The Halo-4 station orbited quietly around Tantalus, an orange giant with green auroras. Lila Miśkiewicz, a fourteen-year-old radio astronomy apprentice, liked listening to the hum of the cosmos best. That evening she was straightening the cables at the Canary antenna, mounted on the outdoor gallery. When she switched on the listening, a breath-like rhythm rolled through the speaker. Three, five, eight, thirteen - the intervals arranged themselves like a Fibonacci sequence. The rhythm came back from the direction of the fourth orbit, where nothing had been broadcast for a long time. Lila called up the intercom, trying to sound calm despite her accelerated heart rate. - 'Tom, take the scanner and come to the Canary, please,' she said in a half-hearted voice. - 'If it's a lantern, you'll buy me chocolate from the recycler,' he replied jokingly. A moment later he was standing next to her, his scanner blinking uncertainly. He muttered something under his breath, watching the screen, and squinted over the data. 'The signal has a strangely variable delay, as if the source is jumping on an ellipse. - 'And it repeats our station ID, only with a mistake from years ago,' Lila added. A vector appeared on the navigation console leading towards the fourth orbit. The former tug Smaragd was lost there in a magnetic storm before they were born. - 'The adults are at the aurora briefing,' Tom said, adding in a whisper that they had twenty minutes. Lila hesitated, but curiosity won out over regulations and common sense. They donned their manoeuvring suits and walked slowly through the tunnel to the G-4 observation dome. The close-up view of Tantalus was like an eye that moved and blinked. The antenna in the dome, untouched for months, began to slowly change azimuth on its own. The signal grew, splitting into two paths, like a conversation conducted in a whisper. A message flashed on the diagnostics screen: HALO-4 ARCHIVE, DATE 24 DECEMBER, TWO DECADES AGO. - 'After all, the station hadn't yet been expanded then,' whispered Tom a little paler. Behind the glass, a flock of ice shards prefaced, and among them something more regular. The outside airlock light unexpectedly glowed green, as if someone was asking to enter. A voice, identical to Lila's, echoed from the loudspeaker, repeating her own name. Before they could do anything, the docking sensors snapped and caught an invisible object.