Chapter 13 — The Star Growers

The Drifting Star does not disappear the way other particles do. It didn't fall, didn't turn off the light immediately, didn't send the last coordinates. It just left the map and left a string of vibrations in Mien's receiver.

“Can you find the source?” Lam asked.

Pull the sensor wire around the box. I placed a mechanical radio next to the receiver, then moved step by step toward the shore. The vibration is stronger near the guard tower.

“It could be noise,” Lam said.

Mien writes: “Noise also has a place.”

Cu listened and asked: "What if I go to the beach to look for it?"

“No coordinates,” Lam replied.

“There is a rhythm direction.”

"Insufficient."

"Mr. Bach said not to arbitrarily chase the device."

"I'm not chasing you. I fix the engine on the ship."

Lam knows Cu is saying it his way, but behind it is the desire to find what he sees as part of his responsibility. Star Troi is released from the beach, but it carries the village's data. If left to drift, people can say that star seeds are not durable and that the project is not worth it.

Thao Nhi asked what the goal was. Lam said it is necessary to determine whether the particle is still sending or just receiving an echo.

“So don't try to save it,” she said. “Find out what happened.”

Cu prepares the ship. Kha checks the water surface weather, not using satellite reports but using winds from four shore stations. Ha wants the group to have buoys, water, lights and a deadline to return. Mien carries a vibration radio, Lam carries two passive sample boxes.

“Don't pull seeds if you find them,” Lam said.

Cu laughed. “Are you afraid that we will over-rescue you?”

“I'm afraid the data will change when touched.”

Mien wrote on the board: "Touch is also data. Record first."

Kha asked if he could go with him. Cu said the boat only carried three people, but Mien already had a name. Kha yield.

“You stay and hold the station,” Lam said.

“If the seeds fall far, I climb the pole to catch the signal?”

“No waves.”

“Then I'll stay.”

They left the shore at 2:00 p.m., when the water began to rise. Low clouds, sun obscured but no rain. Cu ran the machine slowly so as not to disturb the sample box. Mien stood at the bow of the ship, one hand touching the railing, the other holding the radio.

After 20 minutes, the vibration signal increased. Not from the front, but from below the ship. Cu reduced the engine. A thin piece of wire is wrapped around the propeller, inside the wire is a long, scratched transparent ball.

“Drifting Star,” Lam said.

The seeds are pulled down by the old fishing line and do not fly anymore. The receiver still flashes, but the light is obscured by the water. Cu wanted to jump down, but Lam stopped him.

"Don't touch. Measure the position first."

Mien attached a GPS ground ruler to the wire and recorded the time according to a mechanical clock. Cu grabbed a pole and tried to keep the ship from drifting. The sample box on deck receives salt dust from the northwest wind.

“The back-end data can be affected by water,” Lam said.

“Before falling?”

"Cup."

Mien pointed to the grain, then drew a broken line. I want to record three states: before hooking up, when sinking, and when pulling up.

Lam reads the signal. The underwater vibration chain does not coincide with the wind. That's the fishing line rubbing against the shell, creating a repeating rhythm. Mien is not wrong in saying it is calling, but the call is not meteorological data.

“What do you think?” Lam asked.

Mien wrote: "It doesn't know how to speak. But I know I heard it wrong."

Cu be quiet. He gently used the pole to untangle the rope, without pulling hard. The star seed emerges, the shell cracks, the memory remains intact. Before unhooking from the rope, Lam took position photos, recording depth, ship direction and wind speed.

They put it in a waterproof bag, don't turn it on. On the way home, Cu didn't say much. Mien added on the board "underwater objects also have their own reputation".

Bach called over the terrestrial radio. Blue newspaper seeds have been found, the memory has not been opened.

“Good,” Bach said. “I want to receive it for inspection investigation.”

“Received according to community minutes.”

"Okay."

“And make a rough copy.”

"Okay."

“The whole vibration sequence that Mien recorded.”

Bach stopped. “What if it's interference?”

“Noise has location, time and condition.”

"I agree."

Back on shore, people gathered. Some want to see the beads, some want to know if it signals a storm. Lam placed the bag on the table and did not open it immediately.

“It doesn't warn of storms,” she said. “It got caught in the fishing line. The vibrating string Mien received was the sound of strings and water, not the wind.”

One person asked if that was the wrong seed.

“The grain records what happens to it. If we read like the wind, the error is in the way we read.”

Mien listened to Lam translate in words, then wrote on the board: "Do not leave out data. Change the label.”

Ha asked if the person who made the fishing line was responsible. Cu said the wire left behind was old and didn't know whose it belonged to. Mrs. Mui suggested that the village set up a day to collect rope, not blaming someone who was not present.

Thao Nhi said each star seed needs to have an "accident log", like a fishing boat. Cu nodded and said that was how the device learned.

In the recovery room, Bach arrived by direct call. Lam opened the bag in front of the camera and read the serial number. Mien placed the vibrating box next to the seeds. The memory does not turn on because of the salt water, but a small light clicks.

“Don't power it,” Bach said. “Dry first.”

“We don't have a drying chamber.”

“Use a dehumidifier box, don't use heat.”

Cu took an old computer case and lined it with a desiccant bag. Lower the humidity check. Mien places the sensor outside the bin to record the drying process, without touching the seeds.

While they waited, they watched the string vibrate. Mien discovered that the rhythm of the fishing line coincided with a signal segment that they thought was a packet from May Mong. The blue box outside the hut may also receive mechanical vibrations from the structure, not atmospheric data.

“So the strange package in chapter two?” Cu asked.

“Don't know yet,” Lam replied.

“One of the things we believe is that the signal might just be vibrating iron.”

"Correct."

“The more data, the harder it is.”

“So the conditions must be written.”

Bach heard and said the center has a vibration filter but it has not been applied to community equipment. I'll send a sample algorithm, but warn against using an unexplained black box.

“You will need to know why,” Lam said.

“I will write it all.”

Mien raised his hand to make a "thank you" sign, then wrote: "Not just for engineers."

Bach replied: "I will try."

At night, the seeds are dried in barrels. No one knows whether the memory will be saved or not. Cu sat next to him, fixing a piece of ship rope. Lam read the notebook, marking the places they misunderstood.

“Do you feel sorry?” Lam asked.

“Sorry the seeds are damaged.”

“No regrets about wrong data?”

“False data helps me know that I look at the fishing line like I look at the wind. It's expensive, but not useless.”

“Are you going to walk again?”

“If needed and have a plan.”

Mien tapped the dryer drum once. She doesn't call it a floating star anymore. She wrote in her diary: "Stars Are Pulled."

Lam asked why the name was not beautiful.

“The name is correct.”

Near dawn, memory turns on. Final data before seeding showed northwest winds and increased salinity. The vibration sequence is then excluded from the meteorological analysis but kept in the accident log.

Bach looked at the copy and said three minutes before connecting the wire was worth monitoring, not enough to predict. Lam publicly announced the exact results.

People are not happy because they want bigger news coverage from the county. But Mien placed two versions next to each other: one "wind" version, one "string" version. No one gets to choose the version that makes the story better.

Kha stayed at the station until noon, then said there was another particle in the wrong corridor. Lam said he has not released more yet.

“Why are you being pulled? lost the question,” Kha said.

“But we know we need better rope.”

Cu gave the damaged seeds to the group of children to see. I didn't say it failed. He showed only fishing line marks, cracks and data lines.

Little asked if everything can go wrong, why still plant?

Lam replied: "Because if you don't plant it, you only know what others have measured. When planting, you will know more about where you need to fix.”

Out on the shore, the surface of the lagoon shines silver. A layer of northwest wind passes again, bringing with it very light salty dust.

The Drifting Star is no longer in the sky, but its diary has added an important line to the Star Garden: not all vibrations are meteorological.

After Sao Troi was brought back, Cu did not want anyone to rush to take it apart to get parts. He placed the seeds on a cloth-lined tray, next to a roll of old monofilament line. The rope was wrapped around the stabilizer wing, creating a vibration similar to what the sensor recorded. But it doesn't explain the whole package about the salty wind layer. It just shows that an error can have a very convincing shape.

Bach asked for permission to open the memory. Lam requested a witness from the community, a copy kept at the cultural house, and a record describing the condition of the grain before opening. Bach agreed. Cu removed the outer shell by hand, slower than any other machine repair. There were no foreign materials inside, just salt dust, a drop of dried water, and scratches from rubbing against the wire.

Mien compares vibration data with video on the boat. The two passages have the same time but not the same rhythm. I marked the noise segment, then looked in the data packet for minutes when the salinity increased. The noise causes the graph to fluctuate, but does not create the entire salinity curve. The conclusion is not “the particle is right” or “the particle is wrong”. The conclusion is that each part needs its own way of testing.

Thao Nhi proposed opening a lesson for people about errors. She used an old scale, three stones and a bag of salt. If the scale is a little off, the buyer still needs to know how much the bag weighs, not hear that the scale is "not accurate and should be thrown away". That analogy helps the children understand the terms in the report faster.

Lam rewrote Sao Troi's archive label: “Device model has known interference; Atmospheric data need to be compared; should not be used alone to draw conclusions.” She added a photo of Cu's hand holding the string, a photo of Mien marking the graph, and a photo of the sandy beach where the seeds were picked up. Objects are no longer an adventure story. It becomes a lesson that there are people, places, and limits.

That night, Cu took the tray out to the porch. He said the star seed looked like a small fish caught in a net. Mien wrote: "So we must teach him to distinguish between water and string." Cu laughed. They couldn't save every signal from error, but they did know how to give a mistake a location on the map.