Chap. 410 One week later

My hands are sweating, Data thought, as he stepped onto the stage. The implications of what I read not an hour ago are mind numbing. Raylan was stunned, too.

“We’ll have to tell them,” Data said. Raylan nodded, numbed. “You will help me?”

“Of course,” Raylan said, “Although I have a feeling most of them won’t understand the concept.”

He watched as the audience came in. Thank the stars it’s not the whole Landing staff, he thought. I really dislike the few yobs who have to argue or insist on being the center of attention.

Lord Lytol and Master Astronomer Rahman sat behind him.

“We’re trying something new,” he told them, “This meeting is being sent via datalinks bouncing off our Yokohama to those Holders, Crafters and Weyrleaders that have datalinks. They won’t be able to make comments, but this will save them from having to come here via dragonback. Later they can ping me with questions. None of them are set up with this big screen behind me, so I’m hoping that they’ll then pass on what we say today to their folks.”

“You mean, I’ll be seen all over Pern?” Lord Lytol said.

“Yes, my lord. But only those who are actually watching via datalink.”

The Councilman paused. “Maybe I should have had my hair cut.”

Rahman smiled. “My lord, at least you HAVE hair.”

They all laughed. It broke their nervousness.

When the flood trickled to a single person, Data tapped the microphone-a novelty recently recreated by the Research and Development folks-to assure himself that it wasn’t too loud.

“Good morning, my friends,” he said, and was pleased to see his tech at the back give a thumbs up. Good. Not too loud and not too soft. I hated shouting.

He cleared his throat and looked at where he thought the camera lens was. His tech at the back motioned for him to move back just a bit and then gave him another thumbs up. Perfect.

“Good morning, all of those who are viewing this briefing remotely. I am Data Division Chief. This morning you will hear from Councilman Emeritus Lord Lytol, who will speak first, then Master Astronomer Rahman, who will relate what he and his team saw through their telescopes on Far Western. I also have Science Division Chief Raylan, who, with me, will relate what the Yokohama saw and reported of the flyby of the Butcher’s starship.

The screen blossomed with a view of the stage, Raylan and Data standing, Lord Lytol and Master Astronomer Rahman sitting behind them.

“If you please, my Lord?” he asked, meeting Lytol’s eyes.

My stomach is still in knots, he thought, as Lytol stepped up to the microphone. I have to let Lytol and Rahman go before me, If I go first, no one will listen to either of them. I still can’t believe what the computer has theorized. I can see Raylan composing what he’s going to say. He’s holding up well, considering his being a scientist means he understands the situation more than I do.

The elderly dragonman touched the mike, flinching when he heard the sound. Then he spoke.  

“I want to, once again, commend everyone in Landing, and indeed, everyone on Pern, for their actions-or should I say non actions? when this horrible craft approached us. Because everyone obeyed the mandated shutdown, we are here today, unharmed and now, much wiser as to what the threat was-and how we protected ourselves. While I still don’t know quite how to use a datalink, never mind a computer, still, I knew that many of you were unhappy with having to communicate by old ways, that being using Runners, and writing things down and actually talking face to face.

Not using a datalink or a computer terminal forced some of you into communicating in ways you haven’t had to do in a long time. It was no hardship for me and other people my age to do without an electronic thing to communicate with.”

He sighed, then continued, “I would like to thank all of Pern’s dragonriders for going above and beyond in managing communications and even preparing to fight the drones should it have been necessary. Those of you with fire lizards are also to be commended, it is amazing how useful the little dragons have become.”

He’d had many years to learn to master the flicker of pain that suffused his face when he mentioned anything about dragons. But still, the dragonriders in the audience saw it. And sympathized. He’d lost his dragon early on, they all knew, and they admired that he did not suicide, but continued on.

 He’s given everything he is to Pern, K’ndar thought. How we all wish we could ease your loss. But it is impossible.

“It is due to everyone abiding by the shutdown that we are all here today,” Lytol continued, “happy to be alive and unharmed, because everyone on the planet worked together to keep it this way. Here’s to Pern!” he cried. The crowd cheered.

He returned to his seat. Data bowed to him. “Thank you, my lord.”

Data caught Rahman’s eye and nodded.  The astronomer got up very slowly from his seat and walked to the mike, looking as old as the planet itself.

He cleared his throat and tapped the microphone, obviously unused to the technology.

“Forgive me, my friends, but I’m not very good at public speaking, and I am not sure how to use this microphone?”

“Just speak normally, sir,” Data said, “My tech will modulate it if need be.”

Rahman nodded.  He looked out at the audience.

“I’m sure I don’t have to remind everyone how afraid we all were.  I don’t think any of us will ever forget Captain Singh’s message to us. She saved us with her sacrifice.  I so wish we could have rescued her. But …it is what it is. When my team first saw the starship, we thought it was fairly good sized. We had no idea just HOW big it was.”

“How close did it get, sir?”

Data held up a hand. “Please, let him speak without interruption. He will tell you everything he knows.”

Rahman nodded.

“From the moment I and my team actually saw the starship, we realized how dreadfully dangerous our situation was.”

“How close did it get?” the same person asked.
Data sighed.

“Now, will you take away my entire speech?” Rahman said, gaining confidence. “I hope not. My prepared talk isn’t very long, but interruptions will make me forget what I just said, and I’ll just keep repeating myself, if I haven’t already.”

The crowd laughed.

“From the moment of the shutdown, at least one of my four person crew-and that included me-manned both scopes, every night, for the month. The staff at Western Continent spelled us, too, despite their not being astronomers.

“We tracked it almost the entire time, and I’m still recovering from lack of sleep, and I’m an astronomer. We don’t sleep at night!”

Again, there was laughter.

“The starship came on fast, and without deviation. I’m certain it was listening the entire time, and I would not doubt that it was also looking for laser beacons and spacecraft.”

“Did it see the Yokohama?”

Rahman grinned. I should have expected people to question whether I asked for none or not. “That will be Data’s speech, thank you. But I can tell you that the starship came no closer to Pern than a million kilometers.”

“Could they have seen things like lights from that height?”

Rahman shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never been that high up.”

“Ummm” the person started. Rahman stopped it with “But I seriously doubt it,” he added.

“Any idea of the speed?”

“I can’t really say, we just guestimated it at first. We had nothing else to compare it to, and mind you, we decided to not enlist the Yokohama. My gut said maybe the less this thing sees or hears, the better we will be. Data’s data, haha, will be better able to state that, but I can say that it was faster than I’d expected.’

“What did it look like?”

“Enormous. I can’t really dignify it with the term ‘starship’, or even ‘spacecraft.’ It looked as if an asteroid had been mated to a framework, like a ship’s hull. Remember, Captain Singh saw a bay door open in the hull, I suppose, and those hideous drones carrying their gruesome haul into the hull part of it.”

“Her craft probably had windows, then. Did this starship have windows? Or maybe lights? There’s a tapestry at Honshu that shows one of the shuttles, it had lights and windows.”

“Again, it was small in respect to the entire field of view. I’m used to looking at stars, and it was a long way from us.  But from what I saw, there seemed to be nothing that indicated it was manufactured. No lights, nothing like solar panels or antennas sticking out, nothing. It didn’t have a discernable front end, like a ship, or a back, but we had to call the front end something so I called it the bow. That added a lot of problems with keeping an eye on it, because the ONLY thing that made it trackable were the spacecraft riding what I called its bow wave. They were tiny specks of shiny metal  next to the starship that we finally saw were spacecraft. It was as black as space itself, virtually invisible. Only the hull reflected the light of our sun. As it got closer, we began to see some relief on the asteroid. We noted that the front end seemed more heavily cratered than one would see on a typical asteroid. That’s why I’m hoping that the Yokohama got a better look at it. It would make sense that the front end was more heavily cratered as it’s going so very fast. But that raises the question, was it cratered to begin with, if not, how is the spacecraft it had captured weren’t heavily damaged? Things like this keep me awake all day.”

“You mean night?”

“No, ma’am. I sleep during the day. You can’t see the stars at noon, sorry to say.”

He held his hands out, far apart. “The thing that impressed us the most was its size. If it hadn’t been for the captured spacecrafts in front of it that were visibly moving, we wouldn’t have seen it at all. It blotted out the stars in the background. I commend my staff and the folks at Far Western, for their long long hours. We knew its trajectory, but even so, it was like looking for a black cat in the deepest, darkest mine.”

“But you said you didn’t see it during the day?”

“We did not. But we tracked it, the old fashioned way. With a timer,  calculus, tiny adjustments to the scopes every minute, and crossed fingers. It was made far more difficult in that we couldn’t check in with the Yokohama to see if we had kept the invader in our sights. THAT is the mighty task my people-and the staffers-accomplished. That was more work than just sitting up peering through a scope. If it had changed course we would have lost it. As it was, not long after it passed the Yokohama in L1, it accelerated and we DID lose it, then.”

“Sir, did you follow it as it passed?” a lanky teenager asked.

“We did for as far as the scopes could travel, but that wasn’t far.”

“How many spacecraft did it have?” another voice asked.

“I would say, twenty five? But they were small, so small in comparison to the ‘starship’. And please understand, we were looking at it with telescopes. I’m betting Yokohama got a better view of it.”

“How big was it?”

“If you discount the little specks that we know were small spacecraft, I would say it was a little more than half the size of Belior.”

For one long moment, there was stunned silence.

“Belior? One of our MOONS?”

“Yes.”

“And Belior is how big?”

“A little over 32 Km long, maybe half that around. It’s shaped liked a potato.”

The audience gasped.

“The starship was 16 Km long?”

“That’s my guestimate.  Maybe more. And again, it wasn’t a nice pretty elongated machine, like the Yokohama, with solar panels like wings and antenna, or handles to hang onto, no cargo handling arms, the many things they stick on the outside of a starship. And mind you, I don’t know anything about a starship’s build, having never been on one and only seen our Yoko in a telescope. I cannot say what is ‘normal’ in the appearance of a starship, or even the small spacecraft. The Butcher’s ship looked, to me, like an asteroid with a hull. It was about a million miles from Pern, half that from Lagrange point 1, where the Yokohama is stationed.”

“This Lagrange point is how far?”

“Points. There are five of them. They’re all 1.5 million kilometers from Pern.”

The audience was silent for many moments. Rahman said, hopefully, “If there are no more questions, I will relinquish this spot to Data.” He moved away from the microphone with obvious relief.

Data jumped up to forestall the inevitable question. It’s time, he thought, and I don’t want to drag the process any longer than necessary.

‘Thank you, sir,” Data said, and waited until the astronomer returned to his seat. Lytol gave him a thumbs up.

The audience looked at Data, expectantly.

“The entire time we were on shutdown, Yokohama was collecting data on the Butcher’s ship. She held it in her memory until it was safe to download such voluminous amounts of data that my computers and people are STILL digesting it. But I can say that Master Rahman is correct. The Butcher’s ship was BIG, it was fast, and so unusual that I really can’t call it a starship. Until we got photos, it was assumed to be an asteroid mounted on a hull.”

“It wasn’t?” Rahman asked.

“Well, yes and no. Yoko was able to get a better look at it, and she took several photos. Only because she used various sources other than light from Rukbat did she get some fairly decent pictures.  She didn’t dare ping it, so there is not much we can discern other than that. Through her cameras, it definitely looked like an asteroid, but this one was different. I don’t believe asteroids present an even surface. This one did. Its surface appeared at first glance to be smooth, like a stone that has been rounded due to high speed river water or coastal waves. One would think that even a black surface that polished would reflect some sort of light, but this didn’t. It seemed to absorb light. The scopes the Yoko used showed a smooth surface, but the photos revealed that the surface was heavily ‘dimpled’, I’ll call it. Master Rahman, you were so close to the reality. You said it looked like craters on the so called nose? They weren’t craters. They were parabolic dishes carved into the surface. Literally every meter of that asteroid had parabolic dishes, ones that appeared to have been machined, carved or buffed. Their purpose, to me was obvious-collecting electromagnetic signals of every frequency you can imagine. The dishes came in all sizes, from ones the size of your palm to big ones as large as small dragon.  And they weren’t just on front end. They covered the asteroid, top, bottom and sides except for the hull. There must have been hundreds of thousands of them, all over that asteroid. It made the starship into what could be called a giant, 17 kilometer long ear.”

The import of that hit them all.

“They could probably have heard one of us fart,” said one man.

The audience laughed, but it was still nervously.

Raylan stood up, and Data nodded.

“For those of you watching from all over Pern, I am Science Division Chief Raylan. The Butchers would not have heard sounds like, um, yes, a fart, or thunder, or even a volcano erupting. Sound waves need a medium, like air or water, in which to travel. That’s why space is said to be ‘silent’. Space isn’t silent at all, not really. It’s absolutely full of electronic emissions, such as radio, datalink, microwave, even static electricity.  The black hole sends out so much noise that it drowns out just about everything else when it’s feeding. But you have to have an electronic receiver to hear all that noise.

Electronic emissions, like datalink pings, is what the Butchers were listening for: signals that were obviously created by living things, like us. They were listening for voices, if it were in the sky right now, it would hear me speaking. They would hear anything we emitted and transmitted, voices, music, data. It’s all sent up into space, or to a starship, or another planet. When you use a datalink, not only does the signal go to the Yokohama, much of it also escapes into space. Electronic emissions don’t need a medium in which to travel, so it works far better in space.”

“Wasn’t she emitting signals?”

“The Yokohama? No. She was good, like us, at keeping mum, and that is precisely why we are still here.”

“No, I mean the Butcher’s ship.”

“I don’t know. Yokohama heard many things, for instance, the radio message from Captain Singh’s, as well as sounds from what we believe was the starship. But it’s a mishmash of sounds up there and as she’d never heard the Butcher’s starship until, well, maybe the last month, she had nothing to tell her it was coming from their ship. For all anyone, including the database knew, some of the emissions could have come from the other side of the galaxy. It’s noisy up there when you have the ears to hear.”

“They didn’t scan her?”

“Oh, they did.  They used a large spectrum of frequencies. Interestingly, they did NOT use radio. Yoko reported being hit with microwave, especially.”

“Captain Singh reported being hit by gamma rays, did they hit us?”

“Captain Singh did NOT say her craft was hit by gamma rays. She said the Butcher’s took out the lunar and air traffic control stations with gamma rays.”

“Did they scan Pern?”

“I don’t know.”

The man harrumphed. Someone tugged on his sleeve, but he shook it off.

Data, relieved that Raylan had taken over the science part of it, recognized the man. We talked about you, lout. You’re from Logistics. You’re the same jerk who harassed me the first meeting, he thought. What IS it with you? Why can’t you go a day without flashing your nonexistent superior knowledge?

“Chief Raylan, Data’s Chief says he doesn’t know if we were scanned. Do you?”

Nice play, lout, Raylan thought, but it won’t work.

“I don’t. Yokohama said it had been scanned, several times. And the computer thinks that the hull of the starship was a gigantic gamma ray projector.”

The lout nodded as if his doubt in their data had just been justified.

“You don’t know if they scanned Pern. Last month you implied that we were being scanned with gamma rays and now you say you don’t know? Why?”

Raylan said, “I did NOT say we were scanned by gamma rays. We don’t know what they were using to scan with. Remember, the Manhattan’s captain reported that the gamma rays were used to disable the lunar and Terran communication devices. She did not say if they were, too. Maybe they were. Understand that we, everything outside, the entire planet is hit with gamma rays every single moment.  Right now, right here, at this very moment. Our atmosphere absorbs the high energy particles, but many of the less active particles still get through. It’s why there is shielding on spacecraft, it’s why the Terrans on their moon live in caves, like we do. I can only guess at what the Butcher’s used to scan with.”

“I’m still not convinced. It seems to me as if you’re hiding something from us. Why have we not been informed? When will you tell us if we were scanned?”

Ah, always there’s one who has to argue.

Data and Raylan exchanged glances. Data’s said, go for it, Raylan.

Raylan looked at the man with the most patient look he could muster and said, in the sarcasm dripping tone one uses to explain a complex concept to a child:

“I will be able to tell you when YOUR division, Logistics, provides me with a High Energy Gamma Ray Detector. When will that be?  Are you hiding one in your vast collection?”

“A..a what?”

The person next to him said, “Stop flaunting your stupidity to all of Pern, lout. Sit down and shut up.”

The heckler sat, flushing red.

There were several long moments of what could only be satisfaction at the lout’s denouement.

A woman stood up and asked, “If the Yoko was in the Lagrange point, and the Butcher’s ship scanning it, how is it they didn’t see her?”

Data was so tickled he laughed. “Oh, she was a clever one,” and he told them how the Yokohama had camouflaged herself. “When she was scanned, she presented an asteroid appearance and has at least eight to ten asteroids her size or larger in the immediate vicinity. The Butcher’s scanners probably returned data showing the Point as being populated by nothing but asteroids.”

The crowd roared in approval. “Good girl!”

“But, Chief,” a woman said, “Do you think that maybe the Butcher’s were of the same mind? Camouflaging their ship to look like an asteroid? The captain’s message seemed to indicate that they collected small spacecraft to serve as shields against attack. It makes me wonder if there’s something out there that even THEY are afraid of.”

That concept chilled everyone’s bones.

“Oh NO” someone said, the voice full of dread.

Data’s jaw dropped. “WHOA. That’s a scary thought. I didn’t think of that. I don’t know. I don’t know and I hope to the stars that we never have to find out. “

“I suspect, ma’am, that the spacecraft are used to prevent a world they’re preying on from attacking them in return. Any defense from the victim of the attack would be forced to destroy their own spacecraft and crew. It’s called taking hostages. I’ve seen it done. By Fax.” Lord Lytol said.

Fax, a warlord, had attacked and taken over at least six Holds, killing their noble occupants.

His actions had set in action an entire chain of events that eventually led to the present day.

After several long moments of reflection, one man said, “Even if they had seen the Yoko, they wouldn’t have seen Landing, right? Because of the thunderstorm?”

“Well, no. Had we not been on shutdown, we would not be here. We’d be dinner,” Raylan said.

“What?” said a dozen voices, amidst gasps.

“As Master Rahman noted, the Butcher’s ship was coming fast. We know they scanned the Lagrange points. When they didn’t see Yoko, they accelerated. I hesitate to give them the concept of thinking like we do, but to me, it was as if they thought, we’ve heard nothing, we see nothing here, let’s go on. And they did. They passed by us a day and a half earlier than calculated. They passed us at straight up noon, when it was sunny and the skies were clear as a bell here.”

The crowd moaned.

“The shutdown saved us,” Data said, “As did Yoko hiding herself,” he said, taking over from Raylan. “I used to be angry that Aivas had insisted that all three starships have their engines crashed onto the “Red Star” to kick it into a new orbit that bypassed us.  We know it worked, but I always thought, couldn’t we have saved at least one? Yokohama without an engine is no longer a starship, just a VERY valuable asset for us in so many ways. Up until now, I thought it incredibly wasteful of Aivas to send the Bahrain and the Buenos Aires into the sun. We could have parked them in any of the other Lagrange points.”

“But,” said a teenager, standing up, “Three starships is even more proof of an advanced civilization on Pern than one.”

Raylan took note of him. That young lad has a brain. If he’s scientifically minded, I might just take him from whomever he is working for, although I don’t see a badge on him. No matter. He’s thinking. I need people like that.

“Correct. And even if we had only Yoko still holding an engine, we would have been attacked. Radioactivity from her drive is different than what is normally found in an asteroid. It would have been like a red flag waving a “here we are!” even if they didn’t listen for electronic emissions.”

“Hmm.”

“Do you think, sir, that Aivas knew that?”

“Yes.”

The lanky teen stood up again. “Master Rahman, when you observed the starship, or maybe the Yoko saw? Did you see any form of exhaust coming from behind the starship? I wonder what sort of drive it had.”

Rahman shook his head. “I’m sorry to say that we weren’t able to see that. I’m not even sure what you mean by ‘exhaust” in this context.”

A computer voice boomed out as well as printed:

Exhaust: L, 1. To draw off, release or let out (air, gas, steam, smoke, dust) as from a container. 2. to use up, to expend completely…”

Data laughed, as his tech quickly muzzled the too helpful computer’s dictionary.

“That’s our computer,” he said, to the world wide audience, “it likes to explain things. Please, sir, carry on.”

“A fart is an exhaust, by the way,” the man said.

Rahman shrugged. “If I understand this, I guess your question is, did the Butcher’s ship leave tracks, or some sign of its passing?  I don’t know. We were more interested in keeping it in sight than to see if it left droppings.”

Raylan admired the teen. “You ask some VERY good questions, lad, please explain further why you ask.”

“Chief, during the shutdown, I was in the library every day after school. I did some research on starship propulsion,” the teen said. “In the case of our starships, the engines were nuclear, and they leave a trail of radioactive particles at the point where they exit the drive. That’s called ‘exhaust’. Time has probably disseminated it to the point of being so scant that it’s not noticeable. So the question is, did Yokohama see, did it actually SEE the ship, and if so, did it see any sort of propulsion or exhaust from the starship?”

Data gulped. This kid is sharp as a razor. He’s gone right to the entire point of this meeting. And it’s so hard to believe, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

“Your name, young man?”

“Sir, my name is, well, sir, I’m sorry, I’m supposed to be in a planting planning meeting with my class, but I snuck out. I just had to be here because this thing has been bugging me all month.”

Everyone laughed. Data said, “Come see me after this meeting, lad, and I’ll smooth your teacher’s feathers.”

“That won’t be necessary, Chief. I’m here, too,” a woman’s voice came from the very back, “the rest of my kids are on break.”

Everyone roared.

Data smiled. “Lad, Yokohama did visualize, if you will excuse the term, she did ‘see’ the ship. She did get a few photos, it’s how we know their ship was a giant collection of parabolic dishes. But she does not say anything about propulsion or ‘exhaust’. Her not saying so tells me there wasn’t any.”

The teen, still holding his standing position, said, “No exhaust? Nothing glowing, no radioactivity, nothing?”

Data shook his head. In fact, his hands were shaking. Raylan saw it. When he told me I couldn’t believe it. But now it makes sense.

“No” Raylan picked up, “Nothing. If that ship had been made from an asteroid, it would have had some sort of radioactivity emanating from it. Most asteroids don’t have those elements. Some of the heavier elements, ones that were used to power starships, take millions of years to break down into something non-reactive. No civilization can last that long. For that matter, not even stars last that long. There’s an element called Xenon-124 that has a half life of well over trillions of years, far longer than our universe is old.”

One man nodded and said, “The thing that we all want to know is how is it that a ship of that size can move so blinding fast, can go from zero to a quarter the speed of light in a few moments, without some sort of drive? SOMETHING had to be powering it. Do you have any idea what it was?” a man asked.

“Now, I do, and I advise you to sit down, like I had to. Because the computer has the only idea that makes sense.”

The man, sat, still bewildered and continued, “IF it was an asteroid? IF? What else could it be?”

Data nodded. “Aivas chewed on the data for a week. Just because he doesn’t talk to us anymore, he’s still in our computers, and I think even he couldn’t believe his theory. But he did all the thinking and came up with the only solution that makes sense. As you posited, how can a ship that size go from a standing start to a quarter of the speed of light in a moment, didn’t need a month to slow down or speed up, can grab and hold spacecraft, doesn’t appear to need a power source and seems to be able to manipulate gravity itself? That’s what we asked him.”

“The computer says what?”

“Sir, the computer theorizes that that starship appeared to be composed of  ‘dark matter’ and is powered by ‘dark energy.”

The people who understood that gasped.

“Dark energy and dark matter? I’ve read of them both. What are they?”

Raylan said, “Ma’am, to this day, we haven’t a clue.  When the colonists left Earth twenty five hundred years ago, they knew of both dark energy and matter, but not what they are. They knew they existed but weren’t able to measure it, never mind see it. All they could do is see the effects. We are no better at understanding it. Dark matter composes almost 95% of the universe, but has never been seen. Dark energy is pushing the universe apart at what seemed to be faster than light speeds. We have no idea how. We can’t measure what we can’t find or see. We have no idea what dark matter is. We can’t measure dark energy when we don’t have any idea what it is, how it works and where it’s coming from.”

He paused, then said, “Of course, the Terrans may have solved it by now, but we haven’t had an update in over twenty five hundred years. The computer suspects that the Butcher’s spacecraft is not an asteroid at all, but a mass of dark matter, powered by dark energy. We don’t have the capacity, the tools, the measuring devices here on Pern, never mind HOW to go about doing the research.

What I DO know, and what still terrifies me, is that the Butcher’s are so technologically and scientifically advanced that they have harnessed the most powerful substances and energy in the universe. They are so far more advanced than us that we are nothing more than fish, to them, something to catch and eat as they fly through the galaxy. The thing they have done, though, inadvertently is revealed their existence to us, loud and clear. We know their mission. We know, now, how they work. And personally, I don’t want them to ever know of our existence, even it means we will always be a backwards, low technology civilization. Like Lord Lytol said so long ago, I’d much rather be lost in the wilderness of the galaxy than be known as a place for these beings to pick up a quick snack before they continue on their way.”