“Will he be okay?” Asadi asked, wringing her hijab in her hands. Denys raised a scaly eyebrow but said nothing, instead picking up a needle attached to a thin tube. The other end of the tube, Asadi noticed, was sitting in an ordinary glass of water.

“Depends on your definition,” Denys said, holding the syringe in one hand. With the other, he felt both sides of Casillo’s chest. After a few seconds of this, he nodded and cut a hole in the right side of Casillo’s jacket, exposing some pale skin beneath.

“The captain has a collapsed lung,” Denys explained. “That, I can treat.”

The reptilian doctor took a deep breath, then inserted the needle into the exposed skin, right between the ribs. Almost immediately Asadi heard a hissing sound and turned to the glass of water. Air escaping from the tube made the water around it bubble enough to appear carbonated, standing out amidst the motionless, sterile atmosphere of the sickbay.

“The problem is how the lung collapsed in the first place,” Denys continued, his lips curling into a slight snarl as he watched the bubbles. “I gave his entire respiratory system a complete physical less than an hour ago, and everything seemed fine. The lowered lung capacity may have been a warning sign, but even so it accelerated much faster than it should have.”

“Stop blaming yourself,” Asadi said, resting a reassuring hand on Denys’s shoulder. “Admit it, that’s not enough to point to a collapsed lung. Besides,” she added as an afterthought. “That radiation spike may have had something to do with it.”

Denys’s coal-black eyes held Asadi’s gaze until she withdrew her hand.

“I am the ship’s doctor,” he stated. “My job is both to treat people when they are injured or sick, and to prevent them from becoming injured or sick. In the second respect, I have failed. Whatever the radiation was, it seems to have accelerated a pre-existing condition of his. And since the analysis of those dead cells I collected earlier reveal nothing useful, I may fail in the first respect, too. ”

Asadi pressed her lips together as she tried to think of what to say. After a few moments of tense silence, Denys shrugged again and turned away from the Commander, checking on a few instruments and organizing his sample tray.

“He is stable,” Denys assured her from over his shoulder. “He won’t need surgery, and shouldn’t be out of action for more than two days, one if he wants to walk around with the chest tube. In the meantime, it’s up to you whether the mission to the surface continues as planned.”

“I’m sorry?” Asadi said, tilting her head in surprise. Denys mirrored her movement, regarding her with his unblinking eyes until Asadi glanced away. The sarvolyan had to be aware of his affect on humans, especially after serving on the Galaxie for almost two years. Asadi secretly believed that the saurian doctor enjoyed staring people down.

“You’re in command for the time being,” Denys explained, his steady gaze boring a hole in Asadi’s skull. “It’s your decision.”

“Then we’re doing it,” Asadi replied without hesitation. The sarvolyan started with surprise at her quick decision, so she hastened to explain.

“How’d he feel if the mission got delayed on his account?” she asked rhetorically, already turning away. “He’d hate it, of course. Besides, we may have difficulty hiding from that sphere for much longer.”

“Who’s commanding the away team?” Denys asked. “You, or Polk?”

“Me of course,” she replied instinctively.

“Then you’re leaving Polk in command of the ship,” he stated, giving a small shrug.

Denys could be very annoying, Asadi realized. Especially when he was right. She dialed her communicator for Polk’s personal comm. The bridge channel was public, available to enlisted and senior officers alike. Zach would know who to tell and what to do with the information.

“Polk here,” the helmsman said. “How is he?”

“He’s recovering,” Asadi said, her voice flat and emotionless.

“That bad?” Polk replied, his concern evident.

“Yes,” Asadi replied. “I’m leading the away team as planned. You’ll be in command of the ship until I get back. Probably an initial survey, nothing more.”

“Copy that,” Polk said, clicking the comm off a moment later. Asadi licked her lips, then waved goodbye to the captain before leaving sickbay. It didn’t take long to assemble an away team; since she usually led them anyway, she already had a premade list of officers and pilots. The real problem, she realized, would be leaving Polk in command of the ship. Should the sphere come back…

As she walked to the hangar, she shook her head. No, she was making the right decision. Certainly, her desire to explore the new planet factored into it, but she had far more experience leading away missions than the other crewmen. This was the correct choice.

“All systems nominal,” Asadi said a few minutes later, checking over the instrument panel in the landing craft LASV-1. Unlike the Galaxie’s streamlined, almost cylindrical body, the landers were unwieldy octagonal hulks of steel, military-grade tinfoil, and a mess of wiring. Nonetheless, they were durable enough and highly versatile.

“Very well Commander,” Polk said. A final stab of doubt went through her mind, which she angrily suppressed. Right or wrong, it was far too late now to make a switch.

“Good luck out there,” he finished. Asadi clicked off the comm, then fastened her seatbelt and gestured for the rest of the crew to do the same. They were a mix of security officers and scientists from pretty much every field. Somehow, all ten of them had managed to cram into the confines of the lander.

“Prepare for separation,” Asadi said, raising her voice so the people in the crew compartment could hear her. Then, once the air was pumped out of the shuttlebay, the doors slid open, letting the lander drift out into the vast emptiness of space. From the cockpit window, Asadi watched as space seemed to grip the lander like a giant black glove, squeezing the light out until it scattered into the glimmering stars.

“Everything’s looking good,” her copilot said. The lieutenant looked about thirty, with a close-cropped beard and a quiet demeanor. Asadi combed through her memory for his name, then sighed in defeat when she couldn’t come up with it. She was horrible with names… faces too, apart from those of the bridge crew. It did hurt her standing with the rest of the ship; not that it mattered, since she usually ate and relaxed in her quarters anyway.

“Hold on,” the copilot continued, narrowing his eyes at the monitor in front of him. “I think the sphere’s back. Yep, it’s definitely spotted us.”

“Entering low planetary orbit,” Asadi said, some small part of her hoping that if she drowned her copilot out, the strange probe would magically disappear. It was her equivalent of the ‘nanana not listening’ routine.

“Detecting a second signal Commander,” he continued, as if oblivious to the stress he was causing. Out of the corner of her eye, Asadi could see some of the scientists fidgeting in their seats. One of them was even bent over in what appeared to be prayer.

Asadi glanced out her window in time to see the lander ghost into the planet’s atmosphere, kicking up a small cloud of air in their wake as they began what was both the most exhilarating and terrifying part of a landing. The speedometer, which had held steady until this point, jumped until the red needle looked ready to break through the glass.

“It’s pinging,” her copilot read off the display, shifting in his seat. “It almost sounds like it’s homing in…”

Asadi activated the guidance thrusters, then plotted a course for one of the mountains Casillo had described. They looked more like domes than actual mountains, Asadi thought, like steel-gray pimples on an otherwise verdant preteen planet. From the upper atmosphere, they could see the planet’s harsh yellow sun throwing light at the atmosphere, some of it being reflected while most managed to squeeze through.

Once the course was laid in, she glanced over at the copilot’s display. It did appear to be homing, and if she was reading the monitor correctly, the sphere was feeding the second object data about the lander’s course and position. An uneasy feeling sprouting in the pit of her stomach, she picked up the comm.

“LASV-1 to Galaxie,” she said. “We have a problem. Unidentified object pinging us, looks like it's homing. Requesting a more detailed scan and interception if necessary.”

She really hoped that interception wasn’t necessary.