Flies in the Radiant Web

The gate hummed. It was a lot quieter than you would think, given that it required most of a star's output to run.

It had been two thousand years since the Radiant Web program was initiated. Twenty centuries of acceleration through the vastness of space for the automated probe and its self-repair nanites. It had nearly been forgotten, until it reached its destination and the automatic setup had initiated fusion and sparked the gateway into being.

We wouldn't be the first through, however. That was the problem. That was, in fact, why we had been called in.

The first crew had gone through to start standard new-system processes and check to make sure any evolved proteins on these planets weren't accidentally folded into deadly neurotoxins. They'd been sending regular messages back through the gate, though not often (c.f. power of a star).

But now they'd gone quiet.

We weren't first contact crew. We were batting cleanup.

The gate pulsed once, sharply. Full power. Ready to go.

It was time to solve a mystery.