Transitlike

Two hours of slightly less light every three days, from a star in Orion I couldn't point to from the yard.

That is all of it so far. Not a world: a dip that comes back, in numbers anyone can rerun.

Some of the early dips lined up with the telescope firing its own thrusters, its small correcting push reading as something passing.

So he keeps to the word he can stand on. Transitlike. A stone, maybe, hot enough to run lead, going round its sun in three days, and the other reasons not yet ruled out.

A filter caught it in 2020 and let it go. Since then that patch of sky kept being counted until the dip stood up on its own.

In November the star comes round into view again, to be asked. Until then nothing has been found. Only less, arriving on time.