Meanwhile, on another ship called Secondprize...
Captain Willie T. Wrecker stood in front of the bathroom mirror, nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It was the morning of the first day of his first starship command. Sure, he was getting the Secondprize 2.0[beta], the big shiny new ship that was going to be the testing ground for all new technologies (thereby guaranteeing that something would be broken at all times), but still... a command is a command, and his four fateful weeks as Captain Clerk's First Officer were now ancient history. Not that he would ever hear the end of it anytime soon. Today, however, he faced one of the most monumental career decisions he'd ever have to make, one he'd dreaded ever since he got the assignment, but that he knew was inevitable:
To beard, or not to beard?