Patiently waiting in the center seat, signing off on fuel-consumption reports and sipping long-since-cold coffee, Kirk had yet to hear a single report from anyone that explained what Xiong had revealed. Noting the hour, Kirk was about to turn in for the night when Spock called to him. “Captain.”

He joined Spock and Piper. The first officer looked no worse for his efforts, but the long hours had taken a terrible toll on the old physician. Kirk said, “What have you got?”

One of the overhead displays switched to a complex helical design composed of multitudes of colors. “The biological samples recovered by the Constellation crew included a unique and complex genetic material, Captain,” Spock said. “A team at Starfleet Research and Development has since named that gene sequence the Taurus Meta-Genome.”

“It’s like our DNA,” Piper said, “but a lot more complicated.”

“How much more?” Kirk’s real concern remained un-voiced: Complicated like warp-geometry calculus, or like Gary Mitchell on Delta Vega?

Enlarging the image on the overhead, Spock said, “The Taurus Meta-Genome contains a staggering quantity of raw information, encoded in a biochemical matrix. Compared with all currently known humanoid genetic material, it is more complex by several orders of magnitude.” Kirk did a double take, then looked again at the image with a new wonder and respect. Spock added, “Its value to science is potentially incalculable.”

“Coming from you, Mr. Spock, that means something.” Kirk looked at Piper. “Where did it come from?”

Piper pointed at a notation in fine print at the bottom of the screen. “Ravanar IV, Captain. A survey team scraped it up with a simple mold. They didn’t know what they had until the Constellation was long gone from the system.”

Now Kirk had heard everything. “Mold?”

“Only the first six base-pairs seem directly related to the mold,” Piper said, pointing to the relevant molecules. “The next five pairs seem like barrier proteins, designed to keep the mold’s genetic data separate from the rest of the sequence.”

“So the mold is only a carrier?”

“Precisely, Captain,” Spock said. “There is also a repeating sequence, which might serve to prevent errors in replication. I have never seen such symmetry in a genome before. If I were to offer an educated guess, I would say that it was artificially engineered.”

Genetic engineering. Even the mention of it recalled for Kirk ethics lessons from Starfleet Academy on the evils of bioengineering for “eugenic” purposes. Despite his reasonable certainty that humanity’s failed efforts in that field were unrelated to what he was seeing here, a chill shook him. He put aside his gut reaction. “Is this a blueprint for a life-form?”

“Unlikely, sir,” Piper said. “Not unless it’s the size of a small moon. I think Mr. Spock hit the nail on the head when he said it looked like information storage. I’d say it’s raw data.”

The imprecision of it frustrated Kirk. “For what?”

Piper and Spock both wore poker faces. Finally, the first officer simply said, “Unknown.”

Seeking a new avenue of inquiry, Kirk said to Xiong, “This is why you were on Ravanar?”

Xiong looked up from his work at the adjacent station. “Yes, sir. I went in with the Sagittarius crew on an early mapping assignment.”

“And that’s when you found the artifact?”

“To make a long story short, yes.”

“There’s more on that, Captain,” Scott said. “Look here.” The entire group crowded around the second science station as Scott transferred his work to the overhead screen. Wireframe models were superimposed on virtual models of the intact artifact Xiong had discovered underground. “With the kind of power this thing must have had, its range would have been tremendous.”

Once again, the expertise of Kirk’s senior officers left him feeling half a step behind. “Its range, Mr. Scott? Range for what?”

Scott sounded shocked that he had to explain himself. “Broadcast, sir.” Waving toward the image on the screen, he continued, “I didn’t see it until Lieutenant Xiong showed me the whole works in one piece just now. Then it hit me—it looked like an oversized subspace relay coil.” Punching a few keys, he added some schematic data as an additional overlay. “These are the systems D’Amato scanned beneath the thing, before it blew up. You can gussy it up all you like, but the laws of physics don’t change. That is a subspace transmitter.”

It was Xiong’s turn to let his jaw hang open while he stared at the chief engineer’s work. “Commander Scott,” he said, “what would be the effective range of such a transmitter?”

“That size?” Scotty shrugged. “Huge, lad. If I had the time, maybe I could do the math and—”

“Approximately two hundred eleven point six light-years,” Spock said. “Assuming a power source sufficient to accelerate the coil’s primary oscillator to full velocity.”

Xiong looked at Kirk like a child pleading for Christmas gifts. “Captain, could we check the databanks for any unexplored M-Class or formerly M-Class planets within that radius of Ravanar IV? It might help direct the search for more artifacts or other samples of the meta-genome.”

Kirk nodded his assent to Spock, who leaned over the sensor hood and patched in to the ship’s computer library.

“Searching,” Spock said over the gentle hum and whir of the computer. “Several such planets are within the specified area.” He routed the data to the overhead, replacing the genome information with a star map.

Xiong studied it quickly, eyes darting from one highlighted name to another. “There,” he said, pointing. “Erilon.”

Calling up supplemental data, Spock read aloud, “Class-P, glaciated. No sign of intelligent life detected by remote survey probes. Believed to have been Class-M until approximately twenty-nine thousand years ago, when the companion of its primary star diminished in magnitude.”

“It’s near the Klingon border, right along the Endeavour’s patrol route,” Xiong said. “We could ask them—”

“Lieutenant,” Kirk said, cutting him off. “I’m not about to send another Federation starship on a wild-goose chase to a dead block of ice based on your hunch.” Gesturing at the star map, he continued, “There are dozens of candidates, and no reason to think that one’s a better bet than the others.”

“True,” Xiong said, “but it’s the only one on the list that has a Starfleet ship passing within one-point-five light-years in the next five days. Might as well start there.”

Before Kirk could rebut Xiong, Spock chimed in. “Logical.”

“Fine,” Kirk said. “Will the Endeavour crew know what they’re looking for?”

“They’ll know,” Xiong said. “We should notify them on a coded frequency.”

“Very well. Mr. Scott, Dr. Piper, continue your analysis and contact me if you learn anything new.” Kirk walked toward the turbolift. “Lieutenant Uhura, please help Mr. Xiong send a priority coded signal to the Starship Endeavour.” The turbolift door opened and Kirk stepped inside. “Mr. Spock, you have the conn.”

The doors closed as Kirk gripped the turbolift throttle. Watching the deck lights blur past, he grinned at the realization that he and Commodore Reyes would have much more to talk about at their next meeting than at their first. This time, Kirk promised himself, I’m getting some real answers out of him.

Lieutenant Moyer sat with her hands folded on the wardroom table and hurled questions at Commodore Reyes. He did his level best not to get out of his chair and strangle her. “Would you describe the workload of the Bombay crew as excessive?”

“No,” Reyes said, then heeded his counsel’s advice not to elaborate unless instructed to do so. It was the fourth day since Desai had overruled Liverakos’s motion to terminate the inquiry, and Reyes’s first day being deposed.

Moyer reviewed her notes. “How many separate action items did you assign to the Bombay on an average cruise?”