Ashok shook his head. “Even if they did find a bridgehead in the depths of distant whatever, and they flew into it – they still wouldn’t have popped out here. The only bridgehead in our system is the one near Jupiter. Are we supposed to believe this ship popped out of that portal unnoticed and somehow ended up way out here? The Jovian Bridge is the busiest port in the solar system, and all the traffic that passes through there is monitored and logged. Besides, this ship couldn’t open a bridge anyway – it’s not like they have an activator.”

“Yes, Ashok, I’m aware of that. But the sleeper said they met aliens, so I thought maybe the Liars they met opened a bridge and shoved their ship through it. They would have been noticed on arrival here, though – you’re right.” The limited interstellar travel available to humans required technology acquired from the Liars to open stable wormholes: the bridgeheads were fixed points in space, usually invisible, that opened when bombarded by the right array of waves and particles. The bridges allowed rapid travel from one fixed point to another, sometimes scores of light years away. But without an activator to generate the right signal, the bridgehead stayed closed, lurking in unseen dimensions, utterly undetectable. The activators that opened those bridges were the size of small ships, and closely guarded, because owning one in proximity to a bridgehead gave you control over one point in an interstellar trade network; that’s how the Jovian Imperative had grown so powerful. “They couldn’t have come through a bridge. The data must be bad, then. It’s just an old computer system, barfing up nonsense.”

“Seems likely. I mean, there is something weird happening with the propulsion system, so I guess it’s possible a bunch of frozen scientists from five centuries ago cracked faster-than-light travel because they were bored on their trip, but like the ancients said: if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”

“Both are equally improbable in Trans-Neptunian space,” Callie pointed out.

“I’ll alert the aphorism police and demand a more appropriate cliché right away.”

“Did you find any data on the crew?”

“Some, but it’s partial and corrupted. Big chunks of the computer’s memory got overwritten with either garbage data or something with crazy levels of encryption, and the latter seems unlikely. Probably just a systems failure and a botched backup, if I had to guess. I found some medical records that seemed intact, though. I sent it all over to the ship so Shall can try to make sense of it. Can I please go poke around the control room now? And maybe do an EVA to check out the crap welded all over this little ship’s rear end?”

“Go ahead. Just be careful. Try not to blow up… everything.”

“I doubt there are any atomic bombs left on this thing.”