Okay one problem solved. I queued up the required tasks on my TO-DO.
Next, the Bender problem.
Item one: there is a good chance that Bender had veered off and headed for Eta Leporos. But if that turned out to be wrong, I'd receive the report from my trailing drones long before I got there. I’d let Marvin know and be able to swing around to pick up the trail again, so for the sake of argument, consider that a given.
Item two: Eta Leporos displayed characteristics suggesting a spacefaring intelligence lived there - one that had built or was building a megastructure. That thought brought back memories of the Others. I shuddered at the possibility of another protracted interstellar war.
Item three: if you accepted that a spacefaring civilization and built some kind of megastructure and Bender had changed course to investigate it, then it was highly probable that something had happened to Bender in Eta Leporos. Otherwise he’d have built a space station which would be transmitting his logs back toward human space via radio by now. He’d also have long since received the SCUT plans already be on BobNet thanks to instantaneous communications.
Conclusion: caution is highly indicated.
I chuckled at the dried bureaucrat tease in that statement. Still, it was true. We normally approach to system at a tangent rather than diving straight for the star but we retained enough velocity to turn in system in minimal time. Maybe a parking orbit in the Oort would be a better first step this time, and HEAVY use of exploration scouts. Not cloaked, though. Cloaking interfered with SUDDAR, our subspace version of radar.
I rubbed my eyes with thumb and forefinger, an action that had no real point in VR except that it felt good, and started an inventory of onboard assets. I would have to do some in-flight manufacturing. Wouldn't that be fun.
3. Trouble
Bob
September 2331
Outskirts, Eta Leporos
I came to a stop, relatively speaking, more than 50 AU out from Eta Leporos the definitions of Kuiper and Oort regions were completely arbitrary, especially for a system other than Sol, but there were some practical differences. For instance, matter became increasingly scarce farther out, and metallic deposits became harder to find. The physics of stellar system formation seem to produce some consistent patterns, one of which was that the heavier elements tended to be closer in, and all the ice and frozen gases congregated farther out. In the Kuiper and Oort zones, it was almost all frozen clumps of condensed gases ejected from the inner system when the sun ignited. But, like raindrops, they generally condensed around something.
My first task would be to send scouts out to look for useful materials. This part fell within my original design. A Von Neumann probe needed to find raw materials, refine them, and use them to manufacture more Von Neumann probes. Of course, I’d long since exceeded my original design specifications, but it was still relaxing, like doing a routine and mindless task. This process would take a while though, which was making me antsy.
After years in interstellar space, it might seem odd to be fretting over a question of months, but I’d been frame-jacked way down for most of the trip. I was here now, and I want to get moving on my search. And not to put too fine a point on it, I wanted to see if there was really a megastructure in the system. The Others’ Dyson sphere was the only other piece of mega engineering we'd ever seen, and that had been only partly constructed. That the Others might be here seemed unlikely but it would certainly be a worst-case scenario.
My current orbit was too far out to resolve anything in the inner system with the onboard telescope. That was frustrating and my immediate urge was to send in some observation drones. But Bender had probably just gone charging in and that presumably had not worked out well for him. So, like it or not, a slow careful exploration of the system was in order.
I spent the time deploying my printers and setting up a proper orbital auto factory. Regardless of what I found in the system proper I would still have to set up a local communication station. In my idle moments, I checked my message backlog. It was HUGE after a few decades out of touch, but I was mostly interested in messages from my trailing drones. I filtered for those. The drones launched from Delta Eridani after I’d left had indeed found that Bender's trail turned toward Eta Leporos, and only a fraction of a light month before the point where I’d made that same turn. The fact made me feel more confident about my deductions, and about my plan of action. And slightly smug.
It took four months to locate enough material to even make a start on my plans. Transport drones brought mined material back to the auto factory, which slowly turned out finished parts according to the schedule and plans that had given Guppy. Roamers assembled drones from the parts and slowly constructed the relay station. A year after arriving I finally had enough exploration drones to begin the actual search for Bender. In all that time I hadn't contacted anyone, other than having a couple of email exchanges with Bill. First, because I didn't want people breathing down my neck, demanding constant updates. And second, because with the small temporary relay station all I would be able to manage would be audio and video streams. BobTime? FaceBob? It didn't sound likely to catch on.
I ordered local drones to trace an expanding spiral looking for Bender's trail into the system. The cross-section they had to examine wasn't all that big - not for devices with a 4 light-hour detection radius.
And finally, success. Bender had reached here. And Bender had apparently entered the system. I plotted his approach vector and assigned some drones the task of following his flight path. The
