“We might die,” Robin said. “Just making that clear.”

Elena stopped looking at Sebastien and started looking at the problem. “The probability of our survival was always low. The entire Goldilocks project is based on an r strategy, not a K one, after all.”

Hans raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “Come again?”

“There are two contrasting survival strategies for life.” That was an oversimplification, but Elena had spent enough time as a professor that she could embrace oversimplification for illustrative purposes. “Creatures that adhere to a K strategy, like humans, have very few offspring, and invest a lot of resources in making sure those offspring survive. The other option is the r strategy – think rats or spiders. They have lots of offspring, with minimal parental involvement, but there are so many, some of them will probably survive.”

“Scatter your seeds, and though some will find only stony soil, and die, others will find fertile soil, and thrive,” Ibn said. “As in the Christian parable of the sower.”

“I thought that was a science fiction novel,” Hans muttered.

Elena ignored him. “Right. We’re the seeds, scattered on the wind. Most of us will fall on worthless rocks, but a few will land where they can grow. The odds were always against us. Even if we reach our destination, it might be uninhabitable for any number of reasons.” She nodded her head toward the viewscreen. “But this… it’s a sure thing. It’s huge, it’s important, and it’s right here. We can explore it, and if it’s alien, we can send a message back to Earth, and do a definitive service for our people.”

Hans made a sour face. “Ha. There’s no Earth left to get the message, and it would take forever to get there anyway.”

Uzoma shook their head. “Not forever. Not even an appreciable fraction of forever. We could aim a tight beam–”

“All right,” Robin said. “This isn’t a democracy, and mission-critical decisions are delegated to me, but this is beyond anything we ever expected to have to deal with, so, all in favor of sending a small exploratory–”

“The ship is moving toward the station.” Uzoma inclined their head toward the screen. “Or else the station is moving toward us, but that seems less likely.”

“Moving how?” Robin jabbed at the screen. “We are moving, very slowly, just a few meters per second, but we’re not generating any thrust, and there’s not… there’s no tow line, there’s no, I don’t know, tractor beam…”

“No visible one, anyway,” Uzoma said. “Someone in there can control inertia well enough to make our ship decelerate rapidly from a tenth of the speed of light to a full stop without doing any damage to us in the process. If they can accomplish that, drawing us near would be trivial.”