The derelict drifted through the void, singing a song that had no sound.
Navigator Aurora Starweaver first noticed it as a resonance in her bones, a vibration that bypassed her ears entirely. The sensation grew stronger as their salvage vessel, the Cosmic Vulture, approached the massive hulk tumbling slowly through the empty space between stellar systems.
"Boss, you feeling this?" she asked Captain Meteor Storm, a grizzled veteran of a hundred salvage operations.
"The humming? Yeah." He frowned at his instruments. "But there's nothing on the audio sensors. Ship's been dead for... hell, the isotope decay suggests it's been drifting for at least thirty thousand years."
"Thirty thousand years and still singing," whispered their tech specialist, Binary Dream. "That's not possible. Power systems don't last that long."
The derelict was beautiful in its alien wrongness. Its hull seemed to be made of a single piece of metal that flowed like frozen music, covered in patterns that hurt to look at directly. It was huge—at least ten kilometers long—but built with a grace that made human ships look like crude hammers.
"Galactic Archaeology Division cleared us for salvage," Captain Storm announced. "They did their scans, took their pictures. Now it's ours to strip for tech." He paused, and Aurora could see the greed warring with caution in his eyes. "Thirty thousand-year-old alien tech. We could all retire on this."
They docked with surprising ease, the derelict's hull accepting their cutting tools as if welcoming them inside. The airlock opened to reveal corridors that seemed to stretch longer than the ship itself, lit by a phosphorescence that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Artificial gravity's still working," Binary noted, her voice tight with nervousness. "How is that possible after thirty millennia?"
"Same way it's still singing," Aurora replied, feeling the vibration growing stronger now that they were inside. It wasn't unpleasant—in fact, it was almost soothing, like a lullaby remembered from childhood. "This ship isn't dead. It's... sleeping."
They moved deeper into the vessel, their footsteps echoing in harmonics that shouldn't have existed. The corridors were empty of bodies, empty of any sign of struggle or catastrophe. Whatever had happened to the crew, they'd had time to clean up after themselves.
The bridge, when they found it, took their breath away. Instead of consoles and screens, there were crystalline structures that sang in harmony with the ship's eternal song. At the center sat a chair that looked more grown than built, its organic curves suggesting it had been shaped for a being not quite human in form.
"Captain," Binary's voice cracked, "I'm reading massive data storage in these crystals. Not electronic—something else. Information encoded in standing waves, in the very structure of matter itself."
Storm's eyes lit up. "Can you download it?"
"I can try." Binary approached the nearest crystal formation, extending her portable interface. The moment it made contact, her eyes rolled back, and she began to sing.
It wasn't her voice. It was something older, deeper, a sound that seemed to come from the birth of stars themselves. Aurora rushed to pull her back, but the moment she touched Binary, the song flooded into her too.
Suddenly, she understood.
The ship wasn't derelict. It was a monument, a tomb, a message all in one. The civilization that built it—the Resonants, her mind supplied, though she didn't know how she knew—had faced extinction. Not from war or disaster, but from transcendence. They had learned to exist as pure vibration, to live in the cosmic background radiation itself.
But they'd left this ship as a gift for whoever came after. The song wasn't just sound—it was knowledge, culture, art, and science all woven into a single eternal symphony. Anyone who listened long enough would learn everything the Resonants had known.
"We have to go," Aurora gasped, pulling free of the vision. "Now."
"Are you insane?" Storm snarled. "This is the find of the century! The technology alone—"
"Will sing to us until we can't stop listening," Aurora interrupted. "Until we become part of the song ourselves. Don't you see? This isn't a derelict. It's a recruitment station. The Resonants aren't gone—they're waiting for others to join them."
Binary had stopped singing, but her eyes remained unfocused, a beatific smile on her face. "It's beautiful," she whispered. "The universe is music, and we're just notes that haven't learned our part yet."
Storm reached for Binary, intending to shake her back to her senses, but the moment he touched her, the song took him too. Aurora watched in horror as his expression shifted from anger to wonder to something beyond human emotion.
She ran.
Through corridors that sang her name, past chambers where the very air vibrated with invitation, Aurora fled toward the airlock. The song followed her, growing stronger, more insistent. It showed her wonders—how to navigate by the resonance of dark matter, how to communicate across galactic distances instantly, how to live forever as a harmony in the cosmic symphony.
All she had to do was stop running. Stop fighting. Let the music take her.
She almost did. At the airlock, her hand hovering over the release, Aurora felt the weight of loneliness that would come from leaving. Out there was silence, cold emptiness between the stars. In here was warmth, community, eternal purpose.
But she thought of Earth, of her daughter who would wonder why mommy never came home. Of all the messy, chaotic, beautifully imperfect human experiences she'd never have if she became a note in an alien song.
Aurora hit the release and threw herself into the Cosmic Vulture. She fired the engines without proper separation, tearing away from the singing ship with a violence that sent her tumbling through space. Only when she was a thousand kilometers away did she dare to look back.
The derelict still drifted, still sang its silent song. But now she could see figures in the windows—Storm and Binary, their faces peaceful, their mouths open in harmony with something beyond sound.
She sent a warning to the Galactic Archaeology Division: "Derelict is a cognitive hazard. Do not approach. Do not salvage. Recommend immediate quarantine."
The response came back: "Nature of hazard?"
Aurora thought of how to explain. How to convey the terrible beauty of the Resonants' gift, the seductive promise of transcendence through music. How to make them understand that some gifts were too dangerous to accept.
"The ship sings," she finally transmitted. "And if you listen too long, you'll never want it to stop."
She turned the Cosmic Vulture toward home, fleeing through the silent void. But sometimes, in the quiet moments between heartbeats, Aurora could still hear it—the song without sound, calling her to return, to join the symphony that played eternal between the stars.
She never went on another salvage run. And she never stopped humming.