They found it half buried in the snow about a thousand miles from the North Pole, still steaming from its violent re-entry.
It was a satellite, its curved aluminium sides dented from innumerable debris strikes in the hellish Venusian atmosphere and charred black from the heat of re-entering Earth’s.
It lay at the end of a long straight trench that had been created by its high-velocity landing.
The two members of the search team who found it, Dr Cobalt from America and Sergeant Furin from Russia, were peering at it when abruptly a superhot panel on the side of the steaming satellite sprang open and the two of them were enveloped in a sudden cloud of gas.
They both coughed and gagged as they inhaled the strange gas before dropping to the snowy ground, unconscious.
When they awoke in their respective countries three months later, they would both be very different from their former selves.
They would be very different from every other human being on the planet.