Feedback

Jae-Sun listened carefully to the young man as he looked around, marveling at darkness that surrounded them. Tens of thousands of stars fought against the pitch black void, pinpricks of light shining in defiance of the eternal night.

At a distance of just over a light-year, the sun’s rays had lost most of their potency, making the asteroid appear bathed in dull starlight. Photon amplifiers in the spacesuit helmets compensated for the low light, but those areas in shade appeared pitch black.

Jae-Sun marveled at the stark contrast between the grubby asteroid and their crisp clean spacesuits. He replied to Lassiter, saying, “The majority of the science we’re doing out here is to try to catch one of these aliens. The placement of probes, the scanners and patrols, we’re looking for telltale signs.

“Oh, the official line is that we’re monitoring the stability of the cloud to keep long-cycle comets from threatening the inner system, but that’s just a cover. Sure, there’s the potential for mining vessels to disrupt orbits, but it’s a low risk and one that would take thousands, perhaps millions of years to form a credible threat.”

“But dragons?” Lassiter whispered softly.

Lassiter seemed unusually flustered. Jae-Sun realized he had his undivided attention. Central command might consider the existence of dragons classified, but Jae-Sun didn’t care. The ever changing whims of bureaucrats were an annoyance to the old man. He’d lived to see Homo sapiens escape the shackles of Earth and fight off the concept of death, extending human life by a factor of ten. As one of the theoretical physicists that made the space-time compression drive possible, he had a certain amount of latitude. Some called it irreverence.

“It’s not that much of a surprise when you think about it,” Jae-Sun said. “The Oort cloud is impossibly large. There’s more pre-organic matter here than there is in all the planets combined, but it is so broadly spread out that it appears insignificant. The Oort cloud drifts on the edge of interstellar space, held loosely in place by the weakened pull of the sun, over a light-year away.

“To us, the Oort cloud seems like a far-flung, desolate, rocky, icy shell surrounding the sun, an unlikely place to find life. But think about space as a biological environment. Stars are like tar pits, sucking in any creature that strays too close. But out here, we’re on the edge of the tidal zone. Out here, a nudge one way or the other can send you to the Oort Cloud of dozens of other stars with very little exertion.”

Lassiter asked, “And these dragons? They inhabit the Oort Cloud?”

“Yes. Although dragon isn’t the term I’d use,” Jae-Sun replied. “Dragon conjures up images of fire and damnation raining down from some dark, winged monster. No, I’d call them celestial cetaceans or migratory birds. If we’re going to use some kind of terrestrial analogy, we should make it one befitting their character.”

“Birds? Whales?” Lassiter asked.

“Yes. Both of them are renowned for their astonishing migrations, and from what I’ve observed these dragons, for lack of a better term, have a similar mode of being.”

“Are they intelligent?”

“I suspect they’re more intelligent than we believe.” Jae-Sun paused before adding, “They may be more intelligent than us.”

“Then why don’t they make contact with us?” Lassiter asked as the two astronauts slowed to barely fifty miles an hour and began skimming over the surface of the asteroid toward a predetermined waypoint. Due to the undulating nature of the asteroid, their altitude fluctuated anywhere from a few hundred feet to almost a thousand feet.

“Why don’t dolphins learn English?” Jae-Sun asked. “Why doesn’t an octopus learn how to use a crowbar? Why don’t chimps have a mastery of fire?”

He paused for a moment, letting those thoughts sink in before continuing.

“It’s not in their nature. Contact may be a biological imperative for us, but it’s apparently not for them. If anything, they seem wary of us. We’re the aggressors, escaping the gravitational confines of our planet and encroaching on their natural habitat. From their perspective, they have every reason to avoid us.”

Lassiter slowed their forward momentum, dropping them closer to the asteroid as the waypoint approached. The instrumentation cube slowed in tandem with Jae-Sun.

“But you’ve found one?” Lassiter asked.

“I think I may have found one,” Jae-Sun replied. “It’s hard to be sure. These things can move through both space and time, but they leave a trail. Each time they warp, they emit high-energy particles. And they follow a pattern, in the same way that birds will follow the same path to escape the coming of winter.”

Lassiter pulled them to a halt, lowering them down to within two feet of the asteroid. Jae-Sun watched as he established buoyancy, ensuring their suits automatically counteracted the weak pull of gravity from the asteroid.