‘Yes,’ Ty agreed, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a slim torch.

He shone the light into the cavity and discovered that, as he suspected, the creature had been thoroughly gutted. The light played over something smooth, and he reached in past the jagged edges of the hole and touched it. To his surprise, it was very slightly warm to the touch. He shoved the handle end of his torch inside his mouth, to free his hands, then pushed both hands deep inside the cavity.

The object nestling inside the carapace was roughly conical in shape, its blunted point facing up towards him. Two bars like handles extended out and then upwards from the base of the cone, which at least gave him something to grab hold of.

Ty got a good grip on the object and lifted it out. Then Corso grabbed one handle, and together they lowered it to the deck. It was a pale cobalt-blue colour, and seemed to glow with a faint iridescence. There was something undeniably alien about the device, some nameless quality of otherness that sent a tingle of fear and excitement racing down Ty’s spine.

Corso peered at it with clear alarm. ‘It’s not radioactive, is it?’

‘Not according to the instruments,’ replied Ty. ‘If it was, we’d have known long before we even brought it on board. I don’t know what could be causing that glow.’

Suddenly Ty heard a sound, like whispers mixed with static, cutting through his thoughts and once again rising to a high-pitched whistle before fading to nothing. He glanced over at Dakota and saw her wince and cover her eyes with one hand.

‘I can hear it again,’ she murmured. ‘The Mos Hadroch, I mean. I think something’s just happened.’

Corso put up one hand to touch the comms-bead in his ear.

‘That’s fine, Dan,’ he said after a few moments. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

He turned back to face them. ‘Perez says half the primary data stacks just spontaneously rebooted themselves without explanation. It could be there’s someone still hidden on the frigate and trying to sabotage us before we can jump out of this system.’

Dakota shook her head. ‘No, it’s the Mos Hadroch. I’m certain of it.’

‘Then what the hell is it doing now?’ Corso demanded.

‘I think,’ she replied carefully, ‘it just wants to know who we are.’

Chapter Nineteen

Two hours later, the primary stacks had recovered, whereupon Dakota jumped the Mjollnir half a light-year outside the Redstone system. A day later the frigate jumped more than a hundred and fifty light-years, to a point deep inside the Hyades Cluster.

The frigate’s astrogational systems started matching the local stellar population against maps of known stars, quickly identifying a reddish-orange star no more than two or three light-years distant as Epsilon Tauri.