though a slight wrinkling of her nose belied her endorsement. “Besides, assigning names to new worlds is one of your prerogatives as captain.”
Commander Christine Vale, who was seated in the chair to Riker’s immediate right, chimed in quietly, “At least until the Federation Science Council settles on something a little more, um, dignified.”
“Ouch, Commander,” Riker said as he turned his command chair so that he faced Vale. “Way to show loyalty to your captain.”
Vale answered with mock solemnity. “I wouldn’t be much of a first officer if I didn’t point out the captain’s mistakes, sir.”
“Touché. But as I recall, you were quite a bit more eager than I was to get away from that dustball.”
“I was just more vocal about it, Captain. After all, a healthy set of lungs and a lack of hesitancy to use same are the main keys to success in this job.”
“So . . . an exec’s job amounts to either arguing with the captain, or just bellowing the captain’s orders to the crew at the top of her lungs?”
Vale smirked as she pushed several strands of her shoulder-length auburn hair from her eyes. “I learned from the best, sir—aboard two ships called Enterprise. That reminds me of another nice thing about the planet: good acoustics.”
Riker heard Deanna snicker behind him. “It sounds to me as if you like the planet a lot better now that you’re safely back aboard Titan.”
“Places like that always look better in retrospect,” Vale said, gesturing toward the bluish orb that hung in the viewscreen’s center. “Not to mention from nearly five hundred kilometers away. Besides, it could have been worse. At least there weren’t any mosquitoes—”
With an almost Vulcan-like calm, Deanna said something that Riker belatedly recognized as “Incoming!” Simultaneously, Vale interrupted herself by letting out a yelp—accompanied by a brief chorus from Lieutenant Sariel Rager at ops and Lieutenant Aili Lavena at the conn—that startled the captain into turning toward the section of the bridge at which his exec’s eyes had been directed: the main viewer.
An apparition had suddenly appeared directly between the screen and the forward helm and ops consoles, where it rapidly took on solidity—or at least the appearance of solidity. In the space of a few heartbeats, it had become recognizable as the high-fidelity holographic avatar of Lieutenant Commander Melora Pazlar, even as it continued to hover several centimeters above the deck directly in front of the wide central screen.
“I don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that,” Vale said.
“Nor will I,” said Lavena. The Pacifican flight controller shuddered as though something had gone wrong with her hydration suit’s temperature controls. The suit made a barely audible sloshing sound in response to her brief startle reaction.
“Sorry, Commander,” Pazlar said. “Lieutenant.”
The senior science officer entered a command into the padd she carried; in response, Titan’s holographic telepresence system gingerly shifted her toward an open space on the bridge’s port side. Pazlar’s willowy form was outfitted in an ordinary duty uniform rather than in one of the slightly bulkier contragravity suits she wore when venturing outside the comfortable variable-g environment of her stellar cartography lab or her living quarters. Being an Elaysian born, bred, and raised in the microgravity environment of the planet known as Gemworld, Pazlar’s body was structurally incompatible with a Federation starship’s standard one-g environment.
Riker turned his chair toward Pazlar’s floating image. “Commander, I assume you’re here because the department heads have reached a consensus about the origins of this planet.”
“Yes, Captain,” Pazlar said. “At least insofar as our current knowledge can take us.”
“Are most of you still convinced that this planet’s M-class environment didn’t come about naturally?” Deanna asked.
“As surprising as you might find this,” Pazlar said, “the answer is ‘yes.’ “
Riker smiled. “Huh. Maybe ‘Doornail’ will stick after all.” As dead as they were, even doornails did not spontaneously generate themselves.
Pazlar’s V-ridged forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Sir?”
“Never mind. As I recall, you were part of the ‘this planet’s environment is a natural product of planetary evolution’ camp.”
“I was, Captain. At least at the beginning of our analysis.”
“What changed your mind?” Riker wanted to know.
“Well, to give credit where credit is due, Captain, Eviku and Chamish were the first to notice the pattern—a pattern that appears to have played out in several other star systems scattered throughout the Vela OB2 Association, and perhaps even much further into deep Beta Quadrant space.”
Commander Christine Vale, Titan’s executive officer, spoke up from the seat at Riker’s right hand. “If anybody aboard Titan was going to find