“No, it’s definitely man-made. Er, I mean, constructed by intelligence. It’s artificial. Relatively simple design, actually, given the advanced technology evident in the nanites.”

“So, I guess we can rule out the Sino-Soviet Empire?”

Moore nodded. “Alan, if the SSE had the technology to pull off even a fraction of what we’ve seen, we’d already be calling each other comrade and participating in self-criticism sessions.”

“Which leaves aliens as the default explanation. Peachy. Have our people figured out the purpose of the thing?”

“The squints on the Gambit did some preliminary analysis. The artifact is designed to squirt out something when touched. It’s basically a mouse trap. The device is powered by a chemical reaction. Totally inert substances, until they’re mixed. Analysts say that it’s the only way to ensure a working mechanism over long time scales.”

“Long time scales?”

“The analysts are talking about hundreds of thousands up to millions of years. Something based on maintaining tension, like a spring, would eventually deform due to metal fatigue, or lose elasticity and crack, or something. The chemical setup is specifically designed to not degrade over geological time scales. Do you find that frightening? I do.”

“Which means this wasn’t set up for us.”

“Right. It was put in place for whatever came along. Which turned out to be us, but could just have easily been intelligent raccoons.”

Castillo chuckled. “Been watching old movies?”

Moore smiled back. “I blame Narang. She made an offhand reference and it got me curious.”

“Did you read the transcript from the conversation between Pritchard and Kemp?”

“Yes. Just reinforces my feeling that we’re dealing with something very old and very patient.”

“It also reinforces the danger that we are either no longer dealing with a human being, or soon won’t be. Gerrard talked about the burden of proof being on you, Ted. That transcript will go a long way toward providing that proof.”

Moore stared at Castillo, eyebrows climbing his forehead. It was a good point, but the man was likely leading up to something.

“I understand you are having some difficulty selling the idea of strapping a nuclear device to the quarantine hab,” Castillo continued. “The nuclear option would be more palatable, I think, if the isolation ward were a little farther from Earth. Maybe outside the treaty zone. I wonder if we could arrange to tow it out of the Earth-Moon system entirely. Perhaps a solar orbit.”

“Just an offhand thought, of course?”

Castillo shrugged without further comment, nodded to him, and departed. Castillo had made a good point, although perhaps not the point he had intended. NavCom was not enthusiastic about the nuclear failsafe. Moore regretted bringing it up at all, in fact. In the vein of permission versus forgiveness, he’d have been better off to simply go ahead with it. Live and learn.