Although the two junior officers on the team Tom had been assigned to possessed his slim build, their personalities were quite different from his; they were both chatty and sociable. The two were already conducting preliminary examinations as Tom entered the lab.
"Yuck!" Marco made a face as he carefully moved a sample onto an examination slide.
"Don't say 'yuck'. That's so unprofessional!" scolded Julie, "What looks like porpoise ooze to you might well be the genesis of some special discovery, or even a holy subsistence to others!" Even Tom could tell that Julie was only pretending to scold Marco; her voice was too friendly and playful to harbor any real animosity.
Marcos turned towards to Tom, their newest team member. "What do you think, Lt.? Is this yuck or is this yuck?" Marco let the thick purple fluid they had collected from Planet Eatalia 12 (which they had visited prior to Tom's arrival on the USS Potemkin) drip slowly from a test tube onto a second examination slide.
Tom wasn't sure what to say. He knew he liked both the ensigns and did not want to disagree with either of them. "Um," he said, feeling awkward. "It's ... uh ..."
Marco interjected, "If it's not yuck now, it will be when we add some reagent. That'll let us see what this yucky ooze is made off."
"Reagent?" Julie pondered, "That's not scheduled yet. We should just be analyzing what the sample is. The reagent stage is not due until Lt. Commander Kagone is present. The Commander is running protocols with Ensign Deborah Larkins, so we've at least 48 hours to wait."
"Bah," scoffed Marco, "That's only if you go strictly by the book. We do have permission to go ahead if there's no reason to expect anything other than a Type 1 reaction."
As one, the ensigns turned to Tom. "What do you think, Lt.? You are the assistant team leader, after all."
Tom felt a little uncomfortable. He had been given the rank of Lt. (jg) instead of Ensign upon entry to Starfleet primarily due to his possession of a doctorate. However, he didn't feel that he was really qualified to make any command decisions, particularly on just his second day on the ship. And it wasn't like this was a pressing matter. There wasn't any reason not to wait for Lt. Commander Kagone, the team's leader.
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