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I set my knitting down and stared at him. “Pregnant. As in producing another life form.”

“That’s what these glycoproteins would indicate.”

“That can’t be right.”

“No, it can’t be.” Frank tipped his head back, letting out a soft groan. “The samples must have degraded since I took them. That’s the only logical explanation.”

“Is it? Or could there be a simpler one?” I couldn’t believe what I was about to say. “What if the ship really is pregnant?”

“Els, that’s…” He blinked and took a second.

“That would be a first. For us, anyway.” He shook his head.

“I don’t know. I’m not saying it isn’t possible.

The universe is filled with things we have yet to discover, I acknowledge that.

But a pregnant spacecraft? That implies the ship is more than organic. It’s biological.”

“I know. And this definitely isn’t something I know anything about, but what if it is?

Benni told us the ship was siphoning off a lot of power from the solar collection panels.

Maybe that’s why it was disabled. It became …

malnourished and weak because it was … eating for two, for lack of a better explanation.

And that weakness was what made it unable to keep propelling the Ohuli through space. So they hailed us, and here we are.”

He looked a bit shell-shocked. “This is completely uncharted territory.”

“Big time.”

He massaged the back of his neck. “I really need to take new samples and run the test again. I can’t make such a leap with one test on possibly corrupted samples. That wouldn’t be sound science or reasoning.”

“We’ll get new samples. It’s definitely worth doing.”

He put his hands on his hips, his expression oddly resolute as he stared at his screen again. “This is weird , Els.”

“You can say that again.”

The second machine started beeping. I looked over. “What is that one doing?”

He walked to the machine. “A similar test on some scrapings I took from our second visit to the craft.”

“When it looked more like a space vessel than the insides of a giant creature.”

“Yes.” He turned the beeping off and tapped the screen a few times before returning to his laptop.

I stayed quiet, letting him read the new report.

His eyes narrowed as he peered at the screen. Almost like he didn’t believe what he was reading.

I had to ask. “What is it this time?”

“This report shows nothing out of the ordinary, other than the sample contains some metal alloy that’s unfamiliar.”

“So no pregnancy proteins then.”

“Not according to this.” He dragged a nearby stool over to where he was working and took a seat on it. “Honestly, I’m stumped. These read like reports on two completely different substances.”

“Well, they are. Aren’t they?”

“Yes, but they shouldn’t be. They came from the same craft.

Sure, it looked very different from version one to version two, but if it’s still the same vehicle, there should be enough similarities to bear that out.

” He sighed. “Remember how with the first tests I ran, I found similarities to the cuttlefish cells?”

I nodded. “Those irodo … somethings.”

“Iridophores.”

“What about them?”

“They’re present in the report of the first new test but not present in the second.

When a cuttlefish changes color, it doesn’t stop being a cuttlefish.

” He got off the stool and paced toward the wall.

“This might be beyond my understanding. We might need some bigger brains. Someone more familiar with alien biology. Or just biology.”

“The problem is, we don’t know whose brain we can trust. If the Ohuli have already gotten to them, they probably won’t tell us the truth.”

He leaned on the far workspace, nodding. “You’re right. That’s definitely an issue. But if we don’t figure this out soon, we might all be untrustworthy.”

“Okay, we cannot let that happen. We—” My wristband vibrated. I checked the screen. “It’s Hazel.” I answered, popping up the holoscreen. “Hi, there.”

“Hi, Mom. Gibson told me you and Frank requested lab space?” She looked past me. “Are you there now?”

“We are. Is that a problem?”

She quickly shook her head. “No, no. Not at all. What are you working on?”

“Ohuli-related things.”

“Anything you can share?”

I looked at Frank. He shook his head. “Not at this time,” I answered. I understood he wanted to confirm what he’d discovered. I did, too. Telling my daughter that she’d tethered a pregnant, alien vessel to the Athos that could shapeshift without hard facts wasn’t something I wanted to do either.

“But you’ll let me know as soon as you’re able, I hope.”

Frank came closer. “We will. Tell her we will.”

“I heard him,” Hazel said.

“Is that what you called about?” I asked.

“Partially. I also called to see if you’d located your friend. Zanya, right?”

“That’s right. And no, we haven’t. Frank’s coworker, Sten, is also missing. We believe they’re together, but we’re not sure of anything more than that. Other than Frank was able to locate their digital signatures as being in the Nova Luna suite on Deck 38.”

Hazel’s expression darkened. “You must already know that’s where I moved the Ohuli to.”

“We know,” I said. “We went up there to check on them.”

That seemed to pique Hazel’s interest. “And?”

“And we got nowhere. The door was opened by Jhanna, who told us that Sten and Zanya were having their spirits cleansed and couldn’t be disturbed but that she’d give them our message that we wanted to speak to them.

Not long after that, we got messages from them saying they were fine, but I guarantee you neither Sten nor Zanya wrote those messages. ”

Hazel took a breath and looked away. “This is not good.”

“No, it isn’t. Any thoughts on what we’re going to do?”

“I can tell you one thing I’ve already done.” She looked at me again. “I’ve ordered guards at the Ohuli ship’s entrance in the docking bay, and I’ve changed the tethers to clamps. The Ohuli will not be permitted to leave this ship until all the missing passengers are accounted for.”

I gave her a hard stare. “ All the missing passengers? You make it sound like there are more than just Sten and Zanya who’ve disappeared.”

“There are,” she said. “Two others have seemingly vanished.”

“Hazel.” My mouth hung open. “There are four missing staff?”

“One is a crew member, and one is a passenger.”

The news took the wind out of me. This was worse than I’d thought. “Have you alerted FAN higher-ups?”

She frowned. “Not yet. I was hoping we could deal with this in-house, as it were. The problem is, since the Ohuli have been designated an endangered people, they have all kinds of protections. Even FAN won’t be able to do much now.”

“Of course they can. FAN assigned that designation. Get FAN to undesignate them,” I said.

“Doesn’t work like that. Takes a hearing, proof of other like-kind individuals.

An exploratory committee has to be formed, inquiries completed, and eventually a ruling will be made, but that’s bureaucracy for you.

It’s a long process.” She took a deep breath.

“And something tells me we don’t have that kind of time. ”

I felt a little sick to my stomach. “I don’t think so either.”

She briefly closed her eyes, like she was trying to calm down. When she opened them, there was a determination there I knew well. “Look, whatever you and Frank need to get these people back, you have it. And my permission. I stand behind your actions.”

“You don’t know what we might need to do.”

“I don’t care. These people are the priority.”

I glanced at Frank. He gave me the nod that told me he was in. I looked at her again. “We’ll do everything we can to figure this out.”

“Thank you. Keep me updated.”

“Will do.” We hung up. I lifted my gaze to Frank. “I can’t believe this.”

“I hear you. Two more missing is…” He shook his head.

I didn’t have words for it either. We needed to act. “What should we do next? Get new samples?”

He looked toward the glove box. “I think we should have a closer look at that pila first. I think that will give us more to go on.”

“Okay.”

He pulled a few instruments, including a digital microscope, some stoppered test tubes, and a few small tools, one of which looked like a pair of super-fine tweezers. Another was a small but sturdy-looking mallet. He put everything into the glove box next to the container holding the pila.

While he was setting up, Gracie and Harry came out of the office. Grace was standing on Harry’s back, riding along as he trotted toward us.

Harry stared up at me. “Mum, the ants are on a loop.”

Gracie nodded. “We’ve watched it seven times.”

“I see. And you’re bored, is that right?”

They both nodded.

“Maybe you can sit somewhere and watch what Frank’s doing? So long as you’re not in the way. Actually, hang on.”

I moved one of the tall stools to the back of the glove box where the hatch was. Frank had already put his tools in and closed the hatch, sealing it tight. He was now on the other side of the box, setting up a stool for himself.

The entire thing was built from some kind of high-density clear polymer, or maybe it was super glass, the transparent steel-laced silicon that had been developed for applications like the windows on the Athos . Either way, I didn’t think there was much the two of them could do to hurt it.

Hopefully.

“Frank, is it all right with you if they sit and watch?”

“That’s fine with me. Are you staying on that side?”

“No, I’m coming to you.” I brought a third stool over and sat beside him.

He slipped his hands through the gloves, which went up to his armpits if he leaned in. He pulled his arms out, pulled his chair in closer, and stuck his arms into the gloves again.

“I’m going to set up the scope first,” he said. He got that turned on, fiddled with a few bits, and a visual appeared on his tablet, which was propped against the base of the glove box.

“Cool,” I said. “The screen is basically the viewing area of the microscope?”

“Yep. Helpful, since the microscope needs to be in the box and we can’t put our eyes any closer.”

On the other side, Gracie and Harry seemed riveted.

“All right, I’m going to open the container and take out the pila now.” He did just that, prying off the top and removing the crystal sphere inside. He held it up. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?”

“Not really.” I shook my head as I stared at it. “It’s pretty but kind of like a thing you might pick up at a home decor shop. You know, something fancy to stick on the mantel.”

Across from us, Gracie and Harry tipped their heads to the right in unison. I nudged Frank and pointed my chin at them.

He smiled. “Someone’s curious.” His gaze returned to his work. “All right, let’s see if we can get a piece of this thing.”

He held the pila in one hand and picked up the mallet with the other, then gave the pila a tap. Nothing happened. He tried it again, this time with a much more solid whack.

The pila cracked, sending odd, angular lines through the ball. Small bits fell off, giving off little metallic glints under the lights of the glove box.

“Perfect. That’s just what we need,” Frank said. He set the remains of the pila and the mallet aside and used the tweezers to pick up a tiny piece of the pila. He set the shard in the scope.

Gracie rapped her beak against the box, making us both jump.

Frank frowned. “Gracie, stop that.”

She looked at him. “Bugs, papa.”

“There are no bugs,” Frank said. “I told you that before, Gracie. It’s just glass catching the light.”

I glanced at the tablet to see what the scope was seeing. My mouth opened in disbelief. “Um, Frank? She’s not wrong.”