"Hold on a second, I'm getting a reading. It's -- " Before he could so much as finish his sentence, however, a spatial distortion materialized without warning on the shuttle's starboard side. Something that looked to Nagate like an immense sea creature snaked out of the hole in space, eerily luminescent.

Its long body loosely resembled that of a moray eel, with rows of eyes running down both of its sides. Spines ran down the dorsal length of its spine. And though it wasn't much wider than the Tsugumori itself, about a hundred meters of the creature had already exited the distortion, and more were about to follow.

"Watch it!" called Nagate, dropping the drill the Tsugumori had been carrying. "There aren't supposed to be any life forms out here!"