209: neutron star

Meanwhile, on the other side of the universe...

When the familiar signal from the Babel Space Station completely vanished from the communication channel, and the warm yellow glow of the Solar System disappeared from the sensor screen, Ilya von Klein finally relaxed her body, slumping into the wide captain's chair. The bridge of the Wanderer was bathed in soft, cool light.

Her crimson eyes now seemed somewhat dim, like rubies that had lost their luster.

"Navigator, report current coordinates," she said, her voice sounding weary.

"Coordinates confirmed: edge of the M22 Globular Cluster in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way."

The Navigator's emotionless, neutral electronic voice chimed in, "Approximately 10,600 light-years from Earth. This is the maximum distance this vessel can achieve in a single jump, Captain."

"Ten thousand light-years..."

Ilya gazed at the unfamiliar yet dazzling starscape on the holographic screen.

The M22 Globular Cluster was one of the oldest in the Milky Way, with hundreds of thousands of stars tightly bound by gravity within a narrow region only a few dozen light-years in diameter. The sky here was crowded and bright.

"Far enough? Perhaps."

Even the center of the Milky Way was only about twenty thousand light-years from Earth.

She smiled self-deprecatingly.

She had fled the Solar System like a coward to this desolate expanse ten thousand light-years away. That man who chose responsibility was probably playing his role as an "ordinary citizen" on Earth right now, wasn't he?

Ilya shook her head sharply, her silver hair swirling.

"Since I've come all this way, I might as well find some fun."

Ilya straightened up in her chair, the weariness in her eyes completely gone.

"Scan this area. Find something interesting. Don't show me any dying red dwarfs or boring main-sequence stars. I want something explosive."

"Initiating wide-area gravitational wave and high-energy radiation scan..."

A few seconds later, the Navigator highlighted a region on the Star Map.

"Detected extremely strong high-energy X-ray pulse signals, accompanied by ultra-high-intensity magnetic field reactions."

"Target confirmed. There is a neutron star within the coordinate range."

Ilya's eyes instantly lit up.

Neutron stars were the densest celestial bodies in the universe besides black holes. They were the dense cores left behind after a star reached the end of its life and underwent a supernova explosion.

Under the incredible gravitational collapse, electrons were forced into atomic nuclei, combining with protons to form neutrons. The entire star was essentially a giant atomic nucleus.

"Now this is the kind of scenery I wanted to see!"

Ilya rubbed her hands together excitedly, all her earlier gloom vanished.

"Set a course. We're going to get up close and personal with it!"

"Warning: The target's surrounding gravitational tidal forces are extremely strong. Magnetic field intensity exceeds one billion tesla. Conventional shields may not hold. Recommend maintaining a safe distance."

"Then maintain a safe distance, but adjust as needed based on the situation."

...The Wanderer transformed into a streak of light. As the distance closed, the celestial body named [M22-PSR-01] finally revealed its true form.

It was small, with a diameter of only about twenty kilometers—roughly the span of a medium-sized city on Earth. Yet this tiny sphere had a mass 1.5 times that of the Sun.

It was spinning at a terrifying speed of 700 revolutions per second. The high-energy particle jets from its poles swept across the universe like two light sabers, leaving a dazzling peak on the screen each time they passed over the Wanderer's sensors.

"The gravitational lensing effect is very pronounced."

The Wanderer's viewport glass was made of special material, capable of filtering out radiation and light harmful to humans.

Ilya stood before the viewport, watching the planet that appeared strangely distorted in her vision. Due to the immense gravity, light bent around it, allowing her to see both the front and part of the back of the planet simultaneously.

"That's an Einstein Ring..." Ilya gazed mesmerized at the ring of light encircling the neutron star. "Here, Newton's classical mechanics has completely failed. General relativity is the only truth."

"Entering close orbit, altitude 500 kilometers."

The Wanderer's powerful, advanced hull allowed it to stabilize forcefully above this dense celestial body.

If this were an ordinary human warship, it would likely have been torn apart into fundamental particles by the terrifying tidal forces or had all its electronic components instantly fried by the intense magnetic field.

But the Wanderer stood firm as a rock.

"Begin deploying probe beams. I want to see its surface," Ilya ordered.

On the screen, the reconstructed image clearly displayed the neutron star's surface.

It was a world of unimaginable smoothness.

"The surface is extremely flat. The highest peak is no more than 5 picometers tall," Ilya interpreted the data.

"This is due to the immense gravity. The gravity on this neutron star is two hundred billion times that of Earth's surface. Under such gravity, any protrusion is instantly flattened," the Navigator explained.

"The material here... is it iron?"

Spectral analysis showed that the outermost layer of the neutron star was an "atmosphere" about a few hundred meters thick, actually composed of highly compressed plasma. Beneath that lay an incredibly hard crust.

"This is the hardest substance in the universe," Ilya marveled. "Under high pressure, iron atomic nuclei are tightly locked in a lattice, with a hardness one hundred billion times that of Earth's steel. If we could dig a piece to use as armor..."

She shook her head, knowing this was wishful thinking.

Once removed from the neutron star's strong gravitational environment, this degenerate matter would instantly undergo a violent nuclear explosion due to pressure release.

"Continue scanning deeper. Let's see what's beneath its crust."

As the probe beams penetrated the hard crust and delved into the neutron star's interior, Ilya saw a sight only mentioned in the most cutting-edge physics papers on Earth.

"That's Nuclear Pasta!"

Ilya exclaimed.

As depth increased and pressure grew, atomic nuclei began to deform and merge.

They were first compressed into dough-like spheres, then stretched into spaghetti-like shapes (columnar phase), and finally flattened into lasagna-like layers (plate phase).

"This is the product of the interplay between neutron degeneracy pressure and nuclear forces—the ultimate art of material forms."

Ilya's fingers traced the complex structural diagram on the holographic screen as if caressing a work of art.

"Further down is the superfluid core."

That was an ocean composed entirely of neutrons, with no friction or electrical resistance—a perfect macroscopic quantum world.

"Wait... what's that?"

Just as Ilya was lost in the beauty of physics, a set of anomalous data caught her attention.

Deep within the neutron star's superfluid core, among the superfluid vortices rotating according to quantum laws, there seemed to be some unnatural disturbance.

"Magnify region E-7! Filter out background magnetic field noise!" Ilya commanded loudly.

The image was enlarged, and after algorithmic noise reduction, a shocking structure emerged.

Those quantum vortices were not randomly distributed.

They were arranged into extremely complex geometric arrays that seemed to follow some mathematical logic.

"This is... a lattice? No, it's a topological structure!"

Ilya's mind raced, comparing everything she saw with her knowledge of physics.

"There are billions of quantum vortices in the neutron star's internal superfluid, each carrying a quantum of angular momentum."

"Normally, these vortices are dynamically distributed as the star rotates."

"But here..." Ilya looked at the stable hexagonal array on the screen. "These vortices are locked in place by some force. They've formed a stable crystal-like structure, and..."

She observed the extremely minute vibration frequencies of the vortices.

"They're vibrating, and in a regular pattern."

"010110... This isn't random thermal motion. This is encoding!"

A wild conjecture exploded in Ilya's mind.

"This isn't an ordinary dead star."

"This is a natural—or rather, an astrophysical-scale—quantum computer!"

In this extreme environment of infinite density, temperature, and magnetic field strength, those locked quantum vortices acted like transistors in a computer, and their interactions and vibrations were processing and storing information!

"My God... what have I discovered?"

Ilya felt her blood boiling.

"Is this neutron star... thinking? Or is it recording something?"

"Navigator, immediately attempt to decode these vibration frequencies! Run all decryption algorithms! I want to know what it's recording!"

"Attempting to interface... Signal strength is immense. Activating Faleim Decoding Module..."

A few minutes later, a chaotic audio signal was reconstructed.

This audio signal didn't sound like language; it was more like some kind of musical melody.

"This is..." Ilya closed her eyes, listening intently to this sound emanating from the depths of the neutron star's core.