“No. Beta Eridani was a classic by-the-book arrival procedure. Kavli spent a couple of months decelerating down from point-eight-C. She arrived in-system this February. We sent a squadron of astronomy satellites through her portal. So far all standard and good; my people know what they’re doing.” He waved a hand at the semicircular room at the end of the labs, nearest the portal to Nkya. It was a control center, with two lines of big, high-resolution holographic windows all along the curving wall. Several desks had smaller screen stacks, with senior researchers and their gaggle of graduate astronomers drooling over images of strange, dark planetary crescents, orbital paths, fluctuating data tables, star maps, and rainbow graphics that to me resembled bad abstract art. “We picked up the signal straight away. Hard not to. It was multispectral, low power but constant.”

“Signal?” Alik barked in surprise. “Nobody said this was an active artifact. What the fuck are you sending us to?”

Geovanni gave Yuri a quick, resentful glance. “I don’t know. I don’t have clearance.”

“Go on, please,” I told him. “What happened after you detected the signal?”

“It was just a beacon signal, coming from the fourth planet: Nkya. So we followed protocol and informed Alpha Defense. A robot lander was flown down from orbit, keeping a minimum designated quarantine distance from the source. Once the lander put a portal on the surface, we started sending equipment through.” He pointed at the big circular portal at the end of the egress chamber. “I’ve never set up a base camp so fast. Just about the first thing we sent through was a twelve-person science ranger vehicle. Connexion security drove it and two Alpha Defense officers out to the artifact and came straight back. That was ten days ago. Next thing I know, Alpha Defense has ruled the whole expedition ultra-classified, and I get orders to send a secondary base through. That’s a joke, because it’s actually better than base camp; it even includes its own hospital, for crap’s sake. Some trucks hauled it out to the artifact, and an engineering crew set it up. They only got back yesterday. The preliminary science team left seven days ago, with another convoy of trucks packed with research equipment. Now you guys are here, and I’ve been ordered to give you total priority.”

“Sorry about that,” Loi said.

“Why?” I asked him. “Everyone is doing their job.”

The kid blushed, but had the smarts enough to shut up.