When Captain Spock had come aboard the Asimov and requested to speak to Nyota Uhura in private, Montgomery Scott had insisted on joining them, his manner making it clear that he would not take no for an answer. After Denobula, Uhura had told him of her concerns, and he was determined to stand in support of her. In a way, he was the only one who could understand, so she was grateful for his presence. Fortunately, Spock had become much more accepting of the human need for such sentimental connections in the years since his encounter with V’Ger.

Captain Blake also insisted on being present, as was her prerogative as Uhura’s current commanding officer. As soon as the four of them had taken their seats around the table in the Asimov’s briefing room, Uhura spoke. “You must have figured out the same thing I did, Captain Spock—that the one thing connecting every system struck by a vacuum flare is me.”

Spock replied slowly. “So it would appear. The correlation has been consistent enough that it is unlikely to be coincidental.”

She smiled wistfully at his reluctance to commit, knowing it was a wasted effort. “It isn’t, Spock. There’s one more connection that I suppose you haven’t found yet. It was actually my first clue.

“At first, I was sure I had to be imagining it. That my mind was projecting something onto the data that wasn’t there. When I kept getting the same result, I wondered if I was going mad.”

Blake’s bright eyes studied her intently. “Commander?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Uhura moved to the wall screen, working its controls to tie into her personal database. “It started a couple of weeks ago. It occurred to me on an impulse—at least, I thought it was an impulse—to analyze the gravitic and radiometric output of the vacuum flares as if they were acoustical or musical patterns. I thought it might help me tease out some kind of harmonics or structure that could give insight into their origin. But when I tried to match the results to known patterns… well, I got more than I bargained for.”

She called up two graphics on the screen. “The graph on the left is the harmonic analysis of the vacuum flare event we observed at Deneva. The patterns I could reconstruct out of its noise were fragmentary, scattered… but they showed a statistically relevant correlation with the wave pattern you see on the right.”

Spock frowned as he studied the indicated wave function. “It appears to be the audiospectrogram of a humanoid voice.”

“Not just any voice, Captain.” She activated the playback.

“It seems like we’ve known each other forever / It feels like a billion years and a day…”

“My God,” Blake said. “That’s your voice!”