He saw no advantage to the design of the object. The cubes seemed to be connected in a totally random fashion. Purely aesthetic, he thought. Somebody’s idea of art.

He looked at the rear view. The black patch was growing, systematically blocking out stars.

“Hatch locations,” said Bill, marking four sites on the display. François picked one that allowed easy access from the Jenkins and maneuvered alongside. It was located on one of the smaller cubes, on the outer rim of the cluster. It was less than average size, but it was larger than the Jenkins. He eased in as closely as he could, lined up the hatch with the ship’s air lock, and instructed Bill to hold the position. “Okay,” he told Ben.

His navigation lights played off the surface of the object. It was battered. Corroded. It had been there a long time.

Ben opened the outer hatch. “It’s pretty worn,” he said.

“You’ve got seventeen minutes to be back here,” François said. “Okay? Seventeen minutes and we take off. Whether you’re on board or not.”

“Don’t worry,” said Leah. “Just keep the door open.”

Right.

An imager picked them up as they left the ship. Followed them across the few meters of open space to the hatch. Whoever’d used it had been about the same size as humans. Which meant Ben would have a hard time squeezing through.

“Incredible,” said Leah. She was examining the hull, which was pocked and scored. “Cosmic rays. It is ancient.”

“How old do you think?” asked Ben.

Bill sighed. “Use the scanner, Ben. Get me the hull’s composition, and I might be able to give you an answer.”

Ben wasn’t sure which of the devices he carried with him was the scanner. He hadn’t used one before, but Leah knew. She activated hers and ran it across the damage.

“Good,” said Bill. “Give me a minute.”

Ben made an effort to open the hatch. There was a press panel, but it didn’t react. Leah put her scanner back in her belt and produced a laser. She activated it and started cutting. “This is a disaster,” she said. “What were the odds of finding something like this? And then to have it sitting right in front of that goddam avalanche back there?”

Ben drew his own laser out of his harness, but François cautioned him not to use it. Two relatively inexperienced people cutting away was a sure formula for disaster. So he stayed back. Leah needed only minutes to cut through. She pushed a wedge of metal into space, put the instrument away, and stepped inside the ship.

“Turn on the recorder,” François told her.

Each wore an imager on the right breast pocket. The auxiliary monitor came to life, and François was looking down a dark corridor, illuminated by their headlamps. Shadows everywhere. The bulkhead looked rough and washed-out. Whatever materials had originally lined it had disintegrated. The overhead was so low that even Leah couldn’t stand up straight.

Something was moving slowly down the bulkhead. Ben saw it, and the picture jumped.

“What is it?” asked François.

Dust. A hand, Leah’s, scooped some of it up, held the light against it.

“Scan it,” said Bill. Leah complied. The AI’s electronics murmured softly. “Organics,” he said.

“You’re saying this was one of the crew?”

“Probably,” said François. “Or maybe they kept plants on board.”

“I wonder what happened here?” said Ben.

After a long silence, Bill said, “I’ve got the results on the cosmic ray damage. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve double-checked the numbers. The object appears to be 1.2 billion years old.”

Ben made a noise as if he were in pain. “That can’t be right,” he said.

“I’ve made no error.”

“Son of a bitch. François, we’ve got to save this thing.”

“If you can think of a way, I’ll be happy to make it happen.”

Leah broke in: “There’s something on the wall here. Engraving of some kind. Feel this, Ben.”

He put his fingertips against the bulkhead. Then he produced a knife and scraped away some dust.

“Careful,” she said.

François couldn’t make out anything.

“There is something here. It’s filled in.”

Leah moved to her right. “More here.” She ran her fingers down the bulkhead, top to bottom. “Not symbols,” she said. “More like a curving line.”

“Nine minutes,” said François.

“For God’s sake, François. Give us a break.”

“What do you want me to do, Ben?” He was having trouble keeping the anger out of his voice. Did they think he wouldn’t have saved the thing if he could? Did they think he didn’t care?

He listened while they tried to get a better look at the bulkhead. The object was tumbling slowly as it moved, and the dust had been crawling around inside it all this time. It would have long since wedded itself to any apertures, openings, lines, anything on the bulkheads. “It’s hopeless,” François said.

It wasn’t going well. He heard mostly invective, aimed at the dust, occasionally at the omega. “Can’t be sure of anything,” Leah said. She looked around. A few pieces of metal were bolted into the connecting bulkhead.

“Might have been cabinets,” said Ben, “or shelves, or an instrument panel of some sort.”

“Better start back,” said François.

“We can’t just give up.” Ben sounded desperate. He literally stabbed the bulkhead. “We may never find anything again as old as this is.”

“Before the dinosaurs,” said François.

Leah was breathing hard. “Before multicellular life.” The comment was punctuated by gasps. “Think about that for a minute. Before the first plant appeared on Earth, something was sitting here, in this room. We can’t just leave it.”

François was getting a creepy feeling. The black patch behind the Jenkins kept growing.

THEY GAVE UP. Ben had found a plate fixed to the bulkhead. He’d been trying to break it loose and he finally took a swipe at it with a wrench. It broke away and disappeared into the darkness. “Maybe the name of the place they came from,” he said.

Leah touched the spot where the plate had been. “Or maybe the Men’s Room.”

They went through an opening into a connecting tube. Toward a cube several times the size of the one they were leaving. “No,” said François. “Your time’s up. Come back.”

“It’ll just take a minute, François,” said Leah. “We’re just going to take a quick look. Then we’ll come right back.”

He wondered whether the tubes had originally been transparent. They looked different from the interior, a different shade of gray, and were smeared rather than flaking.

He took a deep breath. “Bill, I don’t much like the way this is going.

“Nor do I, François.”

He counted off another minute. “Ben,” he said, finally, “that’s enough. Come back.”

“We’re on our way.” They’d entered the new cube, which consisted of another chamber and several doorways.

He wondered if, in some oddball way, they felt secure inside the object. Maybe if they were on the bridge, where they could see the omega closing in, they’d hustle a bit more. Behind him, Eagle and Tolya stood watching, saying nothing, hanging on to each other. François couldn’t resist: “Doesn’t look like such a hot idea now, guys, does it?”

“Nyet,” said Tolya.

He turned back to the AI: “Bill, put everything we have into a package and transmit to Union. Everything on the cloud, and on this damned thing. Whatever it is.”

“It will take a minute or two.”

“All right. Just do it.”

The omega brightened. A series of lightning bolts.

“Nothing here,” said Ben. He swept his light around the interior. Some objects were anchored to the deck. It was impossible to determine what they had been. Chairs, maybe. Or consoles. Or, for all they knew, altars. And boxes on either side of an exit. Cabinets, maybe. Leah cut one open, flashed her light inside. “Ben,” she said, “look at this.”