Marcan Rayger looked at the main view screen, as the second planet of the unknown system grew bigger. He had taken the ship by all the other planets in the system except the two innermost ones. On none of the other five planets had he seen any sign that would have given hope to him and his android companion.

Petr sat in the co-pilot's seat next to him and looked at the main screen as well. Marcan had not learned to like the annoying android any more than he had before they had got into this trouble in the first place. Petr, although he was a gifted mechanic, had been unable to repair the sabotaged navigation systems. He had said that they needed a replacement unit for the whole thing. Saying something like that to the mortal human who was expecting even a small chance of hope had done nothing to alleviate how Marcan felt about the computer on two legs. The only thing that was good about the thing was that he did not need the scraps of food that they had left.

The second planet in the system would not be a bad target for terraforming, Marcan had noticed as they had first started to get data on the rocky planet with a thin atmosphere. It was only a little bigger than the old earth, with a gravity of 1,17, only under a fifth over the earth standard. The star was a type M red star that was not too bad to live under. It surprised him slightly that the planet really was uninhabited since the system could not be too far away from inhabited ones, at least the fuel that he had had before the forced hyper space jumps had not been enough to get him too far away from Lave. As far as he had been able to count, they had to be closer than 40ly from that system.

During the several days that it had taken for him to survey all the other planets in the system, except the gas giant which was not likely to offer him even that small hope as the other rocks, he had had time to think. But still he had not been able to reason why Mr. Jones had screwed with his ship to get him here and not simply blow it up right after the launch. Or at least at the end of all the jumps when it was sure that no one would see the murder. Perhaps the criminal mind liked to think the torturous last moments that he inflicted to his victim.

Marcan took the Asp around the planet and tried to see if there were any signs of life down there. The terrain was not too mountainous, which was rather likely the result of the strong g-force, and there was some ice at the poles that could contain water. The temperature on the planet must be under -100 degrees of centigrade, even at the equator, but Marcan knew what a certain amount of terraforming could do. This could be turned into a habitable planet, or, given the slightly unpleasant gravity which worked to keep people from storming in, there could be built some underground habitats, or perhaps a few biosphere tents here and there.

He noticed how his thoughts started to turn into things that had nothing to do with his current crisis. Planning the future of the planet and the system was futile unless he had some way of telling someone about it first. He wondered whether his wandering thoughts were a sign of impending insanity or if they were just some sort of escaping mechanism that his brain employed to prevent him from flipping over.

Watching at the surface of the planet fleeing past the view screen started to make his eyes hurt, when suddenly Petr let out a strange noise, followed by only a slightly more informative question, "What the hell is that?"

Marcan glanced at the android to see what he was looking at and saw that his artificial eyes were fixed onto the scanner. He turned to look at the thing as well. The piece of equipment had also been broken by the virus that had broken most of the ship's systems, but it was one of the few things that Petr had actually been able to fix. Before this very moment it had been no use whatsoever as far as co-piloting the Asp went, but now Marcan was willing to let go of the idea of smashing the android into a thousand pieces. His annoying preoccupation with the scanner earlier seemed to pay off after all.

What was now visible on the scanner, at about 35 klicks, was a white dot, which indicated that the thing that they were seeing, whatever it was, was a big one. The main view screen was presently fixed on the planet and Marcan did not want to turn the ship and possibly miss something on the surface.

"Take a turret view and find out what it is," he said to Petr and the android started to search the space around them for the unknown object. "If it is a ship, let me know immediately!"

Marcan gave the scanner another glance before starting to look at the main screen again. But there was nothing new showing on it, so he glanced at the other screen that Petr was now using. The android had not yet found anything.

Marcan was afraid to get his hopes up and so he was almost prepared to hear that it was just a big asteroid, when Petr suddenly whooped, "It's a ship!"

Marcan forgot about the planet immediately and turned the ship around. The internal tanks had only about 1,5 tonnes of fuel left, but that did not bother him any more. He sped towards the other ship at full burn. If they wanted the other ship to see them, they had to get close to it. Since their communications did not work, they would have to circle around the other ship and make it notice them, and possibly open their landing bay doors, if they had some. Otherwise, they would have to use the escape capsule and get scooped into the other ship.

As they got closer, Marcan recognised the ship type. It was a Boa. No wonder it had first emerged as a white dot on their scanner. With its full mass of 1500 tonnes it was as big as a small asteroid. There were not many bigger ships than that roaming the space. With its range and equipped with a fuel scoop it made for a decent deep space ship that could work away from inhabited systems for long periods of time. Marcan hoped that he could persuade the crew to return to some inhabited system to drop him off.

"It seems to be on a stable orbit around the planet," Petr said.

"You're right," Marcan said. He had also noticed the dead engines that indicated that no fine manoeuvring was needed to keep the ship where it was. What worried him, though, was that he could see no other lights either. The beacon lights that every big ship had at its extreme points were as dead as the engines. For a while he hoped that they would become visible when they got nearer, but at five kilometres he gave up that hope.

"That ship is dead," he said finally, after he had taken them around it once.

"What do you mean?" Petr asked, as confused as an android can be.

"It's dead in space. Either they have turned off all the power and purposefully lying silent, or then they are all gone."

"How could they be all gone? That ship has a fuel scoop. There is no reason to abandon it!"

Marcan nodded and tried to think, "It may be that their hyperdrive has been destroyed, or it is an ice ship and somehow all the frozen passengers were never awakened. I do not know the reason, but there is no way they will open the landing bay doors for us if they have no power."

Petr seemed thoughtful for a moment. Then he said, "The bay doors can be opened manually from outside, given enough time. If you get us close enough, I can go outside and do that."

Marcan nodded. Petr seemed to become more and more useful to him. His earlier dislike was vanishing rapidly. Without Petr he might have missed the ship simply because the scanner would not be working without him, and the android knew things about ships that Marcan had never bothered to think about. There had never seemed to be a reason for him to think about opening landing bay doors in any other way than the usual request for a docking clearance transmitted through the comm channels.

He guided the small Asp under the Boa Freighter and close to the landing bay doors. Most ships of this magnitude carried with them a variety of smaller fighter-class ships for defence or for easy fuel saving landings on planets. If the ship was truly dead and its inhabitants gone, the landing bay would be empty with the passengers having left by the smaller ships.

He took the ship as close to the big Boa as he dared and shut down the engines to stay completely still in relation to the bigger ship. Petr rose from his seat and went to the airlock. The Asp carried spacesuits in case someone had to go outside to repair some of the antennas, but Petr did not need any of those, being an android.

A few minutes later, Marcan saw the small figure of the android in his main screen, moving towards the bay doors. Petr had simply pushed himself away from the Asp, causing the ship to start moving ever-so-slightly in relation to the Boa, towards the doors and with computer precision, the upside of being an android, he floated to a small door beside the big bay doors. Marcan could not see what was behind the small door when Petr opened it, but he guessed that there was a lever of some sort that would open the bay doors.

It took another minute for anything to happen, but then the large landing bay doors started to move apart slowly. Marcan watched them open and realised that Petr was required to turn a wheel of some sort to move the doors apart. He did not want to think how long it would have taken from him, but the android was an unfailing worker. When the doors were apart enough for the Asp to move through, Petr stopped turning the wheel and waved his arm in a wide arc to Marcan. He understood and took the ship inside as slowly as he could. He saw that the android was working its way through the opening as well to get to another lever that he would use to close the outer bay doors.

In the light provided by the Asp's beacons, Marcan saw that the airlock could take in a larger ship than the Asp, perhaps even a 250t Lanner. It took several minutes, closer to half an hour, for Petr to close the outer doors and open the inner ones enough for them to fit through. When Marcan got the Asp through into the insides of the vast ship, he could not help gasping out in surprise. The landing bay was big enough for five Asps but there was only one place free for landing. Other ships took all the other places. There was a Cobra Mk III and Mk I as well as a couple of ships that he could not identify on the spot.

The thing about the ships that made him gasp, though, - apart from them still being there - was that they all had signs of damage on them. Not a single one seemed to be in a working condition. Marcan shook his head quietly as he brought down his ship next to the destroyed ones. He could not understand what had happened to the Boa that could explain all this.

As soon as he had landed, he got up and walked to the exit hatch. He pressed the buttons that sent the ramp down. Then he turned to a cupboard next to the hatch and dug out an air-mask and an oxygen container. He was certain that even if the artificial gravity field still worked, the air would not be breathable. The layer of dust on top of the other ships had told him that the ship had been abandoned for a long time. He also took out a couple of powerful flashlights.

Then he opened the hatch and stepped outside. He took a long look around and saw that Petr was already making his way towards him. He had left the inner doors open because it was clear that they might have to make their exit through them yet. This old ship did not seem to offer them a possibility of finding a way to survive.

The other ships were as Marcan had seen them in the view screen. In the flashing light of the Asp's beacons he saw how they were covered with dust and were probably in no better condition than their own ship, or they would have been taken by whoever had owned this Boa. There were several doors out of the hangar, but only one that was already open. It was a small door leading to the right side of the ship.

Marcan walked down the ramp to the dusty floor and met Petr there, giving him one of the flashlights. "We'd better investigate and find out what has happened here. It may give us some clue on how to get out of here," he said slowly through the air-mask that he wore around his face. The oxygen bottle he had strapped onto his right hip. He carried his Sergam-10 laser pistol in his jacket pocket again, just in case there was something nasty out there in the ship.

"It smells like decay in here," Petr said and wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Marcan stopped at that and turned to look around once more. "It could just be the stale air," he said.

"No, it's not just that. My olfactory sensors are top class," Petr replied as they started to walk towards the only open door.

"How much do you know about the general lay-out of this type of ships?" Marcan asked.

Petr searched his memory-banks. "I know them pretty well, I think. There are only a few things that various owners may change around, but mostly the Boa-class ships are all the same as far as living quarters go."

"Take us to the bridge, then," Marcan said and let the android past him.

They entered through the small open door and found themselves in a wide corridor with some further doors on the both sides. It was clear that they led to the main cargo bay and so they walked past them to the end of the corridor, where there was an elevator. As the power was out, it was not working and Petr guided Marcan through another door to an emergency ladder and they climbed up to where the living quarters were located.

It was the first shock to Marcan. It was as if he had been transported in time to another era altogether. The modern world of the hangar and cargo bays was suddenly turned into something that looked like it was ripped right out of the Stone Age. Or, rather, Stone Age the way Marcan had always imagined it. The walls were decorated as if they had been cut from stone and there were columns that seemed to support the stone roof. What was even more surprising was that there was an abandoned sword on the ground at their feet.

"What is this place?" Marcan gasped.

Petr knew better than to try to answer and started simply to walk past the columns towards an opening that lay in the other end of the stone corridor. There were wooden doors on either side that they walked past, and Marcan tried to open one of them. It took a moment for him to realise how it worked, but then he pushed it open and looked into the room that was revealed on the other side. He scanned the room with the flashlight and saw a wooden bed and linens made of some crude fabric, as well as a round shield and a spear. On a wooden table, there was also an ancient helmet. He did not recognise the metal out of which the items were made of, but he could see that they were finely crafted. He turned back to follow Petr and saw that towards the end of the corridor the amount of decorations increased. There were murals and reliefs of scenes from mythology. He had no time or overt interest to study them further, but it seemed that many of them portrayed young strong men in heroic deeds fighting mythological monsters and leading armies into battles.

When they reached the end of the corridor and walked through the opening at the end, they came to the main bridge of the ship. As far as it seemed to Marcan the way from the landing bay to the bridge had been simple and easy. But he knew that some of the doors that they had passed hid behind themselves further corridors and many other places that would take them hours, if not days to search. He hoped that they would not have to do that, but that the answers both to the mystery of the ship and to their own dilemma could be found here, in the bridge of the Boa freighter.

The bridge was as ornately furnished as the corridor had been. In addition to the reliefs and pillars, there were life-size statues and portrait busts. The modern computers and other equipment had been hidden out of sight as well as it was possible, although some compromises seemed to have been made. The main view screen was something that one could not hide under or behind anything. Like many other ships, Boa didn't offer a clear view of the space around it through a simple window. The main view screen should have been filled with picture transmitted by cameras in the hull of the ship, but, as they were now powerless, the screen was blank black.

Marcan and Petr had to look around for a while to locate all the equipment that the ship needed to fly, but to their dismay, although not to a big surprise, all the equipment was broken. They did find a few data cards, though, and Marcan inserted some of them into his wrist computer to see what was on them. Some of the cards contained general babble about ancient myths and he caught a sight of some strange names, such as Aphrodite and Theseus, before he took the card out. Some other cards contained information about various star systems and planets and those interested him more. He put those cards aside for further analysis with his datapad, in which he had similar general data analysis programs as those he had used when he had still been a Federal Military Intelligence field operative.

Suddenly, the lights on the bridge shimmered and brightened. Marcan looked around in surprise and saw Petr at one of the consoles that they had found. The android looked up at him cheerfully and turned off his flashlight.

"This console was not as broken as the others. Most of the damage is probably the result of condensed moisture and rust," Petr announced.

"Good work, Petr!" Marcan cheered and walked to see which console it was that had been brought back to life. "Can you access the ship's computer with this?"

Petr looked at the buttons and shook his head, "Probably not. But I think I can turn on the ventilation system."

"Do that," Marcan said. The air in his breathing apparatus would not last forever and going back for replacements from their ship would cost them valuable time. If they could turn on the ventilation system, the air in the ship would be cleared of any unhealthy particles in short order. Marcan had no experience in the field, but he mused that it could not take more than an hour. If only the machinery worked properly.

"Try to do what you can up here," he said to the android, "I'll go back to our ship and get my datapad."

"I'll do that. I'll try to see if I can turn on the main computer and find out where we are," Petr said.

Marcan nodded and left the bridge. When he had walked half of the way towards the ladder to the cargo hold, he suddenly realised how small he felt in the big, unknown ship. With Petr, however annoyed he had been with the android earlier, he had felt a lot safer than he felt now that he was away from him. The android's superior strength and visual and aural capabilities made the eerie searching feel safer. Now that he was alone with his Sergam-10, he clutched the weapon in his hand and looked around carefully. He passed the door that he had pushed open earlier and saw that lights had not turned on in there.

He moved to the dark door and peeked inside, hoping that movement sensors detected him and turned on the lights. But that did not happen. He turned on his flashlight again and lighted the small room. The weapons and the furniture were as they had been, but now that he had more time, he noted another door at the back of the room. He stepped into the room carefully and approached the closed wooden door, wondering what it could hide behind itself.

What he found when he opened the door made him yell out in surprise and horror, and if he had not been wearing the air-mask that muffled his voice drastically, Petr would have surely heard him. On the floor on the other side of the door lay a dead body, its right hand reaching out towards the door. Behind the body there was an ancient bathtub and the gear that went with it. The tub was empty, but not because it had drained. The staining on its sides told of a slow process of evaporation. The dead body itself was not really a body anymore, but a skeleton wrapped in the dust of its former flesh. Marcan mused that the moist air had probably hastened the decaying process and, remembering Petr's comment about the smell of the stale air, any other bodies they found could be in better condition.

Still, he could not imagine what could have killed the poor man. The skeleton was in good condition; there were no marks of either laser cuts or crushed bones. Marcan shook his head as he backed away from the bathroom and got back to the main corridor. Something awful had to have happened on this ship for it to kill a man in his bathroom with no apparent reason.

When Marcan arrived back to the main bridge, he saw Petr working at the insides of one of the terminals. The android was on his back and had his head inside the terminal. Marcan saw how his hands worked at a speed that seemed impossible for anyone but an android.

"Did you get the ventilation systems to work?" he asked.

The android pulled away from the terminal and sat up, "Yes, I did, but I think you should keep that mask on anyway. The air smells funny."

"Like decay?"

The android shook his head, "No. It's something else. Just keep your mask on, will you?"

Marcan nodded and took a hesitant step before he said; "I found a dead body."

"Where from?" the android asked, visibly dismayed.

"In that room that I looked into earlier. There was a bathroom and a dead body on the floor. I could see no apparent reason for his death," Marcan explained and walked to the captain's chair and sat down.

The android tilted his head; "No laser burns?"

"No," Marcan said and shook his head, "the body was completely decayed, but the skeleton bore no marks of violence."

There was a moment of silence as they both tried to bring some sense to what they had found. Then the android asked, "Did you get your datapad?"

"Yes, I did. On my way back I started the analysis program and fed it the information on the data cards."

"How about those other cards you left here?"

Marcan shook his head; "They contained just some babble about mythologies, as far as I could see."

"Mythologies?" the android asked.

"Yes, like those reliefs in the corridor and these statues here. I only caught the titles and some odd names, such as Theseus."

Before the android could ask anything more, a strange crackling sound startled them both. The crackling, which seemed to be slightly metallic, continued for a while and then, out of nowhere, a voice spoke, "Theseus," it said, "may Zeus's lightning burn him to ashes!"

Marcan jumped up from the captain's seat and looked around the bridge in a vain attempt to find out where the voice was coming from. Petr rose to his feet as well, but remained otherwise still.

"What was that?" Marcan whispered and tried to keep his eyes on everything at once.

Petr turned his eyes toward the roof and said, "I think it was the ship's computer."

"Did you find a way to turn it on?" Marcan asked, calming down slightly.

"No, I don't think that I did. I have not even found the central unit yet," Petr said and started towards one of the other camouflaged consoles. He checked that one quickly and walked to another.

Marcan watched as the android tried to find the source of the voice. It was more than inconceivable that the main computer might be in working order when everything else around it was broken. But, he realised then, if the artificial gravity was still working, some other systems could as well.

"Computer!" he called out. There was no answer. Not even a crackle in the speakers. "Computer, answer to me," he called out again, but the computer did not answer.

"I found it!" Petr announced then.

Marcan walked to the android and saw him open up the main computer unit. The wires and crystals inside were in a similar shambles as they were in the other machines. Petr studied the systems for a long time before he pulled back.

"This computer has not been working for years," he said. "It couldn't have been the source of that voice."

Marcan looked at the broken computer, "Are you sure this was the artificial intelligence unit?"

Petr nodded.

"Then what was it?"

Petr shook his head; "I have no idea. Perhaps there is another computer somewhere."

"Two computers attached to the same speaker systems?" Marcan asked incredulously.

Petr nodded again, "Perhaps. After all, it is the only answer if we presume that no one is alive here and if we do not believe in ghosts."

Marcan remained silent for a moment. Then he looked around again, and said, "It will take time for my datapad to finish the analysis. I think that we should check the rest of the living quarters while we are waiting for the results."

Most of the bodies they found had collapsed on the floors of individual rooms and none of them had any signs of violence on them. They were all better preserved than the body that Marcan had found first. He tried not to look at the faces of the dead too closely - only at their bodies and dresses to find some sign of who they were and where they had come from. And, above all, why they all wore ancient clothing, sometimes with weapons strapped onto their hips and wearing metal armour and helmets.

All those who had died seemed to have done so while performing some everyday chore. They lay on the floors of their rooms, or on the floors of some narrow side-corridors and nowhere was there a sign of fight or battle or anything else that might have explained their evidently sudden deaths.

When they had studied the whole floor, all of the living quarters and public areas, they stopped and looked at each other. Petr, being an android wore only a few marks of worry and disquiet on his face, but Marcan knew that his own face was telling more of the surging feelings that tortured him from within. He thanked the fact that he was still wearing the air-mask and so some of his extreme emotions at the sight of the dead crewmembers were hidden from the android.

There were at least a dozen questions that roamed through his now weary mind. What had happened in the Boa? Why were there no bodies in the main bridge? Why all the remaining ships in the landing bay were purposefully destroyed? Had someone escaped the ship and survived? And if so, where were they now?

Those, and many other questions, baffled them both as they walked back towards the main bridge. They had given up voicing the questions to one another simply because they both knew that there were no immediate answers to be found.

When they had reached the main bridge, Petr finally spoke up, "Commander, did you notice that there seemed to be no officers with the dead bodies?"

Marcan had not noticed any such thing and he told the android so.

"Yes. As far as I could see, all the clothing and armour were of the simplest kind. One might expect that if there had been any officers amongst them, they would have been wearing a more ornate type of armour?" Petr said.

Marcan nodded, "Yes, that is true. Does this mean that the officers killed their own crew and then escaped?"

"I don't know, but we did not find the captain's quarters either, if there were one to be found," Petr said.

"Could there be another floor with the officers' quarters somewhere?" Marcan asked aloud, not really expecting an answer.

Petr turned back to the broken terminals and machinery, "I think we need to find a way to power up that elevator and see where it can take us."

It took them, or rather Petr, a few hours to fix the systems and make the elevator systems work again. Before that happened, Marcan had time to look over the results of the analysis from his datapad. There was nothing particularly interesting to be found there, however. It seemed that the data cards were simple travel logs from different star systems and included details about the planets and their atmosphere. It seemed that the Boa had been surveying the systems to find a suitable place to build a base of some kind, judging from the fact that the more detailed information was recorded about planets with close to earth-like gravity.

But, because they had no kind of navigational database to compare the system names and data with, there was no way they could find out the part of the space that the Boa had survived and so their possible present location. And there was no data recorded about the planet that they now orbited around.

Frustrated, Marcan pushed the datapad away and rested his eyes for a while. He realised that he was getting tired and checked the time. It was almost twenty-four hours since he had last slept. He almost fell asleep then, the captain's chair feeling surprisingly comfortable under him, but it was exactly the time that Petr chose to announce his success with the elevator.

When they reached the elevator and entered it - this time the doors opened automatically to let them in - they saw that their suspicion had been correct. There was one further floor above to where they had not found any other way. Petr pushed the button and the elevator took them upwards for a good long time before stopping again.

"This is unusual for Boa-class ships," Petr said. "The living quarters are usually in one bunch, leaving the rest of the space for engines and for the cargo bay."

"That is not the only thing that is unusual about this ship," Marcan answered dryly while the elevator doors were opening.

The room that they entered was apparently a public room with somewhat more luxurious furnishing than the ones below. There were also more statues and more elaborate reliefs against the high walls. Furthermore, there seemed to be only a few rooms there, all having access directly to the public room. The centremost doorway drew Marcan's attention with its relief-decorated double doors.

When they entered that room - Marcan having had trouble figuring it out that this time the doors had to be pulled outwards - they found another dead body. This time, however, the man had not died in a middle of any chores. It was clear that he had died before the others since he had been laid out on his bed, with his hands crossed over his chest. He also wore a mask over his face that seemed to have been fashioned out of pure gold.

"This must be the remains of the captain," Marcan said finally, after having walked over to the body and confirmed that the metal was indeed gold.

"It seems so," Petr said and looked around the room. "It also seems that the computer terminals in this room have not been destroyed. If I can get them working, we may find out more about all this."

Marcan turned away from the body, "Before we do that, let's see what there is in the other rooms."

To their shared consternation, the bodies in the other rooms had died the same way those in the lower floor had. In all of the rooms, except one that was empty, the bodies were stretched out on the floor in various positions. But the computer terminals in their rooms had been left as untouched as the one in the captain's room.

Still, they returned to the captain's room before they attempted to access the computers since it was presumable that it might contain the captain's log. But before Petr got within four feet of the terminal, the metallic screeching - that Marcan had almost forgotten in his tired state - returned.

"My brother. Where is my brother?" the metallic voice asked.

This time Marcan was not taken aback as much as he had the last time he had heard the voice, and he asked, "Computer, what do you mean by your brother?"

There was a pause, but then the voice answered, "My brother, my twin brother. Where is he?"

"Who is your twin brother?" Petr asked.

"Polydeuces. He is missing and I cannot find him," the voice answered. Marcan and Petr looked at each other and frowned.

"Who are you?" Marcan asked then.

"Who the heck is Zeus?" Marcan asked aloud before he could stop himself.

The answer said nothing to Marcan and he looked at Petr in a vain hope that he would know what the computer's artificial intelligence was saying. But Petr seemed as dumbfounded as he was.

"What is this ship?" Marcan asked after a moment, deciding to turn the discussion to other matters if it was possible. But the computer did not answer.

"Castor, what is this ship called?" Petr asked.

"This ship... This ship is Argo II. Where is my brother?" the computer answered then.

"And what was its mission?" Petr continued.

"To find a new home for Zeus's people," the computer answered.

That was the first answer that made any sense to Marcan. It appeared to him now, that the Boa had been owned by a cult who somehow believed in the ancient mythologies and wanted to live in the way people in ancient times did. He had heard about such groups before, and knew that some people in the bubble ships that he had visited before his retirement from the military attempted such life style as well. He explained the situation to Petr the best he could.

Petr nodded, "I have heard of such people as well. I believe that they are usually analysed by psychiatrists as people unable to conform to the realities of modern society."

Marcan decided to try to question the computer further, "Castor, what happened to the crew of this ship?"

Marcan shook his head. It was hard to make sense of what the computer was saying. "Tell me about Jason, Castor. Was he the captain of this ship?"

"How did he die?" Marcan asked again.

Marcan shook his head in exasperation. For a computer, this Castor was quite mad. Before he could think of the next question to ask, Petr interrupted him.

"Commander, the captain of this ship was certain Professor T. Bardoff from Earth. He was the foremost scientist of classical mythology," the android said, looking intently at the screen of the captain's computer.

Marcan frowned, "But I thought the captain was called Jason."

It took a while before Petr answered and Marcan could see that he was flicking through dozens of pages of text in just a few seconds. It was just another of the better sides of being an android.

"No," Petr said at last, "but it seems that Jason the Argonaut was the captain of a ship called the Argo in Greek mythology. Dr. Bardoff seems to be preoccupied by that particular character in his travel journal."

"I take it that it was not a space ship?" Marcan confirmed.

"No, it was an ancient sail boat, as I understand. Jason was on a quest to seek the Golden Fleece in order to show his worthiness to the crown that his brother had taken. What is interesting here is that in his crew there were certain twins called Castor and Polydeuces."

"Castor as in the name our computer here seems to prefer?" Marcan asked.

"It seems so," Petr confirmed. "Wait!" he said suddenly and kept quiet for a while as he read dozens of more pages in a blink of an eye. "The style of the text is changing here. It seems to me that our dear professor got in his head that he was Jason himself. Reborn."

"You mean he lost his mind?" Marcan said.

"It appears so. After about three months of their journey he starts to call himself Jason and starts using various other mythological names for his crew-members, such as Heracles and Iolas, who was the son of Heracles's brother."

Marcan grinned weakly; "I take it that he was killed soon after he started calling people with such names?"

Petr nodded while he read onward, "Yes, it seems that soon after his proclamation of him being the Jason there started to be trouble with some of the crewmembers. Some supported his claim and others wanted to displace him."

"What happened then?"

Suddenly Petr straightened and looked at the screen with his head tilted. "I cannot say. The text is not readable after this point. I'm sure that it is written in some language, but it is nothing I can understand."

"Well, is there anything else we can use on that computer? Working navigational data, perhaps?"

Petr shook his head, "No. There is a direct link to the main computer, but as we already found out, it is not working wholly."

"But if that computer is the home of this Castor character, there should be something!" Marcan insisted.

Petr turned to look at him; "This computer does not contain any trace of this Castor. This is a simple terminal with restricted capabilities."

"How about the other computers in this floor?" Marcan asked.

"As far as I saw, they are all the same. Wherever the AI unit of this Castor is, we have not found it yet."

Marcan grimaced, "But we have already seen everything." He turned and looked around the room. Then he noticed the speakers near to the ceiling, well camouflaged by the reliefs. "Is there any way you can access the loud-speaker systems and see what computers they are connected with?" he asked then.

Petr nodded, "Perhaps. When I turned on the power, I saw something that could have been a lay-out of the power circuitry."

"Access it again and see what you can find out," Marcan said. Then he turned his attention back to the demented artificial intelligence. "Castor, can you tell me if there are any working space ships aboard this Argo II?"

"My brother is missing..." Castor replied.

Marcan groaned and tried again, "Castor, perhaps we could go out and try to find you brother if you tell me where I can find a working ship?"

There was a pause before the AI answered, "What is your name?"

Marcan lifted his eyebrows at the sudden question. "I am Commander Marcan Rayger," he said.

"Commander, it seems that there is a hidden room behind that wall," Petr announced and pointed at the back wall.

Marcan nodded to Petr, but answered to Castor, "Yes, Castor. If you can show me a working ship that can take us out of this system, I will search this Polydeuces for you."

After a brief silent pause, a portion of the wall at the back of the grand room pulled backwards and slid aside. Marcan and Petr could see a short corridor leading to another door. Without further speculation, they both rushed to the opening and entered.

The short corridor was not decorated in any way and that alone made Marcan feel safer. He walked to the door at the end of the short corridor and it slid automatically aside as proper doors were supposed to. On the other side, there was a large room that reminded them of the landing bay where they had left their Asp. But this one was a lot smaller and there was only one ship there. Marcan did not recognise the type of the ship and he studied it curiously. It was completely white, almost brilliantly so, and it was shaped like a gigantic letter C that had its points sharpened. It was not much bigger than a Cobra Mk III was, but from the outside the main and retro thruster outlets seemed to be bigger.

With the loudly spoken words, the entry hatch into the ship opened - it was located in the lower middle part of the ship, between the tips of the C - and the entrance ramp extended out towards the floor like a giant tongue.

Marcan glanced towards Petr and asked, "Do you recognise this ship type?"

Petr shook his head, "No. I think it may be a special design or an old prototype. As far as I understood, Professor Bardoff was rich enough to afford such."

"Shall we go inside, then?" Marcan asked. He suddenly felt tired again. Now that he was almost sure that they had found a way to escape the fate planned for them by Mr. Jones and could almost relax again, he felt like he could sleep for two whole days straight.

Petr grinned sickly, "I think we have no other option, if we want to get out of here."

They walked past the points of the C - which now reminded Marcan of the remotely similar points of the wings of his old Saker Mk III - and stepped onto the ramp.

A few minutes later Marcan sat on the pilot's seat and viewed the controls that were laid in front of him. Despite being a ship of an unknown type, the control systems were familiar and he was sure that he could take them out safely. The insides of the bridge were decorated as the bridge of the Boa had been, with reliefs and statues. But, in addition, there was a short poem in the wall behind the pilot's seat, marked as having being quoted from Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome", that said:

The ship's systems were all up and running and Marcan saw the long-missed name of the system in the screen of the navigation computer: Ahoand. That said nothing to him, but the Local Navigation Chart told him that they were only 28.5ly from Lave. The Castor was equipped with Class 3 Military Drive, and the jump range provided by it was 25.78ly. With that, they could easily reach an inhabited system anywhere they wanted to.

Even though Marcan had promised the ship's AI that he would search for Polydeuces with him, whatever he or that was, there was something he felt that he wanted to do first. Mr. Jones had tried to murder him, and only through sheer luck he had survived the attempt. If there was a way to revenge the attempt, he was going to go for it.

There was no co-pilot's seat for Petr, and so the android sat behind Marcan as the second landing bay door opened above them. When they had flown through, they saw why they had not noticed it before; it had been specially built to be undetectable. Perhaps the professor had not trusted in his crew to begin with - a possibility backed up by the fact that the only entry to the officer's quarters had been by the elevator - or he was very keen on secret passages. Whatever the reason, Marcan was happy to get out of the Boa. The air in his oxygen tanks would not have lasted for much longer and he had got tired of wearing the air-mask.

He watched the welcoming stars before he engaged the hyperspace engines. They felt a lot less threatening than they had when he had believed that he would starve to death amongst them. The only thing that worried him in the escape route that they had found was the fact that the ship's computer was the craziest AI he had ever met or heard of. But, then again, the owner of that ship had been crazy as well. What was the old saying about dogs and their masters starting to resemble each other? Marcan could not remember, but he chuckled at the idea anyway.