The Plumber's Helper

"Ma here. What’s happening?"

"This is Jack from Missions Control. We’ve achieved contact with the Jovian Platform, Jorip. You’d better get over here."

"I’ll be there in ten minutes." He hung up the telephone, threw on some clothing and was out the door.

It was barely over seven minutes before Jorip arrived at the Deep Space Videoconferencing Center. As he walked into the main communications area, he could hear Doctor Eletto debriefing.

"...Anyhow, that’s the gist of it. It’s taken me most of the rest of the time to get the communications system here in the infirmary reconfigured to communicate with you." Eletto looked at his watch, then back at the camera. "Figuring in the time lag, I’d guess that you’re there now, Jorip. To give you the quick version of the details I’ve given everyone else at the center, something blew a hole in the bottom of the platform, right through the outer wall of the water storage. The entire water supply vented explosively, sending us careening off trajectory. Worse yet, the tether to the counterweight for the centrifuge effect snapped, throwing the Jove off on some screwball tangent. Thank heavens we never lost attitude control, or I’d never have gotten the communications dish reconfigured. The rest of the crew was tending to the garden area that’s supposed to feed and recycle things for the research team you were planning to send once we achieved a stable Jovian orbit. I was cleaning things up in here after closing a wound in Charlie’s hand. It seems that whatever blew the water tank had a friend that hit the dome over the garden area, shattering it. Decompression appears to have been almost instantaneous, Jorip. There were no survivors. Most of them left with the atmosphere. Tell the families that I buried the three remaining bodies in shallow graves in the soil they were tending. My gut feeling is that this was sabotage, but I’ll leave that for others to figure out."

Jorip looked over at the tracking officer. "Got any idea where the Jove is?"

"Heading above the ecliptic, at a furious pace. That explosion produced enough thrust to send them out of the solar system. They’re going to be a challenge to catch, Chief."

"I have food that will last about a week," Eletto continued, unaware of the exchange at the Video Conferencing Center. "Water for ten days if I don’t bother washing, power until the platform falls apart, and oxygen for about another seventy-two hours. There’s no way that I figure you’re going to catch up with this thing before I run out of air." Eletto paused.

"Look, Giacomo, there has to be something we can do," Jorip responded, forgetting that it would be minutes before Eletto heard his response. "Let’s not quit yet." He turned to an aide. "Get Doctor Ika here immediately."

"There’s only one solution left open as far as I can tell, and I’m going to need you to kick Doctor Ika out of bed, if you haven’t already. You and Bill are going to have to monitor the freeze as I’m settling into the hibernaculum. You’re going to need at least a couple of months to catch up with me, and there’s no way I can last that long any other way. I’ve got it programmed to handle the chilldown and freeze, with stop points where you and Doctor Ika can adjust the settings once I’m in."

"Giac, I don’t like this, not one bit," Jorip interjected. He turned to an aide. "Where is Doctor Ika?"

"He’ll be here in five minutes Mister Ma."

Jorip nodded appreciatively. "Good work, Jack." Jorip turned to the screen again.

"Ah, there you are, Jorip. Your face just appeared on my screen here. You look as horrible as I feel, and you probably have gotten more sleep than I have."

"Giac, Bill’s coming. We’ll have you chilled down in two hours, frozen in five, and home in a couple of months."

"I haven’t given up, Jorip, as you have heard. Look, I’ll get the vascular access and all that started on myself in a few minutes. Do me a favor, will you? If things go sour, tell my sons, Dave and Matt, that I went down trying, just like I taught them to." Eletto choked for a second. "Put some flowers on Louise’s grave for me once in a while, too, will you? And tell the grandkids that Grandpa Eletto will be back, and will be there for them, somehow, someday, okay?"

Jorip’s face tightened. "I’ll take care of it all, Giac. But you’ll be playing with your grandkids before you know it."

"I’ve adjusted things so that I can see and hear the screen, Jorip; all you’re going to be getting will be sound from me, at least for a little while, and data from the monitors as I start to go down. I hope missing my ugly mug on the screen won’t break your heart. Hey, good to hear that Bill’s on the way. Someone’s going to have to find a faster way to communicate, you know it? This time lag really ruins a guy’s conversational style. Like you hadn’t noticed. I’ll switch my side to data and voice now." Giacomo Eletto’s face disappeared from the screen, replaced by the hibernaculum display. There was a pause, followed by the hibernaculum monitor beginning to register Giacomo’s presence. "Thanks for playing messenger boy, Jorip. You’ve been a good friend for a long time, even before Matt married your daughter. This is where I go silent; you’re going to need the bandwidth to control this infernal machine. Goodbye for now."

Jorip’s head drooped. "See you before the end of June, Giac. Sleep tight." Jorip turned to the rest of the people around him. "Okay, team. We’ve got a rescue to pull off. I want a concrete plan on my desk at 0800 hours today. Doctor Ika and I will oversee the chilldown and freeze from here, as soon as he arrives."

"I’m here, Ma," Ika’s voice came from the back of the room. "Let’s get going."

Jorip turned. "Good to see you Bill. Hey, Jack, you have any of that tar you call coffee? Ika and I are going to need it." Out of nowhere, Jack produced two styrofoam cups of dark, strong coffee. "Thanks." He turned back to Doctor Ika. "Okay, Bill, tell me what you think of Giac’s present status...."

The two men worked together, overseeing the Eletto’s entry into the long sleep. Before they could do more than ensure their friend’s safety, the rescue effort was aborted by the outbreak of World War III. The Jovian Platform, and its only surviving crewmember, moved out of the solar system and into interstellar space, all but forgotten.

Captain’s Log, Stardate 8845.34

The Enterprise is en route from Earth to the colony on Gamma Virginis II, local name, Kahla, ferrying a civil engineer by the name of Anaper Oti, and a construction engineer named Galori Iaffrey to assist with revamping the colony’s water supply and waste disposal systems. Instructions are to aid and assist as needed. Morale is low; the crew of the Enterprise is not looking forward to sitting idly in orbit waiting to be asked to help out.

Kirk closed the captain’s log somewhat dejectedly. One did one’s duty, and followed orders as given, but sometimes he wished he felt he had greater freedom to refuse some of the more routine missions. True, the bridge crew was operating with its usual precision and efficiency, but there was a bored, almost depressed air about their activities. Barring surprises, they expected to spend most of the time sitting idly in a parking orbit around Gamma Virginis II, waiting for the team they were transporting to finish their task. Idleness was one of the few things that the crew of the Enterprise found almost intolerable, and most of the bets were that it would be at least several months before they could call the task finished.

Spock interrupted Kirk’s depressed reverie. "Captain, I have detected a derelict ship, moving at sublight velocity, seven point three astronomical units from our present course. I would recommend diverting our course and intercepting."

Temptation clutched Kirk’s heart, but his sense of duty overcame it. "Plot its trajectory, Spock. Get the best resolution scan you can manage, and report it to Starfleet. I don’t think we can justify diverting to explore a dead hulk."

"If the derelict had been dead, Captain, I would not have suggested intercepting it. However, the scan shows evidence of a surviving Human on board. Considering that the rescue operation would not take more than two point four hours, the delay seems to be negligible to rescue the remaining survivor. It is my opinion that the derelict is sufficiently impaired to warrant the need for urgent intervention."

Kirk nodded, hiding his inner rejoicing at what looked to be a brief episode of relief from the impending tedium. "Very well, Spock. If you’ll transfer the coordinates to Mister Reichard?"

Spock tapped on the control surface. "Done, Captain."

"Mister Reichard, bring us along side this thing. How long will it take?"

"Less than half an hour. It’ll take longer to match the velocity than to get there. It’s moving at 0.15 C."

"Good enough. Take us there, Reichard. Spock, you and McCoy meet me in the transporter room in thirty minutes; we’ll be going extravehicular to rescue this poor soul. Uhura, let Starfleet know that we’re going to divert for a rescue operation, and get me Engineering, please."

"Yes, Captain."

"Scotty here, Captain."

Kirk smiled to himself, wondering if his chief engineer would ever lose his Scots brogue. He hoped not; he’d grown fond of it. "Captain Scott, we’re going to be pulling alongside a derelict. I’m want you to look over the scans, and tell us whether or not this thing will survive being towed to Kahla, and whether or not it’s worth the effort to salvage. We’ll be rescuing the sole survivor."

"Captain Spock’s feedin’ me the scans now. I’ll have an answer on the structural integrity in, oh, fifteen or twenty minutes. But if she can be towed, she’s well worth the effort. I’ll take a bit longer to pin her down, but she’s clearly one of the larger ships from the early to mid twenty-first century, from right before World War Three. We’re dealin’ with a museum piece, and no mistake about it."

"Very good, Scotty. You’ll be transporting us there in thirty minutes. We’ll meet you in the transporter room. Bridge out." A thin smile creased Kirk’s face. It didn’t matter too much what the derelict was, really; if it was at all stable enough to be towed to Gamma Virginis II, it would keep the crew from suffering too much boredom, and from the inevitable pranks boredom seemed to produce.

*****

In just over half an hour, McCoy, Spock and Kirk materialized on the derelict, surrounded by what looked like several acres of frozen farmland. The three surveyed the scene themselves. McCoy pointed off to their left. "Look, hand- made crosses. Our survivor was at least healthy enough to bury the others."

Spock looked up from his tricorder. "Indeed, Doctor. The lone survivor currently appears to be in a hibernaculum." He pointed toward a large structure in the center of the frozen wasteland. "The passage to the surviving crew member goes below, through that doorway." The three moved toward the area Spock was indicating. To their amazement, the door opened without difficulty. Confidently, Spock led the trio down a few corridors to a closed door. The Vulcan studied his tricorder again. "The survivor is on the other side of this airlock. However, it appears that the mechanism operating it has been damaged. I do not believe that we can enter the chamber without decompressing it."

"Bah," McCoy responded. "Let’s get Scotty over here with an emergency seal, and have him cut our way in."

"It might be easier to have Scotty beam the hibernaculum to the Enterprise, Bones. Spock, what do you think?"

The Vulcan considered the readout on his tricorder. "If Captain Scott could construct a replacement power supply for the hibernaculum, and connect it within twelve point seven minutes of its arrival in Sickbay, I believe the transfer is feasible. The hibernaculum appears to be completely self contained, other than an external power source; it even has a modest internal battery for backup power."

"Bones?" Kirk demanded, "Think it’s safe?"

"Hey, remember the trouble we got into thawing Khan, Jim? Other than that, I don’t see a lot of trouble with the transfer. And as I read this scan, whoever’s in there is no superman."

"I agree with Doctor McCoy, Captain," Spock added. "This ship is from the middle of the twenty first century, not the end of the twentieth. I consider it extremely improbable that this individual will pose any risk similar to Khan."

Kirk nodded inside his life support suit. "Then we’ll do it. Spock, you’ve got the coordinates established adequately?"

"Of course, Captain. And Captain Scott should have no difficulty providing a replacement power supply; it appears to run off a standard electric power system."

"Given that you thought it was of Earth origin, Spock, that hardly surprises me," McCoy quipped. "Which reminds me, I forgot to ask, did you or Scotty identify this hulk?"

Giacomo Eletto suddenly realized that he was awake, and that he could hear voices, two of them, talking with each other, somewhere not too far away. He remained motionless, listening.

"Doctor M’Benga, the monitor indicates that the individual should be awakening soon." The voice, from its pitch, was clearly female.

"Thank you, Nurse Webb. I’ll let Doctor McCoy know; he wanted to be here to see the man as soon as possible after his awakening. Captain Kirk will want to be here, too." The voice was male.

"You might want to have Captain Spock join us, Doctor. Given the length of time he’s been asleep, there might be some difficulty with the language."

"Good thinking, Marie. I’ll see if he can join us. We might need to restrain our sleeper when he awakes; Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch might come in handy, too." Eletto heard what sounded like the man walking away. His first clear thought was the realization that Jorip and his friends at NASA must have been unable to rescue him.

Eletto opened his eyes slightly. He could see that he was in one of the beds in what he supposed was a sickbay. Between the reference to a captain, and the layout around him, he guessed he was in the sickbay of an interplanetary ship of significant size. All of the equipment was thoroughly unfamiliar. How long, he wondered, had he been in the hibernaculum? As quickly as the question formed, his train of thought was interrupted. He heard the sound of footsteps approaching, ones that sounded feminine. He shut his eyes. A gentle hand touched his face, as if to feel if he had a fever. Giacomo opened his eyes, looking her squarely in the face. "Tell me, Nurse Webb, when am I?"

She pulled her hand away from him, as if he were suddenly contagious. Eletto smiled inwardly: his guess about the woman’s identity had obviously been correct, judging from her reaction and the look on her face. After a moment composing herself, she responded, "You’re on the starship Enterprise, heading toward Kahla. I thought you were unconscious. How did you know my name?"

"I snooped on your conversation with Doctor M’Benga, Madame. Please forgive me if I have upset you. I appreciate you telling me where I am, even though I’m not sure I understand what you’ve told me, but you’ve still not answered my question: when am I?"

"It’s Stardate 8846.45," Webb stammered.

From behind the nurse, came another voice. "I believe that in the calendar you are more accustomed to using, you would say that it is May 18, 2288."

Eletto turned to face the source of the new voice. The individual was tall, slender, and of a greenish hue. "You don’t look Human," he blurted out, surprised.

"Quite correct," Spock replied. "I am Vulcan, native to the second planet orbiting 40 Eridani A. My name is Spock, at least the name that Humans can pronounce. Would you be willing to tell us who you are?"

"After you’ve wakened me from cold sleep, I figure I owe you that much. I am Doctor Giacomo Eletto, the physician on board the Jovian Platform."

"Well, welcome aboard, Doctor!" McCoy chirped cheerfully, from behind Spock. "Doctor Leonard H. McCoy, at your service. Glad to have another physician on board to share the load. Sit on up, boy, and make yourself comfortable. After the work we’ve put into you over the last several days, you should be pretty much up to grade."

Eletto complied with McCoy’s request. Beside the doctor, there was a third adult male. "You’d be Captain Kirk, I suppose. You’re probably not Doctor M’Benga; M’Benga definitely sounds Swahili, and you don’t look the part."

"You’ve got a sharp ear, or you’re a good guesser. I’m Captain James T. Kirk, and I’m glad to meet you Doctor Eletto. Welcome aboard."

From behind Spock, M’Benga’s voice announced, "I am Doctor M’Benga, Doctor Eletto, and I am glad to see you well. I will, however, have to be more cautious about what I say in your presence, won’t I?"

Eletto nodded in acknowledgement, then looked at the faces around him, finally fixing his eyes on Spock. "Spock, if I may be so bold as to ask you to repeat yourself, what did you say the date was? I just want to be sure that I understood you correctly."

"In the Gregorian calendar system, the date would be May 18, 2288."

Giacomo shook his head, and stared at the floor. A single tear formed, and trickled down one cheek. "2288? I’ve been in cold sleep over two hundred years."

"To be precise, two hundred thirty-five years," Spock corrected.

Giacomo looked up again. "Then they’d all be long since dead. Jorip Ma, Bill Ika, my sons Dave and Matt, their wives Lynn and Adael, all of my grandchildren." A flood of tears welled up in his eyes. "All of my comrades from NASA, everyone that I’ve ever known, that I’ve ever befriended, ever loved. They’re all gone, long gone." Eletto’s head bent forward, his eyes squeezing tightly shut, and for a moment, he was clearly fighting not to start sobbing. Finally, dropping his hand, he wiped the tears off his face. "Sorry. It just hit me all at once. I just suddenly felt, well, felt so totally alone, like there was nowhere in this world where I’d fit. I’m not sure if any of you can quite understand what it feels like."

"Vulcans are trained to control emotion, Doctor, but being half Human, I believe that I understand how you feel: similar to Moses’ self analysis in Exodus 2:22, ‘a stranger in a strange land.’"

"‘Stranger in a strange land,’ yes. If I recall correctly, Moses was back with the children of Israel after being in Midian forty years, and probably feeling out of place. I guess you do understand, better than anyone else here. I’ve got a lot of history to catch up on, Spock. Perhaps you could spare me the occasional off-duty hour, to talk with me about what’s happened while I’ve been asleep?"

The Vulcan nodded. "Indeed. And like Moses, you will no doubt manage to adapt to your new surroundings. I would be happy to help acquaint you with the basics of the history you have missed in the hibernaculum. I am sure that you will have insights from your era that will be remarkably valuable, as well. I am certain that there are numerous individuals in the crew who would be glad to share in them."

Kirk broke into the conversation again. "Myself included; I’m a bit of a history buff. I’m sure that Captain Spock and Doctor McCoy will be happy to start bringing you up to speed on our century."

"Sure will," McCoy grinned. "Especially introducing you to the new medical technology."

Eletto gave McCoy a wry look. "If my arithmetic is up to its usual par, Doctor McCoy, the medical technology of my day is further from yours than medical technology of a Civil War physician was from mine. I’m sure I’ll be able to ogle it and be impressed with your technology, but I doubt that I’ll understand it."

"You underrate yourself, Doctor Eletto," M’Benga responded, before McCoy could say anything. "Most of the technological changes since your time have done little but make the technology more portable, more precise, simpler to use and easier to interpret. The few really major advances, technically speaking, are mainly surgical in nature, and ones that would be comparatively easy for you to master."

"Other than that," McCoy’s drawl added, "It’s just newer drugs for the same old stuff, and a handful of exotic new infections that we’ve imported from other planets. You’ll catch on pretty quickly. You’ll see."

"Thank you for your votes of confidence, gentlemen. However, at over two hundred eighty years old, I’m not promising anything." Eletto felt a sudden wave of dizziness. Spock caught him by one shoulder before he fell.

McCoy looked up at the biomonitor. "Don’t forget you slept most of that time. And it looks like you need some sleep now, too. You’d better lie down before you fall down. One thing about medicine that hasn’t changed is the fact that we hate having to deal with broken necks. Cord crush injuries still don’t do as well as I’d like."

Eletto felt gentle pressure from Spock’s hand. "There is another aspect of medicine that probably has not changed. I suspect that Doctor’s Orders generally outranked Captain’s Orders even in your time, Doctor Eletto, just as they do now."

Eletto surrendered to the firm pressure of the Vulcan’s hand, returning his head to the pillow. To his surprise, he quickly drifted back to sleep.

*****

Only moments seemed to have passed before Giacomo felt his shoulder being gently shaken. "Time to wake up, Doctor Eletto." He recognized the voice as Doctor McCoy’s. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the biomonitor pallet.

"I suppose it’s time for you to start introducing me to twenty-third century medicine?" he asked.

"Oh, eventually, I suppose, but I had a couple of other things I wanted to do first."

"Like what?"

"Well," grinned McCoy, "How about introducing you to such things as twenty-third century showers, twenty-third century clothes, and maybe even a twenty-third century breakfast before we tackle twenty-third century medicine?"

Giacomo returned the grin. "Come to think of it, it’s been over two hundred years since my last shower and snack. That," he looked down at himself, "And I doubt that I’d look professional in my current garb, so I guess a suit of clothing wouldn’t hurt. Hot water’s still on the left?"

McCoy nodded. "Yep, it’s the one with the red dot in the middle. Cold water’s on the right, with a blue dot. We’ve been trying to get the hot water knob to sweat, and the cold water knob to shiver, but so far, no such luck. Scotty’s down in Engineering, still working on that."

Webb appeared from another room. "These should fit you, Doctor Eletto." She handed Giacomo a uniform nearly identical to Doctor McCoy’s.

"Thank you, Nurse. Uh, could you point me toward a shower?"

"Right over there, Doctor," she said, pointing. "If it’s all right with you, I think I have business elsewhere."

"Doctor Eletto will be with us throughout the day, Marie," McCoy added. "Mostly observing, for now, working with Doctor M’Benga and me." Webb nodded her understanding and left. McCoy turned to Eletto "Now, you scuttle into the shower. We’ll have breakfast for you in twenty minutes, then it’s off to work you go."

Eletto looked at the pile of garments in his hands. "I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, or anything, but this is obviously the uniform of a medical officer in, uh, was it Starfleet?"

"It’s Starfleet, and that’s the uniform alright."

"Should I be wearing it, then?"

"Yup. Spock did some checking last night. Seems that you were never discharged from your position in NASA. Not long after you went into the cold sleep, there was quite a ruckus on Earth; I’ll let the history buffs fill you in on that, later. Anyhow, a few years after the ruckus ended, NASA and a handful of other space agencies across the Earth fused into a single organization, the United Earth Space Probe Agency, and that eventually became a part of Starfleet. When that happened, all the civilian employees that didn’t specifically opt out were granted rank commensurate with their time of service. Due to a combination of bureaucratic inefficiency, and your not being officially dead, nowhere along the way were you dropped from the roster, Grandpa. According to the computer records, you’ve got over two hundred fifty years of service in. I can hardly wait to see what the Brass are going to do with you when they find out. Do you realize how much rank that could give you, if they count all the time you were in cold sleep? They’ll have to invent a new rank or something." It was obvious that McCoy was thoroughly amused by the consternation that he expected Eletto’s status would create.

"Don’t worry; I’ve no plans for pulling rank, at least, not until I know what I’m doing, and by then, the Starfleet bureaucrats will have figured out that the best thing to do is to mothball me by making me something or other emeritus."

"Depending on how they figure it, you’ve might have the rank to tell them that’s how to solve it, but for all of me, I’d rather you let ‘em sweat it out all by themselves. Getting back to the present, for the time being, you’ll be functioning as something along the lines of a physician’s assistant, Giac, as you re-learn the trade. The uniform is marked appropriately for that. In a couple of days, Spock, M’Benga and I will get you set up with a re-education program. Now, get your shower, or you’ll miss your first chance at breakfast in centuries "

"Aye, aye, Doctor!" Eletto snapped off a mock salute, and headed for the shower.

*****

After a quick shower and a more leisurely breakfast, Eletto spent the day tagging along with M’Benga and McCoy, studying the new technologies and techniques. The day went swiftly, and as it came to a close, he found himself being escorted by the ever-present McCoy to a cabin.

"E Deck, Giacomo. This part of it is technically officers’ country. Step up to the door, will you?"

Eletto obeyed. The door opened, revealing a modest, but comfortable cabin.

"Scotty keyed the door to your identity earlier today. There will be some clothing in the drawers; Marie will have seen to that, if I know her, and there will be a supply of the usual toiletries. The shower has a built in replicator which can manufacture additional clothing and the like. You’ve already caught on to the rudiments of the readouts and the food dispenser well enough that you should be able to get anything else that you need."

Eletto stepped into the cabin, then turned. "Thank you, Doctor McCoy. See you in the morning, I guess." The door shut behind him, separating him from the rest of the ship. For an instant, Giacomo felt a wave of loneliness wash over him, but he forced it to the side. Later, there would be time to deal with the past, he told himself. Coping with the present was the first issue. He planted himself in front of the computer readout. Feeling somewhat out of place, he spoke to the machine. "Computer, do you have any educational modules available to me?"

"There are 1,347,229 individual adult educational modules available. Please refine request."

"Let’s start with educational modules in pharmacology, specifically on the drugs of choice for specific conditions."

"Accessing. There are 127 modules."

"Begin with medications for bacterial infections, then, starting with the most basic module and moving forward."

"Recommendation: assess current knowledge base prior to selection of initial modules."

Eletto mentally kicked himself. He should have realized he needed to see where he was, first. That was probably why McCoy had decided to wait a couple of days before putting together a plan for his education. "Then let’s start with a general assessment of medical knowledge, so you can create a focused educational plan."

"Accessing. Signal readiness to begin."

"I’m ready." Giacomo settled in to the screen, reading and responding as the assessment modules progressed. Slowly, but steadily, he worked his way through one module after another, until he could barely stay awake. In some ways, he was amazed at how relevant what he’d learned remained; in too many other areas, how totally, uselessly obsolete what had been cutting edge technology in his day had become. The pseudovirion technology that he’d helped develop to attack retroviral DNA had blossomed, come to flower and died, for instance. He sighed, feeling more out of place than ever. Catching up, Giacomo realized, was going to take a lot of time, months if not years. He showered, and lay down to sleep. Whether it was due to his intense study, or to the unfamiliarity of the mattress, Eletto found that sleep escaped him. After tossing and turning for nearly an hour, he decided that it was time to change environment for a while, to try to relax. Dressing again, he left his cabin, carefully making sure he remembered the number on it, and made his way the short distance to a turbolift. The door slid open, and after he entered, shut. Silently, he stood in the small cubicle, unsure where he wanted to go. After a few moments, the turbolift asked, "Destination, please."

"Forward observation deck," Eletto replied, almost without thinking. The turbolift moved swiftly, disgorging Eletto at his chosen destination. Almost reverently, Eletto moved to the large ports that showed the stars in front of the Enterprise, slowly approaching. He stood entranced. Even though he had realized the speeds implicit in interstellar travel, seeing it in the motion of the stars was something altogether different. Slowly though they moved, the stars and their motion held him in their thrall. Behind him, Eletto heard the door of the turbolift open and close, followed by nearly inaudible footfalls. He waited a moment to be sure, then broke the silence. "Tell me, Spock, do you ever tire of seeing the stars moving in front of the ship?"

"One grows accustomed to the sight, Doctor Eletto, but I have not as yet tired of seeing it. I often come here to meditate; there is something about the grandeur of the stars that helps me to remember that I am only a small piece of a much greater universe. Your greeting me by name was unexpected. How did you know who it was?"

Eletto smiled, halfheartedly. "Oh, it wasn’t too hard. At this hour of the day, I guessed that anyone coming up here would likely be looking for me. That narrowed the possibilities down a lot: Doctor McCoy, Doctor M’Benga, Captain Kirk, you and a very few others. Of them all, you are the only one that I know who moves with the almost feline quietness you displayed as you left the turbolift."

Spock nodded. "I see. However, it appears to me that your logic could easily have misled you: not all of your assumptions are beyond question."

"Don’t let me kid you, Spock," Eletto confessed. "The clinching argument was the fact that I could see your reflection on the glass in the port in front of me. All the rest was ad hoc." Eletto turned to the Vulcan. "Were you having trouble sleeping, too?"

"I do not require as much sleep as the rest of the crew, Doctor. I thought we might spend an hour or two conversing, as you suggested yesterday. When I found you had left your quarters, I suspected that I would find you here. If you are tired, there are means of assisting you in achieving a good night’s sleep."

One of Eletto’s hands gestured rejection. "I’m not that tired, not yet, Spock. After having just awakened from one artificial sleep, I’m in no hurry to enter another one. And please, call me Giac. It’s what my friends used to call me." Eletto turned to the port again. "It won’t make the loneliness go away completely, but it’d help a little."

"As you prefer, Giac." Spock moved next to Eletto at the observation port. After studying the field of stars briefly, he pointed to one star, almost exactly forward. "Do you see that star system?"

"The yellowish white binary? Looks like maybe they’re both spectral class F, right?"

"Correct. Both stars are F0 dwarf, main sequence stars, each only slightly more massive than Earth’s sun. The star on the left is the one that Kahla orbits. We should enter the Gamma Virginis system at 14:15 hours tomorrow."

Eletto shook his head in wonder. "It still amazes me to realize that before long, I’ll do what people in my day only dreamt of, you know? Reaching another star system, and perhaps setting foot on a planet that orbits another sun. Once, I thought I’d give anything to do that, but I never thought that I would. Strange to think that now, having lost almost everything, I’ll be given the privilege of seeing a new world." Eletto leaned forward, putting his forehead against the cool of the port. "The adjustment seems easier if I focus on that sort of thing."

"I understand your loneliness. Being half-Human, and half-Vulcan, I have known loneliness myself, as much as one trained in Vulcan emotional control could be expected to do."

Eletto turned to face the Vulcan again. "Having parents from two divergent cultures is hard, isn’t it, Spock? You never really fit into either culture as well as you’d like, not deep inside anyhow, no matter how well you look like you fit externally."

Spock’s eyebrow raised in curiosity, if not surprise. "A most remarkable insight, and an accurate one. How did you reach it?"

"Thanks, but there’s nothing remarkable about it. Giacomo Eletto may be a very Italian name, but I’m not exactly what you’d call fully Italian. My mother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, and until the day she died, she still called me by my Indian name, Adini Noquisi, roughly meaning ‘Stares-at-a-Star’ in English."

"Then you are half American Indian?"

"Not quite. Grandma Eletto, my dad’s mom, was a full-blooded Apache. I’m more Native American than I am anything else. Genetically, anyhow. Grew up on an Indian reservation, learning the ways of the Indians the best I could. But with Dad calling me by my Euro name, and with my partially Euro appearance, somehow I didn’t quite meld. Then, when I moved off the reservation into college and then medical school, my Cherokee and Apache ways made blending with the other students almost impossible. By the time I was done with my medical training, I had become almost totally Euro in outlook." Eletto laughed wryly. "I mean, neither a real Cherokee or Apache would be spilling his guts to someone that is essentially a total stranger, like I’m doing now. Anyhow, when I got back home to the reservation, I was just another Euro to everyone but my immediate family. I should be used to feeling out of place." He stared at Spock for a moment before continuing. "Hey, sorry, Spock. I didn’t mean to drag you into my personal pity party."

"I could not join your ‘pity party’ because I do not pity you. Pity is an emotion Vulcans are trained to avoid. We are trained to show compassion instead."

"That makes you unique, then, I think. I’m thankful that at least one member of the crew feels something other than pity for the poor fossil dredged up from the past." Eletto shook his head. "Drat, I’m doing it again, feeling sorry for myself. Maybe I should talk to Doctor McCoy about that, maybe there’s something to help with it. Wish I could figure out why he delights in calling me Grandpa, too. If you ignore the time I spent frozen, I think I’m actually younger than he is."

Spock’s face flirted with registering amusement, before it regained its controlled appearance. "Perhaps you should ask him, Doctor, when you talk to him about your feelings of isolation and sorrow."

Eletto struggled unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. "I’ll do that. I think I’m going to head back to my quarters, Spock. Thanks for the company and the conversation; it seems to have done me a world of good. Maybe we could do supper tomorrow, when you go off duty?"

"Technically, Doctor Eletto, that would be later today. It is after midnight. However, I would be quite willing to join you at your evening meal."

Morning saw Eletto back in Sickbay, working with M’Benga more than with McCoy. Under M’Benga’s gentle tutelage, Giacomo became increasingly comfortable, then facile with the medical tricorder and the hypospray. Thankfully, there was no call to use the surgical equipment; that was one area that Eletto was comfortable leaving for a much later date. Before the morning was over, M’Benga had decided to let Giacomo work on his own, coming for assistance only when there was some uncertainty Giacomo needed clarified. Surprisingly few individuals balked at his presence. To most of them, he was just a new face in the Medical crew, and with all the new faces that had boarded the ship, hardly anyone noticed one more. Those few who registered surprise seemed satisfied with the explanation that he was returning to clinical medicine after getting rusty from too many years out of contact with direct patient care.

Eletto walked over to a young appearing male, clad in a red and gold Engineering jumper instead of the "mountie" suits that most of the crew wore on duty. He extended his hand to the man, with a bit of a smile. "Good morning. I’m Doctor Eletto. What seems to be the problem?"

The younger man shook hands and released Giac’s hand quickly. "Engineering Cadet Michael Frensa, Doctor. I’m feeling a bit stiff and sore, more than I think I should, and a bit feverish. The big thing that’s worrying me is this rash." He extended a hand, covered with small, reddish-purple blotches. "I’ve got it on my arms, my chest and about everywhere else. I was wondering if it was a toxic reaction to some solvent or other."

Eletto turned the medical tricorder on his patient. "Not too surprising that you feel achy and feverish; you’ve got a temperature of 39.5." He studied the tricorder for a few more minutes, shaking his head. "Look, I think this mediscanner’s malfunctioning. I’ve been having a little trouble with it anyhow." It wasn’t really a lie, Eletto told himself; he just wasn’t admitting that the trouble had been his limited familiarity with it. "If you’ll excuse me a moment, I need to sneak around the corner and see if I can scrounge one that works."

The fellow smiled, looking a little sheepish. "Why does it figure that your machine would decide to fail when you were using it on Engineering personnel? Who says the universe hasn’t got an ironic sense of humor?"

"You’ll never catch me saying that, Cadet. Back in a second, okay?" Eletto hustled to where M’Benga was catching up on paperwork. "Doctor M’Benga? I think I need a hand, here."

M’Benga looked up. "Call me Keme; it’s what I prefer to go by when I’m not in front of patients. What’s up?"

"Can mediscanners go insane?"

"Care to explain that question?" M’Benga was clearly puzzled.

"Got a cadet back there that’s obviously sick, but this machine says it detects glycoproteins specific to Octococcus polyliformis rigeliae. Now, most of the rest of that label doesn’t make sense to me, but if the naming habits of microbiologists haven’t changed a whole lot more than the rest of the language has, that should mean it’s a microbe from Rigel. Maybe I’m out of line, but that just doesn’t seem right to me."

"Nor to me, Giac. We’ve dealt with that particular deadly plague on this ship before, but there’s now a standard inoculation against it. Besides, no one on board has been on Rigel Seven in months. Let me see that mediscanner." Eletto gave his colleague the tricorder. M’Benga studied it for a moment. "Oh, man, am I going to get Hardav for this one." He looked up at Eletto. "Look, Giac, you’ve apparently been the victim of a practical joke that was probably aimed at me. According to this machine, the cadet has Rigelian Fever. Twenty years ago, it might have wiped out the crew. Nowadays, it’s pretty rare off Rigel, almost unheard of. Human to Human transmission is pretty easy, but like I said, Starfleet vaccinates everyone for it if they’re going to Rigel and gives prophylactic treatment, just in case, before they get back from Rigel. Since only Humanoids harbor the microbe, the Federation has been working toward eliminating the disease altogether."

"I take it this Hardav is the one that you figure to have played the joke. Who’s Hardav?"

"Oh, there’s no question about his being the one who did it. No one else could do it, except maybe Spock, and he wouldn’t. Harrison Davids is his real name. Physician’s assistant, and he prefers to work the late shift, when most of the crew is sleeping. That way he can spend more time pulling pranks like this. Brilliant fellow, actually, and he should have been a physician, but I think he offended one too many people. Rigged a mediscanner to do nothing but surface scans, and for females put, ‘Ain’t she fine!’ on the screen. Then he swapped it for my mediscanner. Wouldn’t you know it, the first person I saw that morning was Nyota Uhura, who, in my opinion, is one of the finest ladies on the Enterprise, and possibly the universe. I turned the scanner on her, and almost died of embarrassment. Was I ever thankful that you can’t tell when a Zulu blushes. Well, unless you’re another Zulu, anyhow. When she saw my consternation, she wanted to know what was up. Without thinking, I handed her the mediscanner. I have no intention of telling you what Hardav had programmed to go next to my surface scan. Uhura got Hardav back for both of us."

"Surface scan? You’ve not taught me about that one, Keme."

"It’s used to look for rashes and skin tumors, without the patient disrobing. Got it?"

"I hope Hardav suffered direly for that one. Look, that cadet is waiting, probably thinking he’s dying or something. Want to get a scanner that hasn’t been fiddled with and bail me out?"

"Hardav suffered direly, for several days. Trust me!" M’Benga reached for his mediscanner. "This mediscanner has been at my side for the last couple of days; I can guarantee it’s safe. Come on."

The two men moved back to the area where Frensa waited. As they entered the area, M’Benga began acting as if he were continuing a technical discussion. "I agree; it’s patently ridiculous, Giac. Let’s see what this scanner shows. Probably have to have Scotty work that one over." M’Benga turned the second mediscanner on the cadet. "Mamah weh! Will you look at that? I get the same readings. I just don’t believe it."

Eletto turned to Frensa. "Your roommate happen to be from Rigel?"

"Didn’t have a roommate, Doctor. But my best friend was from Rigel, and his parents came in on their private yacht, especially to see him graduate. We spent a good deal of time celebrating with his folks for a couple of days."

M’Benga smiled widely. "Then the readings make a lot more sense. Son, you’ve picked up Rigelian Fever, probably from your buddy’s parents. He’d have been immune, and since it was their private ship, they’d probably have not had to bother with the official paperwork. I’ll have Doctor Eletto back in a couple of minutes. You’re not allergic to ryetalycycline, are you?"

"No, sir."

"Good. You’re going to be on it for a while and off duty. Don’t go away. Giac, come with me."

Eletto followed M’Benga around the corner. M’Benga set the hypospray for him before speaking. "Good thinking, Giac; I’d never have thought about exposure to the parents of a fellow cadet. Here’s the ryetalycycline; 100mg."

"Don’t be all that impressed with me over that, Keme. Before I shifted into NASA, I did some work with the International Center for Control of Infectious Diseases. That sort of stuff was my daily fare for, oh, six or seven years before Jorip pulled me into NASA to help with a couple of projects."

"Thanks for the personal history, but I’m going to remain impressed. Now go treat your patient."

"I’ll have him get us a list of contacts, too."

"Do that, but I’ll connect with Captain Scott, too, and see who Frensa’s exposed, and get them dealt with. Get back to work, Giac."

Eletto returned to Frensa. "Give me that arm of yours, will you?" The cadet complied, and Eletto applied the hypospray. "You’ll be getting a dose of that daily for a while. Head back to your quarters, son. You’re going to be hiding out there for a couple of days, so you don’t share the Rigelian Fever with any more of your fellow engineers. Once you’re there, we’ll need a listing of your contacts, so we know who you may have exposed." The hypospray hissed as Eletto was talking.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

Eletto watched Frensa leave. There being no one else in Sickbay needing attention, he turned to a readout. "Access files on diagnosis, pathophysiology and treatment of Rigelian Fever."

Before he could do more than read a page or two, M’Benga returned, looking very serious. "Doctor Eletto, we need to talk about your allergies, and what immunizations you’ve had."

Eletto looked up from the readout. "I should have thought to deal with this before you left; I guess I’ve been exposed to Frensa enough to have potentially picked up the disease. I’m not allergic to anything other that ragweed pollen, Keme, which I doubt is in the picture here. Routine immunizations for someone born in 2006; Rigelian Fever wasn’t among them, but since it was shortly after the Eugenics War, neoanthrax vaccine was. So was synthopox, and pseudo-rabies. Usual childhood stuff for the twenty-first century. Any of them going to do me any good?"

M’Benga shook his head. "Not for Rigelian Fever. It looks like you have the privilege of being the first on the list to receive prophylaxis for it. Since you discovered the case, you have also earned the unparalleled privilege of going to Engineering to give as good as you’re about to get."

Eletto pulled up his sleeve. "Why did I know this was coming?" The hypospray hissed, painlessly delivering the medication. "How many folks do I have to dose?" He pulled his sleeve back in place as he spoke.

"Everyone in Engineering, Giac. Including Captain Scott. Lots of luck with him!"

Judging from M’Benga’s grin, Eletto knew he was in trouble. "Metata wingi, eh? Many troubles. Asante, b’wana."

M’Benga straightened up, clearly surprised. "Where did you learn Swahili?"

"From a nurse I worked with once. And you started it, saying ‘Mahma weh!’ you know. Never did figure out why Swahili uses ‘Oh, mama’ rather than ‘Oh, brother.’ Anyhow, to be honest, I only know a few phrases, but they’ve come in handy. If you’ll give me a couple more loaded hyposprays so I’ve got enough ryetalycycline, I’ll head down to the engineering deck."

"Better take a couple loaded with dendromycin, too, just in case someone’s allergic to the ryetalycycline."

"Thanks, Keme."

Loaded and set hyposprays were quickly provided, more than enough to handle the need. As Eletto stepped into the turbolift, he heard M’Benga’s voice saying, "Kwa heri, Eletto!"

"Kwa heri, b’wana! Asante. Or, in English, bye, boss! Thanks." The turbolift door slid shut.

*****

Eletto was still in Engineering, administering medication when the Enterprise reached Gamma Virginis II. Anaper Oti and Galori Iaffrey had joined Kirk on the bridge, for the initial meeting with the colony’s chief executive officer.

"Signal from the surface, Captain," Uhura announced.

"Mainviewer, please, Uhura," Kirk responded.

On the main viewing screen, the image of a lean, middle aged man appeared. "Greetings. I’m Aaron Del Anders, the leader of the colony here on Kahla. Welcome to Kahla, Enterprise. I admit, I’m a little surprised that the Federation used a Constitution class starship to transport two engineers, but I’m glad they did. It looks like we’re going to need the assistance of your medical team, as well."

"I’m Captain James Kirk," he replied. "Allow me to introduce Doctor Anaper Oti, Ph.D. in Civil Engineering. She’s going to be helping redesign your water supply and waste system." Kirk gestured to the statuesque brunette next to him. "And this," Kirk said, turning to the raven haired beauty on his left, "Is Doctor Galori Iaffrey. Her doctorate is in construction engineering; she’ll be helping you implement Doctor Oti’s design." Doctor Iaffrey nodded, her black hair falling across her shoulders as she did.

Del Anders smiled. "Ladies, I’m glad to met you both. The reputation of your remarkable abilities preceded you. No one warned me that you both were beautiful, as well as brilliant. Without doubt, we will have to take steps to keep the eligible bachelors on Kahla from trying to distract you from your efforts."

Oti laughed. "You needn’t worry about that. My new husband is reason enough to keep me focused on my task; I’m eager to get back home to him."

"As for me," Iaffrey added, "I’ve children as old as I suspect your eligible bachelors are, and at least one grandchild on the way. Unless, Anaper, there’s something you haven’t told your mother..." Iaffrey donned a hopeful expression.

Oti rolled her eyes in mock agony. "Mothers! You get home from your honeymoon, and they want you pregnant. His mother bought me a subscription to the Journal for Working Parents. Hint, hint, hint. Aaaughh!"

It was Kirk’s turn to be surprised. "No one warned me I was ferrying a mother-daughter team. I thought you were Centaurian by birth, Doctor Oti."

"Only by marriage, Captain. Zander, my husband, is Centaurian, and being his wife means I’m technically a Centaurian, even though I’m a native of Earth."

Del Anders laughed. "I can see this is going to be an interesting project. I give you both my word that I’m going to stay out of anything but business." His face became more serious. "Captain Kirk, I am informed that you have brought an unusually large structure along with you. None of us were aware that it was expected. Might I be so bold as to ask what it is?"

"It’s a derelict that we rescued along the way, Mister Del Anders. One survivor on board, in suspended animation, that we rescued and resuscitated, otherwise we’d have let another ship do the salvage operation," Kirk responded. "It’s a side issue, as far as your colony is concerned, I expect. Will it be possible for Doctor Oti, Doctor Iaffrey and a few members of our Engineering staff to beam down for an in-depth briefing on the your situation?"

"I’m afraid not. How much were you told about our little problem?"

"Just that there was some sort of problem with the water supply and the waste treatment, and that we needed to help you folks redesign and rebuild that section of the colony’s infrastructure," Iaffrey responded. "We were hoping to get more refined details from you."

"I’ll transfer the specifics to the Enterprise’s computers, if that’s agreeable."

"There should be no trouble, Mister Del Anders," Spock said. "I presume that you use standard Federation data transfer protocols?"

"But of course. Our problem has become rather more complex than we had anticipated, and as I said, we will need the assistance of your medical department, Captain, as well input from Doctors Oti and Iaffrey. It appears that our water supply is contaminated with a remarkably robust unicellular parasite that is surviving our standard water purification procedures. From what we can determine, it gets into the gallbladder, where it sheds incredible numbers of spores into the gut, contaminating the waste stream, and re- infecting the environment. Before you ask, it seems to be too enduring for our waste treatment facility, too. The biggest trouble is that when we tried to eliminate the parasite from the folk who are infected, they start having major side effects from the drug. Worse yet, they’re getting horrendous autoimmune problems if we don’t eliminate it. We lost our colony’s only physician over that. Until your medical team manages to find a drug to eradicate the parasite, you don’t want to visit the surface." Del Anders’ face brightened. "Perhaps your chief medical officer is as magnificent as Doctors Oti and Iaffrey? And single? We’ve lots of eligible bachelors, and we need a new doctor..."

McCoy joined the conversation. "Doctor Leonard McCoy, Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise, at your service." He bowed slightly. "Sorry to disappoint you, and although I'm hardly the stunning beauty these fine ladies are, I'm happily engaged to be married next month. Hopefully I can make up for that by being remarkably clever medically."

"I hope so, Doctor. Essentially the whole colony is infected with the parasite, now, as far as we have been able to determine."

"I’m sure Doctor McCoy will be more than happy to assist in any and every way possible, Mister Del Anders," Kirk interjected. He turned to Spock. "Is the data uploaded?"

"Yes, Captain."

Kirk turned back to the mainviewer. "Is there anything else we can do for the moment?"

Oti interrupted. "Mister Del Anders, does the uploaded data contain recent scans of your colony’s infrastructure?"

"Indeed, Madame, such as our infrastructure is; I’m afraid it’s a bit of a hodge-podge. The scans were completed just two days ago," Aaron Del Anders replied. "We had them especially done, anticipating that you and your mother would need them. And before you ask, Doctor McCoy, we’ve provided scans of infested individuals, and the molecular structures of the antiparasitics that we’ve used unsuccessfully. We are hopeful that you’ll be able to give us some assistance in dealing with the infestations."

"Glad to hear it," McCoy said. "I’ll go over them myself, as soon as I get back to Sickbay."

"Is there anything else, ladies and gentlemen?" Del Anders asked.

Kirk looked at the faces around him; none registered any indication of further need. "It looks like we have what we need for the moment, Mister Del Anders. Unless there is something else, we will talk to you as soon as we have anything worth hearing."

"Quite so. I anticipate it will be a day or two; you’ve quite a lot of data to go over. Goodbye for now, Enterprise." Del Anders broke the connection.

Anaper looked at her mother. "Well, Mom, I guess it’s time we started wrangling with the data. You still sticking with your bet that there’s a break in a couple of lines that’s causing cross contamination?"

"It’s where the odds are, kid. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still wet behind the ears if you think they’ve set up an inadequate purification plant."

"It seems more likely to me than suggesting that they were idiotic enough to lay in sewer lines right next to their water lines," Oti quipped back, as the two entered the turbolift.

Galori pretended shock. "Do you mean to tell me that you honestly believe that the lines weren’t laid out by men? And the bet’s off if the water and sanitation systems are as totally primitive as it sounds like they may be: both of us were assuming they had something organized, even if it was laid out by males. Either way, daughter, I could tell you’ve been married only a couple years without knowing your wedding date, you sweet, naive young..." The turbolift door closed, sheltering the bridge crew from the ongoing banter.

"Sounds like we’ve got us a couple of live wires here, Jim," McCoy opined.

Kirk shook his head. "It probably runs in the family, Bones."

"Congenital, all right. No question about it." McCoy obviously appreciated their sense of humor more than Kirk did. "I’d better head off to Sickbay and see what sense I can make of the data they’ve sent me from the planet." McCoy headed for the turbolift himself. "I bet they’ve overlooked something simple."

"I hope so, Bones," Kirk responded. The turbolift door shut. "But for some reason, I wouldn’t bet on it." Kirk sat down in his chair, wondering what, if anything, he could do to wile away what looked like a prolonged period in orbit. It was obvious that shore leave was out of the question, at least until the problem with the parasite was solved. After staring aimlessly for a moment or two, he snapped back to the present. "Uhura, could you get me Scotty?"

"Of course, Captain."

"Engineerin’ here, Captain. I’m guessin’ you’ve heard about our wee problem?"

"Can’t say I have, Scotty; I had other things on my mind. What’s up?"

"Just a cadet that exposed the lot of us to Rigelian Fever. But there’ll be no problem—we’re gettin’ the proper treatment. What did you need?"

"I wanted some input on the derelict, Scotty. Could you give me a bit of a status report? How badly damaged is it?"

"The Jovian Platform? She’s got a great, ugly, gaping hole in her underside, and a smaller one in her upper dome. Several smaller structural problems, and, of course, the agricultural area’s frozen deader than a cooked haggis. Atmosphere’s gone, except in the medical area, and it’s not the best there. Power supply is primitive, by our standards, but—"

"Enough, Scotty, enough already. Let me rephrase the question. How tough would it be to bring it back to its original status?"

There was a brief pause, as the engineer pondered. "It’d not be too tough, Captain, at least structurally. I’d recommend goin’ to a matter-antimatter power supply, mind you, rather than the fusion reactor she was originally powered by, and I’d use trititanium rather than ultrasteel for the repairs to the hull, except for using transparent aluminum to patch the dome, since that’s what the dome was made of in the first place. Once we had her airtight, and had an atmosphere back in her, making the other repairs’d be easy enough, just time consumin’ to find what needed fixed and fix it with matchin’ components. Are ye thinkin’ what I’m thinking?"

"If you’re thinking that repairing that thing will keep the engineering crew out of trouble, and once it’s fixed, might do the same for some of the rest of the crew, yes. Especially if we start trying to restore the agricultural area, we can keep a lot of folks out of mischief. Willing to go for it, Scotty?"

"Aye, sir! Wi’ pleasure! But d’ye not think we ought to ask Doctor Eletto how he feels about it?"

Before Kirk could react, Eletto’s voice entered the conversation. "Captain, I’m down here in Engineering, dosing folks over their exposure to Rigelian Fever. I’m all for letting the repairs to the Jovian Platform proceed, as long as appropriate steps are taken with the remains of my dead comrades."

"I guarantee that we will take care of them in whatever manner you feel is appropriate, Doctor Eletto. We will discuss the alternatives at your convenience, but certainly we will be pleased to accord them full military honors."

"That’s most generous of you, Captain. Get her repaired, then."

"Thank you, Doctor. Scotty, go to it!"

"Aye, Captain!"

Kirk smiled, contentedly. Suddenly, the time in orbit around Kahla was looking better.

*****

When Giacomo Eletto returned to Sickbay, he found Doctor McCoy pouring over the readout. McCoy heard his approach and looked up. "Howdy, Eletto! M’Benga told me about your diagnostic coup with Frensa and the Rigelian Fever. How’re you doing?"

"Are you kidding? My hands hurt. I’ve gone through over four hyposprays full of ryetalycycline, and nearly two of dendromycin, dosing the entire engineering staff of the Enterprise, and a handful of others that were exposed. I had to threaten Mister Scott with having Spock erase the food dispensing program for haggis before he’d let me give him a prophylaxis for Rigelian Fever. I think he thinks he’s immune to disease because he’s an engineer, or something."

"You should talk Spock into erasing haggis anyhow. Horrible stuff. And you’re not answering my question. How are you doing, Giacomo?"

Giacomo dumped the hyposprays on a table, with a half smile on his face. "I’m a doctor, Doctor McCoy. I’ve just spent the last several hours making a significant difference in the lives of a large number of people by preventing their coming down with a virulent, fatal disease. Wanna guess how I’m doing?"

"Quit evading my question, Grandpa. I can see how Doctor Eletto’s doing; he’s doing fine. I want to know about the person behind that medical facade. How are you doing?"

"You’ve been talking with Spock, haven’t you?"

"Of course, and if I have, what’s the difference? I’ve asked you a perfectly reasonable question, and you’re still evading it. Again, how are you doing, Giacomo?"

Eletto stared at McCoy for a moment. "Who’s asking? Doctor McCoy or a concerned colleague?"

"Are those my only choices? Or can I say both, and a concerned friend as well?"

Eletto walked over to the food dispenser and slipped in a program disk for coffee. The dispenser opened, and Eletto retrieved the contents: a liter carafe and two cups. He sat down next to Doctor McCoy and poured two cups. "You take it black, don’t you?"

"Yes. And you’ve got to be the most artful dodger I’ve ever, at least met since Spock. I’ve never seen anyone use coffee to avoid answering a question before."

Eletto took a swallow before answering. "You haven’t now, either." Giacomo sighed. "I’ve asked myself the same question, Doctor McCoy."

"Leonard, Giac. Len will do in a pinch. Save the title for when you’re sick, or there’s patients hanging around."

"Leonard, then. I’m not exactly sure, to be honest. I’ve only been in your era a short while and I’ve got to admit that I’m still a bit bewildered by everything. Getting me working in medical here was a masterstroke; it’s reassuring me that I may, just may, be able to find a niche. Frensa and the Rigelian Fever was a fortunate thing, as regrettable as it may be medically. I think M’Benga was as surprised by that as I was. A few more months, maybe a year or two, and I think I’ll be comfortable, especially with the self study program you and M’Benga have planned for me. For now," Giacomo sighed again, "for now, I feel adrift. You, Spock, M’Benga, and a handful of others are all the people I know. Oh, I’ve met the entire engineering department, now, but it’s not exactly the same as meeting you, and working here in Sickbay. I’m still feeling pretty lonely. Spock and I are going to grab a bite together, tonight, and I’m going to try to get up to speed socially, a little bit."

"Spock? He’s the last person I’d want to study social skills under, Giac!"

"Um, not what I meant. I was thinking about an overview of history, not input on handling interactions with Humans. I’d be willing to bet that people haven’t changed much there. Show an interest, ask a couple of questions, and let ‘em run off at the mouth while you listen, and they’ll think you’re just the life of the party."

McCoy nodded. "You’re right there. Probably worked in the Babylonian Empire, too. Look, let me get technical a sec, okay? Any feelings of depression? Disorientation?"

"Nothing too bad, and not to the point that it’s interfering with my function. I miss my kids, you understand, and I miss my wife, Louise, more than I can say, but she died in a car accident a year or so before I went up to the Jovian Platform. Once I start getting connected with enough people in this century, I suppose it’ll be only a minor thing."

McCoy refilled his cup of coffee. "Want a warm up, Grandpa?"

Eletto extended his nearly empty cup. "I’d appreciate it. I’d also appreciate it if you’d answer a question for me."

"Sure. What do you want to know?" McCoy poured as he answered.

"What’s with you calling me ‘Grandpa’ all the time? Physiologically, you’re older than I am, and I can’t believe you think it’s still funny the dozenth time you’ve used the nickname. Just trying to make me feel older than you are?"

A surprised grin washed across McCoy’s face. "You haven’t guessed?"

"Would I have asked if I had?"

"Good point. Look, you had a son, David, right?"

"Yes. He and Lynn had a son, Jimmy, who was pushing three, and Lynn was pregnant with their second. Matt and Adael were expecting their first when I went into the cold sleep."

"Right. And James Eletto had a son, who had a daughter, who had a son, whose daughter married my paternal great grandfather. Basically, I just refuse to throw in all of the preliminary ‘greats’ that I should."

Giacomo put his coffee cup down on the table and stared, slack-jawed. "You mean..."

"Yup, I do mean. I may be physiologically older than you, Giac, but I’m your lineal descendent. Grandpa, indeed." McCoy’s face became suddenly serious. "Look, while you were catching some sleep after you’d been awake long enough to tell us who you were, I had Spock hunt up your geographically closest descendant. I was just hoping that we could help you connect in with the twenty-third century by finding you some descendant or other to hook up with. I’d no idea that you and I would be related. To be honest, with both my parents being dead, it sort of feels, well, kind of warm and fuzzy having an older kinsman on board." McCoy’s face registered an almost wistful appearance.

Eletto stood up. "I trust it is still acceptable to hug one’s grandpa, however many greats we’re ignoring?" Eletto spread his arms.

McCoy responded by getting up and wrapping his arms around Eletto, giving and receiving a bear hug. "It sure is, Grandpa. Just don’t tell anyone I can get this maudlin, will you? I don’t want to ruin my image."

"I promise. Especially not Spock. Just don’t sit on my lap and ask me to read you any bedtime stories, okay?"

"I won’t ask you to sing me any lullabies, either, Giac." McCoy grinned happily. "Speaking of Spock," he continued, looking at the chronometer on the wall, "I expect he’ll be arriving shortly to collect on that dinner and discussion engagement you promised him."

Almost as if on cue, the turbolift door opened, and Spock stepped into Sickbay. "Good evening, Doctors. Giac, are you ready for your evening meal?"

"You’d better believe it, Spock," Eletto grinned. "These sadistic workaholics here in medical didn’t even let me grab lunch. I’m famished."

"Several crew members are history enthusiasts, Doctor, and have expressed the desire to have you join them at an open discussion of your era over an informal meal. Would you be willing to do that this evening?"

"As long as they don’t mind my talking between bites."

"Frankly, Giac," McCoy chimed in, "I doubt they’d notice. If I know the crew, you’ll be trying to shout over the deafening munching noise of the lot of ‘em eating everything in sight."

Spock walked over too a wall communicator. "Excellent." Spock triggered the mechanism. "Ensign Carpenter?"

"Yes, Captain Spock?"

"Doctor Eletto has agreed to having you join us. Will the aft dining area be suitable?"

"Meet you there in fifteen minutes?"

Spock turned to Eletto, who nodded agreement. "That will be quite suitable."

"Meet you both there, then. Carpenter out."

Spock turned to Eletto. "There will time to stop at your quarters, if that is necessary."

"Don’t think so, Spock. Out of curiosity, are any of the crew, other than Doctor McCoy, my descendant?"

"Not according to the data files."

Eletto nodded. "Just checking. One surprise was enough. Shall we be on our way?"

Spock responded by moving to the turbolift. As the two entered it, McCoy called out, "I’ll join you folks in a bit, Okay?"

Within minutes, Spock and Eletto stepped out of the turbolift and made their way to the dining area. As they entered it, Eletto noticed that the people in the dining area were all crowded at one end of the hall, and that the ventilating system was running at an almost deafening volume. One of them stepped forward. "Welcome aboard, Doctor Eletto. I’m Ensign Carpenter, and we’ve prepared a little snack for us all to enjoy as we talk."

While Carpenter spoke, the crew shifted to either side, revealing a table laden with assorted foods. At one end of the table, Captain Kirk was standing next to a large charcoal grill, wearing an apron that said "Kiss The Cook!" Eletto’s jaw dropped. "What on Earth?"

Carpenter’s face registered disappointment. "It’s not obvious, sir? I was trying to duplicate the menu of a twenty-first century outdoor barbecue. I’ve sort of made a hobby out of the history of cooking, and..."

Eletto shook his head, interrupting. "You’ve done magnificently, Carpenter. The only mistake you’ve made is that none of the food is burned. Last time I barbecued for the family, the burgers looked like charcoal, and the wieners were, well, strictly carbonized." Kirk grinned broadly at Eletto’s remark, and bowed slightly to acknowledge the implicit compliment. As Eletto continued, Kirk started putting burgers and wieners into buns and stacking them on the table near him. "It’s better than what I ever managed, but otherwise it looks remarkably authentic. However, the proof of the barbecue is in the tasting." With mock seriousness, Eletto moved toward the feast. "Since I’m the only one with first hand knowledge, I suppose I’ve been elected to take the risk." Eletto grabbed a plate and began loading it, munching as he went along. "Mmmm. Yes. Good. Hope there’s enough for the rest of you. Might not be any left when I’m done doing quality control here..."

Carpenter smiled, relieved. "In that case, we’d better tuck in before you hog it all." He grabbed a plate, and the rest followed suit. Even Spock delved into the vegetable dishes provided.

Eletto looked at a tub in the corner. "Is that what I hope it is? Beverages buried in ice?"

"Exactly. Colas, beer, juices, and a few more recent additions to the beverage line, all in authentic aluminum cans." Carpenter was obviously quite proud of the authenticity he had achieved.

Giacomo scrounged in the tub, triumphantly recovering a container of cola, marked with a bright red design. He popped the top and took a deep draught. "Ahh, you’ve even discovered the secret ingredient!" Contentedly, the doctor plopped next to a table. Between bites, he looked up. "Well, theoretically, you guys wanted to pick my brain about history as I remember it. You going to do that, or are you too busy eating?"

From somewhere near the table, a voice called out, "What did you think of how World War Three started, Doc?"

Giacomo turned, unsure who’d asked. "Nothing. How did it start?"

Kirk looked up from the grill. "Oh, come on. It started in 2053. Surely you remember?"

"Nope. When did it start in 2053?" Eletto asked.

"In the Gregorian calendar, March 18, right after Saint Patrick’s day." Giacomo picked the voice out; it was a lady from Communications, one that he’d not met.

"I see. Look, I entered the long sleep on March 14, 2053. My guess is that World War Three is what prevented Jorip Ma and the NASA team from staging my rescue."

"You knew Jorip Ma?" It was Kirk, again, clearly awestruck.

"Knew him? Good grief yes. His daughter Adael married my son Matt. We were good friends for years. In fact, it was Jorip that talked me into shifting into working with NASA. My only grudge against the man was that he could barbecue things better than I could." Giacomo punctuated his comment by taking a bite out of the wiener he was holding. "Which is not, I might add, difficult to do. Carpenter, I hope these wieners don’t have as much fat in ‘em as the ones we used in my day, or I’m going to be plugging up every artery I own."

"All of the flavor, Doc, none of the fat."

"Glad to hear it. Hey, the way you asked that question, it almost sounds like you hold Jorip in something just short of abject awe. How come?"

"You wouldn’t know, would you? He was the mastermind behind taking out Colonel Green’s Command Center in the Australian Outback, virtually ending World War Three."

Giacomo nodded. "Figures. Jorip was a genius, no question there. Probably threw rocks at it, right?"

A voice from the chow line piped up. "Are you kidding? He..."

Before the voice could finish the sentence, Spock interrupted. "A most curious comment, Doctor. Exactly what do you mean by it?"

Eletto turned to face the Vulcan. "Exactly what I said. To be more precise, a silicate asteroid, nudged out of orbit and dropped on the command center. We figured one about two hundred meters in diameter would be more than enough. You have any idea of the size of crater that would make, and the Richter magnitude of the resultant quake?"

The Vulcan nodded. "Assuming a density of approximately three grams per cubic centimeter and an impact velocity of approximately twenty kilometers per second, the crater would have been 2.86 kilometers in diameter, approximately 560 meters deep, and the impact would have released 22.42 megatonnes of energy, registering 6.9 on the Richter scale. Most fascinating. That was precisely how it was done. Might I ask how you knew that?"

"Easy enough, Spock. Jorip and I had discussed the idea privately for years, and had worked out the figures you just quipped off. The way Colonel Green was acting, with his idiotic ideas about purging the gene pool of the evil ‘yellow’ genes, we figured he’d start something sometime. We decided a silicate asteroid would be the best bet; both the tactical and surveillance radar systems had been programmed to ignore those years and years ago. Carbonaceous chondrites wouldn’t have been detected either, but we figured that they’d be too likely to break up before hitting the target. I wanted to have ‘G’day, Mate!’ emblazoned across the front of the asteroid, but we couldn’t figure out how to do it so it would survive the drop through the atmosphere. To be perfectly honest, part of the reason for launching the Jovian Platform was to have a base near enough to the asteroid belt to select and send silicates. I suppose Green figured that out, and sabotaged her, come to think about it, so I’d guess Jorip used a hunk of lunar crust. Anyhow, the Jove was risky, and we all knew it, especially since Green had toured Houston Mission Control and looked over the design. We knew there was a risk that he’d sabotage it, and we decided the risk was worth taking." Eletto sighed. "Twenty three of my closest friends lost their lives taking that risk."

The woman from Communications shook her head. "I can’t believe it. The history books claim no one suspected Colonel Green was planning to try to wipe out the Eastern Coalition of Nations. Obviously, at least you and Jorip Ma could tell it was coming."

"Precisely, Madame."

"Call me Brenda, if you will."

"Very well, Brenda Ifyouwill." There was general laughter. When it died down, Eletto continued. "Actually, there were a lot of us that could see the conflict between Colonel Green and ECON coming. But the North American government wanted to try to appease Colonel Green; to try to keep him happy until they could deal with him in a somewhat more tasteful way than staging an all-out war. On top of that, I guess the quislings and the chamberlains in the government thought that they could get him so hooked on their generosity that he’d be scared to twit them, taking the age-old approach of ‘Peace at any price.’

"But most of the folks I knew, well, we didn’t see it that way. We expected him to keep pushing until either we started the war, or he did. I’d be willing to bet that Colonel Green started it."

Brenda nodded. "You’re exactly right. How did you know?"

"I didn’t know, Brenda. I guessed. I’ve seen his like all too often. Targeting Orientals this time instead of the Jews, but..."

"I would be interested, Doctor," Spock interjected, "in knowing how you deduced that."

"Me, too," Kirk chimed in.

"Just plain horse sense. Bullies are pretty well universal, and reasonably predictable, even if they’re something less than logical. If you don’t rise to their bait, they’ll eventually get angry enough to throw the first punch. Colonel Green was a bully, pure and simple. Oh, he was a liar and a coward, too, as well as a few other things that I won’t repeat in polite company, but a bully at rock bottom nonetheless. Many of the people in my day who saw through Green were waiting for him to make the mistake of starting the fight, and then planning on crushing him shortly afterward."

"Excuse me for asking, Doctor," Brenda said, "but you called Colonel Green’s intention of purging the bad genes from the gene pool ‘idiotic’ if I recall correctly. Now, I agree that wiping out nearly a quarter of the world’s population, and focusing on a single racial group is dumber than a chunk of space rock, but are you trying to tell us that removing, say, the sickle cell gene from the gene pool wouldn’t improve the Human race?"

Giacomo turned to face Brenda again. "You picked a poor gene for your example, Brenda. Although full blown sickle cell anemia is a curse, carrying one sickle gene and one normal gene was a blessing, at one time, in some areas of Africa. It conferred resistance to malaria. When the malarial schizont entered the red blood cell in a sickle cell carrier, the cell would sickle, killing it."

"Well, then, pick something else, like hemophilia maybe, or the gene for Tay- Sachs. There are still some folks who think it would be a good idea to try to improve the Human race artificially."

Eletto shook his head. "You’re parroting exactly the sort of tripe that Green spouted, Brenda. His propaganda was chock full of things about genetic diseases needing purging from the gene pool, mixed in with comments about how most of the world’s devastating infectious diseases started in Mainland China before they spread across the world, devastating the superior genetic stock. Of course, he ignored smallpox, which was of European origin, and all the porphyrias, which were mainly a Mediterranean mutation, and despite harping on China, his main hatred was for the Japanese. But more importantly, the real problem boils down to knowing what is better, and what isn’t. My mother’s father, Stalking Weasel, once told me a story that applies here. Want to hear it?"

Brenda shrugged. "I suppose. I have my doubts that one of your old family stories would enlighten things here, but I’m open."

"You might be surprised. After all, I was born shortly after the end of the Eugenics War, and the ideas that had fueled it were still being actively and hotly discussed. And despite his using a strictly tribal name, Stalking Weasel wasn’t a dumb savage, Brenda. He taught advanced mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of the Cherokees in Oklahoma after he retired from the military. Grandpa said it was an old Indian story, but then, he said all the good stories were. Anyhow, here’s the way Grandpa told it...

"God decided He wanted to make a better creature, called Man. He asked the wolf what this better creature needed. The wolf suggested that the best thing to do would be to make Man more successful at hunting in packs. God then asked the mole, who said that the wolf was wrong: to make a better creature, He would have to make one that could dig faster and further. No, said the fish, if Man is to be better, Man must swim faster. The eagle insisted that improving the creature would require that Man have sharper sight, and better flying ability. One by one, each of the creatures gave its opinion, and they all were basically the same: each creature said that, to build a better creature, the Almighty should make Man like the creature itself, but with more of whatever made that creature distinctive. God, so Grandpa said, rightly decided to ignore their detailed suggestions and take their general idea. He made Man as much like Himself as a finite, mortal being could be."

"What you’re saying is that we really don’t know what would make a better man, right?" Carpenter asked.

"Bingo. We’d just say the better sort of man would have more intelligence, and less disease, things like that. We’d never think of an entirely new, much better quality than we have; frankly, like the animals in Grandpa’s story, we simply couldn’t. Worse yet, in building that Better Man, we’d eliminate the genetic diversity of our kind. The whole thing is, when you see it from that light, utterly asinine. Only a modest handful of people bought into Colonel Green’s theory, really." Eletto shifted in his chair. "But it looks like that handful stirred up a real hornet’s nest of trouble."

Spock nodded. "This casts a new perspective on the records from that time, Doctor Eletto. What can you tell us of the Eugenics War?"

Giacomo chuckled. "You remember that I was born in 2006, don’t you, Spock? I was part of the post-Eugenics war birth explosion."

"I recall that you had just alluded to that fact, Doctor. However, perhaps one of your parents or grandparents might have shared something with you that would be of interest to our group."

Eletto munched on a handful of chips for a moment, clearly in thought. "Well, you’d probably be more interested in the stories told by Grandfather Stalking Weasel, especially about how he was able to penetrate Khan’s headquarters."

"I know the names of every individual involved in that action, Doc, and there was no one by that name in the team. Nor does anyone know how they got into the command center. Are you sure your grandpa wasn’t just pulling your leg?"

Eletto turned, to realize it was Carpenter speaking. "Maybe the name King rings a bell? Colonel Theodore Andrew King, United States Marine Corps?"

"Ring a bell? Man, he led the expedition."

"I know. In fact, he volunteered to lead it, even though everyone else thought it was a suicide mission. He knew otherwise. Ted King was the first one to penetrate Khan’s defense perimeter, actually, and managed to cut power to it so that the rest of the assault team could move in to finish the job off. With the command center taken, the war was pretty much over. Unfortunately, Khan had disappeared, along with most of his kind; no one ever figured out where, but given that none of them ever showed their faces again, we assumed they’d all died, or maybe committed mass suicide."

McCoy’s voice came from the back of the room. "Wrong on both counts, Giac. That’s a story for later."

Eletto turned to face his colleague. "Hi, Doctor McCoy. Welcome to the party. I’ll hold you to that." He turned to face Carpenter again. "Anyhow Ted King rapidly got sick and tired of all the hoopla over his being such a big hero and all, so he retired and returned to the Cherokee reservation. Except for his pension checks from the military, he left the name Ted King behind forever. It wasn’t until he died that my mother told me out that Stalking Weasel had ever been called anything else."

Carpenter’s eyes widened tremendously. "You mean your grandfather Stalking Weasel was Ted King?"

"You bet. And he told me how he got past Khan’s perimeter. Even taught me how to do it."

Spock’s eyebrow almost reached his hairline. "I think we all would be most interested in hearing about it, Doctor. It is a mystery that has been the focus of considerable speculation."

Eletto was pensive for a moment. "Well, I guess after two hundred plus years, I don’t need to worry about a breach of national security." There was a polite round of laughter before Eletto continued. "You have to remember that Khan’s outpost was in India. That was the trick, you see, because even though Khan had no use for the Hindu faith himself—Grandpa said the only thing he could figure that Khan worshipped was Khan, if you see what I mean—Khan had to avoid anything that ran too badly counter to Hinduism. What that boiled down to was that Khan had to arrange for his automated defense perimeter to ignore cattle. First of all, there were so many of them wandering around freely that he’d have used up an unbelievable amount of energy killing the ones that got too close. Secondly, the Hindus would have had ten fits if he killed even one, and they’d have been storming his command center in a fractured second over it.

"Anyhow, Stalking Weasel ditched all his weapons, and everything else he thought that Khan’s surveillance system might detect. Then, he managed to suspend himself under a Brahman bull, and rode it past the defenses. By tickling one leg, and holding another one back a little, he was able to guide the bull just about anywhere he wanted. Grandpa said it was an old American Indian trick, and pretty simple, really, if you think about it. Anyhow, once he was inside, all he had to do was short out the main power bus, which wasn’t really all that hard to do. When the perimeter was down, the rest of the troops were in and it was all over."

Carpenter shook his head in amazement. "Who’d have guessed it? But it fits the facts perfectly."

Spock nodded agreement. "Remarkable. It is the same trick the mythical Ulysses used to escape Cyclops. You will, I am sure, be willing to share this with the Federation historians?"

"Why not? Maybe they’ll teach me a thing or two worth knowing in return."

Kirk grinned. "Don’t bank on it."

Eletto chuckled. "Now there’s one thing that must not have changed. Teachers teach what interests them, not necessarily what you need to know to get by." There was a chorus of laughter again. "Let’s get to something less gloomy than war, folks. Anyone want to talk about sports in the twenty first century?"

No one bit on that, but a string of other questions were forthcoming. It was almost midnight before McCoy insisted on Eletto leaving the gathering. "I need him awake and alert tomorrow, folks," McCoy asserted. "I’m going to be busy trying to sort out what to do over that parasite on Kahla, so Doctor Eletto’s going to have to pick up the slack." He took Eletto’s arm and dragged him to the turbolift. Once the door slid shut, and the turbolift was in motion, he turned to Eletto. "Well, Grandpa?"

Giacomo smiled. "Better, Leonard. Not home free, but better."

Oti and Iaffrey stepped off the turbolift in Engineering, and began looking for Captain Scott. It didn’t take long to find him. Over the railing of the balcony they were on, they could see and hear him very clearly.

"Ye should be doing this in hard vacuum, rather than just in your suits, ye sloppy sassenachs! Now move! I want those impulse engines phased and tuned to less than a ten thousandth of perfect, and I want it done in five minutes, d’ye hear me? I’ll not tolerate sloppy work in this department!"

Anaper looked over at Galori. "Mom, I think this is a good time to get while the getting’s good. That is one man in a towering rage."

"Daughter, you are dead right. He is definitely not in the right mood for asking favors from. This is a good time to sneak out before we’re noticed." Galori started moving toward the turbolift.

Before they could reach the turbolift, Scott’s brogue reached them. "Ladies! To what do I owe the honor of your gracin’ Engineering with your presence?"

Galori looked at her daughter. "We’ve been caught, daughter."

Anaper nodded. "Caught dead to rights. At least he doesn’t sound mad at us, Mom. Maybe we’ll survive." She turned to face the Scotsman. "We were hoping to talk to you about a thing or two. But since you’re obviously busy…"

"Not a bit of it, ladies. If you’ll step into my office, I’ll be with you in a moment." Scott turned back to the cadets, slaving rapidly to comply with Scott’s demands. "Indri! You’re in charge of this sorry batch of cadets! I’ve business in my office. Report to me there when they’re done. And they’d better have it perfect!"

"Yes, sir, Captain Scott, sir!" Indri turned to the cadets. "You heard him! Now get to it! And I’m not going to have you greenies make me look anything less than brilliant, do you hear me?"

Scott turned to the two women. "Please, allow me to offer you some refreshment in my office. It’ll be much quieter, I promise you." He ushered them into his office. "What can I offer you?"

"Lemonade would be fine, Captain Scott, preferably tart and cold," Galori responded.

"The same for me, if it’s not too much trouble, Captain," Anaper agreed.

Scott turned to the food dispenser, getting a pitcher and three glasses. He turned back, serving the women. "Doctor Oti, Doctor Iaffrey, I hope it’s to your tastes."

Anaper took a sip. "It’s magnificent, Captain Scott. But please, it’s Anaper and Galori. We’re informal."

"Good enough, Anaper. And please, call me Scotty. It’s only with the cadets and the like that I insist on the title."

"I’m surprised you’re in such a good mood, Scotty," Anaper ventured. "You sounded so, well, so utterly furious at the cadets."

The engineer chuckled. "Ah, my pretended fury fooled you, too? Good. Then they’ll likely believe I’m in here hunting for a claymore to behead the lot of them if they don’t get it right."

Anaper looked scandalized. "You were faking it? Why?"

The Scot smiled kindly. "You have to understand, lassie, that I have to train these cadets to face any kind o’engineering disaster, and fix it quickly and correctly under hostile fire. You don’t learn to do that without a lot of experience at fixing things under hostile conditions. Since we’ve no Klingons or Romulans to put us under fire, I’ve got to be their stressful and hostile condition. I can’t have them falling apart in combat." For a moment, Scott remembered his nephew holding his post, dying there when others with less or poorer training had fled in panic. He continued, choosing not to mention the painful memory. "It’s not just their lives at stake, y’see: it could be the lives of the entire crew of a starship. If they fail now, all they have to do is face my artificial fury. If they fail in combat, they’re dead. I forgive. Klingons, Romulans, Tholians and all, they haven’t a scrap of forgiveness anywhere in ‘em. Best that they face the consequences now, don’t you think?"

Anaper turned to her mother, obviously shocked. "Don’t look at me, child. Remember? I’m the woman you said had a Ph.D. from Mean Mommy School when you were a kid. I seem to remember having the nickname ‘Attila the Honey’ and hearing you call your father ‘Colonel Green’ behind our backs. I’m on Scotty’s side on this one." Galori turned to face Scott. "You’ve never married, I’ll bet."

"Right enough, Galori. These cadets are the only bairns I’ll ever have. I’ll not let them leave here anything but properly prepared t’face the worst the universe has t’throw at them. But I doubt that you’re here to trade pleasantries over training engineering cadets."

Galori nodded. "You’re right there. You’re almost a legend in Starfleet, for your own skills, and the skills of the cadets you’ve trained. We were sort of hoping to tap into those legendary skills, especially your legendary ability to improvise."

"The flattery is appreciated, Madame, but I’m at your service with it or without it. What can I do for you two?"

"We were hoping," Anaper said, "That you’d have a trick or two up your sleeve to speed the manufacturing and installation of the supply and return conduits for the water and waste water systems. As near as we can tell, it could take over a year using the standard methods."

"Closer to a year and a half, as I figure it," Galori added. "I’m sure the crew of the Enterprise would hate to be idle for that long."

"Aye, that we would. Almost as much as Anaper would hate being that long parted from her new husband. I’ll be wanting to see the schematics, first. Could you display them on the wall monitor?"

"Easily enough." Galori walked over to a control surface, and tapped for a moment or two. Across from Scott, the wall-sized viewscreen burst into life. "This is the general structure of the system Anaper and I have put together, superimposed on the topography. After we looked at the haphazard connecting of several partially adequate water supplies, and the utterly chaotic waste water treatment system, it seemed to us better to start from scratch, and build all of it from the ground up, so to speak. There are a few points that have us concerned, especially with respect to excavating to lay the conduits. For instance…"

"Before you start showin’ me the problems, could I have a wee peek at it on my own? It’ll take only a moment or two."

Galori nodded her assent. The engineer stared at the wall screen for a moment, his face a frozen mask of concentration. After a short period, his hand slipped to the control surface on his desk, and began moving rapidly. The cursor began flying across the screen. Scott zoomed in and out on numerous areas of the design, the image moving faster than Anaper and Galori could follow. Nearly ten minutes passed, with Scott moving nothing but one hand. As suddenly as he had dropped into his concentrated examination of the plans, Scott returned. "There’s a place or two that need a wee bit of adjusting, you’re right. But I think Indri and I can give you a bit of help. ‘Twill be interesting to use the firepower of a Constitution class starship for something other than combat. We’ll need an inventory of what you’ll need, of course. If you’d base your plans on sections of conduit, say, a hundred meters long?"

"Can do. You’ll want diameters for the thermocrete castings, as well," Galori opined.

"And detailed specifications for the confluence chambers and the access chambers," Anaper added.

"Diameters, of course. But the confluence and access chambers—most of them are made as a single block. If you’d be willing to let us, I think Indri and I can come up with a basic module that we can assemble into the larger chambers— make a lot of those, and lash ‘em together to make what you need. It’d save a good bit of time."

"Fine by me," Anaper responded.

"Now, as to the materials," Scott continued, "You were planning to use cast thermocrete, no doubt with appropriate reinforcement. Would you be willin’ to consider something else, like basalt or granite for your larger conduits?"

"Of course, but I would have thought that the thermocrete would be easier to work with. Granite would be fine, but cutting and shaping it would take a lot of time," Galori observed.

"We’ve phasers on the Enterprise that can cut trititanium like butter. I don’t think granite will be a major problem. And there’s a wee trick or two with the transporter that might save us some time digging trenches to put these things in. If you’re willing, of course."

Anaper took the lead, again. "Any trick you’ve got, I’m for. The Enterprise is nice, but I’m starting to miss Zander, my husband. Give it all you’ve got, Scotty. How long before you’re ready to start strutting your engineering stuff?"

Scott’s brow furrowed with concentration for a moment. "Well, the main thing will be makin’ a bit of a design modification to the cargo transporter; that’s a tricky thing to do. A week, maybe a day or so more, to get it done up to grade. Will that be soon enough?"

One of Galori’s eyebrows raised in surprise. "Soon enough? We were afraid of twice that, maybe worse. I can see your reputation as an engineering miracle worker is well deserved. It’ll be wonderful. Does that include getting a design done for a base module for the confluence chambers and all?"

"It does indeed; there will be a good bit of that time that will be cadets buildin’ and testin’ circuits, so Indri and I can be working on the module. Is there anything else you’ll be needing?"

"Not that I can see, just yet. If we find anything, we’ll call, trust me," Galori replied. "I trust that if you have any thoughts on modifications of the layout, you’ll share them with us?"

"Of course. Not that I’m likely to improve on your work, of course."

Anaper looked at her mother out of the corner of one eye. "This, from the man who claimed he wasn’t into flattery. We’d better watch this one, Mom."

"Hush, child." Galori stood, Anaper and the chief engineer doing likewise. "Thank you for your input, Captain Scott." She extended her hand. "When you’ve got things adjusted and done to your satisfaction, perhaps you and Indri can join Anaper and I for supper, as we go through the plans?"

The Scotsman accepted the offered hand and shook it. "Flattery may get you nowhere, but bribery is amazingly effective. I’ll consider that a bargain, if Indri’s willing."

"Done!" Anaper extended her hand as well, shaking Scott’s. "Let us know!"

The two ladies headed for the turbolift. Scott returned to the diagram on the wall screen, studying it. A moment or two later, Indri entered the office.

"Ah, Indri, how did the impulse engines fare under the cadets’ tender attentions?"

"Tuned and phased to less than one part in ten million of perfect, Captain. There’s three or four in this new crop of cadets that show the hint of real genius. Only two or three appear to have suffered major brain damage during training. If they don’t shape up, we can always get them assigned to a starbase."

"Aye, Indri, or to teaching at the Academy."

Indri nodded gravely. "Perhaps so, but I have hopes they’re not quite that hopeless. I take it that the ladies were here for assistance on the project on Kahla?"

Scott nodded. "Exactly so. They went for the granite, as we’d hoped. I’ve found a large, remarkably homogeneous, granitic pluton on one of Gamma Virginis One’s moons that should have all the material we’ll need. How goes the modified transporter circuitry?"

"The last module should be done later today. Testing tonight, but I doubt there will be any trouble. We should be able to transport hundred meter cylinders of any diameter, and bury them in the ground without trouble. I’ve inserted a secure system that will allow you and I to switch to and from the standard to the modified mode without having to do any rewiring."

"Did you put in an automatic reversion to standard?"

Indri nodded. "Naturally. After two minutes of idleness, it reverts. The gaskets to make the seals water tight should be a pushover to produce. Even the least competent of our cadets could do them blindfolded. If all goes as planned, we should be able to start shaping and burying granite in four, or at the most five days."

"Excellent. Now, let’s sit down with their plan. They bought the idea of the modular design for the confluence chambers and access chambers without even seeing the plans we’d worked out, so we’re well along. But there is a place or two that I think we could adjust and improve things a bit. They’ve invited us to a wee bit of a meal with them once we have things the way we want them, so we can talk it over with them. We can time that to suit your convenience."

"I figured they’d want to do that; they’ve been doing that with others in the crew, I guess mostly for the sake of having company. Spoc