“I bumped my head, I think,” she said, sitting up and avoiding Jayme’s supporting hand.
Vaguely disappointed, Jayme went to help the others. Starsa’s arm and back had been burned right through the uniform. Echoing down the hall, from somewhere in her room, her medical monitor began to beep.
Jayme ran for her biogenerator in the drawer next to her bed. T’Rees had more experience with Starsa’s various injuries, so Jayme gave him the generator and went to Titus, who was still sitting on the floor, looking dazed.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She knelt down to examine the long cut on his cheek caused by some of the flying wreckage. “Protons are one of the most stable subatomic particles you can work with. Maybe the velocity selector was creating two discrete beams and they got crossed somehow.”
Starsa was pale beneath T’Rees’s arm. “That would have blown up the Quad.”
Bobbie Ray was sitting bolt upright, staring at the blackened wall and the melted table where the chain‑maker had once sat. “It didblow up the Quad!”
“I meant the entire building,” Starsa retorted. “That was nothing as far as proton explosions go.”
“Oh, really?”Bobbie Ray asked. “Why didn’t you mention this little fact about proton explosions beforewe started this project? We should have stuck with my idea.”
“Your idea was illogical,” T’Rees told Bobbie Ray. “We were required to complete a Quad project, not a sports competition.”
“Now we don’t havea Quad project,” Titus reminded everyone. “Now we are in very deep trouble.”
Nev Reoh ran into Jayme’s room, having fetched another biogenerator. She snatched it from his hand.
“Hold still,” Jayme ordered Titus, making him turn back to her so she could aim the biogenerator at the cut. “You’re lucky it didn’t get your eye.”
“Yeah, sure,” Titus agreed sourly. “Then we’d be in sick bay right now, reporting the failure of our Quad project instead of waiting another twelve hours for the review board to convene.”
“What happens if we don’t hand a project in tomorrow?” Starsa asked through gritted teeth.
Jayme finished swiping the biogenerator over Titus’s cheek and jaw, taking away the last reddening. “Then we get a Quad reprimand.”
“But if we get another reprimand–” Starsa started.
“We have to repeat the year!” Titus finished for her.
Moll pushed herself up unsteadily, making her way to the remains of the chain‑maker. Nev Reoh joined her, staring down anxiously. “Maybe there’s some way we can salvage it,” the Bajoran suggested.
“Salvage?!” Bobbie Ray exclaimed, gesturing to the remains. “There’s nothing left of it! Eight months work down the drain.”
Moll took Jayme’s tricorder, silently gesturing for Jayme’s permission. She nodded as Moll began a systematic sweep of the destroyed device. Meanwhile, Jayme told Starsa, “Stop squirming, you’re making T’Rees miss huge spots.”
She turned her biogenerator on Starsa, relieving T’Rees who stood and surveyed the ruin with an almost satisfied expression. “I would like to remind everyone that I am on record as objecting to this choice of Quad project.”
Titus turned on T’Rees. “You’re just calm because you know you won’t have to repeat this year like the rest of us.”
Stiffly, T’Rees replied, “I am calm because I am a Vulcan.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to see how a Vulcan takes it when an entire year’s work gets blown out the window!”
“There is no need to raise your voice,” T’Rees said mildly.
“That’s easy for you to say!” Titus yelled.
Quietly, Moll turned to Jayme. “I’m reading minute traces of copper ions in the lead chamber. Are they supposed to be there?”
Jayme went to look at the tricorder. “It could be from the barrel of the slot. I think it had some copper in the superstructure.” Moll was doing a subatomic survey of the chain‑maker. “Why bother?” she asked. “It didn’t work.”
“Now what are we going to do?” Bobbie Ray wailed. “I don’t want to take quantum physics again!”
T’Rees placed his biogenerator back in the pouch. “We report the failure of our project to the review board.”
“No, we’ve got to come up with something else,” Starsa insisted.
“Something we can do in one night that will look like it took the entire year to make?” Titus asked. “I don’t think so.”
The sounds coming up the lift tube were familiar to the Quad. “Hsst!”Bobbie Ray called out, his sensitive hearing the first to pick up on their visitors. “It’s the medical team.”
“Quick,” Titus ordered Starsa. “Get back to your room. You go with her, T’Rees. Tell them you just had a little accident–nothing important.”
T’Rees stayed right where he was. “I am incapable of lying.”
“Jayme, you go then,” Titus said in exasperation.
Starsa slipped out of the room with Jayme right behind her. She turned to say, “Better clean up in here in case they come in.”
Titus gave her an affirmative signal and Jayme left, thinking everything was at least partially under control. But the medical team took an unusually long time examining the burns, which both girls admitted came from Starsa’s contact with a malfunctioning proton device. They were worried about the traces of radiation they found in her skin caused by the beta decay. They had to explain that the breakdown was supposed to take place inside the lead‑chamber, during the spontaneous transformation of the neutrons in the nucleus of the sulfur atom that would release the protons. Jayme thought it was fascinating the way the medics traced the exact amplitude of the beta decay, comparing the magnetic polarization of the nucleus against the spin vector of the electrons.
The medics checked Jayme, too, and when there were no traces of beta decay in her skin cells, they asked to see the accident site. Jayme was impressed by their through investigation of the room. But the others had already removed the slagged table, and the blackened wall was covered by a colorful bedspread that usually adorned Bobbie Ray’s bed. Jayme wondered why she hadn’t thought of putting up some sort of decoration in this half of the room. Maybe then she wouldn’t have been haunted for so many months by the departure of Elma. That’s why she had offered the space for their Quad project, to give the others a good reason to come over and keep her company.
“You’re clean,” the medic finally told Titus. To Jayme, she said, “Good work on that cut. Nice edges for an amateur.” As she murmured her surprised thanks, the medic added, “You know we have to report this.”
Bobbie Ray flung himself down on the bed again. “Report everything! It doesn’t matter. The review board will know soon enough.”
“Take that up with the Superintendent,” the medic said with a shrug. She gave Starsa a reassuring pat. “Just get some rest and you’ll feel better. You’re already 80 percent acclimated, so next year should be much easier on you.”
“Thanks,” Starsa said as the medic left. “Great, I’ll be raring to go and we’ll all be stuck here again. We’ll never get off‑world assignments if we have to stay first‑year cadets. It’s humiliating!”
Jayme glanced around. “Where’s Moll? With T’Rees?”
Rom shrugged. “She cleaned up the debris and packed a few pieces in that bag of hers. Then she left.”
“You let her go?” At Titus and Bobbie Ray’s nod, Jayme exploded, “How could you? She got hit on the head! Something could be wrong with her.”