Above the Baltic-3 platform, morning always came from below. Light bounced off the impatient waves and climbed up the metal legs, as if testing the strength of the structure, before spilling over the platforms, containers and glass tunnels. Above it all, disappearing into the fading sky, was the ribbon of the Copernicus orbital lift - a dark dash, hair-thin and yet heavier than all the bridges of the world. Lena Gajewska leaned her elbows against the railing on the control room roof and drew a salty, cold smell into her lungs. The night was short and thick with data. She could still feel it in her eyes: the flicker of the charts, the telemetry bars, the tiny nervousness of the alarms that went on and off faster than she could serve coffee. Beneath her feet, the metal trembled slightly - the lift was working, a supply capsule was descending from mid-orbit, and somewhere above, a counterweight lever was gliding along a track impossible to see with the naked eye. - Are you awake? - Tymon Ratajczak, wearing an orange trainee waistcoat, emerged from the control room, holding the door with his hip. In doing so, he had a look on his face that feigned carefreeness but betrayed that he was once again struggling with 'that one filter' in the noise analysis system. - 'Not on a night like this,' Lena replied. - And not with a sky like this. She pointed with her head to the lift rope. From this distance it seemed motionless. A tiny silver dot was visible between the clouds - a supply capsule with the Copernicus logo, predictably obscured by thermal film. An inspection drone hovered in the air, its LEDs putting up red dots in the gloom. - 'The filter is already alive,' reported Tymon, tapping his fingers on the tablet a moment later. - 'I've converted it to adaptive, it can handle the reflections from the ion stacks. 'And by the way... - he glanced sideways at Lena - ...I got a ping from the emergency channel of the pods. - Which one? - Lena turned completely around. - The supply one? - No. This is the best one. Anons with an SK-17 badge. Lena furrowed her brow. SK stood for service pod, small, fast and usually unmanned. Seventeen hadn't been down to Baltic-3 for months. Last time, as far as she could remember, it had been strapped to the upper section of the lift, in the attachment repair area. - SK-17 is coming back? - she repeated, as if the sentence itself needed checking in her throat. - That's what the system said. Descending speed, fuel normal, track correct, cargo manifest... - Tymon squinted. - No report of crew presence. Zero live signatures. It's just that... - He hesitated. - The biomonitoring channel moved for three seconds. Like an echo. They were already rushing back to the control room when the tunnels became narrower, louder. The sounds of machinery, the swish of air from the ventilation systems, the creaking of nodes - all this created a background that usually calmed Lena. Now it was arousing alertness. They passed through the chiaroscuro of the monitors, touched the coolness of the metal handrails and slipped into the cockpit of the control room, where their world began: charts, lists, green and orange lights, the voice of an artificial assistant who was polite to the point of exaggeration. - 'Assistant, show track SK-17,' said Lena, too quickly. - The track of the SK-17 service pod on the main screen, the panorama from cameras D-3 and E-1, the analysis of the manifest. - The voice was velvety and predictable, mollified for the station. A star map unfolded on the centre screen. A dash of track, a bright patch of Baltic, two points: SK-17 and the fairy-blue Earth below them. Additional windows displayed statistics: internal pressure, temperature, power status, ARS, micrometeorite impact sensors. Everything looked decent. Yet a value flashed in the bottom right corner that Lena couldn't miss. - "Biometric signature: 1 - 27% confidence." - She read aloud. - Why does this even count? - 'The old sensors in the capsules sometimes catch interference from the magnetic field generator,' muttered Tymon. - 'But there's no generator here. They don't fit it in the service ones, remember? - 'I'm calling Sarah's engineer,' decided Lena, pulling small headphones out of her pocket. - 'Without authorisation we can't do anything. Engineer Sara Kolodziej picked up after the second beep. - Speak up - her voice sounded like metal, but not because she was stern. On Baltic-3, everyone talked fast. We had to catch up with reality. - SK-17 is on my list? No. Why do you see that? - The emergency channel has picked up,' Lena said. - Telemetry normal, no reported crew, possible biosignature. Track consistent, vector to dock three. - Do not touch the airlocks or manuals. I'll block the section while I get to you. I'll be at your door in three minutes. If the biomonitor moves again, ping me immediately. - Clear. Tymon leaned forward as if about to leap into the screen. - Lena, check this out. External E-1, zooming in. The image from the drone twisted gently and stopped on the capsule. It was like a blob, rippled from the traces of flight through a layer of dust and ions. Long, shiny furrows formed an irregular pattern on the heat shield. Lena tightened her fingers on the arm of the chair. - Plasma burns? - she guessed. - Maybe. But look at this edge. - Tymon zoomed in on the fragment until the pixels thickened like tiles. - It's not just a tarnish. It looks like... a handprint. There was indeed something marked on the steel panel, right next to the safety buckle. The shape of five separated fingers, smudged, as if moved across the surface. As if someone had tried to grab the capsule from the outside. Lena felt the cold from the roof return to her skin. - Maybe it's just dirt from the tracks,' she said to herself. - Like a lift in a block of flats. There's always someone with dirty hands. - 'No one has dirty hands in a vacuum,' Tymon remarked and immediately regretted it. - Excuse me. Dumb..., that sounded frivolous. - 'Assistant, filter the SK-17 biometric channel again. Dependence on internal pressure and hull vibration,' Lena instructed. - Filtered. Result: "Biometric signature: 1 - 31% confidence". - The voice did not budge even by a breath. - It growled. - Tymon licked his lips. - 'Okay. I'll try radio. Passive listening only, no active pinging. Maybe there's something ticking. In the click of the switches was suddenly all their courage. Lena leaned over the panel. On screen one there were teetering waves, as vast as the Hel Spit. On the second - darkness. Silence that was not silence, but a sediment of thousands of scattered impulses. The waves. The pulse of the station. The sizzle of ion chimneys. And then a signal came through. A short one. Wordless. More like a pattern than a message: three evenly spaced signals, a pause, three dense signals, a pause, three longer strokes, as if someone had dragged a fingernail across a guitar string. Tymon held his breath. - This is no standard call. - He turned to Lena. - 'But I used to play drumsticks in the garage. If someone wants to say 'hey, here I am', they'll choose something so natural. - Did it come from within? - Lena asked. - Yes. At that moment, a line of text scrolled across the left-hand smallest window. Lena wasn't sure if she was seeing right or dreaming wrong. The letters were black on white, clean, official, in a systemic Copernicus font that could not be mistaken. "Crewman recognised: Lena Gajewska - access level B". - No," she whispered. - No, no, no. - It's some kind of mistake. - Tymon swallowed. - 'Maybe you've pulled chalk, you know, from your ID - something like a bounce from the slicer. We've got your card in the system, you know that. Lena pushed her finger into her pocket until she felt the hard plastic of the ID. No. There was not the slightest chance of her card talking to the pod. Not at this distance. The assistant spoke before she could draw any conclusion: - SK-17 at seven hundred and fifty metres. Auto approach to dock three. Pressure equalisation in the airlock commenced. - Sara? - Lena touched the handset. - We are in position. SK-17 is logging me as crew. I think he's ridiculing us, don't you? Right? The handset beeped. The ionosphere cracked them a joke right at the edge. A tinny, angry hum. - 'We're out of communication,' said Tymon. - Just for a moment. - 'Hold the alignment,' ordered Lena, but only the polite whisper of an assistant came back from the speakers: - 'I do not have authority to halt emergency approach manoeuvre. Access level required: A. A metallic groan came from outside, draughty but soft, as if someone had pressed a huge ear against the station wall. The vibration went through the control room floor. On the E-1 camera, the capsule expanded until it filled the frame. The docking lights came on one by one, pushing the shadow into a corner. For a moment, Tymon's own profile flashed in the observation glass, and next to it, an impossible outline. - 'Did you see it? - he choked out. - 'I saw,' Lena replied. - Don't analyse now. Just breathe. The SK-17 muscled the slide, blinked, stopped millimetres away from the hitch. The systems played a short clutching tune. The buckle's pawl tightened and clicked into the right groove. The 'lock' light turned from red to green. A diagram of the lock appeared on the control room screen: two circles, a rectangle and the word 'aligned'. - Internal camera? - Tymon was already getting up, but Lena grabbed his sleeve. - 'We're not isolating until Sara comes in. Just the image. She snapped on the option. She pressed it, the way she used to turn on the bedside lamp when she was a kid. For a second all they saw was snow - the old pixels from the service camera were in character, pretending to be a blizzard. Then the image unfolded. The interior of the capsule was small, cramped, with two seats folded at an angle, a mechanical clock on the side panel (someone had glued it on, like a joke), stuck at three o'clock. There was a thermal film on one of the seats, shiny like a broken piece of the moon. The interior door was closed. - 'Empty,' Tymon whispered, and seemed stupidly disappointed in himself even at that moment. Then the light in the capsule, soft as breath, dimmed and intensified. Slowly. Twice. And then somewhere deep, beneath the metal, something knocked that could not be called a coincidence. Three times. Slowly. As if someone was counting them along with them. Lena dried up with her lips half a letter apart. Another line of text flashed on the monitor, just above the image from inside. It was as if the system had started to hang up, as if someone had written in it by hand. "Keep quiet, Lena." The sound froze. The camera caught something else - a shadow moved into the depths, a tiny ripple on the thermal film, the angle of the clock twitched a millimetre, though no hand touched it. And then, as if on cue, the light by the hatch to dock three lit up yellow, signalling that the manual opening was ready.