Chapter 11: Is Anybody Out There?

We paid a cautious visit to the Groombridge 34 system. After putting some serious distance between us, we reported back to Earth via linked Q-bits. We found more evidence of a space-faring culture, but again all evidence pointed towards the system being deserted.

We were tasked to visit all the other stars in our local cluster with a large proper motion--stars that were moving 'against the herd' as it were. We visited eight more stars with similarly abnormal vectors, all within fifteen light years of Sol. Every damned one of them had evidence of a space-faring culture that had dried up and blown away. We also found evidence of stellar power taps in each system. I convinced the captain that discretion was the better part of valor, and that caution was a survival skill. He agreed. We reported in over Q-bit links, then returned to Tau Ceti to mine enough rare-earths that we'd pay off a respectable percentage of our ship's construction fees.

We had asteroid mining down to an art form. We used the ship's reactionless drive in concert with our high-powered tractor beams to increase the density of areas in the drift. Then the mining ships went out to Hoover up the ores. It worked like clockwork. We were overloaded with rare earths once again, but this time it only took us seven months. The Miranda company actually had to stockpile the refined metals we brought back so as not to glut the market and cause the prices to plummet.

Merry and I had a little baby. We gave her an unusual name--Argent. We kept her with us constantly for her first year. Then she went into the creche. There weren't too many children there so they all got a lot of attention. By the time she was eight she was past the mindless danger period and tested out into the general population. It was good to have her back with us. We both spent a couple hours a day, usually after dinner, helping her integrate her lessons into her understanding of the universe.

We were tasked with a four year project to survey as many type G star systems as we could within 100 light years of Sol. Before we left several of our older crew retired and a new batch came on board to take their places. We quickly discovered that life on earth was blessed by an abundance of metals, probably due to a large body collision before the crustal plates formed which caused much of the stony outer layer to be ejected in the form of Luna. The remaining core was churned up with the remaining proto-shell, raising the percentage of available crustal metals which soon solidified enough to keep those metals from dropping back to the core.

All the planets we found in the Goldilocks zone (not too cold, not too hot--just right) were deficient in many of the crustal elements necessary for our amino acids, vitamins and other reactions that allowed us to live. Only after subjecting them to massive orbital strikes with metal-bearing asteroids and allowing the consequent vulcanism to subside would they support 'life as we know it'.

These were multi-generation projects that we couldn't commit the corporation to without analysis and budgetary oversight.

We found a generous sprinkling of Jovian-class planets though. We'd never lack for a supply of organic feedstock, carbon compounds or water.