Nova received a communication request from a past acquaintance called Ila Remington who works on mining ship called The Angry Pilot. It was in orbit around Tethys, a large lump of mainly ice orbiting Saturn. She wanted to meet Nova on her ship for an exceptional business venture. After returning to Titan we took a shuttle over to Tethys. Ila arranged a meal over which she discussed why she had called Nova. The other crew of The Angry Pilot were present. There were Lectra, a technician and acrimonious ex of Nova, Dr Mindfuck, a psychosurgion and Francois Laclerke, a tweetware engineer.

They had been performing a surface scan of Odysseus crater before beginning mining. Scanning detected a strange hum from a small area under several centuries of ice. The dug down and found what appeared to be a miniature Pandoras Gate which was only 28cm in diameter. They sent a small gate probe through. Several seconds later something popped out which looked like a partially fossilised shell. Dr Mindfuck threw something else in and a and again few seconds later something else came back out, this time a cylinder with cross hatch markings and a green liquid inside.

Ila had some miniature morphs and was proposing we sleeve into them and go through to explore. She proposed we split anything we find. We sleeved into some horrible brightly coloured mini flesh puppets. Nova went through the gate first. A few seconds later a flat round gold object flew out. Ketrah then followed, and a few seconds later a micro meteorite came back out. I went afterwards. The experience was a bit disorienting.

We appeared to be inside a bright white round room. There appeared to be no other exits. There was a bright flash and a voice in colloquial English said "Nova, prepare for test, do you accept?". She was offered piloting in a flight simulator and navigation tests and selected the flight simulator test. We suddenly found ourselves in a spaceship. The voice said select difficulty and Nova chose hard. Nova seemed to be repeating everything the voice said, which was somewhat annoying. She failed the piloting test and the voice said 'proceeding to navigation test'. She chose the easy level and passed the test, but then failed the medium and hard navigation tests.

Ketrah was then given the choice of being tested on nanobots or culinary dishes. She chose the easy culinary dishes test and we found ourselves in a kitchen where she was given an easy recipe which she failed to complete. She managed to pass the medium test but failed the hard. She then proceeded to the nanobot tests and failed critically. The voice said specimen would be detained, which did not sound so good for her.

I was tested on program decryption and alien language interpretation, passing the easy and medium difficulty tests. I declined to attempt the hard tests as they did not score more points than the easy tests and I thought it was likely I would just lose points based on what the others had been given to do. We were then offered a choice of group tests and told we needed 30 points to pass. I had scored 40 points but the others had got so many negatives in their tests that we had a total of 10 points. The tests we were offered were target practice, freefall and repair.

Ketrah chose target practice which we managed to pass, scoring the needed 20 points.

The voice then said "selecting xeno sampler for specimen extraction" after which a hole appeared in the wall, beyond which was a white light. We passed through the hole and found ourselves in a bright white room in micro gravity. There was an active pandoras gate in the centre. Behind us the hole closed. Emerging from the ceiling was some sort of spiderlike exotech creature. A voice said 'remain still, specimens will be frozen for storage'.

We dived through the gate as the creature fired some sort of ray at us. On the other side we landed in sand. In the distance we could see some structures and further away was what looked to be a spaceship of a style made by transhumanity. It took us an hour to walk to the spaceship. It conformed to the specifications of a scout ship. The prof contacted the ship and was answered by someone called Bruna. He was from the corporation Exotech and let us inside. He said we were on Echo 5. He thought the nearby ruins were Iktomi and the rest of his crew were exploring.

I had heard of Exotech who are run by Morgan Sterling. They emerged from fall relatively unscathed and specialised in high end electronics, AIs and infomorph simulations. Morgan was leading the expedition. We spoke to him when he contacted the ship. He agreed to take us back with him if we helped his expedition, and said he would send the buggy back to collect us. The buggy drove us for about an hour until a Butte rose in front of us. There were four other members of the expedition. They were Toberman, Sterlings bodyguard, Prof. Parry, the team leader and scientist and Kleeg, an Exobiologist, Viner, an Exoarchaeologist.

The buggy stopped outside a cave in the side of the Butte. The rest of the team were waiting for us. They were stuck at a door that asked genetic themed questions in English which they did not know the answers to. There was writing on the door in Iktomi which I was able to read. It said 'Vault 34'. They had the questions recorded and Prof. Cornelius knew the answers. He approached the door and it asked questions. Unfortunately for the professor they were different questions and he got the third one wrong. Luckily it allowed him to answer a second set of questions which he got correct. The door opened into a circular chamber which looked empty except for debris. There was another door and some burnt patches on the floor that could have been made by plasma.

Written on the door was 'vault 35'. There was a voice saying do you wish to enter scientist. The prof said yes and the door opened. Beyond was another round chamber. In the room were some large tubes made of an opaque glass embedded in the walls. There was also another door with 'ancillary storage facility 1'. A voice said do you wish access to ancillary storage facility? I said yes and the door opened to reveal another round chamber. There was no other door but inside was 6 Kumobots we had previously encountered on Zata Raticulai. A voice said do you require access to Kumobot? Lucas connected and was asked if he wished transfer to commence to which he said yes.

Lucas found himself forked into the Kumobot. As Sterling wanted to recover the Kumobot, myself and Ketrah also forked. I detected a virus trying to spread to me when I connected to my fork. My fork tried to wipe it from the Kumobot, but was unsuccessful and the Kumobot shut down. Viner said he thought the tubes could be stasis tubes. The Lucas fork cut into one using a claw on the Kumobot, cutting the lid off. Fluid flowed out, revealing a biological version of one of the Kumobots, probably the preserved remains of an Iktomi.

The Prof examined it and found there was a virus in its blood which was multiplying rapidly. It was decided to leave it behind with the forks in the Kumobots and take the ship back through the pandoras gate in orbit to Starwell on the outer rim of the solar system from where we egocast back to Saturn to collect our morphs before returning to Titan.