A small red dot on an asteroid's surface was all Adam could see of the laser beam from his seat in a miner, a single-person small craft designed to extract minerals from asteroids. As he was moving his joystick to the right the small dot was also moving right and ripping away the surface layer of the asteroid. While flying away into space some pieces of the dust and rock were crossing the laser beam and making it partially visible for just a few seconds. Adam stopped the beam and looked at the scanner. There was just silicate, nothing important. He resumed cutting that piece of rock. After a few seconds, the laser beam encountered an obstacle. Something was stopping it from cutting through the asteroid. Adam looked at the scanner and couldn't believe what he was seeing. The scanner was showing him a titanium signature. He remembered the pre-operation briefing. The scan results weren't showing any titanium in this asteroid. He decided to check it out and aimed his scanner at the place where the obstacle was encountered. The titanium signature became even stronger. Adam was sure that it wasn't a malfunction. He moved the laser beam above the obstacle and started cutting. He wanted to cut around the obstacle, so he would be able to extract a sample of the mineral for quality testing. While doing that he contacted the main mining ship.

"Harrison here, " Adam said, "I have titanium here. Prepping a sample."

"Titanium!?", the voice in his headset sounded shocked

"Trust me, I'm as shocked as you are."

After cutting an almost perfect square around the obstacle Adam took his miner's claws and placed them in the holes. He pulled the lever, but a sample wouldn't let go. Adam decided to use the claws to cut it from the rest of the asteroid. Still no effect. The claws weren't able to make a dent in it. Adam was starting to think if this could have been a vein going inside the asteroid. He decided to cut the front of the sample with a laser again. It was a very hard thing to do. However, after a while, he managed to remove the softer parts. He couldn't believe what he saw under it. It wasn't titanium in a mineral form. It looked like the tip of an object. Adam wasn't sure if it was a sword or a really small missile.

"Harrison here, that titanium, not a mineral, an object, a sword, a missile, I don't know."

"Is it armed?"

Adam looked at the scanner. Nothing out of the ordinary.

"Whatever it is, it looks harmless. If it is a missile, it is dead."

"Ok, take it out. Maybe we can salvage something from this."

"How? I already tried with my claws. It's stuck deep. We need the big laser."

No answer. The controller was probably reporting the find to someone higher before making any decisions. Meanwhile, Adam was scanning the mysterious object further. The titanium signature was so strong that it was hard to detect anything else. After a while, he was able to detect small quantities of chromium and aluminium. Was it really a missile, he thought.

"All miners, return to the mothership. Repeat, all miners, return to the mothership, " said the voice in the headset, "Harrison, leave a marker before returning."

"Aye!"

Adam turned off the cutting beam and hid the claws. Then he shot a marker that attached itself to the asteroid just above the strange object. When Adam was certain that the marker is detectable he turned his miner around and flew to the mothership.

The mothership was a light mining ship with six miner docking bays on the lower hull. Adam flew under the ship and placed his miner underneath one of the open docking bays. When he was there his craft was grabbed by two big mechanical claws and pulled up. Inside the ship, Adam waited a few moments before the docking bay doors were closed and the computer signalized that the pressurization of the room was complete. Then Adam came out of the miner. The craft took almost all the space in the room and Adam had to squeeze between it and the wall to get to the door leading to the changing room. It was a small single-person room with just one locker and a hatrack in a form of a small piece of metal hanging from the wall. Adam quickly took off his flight suit and got into his regular clothes. When he went out from the changing room a woman in a dark green uniform was waiting for him in the corridor. On the chest, she had a sign with two crossed pickaxes and a letter "C" under them. She was a controller.

"What do they want?"

"You to be on the bridge during the extraction. It was your find after all. You have 30 minutes", she said and walked away.

Adam went around the docking bay block and entered the main deck. It was a not-so-big, but also not-so-small, open area. In the middle, there were couches and tables, generally a relaxation area. On the sides, there were all kinds of rooms including crew bedrooms, offices and mess hall. Adam went straight through the room and stepped onto a small platform with a touch panel mounted on the railings. He pressed one button and the platform moved up.

He arrived at the bridge. It was small. Directly in front of him was the helm and on both sides of it were stations of controllers. Mark Holmes, captain of the ship, was standing behind the helmsman and looking through the window. At the sound of the elevator arriving he turned around.

"Ah, Mr Harrison! Welcome, come here!", said the captain

Adam walked to him. He felt a little bit strange. He never was on the bridge. He was just a miner pilot, bridge wasn't part of his job.

"Sir", said Adam, "may I ask why you asked me here?"

"You were working with the problematic piece. We might need your help with finding it"

"But I left a marker."

The captain didn't answer.

"Ready the laser!"

"Ready!", replied one of the controllers after a few seconds

The captain showed Adam to follow him and went to the laser control station. Adam was observing while the captain was carefully aiming the laser. A red dot on the screen was the marker he left on the asteroid and the captain was carefully trying to get the crosshair onto it.

"Sir, I would advise caution. The object is present in a certain spot and might be easily damaged by a laser this strong"

The captain didn't answer. He was completely focused on the aiming. After a while, the crosshair was at the right spot and the captain pressed the fire button. At the same time, an image from a camera appeared on the control station's monitor. It showed the targeted piece of the asteroid. The laser was ripping away pieces of the rock. It took only about a minute before one of the controllers shouted.

"A titanium signature just dropped out of the asteroid!"

A moment later another controller added.

"It's... a sword!?"

The captain turned off the laser and turned his attention to the controllers and reading from their sensors. Adam was also intrigued and looked over a controller's arm.

"A sword?", he asked

"It looks like that. How it ended up inside an asteroid, I have no idea", the controller answered.

Adam looked at the sensor readings closer. Most of the sword was made of titanium, but there were traces of other materials. Most of it was aluminium. Standard titanium-aluminium alloy, Adam thought. He was wondering how it came into the asteroid when suddenly an alert appeared on the screen. Adam stood up and looked at the captain.

"Sir, we're receiving an Archaeo Alert."

"I see it too, Harrison. Time to inform Mr Stevenson."