“Was there any warning?” Simon asked as he joined his communications expert, Curtis, in the control room. The pair were alone, everyone else having gone to sleep hours earlier when the night cycle began. “Perhaps a message I failed to notice?”

  Curtis frowned. He was a small man, the top of his head bald and his face long and angular, the length of his nose exacerbated by his thin oval glasses. The frown pushed those glasses up the tiniest bit.

  “No, you didn’t miss anything,” Curtis said. A flick of his fingers, and the screen before them expanded its image of the world gate powering down. At its five-mile-wide center, just a speck in the distance, was a shuttle headed in their direction. “Nothing from OPC, nor any word from Salus. This is…highly unusual.”

  Simon crossed his arms, mirroring Curtis’s frown. Salus was the planet connected to the world gate, and where the bulk of their supplies came from every week. According to the hailing data, the shuttle carried Planetary Director Jakob Lemley. From what little Simon could look up in the OPC database, Lemley led terraforming efforts for the planet Vasth, two jumps away. They’d never interacted once. For a director to arrive on another station, unannounced, and in the middle of the night…

  “Do you think he’s here about the Artifact?” Simon asked.

  “I think there’s a very good chance the answer to that question is yes.”

  Simon’s stomach was an acid-filled pit at the best of times, and it clenched tightly now.

  “Let the director know I’ll be there to greet him in the docking bay,” he said. “Also, send an alert to Daksh. I want him nearby until we’re sure nothing is amiss.”

  “Will do,” Curtis said. “And I’ll make sure he knows it’s your order, not mine. You know how cranky Daksh gets when his sleep is disrupted.”

  It was meant as a joke, Curtis trying to break the tension. Daksh, while a brilliant mathematician, was also the research station’s lone security officer. There were exactly two weapons on the entire station. One was locked inside Simon’s office. The other, in a safe inside Daksh’s room.

  Simon exited the control room and walked the main corridor through the station, guided by the faint white lights marking the intersection of the wall and floor. There was no need to branch off or change direction to reach the docking bay. The station was one giant ring, set to rotate at a precisely calculated speed so that, as long as one was in one of the rooms attached to the main outside corridor, one experienced gravity akin to that on Taneth. Two elevators could take you from one side to the other, if you were willing to endure a bit of stomach-churning shifting into weightlessness and then the switching of what felt like up and down.

  The docking bay was close enough that he could be spared that discomfort. Simon passed by the closed doors of various laboratories, the windows across their fronts all dark. A month ago, they would have been buzzing with life even at this late hour. The discovery of the Artifact had driven everyone to extremes, but after two weeks of that, Simon had forced strict sleep schedule protocols to prevent his best and brightest from burning out.

  Simon paused before the docking bay door and hesitated. It was one of the few locations with restricted access; a near-invisible camera located above the door scanned his face and unlocked it automatically. A faint little light just above the door handle switched from red to green, and Simon pushed it open and entered.

  Within was a small, secure room with reinforced walls and a circular opening. Clamps on the outside of the station would have grabbed onto sturdy bars built into the shuttle, holding it in place as the docking tube extended and their pressure was equalized. Simon stood before the tube’s exit, watching the numbers on a screen beside it slowly shift from red to orange to green. Pressure fully equalized. Tunnel connection secured with zero leaks. The entrance deemed safe, it opened, and in stepped Planetary Director Jakob Lemley.

  “Welcome to Research Station 79,” Simon said, extending his hand. “Where’s your pilot?”

  “I flew the shuttle here myself,” Lemley said, accepting the handshake with a firm grasp. He was an older man, the white of the stubble around his mouth and the curls around his ears in stark contrast to his black skin. He was dressed in his OPC finest, dark blue trimmed with gold around the wrists, belt, and heels. Attached to his vest was a pin bearing four crimson bars underneath a silver orb, establishing him as a planetary director, one of the highest ranks available within the organization.

  “Is that so?” Simon said, the unusual nature of a planetary director traveling alone further heightening his worry. “Well, I suppose that is one less room we need to allocate. I wish you’d given us word of your visit ahead of time so I could give you a proper welcome.”

  “Your words are chastisement dressed as a greeting,” Lemley said. “Do better, Director.”

  The man’s deep voice cracked over Simon like a whip, hard and commanding despite his pleasant smile.

  “Forgive me,” Simon said. “My pride as station director would have me present a fine first impression, something the late hour and unexpected arrival make difficult. I’m sure you understand, as a fellow director, the desire to showcase your work in its best light.”

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  “I do,” Lemley said, walking past Simon toward the door. “But I arrived when I did for good reason, Director. I do not want pomp and circumstance, nor the greetings of every scientist aboard.”

  He stopped at the entrance to the main corridor and turned.

  “What I want,” he said, “is to see the Artifact.”

  *

  The holding area of the Artifact had taken a week to convert from a conference bay into alien tech housing. Given how every scientist on the station was now dedicating their work to deciphering its glyphs, studying its surface, and scanning the strange, elusive signals it fired out, they needed a large, open space for easy access.

  The Artifact was set in the center of the room. Despite its octahedral shape, there was no need to brace it with any supports. Somehow, despite touching the floor with the sharpest of points, no thicker than a needle, it remained perfectly balanced and able to support its fifty tons. From tip to tip, it was twenty feet tall, its surface seemingly a polished, unblemished black. It was only when it was carefully examined that the myriad swirls, glyphs, and markings became visible.

  Dozens of sensors, detectors, and paper-covered desks formed a circle around the Artifact. It loomed within them like an object of worship. To a few of the scientists here, Simon suspected it was nearing that level of dedication.

  Lemley approached the Artifact confidently, without any of the hesitation and awe that overcame most people who first encountered it. The director put a hand on its surface, slowly running his fingers along one of the sharp edges of the octahedron.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said softly.

  Simon cleared his throat.

  “The work we’ve done here has been highly classified by the OPC,” he said. “What have they shared with you of our investigations?”

  “Oh, I’ve known everything since you first found this beauty buried in Majus’s dirt,” Lemley said. “I’ve wanted to look upon it ever since, but I’m sure you understand how the burdens of managing a planet prevented that.”

  Simon nodded, trying to appear calm while studying every reaction Lemley made, wary about what had brought the director here. Multiple members of OPC had tried to steal control of the Artifact from Simon, insisting he was too young and his facility too poorly staffed. They wanted the Artifact transported to their stations and worlds instead. Simon had used the smallness and distance of his outpost to his advantage. If the Artifact was dangerous, then it was best to keep it where it was, away from any populated world and with a small, controlled group to interact with it.

  The argument had succeeded so far, but Simon suspected he was working on borrowed time. Lemley’s arrival seemed to confirm that.

  “There are scientists on Eden who would offer up their own children to place their hands on something so strange and wondrous,” Lemley said. He shook his head. “But tell me, have you discerned how to activate it? Or has someone discovered a way to interface with it?”

  Simon was glad the director’s back was to him. It made lying that much easier.

  “So far, we have made a single attempt to fully bring the Artifact to life,” he said. “To poor results.”

  Lemley withdrew his hand from the immaculate surface that was so hard, so deep, it resembled onyx. It wasn’t onyx, though. No one knew what it was. It was impossible to chip for a sample, and the vast majority of scans, from thermal to radiation to ultrasound, were all utterly rebuked, to the madness of many of Simon’s scientists.

  “Is that so?” Lemley said. “A shame. The mysteries of the universe seem forever locked to us, do they not? Perhaps that is for the best. There is no promise that the truths we find will not blind our eyes and burn away our bodies.”

  “Strange words for a scientist,” Simon said, and he forced a false smile. “Are we not dedicated to uncovering the truth, however harsh it may at first seem?”

  “I am not a scientist…not anymore.” Lemley turned away from the Artifact. “I am a builder of worlds and protector of life.”

  Despite being severely outranked, Simon could take the suspense no longer.

  “Now that you have seen the Artifact, I ask that you forgive my impertinence,” he said. “But might you explain the purpose of your visit?”

  Lemley hesitated.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “I will explain tomorrow, I promise. Until then, the trip was long, and I seek a bed to rest.”

  Hardly satisfying, but at least there was hope for an explanation.

  “Of course,” Simon said, leading them to the main corridor. “This way, please.”

  The occasional visitor was expected at a research station, and so a single room was always prepared for guests. It wasn’t much, barely more than a closet with a bed and a washroom. A planetary director deserved far better, and it was expected of Simon to offer up his own room during the director’s stay, but Simon risked the appearance of rudeness and chose not to do so. The way Lemley had looked upon the Artifact left Simon unsettled.

  “Sleep well,” Simon said as the door to the guest room slid shut. That done, he quickly hurried down the corridor, past the personal rooms of other scientists and workers. Three doors down, he found one open, and Daksh waiting within. He was a burly man, his dark hair cut short, his brown eyes professionally wary. His uniform was wrinkled, likely the one he’d worn earlier in the day, hastily donned. His firearm was holstered at his hip, a slender device that would fire multiple needles connected to electric wires to stun and pacify as needed. No bullets, not when a single puncture could spell doom for an entire research station.

  “What’s wrong?” Daksh asked. “Curtis told me about our unexpected guest, and I don’t like the look in your eye.”

  Simon glanced over his shoulder, toward the exit.

  “Nothing yet, but I sense trouble coming. I want you stationed outside Lemley’s room at all times. I don’t care about his rank, and I don’t care about any excuses he offers. I want him going nowhere alone, is that clear?”

  Daksh’s hand drifted to the handle of his stun gun.

  “Understood,” he said. The pair exited the room, and Simon watched the security officer take up position with his back against the wall beside the guest room door. It should have made him feel better.

  It didn’t.

  Or has someone discovered a way to interface with it?

  Simon returned to his office and the little safe kept in a corner, a false argentea plant resting atop it. A five-number combination later, he pulled the safe door open and withdrew his own stun gun.

  That done, he returned to his younger brother’s room, settled into the chair beside the bed with the gun resting on his lap, and let the steady rhythm of the heart monitor lull him into an uneasy sleep.