Fiolas had come up with the idea for a harness to have Carter take him through the ship but Carter took the idea and ran with it. He used various cables and harnesses and rigged up a pack that allowed him to carry Fiolas on his back and keep his legs from swinging around and hitting him. Another man might have been embarrassed to need to be packed around, but Fiolas only cared about answers.

"This is great," Fiolas said from atop Carter's back. He was sitting high enough he could see over Carter's head. It was essentially one big piggyback ride for him. His plan was to have Carter take him through the ship from bottom to top before letting in a few specialized teams. He wanted to see the original of everything before everyone mucked it up.

"Yeah, real great," Carter responded. "You ready to go in sir?"

"One last thing, stop by the wall display over there would ya?" Fiolas asked. "Also, I told you just call me Fiolas."

Carter walked him over to the display and Fiolas made sure his program was working before he headed into the Icarus. He had made a make-shift algorithm to check the celestial date around them to see if time was still moving backward around them. Since the discovery, he had been tweaking and perfecting the program, but for now, he needed it to just work. It was accurate up to the hour but it took several hours to calibrate. It appeared the anomaly wasn't consistent throughout so he had to be constantly updating it.

"Ok, looks like our program is running along smoothly, we should know if we're still moving backward through time in about an hour." Fiolas clapped his shoulder, "Let's go into the belly of the beast!"

Carter sighed, "Alright." He marched over to where a team had pried open a door.

"Wait, wait, wait," Fiolas said as they neared the outer wall. He clicked on his shoulder camera, "Outer shell of the ship appears to cast rainbows in the light. It consists of small grainy stones or gems of varying sizes, the largest being... what size would you say this is Carter?"

"A thumbnail?" He answered. "Are we going to do this the entire way through the ship?"

"Of course. This could be the biggest scientific discovery since Scofield left the atmosphere. What did you think we're going to do?" Fiolas replied. He returned to speaking to his recorder, "The largest size is an average thumbnail. Scrapings have already been sent to the lab for analysis. Ok, in we go."

Carter climbed up the stairs and into what appeared to be a cargo bay. "Ugh, what's that smell?" Fiolas asked.

"I have a feeling we're about to see something nobody wants to see." Carter moved past boxes and pushed a few crates out of the way. The whole time Fiolas chattered in his ear and the recording device about how normal everything looked. Carter stopped in his tracks, "The crates are all black and... oh." Fiolas said. "Be careful where you step Carter, I don't want to lose any evidence with sloppy footwork."

"I know sir. This isn't my first dead body." Carter chose a path to take him to the body directly without touching any crates and kneeled down so they could both get a closer look.

"Stars. That's Sturletto. I was just talking to him right before you came to get me." Fiolas swallowed hard.

"Please don't throw up on me." Carter tried to turn and look at him.

"I'm sorry," Fiolas said. "This is my first body and, uh, I need to get out of here."

"You got it." Carter got up and turned around to go back the exact same way they came in.

"Wait, that crate over there, it's open." Fiolas pointed to a large black crate with small canisters of swirling black gas. Carter deviated from his path only enough to get a better look at it. "What the..." Fiolas trailed off, his nausea gone.

"What is that sir?"

"It's dark matter," Fiolas said. "I can't believe they have freaking dark matter on this ship, a whole freaking crate of it."

"Dark matter? Isn't that just a superstition earth created to get the other planets off their backs?" He reached out a hand to pick up one of the canisters for closer inspection.

"Don't touch it!" Fiolas shouted in his ear.

"Ahh, sorry! I just, ya know," Carter put his hands up and now was blocking the recorder Fiolas had on his shoulder.

"Hands, Carter, your hands are in the way of the camera," Fiolas said only slightly more quietly than last time. He put his hands down quickly and let out another exasperated sigh. "Let's just go up to the next room please," Fiolas asked and Carter immediately agreed.

On the next floor, they found an ordinary engine room. Both men gave a sigh of relief to find nothing extraordinary in this room besides really old tech. I bet Keisha loved this room. This was the type of place she would excel in. Fiolas was smart, but Keisha always seemed to know how things fit together.

They moved on and found what appeared to be the barracks. The whole place looked comical to Fiolas. "There's some weird squishy foam thingy from roughly waist down that's a terrible bright red and matches what appears to be a shaggy carpet. Carter, how does the carpet feel when you walk on it?"

"I dunno, soft?" He said.

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"There you have it folks, a soft, red, carpet. Super helpful as always Carter."

"Here to help sir," he said back.

"Stars, check out these terrible gold nameplates, so terrible." Fiolas started laughing.

"Excuse me," A beautiful brunette stepped out of some quarters at the end of the hallway wearing a weird orange jumpsuit. "I picked out the colors for this ship, including those 'terrible' gold nameplates, and I'll have you know they were terribly expensive and all the rage back on earth." The two men just stared at her.

"Rosey, you don' even know them. I thought we agreed we'd let them find us and not go startlin' people we dun know." Another man joined her at the end of the hallway, he was considerably shorter than her and looked considerably older than her.

"What? So I'm to just listen to them laugh at my impeccable taste?" She asked the man.

"Yes. Yes, thas exactly what ya do. What if guns are involved Rosey? Ya dun go and piss off the guys with guns." He waved his hand towards the two.

"Sir?" Carter asked, "Do you have a gun, sir?"

"No. No, I don't. Please tell me you do."

"No sir, the mission briefing did not require guns, sir."

"Crap," Fiolas said. "Do you two have any guns?" He yelled at them.

"No." The guy held his hands up and shook his head.

"Guns! Like I would ever carry such a brutal weapon. What are your names and who do you report to?" She started walking towards them with such purpose that Carter started backing away.

"Rosey, settle down. Can ya see you're scaring the fellas?" The man shouted at her. She seemed to listen to him and stopped and put her hands up also reluctantly.

"Very well." She said. "I'm sorry," and rolled her eyes to really show how much she meant it.

"You'll halfta forgive us. Rosey here has a bit a temper, but she's all kinds of smarts. They all call me Tempus." The man walked up and pushed Rosey to the side and shook Carter's hand and then reached up and shook Fiolas' hand.

"You may call me Mrs. Rose. Only Tempus here is allowed to call me Rosey and even then he does so at his own peril." Carter held out his hand as though to shake hers, she merely stared at it until he dropped it. "I assume you two were sent here to see what the Icarus is all about?" She looked from one to the other. "Is this a normal thing people do now? They ride each other about?"

They both immediately shook their head no and Fiolas was the first to speak, "No, my legs don't work and your ship doesn't really allow for my wheelchair..."

"I was just ordered to bring him aboard so he could check everything out..." Carter interrupted.

"The straps and stuff are to just make it easier for my friend here," Fiolas kept going.

"Yeah, I didn't know how long I would need to carry him and his legs are dead weight." There was a long pause for a while.

"So," Fiolas finally said, "Is there a place where we can talk? Are there any more people we should be aware of?" The two of them shared a look and pointed up. Tempus led the way to the observation deck and promised he would give them a personal tour of the bridge afterward.

They swiveled Kline Tempus' chair around and Carter undid the straps and set Fiolas down in the chair. "Thank you Mr. Tempus for letting me use your chair."

"I ain't no Mr. Tempus." The man turned into a rage, "I said, people call me Tempus. Dammit, Rosey. I tol' ya, I tol' ya a hundred times. 'Better check those nameplates so they get it righ.'"

"I know, I know. Can you just drop it for once in your life? I'm sorry they got your name wrong on the nameplates. I have apologized for it a hundred times already, I can't fix it anymore here, then I could back on earth!"

Carter and Fiolas just watched the two argue, at a loss for what was going on. "I'm sorry Tempus..." Fiolas said it cautiously, "Not trying to offend you. It's just your name on the manifest is Kline Tempus right?"

"No! Thas jus the dag-gon thing. My name is not Kline Tempus. It's Tempus Kline, and I've been fighting for it since the day my ma gave it to me!" He threw his hands up in the air and turned around like he was trying to calm down. "Dag-gon biggest space mission to ever leave earth and they can't get my name right." He kicked the shag carpet in frustration.

"Can we, can we maybe move on?" Carter suggested. The three of them all nodded at Tempus who appeared to be moving past his fit of rage.

"Fine." Tempus sat down on the carpet, crossing his legs. Everyone took a deep breath.

"Now, why are you here on my ship?" Mrs. Rose asked the two men.

"Your ship?" Fiolas asked.

"Yes, my ship. Who's ship did you think this was exactly?" She asked.

"Earth's?" Carter suggested. Fiolas just shook his head no at him.

"Sorry Mrs. Rose. We are on this ship because your ship is on my ship." Fiolas answered.

"My ship, is on your ship?" She clarified.

"Yes. Approximately five hours ago your ship requested to land and then landed on my ship, the Pytheas." Fiolas said.

"No, that can't be right." She replied.

"I'm pretty sure that's right," he said.

"We stopped moving roughly seven hours ago, we've been watching the clock to see when someone would finally come in." She said.

"Interesting." Fiolas started biting his lower lip. "Ok, let's back up. You said the last thing you remember was huddling for your life down in the engine room. Did you have those jumpsuits on?"

"No, we woke up with them on and we were halfway down from the barracks." She said.

"I do remember, some weird flashes, streaks of light, but that's about it." Tempus joined in.

"Ok, why were you afraid for your life? I thought you were all excited to see Rigel's collapse. Did something happen?" Fiolas was sitting up in his seat now, he had never had a puzzle like this before.

Mrs. Rose looked nervous and nodded a yes to Tempus. "Have ya'll ever worked with dark matter before?" Both men shook their heads no. "Righ, well, thas smart of ya. It's a tough sun-of-a"

"Tempus." Mrs. Rose interrupted him. "Manners, please."

"Well, it's tough. We figured outta way to open wormholes through time with stuff right? So we figures why not send a ship through somewhere far and cool and figure out more stuff." He said it all so nonchalantly Fiolas almost choked on his spit.

"Excuse me? Wormholes? Through time? Did he say time?" He asked the last question to Carter, who also looked as though all of this was going over his head in a big way.

"Yeah, wormholes. It must've been how you boys got here too, all the way out here. Right?" He waited a moment, and when he saw their stares he started to second-guess himself. "Ya'll didn' get here through a wormhole?" Both men shook their heads no. Tempus took some time to think this over. "What year is it to you fellas?"

"It's been over 700 years since the Icarus left earth Tempus," Fiolas said as calmly as he could manage.

Tempus gave a low whistle, "Shoot." Mrs. Rose got up from where she had been leaning on the wall and walked away. Carter got up to get her but Tempus stopped him. "Give her a minute. She had a lot left for her back on earth." Carter nodded at him and went back to where he had been standing.

Fiolas' comms clicked on, "Sir, the report you requested has finally gone through."

"Yeah, go ahead," Fiolas said back.

"The celestial date is -1 week," The voice clicked off.

"Dammit." Fiolas said, "Thank you, please run the program again from the start." Fiolas clicked off.

"What does that mean?" Carter asked him.

"It means we're still going back in time." Fiolas ran his fingers through his hair.

"Ya'll are traveling backward through time?" Tempus' face lit up. "Thas the same problem we was having." The two men raised their eyebrows at him. "Ya'll want some help?"