She gazed down at her terminal.  “I’ve used medical nanites to start building up a profile of a living alien,” she added.  “I’m reluctant to risk more invasive procedures until we have an excellent idea of how their bodies will respond.  The injured alien has been placed in a stasis capsule until we can work out how best to proceed with treatment.  For the moment, sir, there isn't much more we can do.”

Fitzwilliam smiled.  “Should we place them all in stasis?”

“If we had the capsules to spare, I’d recommend it,” the doctor said.  “As it is, I'm worried about the condition of several of the former POWs.  I’d prefer to put them in stasis if their condition worsens.”

Ted sighed.  “What is their condition?”

“Drugged, mainly,” the doctor said.  “Varying levels of dosage.  My subordinates and I have had a chance to inspect a handful of the POWs; there's very little actual damage, but there are signs that the aliens took blood and skin samples.  I don’t think they did anything more invasive themselves, at least to the surviving prisoners.”

“Anyone they killed might have been forgotten,” Ted commented.  Drugged as they were, the prisoners might not have noticed if they’d lost friends or family to the aliens.  “Or simply held at another compound.”

“We will ask them when they recover enough to talk to us,” the doctor assured him.  “For the moment, however, we can only treat their withdrawal symptoms and pray none of them die.”

“I have a question,” Fitzwilliam said.  “Couldn’t we drug them ourselves?”

“Keep them on the drugs, you mean?”  The doctor shook her head.  “Quite apart from the violation of medical ethics, Commander, the human body isn't designed for long-term addiction to anything.  Nor do we have the supplies to start easing them off the drugs.  All we can do is let them slowly clear their own systems and clean up the mess.”

“Understood,” Ted said.  “Dismissed, doctor.”

He watched the doctor leave the compartment, then turned to Fitzwilliam.  “Is there an alien city, after all?”

“It looks that way,” Fitzwilliam confirmed.  “There’s nothing to be detected from orbit, but we flew a couple of drones over the ocean and picked up low-level emissions from below the waves.  We don’t have any suitable probes to drop into the water ...”

“We could put one together,” the Chief Engineer suggested.  “It wouldn’t take too long, if we recycle a number of spare parts.”

“We can't stay in this system for much longer,” Ted said.  He considered it for a long moment, then shook his head.  “We’ll come back, one day, and uncover the aliens then.”

“There is another possibility,” Farley pointed out.  “We could drop rocks on the alien city from orbit.”