While the two humans pulled some supply pacs from the locker I wasn’t in and got settled, I adjusted the drones’ code to let them record. Once I collected enough data, I could start the analysis in background.

As Ship disengaged from the lock and started its trip to Milu, I was already watching my new show again.

*   *   *

It took twenty cycles by Ship’s local time to get to Milu.

I hadn’t expected it to bother me. I’ve been in transport boxes and cubicles for much longer, and a lot of those trips were before I hacked my governor module and started downloading media. But I wasn’t used to traveling as cargo anymore, even with new shows, serials, and several hundred books to go through. The transient rest tube hadn’t bothered me, and I had spent three other transport trips, including the one with ART, mostly without moving. I wasn’t sure what the difference was. Okay, maybe I was sure: in all the other spaces, I’d had the ability to move whenever I wanted.

Whatever, it was a relief when Ship reported that it was on approach to Milu. Two minutes later I realized I was picking up the station feed, but there was nothing on it. Usually there’s traffic and docking information, potential navigation hazards, travelers’ news, that kind of thing, but here there was nothing. I checked with Ship, who reported that there was no other traffic on approach, but this matched with its previous experiences docking at this station. (I had watched a serial once that featured a dead haunted station and okay, that was unlikely, but it’s better to make sure.)

The silence was still weirdly unnerving. The station was triangle-shaped and smaller than RaviHyral. The scan showed two ships in dock and a scatter of shuttles, a fraction of its capacity.

Ship had moved into docking position before I finally heard anything on the feed. The welcome message sounded normal enough, but the station index looked like the info system had glitched. There was a list of businesses and services, but each entry had been updated with a closed/inactive notice. So the place might not be haunted, but it was teetering on the edge of dead/inactive status.

While I waited for Ship to finish docking, I checked the results of my analysis. Wilken and Gerth were security consultants, hired by a fact-finding research group contracted by GoodNightLander Independent. GI had filed the abandonment markers on GrayCris’ deserted terraforming facility, and set up the tractor array to protect it from disintegration, and now they were starting the process to take formal possession. The research group’s job was to go into the facility and to make a report on its status.