FOREST FOR THE TREES

a Star Trek Novel
by Paul & Diane Butler
Star Trek is a registered trademark of Paramount Pictures.

Victoria Melbourne took a sip of coffee and absent-mindedly set the cup down on bare wood. She noticed a circular water mark on the surface and slid her cup over the existing stain. "If that coffee ring was good enough for the last four planetary governors," she thought, "it's good enough for me."

She reclined in her chair and looked slowly around her richly paneled office, her eyes coming to rest on the ornately carved monument they called a desk in front of her. "This is ridiculous," she complained, shoving her terminal aside. "The Federation council can't expect one woman to do all this paperwork." She stood and stretched, then strolled leisurely through the French doors opening onto the office's balcony.

Taking a deep breath of the rich moist air, she reveled in the scents carried on the breeze. The hilltop office afforded a beautiful view of the jungle canopy, like an endless green carpet stretching to the horizon. The office had been hers for almost a year now and the view still reminded her of how, as a little girl, she had imagined the balcony was a tree house. Her father had been governor then.

"Planetary Governor," she grumbled, "what a joke." On a colony world with only one population center, the city's mayor pretty much ran the show. Except for the endless paperwork, the governor was a figurehead.

She looked out over the forest and regarded her constituents. "Governor of trees," she chuckled, "that's me." The sound of distant thunder rolled over the canopy, startling a flock of birds. "Oh, right," she corrected apologetically, "trees and birds."

Winning her post in the governor's office had been a lifetime goal. She'd spent her childhood daring anyone to say "you can't do that". From jumping off her parents' roof holding the corners of a sheet as a parachute, to survivalist training in the jungles north of the city, her life had been one challenge after another. She cast the gauntlet before friends and enemies, but her favorite and best opponent was Governor Victor Melbourne, her father.

Poking a finger in the pollsters' eye and winning the governorship was the best challenge this colony had to offer. With her father gone, she'd quickly not only alienated most of the city's political machine, but she was discovering just how pointless the job really was.

Thunder rolled as if responding to her mood. She listened to the rumble die away and glanced at the time. "Ten minutes early," she observed.

It rained daily with almost clockwork predictability. Its coming served only to accentuate the tedium. "If something interesting doesn't happen soon," she vowed to the treetops, "I'm going to bite somebody."

The sound of distant thunder was the only reply.

Rad had purchased the ski upon arrival at Varella II three weeks before. An ungainly contraption to begin with, this one showed its wear. It was a large unit as air skis went, about two meters long and one high. As a form of transportation, air skis were archaic. Being little more than floating engines, they were intended mainly for recreational use. There was no cargo space, no protection from the elements, even carrying a passenger was a tricky operation. They were noisy, nearly impossible to operate safely, and widely considered by responsible adults everywhere to be a bad idea. It was this that made an air ski Rad's vehicle of choice.

If it crossed the establishment, it chimed with Tongo Rad. Raised by wealthy, indulgent parents, he had grown to despise everything they represented. His father, a Catullan ambassador, did everything he could to keep Tongo out of trouble . . . or at least out of jail. Tongo loathed his father and the political system he represented. His mother was no better, to his way of thinking. She held a high position in his homeworld's military and had attempted to teach him the value of discipline. She and his father disagreed about child-rearing, as he touted the value of a soft voice and she, a firm hand. Tongo played them against each other like a Catullan harp. As soon as he was able to leave home, he blew the planet and set off to find himself.

His love for growing things had given him a knowledge of botany, which the mad Dr. Sevrin had exploited. It took his father's best efforts to keep Tongo out of a rehabilitation colony when he, Sevrin, and a small band of true believers stole the space cruiser Aurora and, ultimately, the starship Enterprise herself.

Like most of his causes, the search for the planet Eden had lost its appeal and Tongo moved on. When he heard about the wanton slaughter of the rain forest on Varella II, he hopped the next cargo ship out, as a stowaway of course. He had plenty of credits, but actually paying for things disturbed his universal harmony; never mind how not paying for them disturbed the local constabulary.

After securing the air ski on its landing pegs, Rad walked over to the river and peered in. What he saw disappointed him. Fish. Fish and crystal clear water, as far as he could see. He looked upstream to where the large discharge pipe protruded from the opposite bank. The pipe was dry and clean.

He had come to Varella, along with several "brothers", to protest the logging. Trees were being slaughtered for no better reason than to give some antique dealer on Royal Street an authentic wooden pencil. The company, Jeffries Enterprises, claimed to harvest "authentic lumber in the grand tradition of logging, using only century-old tools and techniques perfected in the forests of Earth". Logging had been illegal on Earth for over a century; after millennia of trial-and-error management, man finally learned that Mother Nature did her best work unhindered.

Once in a while, though, you could get around the rules on a colony planet like Varella II. Jeffries inundated local officials with facts and figures to assure them their operation wouldn't upset the planet's natural balance, adding that two trees were to be planted for each one harvested. Victor Melbourne, Varella's governor at the time, responded, "Yes, all very nice, but how many jobs are you going to bring in." He feared the heavy trade traffic through Newportland would turn the planet into a haven for pirates, and the more legitimate business he could attract, the better. The end justified the means. As on Earth so long ago, Victor could not see the forest for the trees.

But now, it seemed to Rad, the outrage had ceased. His friend and fellow protester, Gag Winthrop, had told him about the pipe. The dry pipe and clean river water meant the processing plant on the hillside had shut down or developed a clean waste disposal method. The river was still used to transport raw materials, if the branches and other detritus floating by were any indication. Tongo wanted to see for himself if the fight was really over before it began.

He reviewed what he knew about the mill process. The trees were felled by obsolete, Starfleet surplus laser rifles. The larger limbs were stripped off with the same weapons-turned-tools, and then ground vehicles pushed the trunks into the river. The processing plant collected the trunks onto a mechanical conveyor belt. No anti-gravs or tractor beams were allowed in this "authentic" hundred-year-old process.

The plant utilized a process called "pop-and-chop" to denude the trunks for finished lumber. The river-soaked bark was subjected to heavy microwave radiation. The trapped water turned instantly to steam and the bark was literally blown off. Guided by old digital-style computers, medium-power industrial lasers cut the trunk into proper boards.

The leftover shavings, edge pieces, knotholes and exploded bark were then passed through a sonic disrupter field and pulverized into minute fibers. These were flushed back into the river, to biodegrade naturally.

Never mind that the pulpy slurry killed the fish and choked the river with weeds, thought Rad. He had been so excited about picketing the "Herberts" in charge, and the sabotage at the plant. He looked at the pipe again, almost wishing for some sign of the effluent he had seen a few weeks ago. "If they have found a different process," thought Rad, "we've no pollution to protest."

Rad mounted his ski as if it were really the "chrome horse" he'd nicknamed it. (Tongo wouldn't know a live horse if one bit him on the butt, but style counted. It was that same attitude that kept his goggles and padded headgear strapped to the seat behind him, where they remained, unworn.) As he started back on the trail toward town, the ski lurched slightly underneath him, and he heard an unhealthy rumble. "Going to need a tune-up," he thought as he keyed the audio playback to even more deafening decibel levels.

Not satisfied with the indignity visited upon his new desk, he hopped out of the chair and walked to the window to survey his new domain. Eyes following the course of the river, he strained to pick out the plume of rising steam he knew marked the sawmill.

Promoted to lieutenant two hours ago, Lesley still wore his junior grade uniform. His superior had transferred off Varella II over a week ago, but he just couldn't bring himself to move his things into the office until it was official.

Once the promotion arrived he'd have occupied the office even sooner had he not been down at the local "watering hole". Alice's was just one of the perks of this job. "A command of my own," he gloated, counting his blessings again, "the nearest starbase weeks away, not a care in the world." He never understood why Lieutenant Jefferson had hated it so much. "Two or three trade ships a day, bringing in every kind of legal, and near-legal, delight a man could ask for."

Varella's proximity to Romulan trade routes made it a Mecca for traders who skirted disaster and reaped obscene profits as goods came in across the Neutral Zone. The Federation outpost kept away the nastier elements of trade_weapons, slaves, and such like. The traders knew a good thing, so they kept their act clean. Lesley needn't lift a blessed finger and was going to get all the Romulan ale he could swig as reward.

He looked at the sign on the desk. "Lieutenant William Jefferson, Commanding Officer, The Sticks," it read. His predecessor felt he had been assigned here as a punishment. Not a day went by that he didn't lament "this backwater boon-dock pest-hole of a planet."

Lesley reflected on the hours spent in the comfortable bar at the edge of Newportland, drinking with his superior. Both of them getting stinking, arguing about everything from sports to philosophy, and at full volume, until Alice gave them the heave-ho. "I run a respectable place," she would tell them quietly, "and you two aren't." The dark-skinned bartender never said very much, and she seemed impervious to Lesley's best flirtatious efforts, but he liked her. Alice's garments tended toward the outrageous, particularly the hats. He liked outrageous.

"This has got to be the single best posting in all of the Federation," he would insist to his commander.

Jefferson would merely stare into the thick blue liquid in his glass, as though the answer were written there on the bottom and he could understand it if he could just drink fast enough.

"I'm telling you, boss," Lesley would persist, throwing back another ale, "we wouldn't be drinking together if we were posted anywhere else. You'd be off polishing some admiral's brass, or worse, hiding out in some bunker waiting for the Klingons to dust your tail. I, of course, would be so overwhelmed with female companionship I'd have no time for important busy officer-types like you."

He would press on, taunting and bragging, until he got a sufficient rise out of Jefferson for the usual argument to ensue. "How can you call Varella II a choice assignment" went the spiel. "We are going nowhere. We are doing nothing." Jefferson never understood that he had just defined paradise for Lesley.

"Wrong, boss," was the usual reply, "we are drinking. We are away from the base, and one of us is at least trying to enjoy himself." It was around this time that Alice, wearying of the effort to hear above the din, would head their way.

Jefferson was gone now. Finally got a transfer to a destroyer-class starship. Lesley recalled the party they'd thrown for him. Everyone on the base came. All thirty-six men and women had signed an over-sized going away card. Two crewmen from maintenance presented him with a hand-carved wooden replica of the Liberty, his new ship. Lesley had never seen such a bad model of a starship. He had also never seen his commanding officer cry before.

"It's all yours now, J. G. Lesley," he had told him after the party, "or should I say Lieutenant Lesley. The paperwork should be through in a couple of days." How could the man be so happy? Starfleet hadn't even sent a ship for him. He'd been booked passage on a civilian passenger liner. Coach, for god's sake.

He remembered thinking, once the good-byes were through, that his first order should be declaring this "Lieutenant Jefferson Day" and, of course, shutting down the base for the festivities. He would come up with a new holiday tomorrow.

Startled by something, a flock of small birds erupted from a nearby tree, stirring him from his reverie. He walked away from the window and sat back down at the desk, pulling open a large file drawer. "Right where he left it," he said, smiling. "Come to papa." He gently lifted out the large decanter of ale and, out of habit, two glasses. He clinked the glasses together, then returned the empty one with the decanter to the drawer and closed it.

"Only one flaw in paradise," he lamented, "now I have to break in a new drinking partner." He took a sip of the potent stuff, and mentally went over the personnel roster. As he propped his feet back up on the desk, he heard glass tinkle inside.

Considerably smaller but no less menacing, feline first officer Meeor stood alertly at the Gorn's elbow. Their relationship had been a profitable one, Meeor reflected. The Gorn were not aligned, or even on particularly good terms with, either the Federation or the Romulan Empire. As they departed loaded with cargo, customs generally breathed a collective sigh of relief and forbore awkward questions. The unofficial attitude on both sides of the neutral zone was, "Leave with contraband, leave without paying export duty, just leave."

Meeor's contribution to the team was invaluable. Like all members of the cat-like race called Sivaoan he was gifted with serial contiguous memory, the ability to remember everything in minute detail. He was a wizard at the logistics of buying and selling precious goods. In addition, Sssek had shown him every dossier available on every Federation customs agent and Imperial exports inspector in the quadrant. They'd evaded more undercover investigations of smuggling operations than Sssek could count.

There was a down side to one's race having perfect memory, Meeor reflected. If one was observed committing any unlawful act, this pretty much necessitated leaving the planet. Hooking up with the Gorn and his only other crew member, a human, had benefited him in many ways.

Sssek focused an eye on a pair of Starfleet creatures seated at a table. One was very round, Sssek noted, and had hair on its face. The other was small and pale, it might have been a female, Sssek was never quite sure. Both wore light blue work coveralls, and they were enjoying their conversation entirely too much. Resolving to do something about that, Sssek lumbered over to the table. Meeor licked his nose in anticipation, and followed his captain's lead. It had been weeks since they'd had a good brawl, and they were both itching. They also made a good team when it came to fighting, thought Meeor. He was incredibly swift and agile, and Sssek had the strength of three mountains.

"You are ss-sssoft and pink," the Gorn hissed at the portly fellow, "and you ss-sssmell bad."

"I think he's talking to you," teased the man's amused companion.

The humans had spent enough time bending elbows at Alice's to know they weren't in danger. Behind the bar, Alice had already stealthily retrieved a weapon so deadly looking that pulling its trigger had to be an anticlimax.

Confused by their reaction, Sssek persisted. "You," he spat, his other eye fixed on the crewman who'd spoken, "are weak and ss-ssstupid."

"And that would be you," declared the Gorn's first target, pointing cheerfully at his friend. His belly shook the table as he giggled.

Sssek regarded them carefully. Neither appeared armed, at least not with anything that could thwart him or hit the swift Meeor. They were obviously merely too stupid to be insulted. In a last desperate effort he declared, "Your superior is undisciplined and foolish!" There, he had offered the worst insult a Gorn knew. On Sssek's world, he would have been attacked instantly.

The two men looked at each other for an instant, then broke into hysterical laughter. "You two must work for Federation Intelligence," one got out between coughing fits, "to know . . ." The other, tears in his eyes and clutching his stomach, began to slide slowly under the table.

Meeor crouched to the floor and lashed his tail, while Sssek raised his arms and opened his mouth in a roar. Neither launched his assault, though, as over their heads an explosion of light and sound deepened an existing char in the wooden ceiling and sent a shower of sparks over the entire room.

Meeor whirled to see Alice clutching an Altarian pulse-rifle. She waited patiently for the Gorn to face her, as the rumble from the weapon reverberated through the room.

"It's a dark and stormy night."

Kirk straightened in the command chair as he realized he'd actually spoken. He was on the tail end of his second consecutive shift on the bridge when it occurred to him that he had been staring hypnotically at the main viewer for over twenty minutes. He scanned the bridge cautiously, to see if anyone had caught him thinking out loud.

Spock looked up from the science station and turned to face him. Those damned Vulcan ears, he thought. He could hear Spock's patient tone in his head, explaining to him the illogic of night in interplanetary space; that although humans persisted in calling the phenomenon surrounding them an ion storm, it bore no similarity to the planetary version; and that since the energies currently coruscating off the shields were lighting up the sky, it was anything but dark. Kirk met his eyes and said quietly, "I know, Spock."

The Vulcan's only possible response was to raise an eyebrow, a silent comment on his captain's following one illogical statement with another. He returned his attention to his sensor readings.

There was no question the storm had been hard on everyone's nerves, but the captain was always last to admit it to himself. He had been riding it out along with his ship for over ten hours, now.

Why was it that routine charting missions always seemed to complicate themselves, thought Kirk. On top of everything else, the "blow" had come up around the Varella system. Varella had already been surveyed, so there wasn't much to keep the crew occupied. That was bad for attention spans, even the captain's. There had already been several minor injuries, and the Enterprise was taking a beating as well. It was nothing McCoy and Scotty's people couldn't handle, though.

Fortunately, the storm showed signs of breaking, and soon they could be on their way. They were pretty much in the middle of nowhere from the Federation's point of view. Kirk had always suspected that Starfleet kept a presence in the area of Varella II just to keep the Romulans happy. If the Federation ignored a world this close to the Neutral Zone they'd suspect it was really up to something and get nervous. Brinkmanship. He'd just as soon both sides grow up, sign some treaty or other_and put him right out of a job.

Kirk hopped down from his chair, intent on a cup of coffee in the ward room. He opened his mouth to turn the con over to Spock, when suddenly all hell broke loose.

"Collision alert, Captain!" Sulu cried urgently from the helm station.

"Reduce speed. Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu," he ordered as he threw himself back into his seat. Sulu had pulled the same double shift as the captain, but his attention never seemed to waver. Kirk noticed that he gave the warning before the first red-alert klaxon that was now sounding in his ears. He reminded himself not to take that kind of performance for granted.

"Sensors detect no other ships in the immediate vicinity, Captain," said Spock calmly.

"A cloaked ship, Spock?"

"Checking, Captain."

The turbolift doors hissed open and Dr. McCoy stepped out and calmly walked up behind the captain. "What's going on?" he asked quietly in Kirk's ear, as though merely kibitzing at a chess match.

"Not now, Bones," Kirk replied, affording McCoy only a glance. "Mr. Sulu, report," he snapped. Kirk did not like waiting to find out what was happening. He much preferred to know what was going to happen before it did.

"Object approaching at warp one," came the quick reply, "navigational deflectors are are innefective."

"It's not a ship, sir," said Ensign Carter at the communications station.

Several people looked up from their stations suddenly to stare expectantly at Carter. Kirk whirled his chair so quickly that he almost caught McCoy in the knees.

Carter was a new crewman, picked up just three weeks ago at Starbase 23. He was also the last person anyone expected to hear from at this point. McCoy looked at him sympathetically and thought, "Jim's going to have you for lunch if this isn't good."

"Report, Ensign," Kirk barked.

"It's the wavefront of a very strong radio signal, Captain," said Carter weakly, suddenly noticing that he was center-stage. McCoy watched him take a deep breath as he continued to report in the face of his scowling commanding officer. "Old style distress beacons were designed to interfere with navigational sensors in just this manner." When he was sure that the captain's scowl hadn't done him any physical harm, Carter added more confidently, "To get our attention, Sir."

Kirk's glare continued for just a moment, until Spock looked up from his viewer. "Computer confirms, Captain. Distress call coming in now."

"Well, they damn sure got our attention." Over his shoulder Kirk called, "Mr. Sulu, resume original course and speed. Ensign Gomez, stand down from red alert." Kirk returned his gaze to Carter, who was frowning in concentration at his board. "All right, Mr. Carter," he continued more gently, "who do we have to thank for 'getting our attention' so effectively?"

"I'm triangulating now, Captain," he replied, distracted. "It had to come from nearby to get through the heavy interference from the storm."

McCoy observed that when there was work to be done, Carter wasn't intimidated by the captain. No mean feat for a second-year ensign, practically just out of the academy.

"Confirmed, Captain. Source of the signal is Varella II. It was transmitted about thirty hours ago."

"Any information on the nature of the emergency?" Kirk asked as he turned back to the main viewer.

"No, sir. Just an old-style distress beacon," Carter said to the captain's back.

"Mr. Sulu, plot us a course, best possible speed. Mr. Spock, are we in sensor range?"

"Course plotted and laid in, Sir, e.t.a. six hours," Sulu replied.

"Negative, Captain. Sensors are severely limited due to ion interference," Spock continued after Sulu. "Subspace communications with the Starfleet outpost on Varella II are also impossible. I suspect that is the reason for the unusual distress call."

Well, there was nothing to be done about it for the next few hours, thought Kirk. He was going to need more than a cup of coffee if he was going to get any rest before they reached Varella II. "Bones," he said as he stepped down from his chair, "between this storm and an unexplained distress call practically on the Romulan doorstep . . ." He paused as he rubbed his temples. "What have you got for a headache?"

"I've got just the thing, Jim. Why don't you come down to my office, and I'll pour you a glass. Besides, it'll give you a chance to tell me what's been going on up here, and when you're going to be through shaking up my patients."

This time Kirk made it halfway to the turbolift, with McCoy in tow, before all hell broke loose again.

On the bright side, their openness gave him opportunity to correct any slips he might make. The crewman who shared his quarters commented on his straight black hair being fashioned in something called a "bowl cut". That was easily corrected by a trip to the ship's barber. His height was another matter, though. He was over two meters tall, and his bunkmate had taken to calling him "Wong drink of water". He was never sure just how much offense to take.

He sat down next to the small sandy-haired man on the bed and ran a medical tricorder over his arm. Satisfied that the break in the humerus was still set properly, he began to apply the bone-knitter's beam to the site.

Normally Dr. McCoy would have seen to the injury personally, but he had gone to the bridge again. Wong thought it disgraceful that a C.M.O. should even be granted access to the bridge. There was no discipline on this ship. McCoy's absence had its bright side, though. The less time in sick bay, the less time looking over his shoulder telling him to "unbend and relax a little". He had little interest in the latter, and little ability to do the former.

His patient winced suddenly. "Ouch! Gee, Doc, take it easy will you? I'm going to want that arm back when you're through." Wong realized that his attention had wandered and he had set the beam too deep. "Hold still, please," he commanded with a heavy oriental accent as he adjusted the instrument.

His accent had been no help with keeping a low profile, either. He had originally assumed it would cover any irregularities in his own speech. However, when the female lieutenant in the cafeteria opened a conversation with him in her native Mandarin, he'd had to feign an urgent forgotten appointment.

Every eye in the room turned as the red alert light began to flash. Dr. McCoy had convinced the chief engineer to dismantle the klaxon in the sick bay, but the absence of the offending noise did little to soothe anyone. Patients and medical personnel alike began to grab hold of anything that looked more anchored than themselves. The bridge had been calling yellow alerts all day, sounding them during sudden surges in the storm. It was just such a surge that had sent his current patient tumbling from a ladder in main engineering. Most of the crew assumed that this red alert indicated the worst shocks yet.

No one noticed that Ensign Wong was the only one in sick bay not bracing himself. Or that when then red alert signaled he simply glanced at the ship's chronometer. The barest hint of a smile had begun to cross his lips when the bone-knitter cheeped its satisfaction. He deactivated the instrument and placed it on a nearby tray. While he read the litany of do's and don'ts to the young engineer, he helped him into a sling. After one more check with the tricorder the patient was returned to duty. The red alert signal went dark as he left sick bay.

Wong scooped up the knitter and headed for the storage room. Once in, he secured the door. Moving aside several large cartons, he retrieved a small black rectangular object. It was no larger than a data cartridge and featureless except for a small red button at one end. He pressed the button and quickly placed the object on the shelf nearest him. A moment later it silently vaporized.

Outside the storage room the red alert signal again flashed its silent warning. Inside, Ensign Wong smiled.

"What's the source? Are we under attack, Spock?" Kirk shot a look at the main viewer, quickly scanning for any signs of another ship.

"I am unable to answer either question, Captain." Spock looked deeper into his viewer, trying to make sense of the incoming data. "The sensors are unable to locate the source of the radiation. According to my readings, the rays are emanating from every part of the ship. I can not explain how, but the radiation seems to originate from 'thin air'."

"What's the intensity?" McCoy asked. "Berthold rays aren't harmful in the short run, but . . ."

"Non-lethal levels, Doctor, " Spock interrupted, " but the intensity is increasing. Captain, I believe I may have the answer to your second question, and there is some cause for concern." Spock straightened up from his viewer to address the captain directly. "While I can not ascertain the origin of the radiation, I have determined its focus. The highest concentration is directed against our main computer."

Kirk whirled on the navigator. "Ensign Gomez, increase main shields to maximum and increase power to the screens around main computing."

"I'm afraid that will have little effect, Captain," said Spock who had returned to his sensor readings. "Berthold radiation easily penetrates our shielding. As far as the sensors are able to determine, the rays are emanating from every corner of the ship, including from inside the main computer."

Kirk let the order stand, it certainly wasn't going to hurt to increase shielding.

"That's impossible, " complained McCoy, "even I know that radiation has to come from somewhere."

"Quite correct, Doctor, " Spock replied without looking up from his scan, "but the sensors seem to disagree about what is possible and what is not. I am more concerned at the moment with what effect it is having on our computer."

"What do you mean, Spock?" The answer to Kirk's question suddenly came blaring out of the bridge speakers at full volume.

"What the devil is that?" shouted McCoy.

"I believe it is Beethoven's ninth symphony, third movement to be exact," Spock shouted calmly over the deafening music.

"I don't care what it is, " bellowed Kirk, "turn it off!"

"I am endeavoring to do so, Captain." The music stopped as abruptly as it had started. "The computer is attempting to copy historical entertainment files into every communications console. There is a ship-wide disruption in all systems. I am attempting to switch life-support over to manual control, but the computer is resisting."

"Resisting? Spock, does that radiation represent an intelligence?"

"Unknown, Captain, but the computer's actions do seem to be deliberate. The main data banks are rapidly being overwritten and at this rate we will lose all computer control in forty five seconds."

Suddenly the turbolift doors snapped open, and spat a red-and-black blur over Kirk's shoulder. "Scotty!" Lt. Commander Scott sailed over Kirk and both railings to land in a crumpled heap in front of the main viewer. Ensign Gomez bolted from his station to join Dr. McCoy in assisting the chief engineer to his feet. They both checked him for injuries.

"I've seen you rush to the bridge, Scotty, " chided McCoy, "but this is ridiculous!"

"Aye Doctor, you can be sure I'll be givin' that beastie a good lookin' over." McCoy observed how Scotty's brogue always got thicker when he was under stress. Having the turbolift gravity fail certainly seemed to qualify as stress.

"Message coming in from Starfleet Command, Captain," cried Carter. His expression of excitement changed to confusion and then utter disbelief as he removed his earphone and stared at it.

"Starfleet? I thought the storm had blocked subspace communications, " Kirk asked.

"Yes Sir, I mean, no Sir . . . I mean . . ." Carter stammered, trying to make sense of the signal that the computer told him was from Starfleet.

"On speakers, Mr. Carter."

"Captain, I don't think . . ."

"I've got no time for this, Ensign. Put that transmission on speakers!"

"Yes Sir!" Carter stabbed a button, and the bridge filled with the sound of a dozen or more barking dogs.

"Sounds like Starfleet to me, Jim," McCoy said with a foolish grin.

"Captain, we have lost all control over the main . . ." Spock trailed off suddenly, stood and turned to face the bridge at large. "Fascinating" was all he could think to say.

"What is it, Spock?" asked Kirk, not quite sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"I am at a loss to explain, Captain," Spock replied as Kirk vaulted the railing to the science station to peer cautiously into Spock's viewer.

It was possibly the only moment in his post-adolescent life in which he had absolutely no interest in seeing a green Orion dancing girl. But there she was, swaying and gyrating seductively on Spock's sensor display screen.

The humor was completely lost on the Captain. Something had seized control of his ship, and he wasn't amused. "Spock, get down to main computing and see if you can pull the plug on whatever's got us. Scotty, are you O.K.?"

"Aye, Captain." Scotty straightened to attention, but Kirk could already see the bruise forming on his forehead.

"All right, Scotty. Pass the word to the crew to avoid the turbolift, use access-crawlways and ladders only. Then see to engineering and make sure we don't lose life-support if Spock brings the computer down."

"Aye, Captain," Scotty said as he headed for the emergency crawlway to the left of the main viewscreen.

"Bones . . ."

"On my way, Jim, " interrupted McCoy, " I'll get down to sickbay just in case anybody else took a ride like Scotty."

Gomez and Sulu were struggling with a panel under the navigation console, trying to figure out why the manual override never seemed to work. Kirk returned to his chair and watched Carter at communications, trying to feed the dogs' barking through the universal translator.

He was suddenly keenly aware that he was the only one on the bridge with nothing to do but sit and wait.

At a glance, the shuttlecraft repair facility beneath the Enterprise's main hangar appeared deserted. The loud banging and even louder cursing coming from underneath the shuttlecraft Copernicus indicated otherwise. Chief Masterson was lying flat on his back below one of the shuttlecraft's access panels, busily responsible for both noises. His silver hair was speckled with leaking coolant, and blood slowly trickled from two scraped knuckles.

"Bloody piece o' junk," he cursed as he hammered away at a fuel regulator valve with a large wrench, "you'll open if I have to cut you out with a phaser!" Some junior engineer had installed the equipment backwards and the regulator, having more sense than the junior engineer in the Chief's opinion, had frozen shut.

He really didn't mind the hammering all that much. Each blow struck with the wrench had someone's name therapeutically written all over it.

Bang! "That's for the twit at Starfleet who thought I'd like to spend my last six months before retirement in a deep space assignment!"

The posting to the Enterprise had been intended as a reward for a distinguished career at Starbase 23. The young bureaucrat who made the assignment didn't understand how a short-timer like Masterson could be anything but delighted about an exciting and dangerous frontier opportunity.

Bang! "That's for the bloody captain puttin' a good Englishman under the command o' that petty excuse for a chief engineer!"

Scotty had always considered himself a fair man, free of any prejudice or bigotry, but since the Brit had come aboard three weeks ago his patience had worn thin. Chief engineer Scott had generally avoided Masterson, but when the Sassenach made a disparaging comment about the cleanliness of the shuttle bay repair shop, Scotty responded with an observation about his attitude, which drew an aspersion to someone's ethnic heritage, which degraded into a shouting match over somebody called "Robert the Bruce". Before he knew it, Masterson had two dirty jobs: repairing shuttlecraft, and scrubbing the shop spotless afterward.

Bang! Beep! He looked at his wrench for a moment before realizing it was the computer console next to the wall that had beeped. He added a curse for whoever designed the repair bay without a voice interface to the computer and extricated himself from under the shuttle. Wiping his hands as he walked over to the console, he checked the repair log flashing on its display.

Apparently Copernicus was needed in the hangar bay. Acknowledging the computer request, he returned to the shuttle's side. He could ride the main elevator along with the shuttle up into the hangar. Once there, he could explain to whoever was waiting that this shuttle wasn't going anywhere, and ask why the bloody hell couldn't they read a maintenance log.

The trouble was, there was nobody in the main hangar.

When the cargo elevator came to a full stop he skirted the shuttle to make sure no one was around. He was about to call the shuttlecraft control room when a loud and familiar rumble caught his attention. It was the sound of the giant clamshell doors behind him opening. "The doors! Hey, I'm in the hangar," he screamed at the top of his lungs, but the roar of escaping air was already deafening. Impossible, he thought desperately. The doors can't open when the bay is pressurized! Realization and fear began to creep up his spine. He looked at the crew door, still several meters away, and wondered if it would even operate with main doors opening. The now hurricane force winds pulled his feet out from under him and began to suck him across the deck. He made a desperate grab for the Copernicus, caught hold of one of the landing struts and locked both arms around it. Looking at the closed shuttlecraft door he realized that inside was his only chance for survival. Panic seized him and his arms refused to relinquish their death-lock on the gear. He cast a longing look at the hatch's locking mechanism, the howling wind forcing tears from his eyes.

A moment later both the shuttle and its unwilling passenger were swept into space.

The sonic option on the shower would have been faster, but she had disabled the mechanism as soon as she'd been assigned the room. It was too simple to install listening devices in a sonic shower. Feeling paranoid was an easy habit to develop in her line of work; but, as her father had told her, "when everyone's out to get you paranoia is just clear thinking." Lintner had been assigned to Security these three weeks aboard Enterprise, and that deeply ingrained habit had been unpacked along with her uniform.

As she stepped out of the stall, the shower automatically shut itself off. Toweling dry, she watched the cloud of steam roil out of the bathroom. "Record time," she thought as she tossed the towel into the recycler chute, "half the time it would have taken to blow dry in the stall." She looked out of the bathroom again to watch the steam billow around her floor.

Something is wrong, a little voice in her head told her. There was too much steam in her quarters. It had swelled knee high and was now floating back into the bathroom. The mist felt icy cold against her bare feet.

She leapt into her quarters and immediately regretted the action. Instinctively jumping to retrieve her phaser, still fastened to her pants lying across the bed, she never got past the first step. The moment her foot touched the frigid deck, it froze in place. She howled in pain as momentum carried her forward and tore the skin from her sole. Toppling, she landed on her side against a bulkhead. Her bare moist skin fastened itself firmly against every surface she touched.

Struggling against the fly-paper grip, she watched snowy-white liquid pour from the ventilation ducts and boil away on the floor. "Very subtle," she coughed in the sub-zero air, "life-support's been . . ."

After only a few moments it became clear the she was not going to free herself. She gazed drunkenly at her own frozen footprint next to the bathroom door, and recalled a story about a little boy who put his tongue on a flagpole in winter. "Strange," she pondered sleepily, "I don't feel cold at all . . ."

As Ensign Lintner lost consciousness, she felt only a sense of regret; not about dying, there were plenty of ways to die in space. It came with the job. Rather, she regretted having been outwitted by her quarry. "Damn . . ."

A head taller than Spock and almost twice as wide, Zukowski was frequently described as resembling "a big thumb". He had been clutching his phaser since the first red alert and was lumbering through the halls looking for intruders when Spock ran across, or rather, into him.

Lieutenant Bauer, who walked almost undetected behind the other two, had been escaping her own quarters. Life support had gone berserk and she could have fried an egg on her floor by the time she'd fled to the corridor. Spock and Zukowski had chosen that moment to pass and, before you could say "non-essential personnel," her training in geology had earned her the privilege of tagging along.

As Spock approached the doors, he almost showed surprise when they hissed open at his approach. He'd expected opposition. His surprise evaporated when he rebounded off the force screen, still quite active, around the doorway's perimeter. He regarded the door as though it had given him personal offense.

"Lieutenant," Spock said to Bauer as she peered around the wide ensign separating them, "I will need a field tool kit and a science tricorder. I believe it would be most expedient if you retrieve both items from my quarters."

After receiving detailed directions on where to locate the equipment, Bauer headed for the nearest ladder. This won't be so bad after all, she decided. Since Spock rarely entertained guests, the contents of the Vulcan's quarters had been the topic of much discussion, and occasionally wild speculation. She was looking forward to getting a peek inside Merlin's cave.

Spock returned his attention to the door. While concentrating on options for bypassing the room's security, a small portion of his mind considered Zukowski. "Why does the security section seem to regard girth as the primary desirable attribute for personnel," he mused. "There is no direct correlation between size and combat ability. Indeed, young Lieutenant Bauer is reputed to be quite adept in ancient Earth's martial arts. If idle gossip is to be given any credence, she could, what was the human phrase, 'wipe up the floor' with the ensign." Of course, the same gossip had her able to defeat a room full of angry Klingons with one arm tied behind her back. Spock recalled the image of Bauer peeking from behind the security guard and abandoned the unproductive train of thought. While that same portion of his mind continued to ponder whether "angry Klingon" was redundant, the remainder of his thought processes had arrived at a course of action.

"Ensign, your phaser," Spock requested, turning and holding out his hand.

"Sir?" Zukowski slowly reached for the weapon at his hip. He'd rather the commander had ordered him to strip naked in the open corridor than relinquish his sidearm. A good security guard was naked without his phaser.

Spock confirmed his estimation of the man by his apparent inability to understand the order, and by the monosyllabic answer. He observed the ensign's bald pate and hirsute knuckles, and decided that too much testosterone was probably at the root of the problem. "Ensign Zukowski," he explained slowly for the human, "I will need your phaser to cut through this bulkhead. Behind it is the control circuitry for one of the computer room's defenses. I will need to gain access to the computer room if we are to regain control of the ship."

"Um_of course, Sir," the guard stammered as he handed over his weapon.

Spock immediately adjusted the phaser and began cutting through the wall. He had the plans to the bulkhead memorized and knew precisely where to cut. There was no way to disable the field around the main entrance from here, but there might be another way in.

The lieutenant returned from Spock's quarters wearing the tricorder over her shoulder and carrying the compact field tool kit. "Fascinating," Spock thought, "exactly thirteen minutes and fifty two seconds." He had estimated Bauer would take at least two additional minutes to examine his quarters. He paused in his labor long enough to note her sweat stained uniform and wilted hair. The temperature that he found comfortable was distressing to most humans. Spock hadn't considered that the incident in her own quarters, where life-support had set the thermostat to broil, would cause her to panic at the fierce heat coming through his door. Bauer had controlled herself just long enough to find and grab the equipment, and get out.

Now, in the flickering light of the corridor outside the main computer room, the disparate pair stood and watched the arc light of the phaser cast sinister shadows on the planes of Spock's face. Sparks rained to the deck as he worked patiently to gain entry where none should have been denied.

McCoy sat slumped against the bulkhead for several moments before he realized that he was still breathing heavily. With detached scientific observation he noted he was also getting light-headed. While he stared bleary-eyed at the ladder he'd just descended, a woman's face appeared before him. Something was wrong with the face, but his increasingly fuddled brain refused to say what. He couldn't see her features clearly, she had short silver-blonde hair and lovely eyes, but her mouth and chin were distorted. "Nancy . . . help . . . hypoxia . . ." he croaked, just as his head was gently tipped back and something cupped over his face.

The woman's face coalesced into the concerned frown of his head nurse, Christine Chapel. "Doctor, are you all right?" Her voice was muffled by the portable Triox mask, which he suddenly realized they were both wearing. "I thought that was your voice I heard. I brought you a mask."

"Thank you, Nurse," he said as Chapel helped him get rather shakily to his feet. The reason he had been unable to catch his breath wasn't the trek down from the bridge, it was the air in the corridor. The Triox crystals in the mask would strip the carbon atoms from the CO2 in his own breath, leaving the O2 for him to inhale again.

Marvelous stuff, mused McCoy, still a little woozy, you can administer it intravenously, ingest it orally, prob'ly a damn good poultry seasoning. He made another mental note to send a thank you letter to the pharmaceutical company along with a bottle of Jim's best headache remedy.

"What the devil is wrong with the air?" Nurse Chapel swung the doctor's arm around her neck and helped him down the corridor.

"Life-support's barely operational on this deck," she briefed him. "It's not life-threatening, but the oxygen is pretty thin. I've distributed masks to all the staff, but sickbay's mostly deserted."

McCoy removed his arm from her shoulder and started walking under his own steam. "Deserted? Why?"

"With the turbolifts out of commission, Doctor, we've had to send medic teams all over the ship. With nothing but music playing over the intercom, I'm relying on word of mouth to get accident reports. Usually they make it all the way to sickbay before collapsing," she added wryly.

Sympathetic to her situation, and chagrined at not making it more than three meters from the ladder before nearly passing out, he softened his tone. "Well done, Christine, but I wish I'd known the situation ten minutes ago."

"Why, Doctor?"

"Because I damn sure wouldn't have shinnied down sixteen decks to get here if I'd known there was nobody home!"

"Yes Doctor. And Doctor?"

"Yes, Nurse?"

"Who is Nancy?"

They both turned the corner into sickbay and waited, extra masks in hand, for the next unsuspecting crew member to drop from the ceiling.

Victoria pulled herself away from the balcony view of the beautiful leafy landscape, and returned to her desk. Determined to make short work of the tedious government forms, she briskly drew the terminal forward. Reaching for her coffee her hand froze in mid-motion, arrested by what she saw.

Concentric rings of tiny waves rippled outward. Foam collected around the edge, and a single droplet kept percolating up from the center and falling back into the coffee.

"What the devil . . ." Her consternation turned to alarm as the cup abruptly began sliding across the desk directly toward her. She started to her feet, half to avoid the inexplicably ambulatory coffee, and half because a book had leapt from the top shelf of her bookcase and landed with a sharp report. More books followed, and she realized that the rumbling noise she had taken for thunder was filling the room. Shouts and screams from the hallway filtered through her office door. She headed for it, figuring that even if no one else knew what was happening, she'd at least have company to panic with.

Two steps to get around her desk, and the floor suddenly gained a life of its own. She found herself staring at the ceiling as bookshelves and cabinets toppled. The rumble was now a roar. The coffee cup crashed as it fell beside her. Panes popped from their frames in the balcony doors. She dodged as a sharp-edged pane, no less dangerous for being shatter-proof, went sailing by.

Instinctively crawling beneath the protection of the desk, it became clear what was happening. Earthquake!

Also no running water, no hot food, and no sanitary facilities. Tongo turned the ski at a fork in the road and headed toward Alice's. A quick "bird bath" in the rest room and a free bar snack, and then he could embrace mother nature.

He glanced in his side mirror and watched the large dust cloud raised by the ski. It was always a hoot to cover the perfectly polished air cars, lined up outside their perfectly polished suburban houses, with an inch of dirt and dust. Between the trees lining the road up ahead, he watched for the first signs of the outskirts of Newportland.

A low cloud of dust already hung over the road ahead of him, as though another vehicle had recently passed this way. There was something odd, Tongo thought, about the way dust seemed to be rising instead of settling.

The air ski bucked violently, snapping his attention back to the wild beast between his legs. Before he could react, the ski slammed into the ground, burying its nose in the loose dirt. The rear of the ski flipped upright, hurling him through the air. The ski didn't ditch, he thought, the ground came up and smacked me. Astonished, Rad was barely able to conclude the brief thought as he was thrown end over end toward the small trees lining the road. Both his heels caught on a branch. The impact knocked one boot completely off, shattering the heel bone, and spinning his body in a new direction. The pain from this injury had mercifully not registered before, an instant later, his forehead met a second branch. His unconscious body rebounded several times more before coming to rest a full twelve meters from the road.

He lay peacefully on the forest carpet as the trees around him swayed wildly. A trunk strained beyond its limit finally cracked, the sharp sound blending into the roar of the earth being torn apart. It toppled through neighboring branches to land with a resounding crash mere meters from Tongo's oblivious form. Back on the dirt road, the air ski exploded as its ruptured fuel cells ignited.

He heard none of it as the earthquake tore on, the air ski burned, and trees fell in the forest.

He was leaning back as far as the chair would allow, when it rather unceremoniously deposited him on the floor. What was worse, he couldn't get up. Try as he might, he couldn't get off his back. He couldn't even roll over to his hands and knees.

The glass of Romulan ale he had been sipping skidded off the desk, bathing him in the smelly brew. I'm sure that was my first drink, he thought crazily as he struggled to rise. The desk continued its assault, a bottom drawer popping open against his head, and the rest of the desktop dumping onto his stomach.

The earthquake rattled the small complex as the hillside began to give way. The loose earth slid from beneath the outpost until the building slowly listed toward the river several hundred yards down the gentle slope.

Inside the corner office, everything was now deposited along the slanting wall. Shelves, cabinets, desk, weapons locker, and Lieutenant Lesley were pressed against the window. He watched in horror as the entire building threatened to slide down into the river.

"Aw, come on," he protested as the room seemed to teeter, "it's only my first day!"

Only the bar didn't quiet down. The rumble from when she'd fired the weapon into the ceiling had grown to a roar, and showed no signs of abating.

Alice double-checked the rifle's force setting before she realized what was happening. Dropping it, she executed a standing leap from behind the bar that even impressed Meeor. Filled as it was with glasses, bottles, mirrors, and other such potentially destructive objects, the area behind the bar was no place to be during an earthquake.

Half a second later patrons and hostess alike became a tangled jumble of arms and legs on the floor. Like some great tentacled beast they all flopped about, trying to rise to their feet on the heaving floor.

Only Meeor kept his footing, leaping frantically on all fours from table to table, trying to make sense of the confusion. He spotted Sssek, lying helpless on his back, flailing his arms and legs and bellowing his indignation.

The Sivaoan leapt from a table, rebounding off the wall before landing next to his captain. Digging his hind claws into the parquet tiles, he grabbed the Gorn's communicator with both forepaws. "Two to beam up, n-neiaoowww," he howled. A second later, the room still undulating beneath them, they disappeared in a shower of golden sparkles.

They re-materialized on the bridge of the Fasssk as the human, and only other, member of their crew worked the transporter. "What happened," he asked after they had fully materialized, "you two finally meet your match?"

"Hardly," Sssek spat, "there wasss-ss an earthquake."

Meeor quickly assumed his station and did a sensor-read of the planet. "It is confirmed," he said, mostly for Grayson's benefit. Sssek knew he had been in an earthquake and didn't care if sensors agreed with him or not. "Power sources going down all over the planet," Meeor continued, "they'll be calling for Starfleet aid. We'd best be scampering."

"Hold on," Grayson interrupted, "you say all power is failing on Varella II?"

"That is correct, the main source is underground and the quake is effectively disrupting it."

"All power," Grayson repeated thoughtfully, cocking an eyebrow at Sssek, "including the power to the beaming screens around the warehouses?"

"Cargo transss-sportersss," Sssek bellowed, catching on, "we muss-ssst ss-sssave all that preciousss-ss merchandisss-sse from the quake!"

Grayson began to divert engine power to the transporters as Meeor scanned planetary warehouses for the best booty. He may not be much use in a scrap, the Sivaoan considered, but for devious dishonest dirty double-dealing, no one could out-cheat a human.

Kirk sat quietly in Spock's chair at the science station, staring at the sensor display. The Orion dancing girl was gone, but so was the data that usually occupied the screen. He knew he wasn't going to get any useful information out of the thing, but there just wasn't anything else for him to do.

Sulu and Gomez had reassembled the helm and were conversing, sotto voce, at their stations. Carter, perched by communications, resembled the faithful canine awaiting his master's voice. Diddling with the sensor kept Kirk from stewing over the viewscreen. He would have given a year's pay to see another ship. An enemy he could shoot at was infinitely preferable to a mysterious computer malfunction. Never mind, if a ship had appeared, they couldn't so much as throw a taunt at it, let alone fire a phaser.

"MURDERERS!"

Everyone on the bridge jumped at the sudden rush of voices pouring from the bridge speakers. "Carter," Kirk barked, "I thought you disabled those speakers!"

"It's not a message, sir. It's coming right from the main computer."

"YOU MURDERED US! You'll pay now! Now we have a ship," cried a mighty chorus of voices. "Now we can kill you all!"

"Who are you! What are you doing to my ship?" Kirk demanded in vain, trying to be heard above the din.

"Federation murderers will die! First your crew, in pain and sorrow, then the rest!" the voices yowled, uninterrupted.

Kirk gathered they weren't listening, whoever they were. He just hoped their message wasn't being broadcast all over the ship. It's not exactly good for morale, he thought grimly, to have a homicidal main computer.

The overlapping voices chanted on. "We of Errat VII, who you sentenced to death! Revenge will be ours!"

"Errat!" Kirk thought, brightening, "At last a clue to what we're dealing with." The tirade poured on from the speakers while he recalled the reference.

He remembered first hearing about Errat during a public debate concerning the Prime Directive. A movement to have it repealed had been established, with the Erratians cited as a major justification.

The planet had entered its fragile "Nuclear Age" when a Federation transport crash-landed near a major population center. When the bodies were recovered from the wreck, it was obvious they were not Erratian. They had only two arms, and those were in the wrong place.

The governments of Errat could draw no conclusion other than "we are not alone." Both national "super-powers" had then attempted to negotiate with the Federation. An official Starfleet first-contact team patiently explained the non-interference directive, but neither side was interested. "At least give us your medical and agricultural technology," they cried. The governments of Errat offered a united front, agreeing to share the benefits, but the Federation was unable to break its own, highest law.

The next year, particularly favorable growing conditions reaped a bumper crop on the agrarian eastern continent. At the same time, a particularly bright young scientist led a great leap forward in medical technology on the western continent.

Each side accused the other of secretly dealing with the Federation, and the veneer of civilization ripped off in a paroxysm of racial and religious hatred. A minor skirmish in a backward area escalated, and before anyone could gain control over the situation, the major powers were drawn in and a full nuclear exchange ensued. The already over-stressed biosystem collapsed, and every man, woman, child, insect and leaf on Errat perished.

So Errat became a symbol. On one hand it represented precisely the kind of tragedy the Prime Directive was created to prevent. On the other hand, the accidental first-contact changed all that. Spokesmen in favor were hard pressed to maintain their rationale before this poignant image of a cold, dead rock hanging in space where several billion people had thrived.

". . . and the Erratians blame the Federation," mused Kirk. Their life-forces had gone searching into the void, driven by an insane need for revenge.

"Killed us all," the voices continued to scream from the bowels of the ship's computer, "left us to die! Now we get even! Now you pay! Our hatred carries us! Our rage will not let us fail! Upon death, we cast our minds into space. In death our purpose keeps us whole: kill you all, kill you all, kill you all . . ."

"Not with my ship, you don't." Buoyed by the knowledge that at least they now had a known enemy, Kirk felt renewed purpose. "Carter, go down and see how Spock's getting along. Mr. Sulu . . ." He didn't get the next order out before the hissing of the automatic doors caught his attention. Out of habit and reflex, Carter had bolted from his station and into the turbolift. "Carter, get out of there!" he yelled, but it was too late.

The moment the doors closed, Kirk was blown back against the science console as the station the ensign had just vacated exploded in a shower of shrapnel and fire. Ensign Gomez attacked the burning hole that used to be the communications console with an extinguisher as Kirk slowly pulled himself upright. His eyes went from the turbolift doors to the top half of Carter's seat, embedded in the main viewscreen. Kirk hoped the ensign hadn't just leapt from the fire into the frying pan.

He requested his floor, closing his eyes and clutching the handle for all he was worth. Relief washed over him as the lift gently started on its way. A moment later the doors swished open to reveal deck eight. That is, the actual deck of deck eight. The turbolift car had stopped midway and only about half a meter of the doorway cleared deck eight at the top and nine at the bottom.

"Deck eight," he repeated, but the doors stayed open and the car remained motionless. "Sick bay," he ventured, but the lift seemed completely dead. Judging the space at the top of the doorway against his own girth, he braced a foot on one of the control handles and pulled himself up.

He had shinnied halfway onto the deck above when a sudden noise caused his heart to freeze in his chest. The lift was moving! Scrambling frantically, his foot slipped from its purchase. He searched desperately for a hold on the smooth surface as the gap began to close.

A moment later the car was on its way again, obediently delivering the lower half of young Ensign Carter to sickbay.

Spock reached gently into the bundle of fibers and conduits, careful not to touch the still-glowing edges of the aperture. His fingers deftly located the cable he sought and gently extricated it from its fellows. Once his hand was clear of the opening, he rudely yanked the cable free of the wall, giving no consideration to the sparks that followed it. A static crackle nearby indicated a force screen deactivating.

"Mr. Spock," said Bauer with a puzzled expression as she strained to see the glow surrounding the computer room door, "I think the field is still active."

"Indeed, Lieutenant." Spock retrieved a tool from the field kit and walked several paces down the ramp and away from the main entrance. "The defensive screen is still quite active." He put the tool to use removing an access panel at the foot of the wall. "It would take a considerable amount of time to breach the security in any conventional way." Setting the panel aside, he knelt down in front of an opening about fifty centimeters square and peered in. "What I have done, is to disable the shielding around the cable raceway under the floor of the main computer room."

"Cable raceway?" asked Zukowski.

"Yes, Ensign," Spock explained as he took the lantern and tricorder from Bauer and began to examine the channel behind the bulkhead, "a computer in a completely sealed room would be of little use. There must always be space for conduits to provide power and input data, and to discharge waste heat and disburse information." Spock's lesson ceased as his legs disappeared into the dark opening. Bauer and Zukowski strained to watch his progress, and waited, trying to ignore the Erratian's taunts howling through the corridor.

Spock grasped a thermal transfer conduit and pulled himself along on his back. After about six meters the channel opened into a crawlspace filled with wires and cables of every shape and description. Operating from memory, he located a junction in silver wire about a centimeter in diameter. Applying an interlocking tool to the junction, he neatly disconnected the two cable ends.

Throughout the ship, the Erratian's screaming stopped. The marauding turbolifts stopped wherever they were. In engineering, life-support systems finally yielded to Mr. Scott's attempts at manual control. On the bridge, Sulu's helm came to life. And, in a lonely ensign's quarters, a computer screen went dead.

Spock activated his tricorder and began scanning the memory banks of the main computer above him. Finding no sign of the aliens' influence, he downloaded what small fragment of memory his tricorder could hold. Putting it away for future study, he reconnected the two ends of the power conduit. Securing the tool kit and lantern, he pulled himself back into the corridor from the raceway. As he slid out of the access panel head first, the two crewmen helped him to his feet. "The computer should now be restoring itself from protected back-ups," he announced, "we will have lights momentarily." As if on cue, the corridor lighting returned to normal. Spock walked over to the wall intercom unit and punched the button. "Spock to bridge . . ." He paused, ready to provide the captain with a status report, but the indicator light on the unit remained dark. "Evidently, there is a problem with communications on the bridge," he observed calmly, unaware that communications would probably have to be routed through the auxiliary bridge for some time, and definitely through another communications officer.

"Crewmen," he announced perfunctorily, "please return to your regularly assigned duties." They both stood agape at how fast Spock had "changed gears" from crisis to routine. Lieutenant Bauer felt a guilty twinge at Spock's tone, as though he'd caught her loitering in the hall.

Spock, sensing that he'd neglected to account for frail human sensibilities, added "well done." Satisfied he had applied the correct praise given the situation, he turned and calmly walked into the nearest turbolift. His face was completely expressionless as he said simply, "Bridge."

"That is one cool customer," Zukowski whispered to Bauer, as though Spock might still hear him.

"Just another day on the Enterprise," she responded dryly. Zukowski nodded his agreement, and returned to duty. Bauer decided to vacate the area before chief engineer Scot discovered the mess Spock had made of his ship.

Kirk strode into the conference room, pleased to see most of his senior staff already present. After only two hours each officer had his or her respective section under control, just as the Enterprise was once more at his command.

Chief engineer Scott and Lieutenants Sulu and Uhura were sitting at the right of the conference table, discussing some element of the computer's bizarre rampage. "I find it interesting," Kirk chided as he walked past Spock and Chekov to take his seat at the head of the table, "that although I hold these meetings for the exchange of information, all the best information gets exchanged before I arrive."

"Sorry, Captain," apologized the chief engineer, "we were just . . ."

"No problem, Scotty," Kirk interrupted with a conciliatory smile, "let's just get on with the briefing." Leave it to Scotty to take me seriously, Kirk thought, the man needs to get away from his engines more often. Vowing to see to it personally at the next opportunity, he continued. "Well, Mr. Scott, what kind of shape are we in?"

"I'll have her ship-shape and Bristol-fashion within the hour, Captain. Save for that wee bit o' trouble on the bridge, that daft computer did precious little damage. All energizers are on-line and life support is functioning normally."

"That 'wee bit of trouble' nearly took my head off, Mr. Scott."

"Aye, and the console's shot for sure. Blessed computer re-routed the main power feed for the forward tractor beam into the poor thing. Lucky it didn't take the whole bridge along when it blew. I've got o' couple of lads cannibalizing the communications console from the auxiliary bridge. Ye' should have subspace back any time now."

Kirk's mouth pursed as he considered how to put it to Scotty that it wasn't his precious hardware he'd been concerned about, when the door swished open to admit Dr. McCoy. "Sorry I'm late, Jim," the doctor apologized as he took a seat next to Spock.

"Frankly, Doctor, I'm surprised to see you at all. I'm relieved to know you don't have your hands full."

"Actually the injuries are very light," he reported somberly. "We have three casualties, though." McCoy thought about it for a moment. "Technically it's more like two dead and one missing."

"Missing?" Kirk stiffened. He did not like losing crew members, and if he could cut that casualty count by one . . .

"Aye, one of my men," interrupted Mr. Scott, "and along with a shuttlecraft, too."

"A shuttlecraft?" Kirk was beginning to feel a little like a parrot, and he wanted answers. "Gentlemen, are you suggesting that one of my crew deserted?"

"Well, Jim," said McCoy, stalling, "to put it as delicately as I know how: samples I retrieved from the main shuttle bay suggest that Chief Masterson wasn't inside the Copernicus when it launched." He paused for a moment to allow Kirk to draw his own conclusion. "We also lost Ensigns Lintner and Carter."

"Carter?" He quickly recalled the image of the bridge turbolift doors closing behind the young ensign. "What happened?"

"I don't really think you want to know, Jim." The doctor's tone of voice implied that he really meant it. "Nurse Mendez met . . . well, met him in sick bay . . ."

"Mendez?" said Kirk, sure now that his own name was on today's duty roster as 'chief parrot'. "You mean the crusty one who's always bragging about her time in the Cygnis III Wars?"

"That's the one. Well, I've got her sedated. She's resting in her quarters."

"All right Doctor," he relented, pressing on, "what about the rest of the crew?"

McCoy looked up from the table, grateful for the change in subject. "As I said before, very light injuries. A couple of scaldings and minor frostbite cases from life-support malfunctions; several sprains, bruises, and one concussion from that carnival ride passing for a turbolift. Oh, and one case of amebic dysentery."

"Dysentery?" Scotty asked, with Kirk's gratitude.

"Riley," McCoy said, as though little other explanation was necessary.

Sitting out the computer take-over in a crew lounge, Riley had taken a chance on the food processors and ordered his usual lunch. The machine had obediently provided a delicious authentic nineteenth-century Mexican style lunch. This time, though, it also provided him with an authentic nineteenth-century Mexican style glass of water to wash it down.

"Very well," said Kirk, getting back on track, "Mr. Sulu, what's the word on the storm?"

"It will have cleared enough for us to go into warp in approximately two hours," he responded, "e.t.a. to the Varella system is still about four hours."

"We'll be within communications range any minute now," Uhura offered. "We should be able to hail them as soon as Scotty's people are finished."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Mr. Chekov, any idea what we can expect once we arrive?"

Chekov activated the three-sided conference viewer in the center of the table, and the image of a blue-green world appeared. "Certainly, Keptin," Chekov replied in his heavy accent. "Ve don't know the nature of the emergency, be ve do know quite a bit about the planet." He keyed a switch, rotated the planet's image and zoomed in to reveal a solid canopy of treetops. "It is a small class 'M' world with only one medium-sized land mass. The continent is equatorially situated and dominated almost entirely by rain forest." He zoomed in further to reveal a small city. "There is a small colony settlement. The principle city, Newportland, has a population of about one hundred and fifty thousand."

"A hundred and fifty thousand?" repeated McCoy, startled. "Jim if we have to lend aid to that colony in the case of a planet-wide disaster . . ."

"Take it easy, Bones," interrupted Kirk, "we don't know the scope of the disaster, yet. Let's not jump the gun." Not mollified, McCoy began making rough mental calculations on how much basic aid the Enterprise could provide. "We'll know the extent of the emergency soon enough, Doctor. Let's see to it we learn its background while we can afford the time. Mr. Chekov?"

"Yes, Keptin. In addition to the colony, there is a small Federation outpost on Varella II. No ships permanently stationed there, but a great deal of merchant traffic passes through the spaceport. It has a small tree-harwesting operation planetside. The proximity to the Romulan Neutral Zone makes it an easy base for smugglers and the like."

Just great, thought Kirk, the last thing any bunch of pirates wants is a starship parked on their doorstep.

"Mr. Chekov," interrupted Spock, "you mentioned a tree-harvesting operation. Is the harvesting being done for pharmaceutical, or agricultural reasons?"

"Neither, Mr. Spock. They are stripping the leaves and bark, and exporting only the tree skeletons. Collectors manufacture a wariety of products from the skeletons, or trunks. 'Vood' I think they call it."

"That's 'wood', Ensign," McCoy joined in, "and I thought it was illegal to export lumber."

"Not on Warella II, Doctor," Chekov responded. "The operation was established before the ban on trade on stardate 2715. There is a movement in the popular media to have the," Chekov searched his notes for the word, "logging stopped. There is a protest group on the planet, but no major conflicts have been reported."

Thrilling, Kirk thought again, this mission gets better by the minute. I'm going to get called "Herbert" again, I just know it. He made a mental note to commend Chekov on his thorough job, though. One thing Chekov was never short of was enthusiasm. "Thank you, Ensign," he said, "well done. Mr. Spock, we're a shuttlecraft short. Any problem with using the transporters on Varella if this storm blows up again?"

"Negative, Captain," the Vulcan replied through steepled fingers. He was obviously distracted, but Kirk knew if Spock had anything important, he would share it with him later. "Ion storms, while playing havoc with sensors and communications, do not affect transporter function while in close orbit. I anticipate no problems with either crew or cargo transporters."

"Very well," Kirk tugged his shirt straight as he stood, "that's all we're going to get done until we establish contact. We all have our duties, gentlemen, let's get to them."

Spock stood at Kirk's side while the room cleared. McCoy hung back, opened his mouth, closed it again.

"Problem, Doctor?" Kirk prodded.

"Not really a problem, Jim," he said distractedly, "just something a little odd. I'm not even sure if it's worth mentioning."

"Why don't you let me decide, Bones? Something about the casualties?"

"Yes. Well, no really. Kind of." His frown deepened.

"Bones, get to the point," Kirk chided gently.

"Well, it's Ensign Lintner's parents."

"What about her parents?" he asked, beginning to get impatient.

"She hasn't got any." McCoy said simply.

"Bones!"

"Not that I can find, anyway." Spock looked on as the doctor continued, observing the captain begin to rub his temples. "I mean, of course she must have parents, but the ones listed in her file don't seem to exist."

"What are you getting at, Doctor?" Kirk asked patiently, knowing all too well that McCoy was going to get it out in his own good time.

"Well, it's just that I know how you always contact the next of kin when you lose someone, rather than some impersonal Starfleet communiqu‚. I've been trying to include their addresses in my report, just to make it a little easier." Kirk nodded, waiting for McCoy to continue. "Well, the Lintner's address doesn't exist in the civilian directory. I got curious, and started checking. You want to know what I found?" Kirk gave him an expectant look. "Nothing, not a blessed thing. I'm no detective Jim, but not one thing about her could be confirmed in our personnel file. Not her educational background, her Starfleet record, nothing."

"Doctor," Spock said patiently, "all Starfleet medical files are carefully cross checked before transferring personnel to new duty assignments. Are you sure you are accessing the library computer correctly?"

"I damn well know how to look up an address, Spock. If you'd open your pointy ears and listen for a minute . . ."

"Gentlemen," Kirk interrupted tiredly before things escalated, "this isn't going to get us anywhere. Doctor, a botched medical file is certainly cause for concern, but it's not going to do Ensign Lintner any harm if we shelve the mystery for now." He looked at Spock, still too distracted to even feign insult at McCoy's jibe. "Now, what's on your mind, Spock?"

Spock raised an eyebrow at the thought he'd had the bad taste to show his concern so visibly. "Nothing conclusive, Captain. I am still considering the computer malfunction."

"Spock, don't make me drag information out of you, too."

"Indeed, Captain," Spock continued, "it is just that there were several unusual factors involving the Erratian's supposed take-over." Kirk again waited patiently. "I found it surprisingly easy to breach the computer room's security. I should have met with significant resistance.

"Another factor is the tricorder scan I took of main memory. It showed that it was unoccupied by any sentient presence. The collective consciousness of the Erratians must have merely controlled the computer rather than occupied it; but if that were the case, why did they flee once I disconnected power? They could have retreated and waited to strike again.

"There was also no recurrence of the Berthold radiation I detected earlier on the bridge.

"Finally, if the Erratians had wanted to kill us, there are a plethora of efficient ways do to so. Why waste time as they did with individual crewmen, instead of simply evacuating the atmosphere?"

"Perhaps," offered McCoy, "they were more interested in terrorizing us. Like that thing that trapped us on the Enterprise with those Klingons."

"Negative, Doctor," Spock replied, "the entity to which you refer, the creature from Argelius II that invaded the ship via Mr. Scott and subsequently our computer, and even the colony mind from Zetar that destroyed Memory Alpha's computer, all registered on sensors. None of them were associated with Berthold radiation, and none of them were capable of surviving the intense electrostatic field of an ion storm. There is also the matter of the casualties. All three were part of the group of four crew members we picked up as replacements at Starbase 23. The odds against such an occurrence happening randomly are three million, three hundred twelve thousand, seven hundred seventy three point seven five to one."

"Maybe the computer was going to get us in order of seniority," said McCoy. "You know, R.H.I.P.?"

"Bones, please," Kirk interrupted. The doctor was obviously no longer taking Spock seriously. "What are you saying, Spock?" Kirk demanded.

"The facts support no conclusions as yet, Captain. I am merely unable to reconcile them."

"I don't like mysteries, gentlemen," Kirk stated brusquely as the boson's whistle interrupted him. "Kirk here," he replied, slapping the intercom button on the desk.

"Contact with Varella II, Captain," came Uhura's voice.

"On my way." He snapped off the intercom and continued, "we're going to have our hands full in a moment. I want both of you to report back to me when you have answers. In the meantime," he paused, and headed for the door, "we've got a planet to save." He swept out of the room with Spock and McCoy close on his heels, leaving no doubt that the meeting was over.

"Governor Victoria Melbourne is already on the screen, Captain," Uhura interrupted formally and rather pointedly. She knew Kirk was about to request a channel to the commanding officer of the Federation outpost, not the civilian government.

Uhura's words still sinking in, he looked at the main viewer. A woman's face filled the screen. Attractive, somewhere in her forties Kirk judged, and by her expression mad enough to chew neutronium. He could see a mad rush of clerical activity going on behind her. She appeared to be in a makeshift command center.

It wasn't the usual procedure to have a channel open before he got to the bridge. Kirk shot Uhura a quizzical look. "I'm sorry, Captain, " she replied softly, "she insisted on waiting for you with the channel open."

"Damn right I did," Victoria cut in. Uhura turned back to her jury-rigged station and mentally cursed the still non-functional "mute" control.

"We've got a damned disaster here," the governor continued irately, "and I don't have time to sit around on 'hold'. What took you so long, anyway? That big ship got only one bathroom and there was a line?"

"I assure you Governor," Kirk took advantage of her drawing a breath to jump in, "that I came as soon as I was notified communications had been established. Also, there is a head on the bridge, and had I been in it," he paused to draw his own breath, confident she would wait for him to finish, "I would have taken the call there." He smiled.

She squinted at Kirk over the heads of Sulu and Chekov, who feigned interest in something, anything, at their stations.

In Kirk's personal universe (the Enterprise), his word was law. When he said jump, artificial gravity ceased. Even on his odd forays into diplomatic circles, as a starship captain he at least commanded respect.

On the other hand, Victoria Melbourne was not accustomed to being given anything. She'd had to fight for her gains, and as a female governor on a backward colony planet full of pirates and lumberjacks, the battle for respect was the hardest of all.

The bridge held its breath as the two leaders sized each other up and tried to stare each other down. Finally, Victoria cracked a wry smile and cocked her head as though considering some private joke. "Sorry Kirk," she apologized, mellowing a bit. "It's been a tough day. I can't tell you how glad we are to hear from you. Starfleet told us you were incommunicado, and the Red Cross relief ship is twelve days out."

"No apologies necessary Governor," he replied diplomatically. "We couldn't establish subspace communications due to the ion storm, but we got your old-style radio beacon. It didn't state the nature of your emergency, though. How can we assist you?"

"We've had an earthquake," she reported matter-of-factly, "7.2 on the Richter scale. Our main medical facility is doing its best, but we have literally hundreds of injuries. They're short on absolutely everything."

"Who is chief of that facility, Governor?" Kirk asked.

"Doctor Awalegonkar is coordinating the medical effort. He can use any help he can get."

Kirk crooked a finger over his shoulder, and McCoy vanished into the lift. "I'm having my chief medical officer contact him directly, Governor. He'll be able to best assess your needs."

"Thank you, Captain, and please, call me Victoria." Kirk noticed that Melbourne had referred to him by his rank for the first time. She sure comes on with a full head of steam, he thought. But then, after what I've been through the last couple of shifts, I'll bet I'm no charmer either.

"My ship is at your disposal, Victoria. How about the rest of the colony? Do you need food or emergency shelters?"

"Yes on both counts, but what we need most desperately is power. This colony gets, got rather, most of its energy from geothermal taps. The quake pretty much saw to them. Without power, the whole city's without water, heat, light, sanitation, everything. The hospital gets priority but they only have enough left for the most critical services. I'm running this transmission on batteries, and even they've just about had it." The exhaustion was creeping into her voice, and Kirk could tell that Victoria's "batteries" were in no better shape. "We need power cells, portable energy converters," someone handed her a list from off screen and she continued to read, "solar collectors, field work lights, and all the Badgers you can manufacture."

Kirk started to wave Scotty off the bridge as well, but stopped short. "Did you say 'badgers', Governor?"

Scotty secured the engineering station and headed for the turbolift. "Aye, Captain, I'll see to it straight away." Kirk turned to give his engineer a questioning look, but the lift doors were already closing.

"Well, Victoria, my chief engineer seems to know what you need, even if I don't."

"You mean you've never seen a Badger work?" Her smile overwhelmed her tired features. "Kirk, why don't you come down and I'll show you how we power a world." Kirk paused a moment, admiring the smile and sudden unexpected charm. "And while you're at it," she waved an exaggerated come-on-over gesture, "why don't you bring along the rest of your crew." Her sarcasm was evident but not offensive. She elaborated, "we need strong backs as much as we need equipment."

Kirk chuckled into his chest, and donned his most innocent face. "Why Governor Melbourne, I thought I was being invited to a tour and a state dinner."

"Well, if you fancy ration packs and river water, I'll see what I can arrange." Her relief at help arriving was obvious, and some of the tiredness left her face.

"It's a date," Kirk promised. "See you in a while." Kirk nodded to Uhura, who ended the transmission. "Mr. Spock, will you see to the logistics?" Spock nodded and turned to his computer console. "Lt. Uhura, would you get me the post commander, please?"

"Sorry, Captain, but I've been trying to reach Lieutenant Lesley. There is no answer."

Kirk slid out of his chair and headed for the lift. Uhura spoke as he passed her station. ". . . the Governor, Sir, she insisted . . ."

"No problem, Lieutenant. She is obviously a formidable woman." He gave her a quick nod, and she understood the silent "thank you" for alerting him to the situation as he had entered the bridge. Kirk knew how well Uhura knew her job, and him. Today her job included diplomacy, he thought, sometimes I think it includes baby-sitting.

"Spock, you have the con," he called past her, "I'll be in my quarters." Spock nodded his acknowledgment and remained at his station, already entering instructions to the various departments which would provide aid and materials for the relief effort.

As he stepped into the lift, he reminded himself that the job was never as easy as it looked from orbit. A couple hours of sleep was all he could afford, but he had the feeling he was going to need them.

McCoy watched over the pilot's shoulder as the shuttlecraft Galileo eased into the planet's atmosphere. They were carrying some of the more exotic medical equipment and compounds which didn't react well to matter teleportation. The ship's chief surgeon hitched a ride because he felt he didn't react well to matter teleportation.

"About forty minutes e.t.a. at the hospital, Doctor," the pilot announced.

"Thank you, Crewman." McCoy returned to the main cabin and checked the readouts on a container of "scrubbers". The canister was designed to care for particularly delicate biological organisms, but the thousands of microscopic devices inside were purely mechanical in nature. "Scrubbers", as they had been dubbed, were actually tiny remote-controlled drones. One could inject as many as were needed into a person's bloodstream, guide them to the site of a blood clot, and set them to work breaking it up. The devices navigated by means of tiny vibrating filaments, or hairs, much in the same manner as many natural organisms which used undulating cilia for movement. Once at the injury site, each little robot grabbed itself a fragment of the offending blockage and headed for the body's natural exit. "If I could teach the damn things to tie a knot," McCoy muttered, "I'd 'mail' my surgery from home."

Satisfied the occupants were undisturbed, he sat back in one of the shuttle's seats and tried to relax. Gazing absently at the scrubber canister, he reflected on the planet's situation. It's the advances in so-called modern medicine that've got us into this mess, he decided,. "Diagnostic beds that can tell you a patient's vital signs, and a hundred other things, in the wink of an eye; cardiopulmonary stimulators that can keep a man alive long after his brain's gone; bone-knitters, and a hundred other gadgets and gizmos to get you on your feet in no time. Each year they come out with new and better toys, so that each doctor can treat twice as many patients. Pretty soon you end up with half as many doctors, and one small hospital serving a colony of a hundred and fifty thousand.

"Now cut all the power, add several hundred broken bones, bruises, concussions, contusions, and abrasions while you're at it, and throw all those fancy medical contraptions on the junk heap. It must have been one hell of a night."

McCoy knew the colony had been fortunate that almost all of the injuries were minor, mostly people falling off of things, or things falling onto people. There were only a couple of critical cases; a mill worker suffering from extensive laser burns, and a head injury to someone who had been riding an air ski without a helmet.

"All the unavoidable atrocities visited on the human body," he complained to himself, "and some damn fool feels the need to propel himself through the air at a hundred kilometers per hour with no protection." He shook his head solemnly at the memory of all the rock climbers and daredevils he'd patched up in his time.

He mentally reviewed his information on the hospital facilities, and the supplies and equipment being beamed down from the Enterprise as the more sensitive cargo plied its way through the clouds. "Plenty of medics and doctors, plenty of equipment and supplies," he considered, "but the real life saver's going to be Scotty restoring power to the colony."

McCoy duck-walked back up to the cockpit and peered out the front screen. He could now make out the individual buildings and people as they passed over the city. The structures had survived pretty much intact. McCoy could see that only the sawmill, constructed at the quake's epicenter, had been leveled.

"Not much to look at," observed the pilot, "but colony housing sure takes a beating."

"Too bad you can't say the same thing for the colonists," McCoy replied grimly, and returned to his seat. The injuries from the quake itself were trivial, but if Scotty didn't restore power . . . What with people sleeping outside, no fresh water, and no sanitation, it would get very ugly very fast.

"Four hours," he noted groggily. "Kirk here," he slapped the intercom button. Spock's voice filled his quarters.

"Spock here, Captain. We have established orbit around Varella II and have begun transporting supplies to the hospital and municipal spaceport."

"Excellent, Spock. Have you been able to raise the outpost?"

"Negative, Sir. Communications established with the planetary governor's encampment only. Would you like me to send down a detail to make direct contact?"

"No," Kirk considered for a moment, "have someone from security meet me in transporter room four. You stay on the bridge and coordinate the relief efforts. I'm going to beam down to the base and assess the situation myself."

"Acknowledged. Spock out."

Kirk wondered for a moment if Spock had seemed distracted. Of course he had a lot on his plate, supervising aid for over a hundred thousand civilians, but there was something bothering him. It was near-impossible to sense the mood of a Vulcan, but after years of service together, facing tedium and peril side by side, Kirk knew Spock's mood as well as any man could hope to. Spock had more on his mind than Varella II's problems.

Doing a quick "fireman's dress", Kirk decided that to leave him on the bridge was best for now. Spock would solve his problem and come to him in his own good time.

Ensign Zukowski was present in the transporter room when Kirk arrived a moment later, seeming to half fill the area with his stalwart red clad bulk. Gathering up his own phaser and communicator from the transporter room's locker, he noted how ready for action the scowling guard was.

Kirk was wrong in this assumption, however. Zukowski was ready for anything but action. He had managed to serve on the Enterprise for over a year without once being assigned to a landing party with Kirk. Scuttlebutt around the ship was, any time a red shirt beamed down with the captain, the ship's morgue readied a canister. He had lost two good friends that way, and more than a few acquaintances. It was decidedly not preferred duty.

As they mounted the transporter pads, Zukowski reflected on how many security guards had stood in this very spot before being blown up, dropped off cliffs, disintegrated, or brought to various other untimely ends.

Kirk glanced his way and nodded his approval at the ensign's ready-for-action frown. "Energize, Mr. Kyle."

The operator pushed the transporter controls forward and the pair dematerialized from the pads, leaving Chief Kyle to open the betting pool on Zukowski's return. He couldn't decide whether to put his credit on "not at all" or "in pieces". "Safely" hadn't won for the last two missions. He decided to go for the long shot and play "uniform only".

Kirk had been prepared for a lot of different scenarios; a wrecked outpost, total carnage, or perhaps just a communications failure. He had not foreseen a party. Yet when he rematerialized outside the base, that was apparently just what was going on. He surveyed the group of people, about thirty or forty of them, milling about aimlessly. Small knots were gathered in the shade, munching on rations and chatting amiably.

"Who's in charge here?" he called to the group at large. No one answered immediately. Several animated discussions began, deciding who should "bell the cat". "They look like government employees at a fire drill," Kirk observed dryly to Zukowski, "they all want to go home but aren't sure they can get away with it."

"That would be Lieutenant Lesley," a portly yeoman finally offered. Noticing the gold braid on Kirk's sleeve, he hastily added "Sir."

"And just where is Lieutenant Lesley, Yeoman?"

"In there, sir," he said, indicating the alarmingly listing structure behind Kirk, "but we can't get him out. He's trapped against his office window by a pile of heavy equipment, and the hillside is undermined. He's been there all night since the quake, about fifteen hours."

"Why haven't you moved the equipment?" Kirk sighed, his frustration growing.

"We tried, sir. Every time we go into the corner office, the whole mess creaks and groans like it's going to slide right down into the river. We can't get enough bodies in there to free him. He seems all right for the moment, but he's getting a little honked off."

Kirk knew just how he felt. "All right," a telling exasperation in his voice, "who is second in command?"

"Uh, that would have to be J. G. Bob Knuteson."

"And where, pray tell, may I find Lieutenant Junior Grade Robert Knuteson?" Kirk enunciated every syllable to show he meant business, but he suspected it was a losing battle.

"He went for help." A pause. "Sir."

"He what!"

"Went for help, Sir, to the logging camp a few miles up the road. He planned to commandeer a piece of construction equipment to help shore up the building. He's been away since before dawn, and we were just trying to decide what to do next."

Kirk stood agape, completely flabbergasted by the shambling rabble before him. They wore Starfleet uniforms all right, Kirk thought, he must have the right place. Yet the second in command had abandoned the scene, rather than delegate the trip to the logging camp. The commanding officer was pinned down in his own office, and all night no one had conceived of anything so simple as sending one man in on a tether to drag the equipment off of him. Maybe Kyle had beamed him down into a costume party, interrupted by the quake.

"Wait a minute, did you say fifteen hours ago?"

"Yes, sir. Yesterday evening, just before sunset."

"That's impossible. We received a thirty-hour old distress call several hours ago."

The yeoman stared uncertainly at Kirk for a moment. "Sir, I've been in this man's service long enough to know better than to tell a starship captain what's possible and what's impossible, but I can tell you when the quake hit." He reached into his pocket and retrieved a small disc-shaped object attached to a silver chain. He opened the cover to reveal an antique pocket watch, its crystal shattered. "Passed down in my family for generations," he lamented, "I won't forget for a long time when that quake hit." His eyes misted.

Kirk resisted the urge to slap him. There was military precedent against that sort of thing. He took other action, instead. Flipping open his communicator, he called "Kirk to transporter room: Kyle, scan the structure near me, and beam what should be the only person inside directly to my location." Without waiting for an answer, he returned the communicator to his belt.

Seconds later the whine of the transporter was heard. Kirk watched as the form of Lieutenant Lesley slowly coalesced in front of him. While held in the transporter field, Lesley's face was flattened in a ridiculous expression and his body a parody of a frozen jumping-jack, as he was extricated molecule by molecule from against the office window.

The field released him and, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, he collapsed at Kirk's feet. "Oh, glory alleluia!" Lesley rolled over onto his back and seemed content to stay there. "The view was great, guys," he called sarcastically to the gathering crowd, "you didn't have to hurry on my account or anything." Suddenly he noticed Kirk's face looming over him, upside down. "Oh, hello," he said while rubbing his stiff limbs, still content to lie on the grass, "I don't believe we've met."

"Hello-o, Lieutenant Lesley," Kirk sang in a soothing, melodic tone, "are you all right?"

"Yeah, I think so," Lesley replied a little confusedly at the smiling face peering down at him.

"No broken bones?" Kirk continued in a pleasant soothing voice, "Do you need any medical assistance? Is every thing just peachy?" Kirk blinked and smiled even wider on the last word.

"Yeah. I guess so. I really have to pee something awful, though . . ."

"GOOD!" Kirk practically screamed, "then get your sorry ass up off the ground, and stand at attention when addressing a superior officer!" A flock of startled birds vacated a nearby tree as Lesley struggled to his feet and Kirk continued to berate him. "Am I addressing Lieutenant Lesley?"

"Yes Ss-si . . ."

"Then why are you out of uniform?" Lesley looked down at his tunic. He was still wearing his Junior Grade insignia from last night. Kirk got a whiff of alcohol, and spotted the large blue stain on the tunic. "Is that Romulan ale I smell, Lieutenant J. G. Lesley?"

"No Sir, I mean yes Sir, I wasn't drinking on duty Sir, the quake spilled it on me . . ."

"Am I to understand that you keep Romulan ale in your office, Ensign Lesley?"

"No Sir, I mean it wasn't my office, not until yesterday, anyway and . . ." He tried desperately to think of a way to explain to Kirk how it just wasn't his fault. He had spent his first day in command pinned down by a desk, for goodness sake.

Kirk was addressing him in descending rank, not good. Veins stood out on his neck as he regarded Lesley, who by now assumed his goose was cooked.

"Crewman Lesley," Kirk softened his tone somewhat, "I think it would be a good idea if perhaps you organized this rabble into a temporary camp, don't you?" Lesley bobbed his head wildly. "And I also think it might be a good idea if you sent someone to find your second in command and some construction equipment, don't you?" Lesley nodded again. "Then get on it, Mister! Before I send you through the transporter backwards and demote you to chimpanzee!"

He bolted through the crowd, which was no longer anywhere near Kirk and Zukowski. Kirk watched Lesley appoint details to various tasks, and noted that he got everyone busy before dancing discreetly behind a tree to relieve himself.

"Kirk to Enterprise," he called, satisfied he'd adequately terrorized the outpost commander.

"Enterprise here, Captain," came Uhura's reply.

"Tell Mr. Spock that the outpost has things under control, and to beam down a portable communications set when he gets a chance. Zukowski and I are going to the governor's office. Let McCoy know where he can reach me if he needs anything."

"Aye, aye Captain. I'm instructing the transporter room to beam you there now."

"At least there is competence somewhere in the galaxy", Kirk commented, watching the latrine detail digging a hole uphill and upwind from the camp. Just as the world began to disappear in a shower of golden sparkles, he witnessed Lesley swaggering from behind his tree, with his fly still open.

"Oh, please do not run away," the man addressed him in a light Hindi accent, "I am only coming to greet you. I assure you that I do not bite."

"I beg your pardon?" The man's enthusiasm caught McCoy off guard, but his smile was infectious. At a hospital, several hours after a major disaster, a happy face was the last thing he expected to see.

"I am the hospital administrator, Dr. McCoy. I can not tell you how happy we are that you have come."

"Well, you sure know how to make a man feel welcome," McCoy replied with his best southern charm. He looked at the man's badge, embarrassed to have forgotten whom he was supposed to meet. "Doctor Prakeshmanian Awalegonkar, MD.," the badge read, "Hospital Administrator." He looked more closely at the badge and realized that the word "administrator" had been crossed out, and "pain in the osyel" written in. He wasn't sure, but he thought he recognized the Andorian word for the gluteus maximus. The administrator caught him puzzling over the name tag.

"My chief surgeon has a very good sense of humor," he offered, "but a very, very bad sense of the problems of an administrator."

McCoy responded with a broad smile of his own. "Good to see that some things are universally constant, Doctor . . ." He tried to wrap his tongue around the Indian's last name, but was mercifully rescued.

"Oh, please, call me Ji," he suggested, "practically everyone does. Of course, you may call me Dr. Awalegonkar if you prefer."

"Thank you," McCoy accepted earnestly, "Doctor Gee will be just fine." McCoy watched Ji's face for any sign of possible insult. "Shall we?" He indicated the marked walkway leading from the shuttle landing pad, and picked up the canister.

"By all means, Dr. McCoy." They both started toward the main building of the hospital several meters away. "Many of your people are here already," Ji explained animatedly, "and doing a most wonderful job. Minor injuries which have waited many, many hours are now being treated, and we have only two critical patients."

"I'm delighted to hear it. I've read your report, Doctor, and I'm impressed at how well you've done, given the magnitude of the quake." McCoy's slow and easy southern drawl contrasted sharply with Ji's rapid-fire delivery. He assumed that an all-night shift on hospital coffee had worked its usual magic on the administrator's adrenal glands.

The doors to the trauma ward had been forced open manually when the power failed, and the two men walked into the building unchallenged. "I thank you, but I can not accept all the credit," Ji told McCoy. "The doctors and nurses here have most certainly done a very good job, especially without power. But, much of the thanks must go to the city itself; the colony housing has proven very, very sturdy. We did not have even one major structure collapse. Most injuries are from people falling, or being having things fall upon them."

"That's certainly good news," McCoy interjected, "the less we're needed, the happier I'll be."

"I agree most emphatically, Doctor. Right now . . ." The administrator's briefing was cut short by the startling restoration of standard lighting in the admitting area. Equipment could be heard humming and beeping to life up and down the corridors. "Oh my goodness," he exclaimed, "the governor told me not to expect full power for many days." Cheers echoed from adjoining halls as staff and patient alike welcomed back the life-blood of technology.

"Well, if I know my ship's chief engineer," McCoy speculated as he idly watched the outside doors struggle to close despite the surgical instrument wedged in the mechanism, "Scotty's probably rubbed two sticks together and found a way to light up the city with the spark."

Since only auxiliary power had been available, non-essential equipment had been shut down. Broken bones were set, splinted, and left to heal naturally. Wounds were cleaned and then actually sewn closed. A lot of people had been looking at weeks of pain while healing. The restoration of primary power changed all that.

Ji was still looking at the lights, trying to absorb the drastic improvement in the hospital's situation. "Oh, you must be knowing how better this makes things!" His grammar deteriorated in his excitement. "Who is this man, Scotty? Tell him I will be having his baby for this. Anything his heart desires shall be his!"

McCoy smiled broadly at the little man's delight. I think he's gonna start dancing any minute, he thought cheerfully. "Well, he is kinda fond of scotch . . ."

Before he could finish, a tall, blue-skinned Andorian came storming down the hall, bellowing, "Gee! There you are, you little bureaucrat!" The administrator looked about comically for a place to hide while the Andorian raced toward them. He was wearing an old-fashioned lab coat that billowed around his long legs as he strode along.

"Dr. McCoy," Ji said sheepishly, "I would like you to meet my chief surgeon, Dr. Otarr."

McCoy could tell from the curl of the man's antennae that he was in no mood for social niceties. He remembered how the Andorians, while always prepared to fight, were usually deceptively polite. Otarr, on the other hand, didn't even acknowledge his presence as he tore into the administrator.

"You told me we'd have no power for weeks!" Otarr stabbed a blue finger into Ji's chest to punctuate each word. McCoy considered notifying hospital security, but Ji merely smiled beatifically as Otarr raged on. "I have been rationing medication and power as though we were under siege! Do you have any idea how much suffering could have been avoided if I'd known power was going to be back in less than a day?"

"Then perhaps," the administrator replied soothingly, taking Otarr's hand and steering him back toward the hall, "you should be rushing on your way and putting an end to this suffering. Not standing in the hall, berating someone who has no control over these things." The Andorian started to say something, but Ji gently cut him off. "There, there, you will have much time later for yelling at me. You must now see to your patients and correct this mess I have made."

The Andorian cast a rabid glare on McCoy, as though seeking a new target for his deflected rage. Instead, Otarr just hissed something in Andorian that McCoy didn't quite catch, and swept righteously away.

"What the hell was that," McCoy asked after him.

"Do not worry," Ji assured him, "He makes much noise, but he is the best surgeon I have. Andorian doctors are generally known for their bedside manner, but he is a very big exception."

McCoy collected his canister and they headed for the critical care unit. He thankfully anticipated how much easier it would be to use the scrubbers with full power restored. "I think I'm going to have you talk to my captain," he chatted amiably to Ji, "about how to deal with difficult doctors."

"I'm very sure your captain finds your company as pleasant as I do."

"Well, I haven't attacked him lately," he recalled the furious Andorian, "but I did kill him once." McCoy thought of Spock's wedding on Vulcan. Some damn fool ritual had pitted Spock against his captain, and the doctor had administered a drug to put Kirk out so cold everyone assumed he was dead. The Vulcan government was probably still fuming over that one, he mused smugly.

Ji's head snapped around, searching McCoy's face to see if he was being teased.

"I've been meaning to ask you," McCoy continued blandly, "how did you get the nickname 'Gee'?" He checked the badge again, finding only one unlikely "G" in the string of letters.

"Oh, that is very easy." Ji seemed content to follow the change of subject, but still watched McCoy's expression. "When I was first a resident here, people would look at my badge and say 'Gee, that is a very long name' or 'Gee, however do you pronounce that?'. Since everyone looks at my name and says 'Gee', that is what I tell them to call me." Ji didn't go on to explain that his name was also term of respect in Hindi, but the joke always told better without the details.

McCoy chuckled politely as they passed through the first of the two sets of doors leading to the C.C.U. "As long as we're on a nickname basis, my friends call me Bones."

Ji activated the sterilization field between the secondary and primary entrances. A large window afforded a view of the room beyond, revealing several diagnostic beds and a few stasis units. Thankfully only one of each was occupied. "I am very sure there is a good story behind that name, also," he said as he opened the inner C.C.U. doors, "but I am afraid it is time to earn our very large salaries."

As the two men entered the room, McCoy's eyes fell first on the man fully enclosed in the stasis tube. He checked the indicators on the life sustaining device. The readouts showed that the man was in fair condition, in stark contrast to the view through the tube's window.

"From the sawmill," Ji explained, "internal burns due to microwave radiation exposure, and second-degree scalding over one hundred percent of his body."

"Thank heavens you had power to run the stasis tube." McCoy looked carefully at the man's face. "My god, I can't even tell the poor devil's species through all that damage."

"Yes, he will be some time recovering even with all of the power restored," Ji replied somberly, " but he is not the patient we need your help with."

McCoy followed him over to a diagnostic couch where a young silver-haired man rested. He checked the readouts, noting that the blood pressure was unusually high.

"He is a Catullan," he read McCoy's concerned expression, "which explains the high pressure and rapid heart rate."

Catullan, McCoy searched his memory, where have I seen a Catullan. He glanced down at the boy's face for the first time and did a double-take. "Tongo Rad!"

"That is his name, indeed," Ji confirmed. "What a small universe that you should find a familiar face in my hospital. Is he a friend?"

"Friend," McCoy snorted. "He hi-jacked the Enterprise and tried to kill us all. What the devil is he doing on Varella II, instead of behind bars?"

"I am afraid he has not been well received here, either. He and a group of his friends have been protesting the harvesting of trees. They say we are harming the planet. Since the sawmill is the major employer for Newportland, they have been most unwelcome."

"Protesting, hum? Well, that fits the profile. They been waving signs, singing, chanting, stuff like that?"

"Oh yes," Ji explained, "but also chaining themselves to trees and sabotaging equipment. It is not a pleasant business. If you have a such a history with this man, perhaps I should perform the procedure?"

"No, no, I haven't anything personally against him or his friends. I was just surprised, that's all. Besides, I'm the only one rated with the scrubbers." McCoy began to set up the computer console next to the bed. The console would be used to guide the tiny devices to the site of Tongo's head injury. They could repair most of the damage without having to cut through intervening brain tissue. "I'll tell you one thing, though," he advised, "don't let my captain see him!"

Ji watched McCoy's preparations for a few moments before replying. "This is the captain you have 'killed', yes?"

"Right," McCoy retorted, refusing to elaborate.

His hopes of returning soon vanished as they materialized near the capital center. A large cylindrical machine, about two meters high and three across with a sparkling hemispherical globe on the top, sat next to a power substation. The sight of the machine froze Zukowski's blood in his veins.

"Scotty!" Kirk called to a familiar pair of legs protruding from an access panel near the bottom of the cylinder. Mr. Scott extricated himself just enough to peer out and see who was addressing him.

"Oh, aye Captain," he replied, squirming back into the hole, "I'll be with ye in a minute. I've got me hands full just now."

"I don't doubt it, Mr. Scott," Kirk called into the hole. "Is this thing what I think it is?"

Scotty finished, slid from the aperture and stood smiling proudly beside his handiwork. "Aye, Captain," he beamed, patting the monolith gently on its side, "a matter/anti-matter Stark generator. Isn't