The year 3190: Captain Burnham and Booker are on the Alshain homeworld with dilithium as a gift. But the representatives of the "butterfly people" are mistrustful. When they don't understand that Book holds a cat as a pet, they attack the away team. Burnham notices that the Alshain have trouble pursuing them. She enlists help from Discovery, whose crew finds out that the magnetic pole shifted 300 years ago, for which to compensate the Alshain put up a satellite network, which is inactive since the Burn. Using drones, Stamets resupplies the satellites with dilithium. The Discovery then proceeds to the Federation Headquarters where Starfleet Academy is reopened after 125 years and the new President Laira Rillak is inaugurated. The celebration is interrupted by a distress call from Deep Space Repair 6. The Discovery is sent to assist, and Rillak insists to join the mission against Burnham's wishes. On Kwejian, Book attends the Ikhu Zhen ceremony of his nephew Leto. When the birds begin to behave strangely, he takes his ship to investigate. On Kaminar, Su'Kal encourages Saru to return to Starfleet. The Discovery arrives at Deep Space Repair 6. Adira and Tilly beam over to assist the station's crew with repairs. The situation worsens when chunks of frozen methane hit, requiring the ship to extend the shields around the station. Finally, there is no other option but to evacuate, however, the launch path of the escape vessel is blocked. Moreover, it would have to return to save everyone. Burnham takes a workbee to remove the debris. When the workbee is destroyed, she manages to free the escape shuttle manually. Back on the Discovery, Rillak urges Burnham to leave Tilly, Adira and station commander Nalas behind because the shields could break down any time. But the captain decides that everyone has to be saved. Rillak reveals that she was going to assess Burnham because there is an open position for the command of USS Voyager, a ship to be equipped with an experimental drive technology. The president rules that Burnham is not ready, upon which Burnham says she wouldn't have wanted to leave the Discovery anyway. Sensors pick up Book's vessel on autopilot, but his planet is gone. Kwejian is located hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from the position is should be, destroyed by a gravitational anomaly.

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