Chikondi jumped back.

‘The fuck,’ Jack said.

The box moved again. It kept moving, shuddering this way and that without clear direction.

Elena covered her mouth with her hand.

Chikondi took a breath, then another, then another. Slowly, he inched forward, reaching a hesitant arm out, keeping his body as far from his hand as physically possible. If the source of the movement had been a malfunctioning machine suddenly activating on its own – maybe one of the rotational drivers on a camera trap – it would continue moving at Chikondi’s touch. It would buzz against his hand, clatter chaotically out as he got the box open, maybe result in a bandage or two, provide us with a funny story we could tell at speaking engagements down the road about the glitching gadget that gave us all heart attacks.

But fingers touched metal, and the box held still.

There was nothing Chikondi wanted to do less than pick up that box. His face made that fact plain as day. But he crouched down. He picked it up. There was a loud rustle from inside as he did. ‘Oh, God,’ he moaned.

Elena made it to the emergency panel before I did. She slammed her hand against the big red button labelled Containment. The doors to the modules and the upper decks quickly closed. The air filters sealed themselves off, no longer pulling air from the cargo hold. ‘Airlock,’ she shouted.

Chikondi dashed back to the airlock with the box, as if it were ablaze and a bucket of water was waiting. He hit a button; the door slid shut behind him. The rest of us hurried to the window and watched as Chikondi bent down to the box to unfasten the latch. He swung the lid open and got the hell out of the way.

I pressed as close as I could to the door, trying to get a good look. The glass fogging up wasn’t a concern, because for the moment, I’d stopped breathing.

Something about the size of a sock leapt out of the box, arcing away from Chikondi. It scurried to the far edge of the airlock, darting back and forth, trying to find a way out. Its movements were frantic, but bit by bit, I managed to process its shape. Six stout legs. A dainty brush of a split tail. A flat-faced head atop a serpentine body. Delicate, soft-looking quills festooned its back, and the white fur of its sides was peppered with a stunning spray of multi-coloured dots. Gill-like flaps surrounded its snug mouth, and from these it vocalised, letting out a plaintive trill as it tried to escape.

We catalogued nearly ten thousand macroscopic species during our four years on Mirabilis. We’d never seen anything even remotely like this one.

‘I don’t know,’ Chikondi said, answering the question none of us would say aloud. ‘I – I don’t know how. I checked, I checked the boxes after I got the traps in, I always check—’

‘Did you turn your back on an open box?’ Elena asked.

‘No,’ Chikondi said.

‘You must’ve,’ she said.

‘I – I mean, I – I don’t remember doing so—’

‘How did you not see this during decon?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Did you not run plasma on the interiors?’

‘Of course I did!’

‘He did,’ I said. ‘I saw. Three cycles.’

‘Then how did he miss that?’ Elena demanded.

‘Maybe—’ I scrambled for an answer. ‘Maybe the – Chikondi, can you see inside the box?’

Chikondi moved tentatively toward the box, and thus toward the animal, but he had nothing to fear from it. The animal was far more afraid of him than the other way around. It wailed and scurried to the opposite end of the airlock. Both of them were breathing heavily as Chikondi checked the box. His head sagged. He lifted the box, showing us the spot where the foam liner had begun to pull away from the side, creating a little pocket. It wasn’t much, but something quick and flexible might get curious about such a cosy space.

Chikondi looked haggard. ‘I thought – I must have – I could’ve sworn I—’

Elena rubbed her face and turned away. ‘This is why protocol exists.’

‘Jesus, Elena,’ Jack snapped. ‘Look how fucking fast that thing moves.’ He turned to Chikondi. ‘Could’ve happened to any of us.’

The animal was in a full panic now, digging with futile frenzy at the seam of the wall.

Chikondi sat down on the floor and held out his palm. ‘Shh,’ he said to the animal. ‘Shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay.’

Elena walked off in search of something.

‘It was in the box,’ Jack said. ‘It was just in the box. He didn’t open the box in the cargo hold, it didn’t breathe any of our air—’

I shut my eyes. I knew where he was going with this. I wanted to go there, too. ‘Those boxes aren’t airtight,’ I said. ‘They’re not specimen containers, they’re just storage—’

‘It was in here for half a minute, if that.’

‘And it’s in an airlock full of our air now,’ I said.

‘Plus it went through plasma cycles,’ Elena said, returning to the door with a device in hand.

‘Shit,’ Jack said, shutting his eyes. We all knew what that meant. An airlock plasma cycle isn’t like medical plasma treatment, where a light dose is targeted on a patch of infected skin. This was full-body, heavy-duty exposure, never intended for living tissue. Beyond eradicating whatever symbiotic dermal bacteria this animal needed to stay alive in its natural biome, there was no telling what side effects the animal itself might suffer, or what mutations it could carry with it. Release was out of the question.

‘Shh, shh,’ Chikondi said to the animal. ‘Come on, come on, you’re going to hurt yourself—’ He shook his head at himself. ‘I checked—’ he whispered.

Elena put the device in the equipment drawer and slid it through the wall. ‘It’s right here,’ she said.

Chikondi did not look at her, or the drawer. On his knees, he inched closer to the animal, palm outstretched. ‘Come on, it’s okay.’

‘Chikondi—’ Elena said, terse with concern.

He whipped his head toward her, eyes shining with tears. ‘I don’t want it to die afraid,’ he said.

Elena pursed her lips and looked down at the floor. Her disapproval was plain, but she said nothing further. Behind us, Jack paced, hands folded over the back of his neck.

Chikondi closed his eyes and gathered himself. He pulled his palm back and leaned against the wall, folding his legs beneath him, trying to stay calm for the sake of them both. They remained that way for several minutes, the grieving man and the frightened alien. Eventually, the animal’s movements slowed down, and though it still searched for an exit, its cries and digging began to ebb.

‘Camera,’ Chikondi said. His voice was hollow. He took a shaking breath as he began to record. ‘Specimen is hexapodal, and both fur and body shape are Mammal Approximate. However, it does not resemble any of the other MA species we have catalogued here. Further study would be needed, but I find it likely this is a new phyla.’ He leaned his head back against the wall. ‘It’s a very beautiful animal.’ A few silent seconds passed. ‘Stop camera.’ He looked through the window at me. ‘Ariadne, would you get me an exam kit?’

I did. I dropped it into the drawer, beside the device Elena had deposited: a stun gun. Chikondi retrieved her offering first.