Lemuria
This System is a Big Red Flag

A soft orange light clicked on at the aft end of the cabin. The ship had turned around and would begin final deceleration. The light was a reminder of which way was up.

At one-g, the conference room felt like a pastel oil drum. Familiar handholds became ladders. Doorways became ledges. Like the rest of the living space, it was decorated in pleasant earth tones and pastels. The ultrastrong ceramics of the 32nd century lent themselves to color. Muted recessed lights gave the tight spaces a warm coziness entirely at odds with their presence on a starship.

Within the ship’s engine, a beam of antiprotons had stepped up the powerful fusion reaction, releasing a lethal burst of gamma rays in the process. Shielding protected the crew, but it was essential that the ship’s ships stern be directed far from the location of any known star. Thousands of similar X-ray bursts peppered the galaxy. Kat wondered if even a small fraction were due to alien spacecraft working on the same principle. She sank into a synthetic leather chair and waited for the meeting to begin. The truth was, she felt like a third wheel as an astrogator. The machine she had euphemistically dubbed “Baby” was a ninth generation quantum computer capable of making sophisticated decisions millions of times faster than any human. It made most of the major course adjustments years ago. Although Baby itself was quick to point out the necessity of a quasihuman crew on this mission, Kat had always been suspicious of the amount of information it was capable of holding back. Despite her misgivings, Kat was the only member of the crew that thought of the computer as a friend.

Helga crossed her legs comfortably and spoke into the air “Let’s see where we’re going, Baby. Give me 360 degrees and maximum magnification in the direction of the target star.” The room sank into vast darkness. Around them, starfields shone like a powder of tiny diamonds cast on a velvet drape. To the crew, it felt like they had been dropped into the abyss.

It was an impressive solar system. Kat counted 27 planets, including four great gas giants, but from this distance, the view was disappointing.

“This system is a big red flag. The computer spotted it 22 light years away.” Helga spoke, motioning to the images on the screen. “At least 8 different objects in this system radiate energy in a pattern inconsistent with any known natural object. From the neutrino fluxes alone, the estimated power output exceeds a million times that of Earth at the time we left. More significantly, there is evidence of engineering on a planetary scale. A system of solid rings around the second gas giant has every indication of artificial design.”

The view zoomed in to an oblate yellow-brown globe 2 AU from the system’s sun. The image had the fuzzy look of advanced optics, but four vast, solid rings were clearly evident. Unlike the rings of Saturn and Uranus, they were not precisely coplanar, and the overall effect was that of an intricate clockwork sculpture.

“Those structures are about 200km wide and 2km deep. Like four of the system’s planets, they have a massive emission of neutrinos and an unusual radio signature. The biggest energy emitter is a moon of that gas giant, just outside the rings. Another big emitter, one of those outer planets, has the look of a captured errant planetoid, but its orbit is suspiciously circular.” The computer zoomed to a blurry, bluish disk.

“What about life?” Kat interjected.

“Define life” Vigo challenged. “The spectrophotometric analysis shows no significant presence of oxygen in any of the planetary atmospheres. All four energy-emitting rocky planets have relatively inert or mildly reducing atmospheres. The first thing we discover contradicts the accepted wisdom that respiration is the only source of energy sufficient to sustain an intelligent species. Assuming, of course, that is what we‘ve found here.”

“The radio emissions are counterintuitive as well” Tatiana broke in. “There are point sources all over the surfaces of those objects. Mostly shortwave bursts of low signal strength, but there is nothing whatsoever that resembles a coded broadcast. There are bursts of noise from the rings suggesting electrical activity. The infrared pattern is interesting though, some of those objects must be generating a great deal of waste heat.”

“There is no reason to believe they would broadcast radio communication at this point in their development. This civilization must be very old.” Helga pointed out. It was a perverse conundrum that fascinated her. Humans had possessed advanced technology for only a few thousand years-the blink of an eye on a galactic time scale. It was a very narrow window, and it stood to reason that nearly every other society in the galaxy was either pretechnological, or possessing technology far in advance of anything humans had discovered. And yet, even for our own species, technological advances could not be predicted with any accuracy. Futurists of the mid-twentieth century had imagined cities on the moon within a few decades while failing to predict the dawn of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence even as it was happening. Radio, essential to communications on Earth, could have other uses to an alien culture. Or, it could simply be an antiquated curiosity.

“So, is this a set of unbelievably ancient ruins?” asked Marius.

“How about ‘life as we don’t know it?’” commented Kat.

“I was prepared for that.” interjected Vigo. “Assuming there is something left of the original biosphere, we can start by identifying an energy source. Energy always flows up a food web, and intelligent species might be expected to modify the biosphere to direct productivity in their direction.”

“Assuming you recognize a living thing when you see one.” quipped Tat.

Helga broke in “Speaking of energy sources, Kat, we’re gonna need to refuel. Once we’ve slowed down, drop us into an orbit with their Oort cloud. This will give the rest of us time to watch from a safe distance. Let’s get to work.”

The meeting broke into separate conversations and the members drifted off.