106
107
occur. Another display showed the power capacity 
of the antenna creeping up. 98%....99%.... 
“This is gonna be close…” says Skylar. It feels like 
everyone is holding their breath.
It tips over to 100% and a fraction of a second later 
the soft burbling sound is replaced by a static roar 
– so loud that it completely drowns out the signal 
and will flood the spacecraft’s receivers at the same 
time. Then, over the roar of the noise from the 
speakers, Sasha hears the sound of shrieking and 
stares at the commander. Hopper’s scream turns 
into rattling breathing, and she puts her hands 
on her head, bunching up her hair between her 
fingers.
“My head hurts so much, “ she groans. “I’m sitting 
here and just a second later my head feels like it is 
on fire.”
Sasha’s attention is then dragged back to the 
screen as Kiran shouts, “look, look! The stars behind 
are moving!”
“So what?”
“Yes, it should be in the camera list.”
Sasha finds it and shares it with the team. They all 
gasp. It is nothing like any spacecraft they have ever 
seen before. It is not a cylinder module. Nor is it a 
box with solar panels. Ones like that are the usual 
“human” spacecraft. No, this one looks like a bug. 
It has mechanical arms and the antennae look like 
bug eyes with little dishes on the ends.
“Well, will you look at that…?” exclaims Kamari.
“Maybe we can hear it too,” says Sasha, “Devon, 
can you share the sound coming from the 
spacecraft’s frequency?”
“Should be able to, yes.”
A moment later they could hear a high-pitched, 
jangly noise, “blipblipburbleburbleburbleblebleb…” 
– the spacecraft communicating with the chips in 
the adults’ heads.
“No one say ‘I told you so’ until the crew is safe,” 
murmurs Chen and they all look at the countdown 
Earth had given them until brain damage would 

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