Stephen sighed. “I suppose coffee won’t kill her, though I’d rather start her on water and rice. I’m going to see how her medications are coming along. Send her down to me once you’re done chatting?” He lumbered out of the room.

Callie sorted through the drinking bulbs in the cupboard until she found a proper mug. They were under steady thrust on their way to Meditreme Station, experiencing enough gravity for liquid to stay in a cup, so they might as well enjoy it. She decanted a generous quantity of coffee and slid the cup in front of Elena, who wrapped her hands around the mug and lowered her nose over the rim, inhaling.

“Oh, that’s good.” She took a sip, then caught Callie’s eye. “This is all so strange. When I set out on my journey, I expected… I didn’t expect this. To be marooned? Wrecked? I wish I knew what happened.”

“Most people would be a gibbering mess in your position,” Callie said. “Stephen, Doctor Baros I mean, said your memory should recover soon. Maybe you can fill in some of the gaps then.” And fill us in, too, while you’re at it.

Elena looked into her cup as though she was staring into the abyss. “I’m afraid to find out what I’ve forgotten. Something bad must have happened. Your computer, Shall? He said the Anjou’s engines were altered. My crew–” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “My crewmates are gone. We should be light years away from this solar system. I just don’t understand.”

Callie decided now was as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room. Except it was more like a squid. “When you woke up, you mentioned something about making first contact?”

Elena made a small strangled sound, and her hand trembled, sloshing a few drops of coffee over the rim of the cup. “I can’t remember, but there are flashes of a place. Some kind of hangar. A space station? There were machines, working on my ship, I think? Changing it? If it wasn’t a human station, then I suppose… but…”

Callie waited a moment to see if Elena was going to continue, but the biologist just stared off into space. Callie said, “Whatever happened to your crew, none of you recorded anything about it in your ship’s databanks, or at least nothing we could recover – your systems are kind of a mess. But… it’s entirely possible you did encounter alien life. Even an alien space station.”

Elena raised her gaze. Her eyes were so dark brown they were nearly black. “We found simple organisms on Europa, even before we set out. But that’s not the kind of life you mean, is it? Microbes don’t build space stations.”