"All right, let's get going." Alex was strapped into the pilot's seat, Williams acting as co-pilot again. The hanger doors were open, freezing wind blowing dry glittery snow all over the place. It was toasty in the cabin of the Hokule'a already, almost a little too warm, but the team was wearing their e-suits for the first trip into vacuum. If some part of the life support system didn't work right, they would have plenty of time to return safely.

Crenshaw was in the back with Kavo and Tokona, their team to run the drone and do a little analysis on the spot. Not that they were expecting to have much to do while up here - they had brought a couple of laptops, for all intents and purposes. Everyone else was staying on the ground with the big servers that could actually work through all the data they were about to bring back. This was for fact finding, to gather information to make sure their next step was well informed, not just blindly stumbling through an alien portal because it seemed promising.

They had sent the drone up an hour ago, programmed to move on gravitic drive alone and park after about fifty kilometers of upward travel. Once there, it would run a passive area scan and then wait so they'd have data to work on when they arrived.

Maybe they would find something to cheer Abbot up after his data turned out to be echoes from a multilayer sensor. As far as it was concerned it had been pointed at nothing, but was still getting struck by a lot of photons that charged the electronics just a smidge and created a consistently rhythmic waveform on the next layer up that looked very mysterious. This time, nothing but background noise. Abbot was their language guy, though, so that kind of amateur mistake wasn't surprising.

Abbot had asked Crenshaw about it first, because he had been handy at the time. Alex was betting that Crenshaw had picked up what was actually going on and was just leading Abbot around a bit because he thought it was funny. The only confirmation he had was that Crenshaw had seen them discussing the data over breakfast and then avoided them, and had been unusually quiet when loading his gear into the Hokule'a.

All fun and games until you get caught.

Alex double checked the angles on the shuttle - clear all the way around - and then toggled the gravitics and pulled out of the hanger. It was slow going because the barrier layer did not like the impeller motors, and oddly quiet thanks to Crenshaw acting guilty. Pointing the shuttle nearly directly up and crawling along at only a whopping hundred kilometers an hour was something that the brain just didn't really enjoy. It was too slow, and even though Alex knew it was fine, well... It felt precarious.

As they approached, he slowed it down even more. The barrier preferred a slow ship without spinning things, and that is what they would give it. A mere kilometer per hour.

"Ten seconds out. Five.... contact." Alex had forgotten that he was the only one to fly through it so far, and even that was with a remote connection. Hitting the first layer was a lot more jarring in person, as evidenced by everyone onboard making some sort of noise of alarm at the way the ship reacted to running into a soft shield. Williams hummed quietly, he was sure he heard Crenshaw and Kavo curse under their breath in their own respective languages. Alex and Tokona just grunted in surprise.

The shuttle buffeted, warning lights about an impact on the shielding blinking on. Less like running into jello this time, and more like turbulence from very bad head winds. The entire shuttle shifted a bit as forward momentum was momentarily arrested - part of Alex's brain wanted to panic about stall speeds, but a gravitic drive didn't have a stall speed - and then slipped through just like the drone had. Alex looked over to Williams, "hey, you remember the pressure changes and all that from-"

His question was cut off as they ran into the second layer almost immediately. The Corvin E85 shuttle was several times larger than the drone was, nearly as long as the gap between each layer of the barrier... This was going to be an interesting experience.

By the time the Hokule'a emerged into the void a few minutes later, he was almost used to how it felt to punch through layers of an alien sky-forcefield.

It was pretty much how he expected space to look, at least: mostly nothing with the occasional glint of something. The navigation lights on the Tsla'o drone were blinking steadily not too far away, the enormous space-station sized satellite a sort of glimmering thread, and then the beachball-sun at the center of the Artifact was maybe the size of an old American quarter.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Uplink to the drone confirmed." Kavo said, pulling Alex away from gawking at things with his own two eyes for once. "Downloading data, estimated time to completion is ten minutes."

Well, it was a lot of data, and the controller was not a large device. They'd have to wait until they were on the ground to get it into the main computer anyway.

"To confirm, the next steps are an active scan of the central structure, then to do a flyby of the nearby satellite." Alex looked over his shoulder at the trio in the back. Tokona sitting beside Kavo, Crenshaw leaning on the back of the seats, both of them watching the screen over Kavo's shoulder.

"Confirmed." Kavo replied. "I can have it perform the scan now while the first data packet finishes."

"No, wait until the first upload is done. If something considers it hostile, we'll still have the initial data." Alex didn't think that something would take offense to what was a very standard scan at these ranges, just more detailed than passive sensors... but it was still parked thirty kilometers away for a reason.

The minutes crept by. Alex wanted to fill the silence with talking, but he double checked the onboard life support systems instead. Pressure was nominal, no leaks, no problems showing in the scrubbing system, artificial gravity was perfect, and the heat dissipation was working well within expected parameters.

"First data set retrieved. Beginning scan on your mark."

Alex deferred to Williams. She was in charge of running the show, really.

"Understood, permission granted to proceed."

Alex was a little curious about how long this would take. He hadn't been given the opportunity to play with Tsla'o sensors at all. As this was a wide scan, the emitter would be able to sweep the zones quickly and give them a better idea of what was over there, and they could use that to better target deeper or higher resolu-

Kavo interrupted his idle considerations. "Scan complete, transferring now."

Or that's how long it could take. He assumed they used a very wide cone to achieve that sort of speed, it was very fast for such a large object. They were only grabbing the closest side, at least.

No boom, either.

"I have the loop around the satellite set up." Kavo sounded kind of excited about that. "Second packet transfer complete."

"Proceed at your discretion, Mister Kavo." It did sound a little weird to hear a Tsla'o name after Mister, but Williams had done that to nearly everybody who didn't have a military rank so far.

"Launching."

Crenshaw chuckled. "Damn, the acceleration on that thing is nuts. Tsla'o use base ten, right?"

"Everything is base ten." Alex replied, bringing up that old joke.

Williams shot him a look that was fairly amused by that, but she furnished Crenshaw with an actual answer. "They do, yes."

"Good, so that thing really is cooking. Damn." He stared at the screen and tilted his head. "I can't read it but I can tell the numbers are going up very fast."

Kavo made a little humming noise that Alex associated with surprise in Tsla'o.

"What is that? Can you get a better look at it?" Crenshaw asked.

"I am working on it." Kavo had one hand on the screen and the other typing on the keyboard. "It is not getting a lock, I will track it manually."

Alex fought the urge to lock the controls and hop out of the seat to take a peek for himself. Patience. He was the pilot right now. There would be time to pore over new data later.

He still asked about it. "What have you got?"

"It looks like another portal, on the star-side of the satellite, just behind where the limbs attach." Crenshaw was still staring into the screen back there. "It's enormous, looks like it goes all the way around. I can't tell where the other side is, but... I think there are buildings."

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