Everyone laughed, but Nev Reoh tentatively said, “If we can indicate that genes can be cut in living tissue without damage, that would be a genuine contribution.”

Titus patted him on the back. “Sure, you just keep thinking that. All I want to do is ace our Quad project and report to the moonbase for shuttle‑supply duty.”

The cadets went back to talking about their plans for summer vacation as Jayme ran through the preliminary sequence, heating the gas and mixing the vapors. Even T’Rees confided that he planned to go back home to Vulcan before beginning his last year at the Academy.

No one had asked Moll what she was doing, and naturally, she volunteered nothing. It was a little‑known fact of Trill physiology that some needed to return to the pool periodically after being joined with a symbiont. The first two years of a host’s joined life was usually spent in or near the Institute, adjusting to the memories and new sensations. Since Moll was a first host, she didn’t have the memories–except of the pool and some sort of common mental bond that all the symbionts shared before joining. But she did have the strange sensations, feeling different than she used to be, yet not anything in particular.

Maybe she didn’t needto go back to the pool, but in a very real way, it was the most familiar thing she had left. More familiar than her parents and her family, left so long ago and not by her choosing.

Suddenly Moll Enor realized Jayme was looking right at her, that strange fascination in her eyes. She was pointing to the lever that would release the proton beam. “Do you want to open it?” It was your idea to use protons.”

The others nodded, mostly not caring one way or the other. Moll stiffly went over to the chain‑maker, shying away from the questioning smile in Jayme’s eyes, wondering as always why the younger woman always seemed to be watching her. Not for the first time, Moll thought that maybe she should confess she wasn’t as interesting as Jayme obviously thought. That contrary to the popular stories about Trill, there was no one inside her body except for her. No extra lives, no superior wisdom, no exciting stories to tell. But now it would only be another few days and their Quad would scatter to the four corners of the galaxy, to return to Starfleet next year to a new Quad and new roommates.

“It’s been a memorable year,” Moll Enor told them all as she flipped the lever.

Since she was closest, she was the first to see the fine trail of smoke that rose at the contact of the beam with the limen stalk. She was turning in question to Jayme when the beam exploded.

Jayme hit the floor next to the bed, flung there by the percussion wave. Moll Enor landed next to her, but she didn’t open her eyes. At first, all Jayme could see was the smoke and destruction in the room. Starsa’s gasps sounded painful, and Titus was swearing in Antaranan, a pungent language for a frontier colony.

“Moll,” Jayme called softly, coughing, then tried again. Before she could get really worried, Moll opened her eyes and blinked up in confusion. “Are you okay?”

“I bumped my head, I think,” she said, sitting up and avoiding Jayme’s supporting hand.

Vaguely disappointed, Jayme went to help the others. Starsa’s arm and back had been burned right through the uniform. Echoing down the hall, from somewhere in her room, her medical monitor began to beep.

Jayme ran for her biogenerator in the drawer next to her bed. T’Rees had more experience with Starsa’s various injuries, so Jayme gave him the generator and went to Titus, who was still sitting on the floor, looking dazed.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She knelt down to examine the long cut on his cheek caused by some of the flying wreckage. “Protons are one of the most stable subatomic particles you can work with. Maybe the velocity selector was creating two discrete beams and they got crossed somehow.”

Starsa was pale beneath T’Rees’s arm. “That would have blown up the Quad.”

Bobbie Ray was sitting bolt upright, staring at the blackened wall and the melted table where the chain‑maker had once sat. “It didblow up the Quad!”

“I meant the entire building,” Starsa retorted. “That was nothing as far as proton explosions go.”

“Oh, really?”Bobbie Ray asked. “Why didn’t you mention this little fact about proton explosions beforewe started this project? We should have stuck with my idea.”

“Your idea was illogical,” T’Rees told Bobbie Ray. “We were required to complete a Quad project, not a sports competition.”

“Now we don’t havea Quad project,” Titus reminded everyone. “Now we are in very deep trouble.”

Nev Reoh ran into Jayme’s room, having fetched another biogenerator. She snatched it from his hand.

“Hold still,” Jayme ordered Titus, making him turn back to her so she could aim the biogenerator at the cut. “You’re lucky it didn’t get your eye.”

“Yeah, sure,” Titus agreed sourly. “Then we’d be in sick bay right now, reporting the failure of our Quad project instead of waiting another twelve hours for the review board to convene.”

“What happens if we don’t hand a project in tomorrow?” Starsa asked through gritted teeth.

Jayme finished swiping the biogenerator over Titus’s cheek and jaw, taking away the last reddening. “Then we get a Quad reprimand.”

“But if we get another reprimand–” Starsa started.

“We have to repeat the year!” Titus finished for her.

Moll pushed herself up unsteadily, making her way to the remains of the chain‑maker. Nev Reoh joined her, staring down anxiously. “Maybe there’s some way we can salvage it,” the Bajoran suggested.

“Salvage?!” Bobbie Ray exclaimed, gesturing to the remains. “There’s nothing left of it! Eight months work down the drain.”

Moll took Jayme’s tricorder, silently gesturing for Jayme’s permission. She nodded as Moll began a systematic sweep of the destroyed device. Meanwhile, Jayme told Starsa, “Stop squirming, you’re making T’Rees miss huge spots.”

She turned her biogenerator on Starsa, relieving T’Rees who stood and surveyed the ruin with an almost satisfied expression. “I would like to remind everyone that I am on record as objecting to this choice of Quad project.”

Titus turned on T’Rees. “You’re just calm because you know you won’t have to repeat this year like the rest of us.”

Stiffly, T’Rees replied, “I am calm because I am a Vulcan.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like to see how a Vulcan takes it when an entire year’s work gets blown out the window!”

“There is no need to raise your voice,” T’Rees said mildly.

“That’s easy for you to say!” Titus yelled.

Quietly, Moll turned to Jayme. “I’m reading minute traces of copper ions in the lead chamber. Are they supposed to be there?”

Jayme went to look at the tricorder. “It could be from the barrel of the slot. I think it had some copper in the superstructure.” Moll was doing a subatomic survey of the chain‑maker. “Why bother?” she asked. “It didn’t work.”

“Now what are we going to do?” Bobbie Ray wailed. “I don’t want to take quantum physics again!”

T’Rees placed his biogenerator back in the pouch. “We report the failure of our project to the review board.”

“No, we’ve got to come up with something else,” Starsa insisted.

“Something we can do in one night that will look like it took the entire year to make?” Titus asked. “I don’t think so.”

The sounds coming up the lift tube were familiar to the Quad. “Hsst!”Bobbie Ray called out, his sensitive hearing the first to pick up on their visitors. “It’s the medical team.”

“Quick,” Titus ordered Starsa. “Get back to your room. You go with her, T’Rees. Tell them you just had a little accident–nothing important.”

T’Rees stayed right where he was. “I am incapable of lying.”

“Jayme, you go then,” Titus said in exasperation.