Bashir turned his gaze toward Krissten, who was gripping the edge of the surgical table with white knuckles. “Have you had any low-gee training, Ensign?” Bashir said.
“Not for years and years,” she said, still clutching the table like a rock-climber who had just watched a buddy plummet into an abyss. Krissten did not seem reassured by Candlewood’s deft, deliberate steps as he went off corpsman duty and exited the medical bay. “Kol is a fan of zero-gee recreation. Not me.”
Bashir smiled, recalling a low-gee hoverball tournament he had once played against Krissten’s girlfriend, Deputy Etana Kol, who had won two out of three of those matches. He suppressed a sudden urge to show off his genetically enhanced reflexes.
“Just move carefully and slowly,” he said. “I’ll help you stow the surgical equipment.”
He reached for the exoscalpel that he had placed on the instrument tray and lifted it. He scowled when he noticed that it was still activated. Could have sliced my thumb off if I’d picked the damned thing up wrong. How could I have forgot to turn it off?
He moved his thumb toward the “off” toggle.
For a moment Bashir’s hand seemed to defy him, and he lost his grip on the instrument. It felt as though his hand had been slickened with tetralubisol. Damned gravity.
He bobbled the device, grabbing at the still-active exoscalpel as it fell—and succeeded only in batting it toward his patient. Krissten yelped as she, too, grabbed for the instrument, bumping Bashir and knocking him down in the process.
The alien on the biobed screamed as the exoscalpel sunk hilt-deep into its chest, precisely where a human’s heart would have been.
“Doctor, it was as much my fault as yours,” Krissten said after they had repaired the damage and had once again stabilized the patient. Luckily, the exoscalpel had not hit anything vital.
Bashir stood silently beside his again-unconscious patient, the crisis past, the surgical gowns already doffed and in the matter recycler. The healthiest five aliens were already back aboard their own ship. Bashir rubbed his hands together. But no matter how hard he scrubbed, they didn’t feel quite clean.
Finally he said, “Thank you, Ensign. But you weren’t the one who forgot to deactivate the exoscalpel.”
She wasn’t ready to let it go. “You’re not used to lunar gravity, Julian.”
“It shouldn’t have been a problem for me,” he said with an emphatic shake of the head.
Krissten’s face was a study in concern. “An accident like that could have happened to anyone, under the circumstances.”
Not to anyone with my talents. Not to anyone with my genetically engineered reflexes and stamina.
Not tome.
It occurred to him for the first time that something substantive might really be wrong with him. He recalled the vertiginous, seconds-long eternity during which the shuttlecraft Saganhad collided with the giant alien artifact’s interdimensional wake. The shuttle had been tossed about on the quantum foam like a cork on some wine-dark cosmic sea. Could the encounter have caused the Sagan’s crew to suffer unpredictable deleterious effects?
But why thiseffect? It made no sense. And neither Ezri nor Nog had complained of any symptoms. Perhaps he was jumping at shadows.
He forced a weak smile. “Maybe you’re right, Krissten. Thank you.”
Behind Bashir, the medical bay door hissed open to admit someone.
“I prescribe rest for the entire medical staff,” Krissten said, smiling back at him. “Then we can forget that any of this ever happened.”
If only it were that easy.
Bashir thanked the ensign, then turned to the doorway.
Ezri stood on the threshold. He wondered for a disjointed instant just how much she had overheard.
“I was curious about the last of our patients,” she said as she entered. Then she scowled and gripped the door-jamb tightly. “And what the hell’s going on with the gravity in here?”
Bashir gave her a quick explanation of the environmental needs of his alien patients, as well as an update on their steadily improving condition.
“Do you think these people might be able to shed some light on that alien structure we ran into out there?” she said. “Commander Vaughn is getting pretty curious.”
Bashir smiled wryly at her understatement. Vaughn had stopped by earlier, during the busiest part of the surgical procedures. He’d obviously been beside himself with questions about the two groups of aliens, their conflict, and the weird structure that the Saganhad encountered out in the Oort cloud—questions that he’d had no opportunity to ask.
“There’s no way to know what they can tell us,” Bashir said, “until we figure out how to talk to them.”
“Good point. Until then, can you spare some time to help me brief Commander Vaughn and the rest of the senior staff about our survey mission?”
Bashir glanced back at Krissten, who nodded affirmatively. Her wan smile reminded him of how fidgety she always became during staff briefings. She was obviously content to stay here and watch over the last four convalescing aliens, letting the officers sit shuffling padds around a mess hall conference table. She evidently liked formal meetings a good deal less than she did the lowered gravity.
“I’ll call you immediately if anyone’s condition changes, Doctor,” Krissten said, making an effort to appear casual while clinging to the side of one of the biobeds as though her very life depended on it.
“All right,” Bashir said. Smiling, he turned to Ezri. “After you, fearless leader. Let’s regale everyone with our tales of derring-do from the far frontier.”
* * *
Because of the alien ship’s low gravity and dim, amber-colored illumination, Nog moved about with extreme care. Junior engineers Permenter and Senkowski seemed completely involved in their attempt to mime basic engineering concepts to the tall, thin pentaped who seemed to be in charge of the engine room.
Nog was glad that Shar had come along as well. Although the Andorian science officer was still more tight-lipped than usual, Nog hoped that getting engaged in the repairs to the alien ship would help draw him out, encourage him to discuss whatever had been bothering him.
Nog noticed that Shar, who was absently holding a hyperspanner, was looking in his direction. Shar’s antennae twitched in evident curiosity.
“Are you unwell, Nog?” Shar said.
“I’m fine,” Nog lied. In fact, he felt anything butfine. The itch he’d first begun to notice while parking the Saganhad continued unabated and seemed to be intensifying. Until maybe forty minutes ago, Nog had been willing to consider Ezri’s suggestion that the itching might have been psychosomatic, something related to his acknowledged aversion to being forced against his better judgment to share space aboard DS9 with Taran’atar. But now it felt as though hundreds of carnivorous Hupyrian beetle larvae were building a hive in his biosynthetic leg. How could the cause of this be something in his head?
He promised himself that he’d run, not walk, to the Defiant’s medical bay just as soon as he was certain that this wreck of a warp core wasn’t going to blow up in everyone’s face. Until then, he’d cope with the discomfort. Concentrate past it. Suck it up.
Deal with it, Cadet! Deal with it!
He recalled his earliest Academy days. New plebe cadets couldn’t afford to display any sign of weakness. Especially notFerengi cadets.For some reason he couldn’t fathom, reminding himself that his lowly cadet days now lay more than two years behind him was doing precious little to bolster his confidence.