Star of Yellow Sand Across the Sky

"Did you find anything?" a Collector asked.

Following the instructions given by their kin, the Collectors searched this trinary star system but found nothing, aside from a planet with a complex ecosystem and an intelligent species transitioning from savagery toward civilization. Even after digging three feet into the ground all the way to the planet's core, they found nothing else resembling ruins.

It seemed this star system truly contained nothing.

"We found nothing—not even a trace."

Their kin answered the Collectors' inquiry, and that response filled the Collectors with doubt.

"How strange. If the four coordinates on that star map fragment weren't enemy coordinates or colonies, then why had that destroyed civilization marked them on the star map?"

Even if they had been bored out of their minds, this was not the kind of thing one did out of boredom. That star map fragment had been found on a battlefield. Would a warship's main computer be stuffed with useless data?

It couldn't possibly have been four coordinates casually marked by some bored crew member working on the bridge, could it?

As the Collectors puzzled over this, their kin offered their own view on the matter.

"Perhaps time has erased the traces. If that civilization's materials science was primitive, five thousand years would have been enough to wash away everything they left behind."

After pondering for a while, the Collector replied.

"Let's wait a little longer. The explorations of the other three star systems haven't produced results yet."

"Attention, everyone! Begin decelerating!"

At the command of the leader of the sublight-speed swarm, the entire advancing biological swarm began annihilating the antimatter shields directly ahead of them to decelerate. Vast light spilled outward, and they felt a powerful recoil acting upon every cell in their bodies.

The star rainbow before them