Not so the second corpse. That one, a man, had been strapped to the opposite wall with a cargo tie. The valve of a gas canister had been jammed into his mouth. His face was parched and burnt. His lips, stretched around the canister valve, were blackened and cracked.

“I don’t like this,” Malachi said. “What the fuck is that—is that liquid helium? What happened here?”

After encountering so many dead, passing through so many cold, dark crypts, the restful quiescence of this white-haired woman, of those who had huddled in the garden, of the crew of the computing core, was every bit as unsettling as the violent deaths. I had grown almost numb to the brutalized corpses everywhere—almost—but I could not stop staring at Dr. Summers with her arms crossed peacefully over her chest, and the man who had died so horribly just beyond.

Malachi’s voice in my ear: “I found the last entry recorded into the system. It’s a personal log from an M. Summers.”

The screen on the workstation flickered. The blue vanished, replaced at once by the face of Dr. Summers. She looked younger than I had expected; her light brown skin was creased only in laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes were bloodshot, and there were tears on her cheeks. She took a breath before speaking.

“I might well be the last one left.” Her voice was thin, soft, her accent southern hemisphere Oceania. “I haven’t heard anything for over an hour. It’s quiet outside. The captain hasn’t answered since she initiated the medical quarantine. I told her what happened with Saul. I didn’t want to hurt him. He attacked me, and I tried to incapacitate him. He wouldn’t stop moving. I didn’t know what else to do. I told the captain everything. I take full responsibility for his death. I am so sorry for his children. Tell them I am so very, very sorry. That was—” A glance down and to the left. “Seventy-three minutes ago. By the time you find this, you’ll likely know what’s happening out there. You’ll certainly know more than I do. But I want you to know—whoever finds this—I want you to know that we weren’t careless.”

I glanced at Malachi through the glass, but he was watching his own screen.