Unwinding read gestation

After a period of time, the creature at the end of the tentacle swells to the size of an adult African elephant, and after reaching this size, the tentacle leaves the ice meteorite, from which a cone-shaped organism detaches, and the lower disk of the creature is firmly attached to the surface of the ice meteorite.

The organism's skin is dark black, and the structure is supported by a high-strength metal skeleton inside, and the shape of the body is slightly inflated due to the difference in air pressure between the inside and outside, and it looks like those teepee tents in the wilderness.

This creature is a variant of the hive, which is still technically a hive, taking on the task of processing matter for the race, but no longer resembling a volcano, and the opening at the top of it is closed, because in the vacuum environment of outer space, such a design is not needed.

Initially, the cone structure in the shape of a volcano was designed to emit sediment from the seafloor that was sucked into the body, and later, it was designed to emit enough heat into the atmosphere to warm the planet's surface environment.

But in the universe, the design of the volcano appearance is useless, and the hive, which is responsible for processing resources, does not need to emit anything like the universe, and the essence of hive processing is the industrial production of microscopic substances driven by light energy, and there is no such thing as industrial waste.

The newborn beehive looks at the vast world around him, the heavens and stars are dotted in the dim and dark time and space, and the light veil composed of nebulae is lightly covered on it, making it more mysterious.

How many creatures will not be able to come into contact with such a world in their lifetime, they will only be trapped on the surface of the planet, looking at the world above their heads in vain.

"I'm so hungry"

"Here, eat this."

Stretching out their tentacles, the gatherers break up a small meteorite that had been prepared long ago into multiple pieces and feed it to the hive in batches, which quickly grows itself after devouring the meteorite fragments.

"I'm going to go ahead and look for other suitable ice meteorites, and you're responsible for creating more individuals to collect material resources from the asteroid belt, do you understand?"

"Got it, leave it to me."

After the hive grows to a certain scale and can give birth to some simple cosmic creatures, the collector stops feeding, at this time the hive is not fully developed, but this is enough, and the hive can face and solve the two things of self-growth and resource collection later.

The gatherer who prepares to leave gives one last word to the hive.

"If you encounter a problem that you can't solve, think about how to solve it yourself, and if you really can't think of a way, contact me, and I will tell you how to deal with it."

"Okay, if something like this happens, I'll call for help."

Antimatter propulsion was reactivated, and the gatherers began to move away from the ice meteorite, leaving the hive to develop on its own, heading deeper into the asteroid belt in search of other ice meteorites.

To speed up the progress of resource collection, of course, it is impossible to just bury a hive on a single ice meteorite, and the collector looks for multiple ice meteorites to make multiple hives expand synchronously, which is like ripples in water, and large ripples are not as fast as multiple small ripples covering a pond.

The collectors groped for meteorites one by one, searching for the ice meteorites they were looking for.

In this search, the collector gradually discovered a strange thing that it did not pay attention to at first, because it was too inconspicuous, so it did not begin to notice until the hive was planted on the sixth ice meteorite.

"It's strange why these metal meteorites have a surprisingly high proportion of purity, not like they are naturally formed, but rather like they have been artificially refined."

Meteorites can be roughly divided into three categories, metallic meteorites, non-metallic meteorites, and composite meteorites mixed with metals and non-metals, among which the definition of metallic meteorites refers to the metal substances occupying more than 90% of the proportion of its meteorites.

Of course, the collector is not surprised that the metal meteorite has an excessively high specific gravity of metal, it is strange that the specific gravity of these metal meteorites is not only one type of metal, but a large category, and the metal meteorite is a mess of metals fused together alloys.

Now, the metallic meteorites detected by the collectors are so clean that they don't look like a mixture, the metallic meteorites are just covered with a layer of carbonate material on the surface, and the inside is an alloy composed of carbon and iron.

"Maybe there's some special formation mechanism, let me think about it."

The gatherers who searched all the way, while moving non-stop, thought about the reasons for the formation of these metal meteorites, which can be regarded as passing the boring time and increasing their knowledge by the way.

Suddenly, the collector receives a string of radio communications, the source of which is the other end of the asteroid belt, and the collector connects the communication.

"Where have you been?"

"About one-twentieth of the position, ice meteorites are very rare on my side, and so far I have only found six resource meteorites for starting."

The gatherer truthfully explained his situation to his kindred, but to the gatherer's surprise, the other end of the clan acting together did not gain much.

"I have fewer than you on my side, I'm only four, it's really strange, according to past experience, there should be a lot of ice meteorites in this asteroid belt, and this asteroid belt is not that close to the stars."

Even if they don't have a contact with the life field, the gatherer can still feel the deep confusion in the other person's heart from the messages replied by their peers.

"If it doesn't go on like this, the development progress will slow down." The clan replied.

"Do you want to declare a batch of ice shells to the rest of your clan?" So the gatherer proposed.

There are satellites in this star system, and two of these satellites are ice planets, more than 80% of which are solid ice, and the whole thing is a ball of water, but it is frozen.

"How can it be done, that is a resource used to modify the planet's environment, to speed up the progress of the asteroid belt, isn't that a waste?"

The same people oppose this proposal, they are developed in the asteroid belt, and they are not terrestrial planets with harsh environments, isn't it a waste to use water resources here?

"Or you have a better way?" The gatherer asked rhetorically.

"But how do you get these ice shells to be acquired by your fellow people in the asteroid belt? The asteroid belt is not comparable to the planets, they are scattered and sparsely distributed with each other, but they look dense on a macro scale, and ice shells will pass through the meteorite belt, causing a waste of resources. ”

Although the same clan was persuaded by the collectors, it is also a problem to transport the ice meteorite to the asteroid belt and be successfully received, first of all, the previous ice shell rain cannot be used, because most of these ice shells must pass through the asteroid belt and go straight to the direction of the star, so the ice shell rain is meaningless.