She sat on the floor, staring at the little red box.

“So what you are telling me,” said Nim’s voice, “is that the old AI is still active?”

“Yes. And it’s in there.” She pointed at the box.

“And this old AI is what created the space rift and showed us Calista?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence.

“That makes sense.”

“It does?”

“Well, it explains why I cannot access the box, or why I had no idea how that image had appeared on the screen, or how the engine kept switching off.”

She nodded, thoughtful, still staring at the box.

“The question remains, though: why?”

“Why what?”

She threw her arms in the air. “Everything! Why the rift? Why here?” She pointed at the wall on her left.

“Calista’s on the other side, actually.”

Val grunted. “You know what I mean!”

“It must have had a reason.”

“Not helping.”

“Sorry.”

They both fell quiet.

She suddenly jumped to her feet.

“Fine!” she said to the box. “If you’re not telling me why we’re here, and won’t even let us go down there, then I don’t see why we’d stay. Might as well go back to Ovkan.”

As she marched through the halls back to the bridge, Nim’s voice rang through the onboard speakers.

“Have you considered it might just have wanted you to know the planet was still there?”

“Is it though?”

“The signals we caught seem evidence enough.”

“Fine. But how is that useful to us? What are we supposed to do with this knowledge? Broadcast it to the entire universe? What good would it do anyone?”

“Maybe we’re supposed to help them.”

“Help who?”

“The people on Calista.”

“Assuming there’s anyone left down there. Whatever happened here could have killed everyone off, for all we know. But okay, let’s say you’re onto something and we need to help them... How the hell are we supposed to do it if we can’t even go down there?”

Nim did not respond right away.

“Perhaps,” he said hesitantly, “we need to look for whatever is scrambling the signal and blurring the view?”

She snorted. “You call that blurring? The planet is freaking invisible! Can you think of any technology that could—”

She froze in her steps.

“Val?”

“Hang on. I’m thinking.”

For a moment, all you could hear was the distant humming of the engine.

“Nim...”

“Yes?”

“I have a feeling we’re in deeper than we think.”

“How do you mean?”

She started walking again. “There’s no way that planet could have just disappeared out of the blue, right?”

“Right.”

“And there is no human technology capable of achieving that, right?”

“I see where you’re going with this, Val, but we don’t know.”

“What do you mean, we don’t? Technology has been at a standstill for over a hundred years! I think we’d know by now if we had the ability to pull off something like that.”

“Can I remind you the planet disappeared at about the same time?”

She frowned.

“That could be significant,” she muttered as she entered the bridge and sat in her chair.

“It could be human technology got out of hand. Perhaps this is what prompted the ban in the first place.”

“And the government buried everything so it wouldn’t bite them in the ass. Makes sense.” She tapped on her chin. “Which means we couldn’t say anything about this without getting into some serious trouble with the government. Which brings us back to the original question: what the hell are we supposed to do with this knowledge?”

“Maybe nothing.”

“Come again?”

“Maybe we are just supposed to know.”

Val frowned. “Huh.”

She stared at the dashboard for a moment, then quickly ran her fingers across the controls. Starrider veered and rushed through space, heading back toward Ovkan.

None of this explained the rift, though. She didn’t say it out loud, but she still wondered if the AI had wanted her to meet Kaine. And if so, why? Was Kaine important in some way? If so, he couldn’t die, could he?

She realized she wanted him to live.

The doctors hadn’t said whether he would or not. His chances of going one way or the other were about equal...

Which didn’t make her feel any better at all.