Commander Atish Khatami, the Endeavor’s first officer, tromped toward him, the wide ovals of her snowshoes leaving behind distinctive waffle-tread prints in the formerly pristine snow. Shrouded in cold-weather gear, she looked identical right now to the rest of the landing party, except for the white rank insignia that circled the cuffs of her jacket sleeves. “Klisiewicz,” she said. “We’re not reading anything over here. I think we should beam over to the next survey point.”

“Can I have another minute, Commander? I might have something, if I can just break through the interference.”

“Make it quick,” Khatami said. She unclipped her communicator from the broad utility belt around her waist. It flipped open with a distinctive triple chirp. Adjusting its gain, she spoke into it, “Khatami to Endeavour.”

Captain Zhao Sheng answered. “Endeavour here. Go ahead.”

“Our sweep’s mostly finished; we’re waiting on Klisiewicz to finish scanning the galaxy’s largest ice cube. Anything new and exciting up there?”

“Actually, yes,” Zhao said. “The Sagittarius just reported that its long-range sensors picked up subspace signal traffic inside the Taurus Reach. Looks like we might have some first-contact missions ahead of us.”

Klisiewicz and Khatami turned toward each other. Even though neither one could see the other’s face under the breathing masks and goggles, Klisiewicz was certain they were both smiling the same goofy grin. First contact! That’s the whole reason we’re here!

“That’s great news, sir,” Khatami said.

“I agree,” Zhao said. “And with the Exeter relieving us on border patrol, I’d like to get back to making those missions happen. How long until your survey’s done?”

Khatami and the rest of the landing party—which consisted of chief engineer Bersh glov Mog; Ensign Bonnie Malmat, senior geologist; and security guards Jeanne La Sala and Paul McGibbon—gathered around Ensign Klisiewicz. Noting the general mood of impatience pressing in on him, he shouted over the wind, “Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” On a hunch, he resorted to a simpler scanning protocol and made another attempt to pierce the interference. Like a Rorschach blot, an image appeared on his tricorder screen.

“Commander,” he said. “You’d better look at this.”

The first officer carefully sidled up to him, her snowshoes overlapping his own in an awkward jumble. He shifted his posture to let her look at his tricorder display. She stared at it for several moments, but he knew not to interrupt her chain of thought. Khatami was one of the smartest officers Klisiewicz had ever met; he knew that if she had any questions, she’d ask.

“Question,” she said. “Is that the same configuration?”

“Affirmative,” he said. “But bigger. A lot bigger.”

“How far down is it?”

“Almost a hundred meters,” Klisiewicz said.

Khatami waved over Malmat and showed her the tricorder data. “Does that look like a natural formation to you?”

Craning her neck and leaning forward to see the tricorder, Malmat said, “No. Too symmetrical. It’s definitely synthetic, Commander.”

The entire landing party stared up at the sapphire-tinted glacier as if it were about to lash out at them. Above it, the silvery sky was streaked with bruised pink clouds that were dimming with the encroaching dusk. Wind yowled furiously around the Starfleet team, whipping snow-devils into frenzied dances. Khatami turned toward Mog. “How long to excavate it?”

Folding his arms, the Tellarite chief engineer gave the glacier a long look, then said, “About thirty seconds.”

Panic was not a normal reaction for Klisiewicz, but he knew right away what his friend was about to propose. “No! It’s too—”

“Get behind that bluff,” Mog said, then flipped open his communicator. “Mog to Endeavour. Arm phaser banks one and two and stand by to receive my firing solution.”

Khatami and the rest of the group were already jogging in comical snowshoed strides toward the bluff while Mog and Klisiewicz bickered at the base of the glacier. “Mog, don’t be crazy! You could damage it! What if it has defenses? What if—”

“Relax, Steve,” Mog said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“At least use the tricorder to calculate the—”

“Don’t need it.” He lifted his goggles and squinted at the glacier; then he lowered his breathing mask and grinned at Klisiewicz. “Take cover. I’ll be right behind you.”

Convinced that logic wasn’t going to win the day with the headstrong Tellarite, Klisiewicz scrambled across the snow plain toward the rocky bluff where the rest of the landing party had already ducked and covered. Watching his enormous snowshoes flopping clumsily with each step, he felt like a sprinting circus clown.

A few meters shy of the bluff, Mog ran past him. “Step it up, kid, or you’ll get a tan you’ll never forget!”

They leaped together over the bluff into the protective shadows on the far side. Half a breath later, the wind was outscreamed by the whine of a phaser strike as bright as the dawn.

Klisiewicz shut his eyes and covered his ears until it was over. It seemed to him like a lot longer than thirty seconds. Finally, the screeching of the phasers ceased, leaving only the banshee moan of a freezing gale.

Peeking over the edge of the bluff, Khatami muttered something in Farsi that the wind drowned out. In staggered motions, the landing party got to its feet and looked out toward where the glacier had been only seconds before.

Some of the ice that had been vaporized was flurrying back down around the landing party as snow. Most of it, however, had escaped into the atmosphere as heated gas and likely would not recondense for several hours. A relatively small amount had been left behind as liquid water that pooled in the fresh, three-hundred-meter-deep crater in the ground. The phasers had bored through the ice and scoured down to bare stone, revealing a massive rock basin.

Dominating that basin was a structure unlike anything else Klisiewicz had ever seen. Composed of a gleaming black substance that resembled both glass and stone, its overall affect was insectoid and sinister. The largest component was an open dome. It consisted of four massive legs, evenly spaced, broad and thick at their bases and tapering at their apexes, which were joined by a sturdy disk-shaped structure. The disk itself formed the apex of a truncated, conical claw that was suspended above its mirror image, which was recessed into a broad, sloping circular dais half the circumference of the open dome. Biomechanical tubing and components snaked like varicose veins across the structure’s every surface. It was several hundred meters in diameter, more than two hundred meters tall, and even from more than a hundred meters away it radiated a tangible aura of power.

Klisiewicz activated his tricorder and pointed it into the basin. “I’m getting bioreadings in the meltwater, Commander.”

“Probably just bacteria released by the thermal effects,” Khatami said.

“Maybe,” Klisiewicz said. Removing the sample rod from his tricorder, he kneeled down, tapped through the crust of ice that was swiftly knitting itself across a freshly melted puddle near the crater’s edge, and scooped up a few droplets of water. Inserting the rod back into the tricorder, he ran a detailed chemical analysis. The results confirmed his suspicions. He offered the tricorder to Khatami. “Recognize it?”

She didn’t have to answer. Her silence as she gave him back the tricorder was confirmation enough that she knew the Taurus Meta-Genome when she saw it. She flipped open her communicator. “Khatami to Endeavour.”

“Go ahead,” Captain Zhao said.

“Captain, we…Ensign Klisiewicz has made a remarkable discovery, sir. He’s found an alien structure in need of further analysis, and…life signs, sir.”

“What kind of life signs, Khatami?”

“Type-V,” she said, using the code for the meta-genome.