Текст книги "The Best and the Brightest"

Автор книги: Susan Wright

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Bobbie Ray rolled away, pulling a pillow over his face. “Come on, you’ve seen the holos like everyone else.”

“That’s not the same as being there.” Moll Enor crossed her arms, realizing it was impossible to make the spoiled Rex understand what a unique opportunity he had. By next month, Bobbie Ray and his parents would be visiting the Bajoran sector, where a stable wormhole had recently been discovered. Moll was absolutely certain that the view from the newly designated Starbase, DS9–watching the wormhole open to another part of the galaxy, millions of light‑years crossed in an instant–would be vastly different than merely looking at a holo‑image.

“You’re so lucky your parents are taking you,” Jayme told him enviously. “The Endeavorwill be leaving the Cardassian border and probably won’t get anywhere close to the Bajoran sector this summer. But my aunt is hoping we do get into Klingon territory while I’m visiting.”

“I wanted to go with friends,” Bobbie Ray said from under the protective shadow of the pillow. “But Mother keeps talking about ‘losing me’ and how we have to spend more time together.”

“I’ll take your place,” Nev Reoh offered. But his tentative joke had too much yearning in it to amuse anyone.

Moll bit her lip, ducking her head. It was Reoh who should go to Bajor now that the Cardassian occupation had ended–not Bobbie Ray but Reoh, the former Vedek who had never set foot on his own homeworld. From his tone, she could tell he hadn’t been able to arrange passage during the upcoming summer break. Yet he had been all smiles lately, too pleased with the liberation of his people from the Cardassian occupation to talk about his own thwarted desire. Moll liked him even better for that.

Titus stood up, his hands on his hips. “Are we here to finish our Quad project or gossip about our summer vacations?”

“We’ve only got to test it again and we’re through,” Moll Enor reminded him.

“Then we’re through for the year!” Starsa exclaimed, clapping her hands. “No more classes for two months!”

“Then let’s do it,” Jayme agreed, rocking forward on her knees to examine their proton chain‑maker one last time. “Where’s the sample?”

Even Bobbie Ray rolled over and watched their preparations. A limen stalk was placed in the receptacle where the target laser fell on a crosshair.

Moll moved closer to watch Jayme and Starsa, their resident engineers, work over the chain‑maker. Moll’s contribution had been the data on proton structure and characteristics. One of her specialties was astrophysics, and she had suggested using protons, the chief constituent of primary cosmic rays. Titus and Jayme had wanted to use an antiproton chain, figuring it would be more dramatic, but the others voted down the idea because of the large containment field that would be necessary to hold the chain‑maker and its fuel.

“Kind of simple, if you ask me,” Jayme grumbled, not for the first time.

“It’s brilliant!” Starsa contradicted, laughing. “It’s a variation on an old idea. Instead of a molecular beam, we’re narrowing the focus to protons. That means it can be used for ultrafine incisions.”

Titus held up another limen stalk, jabbing it at his neck as if the errant vegetable was attacking him. “The dreaded limen stalk! That’ll teach ‘em!”

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.

Starsa slipped out of the room with Jayme right behind her. She turned to say, “Better clean up in here in case they come in.”

Titus gave her an affirmative signal and Jayme left, thinking everything was at least partially under control. But the medical team took an unusually long time examining the burns, which both girls admitted came from Starsa’s contact with a malfunctioning proton device. They were worried about the traces of radiation they found in her skin caused by the beta decay. They had to explain that the breakdown was supposed to take place inside the lead‑chamber, during the spontaneous transformation of the neutrons in the nucleus of the sulfur atom that would release the protons. Jayme thought it was fascinating the way the medics traced the exact amplitude of the beta decay, comparing the magnetic polarization of the nucleus against the spin vector of the electrons.

The medics checked Jayme, too, and when there were no traces of beta decay in her skin cells, they asked to see the accident site. Jayme was impressed by their through investigation of the room. But the others had already removed the slagged table, and the blackened wall was covered by a colorful bedspread that usually adorned Bobbie Ray’s bed. Jayme wondered why she hadn’t thought of putting up some sort of decoration in this half of the room. Maybe then she wouldn’t have been haunted for so many months by the departure of Elma. That’s why she had offered the space for their Quad project, to give the others a good reason to come over and keep her company.

“You’re clean,” the medic finally told Titus. To Jayme, she said, “Good work on that cut. Nice edges for an amateur.” As she murmured her surprised thanks, the medic added, “You know we have to report this.”

Bobbie Ray flung himself down on the bed again. “Report everything! It doesn’t matter. The review board will know soon enough.”

“Take that up with the Superintendent,” the medic said with a shrug. She gave Starsa a reassuring pat. “Just get some rest and you’ll feel better. You’re already 80 percent acclimated, so next year should be much easier on you.”

“Thanks,” Starsa said as the medic left. “Great, I’ll be raring to go and we’ll all be stuck here again. We’ll never get off‑world assignments if we have to stay first‑year cadets. It’s humiliating!”

Jayme glanced around. “Where’s Moll? With T’Rees?”

Rom shrugged. “She cleaned up the debris and packed a few pieces in that bag of hers. Then she left.”

“You let her go?” At Titus and Bobbie Ray’s nod, Jayme exploded, “How could you? She got hit on the head! Something could be wrong with her.”

“She’s fine!” Bobbie Ray said defensively. “She was poking around in that mess, muttering about acid catalysts and oxidation. I figured it was some kind of astrophysics thing.”

“Do you see any stars in here?” Jayme demanded. “She could have been delusional. And none of you even noticed.”

“Hey, she can take care of herself,” Titus protested. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen anyonetake better care of themselves. We better start worrying about what we’re going to show that review board tomorrow.”

“Today,” Starsa corrected, chewing on her thumbnail.

Titus glanced at the chrono. “Great, today. The day we all get put back a year.”

Jayme was shifting back and forth uneasily. “I think we should look for Moll Enor. Something could be wrong with her. It doesn’t sound like she was thinking rationally.”

“Maybe you should start looking for an explanation for all this,” Bobbie Ray pointed out. “It was your idea.”

“Myidea?” Jayme repeated incredulously. “I wanted to use an antiproton chain. Didn’t I, Titus?”

“We both did.”

Starsa rubbed her eyes sleepily. “I thought using a proton chain would be safer. I guess I was wrong.”

No one could chastise Starsa when she looked so strung‑out. Reoh was quick to assure her, “We all worked on the project. Who knows why it failed? You can’t blame yourself.”

Starsa still looked worried, an unusual sight. “Maybe we could get B’Elanna to look at it. She’s just down two floors.”

“You mean Torres?”Bobbie Ray asked incredulously. “Great! Do you want to make things worse?”

“Torres is a great engineer,” Starsa insisted. “Better than any of us.”

Jayme silently agreed, having watched, mouth hanging open along with the rest of the first‑year engineering students, as Torres argued with Professor Chapman over material stress levels and Starfleet safety protocols.

“It’s no use, even Torres couldn’t fix this,” Jayme told Starsa. “You should go to bed before you fall down.” Jayme helped her quadmate back to her room and into bed, leaving Titus and Bobbie Ray to mull over the mess they were in, with Nev Reoh hovering in the background offering useless suggestions with infinite hope, as always.

Jayme didn’t go back to her room after Starsa had lain down. First she made sure T’Rees would keep one eye on his roommate, then she went down to the transporter room to check the logs. There was no record in the short‑term memory of Moll Enor beaming out of the Quad tower. She checked the gardens around the Quad, asking other cadets if they had seen Moll, until she realized that she had been busy with Starsa and the medics for over an hour during the beta treatment. She rushed back to the transporter and found a record of Moll’s transport in the long‑term log. The Trill had gone to the Academy Database.

When Jayme reached the Database, the cadet staffing the entrance confirmed that Moll Enor had arrived a couple of hours ago, acting focused and preoccupied, as usual. Jayme felt a little better, but she searched through the mostly empty rooms of the Database, too worried to give up and go back to the Quad, but not so upset that she wanted to make the situation worse by notifying security.

Jayme placed a message on the network, but Moll didn’t respond. She checked the transporter logs of the Academy Database when she was certain Moll was no longer there, but there was no record of the Trill beaming out. She wandered along the cobblestone walkways between the Quads for a while longer before she finally gave up.

As she slipped back into their Quad, trying not to wake everyone, Titus, Bobbie Ray, and Nev Reoh were waiting in her room.

“Well?” Nev Reoh asked eagerly. “What did you find out?”

“I couldn’t find her,” Jayme admitted. “She went to the Database and then disappeared.”

“What?” Bobbie Ray exclaimed. “You’ve been looking for Moll all this time? What about our Quad project?”

“What about it?” Jayme countered. “It blew up.”

“But why?”Titus insisted, stepping closer. “We have to tell them something–”

“How am I supposed to know why it blew up? That would take weeks of reductive analysis!”

Bobbie Ray shrugged helplessly, turning away. “Well, I guess that’s it. Might as well get a few hours rest before the review board.”

“You’re going to sleep again?” Titus demanded.

“I’ll stay up,” Nev Reoh offered.

“For what?” Jayme asked. “There’s nothing we can do now. Even if I did figure out what went wrong–that the velociter malfunctioned or the gas streams were mixed at too high a temperature–what does that give us? Nothing! We’ll have to take the bits and pieces in to show the review board that we tried. Then our careers are in their hands.”

When Titus rolled out of bed the next morning, having never really gone to sleep, Bobbie Ray was briskly snoring on the other side of the room. That guy could fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

“Get up!” Titus ordered, roughly prodding the large mound beneath the blankets. “Doesn’t anything ever get to you?”

“You do,” Bobbie Ray assured him, raising his head and peering through sleep‑heavy eyes. “I’m rooming with Starsa or Jayme next year.”

“How can you lie there and act so blasй about being left back?”

Bobbie Ray sat up and stretched, seeming to isolate every muscle in his body through the most incredible contortions Titus had ever seen. Of course, after eight months of watching the Rex do exactly the same maneuvers, he could have mimicked every one. That is, if he cared to look like that.

Finally Bobbie Ray grinned down at him, still blinking sleepily. “It’s only a year. I bet I ace mechanical engineering next time around.”

Titus just stared at him. “How stupid of me. What a fantastic reason for the six of us to repeat an entireyear–so you can get a better grade. I feel so much better, now.”

Titus left his roomie laughing behind him, but it wasn’t much better when he ran into T’Rees in the hall.

“We have twenty‑four minutes before we must report to the review board,” the Vulcan told him. “We should not compound matters by being late.”

“Hey, you’re talking to the wrong guy,” Titus defended himself. “I’m here, I’m ready to face the plunge.”

T’Rees cocked one brow. “What ‘plunge’ are you referring to?”

“Never mind,” Titus told him. “I’ll get the others.”

When he went into Jayme’s room, she was stuffing the pieces of their proton chain‑maker into a carryall. “This looks carbonized,” she told him, holding up one piece of metal with a blackened edge.

“Is that all you discovered?” Titus asked.

Jayme shrugged. “If I had a week and a lab, we could probably put some of the pieces together and figure out what went wrong. Do you want to tell that to the review board? That we need another week?”

Titus grimaced as he shook his head. “Very poor planning. But we put it through all those tests a couple of weeks ago, and nothing happened then.”

“Maybe something went wrong when we were working the bugs out, those last calibrations of the velociter, maybe. Or one of the structural components failed.” At Titus’s glare, she added, “It happens! It happens all the time. That’s what engineers are for–fixing malfunctions.”

“Well, it’s time to face the review board,” Titus told her, realizing that he had to ease off. The others didn’t know how difficult it was for his family to have him away from Antaranan. Or how important it was that he succeeded, so he could send back the supplies and equipment they needed to bring life to the barren soil of the colony.

Everyone was in the hall except for Moll Enor. Jayme was instantly panicked. “Where is she? Did she come back last night? We have to call the medics–”

“Calm down,” Titus told her, grabbing hold of Nev Reoh’s wrist to show everyone that he held a disc in his hand.

“Moll sent me a message,” Reoh told them, finally able to speak when the rest of them shut up. “She’ll meet us at the review board.”

“Then shall we proceed?” T’Rees suggested, ignoring Jayme’s relief.

“Proceed away,” Titus told him with a sigh. At least T’Rees wouldn’t be held back a year along with them. Titus had been angry after their spelunking disaster that Moll, Reoh, and Starsa had gotten a Quad reprimand when all they had done was save Bobbie Ray and Jayme. T’Rees hadn’t done a thing andhe didn’t get punished.

Titus had petitioned Admiral Brand to review the matter, thinking it wasn’t fair, but she had denied his request to remove the Quad reprimand from the academic records of Moll Enor, Nev Reoh, and Starsa Taran. Not for the first time, Titus was grateful T’Rees hadn’t been involved. Even having to repeat the year wouldn’t be so bad without that Vulcan in their Quad.

Moll was starting to think her quadmates wouldn’t arrive by the time the review board convened. But they tramped in together at the last minute, looking as glum as any set of cadets she’d ever seen.

Only Jayme seemed happy to see her, anxiously asking, “Are you all right? Where were you last night? I looked all over the Database.”

“Oh,” Moll said softly, wanting to hit herself when she realized what she had done. She had run off alone again instead of working with the group like they were supposed to. No wonder they were all looking at her like she was a freak.

Before Moll could tell them what she had discovered, Admiral Leyton’s aid was standing at the door of the conference room. “Quad #64C. Are you ready to present your project?”

“Yes, sir,” T’Rees said for them.

They filed in and stood at attention in front of the review board: Superintendent Brand, Admiral Leyton, and Professor Chapman, since they had submitted their preliminary designs and requested an engineering specialist on their board.

“Quad #64C, at ease.” There was a hint of warm humor in Brand’s voice. “How nice to see you all together under more auspicious circumstances.”

The other cadets shuffled and murmured, while Jayme held up the carryall in her hand. “Umm . . . we had a little trouble with our Quad project–”

T’Rees interrupted, acting as their spokesman as they had agreed, “Quad #64C attempted to create a proton chain‑maker. I believe you have the specs we submitted.”

“We have gone over your proposal,” Admiral Brand agreed. “An intriguing idea.”

Jayme shook the bag, letting the sound of broken components tinkle out. Chapman and Leyton began to look concerned.

Moll realized she would have to present her material first in order to get the most impact out of it. The others could add whatever they had discovered afterward. It wasn’t the right way to do it, but her mistaken approach made it necessary.

“That is the waste material,” Moll said, pointing toward Jayme, who obligingly held the bulging bag a little higher. “Theseare the components that tell us what happened.”

Moll set the cracked spin velociter and part of the lead‑chamber with the gas indicators down on the table in front of the review board.

“You have the proposal containing the original intent of our Quad project,” Moll reminded the review board. “However, we discovered a new process, whereby a controlled, deflagrating explosion can be chemically created using a pure proton chain.”

Bobbie Ray’s mouth was hanging open, a sure sign he knew nothing whatsoever about their Quad project. But then again, last year, one of Moll’s quadmates had questioned their project as if he was part of the review board–and they had still managed to pass.

Professor Chapman had his chin cupped in his hand, and Moll wasn’t familiar enough with him to know if that was a good sign or bad. But Brand was looking interested.

“Usually molecular chains are used in detection chambers,” Moll explained, “for studying the deflection and dispersal properties of various molecules. With our proton chain, we were able to do the same thing on a subatomic level.”

“But what about the uncertainty principle–” Starsa started to say, but was nudged into silence on both sides by Titus and Jayme.

Professor Chapman glanced at Starsa. “I agree with Cadet Starsa Taran–what about the uncertainty principle? It is impossible to specify or determine simultaneously both the position and momentum of a particle.”

“That’s nullified by the deflagration, the explosion, which freezes a microsecond in the sample mass.” Moll gestured to the pieces in front of them. “Unfortunately, we weren’t expecting to create the potassium nitrate that caused the explosion, but four things came together in our experiment: the potassium hydroxide in the base gas with protons effused from sulfur atoms, along with the nitric acid in the lemin stalk that was catalyzed by the carbon of the cut edge.”

In the pause, Nev Reoh added helpfully, “There are unusually high levels of nitrogen in lemin stalks.”

Jayme started rummaging in the bag. “I have a piece of the carbonized metal where the proton‑chain made contact. If you want to see it.”

Professor Chapman held out his hand. “Yes, please.”

Moll Enor waited until Jayme had handed over the bit of metal. “If the same combination could be used in strictly controlled levels of chemicals under a stasis field, then a detection chamber could be created that offers a new window into the nature of subatomic particles.”

The members of the review board were nodding, fairly impressed. Even Professor Chapman spoke as if to a colleague. “Brendenson has been working on something similar on Maxum V, but it’s a highly theoretical and innovative approach.”

“It’s way out of our field,” Moll Enor agreed. “We discovered this purely by accident. And, now, if my quadmates would like to add anything.”

As a group, the other cadets pulled back slightly, shaking their heads, trying to deflect the attention of the review board.

T’Rees must have realized the flustered picture they made, because he smoothly interjected, “Thank you, Cadet Enor, I believe you have adequately summed up our project.”

“That was beautiful,” Jayme agreed fervently.

“I must agree,” Brand said, smiling as she stood up and came around the review table. “I think there’s a certain irony in the fact that your Quad project failed, and yet you generated useful and insightful information from that failure.”

“Yes,” Professor Chapman agreed. “I recommend you send your research to Maxum V. It’s a fine thing for cadets at the Academy to be able to contribute to cutting‑edge science.”

Brand shook Moll Enor’s hand, since she was the closest. “I’m glad to see your Quad has learned to triumph in the face of adversity. Your Quad project has passed.”

“Congratulations,” Admiral Leyton said, and for the first time there was a slight easing of his normally stern expression. “May your next year at Starfleet Academy be as successful.”

Moll Enor smiled along with the rest, shaking hands next with the Admiral, then the professor. But she couldn’t help hoping that next year she would do better than she had this year.

The next day, Jayme still hadn’t gotten over the miracle Moll Enor had accomplished with a tricorder and one night’s work. The rest of the Quad had jumped on Moll the moment they were outside, with everyone asking questions at once. Moll had explained that her eidetic memory had allowed her to instantly make associations and connections across the engineering disciplines. Jayme confirmed that it would have taken her a week of computer analysis to reach the same facts, and even then, she might not have seen the new use for the proton‑chain that Moll had discovered.

It was beyond genius, and Jayme even defended Moll when she meekly agreed with T’Rees’s chastisement of her for not including the rest of the Quad in the analysis. Jayme would have loved being involved in the research, but she knew they would have slowed Moll down by questioning her and following false leads.

Jayme kept sighing with envy at Moll’s accomplishment–and the Trill wasn’t even interested in engineering!–while she packed her transport containers for the break. She couldn’t decide what should stay in storage over the break and what she should take with her. Since it was her vacation, she included all of her body paints and every one of her tights, figuring she might find use for everything while she was observing the Starfleet crew of the Endeavor.

Starsa suddenly called through the halls, “Everyone, you have to see this!” She poked her head around Jayme’s door. “Have you seen it yet? The class standings were released.”

Jayme took the padd from Starsa and quickly ran through the first class as Starsa chattered, “We’re all in the top half. I barely made it! But it’s the second‑year cadets you have to see.”

Jayme scrolled past the names until Starsa impatiently pressed the key that took them to the top. “There,” she said, as if it were her own name listed at the head of the sophomore class. “Moll Enor is first!”