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“Well, theory or no, if things get much worse, I’m pulling you both out of there. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” David replied. “We’re less than a kilometer from the life-form readings. We’ll have something for you shortly. Marcus out.”

Saavik looked at him. “David,” she said with concern. “You do have a theory, don’t you?”

“Later,” he said abruptly, trudging off across the snowy terrain. “Let’s find what we came for.”

Along the distant horizon, a line of mountains could be seen, and with a flash of bright flame, one of the peaks erupted with a massive fireball, shooting red-hot rock and ash high into the skies over the outlying lands. Several seconds later, the shock wave rattled their eardrums, and whittled away at what little fortitude they had remaining.

They hiked the last kilometer in silence, awed by the bizarre weather patterns, and growing increasingly troubled by the small tremors rumbling through the ground with increasing regularity. Their path took them down into a shallow valley flanked by rocky bluffs. As the readings from their intended target began to suggest a very close proximity, the vale abruptly opened out to their left and they rounded the corner of the cliff, where before them the object of their search sat on prominent display.

Like a great monolith left behind on this primitive world by some advanced civilization eons ago, then felled by the winds of time, they beheld a massive sheet of metal, perhaps thirty feet high, embedded in the snow-covered soil at a sharply diagonal angle, the top leaning against the nearby cliff face. The smooth surface, though seared by the heat of atmospheric friction, looked relatively undamaged and bore markings that were all too familiar to David. In fact, the only serious blemish marring the integrity of the object was down the right side, where it seemed as if the metal had simply been eaten away by some ravenous unknown force.

Saavik was already scanning the object with her tricorder. “Tritanium alloy,” she read from the display, “with duranium outer plating.”

“That’s part of a registry number,” David said, pointing to a set of figures displayed upside-down, about halfway up the length of the object. “'Seven-oh-one.’ When the Genesis Device exploded aboard the Reliant, the aft section of the Enterprise was compromised by the effects of the wave. I think this is a section of the shuttlebay door.”

Saavik scanned the surrounding area. “Presumably it would have impacted nearby and rolled to this position. But there is no sign of an impact crater.”

“Well, the graviton waves were still in flux,” David said. “It could have soft-landed.”

Saavik raised an eyebrow as she again retrieved her communicator. “Fascinating,” she said, as she flipped it open. “Saavik to Grissom.”

“Esteban here,” came the reply. “Have you found anything?”

“Yes. It would seem that we have discovered a section of the Enterprise hull.”

“Damn…Saavik, do you detect any proprietary Starfleet technology attached to the wreckage?”

She continued to scan the object as David approached it, ducking his head into the shadows cast upon the ground behind it. “Negative. It appears to be nothing more than a section of the outer door to the shuttlebay.”

“Well, we’ll have to check it out anyway. I’m sending down a Starfleet landing party to document your findings. What about the life-form readings?”

“Saavik, look at this!” David shouted from his half-concealed position behind the door.

“Stand by,” Saavik said, and she approached David, who had stepped back and was scanning the ground at the base of the wreckage.

In the soil directly behind the object, sheltered from the surrounding snowfall, dozens of small flat wormlike organisms, each about an inch long, slowly maneuvered their way along the ground. Though clearly primitive, their size was shocking to the sensibilities of the two scientists, who knew that nothing more advanced than embryophytic plant life should have been manufactured by the Genesis matrix. David completed