It’s not easy when no one around you recognizes your genius, when everyone you have to deal with has the intellect of a Cardassian snapple pea and just goes on and on obsessively about empirical rigor and petty ethics. But that’s the curse of Byr Ch’Kelrer, an Andorian scientist officially disbarred from the Andorian Institute of Science for what they foolishly called “immoral, dangerous behavior”. All Byr wants to do is add to the sum total of knowledge in the universe, and if that means that from time to time a laboratory explodes or a basic lifeform mutates into a slavering, flesh-eating monster, well surely that’s a small price to pay. In the meantime, Byr has to make do with putting his considerable skills to use aboard the vessel of Trill adventurer Masriad Vael, operating at the edges of the law, helping to liberate some of the galaxy’s rarest and most valuable items from the galaxy’s most undeserving. It’s the kind of business that often calls for the rapid cerebral inventiveness of a scientific mastermind. The traveling lab isn’t so bad, either.