The blackness of space gone, replaced with the blackness of a dark tunnel. I turn on the helmet lamps and angle my head to shine light through the porthole.

The end of the tunnel is too close. I don’t mean I’m bothered by it. I mean the end of it is not 20 feet away. It’s more like 10 feet. And while the rest of the tunnel is made of gray and tan blotchy xenonite, the wall at the end is a hexagonal pattern of random colors.

They didn’t just connect a tunnel. They connected my airlock to theirs, with a wall in the middle.

Clever.

I close the inner airlock door with me inside and depressurize it. I spin the outer door’s hatch handle and push. It opens without resistance. The tunnel is a vacuum—at least, it is on my side of the divider.

I think I see. This is a test. They had all the same concerns I had. Attach it, let me pressurize my half with my air, and see what happens. Either it works or it doesn’t. If it works, great! If not, they’ll try something else. Or maybe ask me to try something.

Okay. Let’s see.

I tell the airlock to repressurize. It refuses—the outer door is open. Nice to know that safety interlock is there, but I’ll have to work around it.

It’s not hard—there’s a manual relief valve that will just let air from the ship into the airlock. It bypasses all computer controls. You don’t want someone to die because of a software malfunction, right?

I open the relief valve. Air rushes in from the Hail Mary and, with the airlock wide open, into the tunnel. Within three minutes, the airflow slows and then stops. My suit readings tell me there’s 400 hectopascals of pressure outside. The Hail Mary has equalized with my part of the tunnel.

I close the relief valve and wait. I watch the external pressure gauge on my EVA suit. The pressure stays put at 400 hectopascals. We have a good seal.

Eridians know how to glue xenonite to aluminum. Of course they do. Aluminum’s an element, and any species that could invent xenonite in the first place must know their way around the periodic table a thousand times better than we do.

Time for a leap of faith. I pop the seals of the EVA suit and climb out the back. The strong smell of ammonia permeates the air but it’s otherwise breathable. It’s my own air supply, after all. I push the EVA suit back toward the airlock. The helmet lamps are my only source of light, so I finagle the suit so the lights stay pointed down the tunnel.

I float over to the mystery wall and reach out to touch it, but stop short. I can feel the heat even from a few inches away. Eridians like it hot.