The galaxy is filled with enigmatic artifacts — derelict spacecraft, intriguing art objects, the cities and engineering feats of unknown intelligences and past eras — but Sector 48 seems to have more than its fair share. Below are the top ten most mysterious of these, as determined by a convened panel of renowned engineers, historians, culturologists, and physicists.

 

Some inspire hope and awe. Some provoke fear and dread. And some simply leave us scratching our heads.

 

10. Around the planet Mouniers VII orbit several million mummified bodies. The species has never been encountered by Assemblage explorers. The mummies are estimated to have been in orbit for over six thousand years. Someone or something must be maintaining the mummies in their orbits, which otherwise would have long since decayed, sending the remains into the atmosphere of the planet.

There has never been any indigenous life on Mouniers VII.

 

9. A drifting cone of pure iron, three miles in diameter at the base and tapering, over seventeen miles, to a near-perfect point, was discovered by the passenger vessel Far from Wooded Vales approximately 3.4 light years from the nearest star, the red giant Erlios. The cone has no propulsion system. It emits no discernable signals. Who built it, and for what purpose? Is it a work of art? Part of a weapons system? A religious artifact?

 

The discovery was, of course, accidental. The chances of finding anything at all of that size out there between stars is vanishingly small. Unless there are like a bajillion of them.

 

So just how many of those cones are out there, anyway?

 

8. On a small, airless moon of Glonn IV there is a city. Silent, abandoned, and not constructed so as to protect any inhabitants from the vacuum, it encloses no bodies, no inscriptions or writings that explain its presence there.

 

Roads lead out from the city, and end suddenly. They go nowhere.

 

Or perhaps they lead into the city. Starting from nowhere.

 

7. A silver object, just over seven inches in length, was found drifting in space several hundred miles from the Xerxes Waystation. Thin and flattened, with gentle curves along its length, the object widens about two and a half inches from one end, and becomes four narrow tines. These tines are encrusted with some form of organic matter. Twenty-three years previously, the yacht Occasionally Golden Days had exploded nearby; the cause of the explosion was a faulty constrictor and an equally faulty guidance sensor.

 

Quite a coincidence.

 

Who could have made this object, and for what purpose? Is it a work of art? A religious artifact? Part of a weapons system that somehow initiated the faults in the constrictor and guidance sensor?

 

Who can say?

 

6. The world Dsaltah II is home to the ruins of fourteen civilizations, all products of different species. None of these civilizations were contemporaneous.

One civilization is evidenced only by the ruins of a single city, constructed entirely of thin glass.

 

5. Eight stars have apparently been brought together and arranged in such a way as to form a perfect octahedron. The stars provide a stable environment for a single planet, Trost I. Researchers speculate it may be a work of art, part of a weapons system, or perhaps a religious artifact.

 

In any case, positioning the stars thus must have been quite an effort.

 

4. Several dozen robots have, as their singular purpose, the construction and then the deconstruction of docking piers. This is on the otherwise deserted planet of Tamslon IV.

 

Tamslon IV has never had large open bodies of water.

 

3. A spacecraft of unknown origin was found orbiting Chuntallots II. Although there were substantial amounts of food on board the ship, all of the passengers or crew on the ship had died of starvation.

 

Many of them had died in cages they had constructed out of the bones of their pre-deceased shipmates.

 

2. On the single moon of Alronia III there stands a statue of a human, nearly six miles in height. Is it, indeed, a work of art, as it appears to be? Or could it be part of a weapons system, or a religious artifact?

 

The subject of the statue has been identified as actor Steven Seagal, whose last film was made over 450 years ago.

 

The statue has been determined to be eight million years old.

 

1. Euphonius is a barren planet of powdery sand and gentle hills. Strangely enough, the air is breathable. Even stranger is the fact that the winds carry trillions upon trillions of nanotech devices. As the winds bring these devices into greater or lesser concentrations, they play music — sometimes soft, lilting tunes at the edge of the human range of hearing, and at other times crashing symphonies of sound, and every sort between. The music is endless and never repeats, never reprises itself.