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F rank walked me to my door, but we’d mutually decided to end the night there. It was obvious we both had a lot on our minds, and we’d already had a great evening. Not to mention, we both had work the next day. He kissed me goodnight and went on his way.

I went inside. Harry was sitting in his charging bed, cleaning his toes. The squirrel video was still on. No telling how many times it had looped, but that never seemed to bother Harry.

“Hi, Mum.”

“Hi, baby.”

“Where’s Frank?”

“We decided to call it a night since we both have work tomorrow. Are you ready for bed?”

“I can always use a nap.”

I laughed softly. “You are good at that.”

I took off my jacket and draped it over one of my dining chairs, then sat on the couch next to him and dialed Hazel, the holoscreen pulled up.

She answered, and I could tell she was ready for bed by the sleepshirt she was wearing. “Hey, Mom.”

“Are you in bed already? I don’t want to keep you from sleeping.”

“Working on it. I was just about to brush my teeth. Everything all right? What’s up?”

“Everything’s fine. Frank and I had a look at the Ohuli starcraft this evening.” I made a face. “It was very unusual.”

Hazel’s brow furrowed. “In what way?”

“For one thing, the ship was a lot smaller than it should have been for a Class 4 cruiser. Not that I’ve ever been on a Class 4 cruiser, but Frank knew. And the other thing is—and there’s no easy way to say this—the ship’s interior was … odd.”

“Odd in what way?”

“It looked organic. Like it was grown, not built. The structure of the walls and such looked like bone, and the fabric covering them reminded me of skin.”

“Mom.” She didn’t roll her eyes, but I could tell she was on the verge by the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Hazel, I’m serious. I took pictures. I can show you.”

“I had a crew in there, and they reported nothing of the kind.”

“What? When were they in there?”

“They just left within the hour. I’ve already received their report. I’ve been sitting on my bed reading it.”

“Did they take pictures?”

“They did.”

“Can I see them?”

“Hang on.” Hazel shifted, turning her tablet so that I could see her screen. The photos there looked vaguely like the ship Frank and I had been on, but what I saw before me was made of metal and composite materials. The same sorts of things the Athos was built from.

“Hazel, that is not what we saw.”

“Can you send me your pictures, then? I’ll add them to the file.”

“I’ll do it as soon as we hang up.”

“Did Frank find anything interesting?”

“Possibly, but he wants to run some analyses before he writes up his findings.”

“Sounds like Frank. All right, I’ll wait to hear from him. Night, Mom.”

“Night, Hazel.”

We hung up. I stared at the coffee table and the pila resting on the decorative wooden box, the crystal glinting softly in the lights of my living space. “How could the ship look so different? It’s not possible. Is it?”

I tried to think of a way that might happen and couldn’t come up with a single explanation. It bothered me so much that I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I had another look.

I texted Frank. You still awake?

I already knew the answer to that question, and he confirmed it a few seconds later with a simple, Yes.

Can you meet me at docking bay one in ten minutes?

I can. Leaving now.

He had to have questions, but did he ask them? No. He just agreed to whatever I wanted. I couldn’t love him more.

I glanced at Harry, wondering if I was doing the right thing. I got to my feet. “Computer, if I’m not back in ninety minutes, send a message to Hazel Perry letting her know that I went to look at the Ohuli ship again and never returned.”

Maybe that was overkill; maybe I was the one being paranoid now, but so be it.

“Message received,” the computer responded. “Starting ninety-minute timer now.”

“Harry, I have to run out for a bit, but I’m going to be back as soon as I can.”

“Okay, Mum.”

I left my quarters and went to meet Frank, feeling about as unsettled as I’d been in a long time. When I arrived, he was already there, his messenger bag over one shoulder.

He looked concerned. “What’s going on?”

“I talked to Hazel after you left and told her about how the ship was too small and how odd it looked inside, and she said her crew had turned in a report that stated none of that. She even showed me the photos they’d included with the report.

The ship looked very different than when we were in there. ”

“What?” He glanced toward the hatch. “I’d like to see those. Did you show her the pictures you took?”

I groaned. “No, not yet. I was supposed to send them to her when we hung up, and I was so discombobulated by what she’d shown me that I forgot.”

“Do it now if you want.”

“Good, yes. Hang on.” I tapped away at the screen of my wristband, finding the files and sending them to Hazel. “All right, that’s done. Now I want to go back in and see for myself.”

He nodded. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go in.” He punched in his access code, and the hatch slid away.

He dug into his bag and pulled out three items. One was the device he’d used on our first visit to the ship. The other two were new. “I brought headlamps. More useful than just the lights on our wristbands.”

He handed me one, then pulled on his own. I put mine on. He lifted his chin and pointed at the box housing the lens. “Button’s on the side. On/off, nothing more than that.”

“These are great. Thanks for thinking of these.”

“You’re welcome. Let’s go take a look.” He turned toward the hatch and pushed the button on his headlamp. It cast a wide, bright beam. He held his device out and went through.

I did the same and followed him in.

The first thing I noticed was the cold, just like last time, but as we reached the Ohuli craft and stepped through, the cold was gone.

The second thing I noticed was that it looked nothing like the first time Frank and I had been in here. In fact, it looked pretty much like the pictures Hazel had shown me.

Frank muttered a quiet curse as we stood there, looking around. The lights on his device blinked green, just like they had the first time. “How is this possible?”

I could only shake my head.

He reached out and touched the nearest wall. “I feel like I’m on a different ship.”

“So do I,” I said, still staring at the impossibility in front of us. “We could very well be on a smaller version of the Athos .”

The ship before us was made of metal, composite building materials, carbon fiber, all the same things the Athos was constructed of. There were no traces of the bonelike structures or skin-mimicking membranes.

“This is…” Frank shook his head before touching my arm. “I don’t know what to make of it. Let’s see if the rest of the ship is like this.”

We went through to the common area. The floor pillows were gone, replaced by a standard-looking couch. A small table sat in front of it, and on the opposite wall was a large viewing screen. The games and puzzles were still stacked on the floor.

It was the same room, except it wasn’t.

“I know what I saw. And this isn’t it.”

“No,” Frank said. He glanced at his device, then turned to look down the corridor. “I need to see that storage room.”

The oddly shaped portal doors along the corridor had been replaced by precisely matched rectangular doors that could have come straight off the Athos . Not only that, but each door also now had a touchpad beside it, much like on the Athos .

We went to the end of the corridor where the storage room was. Frank planted his hand on the touchpad. A line of green scanned his palm, and the door opened.

We looked at each other, brows raised in mutual surprise, then he went in. “Els, you’re not going to believe this.”

I stepped in and stood beside him. The storage area that had once only been large enough to hold two yellow school buses now could have hosted a football game. “This was not like this. I know it wasn’t.”

“Nope, definitely not,” Frank said. “Nothing about this makes sense.” He went over to the wall and touched it, then touched the device to it and looked at the readout.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it, but I hoped he was making progress. “What is going on? A ship can’t just change .”

“No, it can’t. And yet, somehow it has.”

An eerie feeling filled me. Almost like we weren’t alone even though there was no one else in sight. I grabbed Frank’s arm. “I want to leave.”

He nodded. “I’m right behind you. I just want a few pictures before we go.”

“Good idea.” I started snapping away, trying to get the same areas I’d taken before. We made our way out. I didn’t bother looking in any of the bedrooms. I already knew what I’d find. The same but different.

When we emerged into the docking bay, we switched off our headlamps and blinked at each other for a moment, but neither of us had words. I pulled mine off and handed it to Frank. He put it back in the messenger bag along with his and the monitoring device he’d been carrying.

After that, he went over to the keypad and made sure the hatch was locked. “I may not sleep tonight. I need to analyze the data I collected earlier and compare it to this new data set. There has to be an answer.”

“You’re right. There has to be.” I looked at the hatch, glad it was closed. “But what about work tomorrow?”

He shrugged. “I’ll take a day off if I need to. I have the PTO built up.”

“Do you want me to help? I can take a day off too if you need me to.”

He shook his head. “No, I need you to do what you planned to do. Research the Ohuli and find out everything you can. We need to learn as much as possible.”

“Okay.” We started for the exit. “But you’ll keep me posted if you figure anything out?”

“I will. You have my word.”