The rabbit doesn't think much of the interior of the ship and hides beneath a table.

It doesn't die or anything.

They leave it in their for fifteen minutes, and then the Fetcher retrieves it back into its cage.

Leareth, scrying focus in hand, watches the process from his bunker. So far so good, but he's not relaxing yet. 

<Have a Healer examine the rabbit> he instructs the mage on duty for comms. <And sterilize the interior of the ship. The foreign visitor arrived already seriously ill, and we are unsure of the route of contagion.>

It's probably not airborne - if it were, the Healer he's been spying on would surely know, and even if the incubation period were longer than two days, they wouldn't have made the decision to Gate the foreigner to Haven of all places. 

A Healer is Gated over, to hang out in a tent set up nearby and examine the rabbit. 

Ten of the mages team up and cast the standard spell that mages can use to render unsafe drinking water safe without boiling it. It's a variation on a mage-light. They repeat the process with all the known variants of the technique, and put lots of extra power into it, in case this disease is particularly resistant or something. 

This is DELICIOUS and much appreciated.

The rabbit, after an intensive examination, is declared perfectly healthy and clear of any sign of unknown disease-causing lifeforce. 

The ship is still flashing red lights and warning its crew that it took impact damage and several systems are offline or at risk of breaking. 

The mages, of course, have no idea what the warnings mean. They can see the damage for themselves, though. 

<We can send in an exploration party> Leareth declares. <Full shields, maximum caution - assume hostile presence> There probably isn't a hostile presence, but, well, paranoia. 

They crack open one of the airlocks. Some amount of Fetching and application of mage-force is involved. 

The least tired of the elite mages, a team of five, check their personal shields and activate various shield-talismans and then enter. They spread out, casting mage-lights to see the space better. 

The airlock has two doors with a console on the wall that controls them. Through it there's a storage locker and then a room with six strap-in seats and large glass screens that are flashing warnings. Past that there's bunks, toilets, system access, and engine access. All empty.

They spend a candlemark inside, checking every room, and every nook and cranny, searching for magic, and also any non-magical hazards or booby-traps. They're careful to avoid touching the flashing glass screens. They collect anything portable, recast the sterilizing spell on it, and carry it out; at Leareth's instruction, they do this with great care and without ever touching the items directly, using Fetching and mage-work instead. 

Other mages are holding an impermeable mage-barrier around the ship. When the exploratory team emerges, the Healer comes out and checks them over, just as thoroughly. 

There's no magic. The ship doesn't seem to be designed to be hazardous to interact with, though some of its systems are crushed and not functioning correctly and look like they could collapse by accident (they don't). 

Portable things: some metal canteens, torn-open packets made of an unfamiliar thin material more durable than paper, replacement parts in the engine room, small chemical packets in the bathroom, thin paper in the bathroom, replacement light fixtures.

All of these are collected and laid out inside a tent erected for this purpose, enclosed in its own separate mage-barrier.

Does the Healer see anything wrong with the team of mages sent in to explore? 

They all seem to be in perfect health. 

Leareth spends another full half-candlemark thinking about what to do next. 

He wants to see the artifact for himself. At this point, he's certain it was built by a civilization far more technologically advanced than this one. Probably without magic at all, given that they've seen no traces of it. And Leareth is the only person in Velgarth with enough expertise, built up over centuries and millennia, to have a chance at interpreting the alien engineering... 

There's a risk, of course, but...for once, it's not clear to him that the risk to himself is unnaturally high. If the ship is from another world, then - that means it isn't of his world, where the gods scheme against him. (Unless They've already found a way to turn events to Their own purposes - which he has to assume They have - but Their Foresight is likely to be clouded by this unexpected event...) 

He sketches out the various considerations on paper. Thinks through contingencies. 

Eventually, he gets up, gathers his full set of shield-talismans including several that no one else knows how to make, and Gates to the location. 

He debriefs for a while with the team of explorers, who are still quarantined from the others in a separate tent, just in case. They draw up a map. They show him the tent with the various miscellaneous items. 

And then Leareth activates all of his own shields, and steps into the ship, all of his senses and instincts on full alertness. 

The alarm is still going. It's now warning not just of systems failures but also that one of the airlocks is damaged and that ship sector is no longer airtight.

There are no minds in the ship. There's still no magic.

He moves cautiously through the ship, still on alert for any hint of magic or minds, but mainly focusing on the various glass screens with his ordinary senses, gauging whatever he can about what the systems do. 

After a few minutes, he heads for the area that he now suspects is some sort of power source or propulsion system. 

The drive is enormous, probably half the bulk of the ship; it's accessed by a metal walkway with railings. Some of the components are at least legible. The largest part by mass is a metal cone, smooth and featureless, made of a material that'll absorb unfathomable amounts of heat and shaped to collect nearly all the heat from the drive's operations that isn't expelled as exhaust. Everything else is harder to figure out. There are mirrors. There's a feeding system for fuel and propellant. It seems to be fueled by some kind of highly compressed gas, in liquid form at this pressure, and by ....ordinary water? It's almost out of water, though. 

The ship is badly damaged but it's still an extraordinary, unlikely coincidence that the floor held up under the earlier exploration and snaps in two now, dropping Leareth into the water filtration system, and another extraordinary, unlikely coincidence that this mistakenly triggers a blast door to attempt to close on him as he falls.

Leareth doesn't scream. He flings power into his shields; the shield-talismans are already up at full strength. They take the brunt of the blast door's attempted closure. This isn't very good for either the artifacts or the door itself, but Leareth is unhurt. 

He doesn't, quite, have time to raise an unscaffolded Gate before he lands in the water. 

The Farseer currently assigned to watch Leareth's progress does yelp out loud. 

He's also a Mindspeaker. :Leareth. Status report: 

:Floor collapsed. No injuries. I am going to Gate out: 

First, though, he blasts the general area with the sterilizing spell, just in case it was too thoroughly blocked by the tank walls on the last pass. He takes ten seconds to cast a bright mage-light and study the area he's fallen into.

Then he Gates out. To an area a mile away. He lands on hands and knees, quite a lot of water spilling through the Gate along with him. 

<Keep your distance> he tells the mage on comms. <I am - this was suspicious - I need to think> 

Pause. 

<Please send the Healer, though.> 

The water filtration system appears to have been cracked when the ship was dropped through a Gate; it's all shiny chrome tanks and pipes, several of them badly damaged. 

Leareth crouches in the empty tundra. 

After a moment, he blasts the area with not-mage-light again; it's not generally good for humans to be in the radius of the spell, but he's very, very well shielded.

He's soaking wet now, so he raises a weather-barrier while he waits. 

After some discussion, they decide to Gate the Healer over rather than making them trek an entire mile. 

She steps out twenty paces away from Leareth. "Safe to approach?"