Recovery

The gaps between the stars may be vast, but they are not uneventful. If you look long enough, you will find pockets of gases left over from both the formation of nearby systems... or from their deaths. Occasionally they will flash with lightning, as charges built up from the myriad dust particles rubbing against one another naturally seek their balance before starting over again. Rogue planets sometimes pass through these clouds and siphon some off to become part of their atmospheres. Asteroids of various shapes and sizes drift in every direction – tumbling lazily on their eons-long journeys from star to star.

But artifacts are rare.

So rare that they tend to capture the attention of any traveller who happens to come across one...

Erica stretched her arms above her head and yawned. As her joints popped from the motion, she heard the door behind her slide open with a hiss. "Derek, hi," she said when she saw who it was that walked towards her. "You're early."

"I know I am, little sis," he replied with a smile, "but you've been here for six hours... so I figured you could use some cafa and company."

She took the mug from his outstretched hand and blew on the steaming liquid to cool it to her taste. "Has it really been six hours?" she asked as she enjoyed her drink. "I guess I lost track of time."

"I guess you did - AGAIN," he teased. "I swear – if you focused more on the scanners instead of the windows, you'd be done in half the time."

"I can't help it," she countered. "Just look at that VIEW!" She pointed to the three stars that stood out among all the others – two main-sequence types and a dull orange dwarf that sat much closer to their survey ship. "The scanners can tell me everything I need to know about this triple-system... how they orbit around each other, how their magnetic fields interact, even where the major planets are. But they can't tell me how beautiful it is, or how the light flashes when one star passes in front of the other, or..."

Her reverie ended abruptly when her console pinged for attention. "That's a proximity alarm," Derek stated as he slid into the seat beside her and touched a key to let the computer know that he was paying attention. An image appeared in front of him, and he read the information it gave him. "Apparently, there's an object heading toward the system, and we're in its' path. Low-speed, danger of impact damage zero."

"So why tell us," Erica wondered. "The automatics could have handled it without needing to let us know."

"Because it's made of Rotal alloy," Derek explained. "Refined metals dictate a closer examination – it could be a probe that needs maintenance, after all."

"I know, I know," Erica sighed. "The job comes first. I'll open up the receiving bay and tractor it in. Since you're our resident engineer, you may as well go down and see what it needs. I'll monitor from here in case you get yourself into trouble again... maybe I should alert Medical now, and avoid the rush?" She winked as she stuck her tongue out at him.

"One little accident with a phase-synchronizer, and I never hear the end of it," Derek cursed under his breath as he headed towards the door, Erica giggling behind him.

Derek watched as Erica brought the object into the cargo bay. He might occasionally tease her about her wistful nature, but he had to admit that she was an artist when it came to operating the tractor beams. She guided it slowly through the open hatch, and set it down without a sound. Derek moved in to examine the object while Erica kept an eye on him through the monitors.

"So what is it?" she asked through the image she projected into the bay beside Derek.

"It's not a probe, that's for sure," Derek admitted. "Looks to be a storage tank of some kind – roughly cylindrical, twenty-two hundred millimetres in length and eight hundred millimetres in diameter." He ran his hand over the rough and pitted surface. "It's been out there for a long time... centuries maybe. If there were any identifying marks on it, they've been sandblasted off by interstellar dust."

"I did a course projection," she told him. "But I can't determine an origin-point. If it's a storage canister, then it could have been jettisoned by another ship anywhere along the way. Continuing forward, it would have passed by this system and headed for the star system nearest to this one – a yellow main-sequence star with eight major planets, including one habitable one. Funny... the computer has that system listed as a Red-Zone."

Red-Zone - Derek thought – no entry under ANY circumstances. "Something for you to look into later, I'm thinking," he said. "For the moment, let's see what we can figure out about what this is." He walked over to a wall-panel and pushed one side inwards slightly. It opened with a click and he picked up a small device from a shelf. Walking back to the canister, he knelt beside it and waved the device over it. "Seems pretty typical," he said, "Rotal alloy shell, embedded dust fragments from spending so much time in space. Welded seams, so they didn't know anything about trans-molecular bonding. No hinges or latches, so it wasn't meant to be opened. HEL-lo!"

The startled exclamation caught Ericas' attention. "What is it?"

"There's an organic mass inside," Derek said. "Eighteen hundred millimetres in length, massing about eighty kilos." He went back to the panel and removed a breathing mask and another device. "I want you to seal the bay as a precaution, I'm going to cut it open with the molecular separator."

"Be careful, Derek," Erica warned him. "it might be dangerous."

"That's why you're going to seal the bay," Derek reminded her. "The scan says the mass is inert, but you'll seal the doors and open the main hatch to space anyway. If something goes wrong, you drop the air-containment field and pick me up later, got it?"

"Got it," she said as she activated the program sequences that would perform the tasks her brother had requested. "Bay is sealed, you can start whenever you're ready."

Derek touched the device in his hand to the side of the canister and pressed a button. A yellow glow appeared at the tip as it emitted a faint hum. He slowly traced a line around the length of the container, leaving a gap in the metal as he went. Within moments he had moved completely around the object, slicing it neatly in half. He deactivated the separator and replaced it on the shelf he had taken it from, returning with the scanner instead. "No hazardous materials released," he noted in order to ease his sisters' concerns. "I'm going to lift off the top half now." He went to the tractor-beam controls and watched intently as the upper half of the cylinder rose, shifted to the side, and settled onto the deck with a hollow ring that reminded him that he needed more practice with controlling the beams. He walked closer and peered at the now-exposed contents of the container.

She wore a black-and-white jumpsuit with an emblem shaped like a three-coloured inverted triangle below the left shoulder. Her red/pink hair was combed back towards her neck. Her arms had been crossed over her chest ritualistically. Derek didn't see any sign of decay or frost, she had been well-preserved and protected.

"Ummm... Erica? Remember when I said that I wouldn't be needing the services of Medical?"

"Eeee-yes...?" she answered.

"I was wrong. Get them here – right now!"