The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction by Brandon Morris (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📕

this future fate. But he probably wouldn’t find a female interested in his seed packets, anyway.

He was glad that he at least had an interesting job. Studying the signals that the umbrella plants received from universal space was always exciting and surprising. Wormitor must be old enough to have known the investigator who had discovered this special property of the iron leaves of the umbrella plants. The leaves transmitted signals to the water circuit of the plants, from where they could be extracted. It was as if one could hear universal space thinking.

“What’s up?” Wormitor asked. He curiously pushed back on the hard shell that protected his body and neck. The red dots on it looked washed out, another hint to Krognatur of his colleague’s advanced age.

“Look at this text,” Krognatur said. “The Antsen just transmitted it.”

The Antsen had developed the ability to interconnect their brains in their huge castles, which were thousands of pairs of legs in size. This enabled them to solve difficult problems in the blink of an eye—for example, translating broadcasts from universal space. Krognatur tapped the vision device with his foremost pair of legs, magnifying the text and allowing Wormitor to read it more easily.

“Hey! I’m old, but I’m not blind,” Wormitor said, resetting the attitude.

Then he read aloud.

We crawl back and forth in the soft mud / Of the silk tomb almost to its lid / And see on the outside of the suspended grass / The umbrella plant for the second time with spots.

We flutter to the sunny places of rest / Where strangers’ calls never shooed us / As we flay our limbs entwine / We dine while blood dragonflies glow.

We feel joyfully how with silent urge / From leaves light reflections drip on us / And only see and hear when in pauses / The leaky branches prop themselves into forks.

“Where did you get that?” asked Wormitor.

“From universal space, and then processed with the Antsen communicator according to our own presets, as we had agreed.”

“It’s obvious that this is coming through universal space. But from where, exactly?”

“According to my calculations, a small yellow dwarf could be the source, about ten light-leg pairs away from us.”

“That’s exciting,” Wormitor said. “You’ll definitely have to pass that on to the clear-cut artists. They’ll create a wonderful light sculpture out of it.”

Author's Note

Dear Readers,

The world is saved. Or is it? It’s hard to say. Peter was both a hero and a victim of the prevention paradox. He couldn’t prove he was right without leaving Earth in danger. On the other hand, this showed that he was never focused in being right. I think we need people like that, who don’t focus on themselves, but on the big picture.

But of course, this story is not over either. You may already know that everything is interconnected in my universe. Do you remember the crack that suddenly appeared in the Earth’s sky in The Rift? Could it have been the danger—or might it have been the black hole in The Hole? Or, in the end, was the danger only in Peter’s head?

We’ll probably have to pay him and his helpers another visit. After all, it’s only 2026, and Francesca, who will make her outer space career in The Enceladus Mission starting in 2046, still has 20 years to go. If you don’t know Enceladus yet, take a look! There you will meet the young woman again as a tough space pilot.

I will also be happy to have you visit me, for example, on Facebook, or on my website, where I report several times a week about current events from the universe. Some of the names in my books have been suggested by my fans on Patreon, to whom I express my sincere thanks.

I have one more critical request before you go—no, two. First, this book plays a vital role in my Master of Space Science degree. I would like to determine what knowledge has stuck with you. What do you remember? Please fill out the questionnaire at

hard-sf.com/links/1777854

Second plea: A review. Without reader reviews, it is much more difficult for potentially interested readers to discover a new book. That’s why I’m depending on your help. Please use this link:

hard-sf.com/links/1730990

...or scroll to the end of the book, where Amazon will ask you for a star rating and offer you the opportunity to leave a review.

As always, you can get an illustrated version of A Guided Tour of Multi-Messenger Astronomy by requesting it here:

hard-sf.com/subscribe/

I hope to see you in the next book!

Sincerely,

Yours, Brandon Q. Morris

Resolution

What’s the deal with the chapters that have strange names like 22 57 27,98 20 46 7,8? And what do the peculiar texts you find there mean? The resolution, of course, has something to do with the plot, so I won’t deprive you of your reading pleasure by giving it all away from the start. But if you’ve had enough of puzzling, don’t scroll back now, but continue reading after the spoiler alert.

Attention: Spoilers ahead

The chapter names are coordinates. First, you find the right ascension in hours, minutes, and seconds, succeeded by the declination in degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds. There are always concrete objects behind the coordinates. The first five readers who email me the names of all objects (see imprint for address) will receive a free paperback of their choice. Tip: To infer concrete objects from the coordinates, you can use the search function of the object dictionary SIMBAD, (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/).

By the way, at the end of the Guided Tour, I also explain the basic terms of astronomy, i.e., what these coordinates are all about.

The texts are messages. They are encrypted with the Red 13 method. Perhaps you’ve already recognized it. To decode them, you have to replace each letter with the one that is 13 letters ahead in the alphabet. Or you can make it easy and use a decoder like https://rot13.com.