“When you said you needed my help, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Skinner said as he rolled a foot-wide coil of malkathite wire over to Cutlep.

“Did you think I would trust your shaky human hands with the wiring?” Cutlep spat, looking at Skinner over the top of a control array. “Nonsense.”

Skinner used the tip of his boot to hold the coil in place. “Hey, I’ve redone the wiring in my ship dozens of times!”

“Had you done it correctly, you would have only needed to do it once,” Cutlep said irritably. “You’re only proving my point.”

Skinner scowled at the Erythian but said nothing. The gray alien wasn’t wrong – he wasn’t exactly a first-rate electrician. Then again, considering he hadn’t been trained for any of it and was operating solely under Lumos’s guidance, he thought he’d done rather well so far. “What else do you need?”

“If you truly wish to make yourself useful, some space to think and some peace and quiet,” Cutlep said with a sigh. “However, if you insist, please pass me that beaker over there.” He gestured vaguely towards a table with a greenish bottle on it. Skinner picked it up and passed it to him. Cutlep flipped the lid open and drank the contents dry in one gulp. “Thank you. You may go back to standing idle until I require heavy lifting.”

Skinner gave the Erythian a scowl before going and resuming his post near the door. He’d been ordered to stand there and wait until he was needed for “less delicate matters” and to keep an eye on the tanks in the other room. According to Cutlep, the tests he had planned could possibly drain power from the tanks. If that happened, the thing in one of them might be able to break free.

Although Cutlep had warned him to only incapacitate it, Skinner wasn’t going to play nice. If that thing got out, he was shooting it until it stopped moving. He could still see the nightmare image seared into his mind’s eye – the way the featureless face stared at him as if it could see. The sinewy way the body moved; a way that would have been sensual—maybe even enticing—if the creature had been human. Well… a true human.

“Human, I need you,” Cutlep said as he stepped back from the console he was working on. “Move this against the far wall. I cannot move it on my own.”

“Yup. I’m on it,” Skinner said as he moved over to the console. “You’re handling the hookup?”

“Naturally,” Cutlep said. “I would not trust you with it.”

“Friendly little cuss, aren’t you?” Skinner said as he began to shove the console to where Cutlep indicated. “Anything else, your majesty?”

“No,” Cutlep said. “That will be all.” He picked up the artifact Skinner had brought him and walked over to the modified console. “You said the Constellation commander called this something. What was it?”

“The Gaither Key, I think,” Skinner said. “I’d have to replay my audio logs to be completely certain, but that sounds about right.”

Cutlep placed the object into a semi-spherical cradle before starting to connect the terminal he’d been working on to it. “I find that fascinating,” he said. “Do you know who Gaither is?”

“No clue. An Erythian, I’m assuming?”

“Again, you would be blinded by your stereotypical short-sightedness,” Cutlep said. “No, Gaither is a relative unknown even to us. You see, there is an old Ragan tale about a hero named Gaither. A Ragan who ventured forth in search of new lands when his species began to decay. He journeyed deep into what we now consider Constellation space in search of new worlds and possible cures… but instead returned empty handed. Or almost empty handed.”

With a spark, the modified terminal activated. Lights flashed across the screen as it came online. “He allegedly returned bearing stories of monsters and things that lurked in the deepest recesses of space. He told tales of hostile planets and the beings that inhabited them. Of impassable space phenomena and compound black holes… and of hundreds and hundreds of other phenomena. He had kept a detailed record, and allegedly brought back artifacts to prove his claims.”

“So, what happened to him?” Skinner asked.

“If the stories are to be believed, he was exiled. The Ragans were attempting to cure themselves and had no time to listen to fairy tales about monsters. They wanted cures and solutions, and Gaither had failed to deliver. He was stripped of his titles and his honor, branded as a fool and a dreamer and kicked out of the cities. Any artifacts he brought back were seized and studied by the Ragan aristocracy. Gaither himself died broken and destitute outside the capital.”

“Well. That’s unfortunate,” Skinner said, giving the Erythian an confused look. “What does this thing have to do with him, then?”

Cutlep stood up from his position on the floor. “Well… I don’t know,” he said. “It is possible, though, that this is one of the artifacts Gaither recovered. If he really existed. Much of what we know about the Ragans is questionable at best.”

“So I’ve heard,” Skinner said. “Surprising, really, considering how both the Erythians and the Zyzyt occupy their former territory.”

“Humans occupy the former territory of at least twenty former species,” Cutlep said angrily. “Do you presume to know everything about Homo habilis? Or perhaps about Homo neanderthalensis? I have done quite a bit of study on your species, human. Considering your heavily polluted ancestral genes, it is a miracle you evolved the brainpower to build simple structures, let alone somehow get into space.”

“Did I strike a nerve?” Skinner asked, unable to keep a smirk off his face.

The scientist grumbled something under his breath. “To think I would be ridiculed by such an infantile species,” he said. “It would be like you being ridiculed by a chimpanzee.” He punctuated his statement by flipping a breaker switch on the wall. The lights dimmed for a moment and Skinner reflexively pivoted and pointed his gun into the room with the tanks. A moment later, the lights returned to full power. The only major difference was that the Gaither Key was now floating inside its housing.

“So… we good?” Skinner asked, not taking his rifle off the tanks.

“Yes yes,” Cutlep said with a wave of his hand. “Just a minor power fluctuation. I can reset the junction box later. We are in no real danger.”

“Well that’s a relief,” Skinner said as he slowly lowered the rifle. “Now what?”

“Now I run my tests,” Cutlep said irritably.

“I can leave, you know,” Skinner said, jerking his thumb towards the airlock. “You’re the one who asked for my help, and asked me to guard the tanks… remember?”

Cutlep stared long and hard at Skinner with his infinitely deep, black eyes. “Indeed, you could,” he said. “But if this test goes awry, or if the specimen in the tank manages to damage some of my equipment, the resulting explosion could damage your ship before you take off. Besides, in the event I was overwhelmed by these ‘ghosts’, as you call them, I have the entire crater lined with explosives. You would not get far.”

Skinner narrowed his eyes, turning the gun and pointing it at Cutlep. “Are you threatening me?”

“I require your assistance,” Cutlep said shrewdly. “Interpret my actions as threatening if you wish, but I am proceeding with the tests with or without your assistance.”

Skinner didn’t answer for a moment, weighing his options. He didn’t have it in him to just shoot Cutlep, although right now he wished he did. The smug little bastard was making it very hard to remain civil. He could just take the artifact and leave, which would deny the scientist what he wanted, but Skinner had no way of knowing how much he could sell it for or even what it did. There was also the paranoid part of him that wondered if the darn thing was hostile. He didn’t want to bring a hazard onto the Dangerous.

“Run your test, Cutlep,” he said. “But be quick. I don’t like this – something tells me—”

“Excellent,” the Erythian said, cutting him off. “Stand by. Keep your eye on the tank, just in case.”

Skinner scowled. “And what, exactly, are you planning on doing? In layman’s terms, if you don’t mind.”

Cutlep huffed in irritation, putting his hands on his hips and turning to face Skinner. “If you absolutely must interrupt me again, I am going to… wait, you said layman’s terms, didn’t you? Bashuk do-novar… what I am planning to do is interfere with the Gaither Key’s radiation signature. That Type-II reading it’s giving off is encoded on a quantum state, which means this is broadcasting a signal to some indeterminate location.”

“Wait… broadcasting?” Skinner asked, tipping his head. “Is that how the Constellation followed me?”

“Unlikely,” Cutlep said, his eyes narrowing for a moment. “Tracing Type-II radiation is difficult due to how much there is in the cosmic background. Even I am unable to directly trace it – only glean that it is, in fact, being sent.”

“So much for that idea. Anyway, go on… you’re going to interfere with it. Why?”

“Because I am not certain what is going to happen. The signal is a constant – repeating an organized wavelength pattern. If we interrupt or reverse the signal by emitting a constant inverse pattern, the object may react!”

“Okay… you know what you’re doing, I suppose.”

The gray alien snorted again, turning his back on Skinner. “Indeed I do,” he said, flipping the cover off one of the control terminals. “Now let me work – you do your job and guard the door in case I blow a fuse. I am not sure how much power this will require.”

For perhaps one wild moment, Skinner had a sense that something was wrong. He realized he could see the outline of the creature in the tank – it was plastered up against the glass with its fingers spread out wide. As it didn’t have a face to speak of, it didn’t have to turn its face sideways to get to the glass. Instead, it was pressed forehead-on against the side of the tank as if watching them closely. The fingers tapped restlessly as if waiting for something. “Wait, Cutlep!” Skinner cried, his stomach dropping out. “Don’t!”

“Too late,” Cutlep said as the lights in the room dimmed abruptly. The enclosure containing the Gaither key seemed to fill with some kind of static, partially obscuring the artifact from view. “Increasing signal interference strength. Fifteen percent of maximum power.”

The thing in the tank began to claw at the glass, banging its head against the side of the tank. “Cutlep, your pet is going berserk in the other room!” Skinner yelled over the hum of machinery. He braced the rifle against his shoulder, squinting down the barrel. “It’s trying to break free.”

“The glass will hold,” Cutlep assured him. “Twenty-two percent. Signal degradation is beginning.”

Skinner was about to yell at him to turn the machine off when Lumos’s voice broke through the mechanical ambiance. “Captain, I am picking up movement on the slopes of the mountains,” she announced. “A considerable amount of it.”

“Egghead! We have company! My CI is picking up movement – what’s going on?!” he roared. “Answer me!”

“Signal interference at forty-seven percent!” Cutlep squealed excitedly. “It’s working. The artifact is reacting. It’s… opening?” the sudden shift in his voice worried Skinner enough for him to turn and look at the scientist.

Indeed, the Gaither Key was opening. The octahedral piece in the center had split into two along its central vertices to reveal a small red sphere. It looked as though it was made of something organic and pulsing. The steady thumping pattern looked like a heartbeat being transmitted through a liquid sphere. “Cutlep! Turn it off! Something’s coming up the mountain!” he shifted to his in-helmet radio. “Lumos, status report.”

“Numerous organic contacts are advancing up the mountain,” she announced. “Biosignatures read human, but they are all identical. There are three unknown signatures with them – two of them are quite small but the third is massive. Estimates place it at 355 tons or more.”

“355 tons? What the heck is it, a spaceship?!” Skinner turned back to Cutlep. “We need to get out of here, pal! This qualifies as ‘sideways’ now. We’ve got 355 tons of something heading this way and I doubt it’s friendly.”

Cutlep said nothing, merely gazing into the object at the heart of the Gaither Key. Skinner was about to take a step towards him when he heard a loud cracking sound in the other room. He spun back to face the tank, realizing for the first time that a large fracture had appeared where the creature was banging on the glass. “Oh beans, no…” he said. “Cutlep!”

The Erythian looked at him. “Seventy-nine percent,” he said. “It’s—”

The Gaither Key suddenly began to spin very rapidly before both of its pyramidal halves suddenly inverted, pointing towards the center. They passed through one another and the sphere as if none of them were solid despite Skinner knowing that he’d held them in his hand. They then began to spin extremely rapidly before the pyramids opened from both ends… and then opened again… and again… and again…

Skinner knew what he was seeing was impossible. It was like watching a flower that wouldn’t stop blooming. No sooner had the pyramids opened into four equal portions than a new pyramid grew at the center—larger than the original—and then opened again. The result was a spiny, crystalline blossom at both ends of the alien artifact. The torus sections opened as well, stretching themselves thin in order to accommodate the new shape of their central component. Two hovered around the uppermost blossom, two around the red sphere in the center and two more at the lower portion. All were spinning rapidly – far faster than they had when the object sat idle.

Anything Cutlep was about to say was cut off as a brilliant beam of light punched through the ceiling of the laboratory. It didn’t break the chamber roof – it simply passed through it as though it wasn’t there. A moment later, there was a backwash of energy so powerful that it threw Skinner against the doorframe between chambers. Cutlep, standing as close as he was, didn’t stand a chance. One second he was standing in front of the Gaither Key and the next he was evaporated. Skinner saw him silhouetted in the brilliant light for a moment as he blew away like dust and ashes.

“Captain!” Lumos’s voice broke through the chaos as he dragged himself up.

“Lumos! Fire up the Dangerous and prepare to depart!” he yelled into his headset.

“That is not possible,” she said. “The energy signature from the structure is acting almost like a gravity well. Can you disable it?”

Skinner chanced a look at the Gaither Key. It was spinning even faster and the heartbeat of the central core had increased. “Probably not!” he said. “But I’ll try – otherwise we’re screwed.”