Phuldross resembled the eye of some forgotten sun god taking one last look at the universe before sleep claimed it at last.

The ancient star, whose light had given birth to countless species, whose proudest children had taken their place among the cosmos when the Earth had not yet formed, was dying.

As it burnt through the last of its helium and its core began to shrink all that remained of this life-giving sun was a bubble of gas more than a million degrees hot and surrounded by a glowing aura of cooling nitrogen, oxygen and of course hydrogen expanding ever outward.

The jewel-shaped Odyssey slid back down from the higher dimensions of hyperspace and into the line of sight of slowly dying Phuldross. The Ambassador-class starship maintained a safe distance, although its many redundant layers of defense fields would have allowed it to fly straight through Puldross's core if the need arose.

The gestalt entity that had commanded the ship through hyperspace separated itself back into two distinct individuals. One of them the artificial intelligence Odysseus Centillion.1.1.4, and the other an organic human woman known as Lulu Lovelace.

Lulu stretched in her command throne; it always felt weird for a few seconds when you stopped being one of the most advanced spaceships in the galaxy and went back to just your limited human body. Stifling almost. Like trying to run underwater.

Soon the feeling of loss slipped away, like a forgotten dream, and Lulu felt like herself again.

As she stood up Lulu noticed the Think Tank was already on the bridge, waiting. She would never accuse those three of being overly patient.

Dr. Eisenstein was a hypergeometry savant and one of the leading 6d hypertheorist. She took the form of a floating metallic sphere bisected by a slight indentation along which a single glowing sensor eye slid back and forth.

Dr. Fido was considered the foremost expect on the unprecedented in all of Consensus Space. Although technically an uplifted Jack Russel Terrier Dr. Fido much preferred the opposable thumbs and upright posture of the human form, and so that's the body he wore. Only the color pattern of his hair hinted at his canine ancestry.  He often gave the appearance of having slept in his clothes and forgotten to change them. That was because he often did.

Dr. Birdwhistle was the former head of the Xenology Department at Ylem University and an expert on alien equivtech capabilities. Rumor had it that he was also an Exigency asset. His long, albeit perfectly groomed, facial hair made him look downright barbaric. 

All three were already examining a projection of Phuldross in their minds eyes.

"This is it? This is what the Drelnoch were so worked up about?" asked Dr. Birdwhistle. "I mean, fine, it's sad when your home star burns out and everything but their civilization is entirely digital. It's not like they need it. This is just the life cycle of a star of this size. I fail to see how this demanded our personal attention."

"Take a look at the shadow it's casting in hyperspace," said Lulu.

The others expanded the image in their minds eye out into the 5th and then 6th dimension. There was a visible dark patch in hyperspace the precise shape of the dying star.

"Oh my," said Dr. Eisenstein.

"Now we're talking," said Dr. Fido.

"Are we sure the star is generating this?" asked Dr. Eisenstein.

"We don't know anything about what's generating it," replied Lulu. "What you see is what we know."

"I withdraw my objection. This is perfectly worthy of my attention," said Dr. Birdwhistle. "I can scarcely believe what I'm seeing. It's like the star equivalent of a tesseract."

"A hyperstar," offered Dr. Eisenstein.

"I assume we're giving it a full sensor bombardment as we speak, yes?" asked Dr. Birdwhistle.

<What do you take me for?> snapped Odysseus. <This isn't my first anomaly.>

He spoke to the quartet directly into their minds.

"Anything of interest yet?" asked Lulu.

<Is there ever. You're going to like this,> signaled Odysseus.

New data flooded into their brains and began to resolve, modifying the image in their minds eye. The hyperstar was emitting something. Reaching out with great sweeps of energy.

<If I didn't know any better, and I don't, I'd say it was scanning us back. But that's not even the good part.>

More data. It was now past the point where any of them besides Eisenstein could parse it visually.

"By all the stars..." she said, "you can't see the point of origin for these emissions. Not even all the way up in the 6th dimension. At the risk of jumping to conclusions this could be... seventh dimensional hyperspace. If we can figure out what's going on here it could revolutionize space travel forever."

"What if this 'hyperstar' of ours is just what a 7d wormhole looks like?" said Dr. Birdwhistle.

"I'm more interested in knowing what's scanning us," said Dr. Fido.

"If it is a wormhole it stands to reason there could be another ship on the other side scanning it just like we are," said Dr. Birdwhistle.

"Or perhaps its the hyperstar itself. I don't think it's possible to rule out at this point if it's intelligent," offered Dr. Fido.

"We should attempt communication immediately," said Lulu. "Until we can rule it out it would be best to operate under the assumption that this thing is alive, intelligent, and therefore worthy of respect."

"I suggest using Contact Package Type 3," said Dr. Birdwhistle. "A biologically neutral multi-frequency demonstration of knowledge of higher mathematics. Should prove we're intelligent, providing of course anything is listening."

"Do it," said Lulu.

The Odyssey began to broadcast the contact package on every known frequency. Patterns of pulses, radiogylphs, messages and equations, and even more arcane methods of communicating patterns and numbers. It was intentionally simple but unmistakably the work of deliberate intelligence.

The signals were drawn upward into the higher dimensions as soon as they came into contact with the hyperstar before finally disappearing somewhere in the sixth dimension. It was all perfectly consistent with the 7d wormhole theory.

Before long the energy emissions coming from the hyperstar stopped. Then they started up again. Only now they were different.

<This looks like an attempt at a reply,> reported Odysseus. He spoke with the frantic speed that AIs sometimes slipped into when they got too excited. <It's not as sophisticated as what we sent but it's the same basic idea. Doesn't look like we're talking to the hyperstar itself; I'd be willing to guess that the signal is from a species similar enough to humanity to be mutually intelligible. I'll need more data and more context but if we can establish a few basic points of reference I think I might actually be able to translate.>

"First contact," said Lulu, a little wistfully.

There was a long beat of silence as the full weight of what they might accomplish in the next moments fell upon the team.

"Dr. Birdwhistle, this is still mostly your wheelhouse," said Lulu. "What else can we send them?"

"We're going to have to start from first principles with the aliens. As I'm sure you inferred from the name there are any number of contact packages. Most of the lower numbers are fairly neutral. Types 1 through 3 are quite basic so let's try 7. That one presupposes the receiver uses a spoken language. If they reply in kind we'll know that much. "

<If they do speak a language and we can get them to send me at least an hour's worth of material from at least three different speakers I could build the nucleus of a translator algorithm.>

"Why not send a sample of our own language then?" said Dr. Fido. "For all we know they're even better at this sort of thing than we are. They might be able to do all the heavy lifting."

"Good idea. Odysseus, put together a package of everything you would want from the aliens to build a working translation of their language, assuming of course they have one, but from us," said Lulu.

It took several full seconds for Odysseus to retrieve all the necessary data. To the AI it felt like an eternity.

<Broadcasting now.>

"Naturally if the aliens are significantly less sophisticated than us they're not going to know what to make of any of this," said Dr. Birdwhistle, making not attempt to hide his skepticism. 

"We'll know either way soon enough," said Lulu.

<Oh no!> exclaimed Odysseus.

"What's wrong?" asked Lulu.

Odysseus drew the group's attention back to the image of Phuldross in their minds.

The star's hyperspacial shadow was beginning to recede. The wormhole was closing.