These aliens are aware of Astrophage. Or, at least, they’re aware of the Petrova line. But that doesn’t really tell me anything. They’re in an Astrophage-powered ship, so of course they know about Astrophage. And we’re chatting in a solar system that has a Petrova line, so that’s not surprising either. This might be their home system for all I know.

This is a good start, though. We were “talking” by flashing our engines. So they know I use Astrophage and that I can “see” (with help from the ship) the Petrova frequency. From that, they concluded I must be able to see the Petrova line. They’re smart.

I look at the other half of the doohickey. Dozens of whiskers rise from the base. They’re all different lengths and each one ends in a sphere less than a millimeter across. I poke a whisker with my finger and it doesn’t bend. I press harder and harder. Eventually the whole doohickey slides on the table. Those whiskers are stronger than anything that thin should be.

I guess xenon makes pretty strong material when you get it to react with things. It infuriates my tender scientist’s heart! I try to put it out of my head and get back to the task at hand.

I count thirty-one whiskers, each with its little sphere at the end. While counting, I spot something special. There’s one whisker sticking up from the exact center of the disc, but unlike the others, it’s not connected to a sphere. I squint to get a good look.

Instead of a single sphere, it’s two spheres of different sizes and an arc—okay, I see. It’s a very small replica of the Petrova-line model on the other half of the doohickey. Maybe one-twentieth the scale.

And that little Petrova-line model has an even thinner whisker connecting it to another sphere at the tip of a different whisker. No, not quite a sphere. It’s another Petrova-line model. I scour the rest of the doohickey for any more of them, but I don’t see any. Just the one in the middle and the one off to the side.

“Wait a minute… waaaaait a minute…”

I pull out the drawer that has the lab computer panel in it. Time to make use of that virtually infinite reference material. I find a huge spreadsheet with the information I need, bring it into Excel (Stratt loves well-tested, off-the-shelf products), and do a bunch of operations on it. Soon, I have the data plot I wanted. And it matches.

Stars. The little spheres on the end of the whiskers are stars. Of course they are. What else would have a Petrova line?