Over the next fifty days the crew of the Terra Twin poured over every scrap of information they had collected from the object.  When the Argus arrived they had a lot more questions than answers.  For instance, the gravity of the object was all wrong. Its mass was measurable and solid but no amount of figure juggling could put the gravity to rights for the mass. In short, this mass somehow had less gravity than it should by half.  The iron nickel alloy was not natural or homogenous. It was fused out of several source ores, and several impurities remained in the metal.  The percentages of iron and nickel in all core samples were roughly similar but some contained cobalt, others were high in sodium, cesium, cadmium and other incompatible elements.  The samples also left no doubt that what or whoever was responsible, the sphere was an artifact, a made thing, and one piece of nickel iron this large hinted that the responsible party did not think in small terms.  By all previous knowledge of asteroids, meteors, and planetoids, the crew knew the object had to have a magnetic field, but it did not.  Even at this distance from the sun, light energy should be reflected just as well as it reflected off the Twin’s sunward side, however the sphere’s ability to absorb energy striking it was phenomenal only thirty percent of any radiation into the sphere was reflected, seventy percent literally disappeared.  The parallel lines Jamie found were very enigmatic, apparently they were also composed of the basic alloy but with absolutely no impurities what so ever.  The dish as they were calling it now, was also of this higher grade metal.


    The most interesting of all the observations were the inside sonographs done by Russell and company.  The inner surface of the sphere was supported by huge buttressed columns extending miles toward the center of the sphere.  This center itself appeared about one and a half kilometers in diameter and was completely covered by the flared and interlocked bases of the columns.  From all points inside the sphere the sonographs looked like a child’s concept of being inside a spider web.  The space between the shell and the center contained no air or any gases for that matter.  The resonance patterns of the shell and buttresses were identical, so the same substance was reasoned to be the column material also.  No joints or cracks were present, however the thing was constructed even x-rays could not find a trace.  The very last clues they got were from Jamie’s non-vis.  Light photos, there was the disk reflecting all of the infrared and ultraviolet light and absorbing nothing against a dead black sphere absorbing about ninety eight percent of these wavelengths.  The parallel lines reflected equally bright against the black silhouette of the sphere.  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    For three days the crews of the Terra Twin and the Argus exchanged information and visited each others vessels, as much to vary the scenery as to talk.  The Argus (named for a hundred eyed mythic monster) was covered every square meter of her with instruments and sensors for everything from detecting neutrinos to tachyon emissions to changes in the density of interstellar hydrogen in space.


    Her crew out numbered the Twin’s by forty-eight souls and was for them more cramped than they liked to admit.  The fourth day after the Argus joined them the crew of Terra Twin had a general holiday, the Argus’ commander Nigel Sapps, married Jeff Calan and Jamie Chung on his own ship and let Jeff’s crew remain on the Argus overnight.


    This arrangement suited Russell Carlin just fine as he found ha had much in common with Argus’ maintenance engineer Debra Hilds.  Somehow, the proximity sensors on Argus would not register their location for three days.  Commander Sapps and the scientists aboard Argus outlined their views to Jeff on the ninth day after the rendezvous.  They believed now the sphere was a spaceship or a space pod from an even larger vessel.  They inferred from the energy absorption data, that the ship could still be functional at a low power level.  The age of the object they calculated at between one thousand and twelve hundred years.  The dish was believed by most of the staff to be a communications device and the tracks could be an electro magnetic drive.  The staff of the Argus therefore planned to enter the sphere, investigate the center the Twin’s equipment couldn’t reach, and try to make contact with the alien sphere’s source culture, if the dish apparatus still worked.