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Maui wrote:My dad is involved with one of the instruments on Voyager... they hadn't been sure they would see anything when it left the heliopause so their instrument's readings were not normally mentioned as one of the primary data points to be watching as evidence of passing the heliopause, but he just analyzed data and he said it was unmistakable.

It will take a while to submit the paper and make it official, but it sounds like it is now a done deal-- Voyager has left the solar system.

Maui wrote:My dad is involved with one of the instruments on Voyager... they hadn't been sure they would see anything when it left the heliopause so their instrument's readings were not normally mentioned as one of the primary data points to be watching as evidence of passing the heliopause, but he just analyzed data and he said it was unmistakable.

It will take a while to submit the paper and make it official, but it sounds like it is now a done deal-- Voyager has left the solar system.

Marguur'eketok'k loudly buzzed her lower mandibles in displeasure as the messenger drone entered her chamber, backwards, exposing his vulnerable neural clusters in case she chose to end his service.

"Swarm Mother! Forgive the intrusion! Sensors have detected the crossing of the interstellar boundary by one of the Human probes!," he clicked nervously.

Her antennae momentarily froze in place as she contemplated the ramifications. The Galactic Council had forbidden any activities by her species within the boundaries of the Human star system. She had ordered stealthy surveillance of the third planet anyway.

Now that the Humans had violated the quarantine, she could tell the Council to kiss off. Her Swarm would feed.

She arched menacingly over the messenger and clicked her command in rapid fire. "Tell the Chief Engineer to bring all reactors to Full power. NOW!"

DeltaV wrote:

Marguur'eketok'k loudly buzzed her lower mandibles in displeasure as the messenger drone entered her chamber, backwards, exposing his vulnerable neural clusters in case she chose to end his service.

"Swarm Mother! Forgive the intrusion! Sensors have detected the crossing of the interstellar boundary by one of the Human probes!," he clicked nervously.

Her antennae momentarily froze in place as she contemplated the ramifications. The Galactic Council had forbidden any activities by her species within the boundaries of the Human star system. She had ordered stealthy surveillance of the third planet anyway.

Now that the Humans had violated the quarantine, she could tell the Council to kiss off. Her Swarm would feed.

She arched menacingly over the messenger and clicked her command in rapid fire. "Tell the Chief Engineer to bring all reactors to Full power. NOW!"

Copyright 2013 DeltaV. All rights reserved.

KitemanSA wrote:So it is beyond the Oort Cloud?

KitemanSA wrote:If gravity dominates, don't "solar forces" dominate? I mean, these are the same ijuts that said Pluto is not a planet. Harrumph!!

JoeP wrote:This is pretty good, DeltaV! You should expand on this and get out a submission to Azimov's or some magazine like it in time for the Voyager announcement

Overall, researchers said, Voyager 1's new data suggest that the spacecraft remains within the solar system, though it appears to be in a sort of interface region connecting the heliosphere and interstellar space.

"Not again!" groaned Wainwright, burying his head in his hands as the freshly processed Goldstone data appeared on his display.

First there was that fiasco with the Pioneer Anomaly. Now, Doppler analysis indicated that Voyager 1 had accelerated to nearly 0.1 c.

Impossible! There had to be an error in one of the parameter files...

Near the heliopause, a related, if rather one-sided, conversation was taking place.


"Swarm Mother! No worries! The Galactic Enforcement cruiser won't be able to detect our modified tractor beam modulation for several days yet! There is plenty of time to get the Human probe across the boundary," the Chief Engineer clicked at an ever-increasing pace, trying to make himself sound authoritative and, hopefully, indispensible.

"And the problems with the boundary detection software have been solved! We just had to-" CHOMP!-munch-munch-munch-munch-...

Marguur'eketok'k's mandibles rhythmically continued the initial process of converting the Chief Engineer into new eggs.

With Galactic Enforcement on the prowl, she would have to accelerate the growing of his replacement, as well as her invasion Swarm.
"Bring all incubators to Maximum heat. NOW!"

Marguur'eketok'k's hyperspectral compound eyes stared at the image intercepted by the observation post, the one she had ordered emplaced on the Human system's largest asteroid upon their arrival. As she used a very sharp foreclaw to pick the stringy, carbo-chitin remnants of the messenger drone out of her mandibles, she thought "Damned Humans and their probes! Now the schedule has to be accelerated, AGAIN!"

She bruskly clicked new commands to the Master of Weapons and the Keeper of Eggs.
"Destroy the asteroid probe! Inject the Swarm eggs with growth accelerant! Maximum level!"

Use of the accelerant would result in thinner scales for her invasion Swarm, but there was no other option. The scales would still prove more than adequate armor against the puny, chemical-combustion weapons that the Humans relied upon.

Time was now of the essence. A race, of sorts, was underway, between the probe about to cross the interstellar boundary and the signal transmitted by the asteroid probe, containing close-up images of her observation post.

If Galactic Enforcement detected images of the observation post in Human transmissions before the boundary was crossed, it would be game-over for her Swarm.

She could not allow that...

JoeP wrote:

DeltaV wrote:

Marguur'eketok'k loudly buzzed her lower mandibles in displeasure as the messenger drone entered her chamber, backwards, exposing his vulnerable neural clusters in case she chose to end his service.

"Swarm Mother! Forgive the intrusion! Sensors have detected the crossing of the interstellar boundary by one of the Human probes!," he clicked nervously.

Her antennae momentarily froze in place as she contemplated the ramifications. The Galactic Council had forbidden any activities by her species within the boundaries of the Human star system. She had ordered stealthy surveillance of the third planet anyway.

Now that the Humans had violated the quarantine, she could tell the Council to kiss off. Her Swarm would feed.

She arched menacingly over the messenger and clicked her command in rapid fire. "Tell the Chief Engineer to bring all reactors to Full power. NOW!"

Copyright 2013 DeltaV. All rights reserved.

This is pretty good, DeltaV! You should expand on this and get out a submission to Azimov's or some magazine like it in time for the Voyager announcement

It had come to her in a flash.

Her kind were not able to interact with Humans, in person, without detection, due to their radically different anatomy. Reptiles, however, were much closer to Humans in this regard.

In fact, by way of a deft legal and political maneuver, dating back eons, the Reptiles had gained blanket permission from the Galactic Council to maintain small "research" groups on Mammalian worlds. Something about the "rights of the first-hatched".

With genetic modifications to their outward appearance, the Reptiles were able to fool the bulk of the Mammals (Canines and Felines were harder to fool, for some reason). The Council limited the size of such groups to numbers thought low enough to protect budding Mammal cultures. The Reptiles, however, had gradually learned how to leverage their influence over these worlds.

Employing a bewildering array of psycho-social manipulations, generally too subtle and obfuscated to trigger the ire of the Council, the Reptiles raised puppet armies and nations in their service. Ultimately, they didn't care whether their efforts resulted in adding another planet to Reptilian space, or in the total destruction of another world filled with usurper Mammals, as long as the Council did not intervene. Historically, such interventions had extracted a very heavy toll.

Marguur'eketok'k had arranged a deal with the Human world's Reptilian "researchers". They had used their on-ground assets to delay broadcast of the probe's images of her observation post, giving her disruptor teams time to erase any conclusive evidence. In return, she had promised that her Swarm would only consume half of the Human world's tasty Mammals and transport the remaining half, alive, to the nearest Reptilian administration world. While Reptiles and (carbon-reinforced) Insects had once regularly consumed each other, they both now preferred the newcomers. She had no intention of keeping her promise, but that was a matter for another time.

Now, it was time to train her new Chief Engineer. When she had eaten his predecessor, one of his neural clusters, the one associated with technical knowledge, had entered a special "stomach" in her thorax, which kept the cluster alive and nourished. She carefully moved a modified ovipositor to puncture the hatchling's carapace at a particular spot and felt the archived cluster move into its new home.

Class was adjourned.