Pennington had made the interminable journey to Vanguard hoping to find answers to some of those questions. Instead, he was getting the same talking points as his Earth-assigned colleagues—and, just to make it worse, missing out on the Paris nightlife and press-corps gossip.

Jetanien wolfed down his last few fried beetles. Watching the Chelon diplomat eat, Pennington realized that he had a sudden hankering for waffles. Wondering if the café was still serving breakfast, he turned to summon a waiter.

Before he could shout “Garçon!” a general announcement echoed inside the vast, hollow-doughnut–shaped space of the habitat, emanating from camouflaged speakers and seeming to be everywhere at once. “Attention, all personnel,” the feminine voice said in a businesslike tone, “the Starship Bombay is on approach to main spacedock bay two. Alpha-shift maintenance and cargo crews report to bay two for priority operations.”

The message began to repeat as Pennington, suddenly energized, rose from his seat and swiftly gathered his notes off the tabletop. “Mr. Ambassador, will you excuse me? I have a pressing matter to attend to.”

Pennington was already several meters away and dodging through the Starfleeters’ Frisbee game before he realized he had left without waiting for Jetanien’s reply. As he sprinted across the wide-open green, he forgave himself. Priorities, he reminded himself as he reached the station core and boarded a turbolift. You have to have priorities.

“I don’t know what you see in this game,” said Jabilo M’Benga.

“Just watch,” said his boss, Vanguard’s gray-haired, dark-skinned, gravel-voiced chief medical officer, Dr. Ezekiel Fisher.

The two men were alone on the top row of the bleachers beside the athletic field, squinting against simulated sunlight beaming down from an artificial sky. Though the massive inner space was officially designated the “terrestrial enclosure,” most of the station’s residents called it simply “the park.”

M’Benga—a handsome, soft-spoken young attending physician—had been all that Fisher had hoped to find in a successor. His diagnostic skills were second to none, and his bedside manner was personable without being overly familiar. Though he had been on Fisher’s staff for a few months, since shortly after Vanguard became operational, M’Benga’s quirks and moods remained a mystery to him. The junior physician reminded Fisher at times of a Vulcan; he had served in a Vulcan ward before being assigned to Vanguard, prompting Fisher to wonder if the Vulcans’ inimitable stoicism had rubbed off on the young doctor.

In the distance, the skyline of Stars Landing was partly distorted by surface irregularities on the broad central core of the station, which was camouflaged with photosensors that reproduced the images in front of them on massive diodes 180 degrees away, on the other side of the core, to preserve the illusion of an unbroken pastoral vista.

Nestled out of sight, along the gently rising slope that bounded the perimeter of the circular park, were entrances to the station’s high-speed maglev tram. The automated people-mover ran a small fleet of trams on two levels, one set in each direction. The system had been designed so that the terminals, which were spaced roughly two hundred meters apart, would each be visited by one tram every two minutes.

A tight cluster of brightly uniformed athletes clashed in a haphazard pile on the grass in front of the bleachers. M’Benga eyed the scrum with detached curiosity. “What did you say this game was called?”

“Rugby.”

“And what’s the objective?”

“Don’t ask so many questions,” Fisher said, a hint of his late father’s native Tennessee drawl peeking out from behind his words. He gestured to the tray on the bench between them. “Have some chips.”

With poise and precision, M’Benga reached out and gingerly plucked a single chip from the plate on the tray, lifted it to his mouth, and ate it without dropping a single crumb.

He reminds me of Noah, Fisher thought, picturing his firstborn son. M’Benga was a bit younger than Noah, and his dark skin was a slightly richer shade of brown, but his and Noah’s mannerisms were eerily similar—so precise, so measured. Is that why I took such a shine to him?

“Do you think about your next career step?”

M’Benga shrugged. “Now and then.”

Stroking the graying whiskers of his goatee, Fisher hesitated to spell out his agenda too bluntly. Decades of experience in Starfleet had taught him that sometimes it was best not to show all of one’s cards at the same time. “What do you see for yourself? A few more years and out? Or a future in Starfleet medicine?”

“Definitely a future,” M’Benga said, his confidence apparent. “I joined Starfleet for a reason.”

“Didn’t we all,” Fisher said under his breath. More than fifty years of service in Starfleet had left him somewhat world-weary, and he was long past the point of apologizing for it. In his opinion, he had earned the right to grumble a little from time to time. He refocused his thoughts. “If you plan to make a real go of it, the best advice I can give you is this: Learn to see what people don’t show you, learn to hear what they don’t tell you, and learn to trust your gut.”

“Interesting counsel,” M’Benga said. “Thank you.”

How very Vulcan of you, Fisher mused. “You’re welcome.”

On the field in front of them, the players wrestled furiously, a writhing pile of color and dirt-flecked sinew. Grunts and groans and agonized shouts were muffled inside the crush of bodies. A pained expression formed on M’Benga’s lean, impeccably shaven features as he watched. “I still fail to see the point of this game,” he said.

“What’s the point of any game?”

After thinking a moment, M’Benga said, “To win.”

“Right.” Fisher grabbed a small cluster of deep-fried chips and pushed them into his mouth. They were crisp and salty with just a slight tang of vinegar.

“So who are you rooting for?”

“No one,” Fisher said. “I just watch.”

“You have no interest in the outcome?”

“Not really.”

Now young M’Benga looked confused. “Then what do you get out of it?”

“Depends on the game,” Fisher said. He wondered if M’Benga would understand his philosophy with regard to competitive sports. “Some games, you admire the skill of certain players or the harmony of a good team. Others, the strategy has a beauty to it…. Sometimes, it’s enough just to appreciate the struggle.”

Nodding, M’Benga said, “You love the effort—regardless of the result.”

“Right.” Fisher could sense it: He’s catching on.

“That would be an apt description of the scientific method. Opposed hypotheses vie for evidentiary support—and scientists observe impartially. The result is secondary to the method.”

Fisher smiled at the young attending physician. “Not bad. It took my last attending months to work that out.”

Gesturing at the quickly intensifying scrum below, M’Benga asked, “Does rugby actually have any rules?”

A wry half-smirk tugged at Fisher’s mouth. “Sure,” he said. “No autopsy, no foul.”

“Angry? No, Your Excellency, I wouldn’t say they’re angry. I think ‘apoplectic’ might be a better term.”

Senior attaché Anna Sandesjo clutched her briefcase as she trailed close behind Ambassador Jetanien, who swept through the frantic chatter and cluttered work nooks of the Federation Embassy office, grabbing up hard-copy reports from each of the consulate case officers as he went. The towering Chelon diplomat spoke over his shoulder to Sandesjo as he reviewed his daily intelligence updates, one in each scaly, web-fingered manus. “What, exactly, did Ambassador Sesrene say?”

“The translators couldn’t parse it,” Sandesjo said, taking care not to step on the tail of Jetanien’s flowing white coat, which fluttered ethereally behind him as he strode forward. “It was more like a metallic shriek than the chiming tones they usually make. It sounded like he was in pain.”