NEWMAN

The text channel to Houston was quiet, and that left Juliana time to examine her changed biology.

The medlab, where you had everything to track the health of the ISS crew and perform space medicine research was the obvious stop for that, and while Frank and Ivan were trying to rig an additional cable or two to feed the Dragon capsule in an attempt to increase the batteries charging speed, she floated into the section, trying to figure out what she could test most easily.

Blood was the obvious first. Trying to puncture the hardened tegument that replaced normal skin was hard, but she managed to slip a needle.

For all the good it did. Try as she might, no bodily fluids escaped into the sampling container, even trying to squeeze or massage the section she’d picked. She tried again in her mid-section but with the same lack of results. She stopped reaching for a scalpel and trying to cut to see how deep she needed to go to find something.

Most evolved animal orders had some kind of fluid distribution system. Even most plants had one. But if they had blood or a blood equivalent, it was well protected.

She had more success scratching at the covering and getting some samples to put in the small microscope that came with the lab. The results were confusing. She could see a cellular structure, but the cells were larger than what she expected for skin, and with walls that seemed more appropriate for a plant rather than an animal. She still took pictures of the samples, and, after small deliberation, sent them down to Houston.

General physiology was next, and she tried to get a better understanding of her skeleton. She assumed there was one, as she exhibited articulations on her arms and legs, and the head had some movement.

While the four-eyed version suggested a full 360° capacity, the arms themselves had a definitive front-back orientation. They could move far further “backward” than normal for unaltered humans, but the triple-digit, with its thumb at one end, did provide a preferred direction, even if she could twist the hand somewhat. A front, which also did feel somehow natural to her.

The feet… felt like vestigial. Which was somehow insane, if you thought of their new forms as designed. Evolution – natural evolution – left plenty of vestiges across the million years, but who would design bodies with vestigial remains?

At least they had three digits only, from what she could see with a mirror since she could no longer bend enough to see them.

Real evolution? she wrote on a notepad. Then she shuddered. Because the idea that their bodies were natural meant that the species they appeared to be would exist – or at least have existed – somewhere, somewhen. Maybe they were really remade in the shape of whoever was behind the Zone. But why?

Strapping herself to the exercise bike was futile – her shortened legs didn’t reach far enough. She did manage to get onto the treadmill and run. Badly. She could walk, but running was hard, feeling unnatural.

She smeared her arms with a few substances, trying to see if the apparent skin absorption worked at different speeds. While she waited for that experiment, she switched to others.

Her four eyes, which by now felt entirely natural, appeared to be disturbingly mammalian. Rolling them revealed a white, although seemingly lacking blood vessels. A combination of a too-large iris and inset eyes was what made her think of dog eyes originally.

There were no external orifices. The lack of mouth, nose, and ears she’d already noted, but once she stripped away the tattered remnants of her shorts and used a mirror, there was nothing but blubbery leather with a few folds.

Conducting all that research energized her. She felt more awake now than the half-hours of eclipse holed in the semi-darkness, trying to conserve energy.

She looked from time to time at the text channel. Shuko was running the dialogue with Houston, not that there was much of it. Houston was still obviously testing operations for their potential scenarios to rescue them.

Can you fire Zvezda for 5 seconds? was a curious one.

Parameters? Shuko asked back.

Uploaded.

‟It’s only a little push,” Yaytsev commented across the station after checking the instructions. ‟Weird. I don’t see why? Some debris they haven’t told us about?”

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Firing complete, Shuko reported.

Thanks, was all the answer.

She mentally shook her head – easier than actually doing the thing – and went back to compiling observations.

‟Where is that magnet… ah,” she said as she entered the EU lab.

Yaytsev had apparently decided to make it his headquarters, where he monitored and adjusted the consumption of the station in coordination with the ground’s instructions.

The magnet in question was a largish semi-circular magnet. Yaytsev had liberated it from the operation rig, and it floated, attached to a simple string.

‟See the lines? They’re a bit clearer now, don’t know why.”

‟It’s more like an aura, but yes. It looks weird. Can I see it closer?”

‟Be my guest,” he replied, pushing it.

She tried to grab, misjudging the reach of her too-short arms again. The magnet twisted and floated to her and she grabbed it reflexively before realizing what just happened.

‟Wait…” he exclaimed.

She looked at her hand with the magnet, its aura-lines slowly spreading over her hand. She relinquished her hold on the elongated torus, letting it float out a bit, before tensing her fingers.

This time, she saw the lines twisting a little as the magnet moved back in her hand.

‟Telekinesis?” Yaytsev asked.

‟No. I don’t think so… Catch.”

She flicked the magnet and Yaytsev moved to grab it before stopping himself. She saw the aura distort a bit, and knew what was happening.

‟Magnetic field. We’re interfering with the field lines. That’s how we move it. I wonder…” she said.

She moved close to the side of the module. Under the Kevlar covers, there was stainless steel, she knew. She tried to feel it, until she got a slight resistance. She pushed, and started to slowly rotate.

‟We do. I thought what you reported was just a sense, but it’s a sense and an ability.”

‟Magnetic interaction?”

‟There are species who have magnetic senses, although they’re definitively not visual. Or pseudo-visual. With four eyes and that, I wonder how big our visual cortex must be. Too bad all I have is an echography machine, not a scanner.”

She twisted, grabbing – with her shrunken hands – at the handholds and moved forward, to check on Frank and Ivan.

Back in the lab, she wrote down notes, re-reading them. Plant-like cellular structure, lack of orifices, the odd magnetic fields, the multi-directional sense. Her perking up after the eclipses, which did fit with the cellular structure. As Shuko had said, it looked definitively engineered. With a purpose. And if what emerged from the changes seemed to hold, some of it would be hard to test easily.

For now, it was time to have another exchange with Houston.

BYRNE

“Can’t reach the Chinese,” the Deputy Director told Kayleigh.

“And what does Moscow say?” she asked.

“They’re ‘making plans’,” he snorted back.

“Now is not the time to play politics,” she retorted angrily.

The second-in-command of NASA shrugged without comment.

Ops? came on the text channel.

ISS, we hear you.

She had to smile at the joke of hearing them. They’d turned on the sound in Central, but the entire thing was eerie. You saw the alien shape of the members of the crew twitching and moving, but without the slightest sound. Even when it looked like they were talking to each other.

Yaytsev Baranov had used scanners to try to find. He’d reported there were burst at very high radio frequencies, around 200-250 MHz whenever they talked. He’d tried recording the frequencies and downloaded a batch of them, but nobody had gotten around to analyzing those yet.

Plans?

Kayleigh winced. She’d told Juliana Byrne that there would be a tentative plan set up for their third orbit. Every scenario drawn ran into an immutable wall – the shutdown Zone that would reset the entire ISS once their orbit intersected it again. And nobody knew how long the ISS would endure the shutdown-restart cycle until something critical broke down. Thankfully, solid storage did not seem affected, so computers managed to reboot, but the station had never been designed to entirely shut down.

At least the fuel seemed untouched by the Zone. After the Pentagon had warned them, the fear that fuel would be “inactivated” just as the batteries got emptied had sprung, but thankfully, that particular problem wasn’t one. If it had been, there would be nothing left to do. NASA still used hydrogen propellants, but almost entirely for launches now. Both commercial resupply and Russian attitudes used more complex fuels.

She looked at the last question. Talking over text changed things a bit. There would be no way to disguise she’d been dithering in a voice chat. She steeled herself.

Nothing definitive.

She waited for the next question. It wasn’t the one she’d expected.

How long do you have?

What do you mean?

How long before the Zone reaches Houston?

Kayleigh swallowed. That was one thing she’d refused to think about. Just like the ISS, they were operating on a deadline too. In fact, based on the models, they would be affected before the ISS’s orbit went back over the Zone. The biggest difference was that Houston’s staff could always step out of the room.

Assuming the Zone did not kill, change, or do anything too horrific, she and everyone here would be safe, unlike the five up there.

An estimate is 6:40 AM, local. In 4 hours. It seems to speed up now instead of slowing down.

She immediately added.

There are plans to hand control over to Moscow before.

Their plan is for two people in the Soyuz.

Kayleigh stared at the blunt sentence. She started to answer, but the hand of the Deputy Director on her arm stopped her. They exchanged glances, and she started typing again.

There is still time to send you a plan to execute on your own.

There was a long pause.

I understand.