The Interstellar Mining Ship Arcadia entered the star system named 7C-TC7U at 8:00-hour standard time. It was a member of the mining fleet sent by the Rhyolite and Shale Corporation, and the lead ship in the mining expedition. The Arcadia and her crew were to scout the system, determine a good mining location, and set up shop with the mining fleet for the next six months as cargo ships ferried raw material out of the system and to a refinery station a few systems over.

The automated ship systems powered down its Faster-Than-Light engine as it approached the orbit of the inner planets and engaged sub-light thrusters. The AI controlling the automated systems set a course for an asteroid belt between the inner and outer planets, which were all gas giants, with no rocky planets in the solar system.

Karen Satchel, one of the twenty humans crewing the starship, awoke from her shift sleep. She would help monitor final approach and basic prospecting operations with four others before handing her shift to the next set of crew members.

Karen wiped the sleep from her eyes and did her morning routine. There was no such thing as ‘morning’ in space, but all members of the crew behaved on a twenty-four-hour cycle clock like normal people on a planet.

Karen finished up and made her way to the ship’s bridge. She would check in with the computer and any other crew members before heading for breakfast at the ship’s mess hall.

“Good, good. You’re awake, Karen.”

“Good morning to you, Bob. Is Mark, Wade, and Wilma up as well?”

“They are. They’re in the mess hall getting breakfast. You should too. I’ve already had mine.”

“Anything special to report?”

“Yes, but I insist you go get breakfast. You are going to need it.”

“At least...”

“Karen! Breakfast! Now!”

“Fine, fine, I’m going. You better have something for us when we’re done.”

That was odd. Normally Bob wasn’t that pushy and assertive. The man was pretty serious in his work, but he usually had time to banter and chat. Karen would interrogate him with the rest of the shift.

Breakfast was uneventful. Karen cooked herself eggs and sausage with a cup of orange juice. She caught up with Wilma and the two chatted about what Bob was up to. When they finished their meals, the two walked back to the bridge together. They found Wade and Mark there, patiently waiting for them, so Bob could explain what was going on.

“Okay Bob, we’re here, and the two slow eaters are here too. Mind telling us what’s going on?” asked Wade.

The other three non-Bob crew members bobbed their heads.

“Okay, we came to the 7C system searching for asteroids to crack open. There ARE asteroids in here, a whole belt between the inner and outer bodies. The bodies aren’t planets, though.”

“What? You crack pot of shit, Bob, those were most definitely planets we scanned before coming here,” exclaimed Mark.

Bob held his hand up for Mark to shut up and listen.

“We thought they were planets.”

There were eight bodies in the system. Scans from before the expedition registered them as gaseous planets. Three were in the inner system and five were in the outer system. The three inner bodies were about the size of a large rocky planet, something between three and five Earths worth of planet. The next three planets were the size of Jupiter, spaced out enough where gravity wouldn’t mess with their orbits. The last two were about the size of Neptune.

“Have the scans from back home ever lied?” asked Wade.

“The scans corporate took registered them as planets, I assume because they appear to be about the size of planets. What they are, however, isn’t a classification the scans could make. We wouldn’t have known until we got here.”

“Okay. Let’s assume these ‘planets’ aren’t actually planets. What are they, Bob?” asked Wilma, trying to calm the situation a bit.

“I don’t know.”

“Wait. You can tell us they’re not planets. But that’s all you know?” said Mark.

“Yes.”

Karen was staring out the window, not paying attention to the interrogation the three were giving Bob.

The ship was in orbit of one of the ‘planets’, the third one to be precise. Karen was looking at it, trying to deduce what it was, assuming it was not a planet. Whatever it was, the body was not gaseous. She didn’t know why the scans came back as ‘gaseous’, but this thing looked almost artificial.

At this distance, Karen would be able to see bands of clouds in the upper atmosphere of the planet. But there were none.

She turned back to the group.

“Bob, were there any other information you could glean from local scans?” she requested of him.

“Nothing.”

“Really? There should have been...”

“I mean, the scans returned nothing at all. Whatever those bodies are out there, the scanner gave nothing at all. As if what we were looking at didn’t exist. The scanner registered nothing! That’s why I said they weren’t planets.”

The four other crew members blinked.

“Okay. One last try,” said Karen. “Computer, run a scan on the third planet.”

“I’m sorry. There is no third planet.”

“Computer, run a scan on the body we’re orbiting.”

“I’m sorry, we’re not orbiting anything.”

“What?”

“That’s what I thought earlier!” Bob said, exasperated. “Now, do you guys understand?”

“How is that even possible?” said Mark to no one.

“Okay. What else can we glean from the situation?” said Karen.

“Well, the moons,” said Bob.

“What about the moons?” asked Wade

“They’re ... well, take a look.”

The crew looked out the window. Slowly orbiting the ‘planet’ in the distance was a crystal stellation.

“My estimates that thing is about the size of Mars. The entire system is full of them. There’s one for each of the inner planets, twelve at each of the larger ‘gas giants’, and five at the smaller giants. They’re all identical. And I do mean identical. The dimension of each spire is in the exact same place on every single one. I checked with multiple probe orbits prior to you guys waking up.”

“Are they artificial or something? There’s no way they would be identical.”

“I don’t know.”

The crew stood there in silence. No one knew what was going on. This was all too surreal. A solar system of planets that didn’t exist and moons that were giant crystal stellations.

“What about the asteroid belt? We’re miners after all. Does the asteroid belt conform to reality?” questioned Karen.

“About that...” started Bob.

“Don’t tell us, more insanity?”

Bob got into the pilot seat and powered the ship’s engines up.

“You must see it. I won’t spoil anything and anything I say probably would be dismissed by the sane.”

Bob calculated and executed an intersystem jump from the third planet to the asteroid belt. As he powered down the ship’s engines, the others could only stare at the wonder in front of them. The asteroid belt was made up of strange ‘asteroids’ in the shapes of pyramids, cubes, hexagonal prisms, and four-sided diamonds.

“What in the tarnation is this?” started Wilma.

“The ‘asteroid belt’,” replied Bob.

“Do they at least register on the scanner?” queried Karen.

“Nope.”

“There’s no way these are natural,” said Mark.

“Ra-Ooo. Ri-wa-Ooo-ih.” (“No. They’re not natural.”)

The five of them turned around to find a puppy dog sitting on one of the bridge consoles. It was a dalmatian puppy.

The group blinked and pinched themselves to make sure what they were seeing was real. The ship had a manifest of twenty humans and no more. How a dog could stowaway on the ship was beyond them.