After several days of work, James and I had replaced the shuttle computer system and added some heavy shielding to protect it from the e-ghosts. We came to the conclusion that the e-ghosts had knocked it out by using a EMF beam.

The girls, on the other hand, had found out quite a bit about the solar system we were in and, more importantly, something about the e-ghost system.

“We have ascertained that this solar system is five hundred light years from Earth. I think they call it Kepler 186. The star it orbits is a red dwarf about half the size of our sun.”

“That’s why it seems so dark here compared to what we experiences when we were orbiting the sun,” I said.

“Yes, and that poses questions about whether the habitable planet is actually habitable,” Alisha said.

“Well, it must be,” I said. “Otherwise, why would the e-ghosts have come here.”

“What do we know about this system?” James asked.

“From what we can see from here, this solar system has five planets, two gas giants and three rocky planets” Marie said. “COMA, display the habitable planet.”

The screen lit up with images of the planet she had found. It looked as if it had oceans and an atmosphere with clouds, a sign that it had oxygen and water.

“The planet has an atmosphere with fifteen percent oxygen at about one and half atmospheric pressure. The mean bolometric temperature is 325 K, which is not too much different than Earth’s. If there is a sentient species in this system, that’s where they live.”

“What’s the catch?” I said.

“This planet is on a collision course with the rogue planet. The collision won’t happen for a few thousand years, but in the meantime there will be disruptions in the obits of both.”

“Have you detected any evidence of a civilization on that planet?” James asked.

“We can see what appears to be cities, but we’re not sure that what we’re seeing is what we imagine it to be.”

I turned to Alisha. “Have you been able to penetrate into the e-ghosts’ system?”

“I know how it’s arranged,” she said. “COMA, display the infrared images of the surface.”

The screen filled with a very strange image. It appeared as a spider web of bright thin lines that connected to countless nodal points.”

“Those are optic cables under the surface,” Alisha said. “They connect to billions, if not trillions, of nodes.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that there is no central processing center. Instead, there are these nodal processors connected into a gigantic planet-wide grid or network, if you will.”

“That’s going to make hacking into it much more difficult,” I said.

She blew the words out as if disgusted. “Tell me about it. There could be a central node, but I have as yet to find it.”

“What I would like to know is how they are able to create a wormhole.”

“We think we’ve found the answer to that,” Alisha said. “There are these large arrays that appear to aim at a specific point in space. COMA, display an array.”

The image of a large spire that was tilted an angle appeared. It had concentric discs that went from tip to the base, starting off small and gradually getting larger.

“That projector rig is nearly a thousand meters long,” Alisha said. “There are tentacles from that projector that go down into the core of the planet. We believe that they’re using the heat from the core to create a powerful particle accelerator beam that can be focused on a spot in space. There are dozens of these projectors, and if they are aimed at the same spot it could theoretically open up a wormhole and keep it stable long enough to such the planet into it.”

“That has to be some really advanced technology,” I said. “I don’t understand why it’s still functioning since the artificial beings went extinct.”

“I don’t think they did,” Marie said. “I believe that they are still around, but aren’t needed unless something needs repaired. It’s a conservation of energy thing, which if you think about it, makes sense for a machine mind.”

“If that’s the case, why are they capturing living species?” James asked.

“Who knows,” Marie said. “Maybe they thought that they could train living beings to act as repairmen.”

“That’s ridiculous,” James sputtered. “Why waste all this energy and time to do something stupid.”

“Again,” Marie said. “It’s the machine mind’s logic. Time is irrelevant to a machine without a soul.”

“So, what’s our next step?” James asked.

“We have to wait until we determine how to hack the e-ghost system or get help to do it,” I said.

“We must pray that we receive help,” Marie said, making the sign of the cross.

 Hopefully, that won’t take too long. If we run out of air, we’ll have to go to the surface and live with the mole people.

“Ryan, I have detected the presence of an unknown space vehicle.”

“What is it, COMA?”

“It is unknown, Ryan.”

“Display it, COMA.”

We stared at the image in awe. We were looking at something we never thought we would ever see.