The 20th of February, 2472, was widely celebrated all over the Earth and inhabited area of Mars. That was the day mankind made a great step ahead by launching the first long-range colonization space shuttle. On that day, there was no man unfamiliar with the meaning of "Miracle Zero" - the name of the ship.

It had been built on the orbit of Jupiter, the planet?s shade protecting its fragile elements against sun radiation. A main hull, with the length of nearly 15 kilometers, stuffed with any known technologies, had a capacity of 60.000 people.

More than a half of his mass was taken by fuel - particles of nucleonium (elementary component of any matter in the Universe), upholded constantly in enormously intensed magnetic field. Only that kind of propulsion could guarantee the ship reaching sublight speed.

Their destination point was the Tenaeb system, located almost 95 light years away from the Solar System. It was the closest system with planets giving prospects for being habitable. Moreover, it was the system within human reach, where they could refill their fuel tanks so that they could return home safely.

Almost all of ship?s passengers were to be hibernated during their journey. Since their flight was estimated to last about 65 years, board computers were programmed to take care of cruising and overall maintenance of the shuttle. Only couple of tens passengers were to be awake and supervise the machines. Those, carefully chosen, had to meet very strict demands, both physical and mental. Because of the journey duration, they had to become cyborg-like - their brains were to be connected with cyberlinks to ship terminals; this feature guaranteed that they would live longer (by slowing down their life processes) and communicate instantly with navigating system of the ship. Their odyssey turned out to be much longer and more complicated than they had ever estimated. Though flying at the right speed and using correct navigation measures, Miracle Zero wasn?t approaching Tenaeb within desired time.

Because of the delay, cyborgs, despite their sophisticated maintenance equipment, started to grow old. Therefore, they woke up a part of hibernated humans to let them take over control of the ship. Unfortunately, most of the newly awaken didn?t bear their uplinking to the terminal; their organisms rejected cyber-implants and consequently they went mad or died. Some individuals managed to connect themselves to board computers, though.

As time went by, new generations were born on the ship. The successive offspring of colonists turned out to be genetically changed and after some time the youngest had no difficulties connecting their minds to board devices. They had to pay the cost of this, though - instead of looking like regular humans they started to resemble cyborgs.

Their odyssey had been estimated to last only 65 years. Actually, 281 years had passed before it ended. It was the sixth generation of Miracle Zero?s passengers, who was to reach Tenaeb system. Because of genetic changes, these lucky ones had very little in common with their ancestors, who once had been launched from the Earth.

Cyborgs finally managed to position Miracle Zero orbiting around the Tenaeb system?s most distant planet. The rest of the crew was still hibernated, waiting for better times to come.

What was worrisome, they had previously lost radio contact with their home base and still no terrestrial signal was received. Numerous remains, possibly left by alien civilization, were discovered among surrounding Itharak (as they named this anonymous planet). Some giant abandoned structures, looking like enormous cocoons, attracted colonists? attention. Yet, despite sending an expedition in the area, no local life forms were discovered. Cyborgs decided to land on Tenaeb?s second planet - which later was to be called Sigonyth - as it was the only place that seemed to be able to colonize. Using conjunction of the planets, Miracle Zero was transferred to Sig?s orbit and the search for location of the first base was started. Quick reconnaissance brought some data on the planet, discovering several continents separated with a pitch-black ocean of silicon origin and some abandoned edifices left by unknown civilizations. Finally, a medium sized continent on northern hemisphere was chosen for landing.

Since no terrestrial signals had been received, Cyborgs decided to found another city, designed for unchanged colonists - the hibernated ones. It was built on another continent and named after the planet - Sigonyth.

Then the first Great Mystification took place. Cyborgs woke up a small (counting only a few thousands of individuals) group of colonists and told them that Miracle Zero had experienced a serious breakdown during the flight and had crashed while landing. The newly awaken ones were also informed that only few of passengers had survived and that the search for life-maintenance modules (with hibernated colonists) was still being conducted. The truth was Cyborgs dismantled all equipment of the ship (which was still orbiting around Sigonyth) and transported it into the vast system of caves that had been discovered under Rash-Khan.

People believed in that lie and started to do their job - setting a colony and adapting the hostile environment to their needs. They were experiencing lots of difficulties but their biggest trouble was lack of water. Small amounts of this precious liquid were found only a few hundreds of meters under the vast layers of rocky ground surrounding the city of Sigonyth. During the first couple of tens of years, the colonization was extremely difficult and death factor maintained at very high rate. Still, people were left on their own and any contacts with Cyborgs were occasional.

Then, a new problem appeared. People were able to breath in Sigonyth?s atmosphere only while using special breathing devices. These were electro-chemical filters that blocked harmful elements of the air and, at the same time, kept any moisture excreted by their users. Yet, active matters used in these devices turned out to be extremely mutagenic. To make things worse, more and more babies were born with apparent or latent deformations. What was unusual, only few of them used to die and in most of the cases their organisms under unknown circumstances adapted to breathing without the use of filters. During the 93rd year of the colony, the first mutant rebellion took place. Almost one third of city residents, the deformed and genetically changed ones, violently protested against treating them as slaves and using them as a source of cheap manual labour. After devastating all buildings of newly established government, they decided to leave regular humans on their own. Taking most of heavy equipment, masking their trail, they headed southern hemisphere and found their own village there.

Cold relations between humans and mutants improved slightly during the 148th year of the colony. It was the time when mutant emissaries made an attempt to establish a trade route with residents of Sigonyth. On this occasion they revealed the mystification invented by Cyborgs - people were told about caves under Rash-Khan and found out the truth about Miracle zero alleged crash.

Today, in the 200nd year of the colony, we are familiar with the purpose of the mystification and understand that it had been made to help us with surviving those hard times.

The relations between our three races, though still chilled, are not hostile anymore. We have finally grown up to the fact that we have to join our ranks in a constant battle against our common enemy - the rough and unfriendly planet of Sigonyth.