"...honestly, I couldn't tell you. We didn't open the door."

He leans back so he can take a swig of his coffee. "Maxwell gave the Boom Brothers their Turing Test, asking them to prove crap about her that no-one else could possibly know - and they both nailed it, three for three. So we were gonna err on the side of human decency, let him in to see what the deal was..."

He makes a face, bitter and rueful. "But Minkowski's already made sure we couldn't. She disabled the motion sensor on the door - a fun little party trick she learned from me. So, uh." He's less proud of this one, but it's still the full story. "So when the solar storm hit, and the outsider got put through the pressure cooker, he was... still on comms. So. I left the comms on. So the real McCobi and our illustrious captain could hear what they'd done to someone."

He looks down, resting his coffee in his lap. "Whatever else the thing out there was... he was scared."