Dr. Yara Chen had spent forty years as an astronomer, mapping the outer reaches of known space from her observatory on Titan. Nothing had prepared her for what drifted into sensor range on a Tuesday morning.
The object resembled an ancient schooner, its twin masts intact, its tattered sails catching solar wind as though the cosmos itself had exhaled. It moved with impossible grace between the ice rings, rotating slowly, silently.
She took every precaution before boarding. Atmospheric filters, hazmat sealing, emergency beacon activated. None of it mattered once the airlock opened and the smell hit her — a malodorous wave of sulfur and something older, something organic and wet, like a marsh that had never seen sunlight. She gagged but pressed forward.
The ship's interior was dark except for one room, where bioluminescent moss covered the walls in swirling patterns. At the center stood a pedestal holding a single glass bottle, filled with deep violet liquid. Etched into its surface was a word in a script she somehow understood, despite having never studied the language.
The appellation read: Lament of the First Travelers.
Below it, in smaller lettering: For whoever finds us last.
Yara picked up the bottle with trembling hands. Outside the porthole, the stars looked different now — not like data points or coordinates, but like eyes. Watching. Waiting to see what she would do with the gift, or the warning, she had just inherited from a civilization that had crossed the dark long before humanity ever looked up and wondered.