The Gift.

The Gift.

Our world we called Den. It orbited a red dwarf star that we called Seta that was in turn orbited by another red dwarf swinging out in an elliptical orbit. This sun we called ‘Giver of Life.’ A third sun orbited far out and brought extra heat when it dived towards the first sun. When both red dwarfs dominated the sky behind our world and danced around Seta, then this was a time of plenty. This star came only every few centuries so we called it the Visitor.

Closest to Seta, Den was permanently locked with one surface facing the sun, keeping the other side in frigid darkness, except when the second sun dipped behind and brought warmth to the ice-locked land. This state would last for some years and was taken advantage by the life that faced the eternal day. Billions of gallons of fresh water cascaded down the mountains and swept across the thirsty plains.  Torrential rain would fall and storm-force winds blew across the dried up lands. Shallow seas would fill and life that had sealed itself under the soft mud while they could, before it had set like iron under Seta’s glare, would wriggle out of their temporal tombs. When the added warmth of the ‘Visitor’ was added, all of the frigid, dark sides of all the many worlds that orbited both Seta and the Giver of Life, burst into activity. 

 There would be a flurry of life taking the advantage of the change in seasons. This was the time of plenty. Already the plants that had begun the business of hiding into their roots and pulling the shield over the top of the hole during the dry season began to fight for the light.  Precious water that was oozed around the rim of the lid to make a seal was sucked down into the roots causing them to open their pores to the now damp soil. Growth was now the prime aspect and every plant pushed through the root system sending shoots into the rain filled air. Soon there would be a flowering and seeds form to be ready for the seeding time before Giver pulled away and left Den far behind to endure the great freeze once more and the dark side return to its other state. The time of harvest would be upon us and the gathering take place.

The second sun, ‘Giver of Life’ and its attendant planets was beginning to come closer and the heat began to climb, as we started the journey away from the underground cities and back into the new growing season. Soon the ‘Visitor’ would add its extra warmth to the new spring, extending the summer that would pass. We lived spread across the temperate zone and foraged into the edge of the central desert, pushing the cultivated lands as far as we could, by irrigating from reservoirs built deep beneath the ground. The time of storms was coming, as the second sun followed the elliptical orbit around the red dwarf and in doing so would shine down onto the frigid ice bound wastes heating up the dark side. This would melt the ice and drive the winds over the perimeter bringing water to the baked dry lands, so this happened during every orbit of the second sun as it closed the distance to the larger star. Den orbited Seta along with three other rocky planets that were close enough to have freely flowing water between the ice ages. 

All of these planets were tidally locked with one face pointing at the sun. The second sun warmed them all as it swept around behind the dark side of each planet. A number of planets orbited the ‘Visitor’ as well. it had been known that one of these worlds had transferred itself to Setas’s gravitational pull during transit. 

We call ourselves the Vinay and we have burrowed deep beneath the dark side of our worlds and far under the deserts of eternal day. From there we extract hot air and pump it to the cold side to our underground homes enabling us to expand our cities further into the emptiness. Over the last thousand years we have filled all four planets with our civilisation and have sent expeditions to other red dwarf systems.

We have been a star travelling civilization for over a thousand years and have spread out colonising many red dwarf systems and building a federation of species. The first radio signals began to trickle in from a most unlikely source not too far from whence we lived and when we manged to decode the signals into pictures, we shuddered with horror at the scenes of destruction that the dominant species waged upon each other. The star was a single yellow type surrounded with planets unlike any we had come across. There were four huge gas giants in the outer reaches and four smaller balls of rock not unlike our own worlds in size, but as unalike as could be! The first two worlds were too hot for life and the fourth too small to hold onto an atmosphere. The third world out from the sun however was a water world, orbited by a giant moon that held it stable, but the people that lived there did not cherish the bounty that they had. These planets were rare and sparsely scattered through the galaxy. 

We foolishly sent a message back to them and watched in horror as their civilisations all began to put their energies into weapons of mass destruction, with the idea of launching them at us! Eight different species sat in judgement and it was a unanimous decision to send ships to the small worlds and ice chunks from the Kuiper belt and dislodge a number of these skipping them towards the sun in close encounter orbits as a warning. As a reminder we also sent them the co-ordinates of the dwarf planets and the flight paths. A continual watch would be sent to monitor affairs to see that they changed their ways. This solar system was theirs to use and shape as they wished, but no further travel into interstellar space would be tolerated. 

We also disturbed the eons of static orbits of the Oort cloud making sure that what lived inside that un-impenetrable natural shield, stayed there after we had departed.  .