“It was first spotted by the computer seven hours ago,” Gibruch went on, “but initial probability estimates were below the threshold of concern, so it wasn’t flagged.” Over the past week and a half, Riker had gotten the hang of how this worked. Visual observation of asteroid trajectories was fraught with uncertainties. You could see where a body was now, but it took days or weeks of observation to narrow down exactly which direction it was moving in, creating a cone-shaped volume of potential paths it could take. The longer you observed it, the more you pinpointed its trajectory, narrowing the cone. Initially, the cones were wide enough that thousands of asteroids showed the potential to hit Droplet or Titan, but in most cases, as those cones narrowed, the planet no longer fell inside them and the threat could be ruled out. This asteroid’s probability cone was narrow enough to be worth noting, but the odds were six hundred to one that it would end up missing the planet after all. No cause for alarm yet.

“Risk assessment if it does hit?” Riker asked.

“Minimal. Its estimated mass is high enough that it could do some damage if it hit solid ground, but here it would simply be pulverized on impact and vaporize a crater in the ocean. The impact of water rushing back into that crater would generate a series of tsunamis, but the science team tells me that those tsunamis would subside to a moderate height within a hundred kilometers or so from ground zero—and with no shallow water, they’d remain broad and gentle, giant swells rather than breaking waves. Nearby sea life would be killed by the concussion, if not vaporized in the impact, but as long as our away teams keep their distance, the wave would affect them no worse than an ordinary ocean swell down there.”

Riker thought about the squales, who would not be able to evacuate the area as easily as his crew. “Could we deflect the asteroid if we had to?”

The answer came from Pava Ek’Noor sh’Aqabaa, who stood watch at tactical on gamma shift. Despite Riker’s reluctance to leave his family, old habit had brought him to the bridge early, before most of alpha shift had arrived. “Yes, sir,” the tall Andorian shentold him. “It might take a lot of tractor power, but we could deflect it successfully. The sooner we act, the easier it will be.” The captain understood that easily enough; it was simple geometry. The closer it was to the planet, the larger the angle it had to be deflected by to miss it.

“Let’s not act in haste,” Gibruch said. “Odds are we won’t have to do anything. No sense wasting ship’s power without need.”

“We’d have to use more power if we waited,” sh’Aqabaa countered.

“But nothing the ship can’t handle. And it’s more likely we won’t need to use the power at all.” His cranial trunk curled upward to rest on his shoulder as he addressed sh’Aqabaa. Was he flirting with her? Maybe there was hope for him yet.

“Thank you both. We’ll monitor the situation. I relieve you, Mister Gibruch.”

“I stand relieved.”

At tactical, Tuvok had now arrived for his shift and was relieving sh’Aqabaa. The shenheaded for the turbolift slightly ahead of Gibruch. “Oh, and Commander?” he said, smiling at the Chandir when the latter turned his impressively appendaged head. “Have fun.”

DROPLET, MAIN SURVEY BASE

Xin Ra-Havreii groaned as the ground—or this benighted world’s fickle excuse for it—heaved beneath him once again, almost toppling him into the pool where Aili Lavena floated, working with him on mnemonic exercises to improve her translation work with the squales. Normally the prospect of a headlong dive into Aili’s strong arms would have been far from unappealing, but the water level in the pool had fallen precipitately, making it a plunge of several meters. All right, admittedly there was a rather gentle polyp-shell slope with plenty of handholds between him and the drink, but blast it, he was a starship designer, not a mountain climber.

The islet he was on—one of the twenty-eight roughly disk-shaped polyp colonies that made up this flimsy pre tender to the title of “land mass”—rocked back in the other direction as the ocean swell peaked and passed beneath it, bringing Aili and the water back upward, the latter almost rising to engulf him, sending him scuttling back from where he sat. The triangular pool Aili occupied was the gap between three adjacent disks, which were fused together by chains of polyps and other symbiotic species, but loosely enough that the whole structure could flex and ride the waves without breaking apart. Intellectually, he could admire the engineering solution that evolution had devised, but he would have preferred to admire it from afar.

Aili laughed as the swell passed and the base island settled down to a level pitch again—for the moment. “I’ve never known you to be afraid of getting wet, Xinnie.”

He restrained a wince at the nickname. “I’d rather not get dragged into there by the retreating water,” he said. “Really, you shouldn’t even be in there, my dear. The undertow could suck you between the islets as they grind together.”

She grinned, dismissing his concern. “I’ve been swimming my whole life, Xin. I can handle myself near shore during rough seas.”

“You’ve never had to deal with two shores clashing together! I doubt anyone other than Jason or Odysseus has.” Commander Vale, a fan of classical Earth literature, had treated the command crew to holoprograms of her ancestral world’s ancient maritime myths during their three-day approach to Droplet.

“Oh, stop worrying so much! This is fun, you should try it.”

“My dear, I’m seasick enough on the land.”

“It could be worse,” came Melora’s voice from behind him, startling him. Her elegant sylphlike frame was so lightweight, especially in her antigrav suit, that he hadn’t heard her footfalls. “Just be glad the island isn’t spinning like the young ones do. Now, that would be a fun ride. Just imagine the ground spinning you, twirling and twirling, the horizon rushing around you…” She was clearly enjoying his discomfiture, maybe even trying to make him revisit his last meal in reverse. She had a good chance of succeeding.

“Oh, Melora, don’t be mean,” Aili said.

“Why not? It’s fun—you should try it.”

Ra-Havreii rested his head on his knees and tried to distract himself with engineering. “Gyroscopic stabilization,” he said.