“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” Jack intoned ominously, staring at the viewscreen, where something was indeed twinkling, ahead and a little off to port.

“Mm.” Ianto leaned forward a little in the co-pilot’s seat. “What d’you think it is?”

“Well, not a star, obviously.” Out in space, away from the atmospheric scintillation effect, stars most definitely do NOT twinkle, but this, whatever it might be, was definitely on the twinkly side. Jack moved his hands carefully over the Happy Wanderer’s controls, nudging the ship onto a new course that would take them closer to the mysterious twinkle. “This is what we’re out here for though, seeing what we can see, so let’s go take a look.”

Ianto manned the scanning and detection equipment, getting readings on mass, density, dimensions, light waves and other energy and radiation being emitted, among other things.

“Whatever that is, it appears to be solid, roughly spherical, and approximately three hundred metres in diameter. I’m not detecting any harmful radiation, and no life signs, so it’s not a living creature.”

Strange though it might have seemed to the people of earth, there were several kinds of creatures that lived for most of their lives in the vacuum of space, unbreathing, and requiring very little in the way of sustenance. Space whales were one kind, and there was also a dragon-like species, although they were far rarer. In over a century of travelling space, Jack and Ianto had only ever seen two, or possibly the same one on two separate occasions.

“Could it be an egg of some description?”

It was a logical question; almost all vacuum dwellers hatched from eggs. The space whales were the major exception to that rule, being mammals.

“If it is, either whatever is inside it is dead, or the shell is blocking our scanners.” Ianto looked at the forward viewscreen again, studying the twinkling object, now showing more clearly as the Wanderer approached. “It’s pretty though.”

“Very pretty. Makes a change from dull grey or brownish asteroids and barren moons.”

That was about all they’d discovered so far on their latest exploratory venture, aside from half a dozen planets of limited appeal to anyone other than for their raw materials. None of them had been blessed with an atmosphere; the only thing they’d seen that did have one was a small and rather unprepossessing moon, which had a rudimentary ecosystem developing. In a couple of million years, it might sustain something resembling life, if it was lucky. Then again, it might not. Sometimes evolution began and then simply fizzled out.

Guiding the Wanderer closer to the twinkly object, Jack brought the ship to a halt a mere tenth of a light year from it. Ianto turned up the magnification on the viewscreen, bringing their find into crystal clarity, in a remarkably literal sense. It appears to be a massive, faceted crystal, just hanging there in space.

“Well, that explains the twinkling, I suppose.” The light from the nearest sun, a little closer to the object than Sol was to earth, was being refracted from the facets as the gigantic jewel slowly revolved about its axis which, from the Happy Wanderer’s position, was approximately twenty-three degrees from the vertical.

Jack altered the ship’s orientation until the crystal sphere was rotating before the viewscreen like a slowly spinning top. “It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?”

“Manufactured or natural?” Ianto wondered, almost to himself, as he continued to take readings. “Still no life signs, almost no radiation of any kind, just a few refracted light waves. It seems to be absorbing most of the sun’s rays, except for a small amount in the visible spectrum, enough to make it twinkle.”

“A solar collector, maybe?” Jack suggested.

“Possibly,” Ianto agreed. “Maybe it twinkles so that spacecraft can avoid running into it. I wonder how long it’s been here.”

“Who knows? How do the planets in this system look?”

“Hold on a minute and I’ll take a look.” Ianto brought up that information on one of his screens. “Two gas giants further out, other side of the sun at present, one small, rocky planet too close to the sun to be habitable. One planet slightly larger than earth approximately one hundred and eighty million kilometres from the sun, and about three hundred thousand kilometres, give or take, from our twinkly jewel here.”

“Atmosphere?”

“Not much of one, and I’m not picking up life signs, radio waves, anything like that, but…”

“What?”

“I don’t know, maybe it was inhabited once, and whatever lifeforms evolved there either died out or left.”

“And now their solar collector still sits up here, gathering energy that the people who lived on the planet no longer need.”

Ianto glanced at his husband. “That’s a sad thought.”

“The decline or destruction of civilisations usually is. We should take a look at the planet, prove or disprove our theory, see if there’s anything left of whatever civilisation once existed there, if there was one, maybe see if we can figure out what happened to the people.”

“And the rest of our job, see if the planet has any valuable resources, or if it might be suitable for colonisation.”

“Mm, if it’s worth anything we could maybe claim it as part of our fee. I mean, it comes with its own power supply.”

“We THINK it does, we don’t know for sure. This might be a beacon or something rather than a solar collector. Or it could be the local equivalent of a space station, a satellite, a lost spacecraft or lifepod, a refuelling station, just about anything. The solar collector theory is still just speculation on our part. We might know more after we check out the planet.”

“Might.” Jack sighed. “This is the most interesting thing we’ve come across so far, but I suppose we can come back and take another look after we scout out the planet.”

“Alright, let me just take a few shots of our stray Christmas bauble, then we can run scans of the planet from orbit, gather as much data as we can before landing.”

“Standard planetary survey, what fun! Looks like we’re back to business as usual.”

“Don’t complain, Jack! It’s all part of the job. Be grateful we’ve found something worth studying. Who knows what technological advances we might uncover? This has the potential to be the biggest discovery of our career to date, so let’s do everything the right way, fully document every move we make, and then….”

“We could be about to make history, the discovery of a previously unknown technological civilisation.”

“Hold on to that thought. Let’s get started.”


The End