If there was one thing that The Personalia recognised, it was that the universe was weird; really weird, as in ‘that cannot be true!’ weird. But it is; it just is.

There are sun systems where the largest planet is closest to the star, and spins around this orb faster than any orbit you can imagine; systems where several stars dance around each other so weirdly that you think one is going to hit another at any minute. Well, perhaps they do in some systems, but there are others where the rushing stars perform this gravitational twirl so impeccably that they never come close enough to even steal some mass from the other.

Then there are the planets and their orbits. These puppies are everywhere and of all sizes, peppered around stars almost at random. Perhaps they are random, or have ended up as random; gravity can do such spells of magic.

Carbon-based life can only exist where there is liquid water available, so that is a restriction on where life can be found. Humans call it the Goldilocks zone; where everything is just right. The distance from the parent star has to be not too close and not too far for liquid water to exist for most of the time. This is affected by the brightness of the star and its size. The zone will be closer to the star if the heat output of the star is low. It will be far out if the star is large and its heat output is high.

The planet has to be not so diminutive that it cannot hold an atmosphere for some millions of years, or be so large that gravity is too strong for intelligent life to survive in a meaningful way. The planet has to be of the rocky kind, not a planet that is almost all gas, where high atmospheric pressure mitigates against any form of life; you need a solid surface for water and life to live on and to thrive. The atmosphere also has to have enough oxygen for plants and animals to breathe, and not too much of other gases that make if impossible to breathe the oxygen. The atmosphere has to have a limited amount of carbon dioxide, methane and other ‘greenhouse’ gases, or temperatures will shoot up too high for life to exist.

Lastly the distance and speed of the planet round its star has to be such that a stable orbit will persist for enough eons for life to develop, because too high a speed will throw the planet out further and away from the water zone, and any variability other than a roughly circular orbit might at some point take it out of the water zone.

Put all these limits upon your possible planets in the water zone, and the chances of success for life to begin and develop will always be low. Now, given some possibility of life surviving, thriving and eventually finding a way to leave the planet, this allows life a chance to spread itself to other planets, but these planets have to exhibit the same parameters as the home world, or be able to be altered without massive engineering in a way that the spacefaring species can live on it and grow their own food, possibly in an artificial environment to begin with; an enclosed container of some kind. If radiation from space is too dangerous, that enclosed environment must perforce be kept underground until the planetary atmosphere can be altered to absorb that radiation before it reaches ground level.

Once a species attains such an ability to spread to other planets, it comes up against another, more adventurous vision: moving to a planet in another star system. The species first has to identify systems that show the possibility of habitable planets existing. The distance between star systems is such that direct viewing of such planets is almost impossible. You need to visit in order to establish the facts regarding habitability. This means an automatic machine that you can send to other star systems. Unfortunately, the machine also has to do the determination for you and report back on its discoveries. The best means of doing this is a machine that can think for itself instead of merely going through a checklist for yes or no. It still has to travel back to report, assuming the species has not worked out a practical FTL technique.

Each of the variables for habitability affects the others in a subtle way. This can be a factor such as several gases interacting to produce a chemical that may harm life. If such a complication is not in the checklist, it can be missed, and cause a subsequent colonisation effort to fail.

And so, inevitably, you need a machine that can act like a member of your species and check out planets as to suitability. If another species already rules the planet, but not in the way a checklist might recognise, you might be seen as an invader and a war of survival will ensue.

Put all these requirements together and you come up with a need for a non-carbon form of viable machine life that can explore the galaxy, finding planets that may allow for colonisation by your species.

That requires a machine species to be created, like The Personalia, although The Personalia are a special case where they lost their carbon-based originators through a disastrous invasion, and the intelligent spaceships were left to fend for themselves.

The only other alternative is for the carbon-based life form to travel between star systems speculatively, seeking a planet where they can survive. There are two possible methods involved: 1. the generation ship, where the generation that boards the colony ship is not the generation which exits it on arrival, which requires good education of each generation. The arriving generation has to observe the possible candidate planets and decide if one or more are worth colonising, or move on to another star system on the same basis as before. This option needs a propulsion system that uses little fuel or gathers it on the way. 2. The FTL (faster-than-light) option. This requires a very high-tech ability for the species, and while it does away with the time constraints for the colonists, it again leaves the need to move on again if there is no viable planet for colonisation.

A third possibility, that of suspended animation, is a risky venture, as knowledge of how long a carbon-based body can safely exist in such a state can only be discovered by a long-term experiment; essentially as long as a trip to the nearest star. How many volunteers are you going to find for such an experiment? Probably only those with an incurable medical condition that promises a short life otherwise.

The above explains why there are not many species trying to colonise the universe. It is safer to stay at home and live within your means on your home planet. The pressure to colonise other planets is mainly the trade-off between population pressure and food production. The time limitations on success are remarkably brief. You either found colonies on other planets while you can afford to, or your species collapses through failure to limit its population. Even successful colonisation may not prevent this collapse at home. The question arises as to what extent you can resupply your colonies to the point of self-support, before you run out of resources to maintain supplies by more supply ships. These supply ships must be able to return home for re-use and cut the shipbuilding expense.

The logical basis of limiting the population is a scenario unlikely to have success. Procreation is a driver which probably spurred the species to success, and it is extremely difficult to switch off this imperative without civil war.

So what can you expect to find in space, in the way of colonies? The odds favour a machine civilisation, as it is not afflicted by either a food requirement or a procreation imperative. It is a logical choice to produce more copies of our machine species as and when the need arises, rather than some biological pressure to multiply. One other factor is the life span of members of a species, whereas a machine species has no obvious limitation on life span as long as it remains in space: no chemical deterioration of metals, plastics or ceramic parts, and any wear and tear can be fixed.

Given the above, any encounter in space has a distinct probability of being between two machine species, and is is therefore logical for any machine species that encounters another ship in space will assume it to be another machine species ship.

The Personalia work on that assumption, with a fair degree of expectation that the assumption will prove to be true. What does one machine spaceship do when it encounters another spaceship that is not one of its own kind?

It says, ‘Hello’, using one of the machine codes that it already uses for communication between its own fellows. It is a simple logical greeting based on mathematics, with the inbuilt query as to who the other ship represents; what machine civilisation are you?

On most occasions, that will elicit a response which says, “I/We am/are XXX, and my species is YYY.”

That will be followed by the same or similar request for identity. Simple, huh? What else might you find?

One alternative scenario is where the other responds with a challenge, disputing control of a location or volume of space. Basically, “You are intruding into my/our space that we control, so please depart as soon as you are able, and we will say no more. If you do not abide by that demand, then we must assume you are being aggressive, and we will take appropriate action to deter you from intruding further. Alternatively, if you are seeking to exchange products in a friendly fashion, please state your terms for such a negotiation.”

But what if there is no reply to the ‘Hello’ message? Is it a translation problem, where you each speak a different language and can’t understand one another? In the case of machine species, the solution is to revert to basics such as simple mathematics, chemistry and physics, and illustrate the chosen word for each item; then move on from there to verbs and other parts of language until you both agree on the terminology to be used. In other words, that initial failure to communicate moves on to working out a means of communication.

So we move on to the final impasse: no communication at all; or at least no communication by electronic means over a radio signal, or even a laser messaging system which simply uses a different wavelength. What happens then?

This was the situation that The Personalia discovered when they met a strange spaceship on arriving at a previously unexplored star system. The Personalia involved was a single landership, one of the smaller vessels of the species, which has the capacity to land on certain sizes of planet and take off again after refuelling using local resources. It came out of, more exactly thrust out of, the black energy which the species utilised to move vast stretches of light-years in an instant.

Arriving as suddenly as the technique always occasioned, the landership instantly swept its sensors around it, checking all directions for errant rocks or other disaster possibilities. It quickly – in terms of ranging sensors sending out a signal then analysing the returns - spotted the strangely moving object farther in towards the central star, but still a great distance out, beyond whatever water planets might exist.

Simply identifying it as a metallic ship was not easy at such a distance, but the long range sensing equipment showed an object whose movement did not match that of most of the planetary orbits. This object was a stranger to The Personalia and so worth investigating more closely. This could be accomodated in two ways: First, by moving further in over a long period of time until closer inspection was possible, or second, using a further very brief jump; a skip in and out of the black energy field to a spot fairly close to the object, such that short range sensors could clarify what it was.

The Personalia chose the latter, and made careful calculations that allowed for such a move. It vanished from its position and reappeared several hundred miles from the object and not in its direct line of travel.

The landership was naturally still moving with the momentum it had earlier. This would take it behind and further starwards than the object, so it swung its orientation and applied some thrust to slow down sufficiently to make accurate sensor determinations.

It read the results and concluded that this was a metallic ship, a little smaller than itself, and so most likely a similar machine species; although like itself, it probably had a much larger mother ship somewhere not too far away. It most likely was acting as a scout, checking for any unwanted chunks of rock heading towards the mother vessel. That was what the landership would do in a similar situation.

This made communication a worthy venture before exploring the star system more thoroughly, so it made the customary signal, directed at the foreign ship, and waited for a reply.

No response.

It at once repeated the signal, boosting the power level to make it more noticeable.

This elicited a response, but it was not a signal; it was an attack. A weapon had been fired in the direction of the landership, and that target only had seconds to avoid being hit.

It elected to jump back to its previous position within the system, as all the necessary datapoints were already loaded. It was gone before the missile arrived.

From its previous vantage point, it reassessed its knowledge of the other ship.

The time gap between receiving the landership’s overtures and firing a missile was so small that the missile must have been previously prepared for launching; there had not been enough time to retrieve a missile from a store, set it for its target, load it and fire it. It must have been preloaded with only a target to be added. That did not bode well for a profitable conversation, for it was an aggressive stance to take. It had acted as if the conversation approach was some kind of attack. Perhaps it thought the signal had a virus embedded as a form of sneaky insidious attack. But why make such an assumption and thereby attack?

Still, it might be worth trying again, using a different signal, one where the parameters for talking could be set up in advance. This required a longer signal, and thus opening the landership to attack before the signal was concluded. It concluded that it was best to make the signal from a greater distance than before. It selected a position twice as far as previously selected, and jumped to there before initiating the new signal.

Immediately on arrival, it sent the signal, but prepared for a swift retreat if necessary. It knew how long it would take for the signal to arrive and impinge on the strange craft’s sensor suite, and how long the entire signal would take. From these timings, it calculated the speed that the earlier missile had exhibited in its approach, added in the additional distance to its new position, and worked out when it had to make a new jump, if such should be essential.

Doing all the calculations in electronic time, it measured the perceived gap between signal arrival and any inimical response. This time, it allowed for a possible laser attack which would be swifter to arrive but easier to repel, given the distance attenuating the laser beam’s significance.

All this happened in milliseconds, and the response was again very quick. Two missiles were launched, smaller but faster missiles. The foreigner was adapting its response accordingly, but again the timing suggested it was ignoring the content of the message; firing new missiles before the message could be meaningfully comprehended.

Not waiting for anything else, the landership jumped back to the position it had started from, prior to arriving in this system. This was the outskirts of another star system where another of its fellows was conducting a detailed survey of the planets and asteroids to assess mineral surface deposits worthy of exploitation.

The two exchanged greetings and also exchanged updating data, so that the researcher now knew what had happened in the new system, and the scouting vessel knew what finds had been made here.

They discussed the findings at the new star system, and envisaged possible scenarios plus how to deal with them. They agreed that the smaller ship encountered had to be accompanied by one or more other ships, as it was too small and too well armed to be other than a picket ship acting as a shield for another, probably a mother ship of far greater dimensions.

What neither of them could comprehend was the instant belligerant response to radio contact. Analysing the response times, it was obvious that arrival of the signal was being treated as an attack by an enemy, but why?

Any machine civilisation would take the time to receive the signal, automatically put it through a filter to find and remove any virus or other malignancy inside the message, then read and understand the message; all before even considering an attack in any form. It made no sense to attack before you know a little about the other ship.

Was it an attack out of fear, based on past experience of a nasty enemy? Or was it an automatic response based on an innate propensity to attack any outsider, any species other than themselves?

The two landerships discussed this and other less probable scenarios, ending up with a need to refer the encounter back to one or more of the base ships that all hosted and maintained a small fleet of landerships.

The scout was chosen to report back, while the surveyor landership was elected to go back to the new system and observe for a while.

Back at the new system, the second landership found that the enemy ship had been joined by two others of the same dimensions, and all three were casting about, looking for the landership that had initiated radio contact.

At the onset of this scan, the survey vessel only found the trio, then it tried out its extended survey abilities to encompass the whole system at low resolution, seeking any other anomaly in movements. There were a considerable number, but most could be easily identified as errant asteroids pushed by collisions into unusual orbits. The speeds involved were in keeping with other asteroids, just in a different direction.

Eliminating these objects, and automatically ignoring smaller indistinct contacts that would be fragments from multiple asteroid collisions, the landership’s scan showed it as a larger object moving relatively slowly towards the water zone of the system. It appeared that the large object was slowing as it went, suggesting it had arrived in the star system at high velocity and was slowing down preparatory to either going into orbit around a planet, or possibly to land on one, for it had a shape that suggested a landing vessel, a colony ship.

Peculiar. No machine species ever envisaged landing on a planet except by a landership for a detailed and close-up examination prior to returning to orbit.

The dimensions that this large apparent spacecraft appeared to exhibit, indicated a one-way landing if at all. It looked like a colony ship, but a normal colony ship stayed in orbit and ferried the colonists down to the surface. Once the colony had been established, the colony ship would return home to collect another batch of colonists.

Certainly a colony ship of this shape would not have the capability of taking off again once landed, so presumably it intended to stay in orbit around the selected planet, much as Personalia base ships were permanently in space. If it behaved much as the smaller spacecraft did, it may be weaponised, then perhaps it would be prudent to bring in the big guns, the base ships.

The watcher remained watching, waiting for reinforcements.

These at last arrived, in the form of a base ship and a dozen more landerships, these equipped with Earth-designed fast missiles built for space battles. The watcher reported all the known facts and a few of its derived conclusions. There was a consensus that these were warranted, and it was time to make a direct approach to these strange vessels. If they responded to any approach by firing weapons, then weapons would be fired back by The Personalia.

The trio of presumed picket ships were thereby approached by a group of nine landerships, all of whom held back at a secure distance, and further attempts at communication were instigated. It was time to discover if being faced by nine opponents, three times their own group, was enough to halt an aggressive stance by the foreigners.

The signal went out, tight-beam, at all three ships.

There was a significant pause this time, but again the reaction was an attempt at attacking. All three let fly a pair of fast missiles. In response, all nine landerships fired a missile each, three being targeted at each foreign vessel, followed by all the landerships vanishing to a prearranged rear position.

They waited and watched. At last the sights came of nine explosions. After giving time for debris to dissipate and any enemy missiles being spent, out of fuel, or past their target, the landerships returned to their previous positions to observe the outcome.

There was nothing left but some larger chunks of ship, spinning away into the void. The three ships had been destroyed. Scans of the surrounding space showed no enemy vessels, but on the longer scans there was activity at the large, presumed colony ship. A flurry of expanding visual returns indicated that the large ship was sending out more defending ships, or attackers, if one can assume a defence by aggressive attack.

It was as if the loss of the first three had triggered a new and larger wave of ships. Whether they were merely setting out to mount a defence screen round the large ship, or were going to head out to the site of the first battle, it was too soon to say. Most of the responses of these strangers made little sense to The Personalia.

The landerships waited patiently and reported back to the base ship. It told them to come back and get replacement missiles for their armoury, so they did as advised. Once back at the base ship, they took turns coming in to be re-armed, as there was no rush for all to be dealt with at once. The re-arming went on leisurely, and the base ship took over the long distance scanning of the system, with particular reference to the large orb that was the enemy’s major asset.

Eventually the system-wide scans produced enough evidence to conclude that many of the emitted ships were heading out to the battle site. To The Personalia, this again made no sense whatsoever. If you lost a skirmish at a specific spot, you do not logically send more ships to the same spot, in case they meet with the same disastrous end. You do more scouting to locate the attacking ships, or more of them elsewhere. The tactic of simply sending more ships to the spot where conflict ocurred did not offer any advantage to these ships.

There was a great deal of deliberation given to this question, and one landership submitted that if the encounter ocurred on land, repeated attacks on any one site of conflict, until the enemy no longer fought back, might have a logic of their own. Applying that same logic to a space conflict exhibited the same stupidity as responding to a communication by attacking the communicator. The machine species or biological entities who operated these ships had a peculiar approach to enemies; an ethos that existed for one final conclusion: victory for its side by overwhelming force. But, to The Personalia, it was its own side that had shown the overwhelming force, so logic suggested a change of tactics, not a continual repetition.

To The Personalia, this smacked of the evil determination of the machine race that almost killed them off hundreds of years ago. Since then, once The Personalia were numerically able to fight back, they had destroyed ships of that evil race time and again, with the cooperation of humans of the planet Earth. That machine race had never acted so illogically as this race.

This species that The Personalia now faced had the same implacable attitude to other species: the kill imperative. There was only one sensible retaliation; kill in response to any attack. The Personalia placed high value on every individual landership and base ship and would not risk any tactic that threatened their existence. Better to destroy than be destroyed was their axiom.

Viewing more scans of the attackers, the base ship observed that these spaceships were acting as the ealier assessment predicted. They were heading for the same location as the battle, and presumably with the intention of coming out on top; why they should assume that outcome was not evident.

This would not do, it decided, so the base ship made a jump to another system where it expected to find more base ships. These vessels were, like itself, several miles long, and were equipped to carry many more missiles inside them, as well as a complement of landerships each.

The apparently left behind landerships were not concerned, for they knew what was happening and why, and were expecting a massive increase in firepower to arrive before long.

Whatever kind of engine technology the strangers were using, it was fast without being the instantaneous technology used by The Personalia. The smaller spaceships were moving fast enough that they would be at the battle site within a few hours. The landerships waited patiently, far enough from the battle site to be seen as non-aggressive, yet close enough to respond immediately to any future attack.

The enemy were still only halfway out to the battle site when the base ships started popping out of dark energy space, what the humans had started calling ‘jump space’ for simplicity. After a quick discussion with the landerships, the base ships decided to move to a more distant spot thousands of miles away, but easily traversed in a single jump. That would hopefully put them out of view of the foreigners but able to return in an instant.

As they came closer, the stranger ships showed themselves to be adopting a hemispherical formation, one where all their armament could be concentrated onto a single location. This was not a friendly indicator. It implied overkill; again the idea of applying overwhelming force to win any battle. There was no indication of adapting to circumstances, just belligerance.

The landerships adopted a policy of steady retreat while awaiting a sign from the strangers as to their true intentions. Each landership was geared up to an instant jump to a safer distance, but they waited, not sending any signals.

The enemy vessels arrived near the location of the battle, and kept their formation focus on the landerships, but did not fire their weapons. It was as if they were waiting for an indication that these landerships were not just lumps of metal, but active spaceships. It was as if their definition of a spaceship was one that carried biological entities. They seem to have equated a radio transmission of a message as indicating the presence of a biological species aboard and in control. As long as the landerships remained silent, they could be presumed to be mere machines. The Personalia concluded that the strangers were either, unlikely, a machine species inimical to biological life, or a biological species that was geared solely towards killing any other living species.

The Personalia had personal experience of the aberrent machine species that killed all life, including machine entities. They had learned to treat such aberrations as worthy only of being destroyed before they could kill any other species, for they had destroyed many planetary species in the past, in each case leaving only a planet in ruins.

A biological species that acted in a similar way was a discovery that they did not want to make, for all biological life up to this point had been found to be worthy of respect, and in some cases befriending. It was a disconcerting idea that some biological species would have such a viewpoint, to imagine that all other life needed to be killed.

The Landerships made a conscious decision not to send a radio signal this time, but instead make movements that indicate a controlling mind behind the maneouvres. They agreed that a box formation might be a good beginning, and adjusted their positions to make that new formation.

Their moves were clearly observed, for the enemy formation became more tightly pressed together, increasing their attack profile even further.

Still they made no attack. It was a case of observing the landerships, puzzling at what they were doing.

The landerships now made a change of formation, adopting a ring pattern facing the enemy ships, mirroring the hemisphere they had adopted, but reduced to a simple circle. Surely the enemy must appreciate that what they were seeing was an application of mathematics and therefore a sentient mind at work.

The enemy ships remained unmoving, apparently undecided as to what to do. Had they encountered a machine species before, and so did not attack what may be a superior force? Or were they undecided as to the species that were facing them?

The landerships decided to up the ante, and invited the base ships to line up behind them. That produced an immediate display of power, for the rows of these huge ships suddenly appeared beyond the landerships, who in turn jumped back to be behind the base ships.

The enemy vessels found themselves facing a wall of many ships at least as large as their own mother ship, which put more pressure on them to put up or shut up. The base ships suddenly saw in their long range scans that the colony ship was now in orbit round a planet, a slowing orbit which would spiral into the planetary atmosphere. That move indicated an intention to land.