“Magic.”
“Oh hi, Angel. What’s up?”
“I’m approaching a planet and about to begin contact and I just wondered when we were going to get together again.”
“I hope it’s soon, my love.”
“Me, too, you’ve never told me what kind of magic tricks you performed as a child to earn you that name. I want you to perform a little magic with me.”
“Oh, Angel, it wasn’t anything much; just card tricks, coin tricks and the shell game.”
“What’s the shell game?”
“That’s where you hide a pea under one of three shells and slide the shells around and see if the bystander can guess which shell the pea is under. HOLY GROAD!”
“What!” Angel and Al said together.
“I’ll get back to you. I’ve just had an idea and I want to see if it’s possible.”
Angel was curious but thought, “Ok, you can tell me later, I love you.”
“And I love you, too.”
“Sprig!”
“Yes, Searcher.”
“Can you and Twig break away for a moment and join me on Aladdin?”
“I sense urgency in your thought, Searcher.”
“I just had an idea that I need you to consider.”
The silvery screen appeared and Sprig and Twig joined him on the bridge. “What do you need from us,” Sprig asked?
“When I was a child I played a game called three shells. I would place a pea under a shell and then move the shells quickly and challenge the other participant to find the pea. I always won because the pea was in my hand and not under s a shell.”
“I’m familiar with that game. It wouldn’t work with us because our observation skills are so superior to humans.”
“I know but it caused me to have an idea. We are hoping that the red screens we place around the planets we contact make them invisible to the Eight Legs; what if they don’t work?”
“Then there is going to be massive loss of life.”
“What if they see them but when they look they don’t find a planet?”
There was a moment of silence while Sprig and Twig communicated. Twig thought, “Are you considering moving the planet?”
“Only if they come in system to investigate; we know we can teleport planets. What if we move them to a different location? The Eight Legs are advanced but in all of the recordings we’ve seen they use standard travel thru null space once they entered our universe. They have not demonstrated the ability to jump in next to a planet but travel in from the jump limit. They would only move in system if their sensors detect something that leads them to believe there is intelligent life in the system. I traveled through more than a hundred thousand class g systems before I found a civilized planet. There has to be enough uninhabited class g stars to safely move a planet. Also consider this; what if we move them to a galaxy they have already examined. Will they backtrack to reexamine one they’ve already left? Isn’t it also possible to move more than one planet to some of these systems?”
Sprig and Twig began communicating and Matt was unable to break their attention from each other. “Back off, Magic,” Al said. “When Algeans are communicating with each other like these two the amount of information being passed is staggering. They heard you now they are investigating whether your plan is feasible.”
Matt sat back in his chair and reached into the little box he kept beside his command chair. He took out a small, white, wooden stick and looked at it.
“What is that?”
“It’s the only remnant of my childhood, Al; it’s my magic wand.”
“I’ve always wondered what you kept in that box.”
“Keep it to yourself, please.”
“I will.”
After three hours Sprig and Twig turned and asked Matt, “When you traveled through those systems did your sensors record any data.”
“I have recorded every system we traveled through and stored the information in a supplementary storage bank,” Al responded.
“What kind of data did you record,” Twig asked.
“The star’s temperature, planet’s locations in relation to the star, force of gravity around all the planetary objects, and the speed of any object circling the star.”
Sprig and Twig went back into their conversation.
“Al, do all our ships record that information or is it just the Alphas that do it?”
“Every ship makes those recordings. It’s a very simple process and it was programmed in the event that there might be uninhabited planets that would be available to planets that need to expand because of population pressures.”
Four more hours passed and then Sprig said, “Have you ever played the double shell game.”
“I don’t think so; how does it work,” Matt asked?
“You place a pea under the shell and move the shells around. The participant picks a shell but instead of finding a pea under it there is a rock instead.”
“What a great idea.”
Sprig thought, “What if we move the planet out and replace it with an uninhabited planet. After the Eight Legs move in and examine thousands of the red screens and find uninhabited planets then they might think that those planets had intelligent life in the past but the civilizations had disappeared or died out leaving the generators behind.”
“Can we do it?”
“I thought you were kidding about needing two billion of my children but now I see you were being conservative. One of the tasks of the adolescents sent to the planets to install the red screen generators will be to also find a substitute uninhabited planet and five hundred locations to move the screened planet in five hundred different galaxies. Once they gather the information, we will combine all of their information and send it to every one of those assigned to planet protection. Your Searchers will track the invaders and notify us of the Galaxies that have been examined and we will target those galaxies for movement of the screened planets.”
“Do we have time to make it happen, Sprig?”
“Barely, but this also means that we can save our building facilities and not destroy them. Another ironic twist to this is that we can use the millions of planets my race destroyed in my galaxy that have no life on them only ancient empty structures still standing to reinforce the idea that the civilization had died out. Those planets my race killed may now save life. It is fitting that they be used in our subterfuge.”
Matt sighed heavily, “More work, Al.”
“You must think I get tired,”
Matt laughed again and began to feel hope for his universe.
A ship floated in the void surrounded by nothing but dark black space; there were no stars, galaxies, or even random radiation. This was a universe that had lived its life and died of old age. What matter remained had lost whatever energy it possessed when the last star sputtered it final death throes. Over a billion years the matter had slowly moved together to form a green mass larger than five galaxies, however the giant sphere of matter only had the mass of a medium planet. It was this matter that was used by an ancient race to build its ships and structures. Even the skin of these beings was covered by a thin layer of this green matter. It was unique not only in this universe but in all of creation. Nothing could penetrate it and energy did not affect it. The beings wearing this green matter could stand at ground zero of a nuclear blast and walk away unharmed. This matter was the strength of those that used it.
The ship was more than fifty thousand miles wide and at its center was a giant creature laying on a platform made of thick silver strands with its eight legs hanging over the side. Each leg was in a depression surrounded by electronic devices. The Nest Mother sat on her bed and thought about her appetite; she had not tasted a good meal in a hundred million years and she wondered if her children were harvesting the meals too soon between visits. She remembered the taste of the first meals more than two hundred million years ago when they first began farming other universes and the memory made her shiver; it was so good. Now the taste was barely palatable. One of her large male children came into her chamber and approached a depression slightly below her platform. The male moved quickly forward and turned upside down in the depression. The Nest Mother looked at the male and saw his abdomen was huge and swollen.