Daniel Keys Moran
On Tuesday, October 5, 2049, a starship of the Zaradin Church exited Sol System's Second Gate. Not just starship; this was a Cathedral, one of nine to be found in the galaxy. Sol's Second Gate lies outside the orbit of Saturn, and far off the ecliptic; but had the Cathedral stayed at the Second Gate long enough, darkened though it was, humanity would have found it in time, through its gravitational disturbance upon the orbits of the other bodies in the System. It was large. The Dalmastran who crewed the Cathedral did not plan to stay long enough for that to happen. They had more important business than this minor matter, the collection of a species that had so recently begun to boast of its existence, pouring radio waves and television and lasers indiscriminately out into the interstellar darkness. They did not want their existence known to humanity - not out of any concern for humanity's reaction, but because they did not want the seem empire to know they had passed this way. And as they had already observed, humans were distressingly disinclined to keep silent about themselves, or, the Dalmastran presumed, about those they met.
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