The missing probes

Right after the space tug observes the disappearance of Winfall, Rei and OMCOM have a conversation about previous attempts at researching the phenomenon. Since the plot of Rome's Revolution revolves around the Stareaters, you would think that this would get a bit more attention. Here is the actual conversation and you can see it is very short:

     “What about probes? Rome told me you sent some probes out, right?” Rei asked.
     “Yes. Probes were sent to the star systems involved, but they never returned.” OMCOM answered.
     “Well, there must be some distance you can send them where you can still retrieve them and beyond that then you can’t, right?”
     “Yes.”
     “So what’s that distance?”
     “No one has measured it.”
     “Why not?” Rei asked.
     “To make the effort remotely efficient in terms of time, you would have to build many, many probes and send them out simultaneously at varying distances.”
     “So why not do that?” To Rei, it felt like he had come up against a brick wall.
     “Up until now, the Overmind had not felt that it was worth the cost or effort.”
     “What do you mean cost?” Rei exclaimed. “I would think that the origin of some crazy hypervelocity cloud, powerful enough to blot out the Sun would be worth any amount of money to find out.”
     “I understand your reference, but the Vuduri do not use money. I meant in terms of the use of resources to build that many sophisticated probes.”
     “So build cheap ones. Build a lot of them,” Rei snorted.

Of course, this led to the star-probes which, in turn, led to the VIRUS units which gives the whole rest of the series its context. But why didn't the Overmind do as Rei suggested? The Vuduri have unlimited, free energy so the "cost" that OMCOM refers to is irrelevant.

The answer to this question is very simple. I wanted to make it seem ominous that probes were sent out and none ever returned. And I had to have an excuse to send out the crew to Tabit otherwise we wouldn't have a story. So, dramatic license strikes again!