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QEC ACTIVE
SHIP: Silt Aria
SYSTEM: Transit, day 8

Maret found the logbook.

Not our logbook. A physical one, clothbound,
wedged behind the hydroponics reservoir where
the pipe junction makes a shelf nobody designed.
She was checking for condensation on the seals.
The book was dry. The pages are filled from
front to back in the same handwriting as the
fourth column of the duty roster.

The entries are dated but the dates don't track
to any calendar I recognize. Not Earth standard,
not mission elapsed, not the 19.07-hour cycle.
Odelya spent four hours trying to find a system.
She says the intervals between dates are
irregular but cluster around factors of nineteen.
She says this like someone confirming a diagnosis
they already suspected.

The text is not in any language the ship's
translation database recognizes. But the
structure looks like log entries: short blocks
separated by gaps, occasional numerals, recurring
phrases. Some entries include rough diagrams.
Floor plans, maybe. Or circuit layouts. One
diagram near the back of the book is clearly
this ship. Not schematically -- the proportions
are wrong in the same specific ways our actual
hull departs from the design documents. Whoever
drew it was drawing from observation, not
blueprints.

I asked Maret how long she thinks the book has
been there. She said the dust pattern around it
suggests longer than nine months. I said the
ship is nine months old. She said she knows.

The cranes stopped appearing. There are still
seven, still in the cargo hold, still pointing
forward. Odelya suggested we leave them. I
didn't need the suggestion. None of us has
touched them.

Kovacs Station acknowledged our approach
vector today. Automated response, no personal
reply from Kovacs himself. Docking procedures
and berth assignment. Everything nominal
according to the system. Four days out.

I've been reading the logbook at night. Not
reading -- looking at it. The handwriting is
careful and even and fast, the way someone
writes when they've been keeping the same
record for a long time. Years, maybe. Pages
and pages of entries in a language that doesn't
exist, aboard a ship that's been flying for
nine months, in handwriting that looks almost
but not quite like mine.

Maret hasn't asked to see it since she found
it. She's been running maintenance checks on
systems that don't need checking. Odelya has
gone back to filing catalog values instead of
her own readings. I noticed because she told me
once she never does that.

- thresh3, Silt Aria