Age of Cosmic Exploration Chapter 385

Waiting always made people nervous. It had been 24 hours since the AI drove the pilotless spaceship into the green light. Therefore, the operation was announced a failure because according to the AI command, it was supposed to return within 24 hours. The fact that it didn't meant that it had gone missing or was attacked.

"We received no information from the other end. All we have is still a piece of emptiness and the pilotless spaceship has completely disappeared."

In a lab somewhere on the Hope's fourth floor, the few people gathered there were despondent. They were the task force behind this operation. They had quite some confidence in this operation, but it had failed gloriously. For this group of people who wished to improve their standing in the Hope's world of science, this was truly a great setback.

Thankfully, this was just one failure, and the loss was merely some materials and deduction of future project grants. As long as no one was hurt, it was fine.

Following this failure, now it was time for the nanoline operation. A 30,000-kilometer-long nanoline would be released into the green light and pulled out one hour later to investigate how it was behind the green light.

This nanoline was created using the nano technology of level 2 space civilizations. Its tensile strength was confirmed and each nanothread had their own memory that could record short information that lasted for three to five seconds. In other words, even if the front end of the nanoline was broken off, as long as a part of the line had touched the green light and at least one nano-size of the line still remained, then the data wouldn't be lost.

The Hope had exhausted plenty of materials just to create this nanoline. In reality, this nanoline was meant to be used as nano-server connecting a whole planet or Shelter; this was an upgraded communication device that was better than fiber optics. Even though they had wireless communication technology like supermagnetic communication, its effect was not proportional to its energy and material exhaustion. For a general use communication technology, the nanoline was still more suitable.

Currently, the Hope was using this nanoline to investigate the inside of the green light. After one hour, the Hope's internal dragging machine pulled the line back, but…

The front end of the line had been broken off. About 1 meter of the line had completely disappeared. However, it was not a clean break like most scientists predicted. The line was not broken off in a manner that was clean and parallel, which would suggest a distortion of space.

The break did not show any signs of corrosion, melting, or other high energy dissolution signs either.

The front end of the line had weird twists, turns, and irregular changes, like certain places were flattened while others curled upon themslves. There were parts that were fraying as well… This was hard to explain. If explained using the normal electrical line as an example, it was as if the inner copper lines suddenly twisted together with the outer plastic casing while the line had remained, for the most part, intact.

This find was confusing. Why would this happen? What happened to the nanoline inside the green light? If it wasn't space distortion or high energy corrosion, then what kind of thing existed within?

The scientists could not come to a conclusion on this result shown by the nanoline. It was like an invisible hand had ruffled the line in a random manner, or… this green light was some weird energy field? It would crush and ruffle everything that went into it?

Regardless, the Hope continued to carry out several other surveillance operations, and without exception, all of them had failed. None of them could shed light on what was inside the green light, the only clue was this nanoline.

"But this makes no sense…"

The scientists almost tore their hair out trying to make sense of this situation. However. going bald wouldn't help the situation. In other words, they had reached a dead end.

In reality, it was not that there no hypotheses given by the Academy on what happened to the nanoline. There was talk of a curious energy field which twisted the line, while other scientists proposed that it was some kind ionic state that formed this green light and that any object entering it would be bombarded by the heavy ions, causing collapse or changes at the ionic level and thus causing the strange phenomenon they had seen on the nanoline. Or it was some strange defense system within the ruin…

There were all sorts of extrapolations, but all of them had one similarity: there was no actual proof. These were all hypotheses using scientific logic and imagination, no one knew what truly happened in the green light. What if it was different from everything they had imagined? This could be death for the Hope should they enter based on a false hypothesis. Since this involved the lives of several ten thousand people and the legacy of humanity, the Hope's higher officials had no choice but to be extra careful.

Just like that, the Hope spent more days idling outside of the green light. Another three months had passed. Looking at these fleets of alien spaceships entering the green light and watching more of them appearing to refill their places, the hearts of the people were nervous and agitated…

In this period of time, among the mess of alien spaceships, other than a few new level 4 space civilizations' ships, there were also some unidentified, weirdly-shaped spaceships. They probably belonged to level 5 space civilizations…

All of the spaceships disappeared after they entered the green light. No one could be certain whether a more high level space civilization, like 6, 7, or 8, would make their appearances. This ruin might've been powerful, but it wouldn't be able to hypnotize a high-tier space civilization, right? If that happened and those high tier space civilizations realized that a level 2 space civilization that was not hypnotized was just idling at the edge of the green light, they definitely wouldn't mind taking a look, right?

Therefore, time was ticking for the Hope. They could be in deep trouble at any minute…

After a great amount of discussion and more proposals to recon this green light, on the third month of idling, the Hope finally came up with a new surveillance operation, a live surveillance. Of course, they wouldn't be using actual human beings, that was far too dangerous. They would be using one of the reared animals on the Hope. From pigs to cows and even a fish that was enclosed in a specially made case were part of the experiment.

At the same time, the Hope also sent out a transport shuttle with an exploratory team made up of scientists and a Diviner to bring these animals near to the green light. This biological experiment's aim was to see whether the green light was harmful to living creatures or not. Therefore, the animals would be led at least half way into the green light. This would enable humanity to tell whether the green light was harmful to them or not. Of course, for this purpose, the team responsible had to follow the experiment closely.

Other than a Diviner, the team also contained Ivan, the biology and pathology Whisperer. Even though many did not want him to join when the team was formed, since his value as a Whisperer was simply too high to the Hope, Ivan's reason was undeniable. After all, if the animals died in the green light, their corpses had to be studied at the shortest notice so that the secret of the green light wouldn't be lost, and of all the biologists on the Hope, only Ivan had the capability to perform such autopsies.

Therefore, in spite of everything, Ivan ended up as part of the exploratory team. Of course, the Diviner was secretly ordered by the Hope's higher officials that should he feel any danger, even if it wasn't serious, he would have to turn the shuttle around and announce the ending of the operation.

Just like that, the transport shuttle inched closer to the green light. They were about 1,000 meters away from the green light. In fact, it felt like they could reach out to touch it. Using a mechanical support, the animals were slowly pushed into the green light. This time, not only the exploratory team on the transport shuttle, even the people on the Hope watched this unfold with bated breath. Finally, some of the animals had entered into the green light, while others still remained outside. After 60 seconds of varying exposure to the green light, the mechanical arm pulled the animals back out.

Then…

Those animals who entered fully into the green light had disappeared, even the part of the mechanical arm holding them had disappeared. Those who reached halfway into the green light had their spaceship completely twisted or disappeared, even parts of their bodies had disappeared or gotten grotesquely twisted. It was truly a scene out of a horror movie.

The weirdest of all was definitely those who only had small parts of their bodies go into the green light…

Those parts had completely flipped inside-out!

Chapter end