Lankin took us to the central compartment, which ran the full height of the ship. It was divided into three levels by walkway grids, but without any handrails. All the bulkhead walls were made of a smooth, dull metal that looked like it had been extruded as a single unit, with no displays or control panels visible anywhere. The only breaks in its surface were small life-support grilles.

Several science techs were working inside, their instruments stuck to the bulkheads. Optical cables formed a messy spider’s web, hanging between them and three G8Turings encased in their protective black metal cases, ribbed by cooling fins.

Lankin climbed a rope ladder up to the middle walkway.

“We’re calling this the bridge,” he said, “because this is what seemed to be in charge.”

There was a two-meter-diameter sphere suspended in the center of the chamber by ten radial rods as wide as my hand. We crowded around it, feet close to the edge of the walkway. It was as blank as the rest of the structure, giving nothing away. Except now it had about twenty sensor pads stuck to it, and some big 3-D screens resting precariously on the rods. The image they were showing was like a deep scan of a big egg.

“Okay,” Yuri said wearily. “What is it?”

“An organic neural processor unit,” Lankin said. “Or to put it bluntly, the ship’s brain. The onboard network isn’t optical, or even digital. It’s neurological.” He patted the rods. “These are a combination of nerve conduits and nutrient feeds; think of them as the spine. The nerve fibers link every piece of machinery, and plenty of them are biomechanical.”

“Is it still alive?” Kandara asked in alarm.

“No. However, two of the smaller fusion tubes are still functioning, so there is power. And as far as we can tell, the nutrient organ system that supports the brain was undamaged before it froze. We’re theorizing the brain must have been alive to pilot the ship from when it fell out of the wormhole to Nkya, then died sometime after the landing. Cause of death unknown, but we’re thinking one of the first systems that failed was the life-support heating.”

“A brain this size couldn’t work out how to fix a heating circuit?” Callum said skeptically. “Bollocks.”

“It depends on what else was damaged by the landing. And this is where our alien’s biology starts to get really interesting. We sampled the brain cells, of course. The genetic molecule has a similar functionality to Kcells.”

“Shit, this is an Olyix ship?”

“I said similar. My team is telling me this is a lot more sophisticated than Olyix biogenetics. All the traits this alien molecule contains seem to be equally valid. There is no equivalent to the junk chromosome we have in human DNA, which effectively gives every cell the ability to become any type of cell required by the designer. It’s like a super stem cell; any function can be switched on by the correct chemical activant code. As long as you have a valid pattern, you can build yourself whatever you want. In this case they chose to build a brain.”