Stephen stirred, leaning forward and lacing his immense hands together on the table top. “Elena is genuinely from the twenty-second century, judging by the antibodies in her blood – or, rather, the lack of what are now quite common antibodies.” Stephen was as placid and unbothered as always; or, well, as usual. When he was in the midst of his religious devotions, he was different. “I’ve given her a full suite of vaccinations, but before that she was definitely an artifact of another era. I detected traces of pollutants in her system that were purged from Earth long ago, as well. She is, at least, not lying about her origin.” He paused. “There is another reason to believe the device is genuine, or genuinely alien, though: it frightened away the Liars. They fled the station when they saw it.”

Callie nodded. She’d been thinking the same thing.

Stephen went on. “The device clearly does something, and potentially something dangerous, judging by the reaction of the aliens. When I was visiting with my congregation earlier… You know that some of the members of my church do alien outreach, because we believe all life is one life, and all consciousnesses are connected? My friend Glinda, who works in the recycling division, said a Liar on her crew who comes to services sometimes stopped to say goodbye on his way off the station, and urged her to leave, too. She asked him why he was leaving, and he said, ‘Your faith is a beautiful one, and I believe it a little. But there are much uglier faiths, and I believe those a lot.’ Then he ran off.”

Callie grunted. “So, what, bridge generators are religious artifacts to the Liars? Did we pry the sacred jewel out of the head of the idol or something here?”

“I have no idea,” Stephen said.

“OK. Liars say weird things. I don’t want to get hung up on that. Suppose the bridge generator works. Elena has offered to trade this unprecedented propulsion technology–”

“Technically not propulsion,” Ashok interrupted. “It’s more of a spatial manipulator but… ah right OK captain I’ll shut up now.”

Callie kept glaring at him for a moment, because sometimes Ashok relapsed in the absence of continual reinforcement. “Elena has offered to give us this alien artifact in exchange for us running a search-and-rescue mission to recover any of her crew that might still be alive, wherever they are. We don’t even have to succeed to get the generator. We just have to make the effort.”

“Her crew got eaten,” Janice said. “I mean, they didn’t, they got thrown out an airlock by a crazy person, but if we’re taking her ridiculous story seriously, why would we go back to that place? Why would we stand a better chance than her crew did?”