Voyage of the Stars

The unknown civilization seemed to be addicted to image communication, and seemed to understand the meaning of the digital dynamic images sent by humans. After humans sent the dynamic images in the form of digital signals, they quickly replied with several digital dynamic images.

The image showed that the human fleet moved from the outer star system to the inner star system, but was blocked by a digital image as big as a planet during the voyage. The image sometimes lit up and sometimes went out, showing a circle with a symbol like a tic-tac-toe bar, and then the human fleet stopped.

Another picture showed that several small spaceships flew out of the human fleet, and then flew into the inner star system, and were also blocked by a digital image as big as a planet in the middle, but the content of this image was a circle without a tic-tac-toe symbol, and then these spaceships did not stop but continued to move forward.

Oh. Now humans understand it, it seems to be similar to a traffic signal, one of the symbols should mean no passage, and the other is allowed to pass.

The unknown civilization agreed to let humans send a team of exploration spacecraft to communicate.

Sure enough, after humans dispatched the exploration spaceship team, the exploration spaceship team of the unknown civilization was allowed to pass.

The exploration spaceship team dispatched by humans this time was not unmanned, but had humans in it. After all, they were going to communicate, and drones would definitely not work. There are definitely risks in doing this, but it is very necessary, and the relevant experts who boarded the exploration spaceship also volunteered to go.

Of course, even if no one volunteered to go, they would execute this instruction under command. Humans have walked into the starry sky, and it is impossible to live in comfort every moment. To put it bluntly, if we talk about danger, the first fleet of humans is now very dangerous, but humans must face it.

Humans have never lacked courage.

The exploration spaceship team passed the exploration spaceship team of the unknown civilization and went to the target star system, but they did not all sail in at once. Instead, they stopped a spaceship in the void after sailing about one light year. The role of this spaceship is very obvious, that is, communication relay.

The place where the first fleet of mankind encountered the unknown civilization exploration ship team was about 7 light years away from the target star system, and the farthest effective range of tachyon communication was only 2 light years, so a relay station was necessary.

The unknown civilization was obviously silent on this point, and they did not stop the behavior of humans stopping one ship after another as relay stations.

Such actions also improved their impression in the minds of humans. They did not stop the layout of real-time communication lines, and it seemed that the other party should not have any bad tricks.

As the exploration ship team went deeper, especially after arriving at the outer edge of the target star system, the situation here was finally clearly seen by humans. The first fleet to enter the field of view of the exploration ship team's tachyon detector was a fleet of about 500,000 ships. After they entered the field of view of the optical detector, humans found that their construction style was the same as the broadcasting ships they encountered before and the exploration ship teams that were still playing image communication with the first fleet of mankind. At first glance, they knew that they were a force.

In the tachyon detection field of view, the human exploration spacecraft team not only detected this fleet, but also other unknown warships in this star system. The specific number is unknown, because it did not enter the optical detection field of view, so the construction style is also unknown. It is not known whether it is a fleet of unknown civilization, but their number is at least 4 million.

After the human exploration spacecraft team arrived at the target star system, there was no direct opportunity to continue to approach and observe, because the fleet of 500,000 warships was already on the way.

The two sides just stopped at the outer edge of the star system, facing each other in the starry sky hundreds of kilometers apart.

Such a distance is no different from face to face. It is reasonable to communicate with electromagnetic waves, but the human exploration spacecraft team did not expect that they received the same tachyon signal as before, and it was still a digital dynamic picture encoded with ternary information as always.

"Are you addicted to talking with pictures?"

When the information was transmitted to the Tianqin through the relay station, everyone was speechless. What's wrong with this unknown civilization? It actually keeps communicating in this way.

However, they did not interfere with the communication of the exploration spacecraft team, because there was a delay in the communication between Tianqin and the exploration spacecraft team 7 light years away. Tachyon communication was almost real-time within its effective range, but the signal transfer of the relay station took time, so the remote communication on Tianqin was far less convenient than that of the exploration spacecraft team.

Although there were only three relay stations and the delay was about 30 seconds, it was actually not advisable to communicate through the relay station all the time, because the relay station was undertaken by a small spacecraft, and if the small spacecraft wanted to maintain the state of the relay station, it had to maintain the full power operation of the large unified force field inside it. In addition, the energy consumption of the reception, conversion and transmission of the relay tachyons was higher than that of normal warp navigation, so this relay communication method was not sustainable.

For this reason, it is actually difficult to use relay communication to assume a low-latency communication network between star systems. Building a large "tachyon antenna" in a star system is not a big problem. The problem lies in the relay communication platforms in the void between star systems. They must rely on the supply ships to supply them with antimatter fuel, otherwise they will soon lose their relay communication function.

It can only be antimatter fuel, because the energy level of nuclear fusion cannot stably produce a grand unified force field.

Interstellar transportation also requires antimatter fuel as the cost of warp speed navigation, so it is indeed feasible to establish such a low-latency communication system across several star systems, but the maintenance cost is extremely high, at least in the eyes of a Level 4 civilization.

Of course, if there is really a settled civilization that has this need, it is not impossible to do it. After all, there is a need, and maybe those relay stations can develop into a void fortress. However, it is obvious that a wandering civilization like humans does not need it, and the unknown civilization in front of us does not seem to do so.

Having said that, the communication between the human exploration spacecraft team and the unknown civilization is still continuing. Humans also follow the principles of communication with strange civilizations, first basic mathematical cognition and mathematical corresponding symbols, then various simple basic physical experiments lead to the textual expression of the laws basically discovered at the primitive civilization level, and finally from shallow to deep.

If the other party responds to humans in the same way, then everyone's language and text have common points, and after more communication and polishing, they can communicate with each other.

For any alien with normal logic, this method of communication will basically be no problem. In the past, humans communicated with the Kuntai Civilization, the Nair Civilization, and the Chiyan Civilization step by step in this way. It is effective and has a precedent, so humans are very reassured.