Weston picked up a PDA and searched through the highlights resulting from the Odyssey’s scanning. “Send out shuttles and retrieval probes to get samples of everything of interest, and tell all the labs to be ready to analyze what they bring back. I’m going down to the med-lab to check on the status of our guest. Contact Dr. Palin and ask him to meet me there.”

“Yes, sir,” Roberts said, tapping out a command on his console.

“And have the sensor techs see if they can’t backtrack the trajectories,” Weston said over his shoulder as he walked out. “I’d like to know where they came from.”

“Aye, sir.”

He grabbed the nearest lift, heading straight for the med-lab. If the preliminary scans they had done with the shuttle’s emergency gear were accurate, the woman they had picked up from the pod would likely be waking up soon. She’d been suffering from dehydration and lack of oxygen but was otherwise fit.

Weston was willing to bet that this was going to be one hell of a story, one worth more than a few rounds at a bar of her choice, if her society was anything like Earth. Token linguist. Let’s hope he’s half as good as that file implied.

Because, God help them all, it seemed that an awful lot was currently resting in the somewhat eccentric, if not downright mad, hands of Dr. Edward Palin. Weston was understandably perturbed when he stepped off the pod and nearly ran over the subject of his thoughts, who was kneeling on the floor in front of the lift door.

“Doctor! What are you doing down there?” Weston blinked as he caught himself against the wall, staring down at the not-quite-prostrate man.

“Oh, hello, Captain. I was waiting for you, of course,” the doctor replied, standing up and brushing himself off as casually as if he’d just gotten up from a mess table.

Weston stopped for a moment, his mouth working as he tried to find words to convey the thoughts he wasn’t certain he was having. “Okay…I can accept that. What you’re doing on the floor in front of the lift, however, is still a mystery.”

Palin paused for a moment, looking confused “The floor? Oh, the floor. Ah, yes…the floor…”

Weston waited, expecting Palin to continue, but the doctor just walked toward the med-lab, pausing only to look back at Weston for a few brief moments before shrugging his shoulders and continuing. With a disgusted shake of his head, Weston followed in the doctor’s footsteps.

Scientists swarmed the med-lab once word of the survivor had slipped out to the other science departments. Weston waded through the assembled lab coats, drawing their attention away from the beleaguered doctor standing between them and the object of their fascination.

“Everyone has two minutes to get out. If anybody but Dr. Rame, myself, and Dr. Palin is still in this area, I’ll have them hauled off to the brig.”