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As he drifted deeper, he punched several commands into his wrist computer, deactivating the array of sensors on the white cube. These were supposed to record the interaction with the alien creature. They were largely passive, intended to avoid appearing intrusive to the alien. Had the scientists on the Excelsior known what he was doing they would have been horrified, but Jae-Sun had a plan. The instrumentation crate was carrying a payload other than probes and monitors.

“I’ve lost telemetry,” Lassiter said. “Do you want me to reposition?”

“Negative,” Jae-Sun replied. “Hold station. I’m still recording.”

He was lying, but Lassiter had no way of knowing that.

Jae-Sun reiterated his command. “Hold your position. That is an order.”

“Roger,” Lassiter replied.

Jae-Sun cut his com-link, cutting himself off from the universe outside. Lassiter wouldn’t move and neither would the Excelsior. They held Jae-Sun in too high regard to disobey. It wouldn’t occur to any of them question his judgement. No one would have believed this wasn’t Jae-Sun descending into the inky depths of a lifeless asteroid.

Jason had lived so many years as Jae-Sun his own name sounded strange. The real Jae-Sun was on Titan analyzing readings from the deep space array and relaying advice and recommendations via the deep space network. Well, Jason thought, real was a relative term when it came to time travel. They were both real. They were both one and the same person. The split in the timeline meant they were effectively identical twins. How that worked from the perspective of conscious awareness, he had no idea, but it did.

“Where are you?” he mumbled to himself. “Come on, baby. I know you’re down here.”

Above, a handful of stars shone in the thin sliver of the eternally dark sky. An inky pitch-black gloom surrounded Jae-Sun from every other angle, and he felt as though he were descending into Sheol, leaving one universe and falling into another.

Darkness surrounded him. The dim light on his wrist computer read 120 meters and still the darkness seemed to be without end. Rather than the sensation of claustrophobia, with the jagged walls closing in, the intense darkness gave him a feeling of floating within eternity. Instead of being trapped inside an asteroid, he felt as though he were floating free in a void without end. Occasionally, his spotlights lit up a craggy rock drifting silently by in the dead of night. The cavern seemed to open out into a vast empty chamber beneath the chasm.

A smooth edge appeared below him, curving away in an arc as it disappeared into the darkness.

“I see you,” Jason whispered, slowing his rate of descent.

Although he couldn’t make out the entire craft, his navigation computer had already analyzed the shape, providing him with a three-dimensional wire-frame model of the UFO oriented in the same manner as in the view before him. Jason didn’t need the image.

“It’s been a long time,” he said softly.

Memories flooded his mind, the lost fragments of previous encounters from tens of thousands of time loops.

Gently, Jason reached out and touched the skin of the massive alien vessel hidden in the darkness. Through his gloves, he could feel the structure tremble.

“Easy, girl.”

Already, Jason felt confident in his assessment. This wasn’t a vehicle or a spaceship, but a living organism. Rather than dealing with a technologically advanced alien species, they were dealing with a biological entity. While humanity had reached the stars inside machines, evolution within a stellar environment had enabled these creatures to survive in space.

Slowly, he drifted over the smooth skin of the alien creature, sinking further, descending into the darkness like a deep sea diver. His fingers disturbed a thin film of dust and he watched it swirl as though it were sediment being stirred up in the depths of some murky ocean.

As his lights illuminated the hide of the creature, he noticed changes in the skin texture. Images flooded his mind. Memories he had no previous awareness of suddenly seemed so clear. He blinked and could see scratches. Words and formulas had been carved into the hide of this magnificent animal. They weren’t real, he understood that, but once they had been and now his mind replayed them, recalling each pattern as he drifted over the creature.

His gloved hand skimmed over the hide of the interstellar beast as he sunk deeper into the asteroid. He could almost feel the phantom sketches, the symbols and letters he remembered from another lifetime. They had scarred the creature’s thick hide, having been hastily carved into its skin. He’d never understood these formulas. Jason knew what they were but why they’d been carved into the creature had puzzled him. All he could think of was that they were some multi-cycle attempt at comprehension spanning the vastness of time itself.