He had recovered from the panic that overtook him in the garden, but his cowardice had seeped into the others like a sickness. They spoke little. They had not once tried to get away, nor balked at our commands. Henke was frightened and trying to hide it; he wanted them to give him an excuse to lash out. I could hear it in the way he directed them, see it in the way he shoved a bit too hard, snarled a bit too loud, never holstered his weapon. I let him bully and bluster. I was afraid that if he stopped, the silence would overwhelm us.

Malachi tapped the door’s control panel. The now-familiar MEDICAL QUARANTINE IN EFFECT glowed red on the screen. He attached his skeleton key and got to work. He was growing more practiced at bypassing the locks, although some still defeated him. His gestures were quick and nervous. But he had not failed us. He had never failed us, not once since he walked out of the desert six years ago, so lost and alone after being turned away from the border so many times. I needed to remember that, to tamp down the impatience. He would not fail us.

The warning vanished. The door opened, and the dormancy lights filled the room beyond. I was growing to hate those lights and the bleak red stain they cast over everything.

The mainframe control center was a C-shaped room that curved around a large, cylindrical chamber about ten meters in diameter. Behind the transparent wall, the ship’s computing core stretched into the levels above and below. The machines flickered with pinprick lights of blue, white, red, and green. There was a slight hum in the air. After so much darkness, so much quiet, those signs of activity were reassuring. The ship had been waiting for us. It needed only to be awoken.

“I don’t like how cold it is,” Malachi said. “The computing core is still functional. It should be warm in here.”

“I noticed that too,” Dag said.

“The whole ship is cold,” Panya pointed out. “It’s been abandoned for ten years.”

“I know, but the machinery—”

“Don’t get distracted,” I said. “Start with the radio.”

Malachi hesitated before answering, “On it.”

There were four dead in the room. Two women, two men, all seated at computer terminals. They wore SPEC uniforms. They were, like all the others, mummified to brown husks. Like the bodies in the garden, they bore no obvious external injuries. There had been no violence here.

To Henke I said, “Get these out of the way.”

He grunted wordlessly and dragged the corpses to the far side of the room, where he pushed their faces into the wall. I watched him for a moment, then turned to the hostages. I did not draw my weapon, but I did put my hand on the holster and hoped it looked like a subtle threat rather than a nervous gesture.