Chapter 57

"Really? What does our advert require?"

"Your advert needs to state the basics: your company name, its address and contact details, and the barest detail of what you sell. You want readers to contact you for detailed information, based on their own requirements. For instance, what is your company name?"

"Rehome Seed Distributors."

"Then, how about: "Rehome Seed Distributors, Home Street, Metropolis. Quality seeds and plants for the best farming results. Contact Fred at (phone number) to see how we can help you grow." How does that grab you?"

"That sounds attractive, sir. Short and to the point. I understand what you mean. So, an advert along these lines, once a week for a month, say?"

"Ah, now the next question is, what dimensions for the advert; do you want it in specific colours; do you want parts of the advert to be flashing, to attract attention? It all costs more."

"Umm ... I think I need to go back and sort this out. Have you got a price list for placement, sizes, frequency, flashing highlights, and so on?"

"Of course. That is usually what people ask for. I can send it to your phone immediately."

"Please do. I apologise for my abruptness at the start, but I was unfamiliar with your business operation."

Euphemia put down her phone, and spoke to Isabella. "We have the newspaper's price list for adverts coming to my phone, Isabella."

"So I heard, Euphemia. You recall Ebenezer's enthusiasm for a store being built here? My enquires suggest that there is no "off the shelf" design available on the planet, so we either get our own store designed, or order a design from Earth that we can use to build a store on the farm.

That all takes time, and I wondered if we could rent a building in Metropolis for a few months while we wait for our store to be built?"

"Hey, that sounds very practical, Isabella. Let's put the idea to Ebenezer when he gets back."

Ebenezer was amenable to the plan. "The sooner we can have access to storage, the sooner we can be in operation."

Euphemia informed him of her enquiries about advertising. "Darling, in order to get business, our potential clients have to know who and where we are. Adverts in the Rehome News will get us noticed, my dear."

Ebenezer looked her over, askance, and gave a little sigh. "Euphemia, couldn't you have just asked me beforehand?"

"Why, dear?"

"Because I have already got hold of the advertising details for Rehome News. I intend our first advert to go in next week."

Euphemia leaned forward, and pretended to slap him. "Ebenezer, couldn't you have just told me, beforehand!"

"Ooops! Perhaps we both acted without speaking to the other. I didn't even mention it to Isabella. Sorry, girls. I promise not to do that again, especially with you two hoping to run the business when it starts."

"And I promise not do ... any ... more deciding without you knowing, Ebenezer. Isabella and I sorted out some things while you had your migraine, but I don't think that bothered you at that time."

"No, my darling. On that occasion I was pleased you used your initiative, you and Isabella. Girls: can we just talk about our ideas before any of us embarks on anything in future?"

Isabella chipped in, "A sensible suggestion, Ebenezer."

Euphemia added, "Agreed. It has my approval as well."

The Personalia rang Helen Kempe and asked her to get together with the Smith family group, for a discussion. "We have information to pass on to you," the voice added.

Helen thought it would be easier to invite them to the Governor's mansion, where she could keep an eye on her son. They agreed to come to lunch, so she fixed up a snack lunch they could eat while listening.

As soon as they arrived, she put in her call to The Personalia. "We are all together, so tell us what you have for us?"

"You will recall that we were searching for a planet or something that blocked the sunlight to the planet at intervals? Well, we found the culprit.

There was no planet, much as we suspected, so we sharpened up our gravity detectors and went looking. What we found was a structure, which was basically a fairly flat plate, with its face to the star. This did not make much sense to us, as we had never encountered such a thing before, despite having visited hundreds of stars.

Accordingly, we approached it slowly, with some trepidation. There was no noticeable reaction, so we came closer and closer, ready to do a subspace jump at the slightest sign of action. We did not want to be attacked.

Our Landership eventually got close enough for us to finally identify it. It was a living entity. What was there was something that should have been in the outer reaches of the star system. There is a ... what you might call a creature, which looks like a circular sail. It – there are many of them - lives and grows very slowly, far from the star. From time to time, small bits break off, as a result of a small collision, and become another entity, independent of the parent. When the parent grows large and powerful enough, it imparts a small impetus, folds its structure into a needle shape, and heads in towards the star, pulled by gravity. Somehow or other, it steers its path into a parabola bending round the star, much like a comet.

As it gets near the central star, it gathers enough energy to open its sail at a certain point, and it then swings round the star, gathering speed and energy all the time, and it launches itself into the void between stars. The closer its parabola cones to the star, the more energy it collects and the more speed it can gather in this slingshot manoeuvre. Whatever the final speed, all of them manage to leave the star system, and head out into interstellar space, its sail facing back to where it left. It travels for thousands of years, perhaps even millions of Earth years, in suspended animation, until it arrives at another star system and settles into an outer asteroid belt again.

We have seen such creatures in a number of star systems, but they are innocuous."

Helen interrupted, "A fascinating story, but what has that to do with the massive structure you mentioned. Isn't it in the wrong place to be one of these creatures; the wrong size; and the wrong behaviour?"

The Personalia voice was unfazed. "You are correct. This is why it took us so long to identify the structure. Our conclusion is that this a mutation. We presume that when the parent creature dived in towards the star, that instead of swinging round and shooting off to interstellar space, it swung more tightly and ended up in orbit round the star.

Its miniscule mind would then have assumed it had arrived at another star, and begin the growth process. The huge amount of energy coming from the sun then overwhelmed its natural processes, and it gobbled up energy. How it added to its mass is not clear, but we have the idea that it turned so that it was edge on to the star, and its face became a collector of dust particles. Once it had enough mass to work on, it would turn back to the sun's output, and incorporate all the collected material into its structure.

Thus, we surmise, it has been growing slowly over millions of years, to the point where its diameter is many thousands of kilometres, and its thickness sufficient that no light passes through the structure at all. As a result, it acts like a small planet and casts a shadow which occasionally intersects with our planet of interest (can we give it a name, please, to simplify reference?).

Robert, as a geologist, had a query. "Do you think that it still alternates in setting its face, or edge, to the sun? That would affect the shadow, wouldn't it?"

"We have not had enough time to determine whether that still happens, but, indeed, it would have that effect. The orbit that the structure is in is not entirely in the same plane as the planets, but close enough that its shadow often intersects with that of our forest planet – may we call it Arborea, on account of the forests?

To go on, the creature orbits at a slightly faster speed than Arborea, so the shadow impacts on Arborea only intermittently, and mostly just a fraction of the planet is affected, but at considerable intervals the shadow envelopes most of the planet. As the orbital speeds are not so very different, the shadow lasts for weeks instead of minutes, so that Arborea goes into a deep freeze within days.

The shadow only has its full effect when the creature is facing the star. In any other configuration only a percentage of the shadow affects Arborea, and that smaller impact shows up in the tree ring data."

"So that is why the natives survived so long?" Mya contributed.

"Correct. It is only in the last thousand years or so that the creature was large enough for its shadow to have a significant effect on the planet, and therefore a significant impact on the life of the natives. We surmise that the apparent fields that were found were the natives attempts to grow enough food to survive during the big freezes. We also surmise that the reason there were no signs of villages is that the natives either used caves or had burrowed underground for living space that doubled as survival shelters once every several hundred years.

That is a long period to prepare for, so the previous events obviously were enough to force the population to protect itself against such disastrous circumstances. Their wise men would have worked out the regularity, but would had no idea why it varied in intensity. If any had survived the last severe event, there would have been some signs of surface activity, for they would have had to search for food in the form of fruit and nuts. The only animals which could survive these temperature drops are deep burrowing animals, and these are few in any ecology."