Fireflies Beyond Neptune

Sumi aligned the two telescope feeds before she allowed the ship to leave the relay. Visible light on the left, infrared on the right; each distant body became a pair of color bars, a coordinate, and a warning about how much of the dark remained unknown. Her job was to keep the outer survey's route from repeating itself.

The smallest objects were hard to hold in view. They crossed the detector like slow sparks, nearly lost among background stars. Yet the colors of the tiny bodies matched the relationships seen in their larger relatives. The survey's new models used that pattern to choose which bodies deserved a second look, and which could be left on the map as quiet remnants.

Sumi's daughter had asked her to find one object older than the family archive, something untouched by the mining routes that had rearranged the nearer belts. The return path offered a single chance to image a faint body before the ship's power reserve forced it toward home. The object was only a point, but its two color bars matched the cold population exactly. Sumi cancelled the turn toward the fuel depot and sent the ship farther out. The little point brightened, then split into two.