Emanations

Voyager discovers an asteroid ring where the Vhnori deposit their dead. During an away mission, the body of a newly arrived Vhnori woman is brought aboard while Harry Kim is swept away through a subspace vacuole to the Vhnori homeworld. There he is taken for a visitor from the Next Emanation, the Vhnori afterlife. He meets Hatil, a disabled man who has chosen to undergo the ritual that sends the living on to the Next Emanation, so that he will no longer be a burden on his family. Aboard Voyager, the woman, Ptera, is revived and is devastated to learn that the afterlife may not be what her people believe. Her desperate attempt to return ends in her death. Kim persuades Hatil to choose life and takes his place in the ritual, which returns him to the asteroids, where Voyager recovers him. Janeway later reveals that sensors detected neural energy around the asteroids, leaving the question of the afterlife open.