Light scattered across the space ship's front screen and quickly dissolved into tiny stars and finally dissipated into nothing. Heron took off his sunglasses, dropped his four feet that had been resting comfortably on the control panel onto the floor and looked at the new star system revealed before his Federation of Planets Imperial Exploration Service Scout Ship.
He picked up his computerised tablet and scrolled through the options until he found the program he required.
"Let's see," he mumbled to himself with finger poised over the screen, and began checking off his Official Survey Form, "Star: Yellow, Planets: Nine - well, that's just a little one at the edge, let's call it eight and a half, Habitable planets: One. That's promising."
He put down his tablet and called over his shoulder to his two shipmates, "Byron! Nelson! We have a habitable planet here."
Byron lifted the towel off his dozing face and rolled off the acceleration couch. He pretended to do a stylish push-up with his four hands while getting up but just looked around in embarrassment when his crew mates paid him no attention at all.
Nelson stopped drinking from his bottle of Fizzy, burped, and wandered over to the front of the control room.
"Any good?" asked Nelson, squinting into the space in front, trying to see the planet that was the source of Heron's interest.
"Could be," said Heron, slowly browsing through the information scrolling down his tablet's screen, "It's the third planet out, from here it looks like it has a full biosphere and …" He paused looking at his instrument panel, "We have signals!"
"Signals?" Asked Byron, pushing against the back of Heron's chair, forcing Heron forward into the control panel, "Like signs of intelligent life and stuff like that?"
"No, smoke signals." said Heron flatly.
Heron then playfully whacked Byron with his tablet, thankful for the drop proof casing, "Transmission signals, Byron! Signs of technology and sharing of information over distance. Signals!"
Heron sighed.
Nelson looked at the controls that had shown the signals. "Can we see what the signals are?"
"Yeah. That'd be really cool. Signs of intelligence from a whole new planet," said Byron looking hopeful.
"We have been out here for ages looking for new planets to join the Federation. All we've found are rocks, big planets and plant life. We can't get our exploration bonus if we don't discover a good planet," complained Nelson.
Heron reached over to his controls and played with various menus and buttons on the interactive display.
"What's he doing?" whispered Byron to Nelson.
"Trying to tune in the signals," said Nelson, "I think he has something. Wait for it…"
Heron's two crew-mates held their breaths and wiggled their hair fronds in anticipation as they waited for the all important signals that could prove they had hit the jackpot. They had been working as Federation of Planets Exploration Team number 4523 for a number of years and had been allocated this remote corner of the galaxy.
"Go to that area," they had been told by their superiors, "No-one has gone there before. It'll be like new fields of treasure."
It wasn't as easy as the bosses had suggested. Travelling around the Galaxy within the established areas of the Federation was very easy. Most travel was via the Galaxy Express Tunnel ("Get to the GET" the travel brochures all promoted loudly) and then you are zapped to any connected address within the Galaxy. Heron had read that it was all to do with sub atomic faster than light quantum particles or something like that. Whatever it was the invention had consolidated the planets within the Federation into one large happy family. Mostly.
When you had to travel within the system it was back to space ships and sub light speeds. Boring. That was why any planets that wanted to grow and develop quickly paid or made a deal to have built a GET. If you wanted to get away from such a connected level of civilisation you just moved to a non GET planet.
Travelling outside the GET system was much more of a hassle. You had to use an Intersect Space Drive which needed a big engine that transformed space in front of the ship and created an Intersection to another place almost instantaneously. You were not allowed to use these big engines and the Intersect Space Drive (ISD) near a planet or gravity well or "Bad things would happen" according to the scientists and technicians. Actually, the engineers had told them that the ship and the planet would both blow up by Intersecting together. Then the engineers would smirk and tell each other how much they loved engineering and blowing things up. "It's like mathematics. But Louder!" they grinned.
So exploring meant going as far as you could go via the GET, then using the ISD to get much further to an edge of a new solar system and then moving around on normal pulse energy drives. And all this took lots of time. Long boring time. Time best employed by special Exploration Teams.
Heron, Nelson and Byron were hatch mates who were bored at home once they left (or were kicked out) of their nests. Being out of work in the Federation of Planets was no fun at all. Sure, there was a basic living stipend which one could survive on but that involved saving and planning and boring stuff only old and dull people did. There were lots of opportunities for the millions of different races which made up the Federation and somehow most of the money involved too much work for young, entitled hatchlings wanting to enjoy the life they felt they deserved.
The flashing advertisements for the Exploration Teams working for the Imperial Exploration Service (the IES) made the job look fantastic. "Come! Explore the galaxy! Join the brave adventurers who expand the Federation! We want YOU to have an adventure and help the Federation!"
They had also heard bonuses were paid depending on what you found. Adventure, training, a basic wage and possible bonuses all sounded great to the three hatchlings.
Within a day of signing up they were given a ship, handed a computerised tablet which contained the manuals and all the tools they required, strapped in to their seats and sent off on a preprogrammed journey to the edge of the Federation. Not much later they were in an interview with Chugalug, the happy and encouraging Explorations Team Director. He looked at his map of the Galaxy which had a huge pink shaded area denoting the limits of the Federation and told the boys to "Expand the pink bit!"
That was five years ago and although they had explored a number of star systems, all they had discovered were boring planets. The big money went for the main prize - a planet with intelligent life that could join the Federation.
And here they were, on the brink of that prize.
Heron finished his playing on the tablet and looked at his two friends, "Ready?"
"Yes!" Byron and Nelson said together hitting Heron in the middle of his head.
"Here it is," Heron said as the static resolved into pictures.
***
After many hours of watching the pictures and desperately trying many alternate channels, the three blue aliens conferred over some bottles of Fizzy around their conference table.
"But they send signals for all the universe to see!" cried Byron in despair.
"Think of the intelligence required for all the equipment and technology to do that," suggested Nelson hopefully.
"And it's all complete rubbish," sighed Heron, wondering how he could somehow convert this discovery into something worthwhile.