“If we were back at the Refuge, I could study it properly,” Ondo mused.
The two of them stood before the towering Aetheral within one of the ship"s pristine inner rooms. He spoke to Selene brain-to-brain, in the hope that the entity couldn"t intercept what they were saying.
The entity waited unmoving while Selene and Ondo circled it, occasionally touching it, trying to understand how it functioned, what it was. It didn"t react at all when Ondo put his ear to its torso and tapped lightly. They had only the few repair tools that came with their EVA suits along with Selene"s enhanced sensory abilities, but nothing that could properly scan the entity"s internals. It felt intrusive to discuss it as if it were just some fascinating specimen they"d recovered, but it didn"t appear to mind. It
