Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 229: Contact

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Other than Xiao Niao and Ren Tao’s opinions, Yao Yuan also consulted a large amount of scientists and soldiers, including Guang Zhen. Yao Yuan came to a conclusion especially after he asked about the activation time necessary for space warp and the like.

Wait!

Yes, the minute possibility mentioned by Ren Tao aside, based on what they knew about the space merchants, they were still a space civilization available for contact. The space merchants’ technology was indeed higher than mankind’s, but not to the point where mankind couldn’t do anything about it. This was because the space merchants’ technology had an irregular growth.

In other words, unlike humanity or the junkyard civilization, which started from the ground up and improved slowly from the 1st revolution to the 2nd revolution so on and so forth, the space merchants’ technological advancement didn’t follow a logical advancement. Their advancement came from opportune trades. Therefore, even though they might have 5th revolution technologies, like the warp drive, their weapons and ships were still from the 4th revolution.

Because of all this, the space merchants were indeed the best space contact currently for mankind. If the merchants intended to do them harm, they could still counter back. After all, they only needed to buy some time for space warp to initiate. The chance of complete extinction was nearly zero.

Therefore, Yao Yuan’s final decision was to stay and wait for the space merchants to draw near.

Of course, all combat personnel on the Hope went into high alert as a precaution. It never hurts to be careful. No matter what kind of flag the space merchants flew on the outside, the main thing they were after was profit. The space merchants had a good reputation because perhaps they still hadn’t come across a profit big enough for them to turn physical. If the profit was high enough, they could risk everything for it.

After all… the Hope had more than a hundred Homo Evolutis!

In the following days, maintenance was done on the Hope’s weapon system. It could go into combat whenever it wanted. People were assigned to control the two Defenders, and dry runs were carried out. Other than that, the space combat jets were oiled and maintained. Lastly, the Hope activated the creator’s particle to cover its surrounding space.

From the information taken from the junkyard civilization, this was the first step whenever contact was gained between two space civilizations. The activation of the creator’s particle not only served as a precaution but also proof that the originator was not a primitive race. It acted as a combat deterrent.

Furthermore, the space merchants were in the middle of a warp drive. During warp, at least by 4th revolution standards, all external signals were undetectable. Therefore, to prevent the merchants from missing the Hope’s location, the creator’s particle was to allow them to know where the Hope was.

Several days later, everything was ready on the Hope. The public were also given knowledge of what was happening: mankind was going to make its first official contact with another space civilization.

A large group of people were very unsupportive of this idea. If gaining contact with the space merchants represented danger, why couldn’t they just avoid it completely? Wait until mankind was advanced enough and then have the contact. Why did Yao Yuan choose to risk all of their lives?

There were many bearing this particular opinion…

Of course, Yao Yuan knew of these. The identity of the few opinion leaders were known to him as well. Many of them were members of the House of Representatives and had the history of doing this in the past. However, Yao Yuan didn’t make a move, not even a sly one, he was waiting…

On the nineteenth day, a large, spherical spaceship suddenly appeared twenty light-years in front of the Hope. It materialized out of thin air, without any warning. After it made its appearance, the spaceship stood still as if waiting for mankind to make its move.

Such a sudden appearance was one of warp drive’s important characteristics.

During warp drive, the ship itself was at zero speed. Warp drive was a space distortion technique that dragged the space around the spaceship forward. In other words, it was as if the spaceship was standing on an electronic space mattress that was pulled forward. The speed didn’t lie with the spaceship.

Therefore, when the spaceship exited warp drive, the spaceship was immobile. There was no issue of acceleration or deceleration.

When the spherical spaceship made its appearance, the Hope was bombarded with a series of signals. For the next few minutes, the large spaceship remained silent with no outward movements.

From Yao Yuan’s observations, the spherical spaceship, while not larger than the junkyard civilization’s main ship, was about 50 kilometers in radius and was spinning on its own axis. Unlike the spaceship pictured in sci-fi, the surface of the spaceship was not smoothed out and gleaming; instead, it was bumpy and crooked, giving it the appearance of a ball that had been patched one too many times.

The Academy picked up much information about this spaceship from its appearance alone, like how they didn’t have anti-gravitational technology. Granted the technology was beyond what mankind should have as well.

Other than that, based on the spaceship’s size and the size of each individual ‘patch’, one could basically predict where was the spaceship’s entrance, weapons ports, signal generators, and the rest.

While the Hope was still parsing the spherical spaceship, the latter cracked open, or rather the entrance to the spaceship opened. Because of the spaceship’s unique shape, it looked like an egg being cracked from within.

After that, an about 200 meters long small spacecraft with the classic plate-like UFO shape spun slowly towards the Hope.

It was not that the spacecraft didn’t release signals, but the whole area had been covered by the creator’s particle, nullifying all transmissions. However, the fact that the other party had sent over a smaller spacecraft instead of coming over with the whole spaceship was a sign of peace.

Watching this gesture of peace made the entire society on the Hope let out the breath they didn’t know they were holding. However, the reprieve was temporary. After all, it could be possible that the spacecraft was rigged with explosives. When the spacecraft neared the Hope, the electromagnetic shields on the Hope and the Defenders came up. The ECS system was also activated to prevent long-distance attacks.

Thankfully, even as the spacecraft neared the Hope, neither the spherical main shop nor the small spacecraft did anything out of the ordinary. They didn’t activate their own ECS system. When the spacecraft entered the Hope’s creator’s particle null zone, the Hope received all sorts of signals immediately.

All the people started to get busy, dissecting the signal, comparing the signal, categorizing the signal. However, for some weird reason, Bo Li’s prototype robot didn’t translate any of the received signals. Bo Li tweaked the robot’s internal server but failed to find any translating software, so the issue of the mysterious translation had to be put on the backburner.

Thankfully, the space merchants kept sending signals of varying frequencies and contents. Obviously, it was trying to find one that humanity could hopefully understand. In less than 10 minutes, the spacecraft had sent more than a thousand different signals, but humanity still understood none of them. While the atmosphere slowly dropped towards despair, someone suggested the Hope to send their signal out, maybe the merchants had access to some kind of universal translator device.

However, this suggestion was vetoed by Yao Yuan, Xiao Niao, and Ren Tao. The obvious risk aside, what if there was validity behind Ren Tao’s fear? Tipping humanity’s hand to the space merchants was definitely not a bright idea. It was absolutely not necessary to reveal humanity’s identity to the space merchants until it could be sure that there was no harm in doing that.

Suddenly, the spacecraft sent over a set of signals that the Hope’s computer could process immediately. It was a signal similar to…

The junkyard civilization!