There’s another ship in this system with me. Those flashes of light—those were its engines. It’s Astrophage-powered. Just like the Hail Mary. But the design, the shape—it’s nothing like any spacecraft I’ve ever seen. The whole thing is made of huge, flat surfaces—the worst possible way to make a pressure vessel. No one in their right mind would make a ship that shape.

No one on Earth would, anyway.

I blink a few times at what I’m seeing. I gulp.

This… this is an alien spacecraft. Made by aliens. Aliens intelligent enough to make a spacecraft.

Humanity isn’t alone in the universe. And I’ve just met our neighbors.

“Holy fucking shit!”

Chapter 7

A flood of thoughts hit me all at the same time: We’re not alone. This is an alien. That ship is weird, how does the engineering of that work? Do they live here? Is this their star? Am I starting an interplanetary incident by wandering into alien territory?!

“Breathe,” I tell myself.

Okay, one thing at a time. What if this is another ship from Earth? One I don’t remember? Heck, it took me a few days to remember my name. Maybe Earth sent multiple ships with different designs? Like, for redundancy or to increase the odds that at least one of them works. Maybe that ship is the Praise Allah or the Blessings of Vishnu or something.

I look all around the control room. There are screens and controls for everything, but there’s nothing for a radio. The EVA panel has some radio controls, but that’s obviously just for talking to crewmates when they’re outside.

If they’d sent multiple ships, surely they would have had some radio system so we could talk to each other.

Also, that ship… it’s insane.

I cycle through the navigation console screens until I find the Radar panel. I’d noticed it earlier, but didn’t think much of it. I assume it’s there so I can get near asteroids or other objects and not collide with them.

After a few halting attempts, I manage to turn it on. It immediately spots the other ship and sounds an alarm. The shrill noise hurts my ears.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I say. I frantically scan the panel until I see a button labeled “Mute Proximity Alert.” I press it and the noise stops.

I scan the rest of the screen. There’s a lot of data here, all in a window titled “BLIP-A.” I guess if there were multiple contacts I’d get multiple windows. Whatever. It’s all just raw numbers about the reading. Nothing useful like an isometric Star Trek scan or anything.

“Velocity” is zero. They have matched my velocity exactly. That can’t be a coincidence.