KEID: A Lost Civilization

Phoenix Starship Andromeda-Keid-A System

Phoenix Starship Andromeda—Keid-A System

There was no indication of anything except the holoscreen turned a uniform speckled gray. One minute and eight seconds later, Jocara blinked as a blazing orange star with an apparent width wider than Ran as seen from Arcan filled the holoscreen center. A bright white star and a less bright reddish-orange star appeared close together off to the right. Even though she knew Andromeda was an FTL ship, and the MERT portal technology had been explained to her, it was still hard to believe that they had traveled six lightyears in just over a minute! Her scales rippled from the blue of excitement to lavender, showing her pure joy at the experience.

“Time to scan for planets,” Thorpe said in his matter-of-fact manner. He turned to the control room visitors. “This doesn’t work like in the holovision plays. We’re on the outer edge of the life zone on Keid-A’s ecliptic, about one hundred sixty-five million klicks from the star. Light takes about ten minutes to reach us from Keid. We find an inner planet by observing its transit across Keid. Mother can measure the orbital perturbations of any inner planets we find to calculate the presence and location of any larger outer planets. All this takes time, lots of time. We can drive our way around Keid much faster than the orbital period of four hundred sixty-four days at our distance.” He checked a calculation on his internal Link. “If we travel at five thousand klicks per second, it’ll take us two and a half days for the survey, and Mother should be able to pick up any inner planets.”

Kenred looked at Jocara. “This must be pretty exciting for someone who studied astrophysics.”

She responded by opening her eyes and blinking, while her scales rippled blue again.

Thorpe watched carefully as the saurian astronaut guided Andromeda onto the scanning flight path. She accomplished it flawlessly. He was amused at the almost childlike joy the two Arcans took in maneuvering the massive vessel. He had to remind himself that when he found them, their technology was at about the Apollo stage in Earth’s spaceflight history. The Arcan Space Push Consortium had definitely chosen their astronauts well.

Daphne had grown close to the female saurian during Andromeda’s sojourn around Arcan. Despite their physical differences, they had become good friends. Daphne had learned how to interpret Jocara’s scale colors and understand her facial expressions and gestures. Each had a Human equivalent.

As she watched Jocara bring Andromeda onto the survey track, she took genuine pride in her friend’s demonstrated expertise.

“Can you imagine,” she said quietly to Thorpe, “how one of our Apollo astronauts would have reacted in a similar scenario? Do you think they would have handled it as well as the Arcans?”

She got up and walked over to Jocara, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It never gets old,” she said quietly, “never.”

A day later, Mother announced acquisition of an Earth-size planet in an orbit 0.6 AU from Keid-A, which put it near the inner edge of the life zone. By the end of the survey, Mother added two more planets to the list, both much closer to Keid and far too hot for life.

Once again, Thorpe allowed Jocara to bring Andromeda into orbit around the new planet. He put the name for this planet up for a vote by ship’s company. The Asterians knew nothing about Star Trek and so declined to vote, as did the Arcans. The Oort, who had downloaded into Human form before the voyage commenced, were well acquainted with the old television series and chose to vote.

By a very lopsided count, the result was Vulcan.