As Alex was strolling through the woods he was confused about a lot of things. Like how can a world this far be terraformed, the Terrans are trying to imply a rogue wanderer group, they just can't understand that, no matter what they say. It doesn't make sense. They simply don't have the resources to reach this far.

There are two reasons his people haven't gotten further from earth, maximum speed and power. It would take centuries to cross the whole galaxy, which would be doable except for one detail. The amount of power cells needed to achieve that would be beyond the ship's storage capacity, and Alex is talking about the big ships, like the one that carried his whole people from earth.

The earthlings simply state the fact that it's here means he is wrong about that, but, he made his money by inventing a more efficient engine so he knew what he was talking about.

Another thing that confused his was Angela. He understood why she didn't like him, his experiment ripped her from her life, even if it is also because of their own experiment but his did most if the job, so, it's mostly his fault.

What confused him about her now was that she chose to accompany him.

After telling them the story of the Lycan war, they had to plan for the expedition.

Alex thought he was the best choice to go, but when he stated that, they said that he is the one who knows the shuttle and if anything happens to the expedition, they will need to him to survive. They had a point but Alex didn't like that, everything that happened was mostly his responsibility, so, it should be him taking risks, if they ever found a way to settle in this world then he would be very glad to not feel responsible for them, but, until then...

He also remembered that it wasn't technically true, Paul had been training and he knew the basics, the shuttle would teach him the rest that he needed.

For a lot of things his people didn't have an assembly line, it was built on demand and with the required specification, and that included shuttles and ships. So, although there were generic categories like explorer model like this shuttle, they were still different from one another even if built by the same company. There wasn't a standardized training manual that would allow you to know everything about a ship or shuttle. And it created problems when repairing, since the repair shop needed to know the correct specification. The solution was that the ship or shuttle carried its own specification, this allowed for any repair shop to simply read the specification from the shuttle's memory and use it to know what is wrong. This also mean that the shuttle's AI can teach the crew how to operate it.

Paul has been learning so, in time he could be as proficient as Alex, and Paul already knew the basics that would be important, like how to run away if things went wrong.

Angela settled things by saying that both her and Alex would go and not wanting to hear anything else.

Alex was confused, he was pretty sure she hated him, he didn't blame her, so he didn't understand why she was insistent of spending a few hours alone with him.

After he got them equipped which since he didn't have most of the necessary gear in the shuttle with him, it consisted only in each of them taking a pair of binoculars, boots and wrist comms.

"What about sound?" Alicia had asked before they left "At that distance will the comms pick up sound?". She meant at the distance they would need to be to not be noticed, and that was behind the tree line.

It probably was obvious from his face that he hadn't thought of that, and Angela simply asked "Do you have some kind of parabolic microphone?"

Now that was a good idea. He didn't have any, but it would be easy to build one.

The comms already have the capability to pick up sound, all he had to do was focus the sound coming from the city to it.

He took them to his workshop and after a quick design, he had it built by the molder, or as the earthlings called it 3D printer, which was an apt name.

The main idea was to build a parabolic shape that would focus the soundwaves to a central location, and then add a comms device in the focal point to pick up the sound. He designed it in a way to hold a comms device and he even added latches so that they could add straps.

He had to balance the size to not be too big to hinder their movements and hoped that it would be enough, mostly because they didn't have any idea what they would find, it's possible that there would be other environmental factors that could reduce the quality of the picked up sound.

After they got up the shuttle, he decided to cross the rope first to test it, and waited for Angela on the other side, she hugged Alicia before crossing.

On the other side they started to walk toward the city. Since they had its location, the comms device inertial navigation system would guide them.

The first few minutes they were in silence. She didn't say anything and he decided to give her space, he decided to use the silence to review his decisions until now.

The problem is that he was mostly reacting to circumstances. His people trained and tested interstellar pilots a lot more rigorously than people who didn't need to leave the planetary system.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Once they realized that not only official security office or space exploration agency officers would roam the stars, they decided to put in place measures to make sure that the pilots would be acceptable ambassadors in case of first contact.

The tests were to make sure that the pilot wasn't mentally unstable or a complete asshole and could keep calm under pressure. Even if you had the money to buy your own ship you couldn't pilot without passing the tests. And by using neural readers it was possible to see if the person was simply trying to be disingenuous during the tests.

The training was focused more on procedures and survival, but even with all the scenarios they thought of, they didn't anticipate something like this to happen. Being pulled to the other side of the galaxy with earthlings and somehow finding a planet with life and civilization that somehow don't use any form of long range communication. It's like a fiction novel. But most fiction novels of his people when it came to being stranded on a planet with unknown culture it was depicting earth, because for his people earth's current culture is one of the biggest unknown.

He hadn't gone into depth about his people's genetic engineering because at the time, it didn't seem relevant, and what his people have created it would take a long time to tell them a lot of what they did. So if they want to know more they just have to go to the library, even though most things isn't there. The library is an big encyclopedia but it only focus on spreading knowledge, it doesn't have films unless it is a public film defined as either cultural significant or a good teaching material. It also doesn't have a lot of things his people create just for fun, there are other libraries for that but they don't have access to it.

Now that he thinks of it, he remembered something else his people did that might be relevant to their current situation, and that was trying to recreate prehistoric animals. They couldn't clone them, but using their genetic engineering program they could create new species that resembled the old dinosaurs, and they could ensure its genetic code is stable. The project didn't create that many specimens, but they still exist in a small continent.

Looking around more, he thought what would need to do if any beasts showed up. And then looked at Angela. Trying to analyze how fast he could move while carrying her.

His mind went on a small tangent when he noticed how well-proportioned she was. But this was not the time for unnecessary thoughts, he estimated that she might weight 60 kilos, so it would be extremely easy to lift her and run in case of anything. The biggest problem is that the forest doesn't simply provide with a straight clear path for them to go through. But most likely he is being paranoid, and except for certain creature he could probably see any nearby beasts coming before they arrived.

He was lost in his mind when Angela suddenly asked "Why are you alone?"

He didn't understand what she meant. After all right now he is walking with her, and he didn't think she would ask why he wasn't on a relationship, so all he could do was ask "What?"

"Creating a wormhole is what I assume a big project, I can't understand someone who does it without help" she said. He now able to understand her meaning and saw the problem, it was a problem of perspective, but she continued "From your stories, your government actually cares about its citizens, and I also don't understand why you are so sure that they won't come to the rescue"

Ok, he needed to explain this in a way that she could understand

"Tell me of a technology someone can build at home on earth" he said, hoping

"Well, you could build a lot of things, even a computer" he understood that computers is the equivalent of what his called processors and it was a good example"

"When the computers were first invented, was it a single person who did it?"

"Well, no, back then it required a very big team to do it"

"But now it's easy because you have other technologies that help in its construction"

"So, you are saying your technology is so advanced that anyone can simply create wormholes"

"Not anyone, it still requires money, knowledge and resources, but with our processors and robots, it becomes easy for a lone person to build a lot of things if he is willing."

"Don't you need permission?"

"Yeah, I started a company with the focus on a lot of types of research, and the types of research I asked permission for would also apply for wormhole research. I followed all the safety protocols to the letter even added more, but I didn't need any extra help" Alex said and decide to give her a history lesson

"The first wormhole attempt was over 2000 earth years ago, and it was a government project that required almost the whole nation working in tandem to complete. After an incident that killed thousands of people not one tried it for a long time. The next attempt was more than a thousand years later by a big private company, as you can imagine it didn't work. Then four hundred years ago a smaller company tried again, but with negative results."

"As you can see the amount of people needed started getting smaller, because technology was progressing, I was just the next logical step, and luckily or unluckily depending how you look at it, it worked"

"Why luckily?" Angela asked

"Because it's still a great achievement even if I won't reap the benefits, and if it hadn't worked this mishap would have killed all of us, and not thrown us across the galaxy" Alex explained.

Angela looked horrified "You still think it was a good idea?"

"Look, I am sorry for what happened, and If I could have predicted, I would have done things differently, but, you as a scientist must know how big a jump this is. I am not saying that what happened to us is good, but just that it doesn't change the fact that the wormhole is a big step forward" That didn't seem to go over well.

Alex didn't know what to say because he didn't want to lie to them, because if he was honest with himself, if the wormhole hadn't affected the earthlings and the only person stranded here was himself he wouldn't feel guilty for what he did, just depressed about his future.

"What about rescue?" Angela said "You said we won't be rescued. Why are you so sure"

"Basically, it's because it is mathematically improbable. My ship will eventually inform my family of my predicament, then when they register me as lost It will release all my research to the public. " The look in her eyes showed him that she was beginning to become hopeful, he liked the way she looked but unfortunately he will crush her hopes.

"I am the one with the most knowledge of wormhole and the problem that I wasn't able to fix is guiding it. Which is what I was trying to find out when all of this happened. How to determine the exit point of the wormhole and if possible guide it to a specific location"

"But others might succeed in finding a solution" she replied still trying to hold on to hope. He actually believed that in time others will succeed in finding a solution to this, even if it's in the distant future. His people had the habit of always improving. It's one of the pillars of his society: Progress.

"But they don't know where we are" Alex stated simply and saw her eyes change from hopeful to almost crying then to angry again. That was the Angela he got to know over the past few days. It's strange because she was the more accepting of the group when he first met them. It just all changed when he revealed that their situation is forever. He actually wanted to see that bubbly attitude again.