Lana’s fingers started zooming on their own, and the console keys changed colors as she pressed them faster and faster.

“This is so cool!” She smiled. “This ship is a Gretqa-C9 type, and you were right—it’s a freighter. It was built by the …” She slowed as she carefully pronounced the name, “In-thid-lon. That’s the same race as the corpse we found.” A three-dimensional image flickered to life next to the woman. It looked like the corpse they found, only this one stood tall and proud with its arms spread to the sides. The image rotated slowly, showing more of the short fleshy bristles growing all over its body.

Nori gasped. “How did you do that?”

Lana grinned. “As you said - I’m the Expert. Hmm, I think I’m going to make that my new catchphrase.”

“Anything else interesting?”

“I can access the ship’s main logs, but it’s weird—there’s nothing on it. It’s like it’s been scrubbed. Wait a minute … “ The Navigator frowned slightly as Lana closed her eyes, her hands still hovering over the light console. “I’m getting an option from my Path to recover the last entry. I’m going for it.”

Several long seconds passed, then the Expert’s eyes flew open. “It worked!”

“What have you found?” Nori asked.

“The captain … his name is too hard to pronounce, and several others like him … received one billion piTec each to, and I quote: ‘Infuse the third star of the Helios system.’ There’s a progression indicator here. It says he only used ninety-nine percent of the cargo.”

Nori frowned. “PiTec? You mean the stuff that came out of his body?”

Lana looked at her helplessly. “I guess? But why would the stuff the captain hauled be on his body? Do you think that’s the one percent that was missing?”

Nori shook her head. “We only got a few thousand piTec out of him, so I’d say it's safe to assume that’s not where he stored the ten million the logs claimed were never used. But I think we just discovered an important piece of the puzzle.”

“What piece?”

“The reason why this ship was shot down in the first place. Remember that mounted cylinder the other ship took from this one? I’m betting that’s where the piTec was stored. Someone wanted to rob the piTec the captain saved for himself.”

Lana sighed. “There’s just more and more questions. I can’t find any other information on this thing. I wish there was an alien version of Wikipedia here.” She withdrew her hands from the console. “Now what?”

As if to answer her question, Nathan approached the console. As soon as he put his hands on it, a series of clicks came from the first room they checked and the light within turned blue.

“Nathan, did you just unlock all the doors in that room?”