Callie shivered despite herself. “You’re sure that thing’s not pouring out radiation or cram packed full of imminent explosions?”

“I have no idea what it’s full of, but it’s not putting out anything.”

“Be careful with it anyway. Liars do bizarre things sometimes, so maybe Paolo wasn’t fleeing in terror from an alien artifact that’s about to kill us all, but go easy until we figure out what this thing is.”

“I did have another diagnostic approach in mind,” Ashok said. “I could plug the White Raven’s navigation and propulsion systems into the box and see what happens. I saw how it was hooked up on the Anjou, so reproducing those connections would be easy enough.”

“No. New rule. We do not plug mysterious alien technology into my ship.”

Ashok continued without changing inflection. “Or, alternately, I could get Shall to simulate a navigation and propulsion system. Then I could plug this box into another computer and fool it into thinking it’s hooked up to an actual ship. Then we can see what happens in a safe, sane, and simulated way.”

Callie chewed her lower lip for a moment. “OK. Do that. But plug the box into a separate, air-gapped system, totally sequestered – I don’t want you accidentally uploading some alien program onto the White Raven’s main computer, or the larger station network.”

“Cap. You wound me. Security is the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep.”

“You don’t sleep.”

“Not true. I just sleep one hemisphere of my brain at a time. It’s much more efficient than your ridiculous whole-brain dream-state approach.”

Callie returned to her ship and made her way to the medical suite. Elena was asleep on a gel-filled mattress, wearing only a thin gown, and Stephen sat on a stool in the corner tapping away at a handheld slab of smart matter. Callie resolutely resisted the urge to let her gaze linger on Elena. “Is she all right?”

Stephen held up the handheld terminal, which showed an array of blips and waveforms that meant nothing to Callie. “All her vitals look good. No bad reactions to the medication. I had to dig pretty deep in the Tangle to find the protocols for treating someone awakened from that particular form of cryosleep. She should return to consciousness in an hour or so with her memory restored, in theory. Are you going to be on the ship for a while?”

“Why?”