Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2)

No word from Helena; no transmissions from the locals, no ransom note or demands or even threats. Or rather, plenty of incidental transmissions should one choose to turn receivers towards their world, but nothing aimed at the Lightfoot. No communications with the Voyager either, which is still hiding out in case the xenophobia of the aquatic civilization here turns out to be insuperable. And Fabian has the uncomfortable feeling that a timer is inching down the wire somewhere. The locals are technologically advanced and erratically paranoid. Octopoid eyes somewhere are going to be searching the further reaches of their solar system for perceived threat. It’s what Fabian would do, after all. He can only assume these angry molluscs have at least as much common sense as a male Portiid.

All of this makes Fabian very angry, an emotion he shows neither in palp nor footfall. It does not do for male spiders to give rein to that kind of outburst as a female might. He is expected to be meek and deferential, and it eats him up inside like a parasitic larva sometimes.

The Voyager mission had got him out from under the shadow of some particularly dominant females in his peer house, who would have blithely taken the credit for his researches—not necessarily a theft, so much as a kind of intellectual eminent domain: anything he produced would obviously be a product of the peer house itself, with Fabian as mere conduit. After that, and with his work hovering frustratingly near the boundary of success without quite crossing over, all these excursions aboard the Lightfoot came at exactly the wrong time. He resents the risk, because if there is one archetypally male trait Fabian espouses wholesale, it is a regard for an intact exoskeleton. He resents the interruptions. He particularly resents the fact that now, of all times, progress is being made. Why couldn’t this have happened back when they had the opportunity to focus on it?

He is also beginning to resent Meshner, or at least his frailties. Humans are supposed to be robust. How could they not be? They’re huge, and they have that absurdly overcompensatory immune system that makes him wonder how any of them can ever fall ill at all. Except Meshner is not well, and months of research-heavy interplanetary travel cooped up aboard the Lightfoot is not mending him. Fabian has spent no small amount of thought on the subject of how much their researches (“their” when negative, “mine” when positive, and he is fully aware of the mendacity of this and cannot train himself out of it) are to blame and tells himself stridently that it is only a little, and other factors outside his control are more culpable. And he is practically there. Only a little more and Fabian can go happily off and encode his findings for the benefit of future generations. Except that those findings are going to be trapped in the ship with Fabian for the foreseeable future, and may meet an explosive death in the vacuum of space with him. This, he particularly resents.

He has spoken with Kern, or rather he has spoken with Artifabian, in the hope the automaton will act as his go-between with a computer too important and busy to deal with him directly right now. Artifabian has a plan to compress Fabian’s data and transmit it on a broad frequency if it appears the Lightfoot’s destruction is imminent. This is less than satisfactory. The Voyager may not receive the signal; moreover the data will only be the bare bones and what Fabian wants to get out is his own Understanding, because in that memory will be him, set down for all posterity. He will become a part of his species’ legacy for future generations and this has been his goal for most of his life.

He goes and corners Meshner yet again, as well as he can in a crew space without corners. I have the first set of maze tests, he explains. I will download them to your implant now.

Fabian spots that Meshner’s expression is not the eager, tractable one he is used to. He queries Artifabian for translation and apparently his Human co-conspirator is unhappy, possibly traumatized. Fabian does not have time for this. Possibly none of them do. It’s only a maze, he says. The amount of data is considerably less than a full emotive experience. This is not entirely true because every Understanding comes with the innate baggage of she—or, rarely, he—who set it down, but Fabian has attempted to maintain a detached aspect throughout. They have reduced the scope of their experiments by minute increments over the course of their interplanetary journey, giving up the grandeur of their ambitions iota by iota, and this is what they are left with. Fabian has memorized a simple maze, and he wants to make Meshner run through it. Mentally, not physically, although the comparison with the laboratory animals of yore is unavoidable.

Meshner gives in, with poor grace, but he checks with Kern first—apparently she will give him all the time he wants. They are closing with the inner planet, and with the orbiting structure that is sending out the bizarre natural history lesson, but there is time, Kern says.

Fabian accesses the architecture of Meshner’s implants to download his maze Understanding. Things have changed in there, he notes. The complexity of the virtual space has increased by an order of magnitude, indicating that the implant’s algorithms are now vastly better at processing and storing complex data. The rate of change is a little unnerving, in fact, as though the implant is reflecting and copying greater external structures. Fabian has a moment of caution, about to call it all off, but he presses on. This just means that his experiment has a far better substrate on which to run.

The observed changes seem to have had no immediate ill effect on his subject, so Fabian gives Meshner the maze, and things go—not wrong, but unexpectedly, straight out of the gate.

I’m there, comes Artifabian’s translation of the words that Meshner is sending. It’s… where is this? Is this somewhere you saw?

Fabian fidgets nervously. Are you able to trace the path through?

It’s slick. Artifabian is working overtime to convey emotional distress. There’s… weed, sea things. The walls are green-black stone. Fabian, where did you…?

Just concentrate on finding the way out. This test is being timed, Fabian tells him primly.

I know the way.

Four words, but Fabian feels his limbs twitch with excitement. At the same time he is running diagnostic tests on the implant, because there are no walls, there is no weed. The maze is simply a configuration Fabian spun up within the computer, an intellectual exercise, but Meshner appears to be adding his own grotesque content, turning the simple game into a simulation, making use of all that convoluted new architecture. Sure enough the implant is running at capacity, and indeed has created new capacity by further optimizing its structure. More than that, it is drawing on outside resources: unused computational power from the ship plus Meshner’s own cerebral functions.

The process requires some refinement… Fabian tells himself timorously. In truth he is not sure what he’s looking at, except that the experiment is getting away from him. He tells himself that this is not damaging Meshner permanently. He is aware that he lacks the empirical data on which to base such a statement.

Meshner finishes the maze in adequate time, and the next three even faster as he grows used to the medium. He continues to complain about the character of the mazes, which have a ruinous, sunken aspect Fabian attributes to their recent travails with the octopuses. Fabian still has more tests, but by then Meshner has had another episode, a moment in which he loses all proprioception and sense of belonging in his own body. After that the Human seizes the chance to break away from vital research because a distraction has arrived. All that valuable time for experimentation has been used up; at long last they are nearing the orbiting station and everyone (except Fabian) wants to take a look.

****

Meshner guesses the others also expected something quite different, specifically something more Human—or at least human. Instead, the orbiting station is a bizarre hotchpotch of technologies that suggests the octopus civilization at least extended a tentacle out this way at some point.

The basic frame is certainly consistent with Old Empire technology—very old given the battered and friable look of the thing. The precise original dimensions would be impossible to determine, save that Kern already has them to hand, dredged out of her far-reaching, erratic memory.

“It is, or was, a detachable module from a terraforming ship.” Her voice, reporting, is very flat, all the ants and the wiring of her is devoted elsewhere, but Meshner finds he can’t avoid giving the lack of affect a human interpretation, as though Kern is filled to the brim with suppressed emotion. “The Brin 2 facility had one, identical to this.” Except the Brin 2’s module was presumably destroyed with the rest of the facility, back during Kern’s long-ago lifetime, leaving her the sole survivor. “I’m not seeing any sign of the main station. Presumably that either lost orbital capacity in the intervening time or was deployed elsewhere. I favour the latter as there is no suggestion this planet has been terraformed.” Planetary data unravels down the screen, based on their preliminary scans. Meshner cross-references it to the fragmentary transmissions and joins all the dots: a planet consistent with supporting the supposed biology and ecology the Lante signal claims.

For a moment he is gripped by a fierce yearning, a longing and excitement utterly alien to him, bigger than him, impossible to stave off or channel. He can only crouch down and press his palms to the sides of his head as though the feelings might erupt explosively out of his skull.

Then the sensation has passed; either that or his window on it has closed, the entire event just a momentary bleed from some vast well of howling sensation he brushed too close to. He stands unsteadily. Zaine isn’t looking his way. Possibly the two spiders are; with their lesser eyes, it’s hard to tell.

The human parts of the module have been built on, and the technology involved is plainly the same that contributed to the octopus vessels they encountered. Globes and bubbles are tacked on in ungainly profusion, with little regard for the structure and centre of gravity of the original. The module would have employed rotational gravity for the benefit of its human occupants; the new mishmash has none of that, but Meshner guesses aquatic creatures don’t have the same need to know which way is up; even Portiids are far more laissez-faire about such things than humanity, old or new. A detailed look reveals more method than the original madness might suggest. On the basis that it was adapted for aquatic use and filled with water, the ungainly structure’s rotation should result in a stable orbital tumble, no indication of decay for at least the next few centuries. Some speculative modelling from Zaine raises the possibility that the end-over-end spin would serve to generate water currents to circulate a clean and breathable medium inside.

Except that medium has very plainly left the building, because the entire structure is catastrophically damaged, torn open at one end, riddled with holes. Kern has a drone making a cautious fly-by, and its images show what Meshner can only characterize as “battle-scarring”. Kern’s analysis, and her own personal experience from the point of view of Kern-as-ship, matches this with the sort of armaments the octopus vessels deployed, and moreover places the damage as recent, as far as she can tell, perhaps even within a decade. There is sufficient ice still locked in the same orbit to testify as to the fate of the station’s innards, plus organic material that might once have been its inhabitants. And yet the signal persists, and it is not an octopus signal but something eminently human in format and content. Human, but antiquated.

“So they went in and they woke up some systems. And then they had one of their sudden bouts of violence,” Zaine proposes. “Or some other bunch tried to take it from the first lot, as they seem more than happy to fight each other.” Her tone suggests an understandable lack of fondness for the locals.

“They have awoken some manner of journal, from a scientist of the Old Empire,” Viola puts in, via Kern. “I would very much like to believe so, although there are some discrepancies. The content is… not uniformly consistent with Old Empire academic style. Also, I have reservations about the validity of the dating system given the period that entries appear to cover. One interpretation suggests constant composition for far longer than your species would normally live.”

“There was plenty of variance in dating conventions,” Zaine starts, but Viola raps sharply on the console to cut her off.

“There are sections in which meaning breaks down entirely,” the Portiid notes primly. “There are repetitions. Some parts of the signal consist of random characters or words placed in a framework that resembles cogent language but is not, unless this is some Old Empire cypher we are not familiar with. However, it is plain that there is a trove of information of some sort available on this facility, and the facility itself will not last forever. The longevity of its orbit is in doubt now that the internal water has been removed.”

“Hold on.” Meshner raises a hand, hearing his own voice come out as a croak. “Sorry, not sure what you’re saying now, or where you’re going with it.”

Viola’s front legs twitch in irritation. “We are obviously going to go in and retrieve such information as remains accessible.”

Did we agree that? He would be entirely willing to accept that he’d simply glazed through the relevant crew meeting, except that Zaine and Fabian seem equally surprised by the contention. Zaine was against the whole business, wasn’t she?

Viola climbs a metre higher on the wall so she can look down on all of them, tilting her body left and right so that her major eyes can pin them all. Her palps lift with a self-important little flourish, obviously choosing this time to announce her ascension to the captain’s pre-eminence.

“Let me be the bearer of bad tidings,” comes Kern’s translation, and Meshner feels a stab of amusement at the slightly pompous tone the computer chooses. “The viability of our entire mission in this solar system is in doubt. The native civilization is both aggressive and potent enough to destroy us should it make a concerted effort. Only its inherent disorganization has prevented this from happening. Bianca is dead and Helena and Portia are lost, and the Voyager is preserved only because it is assiduously concealing its presence. We had hoped to find a counter-force to combat the octopus civilization but thus far nothing is apparent. However, we have found here an opportunity to salvage something of value. There are records here dating to the earliest era we know, that of the humans whose strange culture underlies us all. Moreover, there are records of an entirely other world, which plainly engaged the interests of those humans, and which contains within it biological systems and Understandings of potential use and relevance to our entire species.” A pause, and then a hurried skitter of legs. “And Humans.”

Meshner mostly watches Zaine to work out how novel any of this is supposed to be to him, and she still seems just as clueless as he is. In the end it is Fabian who responds, a meek little question from the floor, his posture as crouching and inoffensive as a male can be.

“Help me along the path to your conclusions, please. Understanding is a matter of Portiids. To what do you refer?” The word Kern uses is given that specific spin, meaning Portiid inherited memories rather than simple grasping of concepts, and Meshner has the same difficulty in seeing the relevance.

Viola jerks with annoyance but starts sending data to the screens, a teacher with slow pupils. “Here is what our signaller has to say about the genetics of the native life of this planet. Here is the structure of their encoding molecules.” Something other than DNA, alien proteins folding in uncomfortable ways, encrypting information in combinations of shape and chemistry. “Here is a genome-equivalent in situ.” Something like a random scrawling revealed as a three-dimensional structure on the interior of a membrane. “Here is another. Another.” Meshner’s eyes are starting to swim because Viola is letting her diagrams overlap, as Portiids tend to, until picking the new from the old is like disentangling old string. “Here is another.”

This one is huge. Viola keeps pulling out and pulling out, and if the others had been a few ditches and earthworks stuck to a cell’s inside wall, this is a city, a metropolis of compact protein-a-likes, molecules for which Old Empire science doesn’t even have convenient handles. Viola flags up various sections, comparing and contrasting to other examples. Meshner loses the ability to make anything of her diagrams at this point and must simply take it all as read.

“According to the signaller the inheritable information is being encoded at an atomic level, meaning that the transmission of information can be accomplished at far greater energy-efficiency than our own genetic code. What, then, can this great assemblage of information be, if not an Understanding? It is plain to me that this alien biota has undergone a parallel evolution allowing it to encode its experiences just as we have, and in a manner that we could learn from and adapt to our own purposes. We need to download this station’s archives entirely and then get them, and ourselves, out of this solar system as fast as possible.”

And hope the bloody octopuses don’t follow us, thinks Meshner, keeping the words unspoken. At the same time he is aware that Fabian is literally bristling with unexpressed emotion, and he guesses it’s probably anger because Viola’s new pet project casts a long shadow on their own.

And he is also very aware of her “It is plain to me” comment, because Portiid science has no problems with making bold claims and only later dismantling them. It is how their academics jostle for dominance amongst themselves. Viola cannot know a tenth of what she claims, but she has decided to make this the cornerstone of her gameplan, and perhaps she is right: getting out of the system with whatever they can grab is probably not the worst idea in the universe right now.

Nobody has mentioned Helena and Portia and the outside possibility that they are still alive and captives somewhere. The overwhelming technological superiority of the locals consigns any thoughts of rescue into the “doomed heroics” category and neither Human nor Portiid nature is quite so in love with its own myth.

Meshner looks about him: Fabian, unhappy; Viola plainly not caring what Fabian thinks—or Meshner himself—but cocking an eye at Zaine; Zaine nodding. Motion carried.

There is an interesting pause before Kern responds, as though she too was hovering near the “nay” camp. At last she concedes, though, her potential veto unused.

“Connect to the active system and download whatever it has,” the spider instructs. “And then we can work out how to get past the natives.”

“Who may take a lot more interest in us if they work out we’re stealing from this place,” Meshner puts in. “Their first attack came when we said we were human—their second, when they caught us responding to this signal. Whatever they’re so touchy about, this is the heart of it.”

Viola’s response, a couple of dismissive taps, is rendered by Artifabian as: “Even so.”

Meshner wrestles with the nearest console, finding his hands still tremble a little. Kern seems to second-guess him, in the end, showing him a record of her contact attempts using a variety of Old Empire protocols.

It’s not recognizing us. He read some of the old Gilgamesh records once, something most Humans do when they are young, trying to reconnect with their receding origins. The situation here is weirdly parallel to when the ark ship had first encountered a dormant Kern, save that in this case Kern is on the outside.

“Play something of its own back to it?” he murmurs, because that had worked for his ancestors. Instead, Kern drops into a deeper level of communication, system-to-system handshakes and deep-access protocols.

A volley of emotions ambushes him: surprise, disappointment, opportunism. Meshner grips the console, dizzy, trying to catch up with his own cognitive processes to discover why he feels like this. Even as he tries to master himself, the sensations bleed into Kern’s thoughtful noise. “Hmm.” A human utterance from a computer system full of insects. “I had contact. It acknowledged me. Then the signal stopped.”

“Infiltrate them,” Viola directs.

“There is nothing to infiltrate.” Kern’s human voice sounds puzzled, which rings a perfect twin to the puzzlement Meshner hosts, as though he and the system are in sympathetic lockstep. “I can find no trace of any system there. The transmission has stopped, but there is no open port, no live network. It’s as though an operator was manually sending the material and has now ceased. But if there is anything within the station to be aware, it is now aware of us.”

“Have the drone find some manner of live conduit on the surface,” Viola says, her movements skittish.

“The power use readings are curious,” Kern notes, illustrating that curiosity with examples on the screens. Some solar collectors are still in operation, a mix of the Old Empire’s ancient, robust technology and some kind of photosynthetic coating used by the octopuses, which in itself seems efficient enough to be worth taking a sample of. They are jury-rigged, cobbled together with lots of loose ends and blind alleys, but routing power to some source inside. Now the signal is gone, nothing on the hull seems to be turned outwards. There is no electronic back door Kern can exploit.

The Lightfoot is closing on the station now, easing into a matching orbit. The large drone Kern currently has out there is joined by some diminutive siblings which quickly find rents in the hull sufficient to allow them inside. Their limited light and range of vision give the crew a vertiginous look at the interior: ancient walls, metal overlain with shrivelled biotech, a chaos of two technologies, or rather two far-distant branches of the same technological tree. Fragments and particles drift everywhere, so that the pair of little drones cause a chaotic whirl of collisions everywhere they go, radiating outwards through the vacuum and out of sight of their lamps. Worry clutches inside Meshner, as though the ripples of the drones’ approach might warn some predator lurking inside.

“I am following the power traces,” Kern remarks flatly. The drones find an ancient doorway, an iris seized half-open, and bob through it. The next area was recently buttressed, shimmering with tatters of membrane, cluttered with a profusion of machinery that just seems to have been piled up and stuck together. All of it looks both new and not designed for human use. One wall is stippled with holes through which the system’s sun glitters on the bristling ice that lines half the chamber.

There is a closed door in one wall, seemingly intact. The drones jockey about in front of it, trying to find how it might open. “Design suggests an airlock—or potentially a water-lock, given the preferences of the most recent occupants. There’s no active terminal I can detect,” Kern reports. “Whatever is beyond this, though, that’s where the power is being routed.”

“Go outside and find another way in?” Meshner suggests, but his words are lost in an announcement from Zaine:

“The pings we’re getting from the locals are more intense now. We’re detecting ship movement towards this orbit. Maybe not an attack fleet but I wonder if they’re working themselves up to it.”

“They didn’t seem to need much working up the last few times.” Fabian’s translated words successfully come over as bitter. “They just did.”

“Then they’re getting themselves into a position where if they just do, they’ll be able to make it stick,” Zaine tells him exasperatedly. “So, if we’re doing something here, Viola, we should consider we have a limited time.”

“Door controls are manual only,” Kern states, and Artifabian twitches and rattles off across the crew quarters towards its own airlock. It is configured as a Portiid, after all, which entails certain physical competencies. At Viola’s insistence Fabian scuttles up to a console, standing by as backup pilot should one be necessary. Meshner just sits back and watches the view from Artifabian’s cameras, feeling oddly proprietory. The arachnoid remote is one of his and Fabian’s team, after all. It’s almost as if he’s contributing.

Kern carefully adjusts the ship’s velocity and proximity to the station, feeding the data to Artifabian. The airlock door is open and their destination is still distant, the size of a thumbnail in the robot’s view. Fabian reports sullenly on trajectory, performing backup maths. Artifabian has limited manoeuvring jets, but most of the legwork, so to speak, will be done the old-fashioned way. Meshner watches stress tolerance readouts push limits as the robot ratchets in its third pair of limbs.

“Relative velocities are stable,” Kern offers, and Artifabian springs, legs spread, kicking off into space.

The approach to the station threads a needle through a sparse cloud of debris that is matching the orbital’s orbit, the echo of a much larger collection of clutter that time and physics has dispersed. Artifabian’s approach is graceful, ghost-like, a single perfect leap over kilometres, a subtle murmur of jets to slow its approach when the wall of the station is already its whole world. Meshner sees the positives as its feet find their anchors, touching down like a feather, no bounce-back at all. Then it goes pattering swiftly towards the nearest torn ingress, following the trail already blazed by the drones, creeping under and over with considerably more ease than the remotes through the cluttered, swirling spaces to the closed door.

Opening the room up is another complex operation. The manual release is nothing made for a Portiid, real or artificial, and Meshner reckons a human would have difficulty, too. In the end Artifabian cannibalizes the camera drones for parts, botching together a kind of flexible glove puppet that the robot can manipulate to get purchase on the control. The process takes longer than anyone is comfortable with.

Meshner half-expects a torrent of water and possibly some annoyed molluscs to come tumbling out of the chamber beyond. What Artifabian detects is air, though, the ghost of a stale breath from the past. The chamber itself would be cramped for a human, sandwiched between two doors, no window on what lies beyond. An airlock for real, though, buried in the heart of the derelict station.

“Doesn’t guarantee air on the other side,” Zaine points out. “Not if a shot compromised the hull through there.” Her voice sounds muffled and Meshner is alarmed to see her suiting up. Is she worried we’ll get shot too? But then the realization: she thinks we’re going over there. She must be mad. And his eyes flick to the long-range readings, because the locals are definitely coming closer. He imagines those monstrously heavy dreadnoughts building up an unstoppable momentum, finally united in their desire to turn these intruding aliens into a fog of atoms.

Artifabian has another convoluted wrestling match to seal the first door and open the second, while Zaine and Viola track the attention they are getting from the distant local vessels. Meshner is already ahead of them in considering that “far away” doesn’t necessarily mean anything given the level of weaponry the octopuses deployed. There might already be projectiles or missiles streaking through the void towards the Lightfoot. “We need to speed this up,” he whispers. “We have to get out of here.”

“But not without making contact.” Kern’s voice is in his ear, matching his conspiratorial tones, and he jumps.

“What?”

“Viola is correct. We should achieve what we can,” Kern informs him, more primly, as though he had somehow surprised the computer in a moment of unintended candour. Which is nonsense, obviously.

Then Artifabian is through the door, signalling Viola for praise as though it is the Portiid male it resembles.

There is light in the chamber beyond. This is where the power goes. There are lamps in one wall (perhaps that was the ceiling once) sending out a gentle radiance that glitters amongst the dust motes drifting everywhere. A seat is bolted to another wall, something Meshner could have sat in, though not without turfing out the antique environment suit that is half-wrapped about it like a feeding starfish, still connected to sockets in the walls by a handful of charging cables. As though someone was just here, and popped out the moment before we came. Except there’s no way out.

There is a console. Meshner stares at it, fascinated. It is bulky, clumsy, made in the same style as the convoluted manual lock to the door, save that its makers dumbed it down, making an oversized, simplified version, as though for a child.

As though for a human. A device made by alien hands for use by hands like his. He can see where fingers and thumbs might latch on to manipulate it.

“There are no controls on the inside of that door,” Zaine observes flatly. Meshner shies away from the obvious conclusion. He doesn’t want to think about what was done—and recently, it seems—to something human enough to merit those controls. And yet when he reaches inside himself he feels… excitement. Excitement that seems to bleed into him from somewhere else because surely he has nothing to be excited about right then, but the feeling wells up inside until he can barely contain it. At the same time, Kern calmly reports that the console is powered.

“Is this where the signal originated?” Viola demands.

“The linkage to the surviving hull systems suggests it may be,” Kern says. “And if there is retrievable data, then most likely it can be accessed from here. But I am not sure the Artifabian unit will be able to manage these controls efficiently. They are designed for human operation.” And Artifabian, on cue, registers its concerns about how long any complex interaction might take.

A long silence follows that, everyone’s thoughts slowly drifting towards the same option, save Zaine’s because there she is, already suited up and checking her systems. Meshner feels himself alive with a brittle excitement. On one level, he really wants to see what is in the abandoned station. He is desperate to reveal the mystery. Except that level is disassociated from the rest of him; intellectually he doesn’t much care. His own mental health concerns him far more, and yet the emotions swell in him, playing his mind like an orchestra, demanding his complicity.

“Fabian,” he croaks, tapping the floor for attention. The male Portiid cocks a large eye at him. “Fabian, it’s not going right. It’s gone wrong.” Except that Artifabian is not there to translate, and Kern isn’t stepping into the breach. Meshner’s hands tremble, worse than ever. His voice shakes so much that perhaps no translation could do it justice. He runs diagnostics on his implants, coming up with contradictory, nonsensical answers—access denials, insufficient system privileges to examine the contents of his own skull. “… I’m still… linked, experiencing… I can’t turn it off.”

“Then we’ll have to send someone in,” Kern tells him, and he jumps in horror before realizing she is just translating Viola, who has found the worst possible solution to her precious answers being locked up somewhere within the derelict station.

“You’re sure, Zaine?” Viola prompts when the woman raises her hand, a grim volunteer.

The Human woman grimaces but nods. “At least it doesn’t seem trapped, like the Old Earth orbitals.” Plenty of childrens’ scare stories about those made it through to Human culture on Kern’s World.

“I will do what I can to prepare the way.” And the humanity leaves Kern’s voice as she redeploys her resources elsewhere. “But Meshner should also go. It will be safer with two crew who can watch each other, and at least half the interior will be designed for humans. And he and Zaine can communicate freely without artificial assistance.”

Meshner shakes his head, his throat too dry to speak. And yet that excitement is still rampant within him: a need to go in person, to experience, to feel the thrill of that discovery, to meet whatever is to be met. He tries to say no; he tries to say that he will not set foot on that dead station under any circumstances, but the tide of emotion carries him with it and he can’t.