Lambda Tulloch Moberan 3x (Lycaeus)

A great glowing orb rises out of the void as you slide through the layers of reality, leave between-space behind. It isn't a sun– it doesn't read the same, isn't as bright, doesn't burn the same way. It's a gas giant, maybe a hundred times larger than Jupiter, and as your scans skim the atmosphere, you spot a series of tiny outposts arranged like a ring around the middle of the world. Twenty-seven in all, they ping back with Terran transponder codes, turn out to be automated, but there's also a ship– scratch that, several ships staffed with men and women who hail you with a series of simple welcomes, with streams of data about the world, what they're trying to do with it.

Dornentantz is the local name for the planet. Hydrogen and helium– those are the primary elements the gas giant is composed of. Ninety-three moons of varying sizes orbit the huge world, some of them habitable, others more like proto-earths, worlds that could be made habitable.

That's where the scientists in the ships and the ring of automated stations come in. You smile as the details trickle through the connection– the planet, it has the potential to become a sun. For almost fifty years, the men and women who staff the ships and facilities near Dornentantz have been working toward kickstarting a fusion reaction within the gas giant. Their progress looks promising, and they're close– maybe only a few decades away from success. It's inspiring, wondrous.

When the last of the data comes through, you hang there, watch the giant in the endless silence. Another star in natus, embryonic. Dornentantz– another system waiting for the right catalyst, waiting to be born, to light up the heavens, to become something greater.

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