I had checked 57 percent of the transports in dock, when I hit an anomaly. I pulled a transport connection and pinged it with a salutation. It pinged me back with a salutation. (This is not how it’s supposed to work, there’s usually an answer protocol, even if it’s in a different language.) But maybe the transport had missed part of the ping or had a different kind of protocol. (Unlikely. Ships from outside the Corporation Rim, particularly on the routes intersecting Preservation, had a variety of different protocols, some of them horrifyingly jury-rigged by humans. But by the registry signifiers in its feed connection, this transport was from a Corporation Rim origin.) I pinged it again. It pinged me back, still a salutation. Okay, I’m just going to start talking to it.