Mantegna asked Moll, “When will the next science team come through this section?”

They all knew that was the sort of question she could answer. Having once seen their assignment rotations, she would remember everyone’s schedule. Suddenly, Moll felt as if the science pod was too crowded for four people and her eidetic memory.

“Not until next quarter,” she said, tight‑lipped. “They just came through this section.”

Satisfied, Mantegna turned back to the helm to plot their course to the nearest relay buoy. He input the new coordinates to take the science pod in. “We’re going into the tertiary zone.”

“I’ll reroute the comm to another relay buoy and notify the station,” Moll agreed.

But Wukee sounded concerned as he asked, “Aren’t we supposed to stay out of there?”

Mantegna raised his brows. “Communication systems have priority! Remember the regulations manual they gave us? What if a science pod got caught in a burst current and couldn’t get a signal out because the relay was malfunctioning?”

Moll said reasonably, “Then they would divert their comm‑link to another relay, as I just did.”

Mantegna didn’t deign to reply. He was too pleased by the break in their routine. Truth to tell, they all were. Moll felt a rush of anticipation at doing something new–an eager dread of not knowing, wanting to know, but uncertain without information to fall back on.

So Moll was more wary than the others, and was the first to notice that something odd was happening. There were more asteroids in the tertiary phase, and they were moving differently. The science pod closed in, but Moll was still unable to see the buoy.

“Shields at maximum,” Mantegna announced.

The pod slowed, letting their forcefield nudge away the jostling asteroids. Moll instinctively hunched down as a mountain‑sized planetoid grazed overhead, shuddering as it impacted with another large asteroid, crushing a smaller boulder in between with a spray of energy sparks. Debris arched toward them, and the kinetic particles rocked the pod despite its stabalizers.

“Merdu!”Wu exclaimed, as they all shielded their eyes from the burst of light.

“Boost power to rear shields,” Mantegna called out, barely keeping his voice from cracking.

Even Campbell was sneaking wide‑eyed glances at the screen as he tried to adjust the deflectors to ward off asteroids.

“The buoy must have been destroyed!” Wukee gasped out. “We should go back–”

“No,” Moll denied. “I’ve still got the subspace signal on telemetry.”

Incredulously, Wu asked, “Howcould it survive–”

“There!” Moll exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “There’s a break in the asteroids. . . .”

The deflectors of their pod were buffeted as they finally broke into the calm sphere at the heart of the spiraling asteroids. The communications buoy was spinning on its axis in the very center, with what appeared to be an asteroid stuck to it. They were whipping around so fast that the two blurred together.

As they moved in closer, Moll warned, “Don’t get caught in the vortex.”

“We’re in the magnetic calm between the two solenoids,” Mantegna dismissed. “It looks like we’ve got a live one here.”

Campbell crouched over his console as if snatching the data off as it appeared. “Radius approximately ten meters.”

Wukee was shaking his head over the science console. “The spin is disrupting our sensors. I can’t get a lock on it.”

The other cadets kept glancing at Moll, even Mantegna, though he affected an air of calm. Self‑consciously, Moll said, “We should notify the station immediately.”

“We have another problem,” Campbell spoke up. “This entire vortex is moving through the tertiary phase, spiraling toward the inner phases.”

Moll read the vector analysis with a quick glance. “He’s right. And we’re picking up speed.”

Mantegna checked navigational sensors. “We’re in a primary jet stream.”

“I’ve done my sensor sweeps, let’s get out of here,” Wu suggested. Mantegna raised one brow at Wukee, a silent reminder that hewas the one in charge. His hands slowed as he deliberately reversed the coordinates to return them from where they came.

Moll accessed the sensor logs, scanning the data, while Mantegna announced, “One quarter impulse power.”

“Wait!” Moll called out, running a computer analysis to confirm her findings. “I’m reading a subspace beacon on the tag emitter. It’s very faint, but it’s there. Number 09Alpha‑99B4.”

Wukee whistled. “Why such a high number?”

Mantegna started to check the tag inventory, but Moll already knew what it was. The ultimate find.

“It’s a piece of planetary crust,” she told the others. “One of the original science teams found it in the inner band, but they had to jettison it when a charge arced between them. They tagged it and went back with a hyper forcefield, but it was gone.”

“A rogue asteroid,” Wu said admiringly.

“It’s more than that,” Moll insisted. “They found evidence of panspermia embedded in the matter. They’ve been looking for this asteroid for the past elevendecades.”

The other cadets were staring at her, unused to an outburst from her.

Moll took a deep breath. “Don’t you see how importantthis is? We can’t allow the asteroid to be sucked into the gravity well!”

“Thenwhat did you do?” the voice asked, seemingly echoing around the empty white room. Moll felt isolated, sitting on a chair in the very center, with no edges in the arched ceiling or curved walls to focus on.

She explained to the unseen voice, “Our team tried to stop the spin with a focused particle beam. We hoped that would break the magnetic field; then we could grapple the asteroid and take it back to the science station.”

There was a pause, and Moll Enor couldn’t help the jump in her heartbeat. She was in deep trouble, called to a hearing before the Symbiosis Commission. Her testimony would be used to help the Commission decide if she had deliberately endangered the Enor symbiont by her actions.

It was the highest crime under the Commission’s jurisdiction, and the most severe sentence for a joined Trill was to be ordered into protective custody. If the host didn’t comply with the ruling, they could even be put to death so the symbiont could be passed to a competent host. Much of the screening performed by the Symbiosis Comission was done to eliminate Initiates with psychological instabilities to prevent that from happening.

Moll knew she wasn’t at that level yet, but her unseen judges beyond the curved wall could order her to leave Starfleet and return permanently to the Trill homeworld. And there was nothing for her here, nothing but the pool. Though it was her preferred retreat, a lifetime of the same experiences, compounded by her eidetic memory, would surely lead to madness.

The soothing monotone voice asked, “What was the risk level of this procedure?”

“We had never done it before, so we knew it could fail,” Moll admitted.

“Did it fail?” the interrogator asked.

“Yes.” Moll cleared her throat as she remembered the magnetic arc that surged between the pod and the metal‑rich asteroid. An electronic fire had whipped through the Sagittarius,fusing power relays in every system of the science pod.

A holo‑image of Wu suddenly appeared near Moll. She knew her fellow cadet was at the Academy on Earth, in an empty room, his image relayed via comm‑link to Trill. He was smiling nervously, as the voice asked, “Starfleet Cadet Buck Wu, why did you agree to attempt the dangerous procedure that Cadet Moll Enor suggested?”

“Why?” Wu repeated, shifting his eyes upward, apparently addressing the ceiling for lack of a person to focus on. Moll could sympathize, facing the same thing herself. But the Investigators of the Symbiosis Commission believed a more honest testimony was given this way, uncolored by a witness’s reaction to the Commissioners.