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Jason was sweating. His suit compensated for the exertion, lowering the temperature and circulating dry air to draw off the humidity produced by his perspiration.

Lying on his back, he reached under the console, grabbing at the roots. Lying there, he felt the vertigo of spacewalking. He could have been lying next to the floor, leaning against a wall or drifting close to the ceiling. All possibilities were equally valid, but for his sanity he chose to think he was lying there, even though he was floating inches above the floor.

The creature shook as he jerked at the roots, tearing them free like loose wiring.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pulling the debris away and watching as the console toppled slowly, propelled forward by his jerking motion.

With the console floating freely within the skull cavity, a rainbow of colors began appearing on the surface he’d thought of as the front windshield.

“You like that, huh?” he said, smiling to himself.

Jason grabbed the console, using his maneuvering thrusters to drag the console toward the fractured opening. The computer controls in his suit struggled with the center of gravity being shifted to one side, and he quickly powered down, arresting his motion before he spun out of control. The only way he was going to get this out of here was by using the equipment cube to drag it, as the cube was designed to retrieve collection samples and its navigation systems could deal with more complex maneuvers.

Attaching the console to the cube was easy enough.

It was time to go.

“Goodbye, my dear friend,” he said, taking one last look at the soft, kaleidoscope of colors pulsating through the cavity. “Take care of yourself.”

Slowly, he drifted out of the yawning hole in the skull cavity, watching as the cube followed automatically behind him. The console caught on the edge of the skull, but the cube adjusted its motion, working the console out of the gap.

Jason couldn’t look back. Tears welled up below his eyes, sticking to his cheeks like globs of glue in the low gravity. He shook his head, shaking them loose so they would be drawn away by his helmet vents.

His spotlights illuminated the sloping body of this majestic creature as he ascended, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at the central core. Above, a handful of fleeting stars provided the only hint of the universe beyond this dark cavern.

As he approached the top of the fracture in the asteroid, the dim light spilled in around the edges of the yawning canyon. Again, he could see the scratch marks where the creature had scraped against the dusty, rock walls while fleeing for the safety of the darkness.

For a moment, Jason floated above the crevasse. Chunks of dusty blue ice mixed with rocks and boulders. The dark crack beneath him looked more ominous than familiar.

“Farewell,” he said, accelerating away from the fracture in the asteroid.

The equipment cube mirrored his motion, following behind him with the console in tow. If he changed direction or came to a halt to examine his wrist console, the cube darted around, compensating for the added mass it had to deal with.

He cleared the lip of a vast impact crater and returned to the way-point set by Commander Lassiter. His surreal experience inside the darkened fracture seemed almost like a dream out here among the stars.

Jason steeled himself. As far as the universe was concerned, he was Jae-Sun again, in demeanor and attitude. He had to play this part once more, one final time.

Jae-Sun activated his coms and caught the tail-end of chatter with the Excelsior.

“—roughly two hours, but he—wait, I’ve got him on radar,” Lassiter said.

Jae-Sun could see the young man in the distance, just a speck of white drifting above the murky grey asteroid with its pits and boulders, craters and cracks.

“Did you find her?” Lassiter asked.

“Her?” Jae-Sun replied, his mind still awash with all that had happened. “No. There was nothing down there. But she’d been there. I found some debris, part of a control panel.”

“Hot damn!” Lassiter replied with excitement.

Jae-Sun found it strange trying to mimic the young man’s excitement. He smiled as he sailed up to him. Yes, he thought, I should be excited about finding evidence of an intelligent alien species.

Lassiter came around beside the equipment cube, drifting by the console as he examined this strange and curious alien device.

“Un fucking believable!” he cried. “We hit the jackpot!”

“Yes,” Jae-Sun replied softly. “Yes, we did.”

Would he ever be able to tell the true story? He wondered. Would he ever be able to reveal all he’d seen? It wasn’t the dragons of the deep humanity needed to be wary of. What were those spidery pirates? Where were they from? What would happen when humanity first encountered this hostile alien race?