envious at how I managed to have my cake and eat it too, crossing the stars to study alien intelligence without having to give up decades of my life. Maybe they were just happy to have a fresh face to talk to and break up the monotony.

Suprapto was the first to speak. "Morning, sleeping beauty. Ready to look for aliens?"

Nguyen shook her head, snorting. "How long were you waiting to drop that line?"

"He probably thought of it before she even went into the freezer," Bisi interjected. She looked my way. "Glad to see you again, Dr. Liú. I hope the long nap wasn't too rough on you."

"Did we arrive in the system yet?" I asked.

Crap, that was a bit too brusk. I could tell, in the ever-so-brief look Bisi and Suprapto gave each other, and in Commander Nguyen's slight shift in posture. Should've done some small talk first, considering how long they hadn't seen me for. Not even two minutes into the reunion after five decades of silence, and the bitch queen was back in business mode.

Commander Nguyen handed over a dataleaf. "We've already passed through the Oort Cloud - Kapteyn's, not Sol's, sorry if there was any confusion- about a year back. The deceleration sail shot out eight of the ten probes it had before tilting and exiting the system above the ecliptic."

"Only eight?"

"I mean, we only got data back from eight. We don't know if they were damaged en route or just failed to signal us. It's still within the performance margins, considering what we were working with."

I nodded, as if I was an expert on these things. "What did the probes find out about the system? I know telescopes had found four planets around Kapteyn's, and potentially two had oxygen and methane in them."

"Scratch off 'potentially'", said Amavasya, to my side. "There are two planets in the more extreme ends of the habitable zone, and both have strong atmospheric biosignatures, including the planet the signal's coming from."

I felt a tremor race down me, and it had nothing to do with the lingering cramps of deep freeze.

"Have they initiated contact, then?" I asked excitedly. "They must've seen us coming years ahead of our arrival. That's plenty of time to start trying to contact us."

Suprapto made a small little grimace, Nguyen sighed, and my heart sank.

The commander forwarded data from her dataleaf, and I looked down to see several images of a blood red marble, hanging in the void. Two fat icecaps dominated the poles, with faint tufts of clouds swirling around the globe. Were it not for the larger southern icecap, along with the thick haze of atmosphere about the disc of the world, I would've thought I was looking at Mars.

"It's easily the most friendly planet after Earth," Nguyen said. "Atmospheric pressure's only sixty percent of Earth's, but the composition's forty percent oxygen. Average temperature of four degrees."

"But," I said. "You're going to say 'but', aren't you?"

Nguyen gave me a look that might as well have screamed, Well, what else could I say?

"But, the probe detected no signs of industrialization. No heat blooms associated with energy production of any kind, no atmospheric pollutants, not even radio communications aside from the signal. We sent a basic signal of our own to the planet about a month before you woke up, and we got nothing. Earth said as much about their attempts to get a reply back."

"Then it must be an outpost," I said, maybe for myself more than for them. "You mentioned another planet with oxygen in the system. Maybe they set the array on this red world for ease of transmission."

Amavasya leaned over me, and I stiffened for a moment before I forced myself to relax as she fiddled with the dataleaf. Another world popped up in view, this time in only one image. This one had a far less pronounced haze about its white disc, almost to the point where I might've mistaken it for an icy moon at first glance. I couldn't discern any features on the surface, only a quintet of what looked like massive storm systems.

"It's almost impossible for this planet to be the source. The surface gravity is roughly five times that of Earth's, and the surface temperature at the equator on the dayside appears to be over a hundred degrees. High oxygen concentration and atmospheric pressure, so it'd be marginally breathable by our standards, but it's incredibly inhospitable to civilization."

I craned my neck to look at her. "You mentioned a dayside. So it's tidally locked, like was theorized?"

"Yes," Amavasya replied, sounding a little hesitant.

"Then the nightside should be avoiding the worst of the storms and heat," I said. "Heat transference with an atmosphere this thick means that it wouldn't be frozen solid, either, which means multicellular life could exist beyond the terminator."

"The temperatures are still worryingly high on the nightside, from what little we could glean."

"What little?" I repeated, arching an eyebrow.

"Let's just say the nightside was probe nine's jurisdiction," Nguyen interjected.

"I see," I said. "Then this planet should be our primary focus, considering its proximity to the signal. Even worlds like this can be cradles for civilization- I've corroborated with Chang and Smirnov on this sort of scenario. Have we even tried radio contact?"

"I mean, we tried, but the planet has an absurdly thick ionosphere," Suprapto said, leaning back in the webbing. "We'd have to use the communications laser we use with Earth, and even assuming we're willing to break contact, there's no telling if they also use laser comms."

I frowned, and looked back down at the dataleaf. My knuckles had whitened as I gripped it, and I forced myself to relax.

"I agree that the planet warrants extensive research," Nguyen said. "But the signal's the primary objective. Even if it's automatic, the transmitter may have the information we need about the builders. Hanlon's razor cuts both ways, here. Considering the lack of space infrastructure we've found, and the sheer difficulties a civilization would have developing on that planet, let alone leaving, and it's just as likely that the builders were passing through the system and planted it here."

She was right. I wasn't a physicist like her, but from the little information I had, I could already imagine the horrific obstacles gravity that strong presented to any species trying to become spacefarers. I'd have to review it later.

"You have a point," I said. "When will we arrive at the target? I need to get everything ready."

Nguyen and Bisi exchanged a look, then back to me.

"We aren't due for another three weeks," the commander said, slowly. "You have plenty of time to get your equipment ready- there's no rush."

"You did just spend fifty years as a popsicle, Bisi added. "Take it slow."

"I prefer to air on the side of caution," I replied, trying and failing to sound gentle. "I'll get started right away."

I offered a nod to all of them, then drifted down the ladder that led out of the command center. Gravity began to pull on me again as I moved outwards from the center of the centrifuge, and I took a hold of a rung with skeletal fingers. Amavasya followed, and guided me to my quarters.

"Hydration is important," she said, handing me a bottle. "For the first few days you'll have to contend with probiotic pills and special meals, as your gut flora is restored. You'll have some hormonal and nutritional imbalances for a little while, since every drop of blood you have in your veins right now is brand new. Don't be afraid to alert me of anything worrying."

"Thank you, doctor," I said. I opened the cap of the bottle and took a whiff. "It smells like baby food."

"It almost literally is." Amavasya's sigh screamed, I've been there before. "It's good to have you back, Liú."

"Yeah," I said.

She stood there for a moment, as if expecting more, then nodded and made her way back to the others. She was comfortable around them, I could tell. And why wouldn't they be? They had all known each other for their entire careers, once doing a two-year stint in the Kuiper Belt. When you're trapped with each other in a metal can for years on end, not even able to talk to other people remotely, compatibility is an absolute must.

Unless you're like me, in which case you just pull me out of the trunk for a job, then shove me back in for the rest of the trip. Everyone else was vital- between the four of them, you had the ship's doctor, psychologist, biologist, physicist, engineer, astrogator, pilot, chemist, and commander. The ship's computer helped to plug any gaps and augment their talents.

As for me? My role was so niche it was literally invented for the mission. Xenoanthropology, the oh-so creative academics had called it. It was an immensely challenging field, considering it combined aspects of computer programming, speculative biology, game theory, sociology, and linguistics. Challenging enough that finding a xenoanthropologist who also met the barest of health criteria and was willing to leave everything behind for a century was exceedingly rare.

How rare? So rare that when they got one, they were willing to put her in suspended animation before the mission started, to remove the chance of any accident or assassin ruining the whole thing. So rare that they ignored the size requirements, and overlooked some issues on the psych report that, while mild by any normal metric, would've sunk any other candidate.

I pulled aside the flimsy plastic divider that counted as the door to my quarters, and took it in. By 'quarters', I meant a bunk laid into the wall, with just enough room to sit up straight while inside it. Personal effects were kept on little shelves at the head and foot of the bed, which was an example of the battleground between the engineers and the psychologists behind the mission planning.

"Every extra gram onboard costs as much energy as a small atom bomb!" I imagined the engineers screeching. "Letting them take that much with them would be a massive waste of energy!"

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To which the psychologists in my mind would reply, "If you don't keep the crew sane, the whole project will be a waste of energy because they'll have spaced themselves before they can even arrive."

And so, with that in mind, we were granted a whopping - drumroll please - five kilos. I bet that made a few of the engineers in charge of the massive laser that brought us here pull their hair out as they considered the energy costs.

Most of the mass allocated to me was in the form of my Yíxīng tea set, and a thick book bound in worn leather. If the engineers were unhappy about the mass, just wait until they hear that I actually hadn't read the book in years. It was something I couldn't bring myself to read in-depth, not anymore, and yet it was also something I couldn't possibly imagine parting with.

I smiled a little as I ran my fingers over the clay gaìwân, and wryly thought about how this must've been the first time in history a tea set had enough energy behind it to destroy a city. Crawling inside my quarters, I pulled the divider back in place. Theoretically, it could help me stay alive in case of a depressurization, but I definitely did not want to put that to the test.

The divider could be polarized for privacy, and alternatively made into a reflective surface. I chose the latter option, and studied my reflection. A stick figure in a uniform looked back at me, with limbs too long and too thin. A hand the color of paper ran spidery fingers over an angular face, then briefly rubbed a shaved scalp. Dark and sunken eyes stared into mine.

Well, good to see suspended animation hadn't affected my appearance in the slightest. A shame I had to lose the hair, though. I could grow about five centimeters back now, since it would merely take up mass that was already part of the ship's mini-ecology, but the hundred grams or so of hair I would've brought aboard didn't warrant the energy costs.

Maybe it was for the best- I still remembered how I'd once made my roommate scream when she bumped into me as I left the shower one late night on our dorm floor. Apparently, between the long mop of waterlogged hair obscuring my face and my pale complexion, I had resembled a ghost in some horror movie she'd seen.

I sat cross-legged on the bed, and tried to wait for it to sink in. You know what I mean, right? The "holy moly I'm in a completely different solar system, this has never happened before in history" feeling. There was no way I could overstate the magnitude of what the crew and I had accomplished, just by crossing the long light-years to a star just an astronomical stone's throw away.

Maybe the very fact it couldn't be overstated was why it wasn't sinking in.

So, I decided to think about what I had said I'd do- my work.

The revelation that the signal world was uninhabited was a bit of a blindside, especially considering the overall hospitality. The existence of not only large abundances of oxygen in the atmosphere, but liquid water and temperatures our sort of life could survive in, made it very probable that it hosted some manner of biosphere. Pulling up the probe data on my leaf, I saw that the rest of the composition mirrored Earth's quite well, with most of the remaining atmosphere being nitrogen, with trace amounts of CO2 and argon and methane.

Had they died off between sending the signal out and our arrival? I shuddered at the thought, but at least it was unlikely. There would've been some lingering evidence of their civilization to detect, most likely- if they had blown themselves up so thoroughly that we couldn't find a shred of their civilization, we would've found the scars such a cataclysm would leave. If they had died out from other means, there would still be infrastructure left.

I considered the other options. The larger world - Kapteyn b, officially - also had large quantities of water and oxygen, and unlike Kapteyn c, the question of it having civilization on it was still up in the air. For all we knew, under those storm tossed clouds, an entire species was watching our arrival with rapt interest. I pondered how we would've felt if the situation was reversed, if we had sent a signal to a distant world and they responded by sending a thousand-kilometer wide sail into our system.

But even that solution had significant problems. For one, the colossal gravitational pull. Five g's was nothing to sneeze at as an obstacle for multicellular life to develop- every action would need five times as much work, including just pumping blood to the brain, and each fall five times more dangerous. I'd managed to pull six g's during training before blacking out- just the idea of enduring that 24/7 while seated felt daunting, let alone thriving under that force and living a life.

It wasn't impossible. I'd researched the possibility with the help of two brilliant biologists, and we came to the conclusion that even with a surface gravity of eight times that of Earth, multicellular life and civilization could develop on land. The real trouble came with leaving a planet with such a high gravitational pull. Doing some quick math, I saw that the escape velocity would be nearly three times ours.

The energy and mass restraints involved would make even an orbital flight a nightmare to accomplish- no chemical rocket could reasonably do it.

The scenario could still happen, but there were too many gaps. If a species could overcome the engineering challenges of interplanetary flight, why would they simply plant an array on a distant world and nothing else? The technologies they'd have to develop just to leave would also grant them free reign of the entire system. Why not set up a colony there, or in orbit? If the goal was simply to contact us, they could much more easily build a transmitter on their home planet, even if their powerful ionosphere was a massive hassle to penetrate.

That left the third option- the array builders had come in from another system. That would, at least, explain the lack of infrastructure. They may have just visited the system to explore, then left the array on an easy to access planet. And, if some of the more fucked up game theorists were to be believed, using a location other than your home system might be safer if you wanted to engage in communications with another civilization.

On the other hand, there was the simple fact that interstellar travel is really, really, really hard. Speaking from experience, there. Unless they spent thirty thousand years getting to the system, they would have to utilize methods so energy-intensive, so "flashy", that we would've noticed long before we picked up the signal. I mean, the thousand-kilometer photon sail I was riding on was one of the more discrete ways to get to another star within a human lifetime. Relativistic rockets would produce flares so bright, our own equipment would be able to see them from light-years away.

And if they wanted to safely engage in actual dialogue with us, why would they only have an array sending a simple "I'm here!" message? They would almost certainly have the capacity for more complex communications, considering they'd need to be able to communicate with their distant homeworld if they actually wanted to represent their civilization.

If they wanted to. Perhaps the diaspora theorists were right, and any interstellar species was by necessity composed of countless sovereign nations, where every border is the c. But that was getting ahead of myself- I needed to focus on what we actually had to work with.

Would the array, when we find it, simply contain a repository of some of their knowledge? Essentially the cosmic version of "Hey, sorry we couldn't stay to say hi, but we left you this note :)."

Or, going the route of not wanting to expose themselves, perhaps this was a peace offering. Signaling that they knew where we were, but they weren't going to kill us all, and were willing to guide us to a world we could very easily colonize.

So many possible explanations, enough that I spent hours thinking about them. A gift, a test, a trap, an invitation- all of them had some merit, but none of them had enough merit to be the most likely answer. Just like the source itself.

It was weird, being at the very periphery of human knowledge and experience, but I'd experienced it before, sitting at the computer station those long decades ago at Tiānyǎn. I was starting to think I liked the sensation.

I took a pull of the I-can't-believe-it's-not-baby-food, idly noting that my tastebuds were still not at their usual sensitivity. Or maybe it was just really dull-tasting, like the nutrient bottles my father told me he had to subsist on during the lean times. Either way, I didn't want to just spend the rest of the 'day' sucking down the stuff while reading. I wanted to stretch my legs.

Sliding the divider back up, I placed my bare feet against the floor, stretching my toes. The illusion of gravity was convincing, more so than the mockup. The Parasol had two narrow centrifuges counter-rotating in the center of the ship, providing gravity for the things that needed it. The workout facility, medbay, hydroponics, and us. If I focused, I could feel the faintest of vibrations as the ring spun.

There were orbital habitats smaller than this ship, even discounting the sail. Such a massive craft for only five people seemed like overkill, until you actually stepped back and looked at the whole picture. We had to survive without resupply, without outside communication or assistance, for decades on end. This was our only home, our only refuge within trillions of kilometers of darkness.

I carefully stood up, waiting to see if I'd pass out from some hidden strain. I technically didn't suffer any muscle atrophy or bone loss, due to not really having cellular activity in the freezer, but you couldn't have something be a little out of shape after not using it for so long. When I didn't faint or have my legs suddenly give out beneath me, I continued walking along the centrifuge floor, taking in the sights.

The mission psychologists must've played a part in determining the size as well. Having such a large ship to explore, to be alone in when you needed it, would help to alleviate the sense of supercharged cabin fever beings stuck in space for decades produced. The crew got along well enough -actually, quite well based off of their body language- but I still wondered how they'd been able to maintain their cohesion, or even just their mental health.

Pausing at the ladder that'd lead up to the zero-g core of the Parasol, I became faintly aware of some, er, rather wet sounds coming from Nguyen's quarters, along with two hushed voices. No, no, scratch that- I heard a third as well.

"Ah," I said to myself, and quickly climbed up the ladder, as if afraid they'd smell my cheeks burning.

I mean, that was certainly one way of fighting cabin fever. I'd read in sociology class that pirates frequently employed that manner of, er, arrangement. I'm sure mission control would've flipped their gourd if they'd found out about that, but honestly it was far better than them trying to kill each other.

I pushed those thoughts into the basement and focused on climbing up the ladder. It's really weird, feeling it get easier with each rung up. I had to catch myself from flying right into the ceiling - also a floor, to be honest - as I entered the center of the ship. Bisi was checking something on the computer, and didn't seem to notice me as I glided past her, past the science deck, and past the water supply that doubled as a radiation shield.

At the very edge of the ship was a tiny observation blister, something that was normally shuttered off while we were at maximum velocity. After all, you didn't need to look outside when there was nothing but interstellar space to look at, and in exchange you'd just get a face full of cosmic rays for your troubles. But, since we were no longer going at relativistic speeds, there was no such worry.

When I say this blister was tiny, I mean tiny. It was like the thick plastic domes at the zoo, the ones you'd stick your head into as a kid to look at monitor lizards up close. It'd be awfully cramped just for two of the other crewmembers to squeeze into - not that they'd mind, apparently - and I had a good thirty centimeters on even the tallest of them. There were times being a human stickbug came into handy, and this was one of them.

The first thing I saw as I poked my head into the blister was the sail. Even after the majority of it had detached to reflect the light of the laser back our way and decelerate us, it was still about the diameter of my home province, stretching away from me like a glittering desert. Yet, funny enough, the whole thing had less mass than your run of the mill cargo ship. I still tried to imagine how something so wide could be made from a material so flimsy, and I still failed.

But I wasn't there to look at the sail. Instead, I craned my head up, and saw it. It was exactly in the center of the blister, little more than a blood red dot that shone in the blackness like a dying ember, but it was still brighter than anything else in view.

A toothy grin broke out on my face. "Found you."

Then I glided back into the command center and down the ladder, grabbing the rungs as my weight increased. Nguyen walked past me to the hydroponics, with flushed cheeks and a light smile. I watched her short frame disappear from sight, then returned to my bunk. Grabbing my leaf, I idly checked to see if there had been any messages sent to me via the Earth tight-beam.

Just some general platitudes from distant family, a few more honorary degrees from universities I'd spoken at, and - most importantly - the owner of my favorite tea shop telling me that his grandson had taken over. Hopefully my spot was still there, with the same look. Actually, come to think of it, it'd probably been made into an attraction by the local commune's historical preservation council.

Aside from that, there was just a ridiculous amount of news updates, a pile that had decades to grow. It wasn't a real-time update, not when light itself took twelve years to get where we were from Earth, but it was better than being in the dark.

I wouldn't read it either way, but at least the option existed.

Instead, I just focused on reading over mission data again, and reviewing my contact protocols. Unlike the old stories, there was no "contact package", no pre-made data packet I'd radio over to any aliens we met. There were too many unknowns, ranging from their capacity to even process the information, to how they'd react to it. Text would be useless if they hadn't evolved eyesight, and if it seemed that they were wary of carnivorous animals, revealing that we were naturally apex predators could hamper relations.

Did this give me a ridiculous amount of power over what sort of first impression humanity would make, in the most important cultural exchange it would ever have? Why yes, yes it did. It made me wonder if the crew had secret orders to duct-tape me to a wall and take over the operation if they were worried about what I was telling ET.

Of course, if I was worried about that, I'd just be sure to tell the aliens that anything happening to me was proof that I was right. Mwa ha ha.

Jokes aside. With an uninhabited signal world before me, I was looking at the possibility my job would consist of poring through some dusty old archives, inferring what I could from scant evidence like an archaeologist. We'd prepared for that possibility, and so I reviewed the packets pertaining to the topic. Not that hard, since I had written half of them.

After an hour or so of that, I felt myself starting to nod off. It felt wrong, going back to sleep so soon after a five-decade nap, but the heaviness in my head could not be denied. Closing the tab on my leaf, I pulled up the ambience selection, which was essentially a catalogue of ASMR videos meant to dull the pain of being trillions of kilometers away from anything resembling nature. I chose the one labeled Starry Night, and settled in to the sounds of chirping crickets and wind through the leaves.

It was no wonder that, when I finally drifted off, I dreamed of that night again. This time, a red star shone in the heavens, while a world in white rose above the horizon. The companion from before was there as well, but while I was staring at the star, something told me they were looking somewhere else.