“Not too close,” Leox said, then proved it by firing the tow. It lanced through empty space before colliding with the hull of Nan’s ship. With a shimmer of energy, the electromagnetic clamp kicked in. “All righty. Now we just have to get to the station before being incinerated to atoms.”

Reath tried not to let his reaction show, but he must not have done a good job, because Affie said, “Don’t scare the landlubbers.”

“We’ve only got forty-five seconds left,” Leox said, and Affie’s jaw dropped. Apparently the situation was just as scary as Reath had thought.

But Leox (and, possibly, Geode?) took them around the curve of the spherical station a full two seconds before outer space filled with a flash of brilliant white light. Reath shielded his eyes with his arm and was still nearly blinded for a moment.

When he could sort of see again, he said, “That means we made it, right?”

Leox put his hands behind his head. “Am I good or what?”

Before anyone could board the station, a landing party had to make certain the interior was safe. Dez had asked to lead the way; Affie agreed to go on behalf of the Vessel crew.

Reath volunteered readily, though he had questions. “Should we conduct more scans first? There could be dimensions to this station we don’t understand. Risks we haven’t guessed.”

“That’s why they call it adventure.” Dez was already double-checking settings on his wristband equipment, pacing near the airlock. “We already checked the atmosphere, so we know we can breathe. Anything else, we’ll handle as it comes.”

As Leox carefully maneuvered the Vessel into docking position on the central ring, Reath asked Affie, “Have you explored lots of abandoned old places? Are there tons of things like this out here?”

“First time,” she said brightly, like there was zero chance they were about to die.

Maybe that was true. Look at it this way, he told himself. You’re doing research with primary sources. Getting the information straight from the source, to share with others later. It helped, thinking that the last phase of this task would be simply writing it all down.

Their airlock spun open. Light streamed in, almost blinding at first, and Reath momentarily feared another solar flare. His eyes must have adjusted to the light more slowly than Dez’s, because he whispered, “Would you look at that?”