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Ready, yes, but not overly enthusiastic.

While this had been his idea, Scott found he didn’t want to go through with it. The actual step through the force field into free fall took a lot of gumption. He’d never been one for extreme sports like orbital skydiving.

Ah, sod it, he thought. There was no time to whine now.

“Velocity matched.” Spock’s voice sounded through the suit’s comm. “Ready?”

“Aye, sir.” Scotty nodded and tugged on the cable from his waist to the anchor point by the hatch. Emalra’ehn did the same.

“Opening hatch.”

The door swung up in front of the two men, revealing the expanse of stars—plus a small metal object only a few meters away. It was a satellite built by the missing inhabitants of Mu Arigulon V, one of a thousand orbiting the planet but no longer active. Antennas projected from the side of the sat, which was a cylinder a meter and a half tall and less than half a meter wide. A misshapen dish sat on top.

“Lieutenant Kologwe, please monitor their activity,” ordered Spock. The security officer, sitting in the seat nearest the door, turned on a tricorder.

“Time to go.” Scotty stepped forward, the atmospheric shield fizzling around him.

Simply being in zero gravity was always disorienting, but stepping into it was even more so. One second, Scotty was in a world with up, down, left, right; the next, there was nothing but the limited confines of his own suit. He was drifting slowly forward, carried by the momentum of his step over the shuttle’s threshold. Glancing to his right, he made out Emalra’ehn behind him.

The sat appeared motionless. However, Scotty knew that both the little metal ball and the shuttle were moving at 15,000 kilometers per hour relative to the planet, but with their velocities matched, it seemed like neither was moving.

Scott understood the mechanics of low gravity perfectly from a mathematical standpoint, but his stomach never had. While Spock and other scientists worked on the orbital survey, Scott wanted to study the alien satellites. However, Spock had not wanted to spare the shuttle’s limited sensor time to analyze them in detail. Scotty’s idea of bringing one on board so he could study it had been deemed an “adequate” solution. Effusive praise from the Vulcan science officer.

Scotty tapped some controls on his suit, causing its tiny thrusters to fire. Soon he was close enough to the satellite to touch it. Its purple metal surface was pitted by over a century of micrometeorite impacts but otherwise intact. Emalra’ehn had moved to the opposite side, all the while making sure that the tether didn’t get caught on one of the antenna spikes. After Scotty made a quick scan to verify that the satellite was inert, they moved to grab hold of it.

“Got it?” asked Scotty, keeping his eyes on the satellite to avoid vertigo.

Emalra’ehn, on the other hand, was glancing in every direction. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Pity to go back inside already. It’s nice to get out.”

Scotty raised an eyebrow. “Lieutenant Kologwe, bring us in.”

“Aye, Commander,” came her voice over the comm. The cables on Scotty and Emalra’ehn’s suits began to retract, reeling them over to the shuttle. Scotty let his eyes wander over the satellite, wondering what lay beneath its surface. Was it for communications? Scanning? Mapping? Or something more malevolent? Many early-spaceflight civilizations used satellites for housing rudimentary nuclear weapons.

Ah, well. He’d have enough time to speculate later. Taking great care not to lose himself in the infinity of space, he directed his gaze toward the small gray-green orb some Berengarian astronomer had christened “Mu Arigulon V.”

As they came within a meter of the shuttle, the comm came on again. “Stopping the cable.”

Scotty turned toward Emalra’ehn, but he moved his head too quickly. The stars began to spin. Cursing himself, he quickly focused on the satellite. “Fire your thrusters,” he said. They needed to slow the sat down.

Scotty and Emalra’ehn activated their thrusters at