He turns it over a few times in his hands, touching every inch of the screen. Then he examines the ports on the back and clicks his tongue. ‘I think . . .’ he says, trailing off to spin in his chair. He walks over to the corner of the room where there’s a stack of opened brown boxes. Nine digs through the top two, saying, ‘I asked them to bring these up from storage when they delivered the stuff that arrived for Sandor. I wanted to see if there was something in one of them that could give me an idea for a new way to communicate with the others . . .’ He puts aside the first two boxes and then yanks the third off the stack. He opens the top of it, pulls out the two new laptops inside and shouts, ‘Bingo!’ Nine stands, looking victorious, and holds up a thick black cord. One end of the cable is, amazingly, shaped like a triangle – the same as the triangle-shaped port on my tablet.

‘Where did that come from?’

‘I don’t know. Sandor had all this stuff with him on the ship that brought us here. I never even had a chance to see most of it, never mind learn how to use it. I tried to figure out what this stuff does a couple times, but Sandor was always protective of it, and I never got anywhere. I mean, most of the time, I can’t tell the difference between the Earth stuff and ours, which really doesn’t help.’

He takes the cord he’s found and brings its triangle-shaped end to the triangle-shaped port on my tablet. We hold our breaths as Nine slides the end into the port. It fits and we both sigh in relief. Slowly, he puts the other end into the closest computer’s USB slot. A black horizontal line appears on the tablet’s screen, and seconds later we’re looking at a map of Earth. One by one, seven pulsing blue dots appear: two in Chicago, four in India or China, and one in what looks like Jamaica.

‘Um, bro,’ Nine says, his voice hushed. ‘I think that’s us. As in, all of us.’

‘Damn, you’re right. There we are, there we all are,’ I whisper. ‘We don’t even need the macrocosm with this thing.’

‘Wait a sec, there are seven dots, but only six of us left,’ Nine says, furrowing his brow.

I lean back. ‘I told you there was another ship, right? ’

‘Right, right,’ he says, suddenly the eager pupil paying close attention to me.

‘Well, we know there was an infant inside. This might mean it made it to Earth, after all! And that means –’

‘Setrákus Ra has seven of us to deal with, not six,’ Nine interrupts. ‘The more the merrier.’