The Tantalus orbital tower floated above the equator and the cable sang in a dry metallic whisper. At the seven-hundredth kilometre, Iga Borecka received reports of capsules that had been silent for too long. Silent units were called ghosts here, although official protocols said simply: no telemetry. Through the armoured window one could see the Amazonian horizon, covered with clouds like wrinkles on water. Systems heated up evenly, gauges danced and the smell of grease wafted through the locks. A normal duty night, until the radar spit out an anomaly with a number she knew by heart. The pings came in intervals that aligned with her scout signal code from years ago. The capsule flew from above, on a service trajectory, but without a transmitter, without a signature. Seemingly rubbish, yet someone had given it a route through a strictly reserved zone. Boris entered the control room, holding up a cup, and muttered that such things end up in a report to the Archives. She pressed intercept as the old whistle tune from the camp summer vibrated in her ears. The system confirmed the intercept and warned of a discrepancy between the material era and the formal metric. The shell of the capsule had microscratches as if it had been rained on for a hundred years, and the varnish was signed with today's date. The hatch bore a quality control mark from her hometown, although no one manufactured space parts there anymore. The cargo manifest was short: to hand, Iga Borecka, only after dusk. Boris squinted and asked who plays with such flair sometimes. She replied that she would check with the research airlock and he was to report the delay to the service drones. Her heart beat evenly, but her fingers trembled as if they remembered another night duty. The airlock hummed as the capsule rolled onto the research table under the deep hanging lights. The aluminium smelled cool and the tower cable whispered in the background in a skeletal hushed tone. The first lock gave way after a code she shouldn't know, yet did. A whisper came from inside, like a tin can: Igusia, take your time, please. Only her grandmother spoke to her like that, and only on one very bad day. Boris asked if he could hear it too, and stepped back, as if the walls were about to suddenly grow thorns. Iga pressed the other lock until her finger ached from the vibration of the electromagnet for a brief moment. The interior hid no tools or samples, just a casket of glass woven with fibres that were alive. The translucent strands pulsed in a rhythm synchronised to her breathing, and at the edge shone a blurred tin with her initials. In the nest rested a seed the size of a plum seed, criss-crossed with microchannels that arranged themselves into a map of ionospheric storms for tomorrow. The lamp blinked and suddenly all the indicators jumped forward a minute, as if time had wheezed and corrected itself. The grain twitched and opened a crack, and the table showed oxygen uptake from the air. At the same moment, the external radar flicked on, reporting a second, identical capsule on a converging trajectory.