Chapter 97: Bright Nebula
The long voyage continued.
This acceleration of just one centimeter per second squared lasted for more than ninety days, only stopping once the fleet reached a velocity of eighty kilometers per second.
They couldn't accelerate any further. Doing so would consume more fuel, as would decelerating in the future. They might even have to dip into the emergency fuel reserves.
When the acceleration, which had lasted for over three months, finally ceased, gravity vanished completely throughout the entire fleet.
Thanks to this acceleration of 0.01 meters per second squared, every ship's cabin had maintained an extremely stable gravity, roughly one-thousandth of that on Earth.
Now that acceleration had stopped and the fleet had entered an inertial cruise, even that tiny amount of gravity was gone.
Nothing stayed securely in place anymore; every unsecured object began to float.
That included the Clones.
Of the fifteen million Clones, aside from the 500,000 required for watch duty and routine fleet maintenance, the remaining 14.5 million spent their days resting idly in densely packed bunks.
Li Qingsong would have them exercise for just one hour each day to prevent muscle atrophy and the degradation of their bodily functions.
Before, they could lie down, but now, without gravity, they could only float.
It wasn't just them. The entire fleet was now adrift, suspended in the endless sea of stars.
No matter which Clone's perspective Li Qingsong switched to, or which porthole he looked out of, he saw the exact same star-dusted expanse.
The view outside remained virtually unchanged, whether an hour, a day, or even a month had passed.
'Sometimes, he couldn't help but wonder if he was truly hurtling forward at eighty kilometers per second, or if he was simply motionless.'
Of course, each time, his reason would remind him that he was, in fact, moving at an unprecedented speed.
But the cosmos was so vast and devoid of reference points that no matter how fast he traveled, it felt as though he were standing still.
And so, the fleet sailed on, seemingly motionless.
The fleet's limited supplies precluded any new scientific experiments or research. That didn't stop Li Qingsong from using the Clones' brains to think, however.
With so much idle time, this voyage became the perfect opportunity to tackle the many problems that had accumulated during the long research phase.
Over ten million brains contemplated these issues simultaneously, searching for inspiration. They slept when tired, ate when hungry, and resumed thinking as soon as they awoke, repeating the cycle endlessly.
Meanwhile, with time to spare and the fleet's velocity and heading now stable, Li Qingsong took out all the space-based optical and radio telescopes. He deployed them directly into the void of space to begin a new round of celestial surveys.
Li Qingsong didn't even need to secure these observation instruments.
He simply placed them about 1,000 kilometers from the fleet and adjusted their initial state to be motionless relative to it. After that, he didn't need to worry about them; they would remain perfectly still, maintaining a fixed distance from the fleet indefinitely.
Of course, they only appeared to be stationary. In reality, both the instruments and the fleet were hurtling toward the Inner Solar System at eighty kilometers per second. But since their velocity and heading were identical, they all seemed to be at a complete standstill.
Thus, dozens of optical and radio space telescopes, each aimed at a different patch of sky, began their tireless, round-the-clock observations.
As a result, a multitude of peculiar astronomical phenomena that Li Qingsong had never witnessed before came into view.
Black Holes, neutron stars, White Dwarf Stars, nebulae, star clusters, extragalactic galaxies, quasars... The list went on.
Li Qingsong knew that once technology reached a certain level, further advancement was inextricably linked to astronomical observation.
Too many fundamental theories in physics required proof that could only be found in astronomical phenomena.
It was just that for the past few centuries, he had been preoccupied with more low-level development and had never devoted much attention to the cosmos.
This multi-year journey was the perfect time to make up for that.
And so, time slowly slipped by amid long hours of observation and contemplation, of reviewing mastered theories and postulating new ones.
Ahead, the Sun's brightness had increased. Back at Ceres, it had been barely strong enough to cast a dim shadow; now, it shone with the intensity of the full moon as seen from Earth.
This was in brightness only, of course, not in size.
In fact, the Sun still appeared as just a small point of light to Li Qingsong, with no discernible disk-like shape.
It seemed to be the only change visible to the naked eye during the multi-year voyage. Everything else remained the same.
At least, not to the naked eye.
'Just one more month of travel and we'll cross Pluto's orbit. We're finally getting close.'
One day during the long voyage, Li Qingsong found himself sighing at the vastness of the Cosmos and the sheer length of the journey.
A journey merely from the edge of the Solar System to its interior had already taken so long.
The nearest star to the Sun was about 4.2 light-years away.
'That distance was roughly 2,500 times greater than the one he was currently undertaking.'
'And he was already giving his all for a journey that was a mere one-2,500th of that distance.'
'And how could the sheer vastness of the Cosmos be measured in thousands, or even tens of thousands, of 4.2-light-year increments?'
'I wonder when I'll be able to truly roam this Vast Cosmos.'
Li Qingsong sighed, filled with yearning.
The hundreds of telescopes still floated around the fleet, ceaselessly exploring the void.
It was during this exploration that Li Qingsong suddenly discovered a rather strange celestial object.
Based on its shape, it appeared to be a nebula.
A nebula is a cloud of matter formed by concentrations of interstellar dust, hydrogen, helium, and other plasmas.
Nebulae are common in interstellar space, numerous and varied in size. Large ones can give birth to thousands, even tens of thousands, of stars, while smaller ones remain obscure, almost impossible to detect.
Nebulae can be broadly classified based on whether they emit light: Bright Nebulae and dark nebulae.
Right now, Li Qingsong was looking at a Bright Nebula.
In the visible light spectrum, the nebula emitted a hazy glow.
But Li Qingsong remembered quite clearly: the last time his space telescopes had observed this region of space, he had seen nothing at all.
But a nebula couldn't travel such a great distance in such a short time. It was highly unlikely to have drifted in from elsewhere in just a few years.
That left only one possibility.
Something must have caused it to change from a dark nebula into the Bright Nebula he was seeing now.
'What could have caused it?'
'This small nebula is only five or six light-years from the Solar System. That's very close.'
'And that direction... that's the direction of the Gliese 625 Star System.'
The Gliese 625 Star System—also known to the Blutuk People as the Blutuk Star System.