May-wasteroid tells Trip he prefers to stay at his post. He's just knows that if he leaves the Bridge, he'll never be seen in the episode again. T'Pol comms Quantum to tell him that the minefield is a thing of the past. Quantum acknowledges and turns back to more important and delicate matters. But first, the mine. More twiddling and adjusting and praying their eyelids won't be blown off by Quantum's supreme stupidity. "You must have realized this wasn't going to be your typical armory posting. That my command style lacked a certain spit and polish," Quantum says, in a revival of The Malcolm Reed Nobody Knows. Reed says, "That was obvious." Quantum chuckles and thinks it's strange that Reed comes from a Royal Navy family, going back several generations, and yet he chose to join up with Starfleet instead of serving Queen Elizabeth. What? Oh, come on, you don't really think she's going to die and leave her throne to that chinless son of hers, do you? Reed says he tried really hard to continue it. "Yeah, right -- the Reed who fought at Trafalgar," Mathra mutters to himself. "What happened?" Quantum wants to know, his helmet furrowing. "I'll need a circuit probe," Reed tells him. Already? I mean, shouldn't they have a few drinks first? Lord! What is wrong with me?! Finally, Reed tells his sordid tale. He was raised on the water -- not whisky, the actual water -- and knew all kinds of stuff about it and boats. "I dunno, I suppose I thought I'd just grow out of it," Reed sighs. "Grow out of what?" Quantum wonders. His pants, doof-butt -- what do you think? "Aquaphobia," Reed says. "You're afraid of the water?" Quantum wonders. "More precisely, afraid of drowning," Reed corrects him. "So instead of a life on the sea, you choose a life in the vacuum of space," Quantum postulates. Great, just give him a new phobia, why don't you? Spacaphobia: the fear of serving all your days under a furrowed brow, which eventually envelops, consumes, and digests you alive over a period of seven years. Along with all those eggs from Chef. Reed confesses that he had a great-uncle who suffered from the same problem. "But he faced his fears. Joined the Navy, had a distinguished career -- all you have to do is attach it to the --" Sorry, I didn't catch the pointless technobabble in time on that one. Reed tells a story of heroism, freaktitude, and death. Apparently, the great-uncle bravely decided to get himself assigned to a submarine. [Stupid, insensitive Quantum comment here about the gr'uncle facing his deepest fears.] He was promoted over the years and finally made Chief Engineer on the H.M.S.