Three teenagers arrive at the SOJUZ-17 station orbiting Saturn and find a presence in the observatory that no briefing had mentioned.
The lights in the SOJUZ-17 station trembled as the Swan transport ship locked onto airlock four. Through the narrow portholes, Susanna, Adam, and Lena pressed shoulder to shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of Saturn beyond the haze of station lights and yellow cloud. It was hard to believe that between them and Earth there was only black silence.
The hatch opened with a hiss. Susanna stepped out first, forcing her face into calm even though her stomach had tightened. Adam was grinning at every beep and clank the station made, as if it were all part of a game. Lena, already holding her old camera, kept turning in slow circles, taking in every bolt, cable, and reflective panel as if she meant to photograph the whole place before it disappeared.
Inspector Tarasova met them in the docking corridor. Her hair was escaping its tie, and the station logo on her T-shirt looked as if it had been printed in a hurry. The smile she gave them did not quite reach her eyes. "I’ll show you the labs," she said, leading them forward. "Stay with the group. This station has enough rules to sink a shuttle."
SOJUZ-17 was bigger than Susanna had expected. Three research modules stretched out from the central spine, with a hydroponics bay glowing green behind glass and an observatory at the far end, packed with scanners and telescopes aimed into the dark. They passed silent service robots, analysts bent over mineral samples from the moons, and screens full of drifting data no one bothered to explain.
In the observatory, Saturn filled the panoramic window, enormous and almost unreal, its rings catching the faint light like a blade drawn through dust. Adam found the station map and began tracing routes with one finger. Lena stood at the glass, camera forgotten at her side. Susanna noticed a line in the briefing file she had read on the flight, about odd radio signals from Enceladus, and turned to ask Tarasova what the station thought they meant.
The inspector only gave a small shrug. "Probably nothing," she said.
Two hours later, Lena leaned over the observation monitor and frowned. "That wasn’t there before."
On the screen, something dark moved across the image every time it refreshed. Not a moon. Not a ring shadow. Something narrower, stranger, as if a shape were passing just outside the lens and refusing to stay still long enough to be seen. Adam reached for the camera controls, but the panel locked with a sharp, flat buzz. The lights in the observatory dimmed to a bruised blue.
Then came a sound from the maintenance airlock.
Not a clang. Not a fault in the vents.
A slow, deliberate scrape, like someone on the other side was testing the door.
Susanna’s fingers closed around Lena’s hand. Adam lifted the torch he had pulled from his pocket, his grin gone now, every muscle in him tense. The scrape came again, closer this time, and the monitor flickered once more, showing a shadow that should not have been there at all.