“You always found subspace radio fascinating,” M’Umbha told her, “ever since Alhamisi showed you the radio on his transport. The idea of talking to people all over the galaxy made your eyes glow. You begged me to get you a subspace ham radio of your own, so you could build it and tinker with it and make new friends across the stars.”

“Oh, the weird noises that emanated from your room at odd hours while I was trying to study,” Malcolm complained. “All that whistling and buzzing and chattering as you tried to tease signals out of cosmic noise, as you rebuilt your set to boost its gain and range and whatever. I thought that as you got better at it, you’d produce less noise and more signal.” He threw up his hands. “But you embraced the noise! You listened to it longer and louder. You swore you could hear some kind of pattern in the noise, something almost musical.”

Nyota stared at him sharply. “Did I ever sing back?”

He shrugged. “Now and again.” After a moment, her intensity registered. “Wait, do you think this is connected to what you came here for? You think you actually were talking to something? Or… singing to it?”

“That’s what I’m hoping you can tell me.”

“I’m afraid I tried to pay as little attention as possible. I was trying to get into medical school!”

M’Umbha touched her arm. “I remember your enthusiasm about what you thought you heard—at first.”

Nyota turned to her. “At first?”

“As I recall, you eventually decided that you were hearing the patterns from too many different locations all over space, too far apart and random to be connected. You decided it must have been pareidolia.”

Omar spoke up for the first time in a while. “Pair-eye what?”

Malcolm answered. “The tendency of the mind to construct patterns out of randomness. Like the Man in the Moon, or seeing palaces in the clouds.”

“That’s right,” M’Umbha said. “You decided that you heard something musical in the noise because it was what you wanted to hear. You were so disappointed—you thought for a few weeks there that you were on the verge of a major discovery.”

“In your defense, you were fourteen,” Malcolm conceded.

“Still,” their mother went on, “I always had the feeling that it was the yearning that experience gave you—the need to hear the songs in the stars—that inspired you to pursue a career in Starfleet. That sense of awe and excitement in your eyes when you were on the track of a discovery—I saw that same look when your acceptance to Starfleet Academy came through.”

“So that was how it began?” Nyota asked, awed.

“As far as I believe, yes.”

She sighed. “I wish I could remember that. Choosing my path.”

M’Umbha took her hand. “It’s all right. You have us to remember it for you.”