Starlit Containment Riddle

The scene hums in a hush between alarms. Tubes coil like black serpents—curled, tensed, expectant—while a crate proclaims its plea: *WHERE VOJTA?* in jagged white strokes, echoing in English and Russian like a ritual etched twice for luck. The monitor, feverish with scarlet code, breathes heat against cold steel skin; faint metallic tang seeps through the recycled air, mingled with something sharper, antiseptic, an odor that clings like fear dressed in medicine. And there—just there—the drifting cylinder, tagged and dripping a single bead as though it wept mid-orbit. Through the round window waits a silent galaxy, watching, unblinking. When I leaned close, the cables tremored and someone—recorded or real—whispered, "He needed to go further." Every trace says he slipped the sealed path, past protocols, past us, into that exquisite dark. We log the fragments, methodical, yet the question coils tighter: Vojta remains unaccounted, his silhouette dissolved among the stars.