Captain Pike beams over from the Enterprise with two of his officers, to take command of the Discovery on Starfleet's orders. The Enterprise has been investigating seven red bursts that have appeared across 30,000 light-years, and of which all but one are gone. The ship's systems were somehow damaged by the incoming signals. Pike orders the Discovery to proceed to the location of the last signal. It turns out to be on an asteroid that is surrounded by a debris field and heavy gravitational distortions that don't allow to beam down. There is no sign of the red signal any more. The interaction of the ship with the asteroid causes its course to change, and a collision with a pulsar is imminent. However, there is a crashed Starfleet ship on the surface whose crew may be alive. Pike asks his bridge officers for options, and Burnham comes up with the plan to use landing pods to navigate through the debris. Lt. Connolly, the science officer of the Enterprise, dies when a rock collides with his pod. When Pike has to eject and his thruster pack fails, Burnham saves him by grabbing him and using her thrusters to land safely on the asteroid. On the crashed ship, the USS Hiawatha, they find Denise Reno, an engineer who has managed to keep some heavily injured crew members alive by means of engineering. The landing party sets up transport enhancers to beam the survivors to the Discovery. Burnham doesn't make it in time. She is about to become unconscious when she sees a winged figure. But Pike has returned to rescue her. On the Discovery, Stamets and Saru arrange for a rock from the mysterious debris field to be captured and confined in the shuttlebay. Pike's mission is over, but the Enterprise needs more extensive repairs, so he stays aboard the Discovery. He tells Burnham that her foster brother Spock has taken leave. In Spock's quarters on the Enterprise, she discovers that Spock's sudden disappearance is related to the strange red lights.

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