A transmission crackled through, voice calm and terrible:
She punched in the translation. The screen flashed.
But Lena couldn’t. The string pulsed faintly on the screen, like a low-frequency hum she could feel in her molars. Seven. S-T-T-A-R. H-D dot ing.
She traced the keystrokes on her armrest. 7. S. T. T. A. R. H. D.
And on Lena’s screen, the string changed to:
“No,” Lena said, zooming out the star chart. “It’s a coordinate encryption. ‘Seven star’ refers to the Pleiades cluster. ‘Hard ing’ – ‘hardening’ – a structural term. It means anchor .”