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the back to rocket the ship forward. It’s brilliant engineering since the ship would have an infinite supply of fuel.”
    “If that’s true,” said Imala, “then why is the radiation coming in our direction, toward Earth? If it’s propulsion, shouldn’t it be emitting away from us, toward deep space?”
    Yanyu smiled again. “That’s just it. It’s not accelerating. It’s decelerating. It’s desperately trying to slow down.”
    “It wouldn’t emit the radiation from the front,” said Victor. “Even to slow down. That would be suicide. It would fly right into its own destructive cloud of plasma.”
    “True,” said Yanyu. “But the ship might emit the radiation from the sides . It would do so in equal bursts so as not to deviate it from its course, and that would explain why the interference happened so fast and spread so quickly in all directions before anyone knew what was happening.”
    Victor considered this. It made sense. He had known superficially that the hormiga ship was causing the radiation, yet until now he hadn’t known how.
    “So this ship,” said Imala, “is acting like a volatile minisun rocketing toward us.”
    “Basically,” said Yanyu.
    “That’s comforting,” said Imala.
    “How did you figure this out?” asked Victor.
    Yanyu pulled a holopad from her bag. “It’s the only explanation I could think of for this.” She tapped a command and extended two thin poles from opposite corners on the holopad’s surface. A moment later, a holo consisting of hundreds of tiny, random dots of light flickered to life above the pad. At first Victor thought he was looking at a star cluster, but as he leaned forward and got a closer look, a sickening feeling tugged at the pit of his stomach. He had seen such a cluster before. Deep in the Kuiper Belt.
    “What is it?” asked Imala.
    “Wreckage,” said Victor.
    Yanyu nodded, grave. “I’m still running scans because the readings from the scopes aren’t particularly clear, but I think Victor’s right. These objects appear to be moving away from each other at a constant speed from a center point. Like ship debris from an explosion.”
    “How many ships?” said Victor.
    Yanyu shrugged. “No way to be certain, but probably dozens. If you trace the movement of all of the debris, the point of origin is here in the Asteroid Belt, near an asteroid named Kleopatra. Juke has facilities on the asteroid’s surface, so there’s always a lot of traffic there. If a burst of radiation from the alien ship took out the mining ships in that vicinity, then we have to assume that it took out all the facilities on Kleopatra as well.”
    “How many people are stationed there?” asked Imala.
    “Between seven and eight thousand,” said Yanyu.
    Imala swore under her breath.
    “And who knows how many people were on those ships,” said Yanyu. “Maybe double that. We have no way of knowing.”
    “How old is this data?” said Victor.
    “I got the first scans back this morning,” said Yanyu.
    “Who else knows about this?” said Victor.
    “I shared it with my supervisor. He’s reviewing the data now. He made me come find you and bring you back to the lab.”
    “We need to contact the media,” said Imala. “Your supervisor needs to hold a press conference.”
    Yanyu frowned and shook her head. “No. I am sorry. That will not happen. We are not independent researchers. We work for Juke Limited. If anyone holds a press conference it has to be corporate.”
    “Corporates?” said Victor. “You want to bring in a lying snake like Ukko Jukes? He’ll twist this somehow, he’ll use it for his own gain. That’s the last thing we need.”
    “I can’t stand the man either, Victor,” said Imala. “But these are his employees. He’s responsible for these people. Their families on Luna or Earth deserve to know what has happened to them.”
    “We don’t know what’s happened to them, Imala,” said Victor. “We’re speculating.”
    “Ukko can