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There was a part of Argos only a few knew, both it’s whereabouts, and what it actually was. It wasn't a secret – it wasn’t even off-limits. It was more that no one had bothered to point it out on any of the maps of their hurtling world. It was located on the outer hull, along the “bottom” of the starship. Seen from outside the vessel, it was little more than a blister. Accessible through the intra-hull access ports, it represented the singular act of whimsy on the part of the builders of Argos. With room for no more than three adults at any one time, this hidden observation lounge, if it could indeed be called something so pretentious, those few who were aware of it’s existence often stole time from their daily tasks to spend a small piece of their endless journey gazing at the stars, through a portal nearly two feet of grown flawless crystal. The view, according to the select few, was magnificent. The small space was also equipped with a vidscreen connected to digital telescopic sensors. One could select a field of view from the direct vista seen through the port hole, and go deep into the heart of the endless view outside Argos.
Argos’ speed was such that one could get a distinct sense of their forward momentum, with stars and nebula closer to the ship rapidly receding, while those at greater distance hardly moved relative to the ship. It was usually these more distant bodies the person viewing would bring closer through the instrumentation. The quality of the digital telescope exceeded that of the famous telescope, Hubble, long since burned up in the atmosphere, before coming to a rest on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The technology on Argos was so far beyond the Hubble it fit on a space not much larger than an old-style server. It was able to capture images at the furthest reaches of the Universe, when properly aligned. But most usually used this particular sensor array to do some sightseeing.
The observation pod also had another use, from time-to-time. Trysts were not without risk of discovery, but some actually arranged their time by negotiating with the few others who knew of the pod. In fact, several babies had been conceived under the fading light of stars and distant galaxies, and one of these children was now twenty-two ship-years of age, and starting his first job after graduation from the ship’s informal university, known informally as Argonaut U. Jawal Parabo was a tall, serious young man, with a copper color and mildly Eurasian eyes and cheekbones. He had the walk of someone so familiar with the reduced gravity of a starship that one would never observe on a planet. The first-gen folks aboard, while they had adapted fairly well for the most part, did not display this somewhat loose, non-reactive gait. His height was not unusual among second gens: the gravity allowed the bones to elongate more so than someone born under planetary pressures.
Jawal had learned of the pod from his mother, who was a daughter of the ship’s chief designer. She had been taking Jawal to the pod since he was little more than four, and never bothered to tell him to keep the place a secret. He, of course, had no reason to speak of this wonderful place to anyone else, because he always assumed everyone knew of it already. He loved to spend time here, always focusing on a different star or nebula. He had studied very hard under the tutelage of Dr. Harmon, soaking up the maps of the sky with an insatiable appetite. He was always coming back to Harmon, who of course knew of the pod, with questions about certain galactic clusters or solar bodies, why they were what they were, what held promise, or what was so off-limits, usually due to an overactive black hole, that Harmon suggested he leave those demons alone. Not that it dissuaded Jawal – he felt no compunction to censor his curiosity, giving it full rein at any opportunity.
It was on one of these occasions, absorbed by the splendor of the view, that Jawal became the first aboard the starship to see the object soon to be called Far Light. Upon first zooming in on a somewhat dim star, he was shocked to see what appeared flashes of light in irregular patterns, emitted from a region adjacent to the star itself. At first, he thought it might merely be a pulsar, far beyond the orbit of the star itself. But the more he watched the pattern made by this distant object, the more he felt he knew something about that pattern. In the end, he turned to Dr. Harmon for his insights into this odd phenomenon.
Harmon spent considerable time following up on what Jawal had observed, and promised he would make his first report to Jawal, before telling anyone else. Bringing even more powerful instruments to bear on the problem, Harmon was able to determine the object was in fact orbiting the primary star, and subsequently determined the efforts to engage in this sort of problem-solving was thoroughly worth the effort. When the first long-exposure shots were ready, he called Jawal to join him so that they could study the object together. After a long consideration of what they both saw in the images. Harmon swore Jawal to complete secrecy, and went immediately to find the Captain.
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