“It’s hyperbolic.”

  “Hyperbolic?”

  “Its orbit. Its orbit with respect to Solus,” explains 1232Artoz, with an emphatic wriggle of his middle eyestalk. “Our visitor is moving in a hyperbolic orbit, rather than an ellipse. You know what that might mean?”

  “It comes from – outside Solus’s system?” ventures 4565Magnik, the Surveillance Centre’s Archon – his eyestalks betraying some nervousness.

  “Not necessarily. Could have been perturbed by an asteroid into its present orbit – as so many comets have been over the past few hundred Cycles. But I don’t think it’s a comet.”

  “An asteroid, then? Asteroids are heavier than comets, aren’t they? Not so likely to be perturbed by another asteroid’s gravity.”

  “Could be. We don’t have enough data yet. And this is the best image we have, so far.” 1232Artoz, who is Senior Engineer at the Surveillance Centre, slides towards a holo display monitor and manipulates a contact, bringing up a three-dimensional view of the mysterious object. “0246Pennu has just sent this across.”

  “What the slime is that?” 4565Magnik cannot help gesticulating.

  1232Artoz ignores the profanity and continues. “Whatever it is,” he explains, “it’s like no asteroid we’ve ever studied. Small asteroids don’t have enough gravity to pull themselves into a sphere, true – they can be all sorts of irregular shapes – but no-one’s reported one quite that shape. What does it remind you of?”

  4565Magnik slides closer to the holo, and waves all three of his eyestalks intently over the image. After a minute, deep in thought, he backs away, baffled.

  “Looks sort of hollow,” he remarks. “A sort of short hollow cylin-der, with a huge flat disk at one end, and tentacle-like projections. Could it have been a living organism, once? I guess it would be dead and mummified, exposed to space like this.”

  “That’s what my fellow Nauts in Surveillance were guessing, at first. But what a living creature – if it really were one! Look at the size of the thing! And the shape – what we can make out of it. More likely an artefact.”

  4565Magnik now realises for the first time that there’s a measure-ment scale alongside the holo. “So it is huge! Why, it could even be a spaceship. But some spaceship! I guess hundreds of Nauts could be accommodated in that cylinder-shaped part – and it could be spun for gravity. But we don’t have any spaceships that big, do we? Unless there’s something we’re not being told. I’ll have to ask 7293Weeb over at Space Centre.”

  “I’ve already contacted him. He’s as puzzled as we are. And I don’t think he’s holding anything back. The general consensus now is, it comes from another star system.”

  The two Nauts remain gazing at the holo, trying to make out any more detail, but the holo is too blurred by distance for that. One of the ‘tentacles’ is extremely long, and perfectly straight. Purpose unknown, but it doesn’t appear to be useful as a gripping appendage unless it can be flexed. Other tentacles have some sort of bulging structures attached to their extremities – but again it’s not possible to make out any detail on them.

  At length 1232Artoz switches off the holo. 4565Magnik turns to slide off, but 1232Artoz signs to him to pause a moment.

  “Archon, we must get a closer look at this thing. Can you put in a request to Space Centre? For a mission to rendezvous with it?”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “I’d need a good reason for that. Like, it’s posing a threat to Naut-sphere itself – or even to Solus.”

  “I’d say, there is a potential threat. Dammit, it’s in a hyperbolic orbit! If not a planet or Solus, at worst one or other of our space stations could be in jeopardy. A collision with anything going at that speed. And we don’t know whether it carries weapons...”

  “Alright. I’ll try my most tactful approach with 7293Weeb – if you haven’t annoyed him too much already with your questioning.” And with that 4565Magnik slithers out of the Communication hub.

  *

  It is a mere 12 mini-Cycles later that 1232Artoz gets his answer – to his delight. A heavily-shielded autonomous space probe, named P2835, has been prepared and launched on a trajectory that will pass within two hundred kilo-nauts [see note 1] of the visitor, which has now been assigned the code-name X4038. Close enough for its sensors to pick up as much data as possible about the object.

  1232Artoz can hardly contain his excitement. At times, to avoid making a spectacle of himself at mealtimes with frantic eyestalk-waving, he has to withdraw into his shell. This prompts several colleagues to ask if he is unwell.

  Eventually he extends one eyestalk out from his shell – whereupon his colleagues repeat their query. “No, I’m quite alright. Just eagerly awaiting the data from that probe – the one set to intercept X4038.”

  “Yeah – well, we all are,” replies 1300Mogt, a close friend who often eats at the same feeding-tube node in the canteen. “And what’s your idea now? A giant mummified corpse – chucked out of an alien spaceship for some reason? Do we still think it’s dangerous?”

  “No – we’re being open to other interpretations,” replies 1232Artoz vaguely. He doesn’t want to reveal the recent specula-tions he’s shared with the Archon, not in front of all his colleagues. No doubt the true nature of X4038 will come out, in time. But he wants to stay ahead of the game – while he still can.

  Luckily for him, no-one else picks up on the guesswork.

  *

  At length the data feed from P2835’s flyby arrives, and of course 1232Artoz eagerly examines the new information the probe has gathered. It is now clear that the intruder is indeed an artefact: scans reveal that it consists mostly of metal. There is no sign of any life support system nor containment of an atmosphere, indicating that the visitor was probably uncrewed. Also no sign of any energy source or output: if it was a working artefact – an alien probe similar to P2835 even! – its power source has long since become exhausted – and perhaps jettisoned.

  But the scans have revealed some surprises. Most of the con-struction consists of common metals like aluminium, titanium, nickel and iron [see note 2], but there are some components made of gold, which is very scarce in Solus’s system. Someone in the team suggests that maybe gold is abundant in the alien’s origin stellar system, but the Cosmology Centre dispute this. The purpose of most of the gold appears to be to protect sensitive components at risk of corrosion, but there is one sizeable circular plaque made of gold, attached to the side of the cylindrical ‘body’ (now revealed to be octagonal) – function unknown.

  “We must bring it in,” remarks 1232Artoz. “We absolutely must!”

  There is more mystery revealed in the scans. At the end of one of the ‘appendages’, or ‘waldos’, or whatever the tentacle-like project-ions are supposed to be, there are attached four cylindrical canisters, heavily corroded but still intact, containing a mixture of various substances – among them spheres of lead oxide.

  Why this artefact was burdened with so much dead weight is yet another puzzle. What could the lead have been used for?

  And then there is the discovery that the huge disk, attached to one end of the cylindrical (octagonal) ‘body’, is not a flat disk at all. It is in the form of a shallow paraboloid, over 120 nauts across. Perhaps intended as some sort of focusing device. But for what media? Its surface appears to be only suitable for reflecting electromagnetic radiation far beyond the visible spectrum in wavelength. Such radia-tion used to be employed in communications on Nautsphere – until it was superseded by more advanced technology. But – if the giant paraboloid is some kind of receiver, what was it expected to pick up?

  All these puzzles are lending weight to the consensus amongst the Surveillance Centre’s staff: the artefact must be ‘captured’ so that it can be examined closely by Naut engineers.

  That’s going to prove difficult, though.