He sighed, not wanting to say. After a moment he met her intent stare and replied in a cold, quiet tone, his shoulders tensing as he spoke, “It looks like two halves of a missile, Laurie,” he said, finally, “or…” and this took all his strength to say, “two halves of some kind of container.”

They went silent, the implications too stark to warrant further discussion.

* * *

Above them, acute eyes tracked the Transom’s circular path, waiting. They were waiting to see whether the Transom’s probe discovered anything. They were waiting to see if the threat would pass, to see whether the team of humans would succeed in their task, or fail, saving them from having to take action.

They were listening to see what messages the ship transmitted home, ready to intercept them, ready to stop them from reaching their source if necessary, and ready to stop more from following if that was necessary. There had been some radio messages they had not been able to decode, but then there had also been several others that had been easily decipherable. As long as these messages continued to inform them of the probe’s progress, they would let the ship be.

* * *

Each night since the King’s Transom had left, Madeline and Neal had gathered in his small lodger’s room at 11pm, the prearranged time when they would use their Secure Field Radio, or ‘SurFeR’ as they had been dubbed, to speak with James and Laurie.

It was now 11:30, and they had not heard anything. Madeline had always been very excited for these calls, and Neal had as well, to some degree. But some small part of him had always worried, slightly afraid of what they might discover out there. The silence of the radio this night had him spooked, and Madeline had subconsciously picked up on that concern and become unsettled herself, though she was keeping up an appearance of calm as they sipped a dubious local fruit juice and made small talk.

The sudden beep from the radio that lay between them on the single bed was startling. Madeline made an ‘I-told-you-so’ face as she reached for the green plastic radio that looked like a 1990s cell phone, complete with oversized rubber aerial.

“Where have you been?” she said into the handset.

“Yeah, sorry for the delay, we’ve been…” there was a pause on the other end, “…trying to figure something out.” came James’ voice over the two-way.

There was a slight delay as each of the radios went through the lengthy process of decoding each signal, and then thoroughly encrypting the return signal. The stilted conversation continued with Madeline asking, “What kind of something, James? Are you two OK?”