92
93
“It looks like we don’t have enough data. Oh, hang 
on a second…”
Josef mutes himself and turns to talk to a woman in 
a military uniform who has appeared behind him. 
A moment later he turns back. “Apparently we are 
worried that the spacecraft is in a position to access 
secret files in the base computer servers. Can you 
get hold of Chen? The United Nations military has a 
job for them.”
Sasha feels embarrassed as she remembers that 
she’d asked Chen to come and help her. Now 
Commander Hopper is quiet, and she’s forgotten 
all about it. She takes a deep breath and hits the 
call button. Chen appears on the screen looking 
frightened and breathless and says “Hey, Sasha. I’m 
nearly with you. Are you ok?”
Sasha says that she’s fine and gives an update on 
the situation.
“Who’s doing it?” Chen asks, “Where’s the 
spacecraft from?”
“Go outside…on my own?!” they reply. 
“Yeah, I have an astronaut on the line to talk you 
through it, patching you through.”
Josef gives Sasha a quizzical look. “You didn’t tell 
them why.”
“No. They’re going to be scared and under 
enough pressure without knowing that people’s 
lives depend on it. Back in training they said that 
when you do spacewalks you have be as calm as 
possible.”
“You’re probably right. That was a very mature 
decision. Kamari is going to need some help 
getting into that spacesuit. Who should we get to 
do that?”
Sasha sees that Kiran is finished with the 
astronomer and asks them to go and assist Kamari.
Sasha disconnects and turns back to Josef. She 
can’t let go of the feeling from earlier. “Has anyone 
figured out if it’s really aliens yet?”

View this content as a flipbook by clicking here.