The force-field beam began to bend. Its hundred-million-mile path through the solar system curved away from the sun, like a tree branch that had been weighed down. As the force-field engine on board Vessel Blue 84210 worked at maximum power, its enormous heat sink glowed, first dark red, then with a bright white incandescence. The beam’s new thrust vector began to affect the trajectory of the singularity bomb, which curved away from its target. However, it was already inside the orbit of Mercury, very close to the sun, and no one was confident that the force-field engine could bend its course enough to prevent impact.

The whole galaxy watched over hyperspace as the fuzzy, dark ball veered and grew substantially brighter, a worrisome sign that it had already entered the particle-rich space around the sun. The captain’s hand rested on the red hyperspace button, ready to leap away from the solar system the moment before impact.

In the end, the bomb shot by the very edge of the sun, only a few dozen miles from its surface, sucking in huge amounts of material from the sun’s atmosphere as it brushed past. It glowed intensely with a blue-white light, and for a moment, the sun appeared to have a brighter twin star locked in close, binary orbit, a phenomenon that was to become an enduring mystery to the inhabitants of Earth. The sun’s fiery surface darkened beneath the bomb, like the wake of a speedboat in calm water, and as the black hole swept past the solar surface, its gravity consumed the sun’s light, scratching a dark, crescent scar into the sun’s surface which grew to eclipse the whole solar hemisphere. As the bomb left the sun, it dragged an enormous solar prominence behind it, a beautiful string of flame one million miles long. The tip of the prominence flared violently outward, blossoming into a mass of whirling plasma vortices.

After the singularity bomb brushed past the sun, it grew dark again. Soon, it disappeared into the infinite night of space.

“We almost destroyed a carbon-based civilization,” said the senator, heaving a sigh of relief.

“A 3C-level civilization here, in this desert—unbelievable!” exclaimed the fleet commander.

“Yes. Neither the Carbon Federation nor the Silicon Empire has included this region in its plans for expansion and cultivation. If this civilization were to have evolved entirely on its own, that would be a rare thing indeed,” said the High Archon.

“Vessel Blue 84210, you are to hold your position in that star system and commence a full-surface civilization test on Planet Three. Another ship will take over your prior mission,” ordered the fleet commander.

The children in the village didn’t notice anything amiss, unlike their digital replicas outside of Jupiter’s orbit. They were still crying over their teacher’s body in their candlelit dormitory. After a long time, they quieted down.

“We should go tell a grown-up,” said Guo Cuihua, stifling a sob.