A piece of stone breaks off

Without thinking, Elizabeth threw herself at Christen knocking her out of the way of the stone.

A loud thud echoed throughout the lab as the impact hit.

"Are you okay?" consulted with some agitation the blonde who was now on top of her partner.

Their gazes remained connected for a few seconds. Internally Elizabeth wished they didn't have their helmets on so she could pounce on her friend's face and kiss her up and down.

"I'm... I'm fine, thank you."

For a few moments the blonde got a good look inside the redhead's helmet. Was she blushing? No, she couldn't have been, unless....

"Are they okay?" the moment was interrupted by the concerned group.

Immediately they both stood up and distanced themselves a little.

"Yeah yeah, perfect." they both said.

"What just happened Natasha?" Laura interjected knowing that, if anyone else took the floor, the situation could escalate to supersonic speeds.

"My equipment started to malfunction, I'm so sorry." she looked at the redhead feigning guilt.

"That's impossible, my devices never fail." a certain pride was heard in Tiana's voice.

That generated some distrustful glances from the group.

"That doesn't matter now." the co-pilot intervened again in an attempt to calm the conflict at the door "We need to get the stone in first, then we deal with this problem."

"He's right. Let's get to work." ordered Elizabeth.

After a few minutes of effort they were able to accomplish their task. They were finally regaining some sense of security, but it wasn't going to last them long.

"Girls, look." Laura pointed to the floor.

They were all shocked to see a piece of the stone lying around.

"Well, nothing happened to us because a piece broke off. That's good." Christen tried to joke.

"Good? It's more than good." she ran almost diving right into the object to pick it up with her device placing it in a small container "Now with this piece I'm going to be able to do a more meticulous study." she was bursting with excitement.

"I love it when she gets this happy." her girlfriend commented softly to Tiana receiving a look of confusion in response.

"It's okay. It's all in place. Now, let's get everything in order." ordered the captain.

The group started to leave, but a hand stopped Natasha pulling her away from the rest.

"Give it to me." Tiana's voice came out confidently.

"What?" that request took her by surprise.

"The gravitational device. I'm the ship's engineer, aren't I? Like you said 'fix all the problems'."

With some ****, the curly-haired woman handed over her device.

"Tomorrow I'll give it back to you as good as new." she smiled with some sarcasm to take it to her workshop.

Natasha's concern grew. She was about to be discovered and if they probed any further they would discover her red stone. She could not allow it.

The hours passed and almost everyone took it upon themselves to secure the ship again. The only one who focused on another task was Valentina who focused in an almost frantic manner on analyzing the sample. And, as she suspected, it was a symbiote in a suspended state. She had no confirmation whether it was the contents of the fountain or something else, but that didn't matter much now. Her mind was churning with ideas. Suddenly one that stood out among them all emerged. It was an idea about how to reactivate the symbiote.

On the one hand her mind said it was best not to tempt chance, and on the other she was more than willing to get to the bottom of it.