The All of Us race was unaccustomed to dealing with other sentient species. One of the primary reasons for this was, simply, their size; by almost any standards, the Hârulka were giants.
An adult Hârulka consisted of a floatation gas bag measuring anywhere from two to three hundred meters across, with brain, locomotion and feeding organs, sensory apparatus and manipulators clustered at the bottom. Most other sentient species with which theyâd had direct experience possessed roughly the same size and mass ratio to a Hârulka as an ant compared to a human.
When the Hârulka thought of other life forms as âvermin,â the thought was less insult than it was a statement of fact, at least as they perceived it. Within the complex biosphere of the Hârulka homeworld, there were parasites living on each All of Us colony that were some meters across. Hârulka simply found it difficult to imagine creatures as intelligent that were almost literally beneath their notice in terms of scale.
âCommence acceleration,â Ordered Ascent directed. âWe will move into the region of heavy radio transmission, and destroy targets of opportunity as they present themselves.â
The Hârulka warship, more than twenty kilometers across, began falling toward Sol, the inner system, and Earth.
12 December 2404
Emergence, Arcturus System
36.7 light years from Earth
0310 hours, TFT
The recon probe emerged from its Alcubierre bubble of tightly warped space, bleeding off excess velocity in a burst of high-energy photons. An artificial gravitational singularity the size of a small dust particle and as massive as a star flicked on and off a few meters beyond the craftâs bulbous nose, dragging it forward with an acceleration of nearly five thousand standard gravities. At that rate, the craft would be crowding the speed of light within another one hundred minutes.
Only slightly larger than a VGâ10 Krait smart missile, the ISVRâ120 probe was too small to carry sentient organics; its pilot was a Gödel 2500 artificial intelligence packed into the solid-state circuitry that filled the podâs core and so, technically, could be said to take up no space at all. Certainly it needed none of the bulky life-support equipment necessary for organic life.
The AI was called Alan, named after Alan Turing, one of the giants in the development of the first computers four and a half centuries earlier.
Within seconds of the probe craftâs emergence from the warp bubble, Alan had scanned the system ahead, a volume of space dominated by a single bloated and brilliant orange star. The Confederation Naval Standard Ephemeris entry on the star resided within Alanâs surface memory.
STAR: Alpha Boötis
COORDINATES: RA: 14>h 15>m 39.7>s Dec: +19Ë 10â 56â D 11.24p
ALTERNATE NAMES: Arcturus, Alramech, Abramech, 16 Boötes
TYPE: K1.5IIIFeâ0.5
MASS: 3.5 Sol; RADIUS: 25.7 Sol; LUMINOSITY: 210 Sol (Optical 113 Sol)
SURFACE TEMPERATURE: ~4300>oK
AGE: 9.7 billion years
APPARENT MAGNITUDE (SOL): â0.04; ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE: â0.29
DISTANCE FROM SOL: 36.7 LY
PLANETARY SYSTEM: 6 planets, including 1 Jovian and 5 sub-Jovian gas giants, plus 47 dwarf planets and 65 known satellites, plus numerous planetoids and cometary bodies.
One gas giant satellite, Jasper, is of interest with somewhat earthlike conditions due to gravitational/tidal effects. â¦
Arcturus, depending on how one measured such things, was the third or fourth brightest star in the night skies of Earth, a bright orange point at the base of the kite-shape of the constellation Boötis. From Alanâs emergence point some eighteen astronomical units out, Arcturus was a dazzling gold-orange beacon 113 times brighter than Sol would have been at the same distance. At infrared wavelengths, Arcturus was even brighter, flooding ambient space with sullen heat.
Alanâs primary objective lay almost directly beyond the star from his emergence point. His final approach would be masked by the starâs glare ⦠if everything went right.
By the time Alan had traveled a third of the distance toward Arcturusâsome 900 million kilometersâhe was moving at a hair better than 99 percent of the speed of light. Velocity transformed his view of the surrounding universe, compressing it into a circle of light dead aheadâmost of it infrared light from Arcturus, blue-shifted into optical wavelengths. The AIâs sensory correction program, however, was able to untangle the flood of speed-distorted light into its separate components and correct for the distortion. His velocity also distorted time, by seven to one at this velocity. Each passing minute for Alan was seven in the universe outside; it created the illusion that he was hurtling deeper into the Arcturus system much faster than he actually was.