As the ship drew closer and closer to the pulsar star, the metal mystery box took in ever-increasing amounts of energy.
This fascinated Apophis, and he used the MK.1's instruments to record as much data as he could. The more information he gathered, the more likely it was that he could replicate these results in the future if he found another mystery box of the same kind.
But eventually, he had to stop the experiment, since the rest of the crew—and the ship itself—were in more and more danger the closer they drew to the pulsar star.
Sure, players could come back to life after death, but Antanria and Colonel Ralfot couldn't, so it was best to be cautious! Not to mention, the MK.1 was quite a valuable piece of property.
So Apophis changed their trajectory away from the pulsar star and returned the MK.1 to subliminal speed.
However, he was surprised at what happened next.
Rather than the cube fading back to its original dimness, as Apophis had expected, the light remained just as bright as it had while close to the star. More alarmingly, the glow actually seemed to be growing and flickering with increasing frequency! Apophis picked up the cube, trying to understand what had happened—
It burst into blue-white flame in his hands!
Apophis suddenly remembered the stories of nuclear accidents from Earth's past, due to safety failures and oversights regarding uranium rods. It seemed to Apophis that he was in a similar situation, having triggered some kind of chain reaction with no idea of how to stop it!
Apophis urgently woke up the rest of the crew, telling them there was an emergency without wasting time on details! Then he put on a space suit and took the cube with him into the vacuum of space while the ship continued to speed away from him at its normal, non-hyperspace speed.
The cube hummed and shook and went totally out of control! Its blue light became blinding and its vibrations sent a crackling noise through Apophis's suit until…
A huge jet of energy burst from the cube!
A shock wave passed through Apophis, but didn't hurt him. He immediately looked in his character menu to see if he'd suffered radiation poisoning or any other ill effect, but nothing seemed to have happened. Suddenly, the energy jet dissipated and a circle of blue light three meters in diameter shot from the cube!
The pulsing light remained for nearly ten minutes, during which Apophis was too terrified to do anything but study it. He was worried that, if he disturbed the cube now, something terrible might happen.
Eventually, however, the circle shrank.
Apophis knew he must act quickly, so he reached out to the blue circle and touched it—and found that his hand disappeared into the light.
"This thing's a portal?!" he exclaimed in his helmet.
Apophis sent a private message to Lotus, explaining what had happened. "I can't know for sure, but I'll probably be away for a few hours," he said. "You have temporary command of the crew while I'm gone."
Then Apophis dove into the ring of light and passed through to the other side.