Expansion Pains

WHEN THE PROTECTION YOU WANT TO PROVIDE IS A HUGE DISTANCE AWAY AND IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN A DAY AWAY AT YOUR BEST TRAVEL SPEED TO GET THERE, THEN YOU ARE PROBABLY STRECTHED TOO THIN! The Solarans receive an indication that apparent invaders are headed their way, but they are not certain whether they are detecting an invasion fleet or a refugee fleet. By the time their response arrives, it is too late to save the attacked planet but they can prevent the particular predators from again attacking an unprotected world. Still, the loss of 27% of a planet's population is a tough pill to swallow. The Solarans find the means to detect systems with sentient life forms living on them but of course the device has range limitations. Nevertheless, Commander Andy Foster determines that the best way to provide protection is to map the entire galaxy and to prevent those testing as predatory from entering space. This mapping project will take a huge number of ships and the quantities of crew members to operate them. The advice provided to Foster is to scan with overlapping grids on lines drawn from the galactic center, starting at 18,000 Light Years from the center to 60,000 light years from center and build equipment like crazy to sustain the effort. No one said it would be easy but they started anyway. This is the story of what occurred along the way.