I’m desperate to see more! I press my face against the hex. It burns, but I resist the urge to pull away. There’s pain, yes, and it’s probably going to leave a mark. I should go back to the lab and find a camera, but come on. No one would have that presence of mind at a time like this.

I groan as my face aches, but I’m rewarded with a better view.

The alien’s claw—er… I’ll call it a hand. That’s less scary. The alien’s hand has three triangular fingers, each one with articulation points. Knuckles, I guess. They can close up into a raindrop shape or widen out to a sort of three-legged starfish.

The skin is weird. It looks like brownish-black rock. It’s irregular and bumpy, like someone carved the hand out of granite and hasn’t gotten around to smoothing it out yet. Natural armor, maybe? Like a turtle shell but less organized?

There’s an arm too. I can barely see it from this angle, no matter how hard I stupidly press my face into the Hot Wall of Pain. But there’s definitely an arm leading away from the hand. I mean, there’d have to be, right? Not just a magic floating hand.

I can’t take the pain anymore. I pull my head away. I feel my face. It’s pretty raw, but there aren’t any blisters.

Tap-tap-tap.

The alien is tapping the clear hex with a finger. So I flick it with my finger three times.

It taps the hex again, three times. So I tap again as well.

Then comes something creepy. The cla—hand—retreats and returns with an object and holds it against the clear hexagon. Whatever it is, it’s small. I let myself drift closer to the wall for a better look. The heat warms my face.

The object is xenonite, of course. It’s about a half-inch high and finely detailed. It looks like a doll. But it has an oversized head and really thick arms and legs—

“Oh!”

It’s me. It’s a teeny, tiny Russian Orlan-MKS2 EVA suit. That’s all they’ve seen of me so far.

Another hand shows up. Hey, I have two hands, so I shouldn’t be surprised that they do too. The second hand holds a model of the Hail Mary. It looks to be at the same scale as the figurine of me. The hands then push the little me into the little Hail Mary’s airlock.

Pretty clear. It’s saying, Go back into your ship.

I give a thumbs-up. The alien releases Mini-Me and the Hail Mary model to float away. Then it contorts a hand into something resembling a thumbs-up. It’s just two fingers curled into a ball with the third pointed up. At least it’s not the middle one that’s pointed up.