Rina was seventeen years old and on night duty on the Soból station's communications. Beyond the panoramic screen stretched the asteroidal silence and the dark belt of Pythia. Officially, the sector was dead, with no buoys, no routes, no transmitters at all. That's why the vibration on the chart looked like an error, and yet it wasn't going away. She had a navigation exam in a few hours, so she tried not to take any chances. The signal came at uneven intervals, but created a rhythm, as if someone was practising breathing. Rina switched on the filter and counted the packets, as her mentor from Antares had taught her. Out came the prime numbers, thrown into the void between nothing and nothing, rhythmically. - Is someone playing with us or is she really calling? - she muttered to the empty cabin. Nevertheless, she felt a shiver in the back of her neck, as if touching a cold railing. In the inner channel, Miko, the school pilot and her loudest critic, spoke up. - If it's a prank, it's better than your last bits, Rin. They transmitted a common tracking, and the computer indicated a source far beyond the station's map. The buoy list was missing anything, just an empty grid and old warnings. The duty officer told them to just log the measurements and not disturb the drive section. They were given permission to go out in wetsuits and took Raven-2, the smallest technical skiff. Miko led by millimetres, while Rina kept the antenna fastened to the handle like a string. As they crossed an empty sector, the radio transmitter went from a whisper to a clear clatter. The clatter responded to their ping, after exactly thirteen seconds, as if counting. The jumpsuits creaked at the joints and the interfaces stung their wrists with a quick status confirmation. Ahead of them emerged an object without lights, shaped like a folded leaf, coated in ice. It didn't appear on any list, had no placard, but emitted heat from beneath its armour. Rina pressed her glove against the plating, and the numbers in her headphones accelerated significantly. - 'Can you hear that? Someone is counting us together,' she said, trying not to shake her voice. Shallow grooves were drawn in the ice, like fingers left in flour. Then the object changed rhythm and gave her name, syllable by syllable, without accent. Miko broke off the rotation, but something scraped along the side, as if sticking to the hull. The lights on the station bridge began to go out, and a third voice entered their channel. The altitude pointer began to tremble, as if the space around them had become denser. It said only: "Open." And the Raven's plating responded with a sound they did not know.