Zimmerman turned back to them. “I think he looks nearly perfect.”

“So do I,” Starsa agreed. “Come on, Jayme, we have to get to Lieutenant Barclay’s seminar on warp dynamics.”

On their way to the warp‑core simulator, Jayme didn’t thank Starsa for helping her out. In fact, Jayme seemed preoccupied with something. Starsa didn’t mind–her friend sometimes got moody. That’s just the way she was.

Lieutenant Barclay was waiting for the twelve cadets to assemble who were currently assigned to Jupiter Research Station. For once, Starsa wasn’t the last one there, and she had a few moments to tease Barclay by asking questions about the simulation that he set up for them. “Is it a warp breach?” she pressed. “I hope not, because last week’s warp breach was a real loser, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Barclay smiled uncertainly and stammered, “N‑no. This week, it’s a . . . well, you’ll have to wait until we start the simulation, Cadet.”

“Come on,” Starsa urged, “give us a hint. Please?”

Barclay kept hedging, but Starsa was surprised that Jayme didn’t nudge her to stop, as she usually did. Starsa finally let up when Barclay began going through the duty roster for the simulation, and each cadet took charge of a station. Starsa was on her way to the warp‑nacelle monitor when she noticed Jayme, paused next to Lieutenant Barclay, the last cadet to receive her assignment.

“Lieutenant,” Jayme said. “I wondered if I could ask you a personal question.”

Barclay shifted his eyes, catching sight of Starsa. She pretended to be busy with the monitor, but she was all ears when he replied, “A personal question? I don’t know if that’s quite . . . I’m not sure . . .”

“I was just wondering why you chose to go into engineering.”

Barclay really looked nervous, as if he wished he had been firm and told her to report to her duty station. But they all got away with murder with Barclay. Starsa liked him better than any of their other field professors.

“Why d‑d‑do,” he started, swallowing to get the word out, “do you ask?”

“I’m just curious,” Jayme said quickly. “You seem to enjoy it so much, I wondered when you first knew engineering was for you.”

“I’ve always liked working with machines,” Barclay admitted, smiling shyly. “I feel more comfortable with them, I guess.”

Jayme was nodding seriously, as if he had given her something to think about. Starsa wasn’t sure what that was, but one thing for sure, her old quadmate was certainly acting strange. Then Starsa forgot all about it as the fascinating simulation began. She had just been teasing Barclay when she said the warp core breach had been boring. He came up with the trickiest programs that were incredibly fun to figure out.

The next day, Starsa asked Jayme to stop by her quarters before dinner to see something special she’d been working on.

“There!” Starsa dramatically gestured to the device on her desk. “It’s an anti‑aging device.”

“Starsa . . .” Jayme groaned. “Why are you messing around with mechanical gerontominy? You know all the advances in the past two centuries have been biochemical, not electromagnetic. It’s like going back to astrology to understand the stars.”

“Humph!” Starsa snorted, turning to beam with pride on her gerontometer, giving it reassuring pats. “At one time people thought the transporter was a looney idea.”

“That’s true, in a twisted sort of way.” Jayme came closer. “Why are you building it?”

“Why not?” she replied. “I got the idea from something Zimmerman said a few weeks ago, so I just started.”

“Yea,” Jayme agreed wryly, “It’s finishinga project you have trouble with.”

With a pout that acknowledged the hit, Starsa raised her chin. “Where’s the fun in engineering if you don’t build things?”

Jayme didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t want to admit that she’d been thinking the same thing for weeks–where’s the fun in engineering? At night, the mess halls were filled with talk of the new warp designs being developed at Utopia Planitia, so that starships could exceed warp five again. But Jayme couldn’t see the thrill in the need to eliminate subspace instabilities. The thought of twiddling away on a gerontometer or anything like it made her want to yawn.

In some strange way, Starsa reminded Jayme of her mother. Commander Miranda always had a project or three underway in her quarters. Her great‑aunt Marley Miranda’s home in France also looked like an engineering lab. Growing up, Jayme had a permanent image of her great‑uncle gamely smiling from behind piles of coupling rings and conduit bundles, trying to watch the news on a padd in one vacant corner of the room.

Starsa started to ask, “What’s wrong–”

Suddenly the floor lurched under them. Even unbalanced, Starsa dove for her gerontometer and caught it before it could hit the ground.

“What was that?” Jayme asked, afraid of what it mightbe.

Starsa settled her gerontometer back on the desk. “It felt like the graviton array went out of synch for a microsecond.”

“Maybe it’s another tremor,” Jayme suggested, holding her breath.

Another jolt shook the floor. Starsa was ready that time, and she cushioned her precious device safely on the bed. “That’s no tremor. That’s a system failure–”

The yellow alert began to flash, and the computer announced, “Yellow alert! Emergency personnel to their stations.”

Starsa made sure her gerontometer wouldn’t be knocked off the bed. “I’m supposed to go to the environmental support substation this week. I think . . . what about you?”

Jayme was already heading out the door. “I’ve got to get down to the graviton conduit chamber.”

“See you later,” Starsa called merrily. Jayme wondered how someone could be that oblivious about people and still be such a great mechanical genius. Then she remembered Barclay, who was not very personable himself, but she sincerely hoped he was working on whatever was going wrong down there.

The jolting continued to rock the decks of Jupiter Research Station as Jayme rapidly made her way down to the graviton chamber. Personnel were rushing to their alert stations, purposefully crossing paths. Strictly speaking, Jayme wasn’t supposed to be belowdecks, but she grabbed a kit from the rack and followed a work crew down the access ladder, crossing her fingers that they wouldn’t notice an extra person.

“This valve hasn’t been vented in three days!” Ensign Dshed exclaimed, leaning over to check the gauge.

“This one hasn’t either,” a technician further down the conduit confirmed.

“The graviton distortion waves are phasing into synch,” Barclay informed them, concentrating on his tricorder. “We better get these valves vented fast!”

Jayme grabbed a siphon and ran to check the next valve. It wasn’t vented either. In all, more than half a dozen valves in the section hadn’t been vented. They were throwing off the synch of the entire array. She hung onto the conduit walkway as the station shuddered, almost knocking her from her perch to the floor a few feet below. She hoped they could get the valves vented before a synchopathic wave ripped the station off the moon.

The next graviton slip was so strong the walkway seemed to fall out from under her. “Ohh!” she exclaimed, landing hard on the conduit walk.

One of the other technicians grabbed her arm, and helped her hang on. He looked at her. “What are you doing down here, Cadet?”

Her stomach leaped into her throat, threatening to strangle her. Her mouth opened wordlessly as the full import of her mistake hit her.

“Never mind,” the technician whispered, glancing over his shoulder. “I always wanted to be in on the action, too, when I was a cadet. But you better get out of here before the lieutenant notices.”

Jayme nodded, her eyes wide, as she backed away. Then she turned and ran down the conduit, barely grabbing hold of the ladder as another graviton slippage hit the station. For a moment she hung there, staring back at the others, attempting to fix the damage she had done to the conduits, while she had to climb back up where she belonged, unable to help.