“My god.” Pierce was floored. “Though it would explain why we were never able to detect it, at least not from Earth, it was too faint to be seen.”
“And orbited around the known Sirius pair,” Foster said. “Still doesn’t explain why Radiance never discovered it.”
“This is still an unexplored region of space to them; perhaps they only took brief scans, where the presence of a brown dwarf could easily have been missed if its orbit placed it behind Sirius A at the time of the scan.”
They watched almost in a trance like state as a simulation played on the hologram. It showed the brown dwarf Sirius C followed an orbital path that circled around the Sirius pair of A and B.
“All right, we got not two but three systems all in one, and all with planets around ‘em,” Foster said. “We got our work cut out.”
“Let’s chart Sirius B first,” Williams suggested. “We’re closer to it and it will be a great chance to see what happens to planets in the aftermath of a red giant.”
Foster tapped the image of the white dwarf of Sirius B. The projection expanded to show the orbiting planets at the edge of its system. As expected, there weren’t many planets close to Sirius B as many had most likely been destroyed during the time it was a red giant millions of years ago.
Foster returned to her captain’s chair while Pierce returned to his science station. “Helm, set a course to Sirius B.”
“Yes, Captain.”
ESRS CARL SAGAN
Traversing the Sirius B system
May 18, 2050, 17:17 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The Carl Sagan conducted short surveys of the planets that orbited Sirius B. The geologists aboard became ecstatic as data from the probes transmitted their findings and pictures back to the ship. The rest of the crew wasn’t as easily impressed, naturally the pictures that loaded were nothing more than frozen rocks, mountains, and craters. Every planet encountered was rocky, heavily cratered and devoid of all life. Most lacked atmospheres, burned off during the red giant stage with rugged terrain that resembled the surface of the moon back at Earth.
Some planets showed promise for future mining operations, traces of valuable minerals rested in the bellies of those worlds, waiting to be plucked by the new arrivals. Mining would be critical if they were to make this region their new home. Data sent back from a probe revealed one of the gas giants to have huge potential for heileum-3 mining, excellent news considering Sirius A also had a gas giant. Two sources of heileum-3 wasn’t a bad thing at all. Preliminary plans were drawn up by the colonization teams to establish mines and science and research outposts in the system.
Foster noticed the smile that stretched across Dr. Pierce’s face the longer they stayed in the system. Every probe they launched sent additional streams of data that updated their knowledge base of the system and its wonders. And to think, this was only Sirius B, there was still the planets of Sirius A and Sirius C to explore and catalog.
ESRS CARL SAGAN, Captain’s office
SB-215 orbit, Sirius B system
May 19, 2050, 06:32 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The crew awoke bright and early the next day. Foster gave Williams the heads-up about her cat and for him to look after it if she was on duty and he wasn’t. She had a feeling that she’d be pulling long shifts for the next several days as the trove of data collected by the dozens of probes deployed throughout the system continued to arrive.
The Carl Sagan remained in orbit around SB-215, a small, cold moon around the gas giant of SB-2. Foster was looking forward to the day they’d be able to give planets and moons a name rather than the automated designation EVE tagged them with. Foster sat in her office located beneath the bridge, another feature of ship design adapted from Radiance. Foster’s desk sat before a wide window that peered out into space. Plants from Earth decorated the office, while a small countertop off to the side became home of a coffee maker and a display cabinet held models of various ships in the UNE navy, though the layout was still a work in progress. Foster had hoped to further decorate her office with more of her personal belongings from her quarters.
She took a sip of her warm drink as she reviewed reports and data that were transmitted to the ship during their sleep. There was a problem that needed to be addressed right away, water. The Carl Sagan had enough water to satisfy the needs of the crew and a few thousand liters stored away for an emergency and more on reserve for the future colonists once they awoke. Safe drinking water needed to be found in the system otherwise they’d need to enforce strict water rationing protocols. The thought of monthly showers made her shudder. Then there was all the plant life growing in the greenhouses. They’d be critical for the start of a colony, especially if they had to settle on a world with unbreathable air and live inside an enclosed environment. Plants will remove CO2 and replace it with O2, but plants, like all living things, need water to survive.
A staircase off the side brought her up to the bridge where she approached Dr. Pierce who was reviewing data collected by the probes, namely if there was a world that had water.
“You’re surprisingly silent,” she said to him.
Pierce kept his eyes on his computer screen and his arm resting on his cluttered workstation. “Busy doing my job.”
“Doesn’t the discovery of Sirius C make you think just maybe?”
As important as it was to search for water, Foster was surprised that Pierce didn’t say anything more about the discovery of Sirius C. The Dogon tribes of West Africa claimed for years that aliens visited them from Sirius and told them stories that it was a trinary star system. Now they stood before proof that Sirius was indeed that. Pierce a former advocate of the theory of the Dogon kept quiet about it.
“Nope,” Pierce said after a slight delay. “OK, well it’s interesting, but we don’t know anything else. Plus, we haven’t seen any signs of ships, so it’s safe to say the legend about this system are still just stories told by ancient humans that didn’t know any better.”
His computer beeped causing the two of them to look at the flashing notification that appeared on the screen. Pierce’s fingers interacted with the terminal as he revealed the report that populated the screen.
“Here we go,” he said. “Got a planet here, a frozen one with traces of ice all across the surface. Lots of it too, looks like it was once an ocean.”
Foster leaned in closer to look at the data a probe had sent them two hours ago. It had landed on one of the most distant planets in the Sirius B system. It was an Earth-sized planet, tagged SB-417. Its distance would have placed it in the habitable zone during the age of Sirius B’s reign as a red giant, meaning that liquid water may have existed on its surface in the past as well as an atmosphere with rain clouds that never got stripped away from the punishment of the former red giant.
“Worth a look,” Foster said. “Helm, set a course to SB-417.”
ESRS CARL SAGAN, Bridge