quote: Novus Stella from the novel "Paradox of the Locus" (A.Glass 2016)

 

“It was probably a salvage, that ship is capable of harnessing and stripping down dead probes and there's lot of them out here as you know.”

“Yeah sure, but according to the report, the object disappeared.”

“We are locking in, nice and tight. The sail fold is in twenty seconds!” Terrell yells out.

Outside the Delphi the Solartec shield lifts over the front of the craft, with the assistance of two mechanical support beams, it is lifted and then folds the protective shield.

“Never get tired this...” Sullivan says as the reinforced carbon screens slide across, allowing the crew to view the outside. The swirling gas giant Jupiter is revealed in-front of all of them, its mass of orange, brown and yellow cloud formations. Its silky texture interwoven within the various cloud belts from the Northern polar and temperature zones to South Equator zones as the temperature belts move in opposite directions. At the same time the distinct Great Red Spot which has fluctuated throughout the decades, is now at its largest, a swirling mass of ammonia with its colors pigmented by chromophores, an orange brown storm the size of Earth.

“It's a reject...A lifeless, big, fucking reject...A gas giant.” Jackson says looking at the massive planet in-front of them.

“Bitter huh?” Terrell replies with a smile, still looking at the beautiful colors and clouds of Jupiter

“Like I said, these planets, they're dead zones. Nothing on them, not even bacterial. The size of this...” Jackson points at Jupiter. “...and it just sits there, a poisonous monolithic anomaly.”

“Might be the case, but with Ganymede's and Jupiter's Magnetosphere, we might as well be Earth's orbit. We're well protected from the Sun's solar radiation.” Captain Griffin adds.

Terrel checks the obits locks, also looking over the Central System's diagnoses of the photon and proton counts. All are in the normal ranges. “You hate the sun too?”

“That's a love hate, baby. We need it, but eventually it will wipe out everything in this solar system. Remember what I said before about what solar radiation does to an unprotected human out here in Space...” Jackson gets up from his desk console. “...It's like, sometimes you think, we're at war. We are constantly under attack from the cosmos...” He taps a prompt on his monitor, above the Delphi crew on the main bridge monitor an image shows a trajectory of an object heading towards Earth. The crew remain silent shifting their view briefly form the spectacle of Jupiter to the image displayed on the large screen in front of them. “...I rest my case.”

___

PARADOX OF THE LOCUS

(A.Glass 2016)