I watch the Petrovascope. A bead of sweat separates from my forehead and floats away. I feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest.

Then, the rear of the ship lights up in the Petrova frequency for one second. Just like I did.

“Wow!”

I flick the drive on and off several times: three short bursts, a long one, and one more short one. There’s no message there. I just want to see what they do with it.

They were more prepared this time. Within seconds, the other ship repeats the pattern.

I gasp. And I smile. Then I wince. Then I smile again. This is a lot to take in.

That was too fast for any probe to respond. If it had remote control or something, the controllers would have to be at least a few light-minutes away—there’s just nothing around here that could be housing them.

There is an intelligent life-form aboard that ship. I am about 200 meters away from an honest-to-God alien!

I mean… my ship is powered by aliens. But this new one is intelligent!

Oh my gosh! This is it! First Contact! I’m the guy! I’m the guy who meets aliens for the first time!

The Blip-A (that’s what I’m calling their ship for now) fires up its engines again briefly. I watch closely to memorize the sequence, but it’s just a single low-intensity light. They’re not signaling. They’re maneuvering.

I check the Radar panel. Sure enough, the Blip-A brings itself alongside the Hail Mary and holds position at 217 meters.

I flick through the Scientific panel to bring the normal telescopic cameras back up. The Petrovascope’s normal-light camera is just to orient things for the main scope itself. The telescope has much better resolution and clarity. I guess I’m too excited to think clearly because it took me until now to think of it.

The image is far clearer through the main telescope. I guess it’s just an insanely high-resolution camera, because I can still zoom in and out with no loss of clarity. I have a very good view of the Blip-A now.

The ship’s hull is a mottled gray and tan. The pattern seems random and smooth, like someone started mixing paint but stopped way too early.

I spot motion in the corner of the screen. An irregular-shaped object slides along a track in the hull. It’s a stalk sticking up with five articulated “arms” coming out of the top. Each arm has a clamp-like “hand” on the end.

It’s only now that I notice a network of the tracks all along the hull.

It’s a robot. Something controlled from the inside. At least, I assume it is. It doesn’t look like a little green man, and it certainly doesn’t look like an alien EVA suit.

Not that I have any idea what either of those things would look like.