"You're not usually this quiet. How're you holding up?" Asuka reached up to put her hand on Marissa's shoulder.

Marissa shrugged and kept her eyes on the monitor in front of her. "Just worried about our girlfriend. Can't stop thinking about her."

Seth nodded. "Same here. Having trouble concentrating."

"You three are really close, huh?"

Marissa dried her eyes with her shirt. "It's weird … it took me a while to get used to our relationship, but once I did, now that she's not here, it's like a part of me is missing."

"Me, too." Seth hugged her. "We'll find our way back to her."

"If she's still …" Marissa winced. "Do you really think she's okay?"

"She's got to be." He smiled. "Hey, you wanna take one of the shuttles out and have a look around? Maybe we'll get lucky and find a TARDIS."

She managed a brief chuckle. "That'd be a pretty sweet ride." She sighed and turned back to the console. "Maybe later. For now, I should keep working on tracking whatever creepy-crawlies might be roaming the ship."

"Okay." Seth kissed her before returning to his console. "Good thing Roger remembered to send us the tracking app he cooked up for Kamala. Usually, she's the one who's easily distracted, but this time he seemed a bit untethered."

Asuka grinned. "I think Kamala had him distracted."

"Yeah, she's been pursuing him pretty aggressively during the last few months. Maybe she'll get lucky while they're out looking around."

"Maybe. If nothing else, it'd give them time to relax and just enjoy each other's company, what with there being no immediate danger. In fact, when you two are finished here, you might want to take a shuttle for a spin. Might give you some time to decompress."

"Gah," Luana muttered. "Please don't say 'decompress' after what we've just been through."

Asuka winced and glanced over her shoulder at Luana. "Oy. Right, sorry, poor choice of words."

"Probably a good idea," Marissa said. "As soon as I finish this up and we're able to see where the 'spiderpedes' are. I'd rather not have one of those things jump out of an air vent at us on the way to the hangar."

Asuka smiled. "I'll let you work, then." Her smile faded. "I should get to an unpleasant bit of business I've been putting off. Something needs to be done about the corpses all over the ship."

"Ugh." Marissa shuddered. "I wouldn't be in any hurry to touch those, either."

"Fortunately, Omega and I can turn off our olfactory receptors. But we'd still have to look at the bodies. And touch them." Asuka turned to the door.

"I'll help." Hitomi walked over to her. "Since I'm just a machine, bad odors don't bother me."

"I think we've seen that you're much more than 'just' a machine, but thanks for offering to help. This'll make it go a bit faster."

"I'm almost done," Marissa said. "I'll be able to direct you to the morgue as soon as I'm able to track the bugs."

"Thanks. In the meantime, I guess we should get started." Asuka led Hitomi into the corridor and out of sight.

"Huh," Seth mumbled. "What the hell?"

Marissa cringed. "What's about to go horribly wrong now?"

"No, nothing like that. I was just looking through some of the Challenger's records and found this map of the explored galaxy. As it was in 2177, that is." He frowned and scratched his cheek. "I found this chart of planets and colonies, including alien civilizations that have been contacted, and … well, it just looks weird."

Marissa walked over him and he moved aside to give her a look at his monitor. It showed her a section of a spiral arm marked with color-coded flags which represented colonies and outposts that originated from Earth and numerous alien worlds.

"One of the really interesting things is that the first aliens we made contact with were sapient machines. It was a machine civilization."

"That's kind of cool. As long as they're not Decepticons."

"Heh. They called themselves the Atoners. They were originally built by an organic species and are still growing and evolving long after the people who built them went extinct. I'll have to do some in-depth catching-up because I'm curious why they called themselves Atoners. Anyway, what really got my attention was this." Seth tapped a few checkboxes on the bottom of the display, removing all Earth colonies from the map.

Marissa leaned forward. "Okay, yeah, that does kinda jump right out at you." In the center of the map was an empty "bubble" of space a little over two hundred light years across.

"Earth is in that empty area. No alien species were found in there, even though quite a few planets had ruins, artifacts, and technology left over from alien civilizations."

"Yeah, I remember the three of us talking about this on the trip to Io. The Sagan found abandoned cities on at least one planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. And the remains of an outpost at Proxima."

"There were numerous alien species in this area, but they've been gone for centuries or longer." Seth stared at the display. "It's like everything within two hundred light years either died off or was wiped out by something -- except Earth."