The team had been out in deep space for several hours before cautiously making their way toward the aliens’ ship.

The team didn’t want to take any risks. So they had continued maneuvering around in a random fashion, inching closer and closer to the aliens’ huge vessel. They were intermittently pulsing it with active sensors.

Atlas had figured out that if they fired the Energy Zap weapon at very low frequencies, they could use it to gain an inference about the layout of the ship. It wasn’t like they could use it as an X-ray machine. The Energy Zap that Angelique had on board her spacecraft worked on any stored energy—batteries, wires, and the like. It somehow ripped electrons out of where they were stored. Essentially it drained any type of energy-storage device, pulling it into batteries on the ship. What Atlas figured out was that if they pulsed the device, they could tell how easy it was to extract energy. If they had the Energy Zap pointed at an empty wall, they wouldn’t get much energy—except for whatever was sitting in the wires. But if there was something like a door or heavy machinery behind that wall, then a lot of free electrons would be pulled in.

As they continued scanning the ship, they built up quite a comprehensive picture of where the interesting parts of the ship were. They identified sixty-three areas of the ship that might be considered air lock doors. Nothing similar to a bridge or anything of the sort. Unlike on any designs of spacecrafts Atlas was used to, this alien had their main control center of the vessel situated at the very center, away from any viewing ports or windows. The outside of their ship also had multiple fake markings on it, zones that looked like air lock doors, but when Atlas scanned them, he realized they were just empty walls. Atlas thought that perhaps these fake doors were designed to stop pirates from finding a way in.

Atlas printed out several pieces of paper showing a rough outline of the alien spacecraft and where he believed air lock doors were located. He spread them all over one of the tables on the bridge. “These are all the possible exits.”

Ariana walked over to the sheets of paper and pointed at a section of the aliens’ hull. “They went in through this air lock.”

Atlas looked at where she pointed. It was in the middle of a fake air lock door. Right in the middle of where Atlas’s scans showed there wasn’t a door at all. “Are you sure? My scans are showing there isn’t anything behind that area?”

Ariana shook her head. “Nope, I’ve checked the footage twice. This is the exact air lock door they entered through.”

They had sent clones of themselves to the aliens’ ship on an eleph-ANT. But as soon as their clones entered through the air lock door of one of the large circular domes that made up a section of the alien ship, it had begun to spin and bend, making it not immediately obvious which entrance they’d used. Atlas had hoped his scanning process would make it easier to tell.

Atlas sighed as he realized his scanning method had evidently been a waste of time. He knew Ariana would be right—he had known her long enough to know she didn’t make mistakes on tasks like this. It also meant he was reading the scans wrong. Whatever it was the Energy Zap was measuring, it wasn’t air lock doors.

“Okay, take us around there and let’s blow a hole through that air lock,” Angelique said to her Ship.

Their ship wasn’t too far from the area Ariana had pointed to. The spacecraft moved quickly, stopping right in front of the spot Ariana marked out.

“If they don’t fight back after we blow a hole through them here, then I think we can safely say they don’t have a crew,” Ship said. “We’re going to pop this door out using low power. If the others are behind that door, we don’t want to hurt them.”

Ship fired the tractor beam, and it literally just ripped the air lock door out of its holding. The large square piece of metal imploded into a ball. There was a small release of gas that clouded the view.

But slowly, as it cleared, the team saw a solid wall right behind the air lock door.

“That’s strange,” Ship said. “Behind that door is another wall.”

“Try again,” Angelique said.

Ship complied. He turned up the power and fired the tractor beam once more.

The weapon shot out and took a bite out of the solid metal wall. A hole about half a meter deep appeared in the solid metal object. But there was still just wall. Nothing behind it.

Ship wore a confused look on his face. “I’m increasing power.”

The beam fired once more. It took a gaping hole through the alien vessel. After Ship was done, the team watched as an area three meters wide and several meters deep appeared. The metal pulled out of the alien ship floated like a small asteroid tumbling out in space. But still they hadn’t made it to the other side.

Atlas didn’t want to say it out loud, but he was a little happy that he had been right. That wasn’t an air lock door.

“We need to scan until we find a door with something behind it,” he said.

Angelique nodded. Ship moved them around to the next door. Atlas crossed his fingers as the air lock door was ripped apart.

As the gas cleared and they could see clearly through into the chamber behind it, it opened into a large empty room.

Peter walked over to one of the screens showing an image of the room. “How do we know if this is the air lock they came through if they’re not here?”

“Let’s send in an ANT to look for microscopic glitter,” Atlas said, tapping a small test tube on the table.

Atlas had had the foresight earlier to plan for this eventuality. His clone had carried with him a fine mist powder. Something similar to microscopic glitter. The clone version of Atlas was meant to spray the mist over each room he entered, allowing them to retrace their steps if they needed to.

Now, however, they would be able to look for the fingerprint of that microscopic glitter to tell whether the clone versions of them had ever been in that room.

Peter picked the little test tube off the table. “What does glitter have to do with anything, Atlas?”

“Glitter spreads easily and is hard to get rid of. Microscopic glitter gets absolutely everyone and is almost impossible to get rid of. If they sprayed it in this room, there would be signs of it. My clone planned on dropping this mist in every chamber they visited. So if they’ve been here, we’ll know.”

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The team sent several ANTs to investigate, each one about the size of a suitcase. The smaller ANTs could work quicker to scan the room. And if they discovered multiple passageways, sending a swarm of ANTs would allow the team to search all of them at once—which was much faster than using a single eleph-ANT. The ANTs traveled quietly through to the air lock door they had just opened up. The tiny little ANTs quickly scanned through each corner of the room.

It was a small chamber, evidently used for cycling out air. Up in one corner of the room a hapticgraphic projector sat. Atlas noticed it was a similar design to the one he’d designed. After the ANTs had completed their scan, Atlas read out the results. “There’s another wall behind this big one.” Atlas pointed to one of the sides of the chamber. “But none of the ANTs found signs of my glitter. So I don’t think this is the entrance they came through.”

“Which air lock do we try next?” Unity asked.

“We can’t just break our way into each of those sixty-three air lock doors hoping to find the right one,” Peter said. “Surely there’s a better way.”

“Agreed,” Angelique added. “We don’t know how much time we have. We don’t yet know if they have other scout ships nearby.”

Atlas started to rack his brain for ideas. The team was right, checking each of the air lock doors would take forever. But really, what choice did they have?

“Why don’t we just send out all the ANTs we have?” Unity suggested. “Have them break into all the air lock doors?”

Atlas shuffled through his piles of paper, looking for the one that had an inventory of everything they had. “We only have two eleph-ANTs big enough to operate the tractor beam. And we sent one of them into that spacecraft.”

“Is there a better way we can use the Energy Zap to take an X-ray of the alien ship?” Angelique asked, looking toward Ariana for an answer.

Ariana shook her head.

Atlas noticed the question was addressed to Ariana and not him. He knew on some level that sparked a bit of competition within him. With Peter there, he was no longer the de facto leader. He was okay with that, but what he wasn’t okay with was not being seen as the smart one. The one who could invent anything. He was determined to reassert himself as the resident inventor. The one people turned to for all the science questions.

“I’ve got an idea,” Atlas said as he pulled out a sheet of paper and looked to confirm they had enough micro-ANTs to do what he was thinking. “How does an X-ray work?”

“Are you asking about X-rays on the electromagnetic scale or when you go to the doctor and take a picture of your bones?” Angelique asked.

“The second one. How does it take a picture of your bones?”

At this point in the conversation, everyone had walked over to Atlas’s table. Hezekiah raised his hand as he spoke. “A machine shoots X-rays through to a reader behind your body. X-rays can pass through your body, and that’s how a picture appears.”

“More specifically,” Atlas added, “X-ray light passes easily through your skin and tissue but is absorbed by your bones. So the actual picture you’re looking at is the outline of your bones.”

Atlas remembered back to when he was a human. He had broken his collarbone playing football in college. A huge left tackle had basically cut him in half before slamming him hard on the ground. He knew his bone was broken as soon as he got up, but the doctor had insisted that he get a scan to confirm everything was fine. This was back when X-rays required a special kind of film.

While getting scanned, he’d had a lengthy conversation with the radiologist about how the technology worked. Somehow it delved into how astronauts wouldn’t be able to take X-rays of their bodies. Not because the X-ray machine wouldn’t work in space—as it would still be able to pump out electromagnetic radiation at that frequency. It wouldn’t work because the special film used that was sensitive to X-ray light would be overexposed, similar to how old film rolls were ruined when exposed to sunlight. Astronauts out in space were constantly bombarded by radiation across the light spectrum. Any X-ray film would need to have heavy shielding to not become overexposed by the constant bombardment of X-rays out there.

“We could essentially take an X-ray of that alien spacecraft if we wanted to,” Atlas proposed.

Everyone except Ariana wore a slightly confused look on their face.

Unity said what everyone was thinking as she pointed out the window. “That alien spacecraft out there is made of metal. X-rays don’t pass through metal.”

Atlas smiled a knowing smile. He was hoping someone would ask the obvious question. “X-rays don’t. But gamma rays and neutrinos do. We can create a cloud of small micro-ANTs and send them on a quick mission around the alien ship. They could act like the film used to take an X-ray. They’ll measure how much of the different types of radiation passes through the spacecraft. And it’ll measure from what angles it comes through. Then we’ll be able to map quite accurately what the insides of that spacecraft look like.”

“I don’t get it,” Hezekiah said.

Atlas paused for a moment, trying to come up with an appropriate example. “Ship, can you help me with this analogy?”

Atlas had worked with his Ship for long enough that the two of them had a special chemistry. In reality, what he was about to show wouldn’t really work because he was a hapticgraphic projection. But he trusted Ship to change the projections in real time to tell the story best.

“Ship, can you make me an X-ray machine?”

Atlas’s Ship manifested a large device with a glass window on it. Atlas pointed at the glass section. “Can everyone place their hand on it?”

Everyone did as instructed. Then Atlas placed a metal ball inside of a square metal tin and placed it next to everyone’s hands.

“Now, Ship, can you simulate three images? One using visible light, one using X-ray light, and the last using neutrinos?”

For dramatic effect, the machine started to make a noise, and lights began flashing. Atlas was grateful that Ship was helping to sell the story. Three printouts appeared in Atlas’s hand.

Atlas placed the first image on the table. It was a black-and-white image showing the outline of the shape of each of their hands. No bones were visible, just the complete outlined shape of everyone’s hands. “This image was taken using visible light. Notice how none of the light can pass through our hands, so all that’s created is an outline?”

Atlas also pointed out that the square cube of metal he placed next to everyone’s hands also blocked all light from traveling through it. It appeared as a black square on the image.

Everyone nodded, and Atlas continued. Next he showed the image taken with X-rays. The bones in everyone’s hands were visible, and there was a rough outline showing the skin and ligaments of their hands. “Now see how X-ray light travels easily through your skin but is absorbed by bones?”

Atlas pointed to the black square in the image. Again, the X-ray light was completely blocked by this object. “See how X-rays can’t travel through metal?”

Everyone nodded. Next Atlas showed everyone the image taken with neutrinos. The image was completely white, indicating none of the light was obstructed by anyone’s hands. “See how the neutrinos travel right through your hands like nothing was there?”

What was most interesting was that the square tin Atlas had placed next to all the hands was now transparent. And the object Atlas had placed inside the tin was now visible in the image. “Neutrinos find it easy to travel through this metal tin to reveal what’s inside of it. We can use the neutrinos produced by the sun to look inside of that alien spacecraft. Exactly as if we had X-ray vision.”

“I like it,” Peter said. “Space is constantly being bombarded with high-energy particles. We won’t need a machine creating these particles when space is naturally providing them for us.”

Angelique looked at Atlas. “How long would that take?”

“It will be faster than visiting all the air lock doors one at a time. We can basically do it already. The ANTs have sensors on them that we can configure to detect the different levels of radiation we’re looking for. Then it’s just a matter of getting them to surround the alien ship. The hard part will be crunching all that data to build up a three-dimensional look at the ship.” Atlas knew he would do it but knew he wouldn’t be able to do it as quickly or accurately as Ariana. So he asked her. “Ariana, can you build a model for crunching all the data we get back from the ANTs?”

Ariana’s eyes were closed through this whole interaction. “Can I get access to your fabricators again? I’ll start producing more ANTs to speed up the scan.”

The team worked hard for a short while, pumping out ANTs in great numbers. Angelique had a huge reservoir of probes. They weren’t ANTs but were similar enough to do the job. The probes Angelique carried were designed for taking a complete map of a planet from orbit, so were ideal for the purpose Atlas proposed.

It didn’t take long before the team was racing around the alien spacecraft, leaving a cloud of ANTs in their wake. They raced around it several times to make sure they had mapped out the alien vessel completely.

It looked like the large alien rocket ship was flaking its skin.