Edges

SIXTH

A radio signal alerts you. Faint. Impossible to know from what direction it originates or how far away its source might be, but you know this much: It is human.

Hell of a ride in, huh?

A familiar language, common to many worlds. Your players spoke in this tongue, though their accent was different. She spoke thus when she said, Let us make a world together. And you answered, Yes.

Most of your attention—and your telescopes—have been trained on the distant pair of alien ships, but your attention is made up of many threads, many perspectives. Some of these threads shift to review recent data collected by your ongoing sky survey.

A few seconds later you find an anomaly: a background star momentarily eclipsed. Something out there, dark, silent, and moving fast. A fly-by, come to investigate your beacon, but at a cautious distance. You might have missed it altogether if not for the radio chatter that’s spilling now over your senses:

Hell of a ride in, huh?

You’re insane, you know that?

Hey, we made it.

Where are you, anyway?

You do the math and draw a conclusion within a microsecond. The silent fly-by is moving too fast to rendezvous or to return, but it has delivered at least two avatars. They are here on a one-way expedition, likely less than ten thousand seconds in duration. Only data will be returned.

You admire their daring and their cleverness.

You intend to defeat their caution.