Captain Miller, Dr. Peters, and engineer Justin donned thirty-kilogram spacesuits, fastening safety lines behind their waists like cave explorers on Earth, then slowly floated into the Event Horizon through the connecting passage. Even though they had prepared themselves mentally, what greeted their eyes still filled the exploration team with fear—a dry tooth floating in midair amid other drifting metal cans and empty plastic bottles. Dr. Peters made a judgment despite lacking dental expertise—it was neither a child's baby tooth nor an adult tooth broken by violence, but a tooth still connected to its root nerves, with some dried gum tissue remaining, as though someone had clamped the jaw with pliers and forcibly pulled it out.
Captain Miller tried to steady himself. While calling for the first officer operating the Lewis and Clark to keep letting out the composite metal cable, he took a plastic evidence bag from the pouch at his waist, kicked himself toward the tooth, and preserved it in an extremely awkward manner. On the bridge of the Lewis and Clark, everyone else who had not participated in the first rescue mission had gathered together, watching Captain Miller's discovery, including the tooth, through the spacesuit cameras. Dr. Will, First Lieutenant Smith, Lieutenant Cooper, and the other crew members were weighed down by the ominous discovery. The tooth suggested that the Event Horizon might have suffered a disaster beyond their imagination. If its crew had merely entered cryo-sleep, they could never have sustained such injuries.
"Justin, I need you to check whether the engine unit can restart the power supply. We need to activate artificial gravity, if the technology Dr. Will mentioned really is installed on this ship."
Captain Miller put the tooth, sealed inside an evidence bag, back into his pouch. He felt that the temperature control system