The spacecraft sailed through the darkness of space, where darkness is only interrupted by small points of light, and arrived near that solar system much later.
It didn’t take too long to build the listening systems or to construct the spacecraft, but it did take a long time to detect the long-sought radio emissions, and much, much longer to get there.
The waves were captured by powerful reception devices capable of amplifying the faint signal produced tens of light-years away by beings who were initially not interested in their transmissions reaching beyond their own planet.
Radio astronomy had borne fruit, and they could distinguish those signals from the ones received everywhere at all times, coming from stars and other celestial bodies that emit a lot of electromagnetic radiation at various frequencies. But those they captured were not like the others. They had a factor that clearly identified them as unnatural, emitted by an alien civilization. Not because they could interpret their meaning, but because they held patterns that were not precisely random, as are the patterns of natural sources of radio frequency emission.
Even though it was propelled by nuclear fusion, the spacecraft could not exceed the natural limit of the speed of light. It took almost a hundred years between accelerating to speeds close to that limit, and then decelerating to make contact with the planets orbiting the star.
The solar system in question was quite curious. Its main star was of an intermediate type, although ten times larger than the one from the system the spacecraft originated. This was one of the small ones, a reddish star on the limit of what is considered a star and not a planet.
The system at whose gates they now stood was composed of several gigantic worlds in a liquid state, with their rocky satellites, and some other rocky orbs.
Unlike the faint signals barely perceived at the time, the radio waves were now perceived with great intensity. Although, without having entered in it yet, the crew could not know from which or which of all those planets they were emitted.
“There are only three possibilities, SAIR-Spda,” commented MIRV-Spdb, the second in command. “If your theory is correct and Life originated in a hot environment capable of melting Metals, it can only be the first or second Planet. Or one of the Satellites of the largest of them.”
“Yes, I suppose you mean the one with Active Volcanism.”
“Exactly. It is S [a satellite] orbiting the fifth P [planet] counting from the sun. It is a world formed by liquid hydrogen below a gaseous atmosphere, and it exerts a powerful gravitational pull on S [on the satellite]. It is because of that pull that it has AV [active volcanism], due to the eccentricity of its orbit and its rotation on its own axis, which generates intense friction inside. At least that’s what I conclude after analysing the echo-radar emissions.”
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SAIR-Spdb considered his companion’s conclusions and added:
“The problem I see is that the distance from the Star is considerable, and the lava, once outside, freezes quickly.”
“That can be solved with AV [active volcanism] being recurrent,” suggested MIRV.
“Very recurrent, it would have to be.”
“Certainly. But we must think that we will find things we do not expect. It was already a surprise to find a Solar System with S [a star] so large. If the Creator sent a device to our SS [solar system], which has S [a red star], wouldn’t it be logical to assume that he also came from a similar one?”
“Y [yellow stars] can also harbour L [life],” observed SAIR. “In fact, we have already found it, detecting those radio waves.”
“Yes, but could it all be a transmission zone? Simply, SS [this solar system] would be a repeater of the signal.”
“It could be. But to know if that is the case, we had to come here before.”
“Sure, of course. I was just speculating.”
“What are the other two possibilities?”
“I like the first P [planet]. It is warm enough to have M [metals] melted on the S’ Surface, but its rotation is very slow. The bad thing is that it does not have AV [active volcanism], at least not now. Maybe it had it in the past.”
“In short, the second P [planet] is the one we’re interested in, right?”
“Not really. It rotates with enough speed, and its S’ [surface] is quite hot. But there are no intervals of Cold-Heat. It has a fairly dense atmosphere and presents a fairly homogeneous Temperature throughout the surface.”
“So, this system is a ‘repeater’, as you say. Either its inhabitants were created elsewhere, like us, or they are creations of another being created by others.”
“I’m afraid so. We won’t find Cx [the creator] here.”
“But we already knew that, MIRV-Spdb. We knew that in this SS [solar system], no P [planet] was close enough to E [its star] to have T [a temperature] that would melt M [metals], nor had enough mass to rotate on its own and thus have CH [cooling and heating] cycles.”
“Well, in any case, we’re already close. It seems that the signal is being received on one of the ends. P [the planet] emitter is to the right of the ecliptic. We’ll set a course towards there.”