Extraordinarily Long Communication Delay
If they change course now, in less than a year, the three ships of the Nair Civilization will most likely be able to observe the human fleet, if they are equipped with Large-Caliber Telescope and are keeping an eye on the direction of the humans.
A light-year is a great distance even for a Level 2 Civilization. Under normal circumstances, even a Large-Caliber Telescope would not be able to detect it, since the fleet is traveling at a constant speed and there is hardly any bright exhaust plume.
In fact, it is very difficult to detect a fleet in the universe. Either the fleet is very close, or the fleet is performing a high-thrust acceleration or deceleration maneuver. Otherwise, as long as the fleet is not idly broadcasting Electromagnetic Waves, it will be impossible to detect even if it is within tens of Astronomical Unit of distance.
Therefore, even if the human fleet were discovered after changing course, it would be a year later.
Moreover, this was only discovered by the three ships of the Nair Civilization. The Main Civilization did not receive the news until three years later, because the human fleet was about three light-years away from the Yellow Dwarf Star.
Since the fleet had already passed the target it was heading towards, the human fleet first completed its Attitude Adjustment, and then the sterns of the warships slowed down towards the three ships of the Nair Civilization. Only after slowing down did they accelerate towards the target again.
With current human physical capabilities, the time spent accelerating and decelerating is not long, totaling no more than twenty hours. However, not all ships in the fleet possess such formidable physical abilities. Therefore, the first to change attitude and enter a state of deceleration, turning, and acceleration was the Biosphere Spaceship cluster.
After these types of ships have reached a certain stage of completion, the warships and Residential Spaceship Cluster will begin to move. This is done in order to maintain the general coordination and formation of the entire fleet.
As the Biosphere Spaceship cluster entered its predetermined actions as ordered, the New Government had already prepared its response.
Due to the vast distance, information could not be transmitted directly from the Lyra via Electromagnetic Wave Broadcast. Instead, it was first transmitted to the detector via Neutrino Communication, and then the detector transmitted the information to the three spaceships of the Nair Civilization via Electromagnetic Wave.
Since there is no medium in outer space, communication between the two can only take the form of Electromagnetic Wave. In other words, the "words" spoken by a spaceship in space are Electromagnetic Wave signals.
Yue Yuan glanced through the reply and, finding no problems, had the communications staff forward it.
Like the Nair Civilization, the humans didn't say much, only answering where they came from and what their purpose was in coming here. Then they asked a lot of questions about why the Nair Civilization appeared here and the scope of the star system.
The gist of the content is:
We are a Human Civilization Exploration Team from the distant depths of space, and it is fate that we have encountered the Nair Civilization. We have no particular purpose in coming here; we have simply chosen this Yellow Dwarf Star as a resupply station for our fleet. After resupplying, we will continue our journey of exploring the universe.
In addition, we humans are a peace-loving and benevolent civilization that enjoys exchanging ideas with other civilizations. During our journey of cosmic exploration, we have already made contact with many civilizations and engaged in very friendly exchanges. Now that we have encountered your Nair Civilization, we Human Civilization are also willing to communicate with you. Although each civilization has different species, forms, and cultures, we humans have experience that exchanges between civilizations can take many forms, such as exchanging goods and resources, sharing insights, and even engaging in trade.
The following content consists of questions about the range of the Nairwen Star Territory, individual forms, technological levels, racial characteristics, and living environment—questions that the Nair Civilization had previously asked humans, which humans simply repeated in return.
As for the answers to other questions, humanity only answered the number of fleets and that they belonged to the Level 2 Civilization technology level. Then, they randomly marked a route map of four stars against the background of this star field, without answering anything else such as racial characteristics, form, or living environment.
Humanity has once again skillfully referred to itself as an Exploration Team of Human Civilization. This is a common excuse, after all, no matter what, we can't tell the truth and say that we are a Wandering Civilization that has lost its home planet, can we?
After the message was sent out, the human fleet began to decelerate, turn, and accelerate in an orderly manner.
Under these circumstances, Yue Yuan and his group entered a normal but somewhat busy work routine. In fact, the New Government staff, including him, were not in a hurry. After all, the earliest they could wait for the next message from the Nair Civilization was two years, and if the people on those three spaceships couldn't make a decision, that time could very well be six years later.
It takes six years to receive a reply after saying a single sentence. This delay is quite something. However, humanity isn't in a hurry. After all, the entire fleet is still drifting in space. Until they reach a landing point and find a place to replenish sufficient resources, they will delay as long as possible. Therefore, the replies are very short and contain little content, in order to have more conversations and buy some time.
Thus, after replying and completing the turnaround, humanity sent the probe squads that had been scattered around the fleet's perimeter ahead of them toward the changed target.
No matter when or where, humanity always has probes leading the way, and this time, changing course to head towards a new Target Star System 10.1 light-years away is no exception.
10.1 light-years is a distance that would take humans approximately 34 years to traverse, with most of the travel time spent at a constant speed after acceleration. What was originally a 10-year journey to the Yellow Dwarf Star has now become 34 years. Putting aside everything else, the rotational hibernation system could easily continue.
However, now that they have encountered Alien Civilization, the New Government has abandoned the rotation hibernation system and allowed everyone to live a normal life. Thirty-odd years is nothing to humans with a lifespan of 1,400 years.
Two years passed in the blink of an eye, and the predicted reply from the Nair Civilization arrived as scheduled, but the content was not what humanity wanted.
When asked about their racial characteristics, features, and living environment, the Nair Civilization, like humanity, chose to pretend not to see them. Even the human request to mark the star of the Nair Civilization on the star map went unanswered.
The reason given was rather unambiguous: it was a matter of authority. The three spaceships replied that they were not authorized to answer such questions and that humanity would have to continue waiting for an answer.
Apart from that, there was no other information, not even a word about the human fleet's change of course.
Human scholars speculate that the three spaceships may indeed not have been equipped with Large-Caliber Telescope, and therefore failed to detect that the human fleet had changed course.
There is no other explanation, since if they really saw humans turn around, they wouldn't have mentioned telling humans to keep waiting in the reply.