Run or fight

Hoshi Sato is in the medical compartment and is looking at an alien slug that is inside a glass cylinder. This is the only alien life form that the team has met so far. Hosi asks Dr. Phlox to take better care of him - the traditions of the Earth developed over the past century prescribe respect for the life of any creature, whether it is reasonable or not. Phlox assures him that he is doing everything possible, but only returning to a planet similar in condition to his native one can help the creation.

Trip enters the compartment. He complains that for so many days they still have not met a single life form other than this "dying slug" and tells the doctor that he will soon give more energy to the medical compartment.

T'Paul enters the captain’s cabin and finds him listening to something with his ear to the floor ... he wonders if T'Paul is hearing any sounds from under the floor. T'Paul replies that he does not hear what Archer complains about, that now, apparently, he will have to disassemble the floor to find out the cause of the sounds. Meanwhile, in the weapons compartment, Malcolm and Mayweather calibrate torpedoes, the Enterprise last time was in a hurry ... Archer joins them, Reed is unhappy that the accuracy of the defeat cannot be increased to more than 3 meters. Archer orders to leave the warp

  To test torpedo turrets, the benefit was an asteroid nearby, and Reed is going to shoot him.  The torpedo, without destroying the target, ricocheted directly to the Enterprise, since it was destroyed in time.  Archer, despite Reid's requests, orders to fly on, saying that they don’t have time for field tests of weapons, he advises Reed to work on the accuracy of the torpedoes, but on the simulator.  Next we see the Dining Room: Trip and Phlox dine at the table together.  Trip complains that a lot of time has passed, but they haven’t found anything interesting, he is interested in how Phlox feels in the new team.  Phlox answer that every moment is interesting for him here, because people are extremely unpredictable creatures and therefore it is always interesting to communicate with them.  The bridge, T'Pol on scanners, detects an unknown alien ship three light years from the nearest system.  Scanners do not record any signs of activity on it, Archer sends a greeting, but receives no response.  Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the ship was damaged as a result of the battle.  T'Pol recommends not interfering, but since the scanners still fix the biosignals on board, Archer demands to equip the detachment for landing and prepare the shuttle .

Learning that a sortie is preparing to fly overboard with the captain, Trip is trying to beg for it, but stumbles upon the firm refusal of an old friend and the statement that the Enterprise in the first days of its flight needs the vigilant attention of its chief engineer. Then we see Archer dictating the next entry in his diary, where he talks about his opinion on what was the root cause of the bickering between him and T'Pol this time. Then Hoshi enters the cabin and asks not to take her to this mission and get by with universal translators. Archer asks about the reason for such a request. Hoshi says she suffers from claustrophobia when she is in a spacesuit. Archer still refuses her. The shuttle leaves Enterprise after some time and docked with an alien ship. Indoors, the temperature is 20 ° C and the atmosphere is nitrogen-methane. On the walls of the spray of blood greenish in the command compartment of the troupe float in zero gravity. Having walked around the premises and a little scorched over the writings of an unknown race, the landing group stumbles on the room to the ceiling, which the dead people attached with pipes of unknown purpose hang in pipes. Hoshi gets hysterical, the landing group leaves the ship and heads for the Enterprise, T'Pol recommends to immediately leave this dangerous area because it is possible that those who attacked the aliens can return. Archer agrees and orders to lie back on speed at WORP 3.

Archer, Trip and T'Pol sitting at dinner, discussing what happened. Archer starts talking about the moral standards of Earthlings, he says that he regrets that he just nearly violated them. Turning to T'Pol, he asks: “Would the Vulcans be able to find their own ship with corpses on board to leave them without proper burial”? And do not try to find the culprit of their death in order to punish him? "T'Paul does not find what to answer. Archer orders to lie down on the course to the discovered ship. In the conference room, right on the bridge, they decide that four will board: Archer himself, Trip, Phlox, and Hoshi again. Trip will “revive” the subspace transmitter so that Hoshi could transmit the SOS signal in the native language of the unfortunate victims. Archer and Phlox examine the troupes again and try to figure out the root cause of the attack on the alien ship.

Archer and Phlox, after opening one of the corpses, find out that the pumps from which the tubes were coming out pumped Triglobulin, he believes that the kind that he could do was use it as a means of increasing potency. He also hints that the human lymph is quite similar to this substance. The captain says nothing, but simply grim. Meanwhile, a ship of an unknown type comes out of the WORP at 60,000 kilometers, it does not communicate. They contact the landing group from the bridge and demand to return to the ship as soon as possible. The team hastily seated in a shuttle and undocked from an alien ship. When the shuttle has almost entered the hangar, the Enterprise makes an attempt to go to the WORP, but the alien ship damages the WORP gondolas and some area of ​​the hull.

Arriving on board the Enterprise, Archer from the hangar orders Reed to prepare torpedoes. After some time, “Fire!” Commanded. The first torpedo crashes on the enemy’s defense field, the second was destroyed by phasers on approach. The enemy ship scans the Enterprise, Dr. Phlox on the bridge says the following: “Without a doubt, they found out that our lymph contains elements useful to them.” The team is darkening in their faces ... It seems that technologies of this kind are many times superior to Starfleet technologies. Archer orders Reed to come to the armory and proceed with the distribution of weapons to the crew. When the captain himself is about to leave the bridge, a signal is given on the Travis Mayviser panel indicating another ship is approaching. Archer looks questioningly at Travis - he displays on the Overview screen an image of a ship, exactly the same as the ship of the unfortunate aliens that they stumbled upon at the beginning. The ship calls Enterprise, meanwhile the ship of mysterious opponents has already begun to drill the ship's hull. The enterprise answers the call of an alien ship, on the overview screen the same kind of aliens, it seems they responded to the SOS signal. Archer asks Hoshi to ask them for help, to explain to them that the alien ship is now attacking the Enterprise and there are killers of the crew of the ship that belonged to their race. An alien asks: "Who can guarantee that you are not lying?" Archer asks Hoshi to ask him to analyze the pumps that pumped triglobulin from their relatives and the WORP trace of aggressors. Hoshi does not know how to say “pumps” in their native language ... Archer asks Hoshi to speak with an alien without a universal translator. She is surprised, but it seems she really should use her abilities to the fullest. She manages to convince the alien captain that it was not Enterprise responsible for the tragedy. New friends immediately attack the aggressors in the Boer area, then the Enterprise, freed from the “captivity”, launches a torpedo on one of the enemy’s gun platforms, the aliens wait until the Enterprise moves away and they finally finish off the aggressors. Archer on the bridge addresses the crew: “It looks like we have new friends now.” Then we see how Enterprise, already some time after the battle, is heading to a planet whose name remains unknown. Hosi and Phlox disembark from the shuttle, Hosi releases the slug that we see at the beginning of the series from the container, she hopes that he will take root here, albeit away from home.

• This episode is one of the few in which we hear at the end of the original version of the "main theme" of the Enterprise.
• Judging by the design of the ship of the aggressors, we can conclude that these are the quirens, also formerly featured in the series Deep Space-9.