Item: If you accepted that a spacefaring civilization had built some kind of megastructure and Bender had changed course to investigate it, then it was highly probable that something had happened to Bender in Eta Leporis. Otherwise, he’d have built a space station, which would be transmitting his logs back toward human space via radio by now. He’d also have long since received the SCUT plans and already be on BobNet thanks to instantaneous communications.