Stardate 2912.4: The Enterprise is in the Persephone system to survey a comet. Cadet Uhura is invited to the captain's quarters for dinner where she impresses everyone with her language skills. She surprisingly tells Pike that she is not sure about whether she belongs in Starfleet. Uhura then reveals that her parents and brother were killed in a shuttle crash, that she felt unable to go the university because of that and joined Starfleet in an attempt to honor her mother. Spock finds out that the comet will impact the inhabited planet Persephone III in two days, without the prospect of survivors. Pike orders to prepare ion engines to deflect it and use photon torpedoes to launch them. But the comet turns out to be protected by a forcefield. As the forcefield is down again, a landing party consisting of Spock, Kirk, Noonien-Singh and Uhura beams over to investigate. They find large artificial structures, in the center of which some kind of "egg" is located. When Kirk approaches the central structure, he is hit by an energy surge. The shields of the comet go up again, making transport and communication impossible. Ortegas suggests to use phaser harmonics to shatter the comet. But the Enterprise is attacked by a huge vessel. Its commander introduces himself as a "Shepherd", whose mission is to protect the comet they call M'hanit that is meant to follow its own preordained path. He also says that the landing party, who desecrated the place, are meant to die there. In the meantime, Uhura has found out that the comet reacts to music and gets it to lower the shields. They can be beamed back. But now the ship is under attack by the Shepherds. Pike pulls a trick and surrenders, threatening to destroy the ship and thereby the comet if the Shepherds don't accept. In the meantime, Spock takes a shuttle and heats up one side of the comet in a way that it changes its course. The comet only scratches the atmosphere of Persephone III, thereby releasing water that will make the desert planet more fertile. Not knowing that M'hanit did not change course on its own, the Shepherds say this was all predestined and that the Enterprise crew should have had faith. Yet, Uhura discovers something astonishing: An earlier message that she decoded based on the knowledge that it is music contains the course of M'hanit without a collision and image data. The image shows a piece of ice that broke off when Spock heated up the comet. So was the whole sequence of events predestined? Pike can't stop pondering about his own apparently inevitable destiny, although Number One tells him not to waste his life because of that.

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