Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Daylight.

Filtering down through the water, dancing beams of sunlight hopelessly diffracted, shining, dazzling, beautiful.  Darwin kicked his tail and raced up through them, excited by the thought of breathing real air again.  The strange, irresistible humans who lived where they should not, did not understand the need for this.  The need to feel the sun through the water, to see the sky.  They could not understand it, for why else would they choose to live down there?

The sea was his home, true.  But he breathed air, the last legacy of the way his kind once lived, before they crawled back into the ocean.  Lucas had explained this to him once, trying to give him a sense of history, and then had fed him a fish.  Darwin had enjoyed the fish.  He enjoyed being with Lucas, too, and Bridger, most of the humans in fact.  Liked the fuss that they made of him, was impressed that they had learnt his language, liked the way that they had adapted their world to accommodate him.  But he was still a creature of the wild, a spirit of the sea, and he needed to be free.

Kicking harder, wanting to breathe, Darwin broke the surface and cried out for the sheer pleasure of it.  The humans had been annoying him, asking so many questions that he could not answer.  Had asked him to explain the strange, golden, non-human that had come on board the seaQuest, when he could not.  So many questions, it had been a tremendous relief when Kristen had let him out to feed.  Down below, he knew, they would all still be asking one another their questions, not understanding.

Darwin understood.  The shining one had been there, and now was not.  They would worry and fret, and when he returned they would ask him more questions, run more tests.  And still the shining creature would not reappear, because it was gone.  It puzzled him why they cared so much for something that was no longer a problem. 

But then, the humans frequently puzzled him.  It was nothing new.  It was one of the reasons that he stayed, because they were so puzzling and interesting to him.  That, and the fish.

Singing, with no-one to hear, Darwin glided through the clear water, in no hurry to return.  This was what was important.  This was what mattered.  The sheer, pure joy of being alive, of being a dolphin, of swimming, wild and free.

Dolphin swim!

The humans did not understand.  But they could not swim like he could, so he forgave them, benevolently.

And leapt, in a perfect arc, the sun glistening on his back as he slid quietly beneath the waves, still singing.

-----

Crocker needed a drink.

He really, really needed a drink.

Sitting in Medbay, with Doctor Westphalen and Doctor Levin running all kinds of tests on him, Crocker was as near as it was possible for him to get to being mutinous.  He was the eighth of the thirty-four crewmembers who had been ‘killed’ by the alien visitor to be examined, and from the looks on the two doctors faces, they were learning no more from him than they had from any of the others.

Crocker did not particularly like Levin.  The man was a little strange, to Crocker’s way of thinking.  He was interested in the paranormal, which had proved useful during their encounter with the sunken wreck of the George and all she contained, but generally that was a subject Crocker liked to steer as far clear of as he could.

Some would say it’s bad luck having someone like that on board.

Crocker silenced his own doubts, and kept his thoughts to himself.  He was security chief, and could not afford to be prejudiced.  But all the same...

He glanced over at Levin warily.  The man’s long dark hair tied back into a ponytail, and his large protruding eyes, combined with his height and pallor all added together to create an appearance that would not have looked out of place on the main villain in some of the more gory psycho movies Krieg had in his vast collection.  The fact that Doctor Levin was one of the most calm and peaceful men on the boat did nothing to ease Crocker’s fears.

“They always seem quiet and nice in the movies, too,” he muttered under his breath. The two doctors turned around, not having heard him properly.

“Did you say something, Chief?” Kristen enquired.

“Jus’ wondering when I’d get out of here.”

She smiled, and folded her arms across her chest.  “You can go.  Thank you for your time.  Send the next one in as you leave.”

Levin just stared at him, impassive.  Crocker quickly slid off the end of the bed and hurried out, almost forgetting in his haste to get away that he should call Ensign Fulbright.

“Chief!”

Crocker looked around at the sound of Krieg’s voice.  He had seen the supply officer talking to Chief Shan as he was sent in, and was a little surprised to find him still there.

“What did you want, Ben?” he asked a little suspiciously.  The victim of too many of the man’s money-making schemes, he was always on his guard these days when Krieg was around.

The supply officer grinned at him broadly, and Crocker groaned inwardly.

Here we go again.

”I’m not buying anything,” he added for good measure.  The grin faded, and Crocker watched the younger man’s eyebrows climb higher up his face, as his eyes widened in self-righteous indignation.

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.  It was... I just wanted to know... what was it like being shot by an alien ray-gun?”

Crocker stared at the supply officer in disbelief.

“What was it like...?” he echoed slowly.  “What the heck do you need to know that for?”

“I’m interested!”

Crocker narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and folded his arms across his thick chest.  “And just why are you interested, Ben?  What’s in it for you?  Thinking of selling an exclusive story to the media, are we?  The captain’s orders...”

“The captain’s orders are that we don’t breathe a word of this to anyone other than those who already know,” Ben finished quickly for him.  “No, Chief, I’d never say anything.  You don’t know what it meant to me, being part of that exploratory group.  Going out there, into the unknown...” his gaze grew distant, remembering, and Crocker was sure that the man’s eyes were starting to glaze over.  “An alien spaceship...a real alien spaceship, and I got to take a look first hand, before anyone else!”

“Ben...”

“I was the first one, you know?  The first one to actually see the alien?  You should’ve come with us, Chief, the ship was incredible!”

Crocker pushed back his cap, and scratched at his head, wondering what he had done to deserve this and not entirely convinced that Ben was not about to launch into an elaborate scam.  “Reckon I saw enough of it from where I was.  More than enough.  If I’d wanted to explore alien spaceships I’d’ve joined the space program.”

Ben was still caught up in his own fascination with the subject.  “I wish I had.  Hey,” his face broke into an enthusiastic grin.  “Maybe I could ask Commander Keller to put a word in for me?  Get me transferred?  Whaddaya think?”

Crocker laughed, and patted the younger man on the shoulder.  “I think you’re too old, Ben, and unless you pull your head out of the clouds pretty soon you’re never gonna be anything more than a lieutenant in the navy.  Now, if you don’t mind, the captain wants me to put together a report on this...”

The security chief started to walk off down the corridor, but Krieg followed, totally undaunted by the man’s words.

“Too old!  That’s a new one!  No-one’s ever said I was too old before!” He was grinning from ear to ear, still on an all-time high from the visit to the alien ship.  Nothing was going to bring him down in the near future, Crocker could tell.

 Why me?  There’s over sixty people left on this ship, why did he have to decide to share this with me?!

“Too childish, too immature...” Krieg was prattling on, totally oblivious to the security chief’s lack of interest.  “Too...”

“Ben,” Crocker put up a hand to stop him.  “I’ve gotta go.”

Mercifully, the MAG-LEV doors a few feet down the corridor opened at that moment, and Crocker made a break for it.

”But you didn’t tell me what it was like being shot,” he heard Krieg call plaintively as the doors slid closed.

As the shuttle raced back towards his quarters, Crocker sat back and closed his eyes, exhausted mentally and physically by the day’s events.  He did not want to think about the alien ship, or about being shot, or the terrible, unacceptable face of the creature that had loomed up out of the darkness at him.  But he could not help it.  As soon as he closed his eyes it was there, golden and faintly glowing, raising its arm towards him, never giving him a chance.

And it had felt like nothing, in the end, being shot.  Once, Crocker had caught a bullet in the shoulder in the line of duty, and several times he had been battered by solid objects.  But on each of those occasions it had hurt, the pain had been something solid and real to cling to, telling him that he was still alive.

It had been like being hit by a flash of light, then abruptly being in another place.  Totally painless, and soundless, and without any sensation so to speak.  Just suddenly he had been somewhere else.

He had looked the creature in the face, been afraid, but stood his ground.  That was his job, no matter how great the risk.  But the creature had never given him a chance, firing at him before he could even aim his gun properly.  It had been very clear in his mind, as the charge hit him, that he should have stayed with the others and protected them.

Yet here was Krieg, wandering around bold as brass, ecstatic from the encounter, totally unafraid.  To Crocker’s way of thinking, however, it was not bravery but foolhardiness.  Krieg, he supposed, would have run up to the alien with his arms outstretched, and never even seen the blast that killed him.

Crocker shook his head.  Of course, the creatures had been peaceful after all, as it turned out.  They had given oblivion, twice, then taken it back.

Something to tell my grandchildren about!

Except Bridger had ordered silence on the subject.

He had very little memory of that first place he had been sent.  Just a sense that there had been a large number of crewmen around him, all frightened, puzzled and confused.  It had been dark, he could see nothing, just hear their voices, feel their bodies around him.  And then, just as he realised Shan was beside him and was about to speak to him, there was the flash of light again and they were suddenly standing waist-deep in a moon pool on Sea Deck.

Nobody had been hurt, just shaken by the experience.  Yet Crocker still felt a certain unease in the knowledge that as security chief he had totally failed to protect the crew from this attack, that if the aliens had been hostile and dangerous, that he could not have done anything to stop them.

And that ship was a million years old.  At least.  Who’s to say they haven’t been corrupted in that time?  What if they hear our message and come back with reinforcements who want to shoot us with something other than bright lights?  What then?

 Crocker shuddered, not wanting to think about that.

-----

“Thirty-two...thirty-three...thirty-four...” Commander Jonathan Ford slammed the butterfly press together with all his might, trying to use it to drive away the apprehension he felt.

He had agreed to their keeping the discovery of the alien ship, and the encounter thereafter, within the confines of the ship.  Agreed to it, but not liked the idea.  Ford had niggling doubts about it, even now.  But those were nothing compared to the doubts he entertained regarding the use of the seaQuest as a homing beacon for the aliens‘ return.  He had been the last of the officers to agree to that, and then only grudgingly because he was so outnumbered and the captain felt it was right.

Nathan Bridger was a man Jonathan Ford held in the very highest regard.  He respected the man’s decision in this case, but could not make himself agree with it.  So many of their crewmates had been obliterated, so easily.  They had been returned unharmed, it was true, but the threat was still there.  These aliens, with technology that had been given a million years to develop from something that was already in advance of anything on Earth, could be a huge threat.  There was certainly nothing that a lone submarine, no matter how special, could do to stop them.  Probably, there was nothing anyone could do, but Ford would have felt better if more people knew.  Apart from anything else, he liked Bridger too much to want to see him go down in history as the man who sold out the human race.

The door to the gym slid open, to reveal Chief Shan and Lieutenant Phillips, both dressed in shorts and t-shirts, deep in conversation.  Both men had been attacked by the alien creature that had come aboard the seaQuest, and Ford could understand their need to work out the tension they had to be feeling after that.  They nodded to him, and to Hitchcock who was working out on the rowing machine, and headed for the treadmills.

“If he comes near me once more,” Shan was muttering, “with his stupid questions and voice-recorder...”

“Voice recorder?” Phillips echoed.  “He came after me with a video camera!  I nearly knocked it down his throat!  It was bad enough being shot, and having all these tests, without a wannabe futurist hounding me for my view of life inside a ray-gun!”

Phillips switched on the treadmill, and the hum from that made it difficult for Ford to hear all of what was said after that.  But the snatches that he caught indicated that the pair had been bothered by someone who appeared to be making it their personal business to find out everything they could about the alien encounter.  When he heard Krieg’s name mentioned, he abandoned the butterfly press and virtually flew across the room to the two junior officers to switch off their machines.  Shan managed to stop in time, but Phillips had been distracted, talking, and cannoned into the speedometer.

“Commander!” he protested, rubbing his chest.

“Sorry.”  Ford looked to Shan, knowing he was more likely to get a straight answer to his question from him.

“Will, what reason’s Krieg giving for all this ‘research’?”

Shan shrugged, and glanced at Phillips.  “He told me he was just interested.”

Phillips nodded.  “Me too.”

Ford’s expression darkened.  “Krieg’s not interested in anything unless it involves a profit,” he surmised, a little unfairly but not without justification.  “If he thinks he’s gonna sell this to the media...” Snatching up a towel, Ford rapidly began to rub himself down.  “Where is he?”

“He was outside Medbay when he accosted us,” Phillips told him.

“I don’t think he’s intending selling the story,” Shan added.  “He seemed just genuinely interested.” Ford threw down the towel in disgust.  “It’s Krieg!” he snarled.  “Of course he’s interested!” Behind him, Hitchcock had climbed off the rowing machine and was towelling herself down.

“I’ll go and stop him,” she stated calmly.  “Before he upsets anyone else.”

Ford turned on her angrily, still so tensed up that at that point he was finding it very hard not to snap at everyone and everything.  “No, I’ll go down, Commander!  It’s about time Krieg realised this is no picnic!  He’s going for this whole business like it’s some sort of Sunday treat!  We could all have been killed, and I thought for a while that some of us were!!”

With that, he stormed out of the gym, and stomped off down the corridor towards the MAG-LEV.  Katie gave a heavy sigh, pushed back her damp hair, and ran after him.

“Jonathan!”

He stopped beside the MAG-LEV and held the doors open for her, then followed her inside.  They sat down, Ford trying to maintain a stony silence which Hitchcock quickly broke.

“Don’t be too hard on Ben, Jonathan.  He’s genuinely interested in the subject, believe me!”

Ford turned his head to look at her, the anger still there in his face.  Hitchcock knew him well enough to realise that he was deeply disturbed by the visitation, something that he could not explain away rationally.

“If this hits the world’s media...”

“It won’t do.  Not from Ben.  Look, if I had a dollar for every sci-fi interactive he put me through, I’d...be able to afford a pretty good vacation by now!  He’s always been into that sort of thing, and I’m sure that’s all there is to it.  To him, this really is a Sunday treat!”

Ford grunted disgustedly.  “I wish I shared your faith.  He’s unreliable, Katie.”

“You just don’t like him.”

“No.  It’s true, I don’t,” Ford threw up his hands despairingly.  “But what can I do?  First chance I had to get him transferred he risks his life to save the ship!  And I admired him for that.  Still do.  But this...this...nefarious quality he has...no, I don’t dislike him, I just don’t trust him.  He’s irresponsible, and one day that’s going to get us all in trouble.”

Katie nodded, calmly, not fooled for a moment.  “Like the transmission to the aliens will,” she stated quietly.

”Yes!  Exactly like that!” Ford almost warmed to his subject, looking as if he were about to launch into an elaborate spiel on the folly of what he saw as a grossly irresponsible action, then realised she did not appear to share his anger.

“Ben’s just an excuse, isn’t he?” she asked gently.  “It’s the captain you’re really angry with.”

“Dammit!” Ford slammed his fist into the side of the MAG-LEV, frustrated and furious.  “We could be attacked at any time!  We’re a sitting duck for beings with their kind of power!  I shouldn’t have gone along with it, it’s a stupid idea!  The signal should be sent from a secure military base, out as far away from civilisation as possible!  That’s assuming it’s to be sent at all, which I’m not convinced of for one moment!”

The MAG-LEV shuttle stopped, and the doors began to slide open, a warm female voice informing the occupants that they were at Medbay.  Hitchcock quickly reached across and closed the doors, freezing the shuttle in position.  No doubt whoever was monitoring the system would wonder why there was an unreported repair taking place, but as Chief Engineer she could explain that away quickly enough if need be.

“Have you told the captain this?  He’d listen, you know that.”

Ford shrugged.  “It’s too late.  You and Ortiz already sent the signal.  They know we’re here, or they will do.  Maybe it’ll take a year or two, but they’ll be coming.”

“But they didn’t hurt anybody.  It was a peaceful mission.”

“It was an unknown lifeform capable of developing, a million years ago, a security mechanism strong enough to displace thirty-four crewmen without any guidance at all.  An intelligent hologram!  What the hell are we inviting to come and visit us?!  We’re gonna look like primates to these creatures!  Backward ones!  And Bridger thinks it’s okay!  I’ve never, ever really disagreed with any of his decisions before, but I don’t like this one.  He spends too much time with the scientific contingent on this ship these days.  I think he’s starting to forget his loyalty to the military!”

Hitchcock was not quite sure what to say.  She knew how much Ford admired Bridger, for him to talk like this then he had to believe very strongly in what he said.  And, up to a point, he was right.  Except...

“Jonathan, I don’t feel threatened by them.  They’ll be back, wanting to make contact...we won’t be primates, more like children, intelligent children wanting to learn.  There’s so much they can teach us.  I’d be happy just learning about the mechanisms in their ship, and that’s only a tiny fraction of what this union could bring!  It’ll be an exchange of knowledge.  Look, if we discovered a backward tribe of aliens on Mars, who couldn’t possibly hurt us, we’d send scientists to make contact, we wouldn’t attack them.”

“We wouldn’t, no.  But you know as well as I do Katie, that there are plenty of people on this planet that would.  Or they’d enslave them.  Okay, maybe we won’t be attacked.  But once the novelty of finding us has worn off, what then?  We could be facing a grim future.  And say the aliens are totally friendly, no strings attached, they’re everything you say they are.  How are they gonna react when some lunatic dictator destroys one of their ships, or kills one of their people?  Because that will happen, I assure you.”

Hitchcock stood up, her hand on the MAG-LEV control panel, recognising it was an argument she could not win.  “I know.  And that’s why the Captain wants them here.  So that first contact is peaceful.  So that they know we aren’t all like that.”

The MAG-LEV doors slid open once again.  Outside, a little way along the corridor, Doctor Westphalen was frog-marching Lieutenant Krieg out of Medbay, her face a study in barely controlled rage.  Krieg was protesting loudly at such treatment, whilst his most recent victim was following behind them, blocking every excuse he came out with.  From what the young woman, whom Hitchcock recognised as one of Westphalen’s junior science officers, was shouting, the senior officers could tell that after the shock of her experience followed by the extensive tests, to be subjected to Krieg’s over-enthusiastic interrogation was just too much.

Ford looked at Hitchcock as if to say ‘I told you so,’ then stepped out of the shuttle as Westphalen bundled Krieg inside.

“Keep out of my labs!” she snapped at the supply officer.  “If I see you so much as sniff around here in the next week, I’ll have Nathan put you on report so fast...”

Ford looked back at Hitchcock, who was still inside the shuttle.

“Peaceful, huh?” he enquired, poker-faced, as the doors slid shut and she disappeared from his view.

Westphalen glared at him suspiciously.  “And what do you want, Commander?”

Ford raised a hand defensively, grinning at her.

“Nothing, Doctor, nothing at all.  Just along for the ride.”

Westphalen snorted disgustedly.  “Just keep Krieg away from my patients, Commander.  In fact, keep him away from this entire level!”  She turned back to the young science officer, and began to guide her gently back towards her office.

Left alone, Ford moved to call the next MAG-LEV shuttle, then thought better of it.  The long walk back to his quarters might give him time to calm down and think clearly.  Hitchcock was right, of course, he had to speak to Bridger about his concern.  But the deed had been done, he could not just walk in and announce it was wrong.  He had to decide what he wanted Bridger to do about it.  And that was the hard part.

Because what could they do, now?

-----

“I was only asking.”

Ben Krieg sat mournfully in the MAG-LEV shuttle that was rapidly taking him as far away from the Science section as possible.  His ears were still ringing from the young officer’s shrill tones, and from the lecture he had subsequently received from Doctor Westphalen.  Hitchcock was looking at him seriously now, and he fully expected a second lecture from her.  He was only surprised that Commander Ford had not used the opportunity to lay into him as well.

“I know.  There’s been a few complaints about it.  Maybe you’d like to wait a few weeks before interrogating these people, Ben.  They’ve  been through a lot and don’t want it right now.”

“Complaints?”  Ben looked even more crestfallen.  “About me?”

“About you.  Leave all the victims of the alien ‘attack’ alone, Ben.  If you have any problem with that, I can make it an order.”

He scowled at her.  “This is revenge for all the gore flicks, isn’t it?”

“Actually, no.  I came down here to save you from Jonathan, who, incidentally, doesn’t like the idea of you researching this incident.  Seems to think you’re about to sell your story to the highest bidder for some reason!  Of course, he’s in a really bad mood over the whole business of the alien, and I think he wanted to let off steam.  But if you’re not happy with an order from me, I’m sure I could persuade the commander to do it?  Hmm?”

He gave in, not wanting to be on the receiving end of one of Commander Ford’s lectures more often than was necessary.  And Katie was, annoyingly, right.  It probably did look to anyone who did not know him well that he was out to make a fast buck.

“Okay.  Sorry.  I’ll leave everyone alone.  Not that I’ve got much choice after the doc’s goodwill message.”  He smiled at her, showing there was no hard feelings.  Katie, after all, had been the one to recommend him to the captain as one of the party to go aboard the ship, and for that at least he would be eternally grateful.  And for saving him from Ford, too.

“Thanks.”

She shrugged.  “Jonathan’s not so bad when you get to know him.”

“Not just that.  The exploration team.  You did more than just put my name forward for that, didn’t you?”

Hitchcock tried to push the subject aside, not wanting him to get the wrong idea.  “The captain was a little surprised when I recommended you, so I had to give my reasons.  I did.  No special favours, Ben, I thought you’d be useful on the team, and evidently the captain agreed with me.”

“I’ll bet Ford didn’t!”

She nodded, smiling.  “He did make a few comments, especially after we lost your transmission!  But there was no way the captain would have let him go, he was so uptight about the whole thing he would probably have fired on the first alien you saw and lost the entire party!”

Krieg laughed at that, no love lost between himself and Commander Ford.  The shuttle stopped and they got out, heading for the crew quarters.

“It was me that saw the first alien, you know, Katie?  Not Commander Keller, for all his experience and knowledge.  It was me.  And nothing that anyone does now can ever change that.  In the future, when they write about the first contact, it’ll be Commander Keller, Tim, and me.”

“That’s nice.”

“They’ll probably make a film about it!  I’ll be famous, like Neil Armstrong!”

Katie, with her long experience of his enthusiasm for the subject, resigned herself to the fact that he was going to take a very long time to get over this one, and patiently allowed him to go on.  And on.  And on...

When they reached his cabin, she hoped that she was about to escape, but he would not let her go that easily.

“Don’t go yet.  Come inside, I want to show you something.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, but there was none of the usual double-edged ambiguity that he liked to attach to such a request, so she complied.

“I have to be on duty in less than an hour,” she reminded him, conscious that she was still in shorts and vest, and not a lot else.  “And you should be getting ready too.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.  Just look at what I...” he stopped, and she could almost see the little cogs and gears that she always felt were the engines of his mind, turning over and over as he looked at her.  “No.  You go get ready for duty, you’re right, this can wait.”

The nasty little suspicion that had formed in her mind the moment he got carried away and had said that he had something to show her, took root and began to grow.  She stayed where she was, noting that he was developing that crooked smile he had whenever he was trying too hard to be pleasant.

“Oh no, you show me whatever it is now, Ben.”

“It’s nothing.”  The grin congealed.

“If you don’t, I’ll report your pestering of the crew to the captain...”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.  You’ve taken something off that ship, haven’t you?”

Ben’s shoulders drooped in defeat, aware that she knew him too well.  It had served him well when he had wanted to get on the mission, but it was a hindrance now.

“Of course not!”  Too bright.  “It was just some...some...” he kept his face turned towards her, but his eyes were darting around the room frantically.  “...some new life-jacket samples from Japan!  Do you think there’s a call for extra life-jackets on our launches?”  He ran across the room and pulled a bright yellow packet out from behind a pile of boxes.

“Ben...” There was that warning tone in her voice again.

“You don’t want to see the life-jackets?  See, I didn’t think you would, that’s why I thought you should just go get ready for duty.”

“Show me what you took off the ship.”  She folded her arms across her chest, not budging an inch.

“You look just like your mother when you do that.”  He saw he was getting nowhere.  “Okay, okay, I’ll show you.  But you gotta promise not to tell anyone.”

“If it’s a danger to the ship I’ll have no choice.”  She unfolded her arms, and stepped up closer as he turned and pulled open a drawer.

“It’s not dangerous.  Just a souvenir.”  He reached under the clothing and pulled out a small box.

“And you keep it in your sock drawer?” Katie wrinkled her nose in distaste.  “I remember your socks.  Yuck!”

“Lucas gets in here and pokes around.  It’s about the only place he won’t go.”

“Smart kid.”  She leaned over, trying to see the box better.  “Well open it, then.”

“Hang on.”  Still clutching the box, he ran across the room and closed the door, checking that no-one was anywhere nearby.  To Katie’s bemusement he then bent down and peered through the ventilation grille.

“What are you doing?!”

“Well, Lucas...” he began, then realised how strange his explanation was going to sound and decided against it.  “Never mind.  Here,” he carried the little box over to a table that was already covered with half-empty boxes of pencils, watches, and lightbulbs, cleared a small space and put the box down.  He sat down and very, very carefully opened the lid, to draw out what looked like a ball of crumpled tissue paper.

Fascinated despite herself, Katie pulled up a chair and drew close to him, both bending over the package until their heads were nearly touching.

“Look,” Ben lifted the small object gingerly out of its protective wrapping, and balanced it in the palm of his hand.  Katie looked.

It was small, perfectly spherical, like a large marble, the colour of milky agate shot through with lime.  It glistened as if it were wet, and as he held it she thought it was very faintly starting to glow.

“Not another glowing rock, Ben!  Are you sure you haven’t picked up an alien faecal pellet?!”

She could not help it, it just came out.  Krieg’s hand closed protectively over the ball, and he drew back from her, looking injured.  The fact that he did not say anything alerted her to how much her mockery over this had wounded him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, come on, let me see it again,” she tried smiling at him.  These days that usually shocked him into complying with whatever request she had made.

Reluctantly, he bent forwards again, confidentially close, and reopened his hand.  The object was definitely glowing now, pulsing as if it were alive.  Gingerly, she reached out and touched it lightly.

Instantly it stopped.  Katie let her hand drop, believing she had been made a fool of.

“Is this your idea of a joke?!”

“No!”  He was looking at the object in genuine puzzlement.  “I don’t think it likes you!”

Katie glared at him, drawing her hand back sharply.  “Oh very funny, Ben,” she stood up quickly, almost knocking over her chair as she did so.  “Jonathan was all ready to come down on you like a ton of bricks, but I intervened and you thank me by trying some stupid sucker trick!”

“But...”

“Next time you’re on your own!  Hell, I even helped get you on the exploration party, I wish I’d never bothered!”

“Katie...” he put the object back in its box, quickly but still carefully, then scrambled to his feet and caught her arm as she turned to go.  “Wait up.  It’s not a joke...Don’t tell anyone I took it, Katie, it’s just a souvenir.  Something that’s mine from all this.  Please?”

She faced him, studying his eyes, trying to gauge if he was telling the truth or not.  She did not like being fooled, and did not entirely trust him, but he really did seem genuine.  She sighed, and sat back down, picking up the box.

“Okay...”

Ben sat down quickly beside her, cupping his hands beneath hers in case she dropped it.  “Be careful.”

“Okay!”  She reached into the box and pulled out the small globe.  It sat in the palm of her hand, dull and dead.  “I suppose you’ll say it still doesn’t like me?!”

He shrugged.  “I don’t know.  It was like that when I first got it.  I didn’t think it was anything at all, I found it lying on the ground when we were in the cockpit, and I just scooped it up.  The others were around the corner, Tim called the commander to see the alien’s body and so they didn’t see me do it.  When I got it back here and was looking at it, it just started to glow.  Faint at first, but now it’s... well, you saw what it does.  It hums, too.”

Dubiously, Katie put it to her ear.  There was nothing to hear and she told him so.

“If you say that’s because it doesn’t like me...” she warned, smiling at him, suddenly caught up in the fascination the artefact had for him.

He laughed easily, and cupped his hands around hers, causing the globe to begin to glow again.  “No, see?  How could it not!”

His hands felt warm and strong, and completely covered hers, whilst his cheerfully grinning face was only inches from her own.  Not sure that she wanted this close proximity, she quickly looked down, focusing on the globe.  It too felt warm.  And it was soft to the touch, not as rigidly solid as it looked.

“What do you think it is?” she asked, aware that he was still looking at her despite his gaze not being returned.

“I don’t know.  But it seems to respond to me now whenever I touch it.  Are you going to report me for this, Katie?”

She looked up then, and realised how very close he was.  She knew that the artefact should be in Doctor Westphalen’s laboratories, being dissected and studied.  But in her palm it glowed even more warmly, and she began to feel that it would be very wrong to report its existence to the doctor.

“N..no.  I... don’t think it’s doing any harm.  You really should let Doctor Westphalen have it though.”

“Keller took a few things for study.  And we have the film.  This is mine, Katie.”

“Okay,” she was for some reason reluctant to let it go.  The gently pulsing glow was very soothing and relaxing.  Krieg solved the problem by taking it from her and holding it up to her ear again.  She could hear the sound now, like some wild creature calling faintly in the distance, and she gazed at it in fascination when he moved it away.

It was a pale, light, solid globe of matter, it had no visible means of supporting itself.  And yet, it almost seemed alive.  Still, Katie could not think of a reason to tell anyone about it.  One day she would look back and wonder why she had kept quiet, but at that point it seemed perfectly natural.

“It’s lovely.  No, you’re right, no-one needs to take it from you.”  She smiled, both at him and at the artefact, and it glowed brighter than ever.  And it felt perfectly natural as he slid his arms around her and pulled her close, to raise her face and kiss him as she had a thousand times before...

”God, Ben!”  She pushed him away and stood up fast, flustered and embarrassed, not quite sure why she had done it.  And if she was flustered, it was obvious from the consternation on his face that Krieg was totally confused by her behaviour.

“Katie...”

“No!” She pushed him away as he stood and took a step towards her.  “I don’t know why I did that.  Don’t...it didn’t mean anything, Ben.”

He stared at her for a long, silent moment, then very slowly and deliberately crouched to scoop up the little alien globe, which he had dropped when she kissed him.  He looked it over, then slipped it into its box and straightened up.  She could see it glowing even through the packaging, until he placed the box on the table.  Only then did he face her again.

“Would it make a difference,” he asked, “if it meant something to me?”

Oh hell!

Katie looked quickly at her watch.  “I have to go, Ben.  Just forget it, okay.”  She turned to leave, but he darted in front of her, blocking her path.

“No, it’s not okay.  You can’t just leave it like that!  It has to mean something to you!”  He reached out and tried to draw her closer to him, gently but firmly placing his hands either side of her waist and pulling her towards him.  “Look, I never really thought it was over between us.  There was always something...”

“No!”  She pushed his hands away, firmly, hoping that there could be no doubt.  “I’m sorry, Ben.  I don’t know what came over me just then, but it wasn’t undying love and don’t kid yourself that it was.  Maybe just a reaction to everything that’s happened, I don’t know.”  She saw the hope die in his eyes and was both relieved and sorry at the same time.  “Look, I admit, I was concerned whilst you were over on the alien ship, especially when we lost your signal.  When that creature came over here and started shooting everyone I thought you were dead.  Yes, I care about you...” she saw him brighten, the pleasure manifesting itself into a cocky grin, “...but as a friend, that’s all.  Like I am to you,” she added as his eyes darkened in disappointment again.  Choosing to be kind, which also had the attraction of being a nice easy way out, she smiled warmly at him, and continued: “I know all that stuff you just said was to stop me making a fool of myself, but you needn’t have worried.  That was very sweet of you, Ben, but a bit dangerous.  Why, if I’d been serious you could’ve been stuck with me again!”

He managed to wince at the thought, although she could see that the sentiment did not quite reach his eyes.  “Heaven forbid!”

“Didn’t think that far ahead, huh?”

“No.”

“I really do have to go.  Remember what I said, try to leave everyone alone for a while.  Not everyone shares your enthusiasm for our little encounter.”

“I know.”

Katie wanted nothing more than to bolt out of the room.  She had known him too long, too well, not to realise from his monosyllabic replies that she had unintentionally cut him deeply.  But with no alternative other than a return to a union that had eventually made both of them unhappy, she had no choice.  She attempted a smile, that came out looking as forced as it felt.

“I’ll... see you later, then.”

“Okay.”

“I have to go,” she had backed as far as the door.

“Yeah.”

He looked down, away from her, to the box he had placed on the table.  For a brief moment Katie was hit by a worrying certainty that there was something in that box which should not be there.  But as she could not quite seem to focus her mind on exactly what it was, she shrugged the feeling off and made her escape, more concerned by her own lack of control than anything else.

Ben, she knew, would get over it quite quickly.

Suddenly aware of the time, she pushed Krieg to the back of her mind and made a dash for her cabin, not wanting to be late back on duty.

-----

“Captain.”

There was a resigned note to O’Neill’s voice, Bridger thought as he looked up in response to the comtech’s call.  He knew what the young lieutenant was going to say even before he said it.  Before he opened his mouth to call to the captain even.  From the second he had heard the distant bleep of an external communication reaching the ship.

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“It’s the editor-in-chief of Underwater Scientist this time sir.  They want to speak to Doctor Westphalen.”

“Usual procedure.”

Tim grimaced, and spun in his chair back to face his control bank.  “Doctor Westphalen is busy right now.  Your communication has been logged and she’ll be in touch when she’s free,” Bridger heard him say, for at least the twentieth time that day.  He also heard the connection break off, and the comtech mutter under his breath:

“I feel like a damned secretary!  I’ll be typing memos next!”

It was understandable.  The lieutenant had spent his entire duty fending off one timely communication after another.  It seemed that everyone on the planet had heard that something had happened and wanted to find out more.  Of course, Bridger was well aware that the security clampdown had been enormous, and none of the interested parties had much of an idea what they were actually enquiring about.  Still, they had caught a sniff of something big, and he could hardly blame them for wanting to follow it up.

O’Neill’s comment, however, reminded him of other pressing matters.  The junior grade lieutenant tended to be a little nervous of senior officers, and Bridger decided to gently tease him.

“Funny you should say that, Lieutenant.  There’s a mountain of paperwork stacking up in the Ward Room, when you’ve got a spare few minutes...”

O’Neill stared at him in horror and some disbelief, not quite daring to protest to the captain, but obviously feeling it was more than a little unjust.  But Ortiz, closer to Bridger, caught the twinkle of amusement in his eye and started to laugh, the rest of the Bridge Crew quickly joining in.  With some relief O’Neill realised the captain was joking, and smiled, a smile quickly cut short as his station bleeped for attention again.

Bridger left him to it, well aware that there was no-one better than O’Neill at diverting awkward callers as diplomatically as possible.  The mood on the Bridge had lightened at last, his little crack had not been particularly funny but it had lifted the apprehensive quiet that had fallen over the ship since their encounter.  His crew was starting to look less hunted, to chat across their stations to one another again.  It was a good thing, as the crewmembers that had been removed for the encounter were now trickling back on board, asking awkward questions.

The atmosphere thus eased, Bridger had the leisure to notice that when his third-in-command came onto the Bridge it was without some of her usual confidence.  The chief engineer stood between the clam-shaped doors and looked around carefully before she strode over to her station.  He thought nothing of it at the time, and was about to go over and quickly brief her on the media situation so that she could take over and he could escape, when O’Neill called to him.

“It’s Secretary-General Noyce, Sir.  He wants to speak to you.”

Bridger’s dreams of retiring to the peace of his cabin evaporated around him.  Reluctantly, he nodded to the communications officer.  Noyce had, after all, over-ridden General Thomas’ order that Bridger be relieved of command, so the captain owed him something for that at least.

“Go ahead, Mister O’Neill.  Put him on the main viewer.”

The round, lined face of the acting secretary-general loomed up immediately, as requested.  Noyce looked harassed.  Admittedly, he always looked harassed, particularly since being forced into a post he did not want and was not enjoying, but Bridger noticed that his old friend was looking even worse than usual.  He could easily guess the cause, and sure enough the man got straight to the point.

“Nathan, there’s been a leak.”

Bridger raised an eyebrow, turned his head to share that expression with the rest of the Bridge crew, then swung back to Noyce.

“Really?”

The acting secretary-general chose to ignore the heavy sarcasm in his tone, and continued:

“So far, no-one’s guessed exactly what happened down there, Nathan, and you and your crew’d better make sure no-one does.  Hell, if this gets out there’ll be pandemonium!”

Bridger regarded the excited man calmly.  “And what do they think happened?”

“The press think Scott Keller’s down there picking up more debris from the Mars Mission.  That was fine, until one of his crew was questioned and denied that there could possibly be anything left to pick up.  Not his fault, he didn’t know about this, and the information he gave out was unclassified.  It’s silly season and there’s story-hunters everywhere.  There hasn’t been this much interest in the U.E.O. for years.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

“What?” Noyce’s face creased into a frown.

”Interest in the U.E.O.  Have someone leak it that this is a hoax staged by the U.E.O. to generate publicity.  Once they think we want publicity, they’ll lose interest so fast we won’t be able to pay them to come back!”

He watched Noyce considering it, almost able to see the cogs turning in his brain.  Then the round face broke into a grin.

“Can’t hurt to try!  Brilliant, Nathan.  Now listen,” he leant closer to the camera, and Bridger felt his heart sink, aware he was about to discover the main reason for Noyce’s call.

”The discovery of that ship is having all sorts of repercussions.  The U.E.O. wants it hushed up.  If it’s made public knowledge there’re aliens around there’ll be trouble like you can’t imagine.”

 “Nobody was hurt, we had a headache epidemic, that’s all.  Doctor Westphalen’s given everyone a thorough examination.  She says they’re all fine.”

Noyce frowned.  “I have a lot of respect for Kristen, Nathan, but this isn’t really her field, is it?”

“She’s a medical doctor!  Of course it’s her field!” Bridger could see where Noyce was leading, and he did not like it at all.

“She’s not an extra-terrestrial expert, though, is she?  A marine biologist, yes, but what experience has she in alien lifeforms?”

“What experience do any of us have in it?!” Bridger retorted.  “Kristen examined my crew...”

“I have to send a team of specialists down to interview your crew,” Noyce interrupted quickly.  “No arguments, Nathan, I’m getting a lot of pressure over this.”

“You’re Secretary General, surely you can refuse?  I don’t want my crews’ lives disrupted any more than they already have been.  And the more people who know about this, the more likely it is to get out.  I don’t need a bunch of U.E.O. stuffed shirts on my ship pestering my crew...”

”Not U.E.O.  These guys are from the Alien Encounter Program.  This comes from way over my head, Nathan.  I’m sorry, there’s no choice.  They’ll be with you in about five hours.  Give them your full co-operation.” The screen blinked into darkness as the connection was severed at Noyce’s end.

Bridger disliked taking on new scientists, especially ‘specialist’ ones who would doubtless try to take over the entire science section, which in turn would inflame Westphalen, who would rage at him as if he could do something about it.  And then there was the rest of his crew.  He had not had a chance to speak to Crocker in private yet, but he knew the incident had badly shaken his old friend.  Crocker was not one for this sort of thing at all, he liked to have rational explanations, acceptable explanations, for everything.  And for this there were none. And then, there was the satellite transmission...

If Noyce’s team came aboard they would find out about that.  Noyce himself would be furious at being deceived about the aliens, and livid about not being consulted over the signal.  Keller had agreed it, but they all knew that he was as far out of line as the rest of them.  None of them had any business sending such a message without official approval, even if it was just dolphin song.

And it was more than just dolphin song.  Much more.

He resumed his original course to Lieutenant-Commander Hitchcock’s station.  The beautiful chief engineer quickly made herself look busy.  She, like most of the Bridge crew, had been watching the exchange with interest.  Behind him, he was vaguely aware that O’Neill had received yet another call from an inquisitive journalist, and was once again trying to fend it off.

Bridger briefed Hitchcock quickly, no longer quite so eager to get away, but wanting to tell Westphalen himself before she heard through another source and came storming back at him.

“...and when Commander Ford comes on duty, tell him I need to speak to him,” he finished.

“Yessir,” Hitchcock was not as bright as usual, he noticed.  There had been something wrong earlier, when she had come onto the Bridge, a vaguely hunted look to her that he had never seen before.  Normally she was very together.  But he realised she was looking past him, distracted by something, and her face had creased into a frown.

Turning, he saw Lieutenant Krieg sneaking onto the Bridge, as always a few minutes late for duty.  There was no point in reprimanding him, as supply officer there was always an easy excuse that could not be argued with - someone’s order was late; he was checking a consignment; he had to check his inventory; there was a rush order he had to personally deliver...  Bridger knew that Ford had at one time checked out each of these excuses, but the XO had found them watertight and long-since given up.  It had never bothered Hitchcock, used to the way her ex-husband was she rarely let it get to her.  And yet, now...

Now she was looking back to her captain, a faint flush colouring her pale cheeks as she realised he had followed her gaze.

So there is something...

He would ask Ford to keep an eye on it.  If it was not affecting her work then it did not matter, but if they had been fighting, or worse, made up, Bridger had no wish to see his ship become their second marital battleground.  Ford had told him a little about the first ship they had served on together, once, and he had no wish to see a reprise of that situation on his seaQuest.

 “Any problem, Commander?”

Her startlingly blue eyes held his gaze steadily, seeing that he had noticed something and choosing to be cool.  “Nothing I can’t handle, Sir.”

“Good.  This isn’t the Coleridge, don’t let me think that it is.”  Firm, but not sharp, yet he saw a flash of annoyance in those clear blue eyes.  Hitchcock hated even the hint of criticism, from anyone, but especially from a senior officer.

“Yes, Sir.”

As he walked away, he missed the filthy look she shot at Krieg’s back.

The Science labs beckoned, Kristen and Scott, and all the impotent anger they could throw past him over the new arrivals.  He forgot about Hitchcock and Krieg.

For now.

-----

Westphalen was livid.

He had expected it, been prepared, but still he hated to see her so.  Doctor Kristen Westphalen, he had come to acknowledge, meant more to him than just a senior member of the seaQuest staff.

She would never replace Carol, of course, could not, no-one could.  But they were similar in many ways, their bright intelligence, their love of the ocean and fascination with all things in it.  Yet they were vastly different too.  Kristen was forceful in a way Carol had never been.  Sometimes, like now, it was like standing to face a storm, as she battered at him verbally, her words coming at him like stones, furious.

“You’re not being replaced, Kristen, just helped.”

“I don’t need any help!  Don’t those idiots realise I have a team down here to top anything they could send?!”

Scott Keller gently interceded: “What about the signal?” he asked.  “If they find we’ve sent it without authorisation, there’ll be hell to pay.  Couldn’t you put a quarantine on the ship or something, Nathan?”

Typical Keller, to come up with something as impossible as that.  It was a problem with his old friend, he never seemed to be able to grasp the practicalities of everyday living, spending too long with his head in the clouds whilst his feet never quite touched the ground.  Already angry, it was the brittle Kristen who answered him:

“Don’t be ridiculous.  That would only make them more interested.  As it is, only our crew know the full story, and even then only a small number.  Which reminds me, Nathan, your supply officer has been down here pestering my patients.  I think you need to have a word with him about security.  Knowing Ben, I’ll bet he’s spotted a profit angle on this.  I know Katie’s spoken to him, but I’d feel a lot better if you did too.  If this gets out, none of us will have a moments peace.”

Bridger thought of the communications overload that O’Neill was trying to clear up even now, and nodded, seizing the opportunity to direct her from her irritation with him onto another subject: “Okay.  So what have you found?  Anyone pregnant by alien spawn?”

Keller laughed, but for a moment Kristen’s stern face led him to believe he had said the wrong thing.  Then she relaxed, seeing the funny side, and her frown evaporated into a charming smile as she also began to laugh.

“No,” she shook her head, still laughing.  “Although you never know!  Perhaps I should call the chief back and run more tests?!  I mean, I didn’t actually check him for that!”

Keller grinned at her.  “Is that the security guy?”

“That’s the one.”

Keller looked across to Doctor Levin, who was just coming into the room with a fresh set of test samples, and his grin broadened.  Crocker had naively confided his discomfort regarding the doctor to Keller, and the astronaut had no qualms about teasing the ageing security chief gently about it.

“I know just the guy to get onto it!”

Bridger shook his head, amused, but still too concerned about his friend to let another friend start teasing him.  “Leave Crocker alone, Scott.  If you want to torment someone, save it for this science team who’re on their way.  I’m sure they’ll love it.”

Too late he realised what he had said, and saw the anger flare up in Westphalen’s eyes again as she lost her distraction and came straight back to the point again.

“Nathan, if N.A.S.A. thinks it can walk all over me...”

He sighed, inwardly, as his ears prepared to receive another onslaught.  It was, he knew, going to be a very long and tedious assignment.

-----

“...and after they captured them, the aliens dissected them and ate them!”

Tim O’Neill was the centre of attention in the mess.  Normally, the shy communications officer sat quietly amidst the others when there were this many of them, preferring to enjoy their chatter rather than push forward his own thoughts.  But his adventure on the alien ship had emboldened him temporarily, and he was in the mood to talk.  And, as communications officer, once he got going it became apparent to all that talking was something he was pretty good at.

”It was supposed to be a joke!” Tim continued, looking around at the others.  “But it distracted me so much I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I wound up falling down this shaft.  Could’ve broken my neck!”

Ortiz, Phillips, Shan and Lucas all stared back at him.  Ortiz and Phillips both had a thoughtful gleam in their eyes, and he knew they were already starting to plot something.  Shan was cool and expressionless.

“Krieg,” he stated, “seems to be pretty unpopular at the moment.”

Ortiz just laughed: “So what’s new?”

Lucas scowled.  “I knew the captain should’ve let me go on the trip.  It was only taking pictures, I could’ve done that.  And I would’ve known how to fix the camera when it broke.”

“We didn’t know it had stopped working,” O’Neill told him.  “To be fair, Ben could see the creature in his viewer.  It was the signal that went down, not the camera.  And we had to put it down anyway, it was destroyed with the ship.  You wouldn’t have made any difference.  But that doesn’t excuse what he did.”  He pursed his lips together.  “There has to be something... some way to get him back...”

Shan looked dubious.  He had not been on the ship very long, and Krieg was after all a senior officer.  The others had no such qualms.

“Go for the thing nearest to his heart!” Ortiz suggested, an evil grin making its way across his face.

“His wallet?” Tim frowned.  “That’d involve surgery!”

“No, stupid, his porno collection,” Phillips grinned.  “He’s never going to report that missing, half the stuff is illegal anyway!”

Ortiz shook his head.  “No, no, no.  You’re thinking too much of the obvious.  There’s two ways to drive Ben absolutely crazy.  One, and by far the best, would be romancing Commander Hitchcock...”

With the exception of Shan, they all laughed.

“Why?” Shan asked.  “Surely he cannot think he has any chance?”

“He married her!” Phillips explained, enjoying the look of total amazement that spread itself across the chief’s face, quickly replaced by suspicion.

“No...you’re joking, right?  Teasing the new guy?  She’d never...  No.”  He sat back, folding his arms, convinced they were trying to make a fool of him.  “Nice try, guys.”

Lucas frowned, and opened his mouth, about to put the chief right.  But Ortiz caught his eye and gave a quick shake of his head.  Understanding, Lucas quickly clammed up, realising that Shan had just left himself wide open for a genuine wind-up.

“So what’s the other option?” O’Neill asked.  “I hope it’s easier than your first!”

Ortiz leaned forward, motioning for them all to do the same.

“First, are you all in?”

They nodded, Shan very reluctantly, O’Neill far more enthusiastically than usual.  He had not enjoyed his flying lesson at all.

“Good.  Now, the magic word is... supplies.”

-----

“Captain?”

Bridger looked up from the third draft of the report he was trying to write, with some relief.  Never a great appreciator of paperwork, his attempts to put down what had happened to them all for the pending team of ‘experts’ had so far been fruitless.  It was not difficult to make the situation sound harmless, leaving out the hologram and the shootings and the promise of a future encounter, retaining only the ship dissolving.  He did not feel threatened, but he knew that people who had not experienced what he and his crew had would not feel the same.  The sickeningly handsome face of his second-in-command looked back at him, impassive as ever.

“Katie said you wanted to see me.”

”Yes, yes,” Bridger sat back in his chair, and waved towards a vacant seat across the desk from him.  Ford came in and sat down, and Bridger pushed the incomplete missive at him with a smile: “Want to write a report, Jonathan?”

“Sir?” the commander’s face creased into a frown, and Bridger sighed inwardly.

I wish he’d learn to lighten up.

“I’ve got to do a report on our little encounter.”  He pulled it back towards him.  “I think it would be helpful if everyone did.  Will you organise that for me?”

“Yessir.  Was that all?”

“No.  I take it Commander Hitchcock told you about the team coming aboard.”

“Yes.”  Wary.

“It’s a damned nuisance, Kristen is still spitting feathers over it.”

“Yes sir.”

“They’ll want to speak to the crew, mainly the three who boarded the ship, and they’ll be around for a few days.  Some people are going to get very tired of being questioned which is why I want one of my senior staff to act as liaison.  Commander Hitchcock is tied up with monitoring the transmissions at present, so I’m afraid it’s down to you.”

“I see.”

“I know it’s a rotten job...”

“...but somebody’s got to do it.  Don’t worry, sir, I can handle a bunch of E.T. freaks.”

“Good.  Thank you.  You’d better go down and see Kristen about it.”

Ford got up to leave, but as he reached the door Bridger called him back.  “Wait a moment.”

“Sir?” Ford walked back to the desk.

“This takes priority over your other work.  Delegate everything you can to Hitchcock and the other officers.  Which reminds me - have Hitchcock and Krieg had some sort of disagreement?  She was behaving a little strangely towards him on the Bridge earlier.”

“Do you blame her?!  No, in fact they seem to be getting on far better than they used to, if anything.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any easier!”

Ford laughed: “Don’t worry, sir.  Katie’s far too smart to make that mistake twice!  Just be glad of the peace, don’t knock it.”

“No.”  He watched his executive officer turn to leave, then called him back once more.

“Jonathan.”

The commander turned back yet again, half-smiling.  “Sir?”

“You do realise what will happen if these scientists get wind of what we’ve done, don’t you?”

“I know.”

“You weren’t all that convinced we should send it, were you?”

“I’m... apprehensive, sir.”

Bridger folded his hands under his chin, leaning on his elbows.  “Would you rather,” he said, slowly, carefully, “that I asked Hitchcock to do this?”

“Are you asking if you can trust me?” Ford asked stiffly.

“I’m asking if you mind being implicated in this if anything goes wrong.”

The commander relaxed visibly.  “I’m your second-in-command.  I know what you’ve done and I didn’t stop you.  That’s implication enough, isn’t it?  I’ll be in the cell next to you, Captain!  So...I guess there’s not much chance of me dropping you in it.”

“Thank you.”

Jonathan nodded, pursing his lips.  He was beginning to come to terms with it now.  Still did not like it, would never like it, but when it came down to the bottom line, his loyalties lay with the man he respected and whose judgement he trusted above all others.

And now he had to trust that judgement even above his own.

Nobody said that working with Nathan Bridger would be easy.

-----

“Katie!”

Lieutenant-Commander Hitchcock’s heart sank as she heard a too-familiar voice calling to her as she stepped into the MAG-LEV, coming off-duty at the end of a long and tiring shift.  She pretended not to hear, and was glad to see that there were already several people inside the shuttle that had arrived, all coming off-duty and heading for the crew quarters.  The doors started to close, but that did not stop Ben leaping through the closing gap and almost losing his balance as he collided with the seat opposite the door.

Grinning sheepishly at the other surprised passengers, he turned quickly to sit down before the shuttle burst away from the Bridge, hurtling towards the crew quarters.

Hitchcock had sat at the back of the shuttle, which meant she did not have to sit near him.  Unfortunately, it also meant that she was the last off, and when she exited she found Krieg waiting for her.

“Didn’t hear me call, huh?”

“I’m in a hurry, Ben.  And that was a stupid thing to do, you could’ve broken your neck!” Katie glared at him.

His face broke into the easy, lopsided grin that infuriated her.  Too tired to waste any more time on him, she began to walk back to her cabin.  When he followed she was not surprised.

“You worried about me, Katie?!”

“Worried about the safety example you’re setting junior staff.  Officers are supposed to act with a little more responsibility.”  

“I can be responsible.”

“I’d like to see proof of that!”

“Yeah?”  She looked around, and he was leering at her, but good-humouredly.  It was his idea of a joke.  “I could arrange it if you liked!”

Katie sighed, aware that on this one occasion it was her that was not being entirely fair.  She was avoiding him out of sheer embarrassment over something that she knew was her own fault.  Not that he did not deserve a little unfairness for the amount he had heaped on her over the years, but she had always tried to rise above his level.  She managed a smile, which she knew looked as forced as it felt:  “No thank you.”

“Pity.”

“Give it a rest, Ben, before I report you for sexual harassment.”

He raised an arched eyebrow, still intent on teasing her: “You report me?!  Hey, now I seem to remember...”

“Oh for God’s sake!” she finally exploded, stopping dead and turning on him in fury.  Too late she remembered that there were a few other crewmembers still within earshot as several heads turned back to look at them.  She continued in a lowered voice: “Now understand this, Lieutenant.  We have a working relationship, and a friendship and that is all.  And unless you want to end that friendship I suggest you let the matter drop.  Because otherwise, if I’m not your friend, I might just decide to demonstrate that by reporting to Jonathan or the captain exactly what it is you keep in your sock drawer.  Am I making myself clear?”

The vaguely amused look slid from his features as she spoke.  “Yes.  Perfectly.”

“Good.”  Hitchcock relaxed, feeling more in control again.  “Now,” she began to walk on with him at a slower pace than before.  “Was there anything else?”

He shrugged, pretending not to care.  “I guess not!  Unless you want to get in on the poker game tonight?  Tim pulled out because I’m playing, I think he’s sulking.”

“I won’t ask why.  Okay, count me in.  Usual time and place?”

“Yeah.  As long as you don’t blackmail me into letting you win!”

“Don’t worry.  But I think you should consider keeping quiet about your little toy, for someone who tries so hard to be a conman you’re pretty good at leaving yourself open to blackmail, Ben.  Try keeping your mouth shut, you’d probably find life a lot easier.”

“Yeah.”  He stopped, having reached his cabin.  “Thanks for not saying anything, Katie.  I guess I’ll see you later.”

“I guess you will.”  She smiled at him, and on impulse reached out to squeeze his arm fondly, before walking on towards her own cabin.

She could feel his eyes on her, a little annoyed that she could never show him any sort of affection without him reading too much into it, and did not look back, hurrying on.

So she did not hear his cry of dismay when he opened the door of his cabin and saw what had happened to his supplies.

-----

Lucas pressed his nose against the grille that covered the vent in the supply officer’s cabin.  From the safety of the shaft, hidden from view, he could barely suppress his laughter at the expression on Krieg’s face as he looked around in dismay for a few moments, then bolted out of the room.

The moment Krieg was out of earshot, Lucas sniggered, and spoke into the little handset Ortiz had given him:

“He’s gone for it, guys!  Went white as a sheet, and now he’s run off!  Better get the chief ready!”

A few minutes passed, then Lucas heard the sound of running footsteps heading his way, before the cabin door flew open and a panic-stricken supply officer reappeared accompanied by a very calm and solid security chief.  After his interrogation by Krieg that morning, Crocker had no qualms about aiding a harmless prank on the man.

“Look!”  Krieg wailed, gesticulating around the room.  “I’ve been robbed!”

 Crocker looked around, folding his arms against his thick chest, trying very hard not to show his amusement.

All across the floor were little piles beside upturned packets.  Piles of bolts, piles of hinges, piles of tiny chips, piles of clips, piles of any numerous tiny objects that Lucas and Ortiz had been able to find whilst O’Neill stood guard at the door and the other two watched Krieg for any sign of his imminent return.  It did look for all the world like a burglary, but not even the most valueless pin had been taken.

“Quite a mess, Ben,” Crocker stated, looking around.

”Quite a mess?!” Krieg’s eyes almost popped out of his head.  “There’s a thief on board and as head of Security it’s your job to find them!”

“Absolutely,” Crocker agreed.  “So, what exactly has been taken?  I’ll need a list...”

“A list?”

Crocker scratched his head, thoughtfully.  “Think there’s an echo in here, Ben.  Yeah, I need a list, so I can file a report and press charges when I catch the thief.  You sort that out, I’ll start making enquiries, check the security cameras.  Don’t worry, we’ll have them by morning!”

Ben stared at him in horror.  “But that’ll take forever!  It’ll take all night just to count those two little piles over there!”

Crocker shrugged.  “I can’t arrest someone for emptying boxes onto your floor, Ben.  You’ll have to prove there was a crime!”

“Well of course there’s been a crime!  Why else would this place look such a mess?!”

Crocker looked around disdainfully.  “Doesn’t look that much different from usual to me, Ben!” he commented.  “I’ll go check those tapes.  You just get started on that list.” With that, he walked out.  Fortunately Krieg was too distraught to notice the way that the older man’s shoulders were shaking with barely controlled laughter as he left the room.

With a heavy sigh, he walked across to his desk, pulled out his record book, and began the long and tedious task of making an inventory.

Grinning from ear to ear, Lucas silently shuffled backwards, leaving him to it.

-----

“You should’ve seen his face!”

Phillips had been with Crocker when Krieg had come flying down the corridor towards them to report the alleged robbery, and once he had controlled his urge to laugh he had followed them, to find Krieg on his knees, laboriously counting out the first of the heaps.  Phillips had stayed until the supply officer had asked for help, when he suddenly remembered a pressing engagement.

“He’s still in there counting now,” O’Neill reported, coming into the room.  “Said he wouldn’t be with us tonight!”

The last was met with increased laughter.

“At least we won’t have to worry about him trying to cheat!” Ortiz commented.

“No, all we have to watch out for is you!” O’Neill retorted with feeling.

“I don’t cheat!”

“Is that why three aces fell out of your sleeve last time we played?” Phillips asked.

“They must have stuck to my arm.  And it was only two.”

“Oh yeah, the other one was a king, wasn’t it?  I forgot.” 

O’Neill sat down at the table and picked up the pack of cards.  “Maybe I should count these?!”

“Maybe you should take them down to Ben, and see if he wants to count them?!” Lucas put in, causing another burst of laughter.

The door opened, and they all immediately stopped, wondering guiltily if it was Krieg coming for revenge.  But the supply officer was still sitting on the floor of his cabin counting out two thousand and eighty-one size A-7 bolts.  After that he would be counting the nine hundred and twenty-four size A-5 bolts.  And after that, there were the size A-3’s, the size A-2’s, the A-1’s, the B-12’s, and so on.  They were unlikely to see Ben for a very long time.

It was Katherine Hitchcock who entered the room.  She looked around disconcertedly as they all began to laugh again.

“What’s so funny?” she went over to the table and pulled out an empty chair beside Lucas.  “And where’s Ben?”

They all looked at one another, unable to completely stop grinning.  It was Lucas, the least wary of them, who answered her.

“Ben’s...busy!  He’s brushing up on his basic arithmetic skills!”

Katie frowned around the table as they all began to laugh again, her gaze finally falling on O’Neill, whom she had not expected to see there.

“What’s going on, Tim?”

Feeling that it was very unfair that she had picked on him, O’Neill looked to Ortiz for support.  The Cuban shrugged, and answered her himself.

“First you have to swear you’re not going to run along and tell Ben what we’ve done.”

A faint flush coloured Hitchcock’s porcelain features.  “Why should I do that?” she asked stiffly.  Out of her line of vision, Phillips winced at Ortiz.

The sonar operator was unabashed.  “Don’t want to risk a good joke!  Now,” he leant forwards and picked up the pack of cards from the centre of the table.  “Are you in?”

“Just tell me!”

Between them, they told her.

-----

Commander Ford watched as the airlock door opened.  Beside him was Doctor Westphalen, her expression grim and unforgiving.  She did not like specialists interfering in her domain even when they were specialists in a field she was competent in.  When they officially knew more than she did on a subject, they were not welcome.  And that was without the little problem of their unreported alien encounter.

“Remember,” she hissed as the scientists came into view.  “Only the four of them saw the inside of the ship.  The rest of us saw nothing.”

“I know that, Doctor,” Ford told her patiently, trying not to show his annoyance at the number of times she had tried to brief him on what not to say.  “Save it for the rest of the crew.”

Westphalen looked even more worried at that.  “Someone’s going to let something slip, I know it.  They could strip Nathan of command again for something like this, and not let him have it back this time.  You too,” she added quickly, and he wondered if she thought he might let their secret slip just so he could take the ship for himself.

“Why do you think he wants me to shadow them like a hawk?” Ford muttered back.  “Don’t worry about me, worry about the others.”

She nodded, looking even more worried.  “I know.  Tim thinks the aliens’ very existence is a religious affront.  Ben thinks Christmas has come early, and I swear I’m going to strangle him if he doesn’t stop bouncing around so enthusiastically!  And the chief just can’t come to terms with it!  These people are going to question the three of them in depth!  We don’t stand a chance of keeping it quiet!”

Ford stepped forward as the scientists came onto the ship.  There were three of them, two men and a woman.  The taller of the two men was walking slightly in front of the others, and Ford spoke to him first.

“Doctor Joseph?”

The man shook his head, but took Ford’s proffered hand.  “I’m Doctor McCall.”

The tall, red-haired woman behind him pushed past, and shoved her case into Ford’s arms.  The executive officer stared at it, and then at her.

”I’m Doctor Joseph,” she snapped.  “I suppose you heard my first name was Alex and instantly assumed I was a man?!  Typical, we get foisted off with a chauvinistic junior officer.  Where’s Captain Bridger?”

 Ford glanced back at Westphalen, who raised a vaguely amused eyebrow and stepped up to join him.  He turned back to the offensive woman.

“Captain Bridger has asked me to assist you during your stay here,” he told her with forced politeness.  “I’m Commander Jonathan Ford, and for the next few days my normal duties have been put on hold in order to ascertain that you get access to everyone and everything that you need to.”

The woman sniffed, unimpressed.  “Can’t have all that important duties normally, then, can you?”  She looked at Westphalen, up and down, ignoring the bristling Ford, and sniffed again.  “I suppose you’re the fish doctor?”

Westphalen pursed her lips thoughtfully, then studied the floor for a few seconds.  Ford could almost hear her counting to ten before replying with remarkable restraint:

“I’m a medical doctor, and head scientist on board this ship.”  She stuck out a hand, and introduced herself.  When Joseph did not take it, the far more polite McCall did so.

Seeing that Kristen was now as angry as he himself was, and less likely to hold it in check, Ford quickly offered to show the newcomers to their quarters, and was relieved when they accepted.  Once the three of them were safely installed in their cabins, he and Westphalen breathed a mutual sigh of relief.

“I’m going to kill that woman,” Westphalen stated, leaning back against the wall as they waited for the MAG-LEV.

“Get to the end of the queue!  I don’t think I can take three days of baby-sitting them!”

“I have to work with her!  Did you hear what she called me?!  Fish doctor!  I’m a marine biologist!  Fish doctor!” Kristen snorted disgustedly.  “It’ll be a long three days!”

Behind them, Joseph’s cabin door opened, and the penetrating voice resounded at them: “Hey, you!”

Ford looked around, not used to being spoken to in such a manner: “Me?”

“Whoever.  This mattress is lumpy.  And the towels smell of seawater!”

It was Ford’s turn to count to ten.  “I’ll get them changed for you,” he managed to say calmly.  Fortunately the MAG-LEV chose that moment to arrive, and he stepped into it gratefully.

Westphalen smiled at him sympathetically, and patted his shoulder.

“A long, long three days.”

-----

“Ben... Ben...”

It was a familiar voice calling his name.  Somewhere through the haze of sleep that had fallen over him, Krieg could hear it.  Nagging and insistent, when all he wanted to do was stay asleep.  He kept his head down and did not respond.

“Ben...”

Hitchcock shook him by the shoulder, and eventually the supply officer rolled over wearily and sat up.  Blinking, he looked around, saw the numerous piles still littering the floor of his cabin, and groaned.

“Wassamadder?  Couldn’t you leave me to die in peace?”

She crouched beside him, looking at him in concern.  “Do you know what time it is?”

“No.  I was asleep!  Of course I don’t know what time it is!”

Katie ignored his sarcastic tone, and continued: “It’s very late.  You’re on duty in four hours.  I think you should leave this and get to bed.”

She saw a particular expression come over his face, and quickly held up a warning finger before he put that expression into words.  So instead he picked up the latest half-counted pile and started again. “I have to get this done.  Someone broke in here and stole from me.”

Katie watched him laboriously counting the tiny rivets.  She looked around at the hundreds of other little heaps around the room.  Bridger did not know about this yet, but he would do if Ben used it as an excuse not to work the following day.  And then the people responsible would be in trouble.  Feeling that the joke had gone far enough, she stopped it.

“What exactly has been stolen, Ben?”

”That’s what I’m trying to find out!”

“And what have you found so far?”

He stopped counting, one of the little rivets still poised between his fingers.  “Well...nothing yet,” his eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “Why?”

Katie gestured towards the numerous neat little piles.  “It’s a very tidy burglary, Ben.  Doesn’t that, and the fact that nothing seems to have been taken strike you as a little suspicious?”

Krieg looked around.  Suddenly the little piles did look too neat, the unforced door a little too suspicious, the lack of evidence...

“It was Crocker, wasn’t it?!  No... no, I know, it was Tim!  He was sulking about that little joke, then all of a sudden he’s all smiling again, coming in here saying he wants to join the game and isn’t it a mess in here, and oh, aren’t you coming to the game then, Ben?!  I’ll kill him!”

Hitchcock winced, not expecting him to have worked out who was responsible.  No-one was going to trust her with anything after this.

“It could have been anyone, Ben.  You upset a lot of people with your questions.  I did warn you.”

“It was Tim,” Ben repeated, only half-listening.  “Just wait till I get my hands on him.”

Katie sighed, recognising the signs.  “No, Ben.  It was a very large group of people.  You can’t ‘get’ them all.  If I were you, I’d just clear up in here and forget it.”

”Ortiz and Phillips, I bet.  And it was Crocker.  And Lucas, he probably showed them how to get in through the air vent.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if Commander Ford...”

“Ben, get a grip!  Forget it already!  You can’t chase down the whole ship.  Now look, if I hadn’t come in here and told you, you’d be counting this lot for days, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess.”

”Well if you try to get revenge, I won’t help you next time.  Won’t be able to, no-one’ll let me in on the joke.  So you don’t know, okay?  Nothing’s missing, someone’s played a joke, you can’t be bothered to check any further.  Okay?”

He scowled: “I still want revenge.”

“Okay?” she repeated more firmly.

“Okay.”  He reached down and started to scoop the nearest pile back into its box.  “See?  Happy?”

“And no revenge?”

“I guess not.  Say,” his mind instantly slid to other things, hoping to distract her, not convinced himself that he would not pursue the matter.  “How’d the game go?”

Katie patted her pocket, smiling smugly.  “Pretty good.  Must’ve been my lucky night!”

“Yeah?” he could not help it, he began to grin suggestively at her again.

“Yeah.”  She stood up.  “’Night, Ben.  Don’t forget you’re on duty in four hours.”

“’Night.”

Disappointed, but not at all surprised, Krieg watched her go.  As the door closed behind her, he looked around at the mess.

“Might be your lucky night, Katie, but it sure ain’t mine!” he muttered, beginning to scoop up the tiny parts before they all became muddled together.

It did not take too long to clear up that way, and soon his cabin was restored to its normal organised mess.  By then, it was hardly worth going to sleep, but Krieg took a quick shower and lay down on his bunk.  He had taken out the small alien artefact, relieved that it had not been amongst the items interfered with.

Krieg lay on his back, holding the object between thumb and forefinger, hypnotised by the relaxing pulsing of the glow.  Lucas, he knew, would kill for something like this.  Ford would probably just kill him for taking it.  It was rare, unique even now that the ship was destroyed, worth more money than anything he had ever come across before, and then some.  He could sell it for a small fortune in the right places, never have to worry about money again.

It glowed fiercely as he thought that, and he was reminded of the way Katie’s face had looked reflected in that glow earlier in the day.

He would not sell it.  Could not sell it.  Did not want to.

The artefact glowed warmly, and he recalled the sweet, familiar taste of her lips on his, the way she had yielded the first time...

A shadow fell across the bunk, a figure blocking his light.  Krieg looked around, startled, not having heard anyone come in, slipping the little alien globe quickly onto the bedside table.

“Katie?”

She did not say anything, standing beside his bunk like a little ghost in the shadows.  She had changed, no longer wearing her uniform, she had slipped into the tiny black garment he had bought her years before.  Sheer silk, it emphasised every curve, whilst covering very little.  Krieg had believed she burnt it after they split up.  Katie had always hated the thing, and it was what she had done with most of what he had given her.  Still, that was the furthest thing from his mind at that point.  The question of why she was there, in his cabin, dressed - or rather not dressed - like that left the list of reasons he could think of very short indeed.  He sat up quickly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bunk and tried to regard her with caution.  It was difficult, despite their divorce he always had been and always would be very strongly attracted to her.

“What’s going on, honey?  You okay?”

She smiled at him, beautifully, dazzlingly, and deep inside him some nagging little voice said that this was not quite right.  But she reached out to slide her arms around him, and draw him close, and he stopped listening as his mouth found hers in a deeper and more loving kiss than he could ever remember from her, with the promise of more to come.

Forgotten, the alien sphere glowed warmly to itself.

-----

“Chief!”

Miguel Ortiz grinned broadly at the ensign who was one of his relief staff, and who was also one of the very few people on the ship who treated him with a little respect.  He liked Ensign Palmer, the man was still new enough to be respectful but was starting to show a wry sense of humour.  None of that humour was shown on his young face that morning, however.

“Hi, Dean.  Any problems?” The sensor chief swung easily into the recently-vacated seat at his station, running a quick check almost as an automatic reaction.

The junior crewmember leant over Ortiz’s shoulder and showed him a brief report.  “Only this.  It started a few hours ago, with some strange readings on the sensors that didn’t make any sense.  The WSKRs didn’t pick anything up at all, it’s not affecting them it’s just the sensors on the seaQuest herself, and only slightly.  Jordan took a look at it, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong, it’s just picking something up.”  The ensign paused, then added quietly: “You don’t think it’s got anything to do with the aliens?  I mean, do you think they’re coming back?”

Miguel smiled, amused by the awe in the youngster’s voice.  Only a few people were aware of the signal that had been sent, and Ensign Palmer was not one of them.  Second Engineer Jordan knew, however, and the sensor chief could not help wondering if the man had hinted at something.

”Who can tell?  Leave this with me, Dean, don’t worry about it, it’s probably nothing.  One of Lucas’s latest little experiments with Darwin’s translator, probably.  The last one screwed up Tim’s station for weeks!”

Looking a little happier, Palmer left the Bridge.  But once the Ensign had gone, Miguel ran a full check on all systems.  Although there was no obvious cause, and everything was still working, there was definitely something on the internal sensors, as if they were picking up some sort of interference.  Seeing O’Neill had already settled at his own station, the sensor chief quickly jumped up and scooted over to him.  The communications officer looked around, surprised, then grinned.

“Hi, Mig.  Hey, Ben’s not come on duty yet.  Do you think maybe we should call him before he gets us into trouble?”

“Yeah, never mind that now.  Run a check over your station, see if everything’s working okay.”

Frowning, Tim did so.  “What’s up?” he asked, as he ran the check.  “Problem?”

“Maybe.  You don’t know if they’ve got any experiments going on in the Science Labs that might be affecting just the internal sensors, do you?”

Tim shrugged: “I’m the last person who’d know.”  He glanced at the centre of the Bridge, where Hitchcock was settling herself at her position, very slightly late, and looking rather tired.  Even as he watched, she stretched languidly, and stifled a yawn.

“You’ll go blind!” Miguel whispered in his ear, following his gaze.  Tim just waggled his glasses at him, and they both laughed.  The sound made the chief engineer look up at them, and Miguel quickly covered it by voicing Tim’s original intention, which was to call her over.

“Commander, could you take a look at this?”

Katie was about to comply, when she glanced down and noticed something amiss at her own station.  It distracted her, and Ortiz could see that she was starting to run tests.  Instead of having her join them, he was forced to run down to her station.

“Problem, Commander?”

Hitchcock did not look up, but continued tapping instructions into her console, and frowned deeply at the feedback she was getting.  “I think there’s some sort of bug in the ship’s computer.  I’m getting odd readings from certain sections of the ship...Medbay, right here on the Bridge, the MAG-LEV...” her frown deepened: “Even the living quarters!  And it doesn’t remain constant.  One moment it’s in life-support, the next it’s in the lighting, the next it’s in...well, I don’t know where it’s gone now.”  She sighed, sat back in her chair, and looked around at him.  “What did you want me to take a look at?  Similar problems on your station?”

Ortiz nodded.  “Glitch on the internal sensors.  It does look like a bug in the system, you’re right.  If it’s in the MAG-LEV, maybe we should close it down?”

”We can’t risk any accidents, so we’ll have to.  Oh, Jonathan is going to love this.  He’s having enough trouble with those idiots from the space program as it is!  If they have to start walking across the ship, he’ll never survive the trip!”

“I heard they were bad!”

“He was telling me over breakfast about the one in charge.  She’s treating him like her personal lackey!  And he doesn’t want to antagonise her in case she gets wind of what’s gone down here.”

“Commander Ford being ordered about...” Ortiz could not help it, the idea appealed to him and a slow grin spread itself across his face.  Hitchcock shook her head, smiling herself.

”I wouldn’t let him see you looking so pleased about it,” she warned, then stifled another yawn.  “Oh, I’m so tired!  I don’t think I can face tearing the innards of the MAG-LEV apart this morning!  How do you guys get by on so little sleep?”

“Coffee.  Strong and black.  And we play regularly, we’ve built up a resistance!”

“Really?  Well, Mister Resistance, you just take your coffee down to Engineering and have a team look at the MAG-LEV for me.  Just tell them to give it a full safety check.  If you hurry, you’ll catch the last shuttle before I close it down.  Otherwise it’s one hell of a walk!” she beamed at him sweetly, looking more awake almost immediately.  “And ask Third Engineer Hamilton to make her way up here, I want her to take a look at this with me before I go to the captain with it.  Get a relief on your station.”

Reluctantly, Ortiz obeyed.  He wondered if he could make a quick detour past Supply, before their little joke backfired on them all.

-----

The slamming of O'Neill's door as the comtech went on duty had disturbed Krieg but not actually woken him.  It was two junior officers coming off duty rather noisily about ten minutes later who managed to do that.

Still tired, he rubbed a weary hand across his eyes, not bothering to check the time, believing Katie would have woken him if there was any risk of their being late.

Katie.

He opened his eyes, suddenly aware that she was gone.  The cabin was empty, and he felt a surge of disappointment, wishing that she could have waited until he awoke.  He could understand her wish to slip away whilst it was quiet, so that no-one would see, but he did not have to like it.  Still, it gave him a chance to think, a breathing space to decide what to do next.

There was nothing to think about.  This was a second chance for them, and he had no intention of blowing it.  A smile played about his features as he thought about the previous night.  There was no way that he would give her up again.  This time it would be different, this time he would be the perfect partner, the perfect officer too. 

Intending to put his resolution into practise immediately, Krieg rolled over to look at his alarm clock, knowing that an early arrival on duty would impress her...

The resultant scramble would have impressed anyone...

-----

To Ortiz's great relief, his detour to Supply was not needed.  As he left the Bridge, he passed Krieg, even later for duty than usual.  The supply officer did not race onto the Bridge as he normally did, but sauntered on with a very self-satisfied expression on his face.

“Found your burglar, Ben?” Ortiz ventured, the smug expression on Krieg’s face making him very wary.

Krieg shook his head, still looking smug.  “Nah.  Didn’t seem to have taken anything, I think someone was playing a joke on me, so I just cleared up and forgot about it.”

Ortiz watched the man pass.  Krieg seemed to be in a worryingly good mood for a man who had been the victim of a joke which from the look of the dark circles under his eyes had obviously kept him up all night.  He also seemed remarkably laid back about it all, sauntering straight over to Lieutenant-Commander Hitchcock’s station with a broad grin splattered across his features.

Miguel did not waste any more time on the matter, knowing from past experience that if Krieg had worked out who was responsible for the prank, he would get his revenge.  Instead, the sonar operator headed quickly for the MAG-LEV shuttle that the captain was disembarking from just in front of him, aware it would be a very long walk otherwise. 

Back on the Bridge, Hitchcock was still concerned over the computer virus.  Whilst it did not yet appear serious enough to be dangerous, she was not happy operating the MAG-LEV whilst the cause was unknown.  If the programming was to unravel, and two shuttles smash into one another, there would be no hope for any occupants.  She was convinced that the virus was a result of Lucas’s constant interference with the computer, it was an inevitable result that might take days to put right.

“I’ll strangle that kid!” she muttered to herself, spinning in her chair to check on the status of the hyper-reality probe, then jumped as she found Krieg leaning over the control panel, grinning wolfishly at her.  Recovering, she pushed him out of the way, and quickly began to test the probe, not wanting to risk trying it out just then.

“What?” she asked irritably, not liking having him watch her like that.  “Don’t you have any work to do?”

“Just wanted to say good morning!  You ran off before I woke up.”

“I...” Katie gaped at him, finally distracted from her work, but he was looking past her now, straightening, and she followed his gaze in a state of total confusion.  The captain had come onto the Bridge and was heading straight for her.  When she turned back, Ben had already made it back to his seat in front of EVA control.  Katie decided that her ex-husband was either trying some sort of joke at her expense, or that he had completely flipped.  Neither option would have surprised her.  Choosing to ignore him, she sat up straight as the captain approached.

There was a definite air of concern about Bridger that morning, and Hitchcock sensed it at once.  She guessed it was to do with their visitors, but even so she did not enjoy adding to his problems by telling him about the anomalies that were showing up in the seaQuest’s systems.  His face darkened noticeably when she mentioned that she intended shutting down the MAG-LEV.

“I suppose you’ll have to.  But our guests won’t like it.”

“It’s just to be on the safe side.  Until we know what’s wrong.”

“Okay,” rubbing a hand over his lined faced wearily, as if the strain of the whole situation was too much for him, he looked around the Bridge at his busy crew.  Katie watched his gaze go from Tim to Ben, then scan slowly around the room to fall on Chief Crocker as he entered through the clam-shaped doors.  “Do it as quickly as you can.  Try not to make our guests aware that anything’s wrong, else you’ll have them up here checking for alien influences!”

“And how do we know that it’s not?” Hitchcock asked him.  “After what happened here...”

”We don’t know.  We have to keep an open mind.  But we certainly don’t want them thinking that it is, because they’ll tear the ship apart trying to find out why.  And then we won’t stand the slightest chance of keeping this quiet.”

“So you’re saying I should look for alien influences?”

“Just look.  Find out what’s wrong, and put it right.  Don’t rule out any possibility, but don’t specifically go alien-hunting, Commander, it’s far more likely to be the computer error that you originally thought of.  Call Lucas, get him to take a look at it too.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good.  Now, I need to take O’Neill, Crocker and Krieg away from you for an hour or so.  Kristen and I want to brief them before they speak to these specialists.”

“No problem, Sir.  But,” she gestured towards his chair, where the intercom was flashing for attention.  “I think someone’s trying to reach you.”

Bridger muttered something under his breath, but strode across to answer it.  He was back a moment later, looking even less pleased.  “Change of plan.  They want to start the questions at once.  Ben’s first, you’d better send the other two down to the Ward Room as soon as you’ve got cover.  And shut down the MAG-LEV now.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Bridger turned away from her.  He looked grim.  Glancing up to the E.V.A. control, he called to Krieg to follow him and stalked off the Bridge.

Krieg looked around, and she could see from his face that he assumed he was in some sort of trouble.  Amused by that, she turned back to the problem in hand.

“Lieutenant!” came the irritated cry of the captain when Ben dawdled, trying to prolong the outcome of the private meeting he had been summoned to, and the supply officer scuttled out.

-----

Sometimes, Lucas reflected, it was good being a teenager on the seaQuest.  Even though he was paid a salary these days, he still had no specific duties and could come and go as he pleased.  But then, at other times he could be pushed out of the way, and left out of something interesting.

Now was one of those times.  Doctor Westphalen had given him a long lecture on being very careful what he said to the intrusive scientists from the Alien Encounter Program, and then had bundled him out of the Science section before they arrived.  Lucas was not particularly interested in the new doctors, but being told to keep away naturally made him curious, and instead of shutting himself in his quarters with an interactive game as he usually did, he was wandering the ship, bored, trying to find an excuse to get back into the Science section.

Nobody seemed to be about.  He passed a few people coming off duty, but for once the ship’s corridors were fairly deserted.  True, the full staff complement was not on board yet, following the evacuation after the discovery of the spaceship, but most had returned.  His boredom increasing, Lucas made his way down into the crew quarters, wondering whether Krieg had worked out what they had done yet.

To his disappointment, when he stood on tiptoe and pressed his nose against the little window in the door of the supply officer’s cabin, not only was Ben nowhere in sight, but all the carefully emptied little packages were back in their rightful place, the room was in no more mess than usual.  He tried the door, but it was securely locked, as ever.

Knowing full well that there was no way Krieg could have counted that amount in so short a time, Lucas knew that side of their game was over.  Still, there was more than one way to skin a cat, or to wind up a supply officer, and Lucas was far from short of ideas, especially now he had an excuse to indulge the side of him that was still very much a child.

Scooting along the access corridor, heading for his own cabin on the lower deck, he did not bother telling the others what he was up to.

They would find out soon enough.

-----

“Aw, the MAG-LEV’s not working!”

Bridger turned to look at the tall supply officer tiredly as the younger man stared in dismay whilst the MAG-LEV spluttered into darkness in front of him.

“That’s right, Lieutenant.  We’re walking to the Science Bays.”

It registered with Krieg that he was not in trouble after all, and he brightened momentarily.  Then he realised what Bridger had said.  “Walking?!  To the Science section?!  That’s nearly the other end of the ship!”

“Do you good.  Come on, I want a word with you.”  He began to walk off down the corridor.

The apprehensive look returned to Krieg’s face, but he reluctantly traipsed after the captain.

“Is this about the new doctors?”

“Yes.  They want to talk to you about your visit to the ship.”

“The alien ship?” Krieg asked stupidly, wondering if there was any way that his little souvenir of the trip had been discovered.

Bridger sighed, growing less happy by the moment.  “Yes, of course the alien ship.  Don’t let me down here, Ben.  I’ve told them you’re up first on this because just for once I’m hoping you’ll break form and be the most reliable!  And don’t you ever tell the chief I said that!”

Krieg could not help it, the unexpected praise left him grinning from ear to ear.  “No Sir!  And I won’t let you down.  I won’t breathe a word about that signal or the aliens.”

“Even though you know the risks involved in lying about it?”

Krieg shrugged.  “It’s my bag, Sir.  Katie told you that, it’s why you put me on the mission in the first place.  Just the chance of being here if they come back, the very slightest chance...it’s worth a little risk.  Anyway, if I don’t actually lie, they can’t touch me!”

“Oh no, don’t try to be clever, Lieutenant.  Just try not to mention it at all.”

“That’s what I meant!  Katie gave me a lecture on it yesterday.  Trust me!”

“I do, that’s what worries me!  My judgement must be slipping!”

“Thanks.  I think.”

“Hmmm,” Bridger pursed his lips, his mind moving on to the interview itself now, trying to second-guess what the acerbic Doctor Joseph would ask his men.  Krieg, he knew, was unlikely to impress her.  Probably the mild-mannered, gentle, pleasant communications officer would go down best personality-wise.  But Krieg was more level-headed about this particular situation, and he was the senior officer.  One thing was certain though:

“You’d better refer to the commander by her title, Ben.  And Doctor Joseph’s a feminist.  Be careful what you say to her.  Jonathan managed to antagonise her in moments!”

Krieg shrugged: “I don’t stand much of a chance, then, do I?” Bridger frowned at him, and he added quickly: “I’ll try, Sir.  But about Katie...”  He paused, as the captain turned to look at him sharply, then amended it to: “About Commander Hitchcock, Sir.  Can I ask you something?”

The captain, Krieg noted, looked a little wary.  But it was something he really wanted to know, needed to know in the cold light of day, so he pressed on.

“We were married, you know?”

“Oh yes, I know.”  Very, very wary.

”You’ll have seen her records.  See, what I want to know is, did being married to me hold her back?  Would she be a full commander, or even a captain now if she’d married someone like Commander Ford, or just stayed single?”

 “How should I know?!  And even if I did glean something from her records, it’s got nothing to do with you, Lieutenant.  She’s your senior officer!  And it’s all irrelevant now, isn’t it?”

Bridger seemed to be waiting for an answer to that last question, Krieg thought.  Somehow he doubted that the captain would be overjoyed at his reasons.  But then, if he was being gifted with this unexpected second chance with his ex-wife, their commanding officer’s happiness was relatively unimportant.  What mattered was smoothing out the last remaining problems.

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  Katie’s career’s pretty important to her.  It got in the way before.”

“Before?!”

“When we were married.”

“I know when you’re talking about!  I don’t like this ‘before’.  It suggests an ‘after’.”

“Maybe.  We were really young the first time, we messed it up.  Now we're both a bit more mature I reckon it could work.”

Bridger could not quite believe his ears.  He was not sure that he wanted to.  “Are you trying to tell me you’ve matured?!”  He shook his head, not wanting to think about the implications.  “I don’t think I ever want to know what you’ve matured from!  And in answer to your question, I’ll just say this.  Generally, no, I don’t think you held Katie back at all by marrying her.  But those two months on the Coleridge, before you were both transferred to separate ships, that damaged both your careers.  Think on that, Lieutenant, because if it happens here, on seaQuest, I’ll have the pair of you demoted on the spot!  Understood?!”

“Yes, Sir.  And it won’t, I promise.  Thank you, Sir,” Krieg turned, as if he was about to head back to the Bridge, but the Captain stopped him.

“Er, Lieutenant...” he jabbed his finger towards the corridor ahead.

Krieg collected himself, slightly flustered.  “Oh, right, the doctors.  Yes.”  He resumed his original course.

Shaking his head, Bridger followed.

Please let me be a million miles away when Jonathan finds out about this...

-----

It never occurred to Lucas that perhaps he should tell someone what he was doing.  Even if it had, he would not have done so, he was a typical teenager in that at least.  To be fair, he never thought for one moment that any harm could come to him on the seaQuest.  He was the youngest person on the ship and that position left him over-protected if anything.  Even now, slipping into the supply officer’s quarters to sabotage his favourite porn tapes, the worst that he thought could happen was for Krieg to return early and catch him.  It would spoil a good joke, and no doubt Krieg would find some way to get him back for it, but he knew it would be punishment in kind, another prank in return.  It broke the monotony, kept them all on their toes.  Harmless.

Pushing the air vent cover aside, Lucas climbed out of the shaft and stood up.  The room was in darkness, as all their quarters always were when unoccupied, lit only by the light of the corridor outside the door.  It was enough for the teenager, and he stepped carefully across the junk covering the floor to reach the closet.

Ben’s room, Lucas decided, was even more of a mess than usual.  He had to clear a heap of crumpled clothes from the floor to get the closet door open, only to have a pile of books fall on him as he did so.  Picking one up and peering at the cover in the dim light, he saw it was an old Arthur C Clarke novel and tossed it aside, never having been that enamoured of printed books, too impressed with computers and interactives.  The interactive version of Rendezvous With Rama had been a glorious sight to behold, and Lucas could never quite come to terms with the idea of the interactive-addicted Krieg also having such an enthusiasm for the printed word.  The alien encounter had led to all the old books coming out again.  But when Lucas reached down into the cowboy boots Krieg thought he looked so good in, he found that his collection had been removed and replaced by a single tape.  Pulling it out, Lucas found a piece of paper tied around it.  Turning it towards the light, he read:

“Bambi.  You’ll never find what you’re looking for.  Get out of my room, Lucas.”

“Oh yeah?!”  Lucas dropped the interactive back into the boots and grinned.  He loved a challenge, and although he doubted that the supply officer would have managed to provide much of one, the thought was appreciated.  He immediately turned to the sock drawer.  “Too obvious, Ben.  Way, way too obvious.”

Sliding the drawer open, he was grateful to find that Krieg seemed to have actually washed the things recently.  It was almost bearable to put his hands amongst them and search for the interactives he was after.  They were not there, and Lucas nodded appreciatively.  “Okay, so you’re smarter than we all think!”  He looked around, then headed straight for the compartments over Krieg’s bed.  The first was full of illegal bottles of beer, several half-empty packets of chews, a corkscrew, and two bottles of wine.  The second was stuffed with letters, filled notepads, photos, and other such things that looked too private even for Lucas to stick his nose into.  That would have been going against the rules of the game.  He closed the compartment, and went for the third.

It was fairly smart, considering it was only Ben Krieg that he was up against, Lucas decided.  He pushed aside the boxes of computer chips that were at the front of the compartment, and was faced with the false back Krieg had created in there.  It only took a moment to slide it out, before Lucas was faced with the entirety of Lieutenant Krieg’s private collection.  He pulled two tapes out, quickly scribbled “4 out of 10 - Must do better!” on a scrap of paper he put in their stead, and replaced both the false back and the computer chips before closing up the compartment.

Pocketing the tapes, Lucas was about to leave when his gaze fell on the odd object lying on the bedside table.  Spherical, pale, and glowing faintly, it drew his attention and he could not help but pick it up.

“Ow!”

Immediately, Lucas dropped the sphere, the object having scorched his hand where it touched the skin.  It fell dead on the deck, no rebound in it at all.  Puzzled, Lucas bent down and poked at it, curious as to where the heat was coming from.  Seeing that it was soft to the touch where his pen made contact with it, he dragged the cover off Ben’s bed and pulled his penknife out of his pocket.  Holding the globe still with the cover, he went to slice a sliver off.

It was as if the small sphere suddenly exploded in his face.  One moment he was holding the knife poised to cut, the next there was a flash of light and he was thrown across the room, his body slammed against the wall, clattering on the grille he had left there.  There was no time to lick his wounds, however much the impact hurt.  In the centre of the room, rising up from the floor, something was taking shape that defied logic.  It was large, and growing larger.  Lucas did not wait for the monstrous shape to form a face, diving away from the shadowy creature through the only exit he could reach - the ventilation shaft he had come through in the first place.

Lucas scrambled into the shaft, briefly considering pulling the grille after him then realising it would be pointless.  If the creature wanted to come after him that would not stop something which seemed to form from the air.  The pain in his side made him wonder if he had broken something when he was thrown across the room, but there was no time to concern himself with that.  Instead, he clambered down the shaft, bent over, trying not to bash his bruised back against the sides.  He risked a look back as he turned a corner, and the sight made his heart sink.  The shadowy form was following him.

Smashing his arms and knees against the metal walls in his desperation to get away, Lucas scrabbled down the shaft as fast as he could.  The thing was after him, he could feel the heat from it on his legs.  Not daring to look back again, he knew he could never escape it.  His heart was pounding against his chest, and he was panting hard, scared stiff.  Still, he got a considerable distance before he ran out of road.

Even in his terror, Lucas had known where he was going.  Straight back to his quarters, out of the open shaft, and to Crocker and his team as fast as his legs would carry him.  It was not that far, he had traversed the shaft many, many times in the past and knew it backwards.  So it was a shock to turn a corner and almost slam into the solid metal wall blocking his path.

There was no time to panic, or even to attempt an escape.  He turned, and the creature was on him, smothering him, scorching hot and suffocating so that he felt he could not breathe.

And then, just as suddenly, it was gone, the darkness he was left in was natural. Lucas lay for a moment, quite, quite still.  He was burned where the creature had touched him, and his badly bruised back hurt him whilst he lay on it.  But when he tried to sit up, he found himself pinned to the floor of the shaft, immobilised by what seemed to be the solid metal sides of the shaft itself.  He struggled, briefly, but could not get free.  Yelling for help automatically crossed his mind, and he opened his mouth.

But what if it comes back?

Lucas closed his mouth, and struggled silently.  He had to admit it, he was well and truly stuck.  The metal seemed to have contracted and wrapped itself around him.  He could not see the lower half of his body at all, not that he could see much in the shadowy shaft anyway.  It was as if an entire section of the tunnel had melted and congealed around his torso.  His legs were still free, he could kick them fruitlessly.  But his arms and chest were pinned firmly, there was no shifting even the slightest distance.

Praying that the creature, whatever it was, would not return, he yelled for help.  After a few moments, he stopped and listened.  The faint echoes of his own voice came back at him, mockingly, in the tiny space.  No welcome voice was calling out that help was coming and that it would be all right.

Lucas began to consider exactly where he was.  He had raced down the shaft away from Krieg’s quarters, which were two decks above his own.  He had not quite reached the point where he would jump down onto the next level, but he knew it could not have been far off.  He tried to think about the layout of the ship, mentally tracing a map with his mind.  This section of the shaft would take him to the end of the crew quarters, then down... no, it would go out to the maintenance tunnel beyond, and then down.  But with the newly-evolved sheet of metal wall that had stopped his flight, it was unlikely anyone would hear him even if they were in the passage.  Then there was the air.  Behind his head it was completely blocked off, certainly.  In the other direction he could see tiny chinks of light through the metal which had trapped him, indicating that he was not totally sealed in.  There would be a little air, but only a little, and it was going to get very warm in that small enclosed space very quickly.  Lucas tried to push back his panic at the sudden realisation that there was a good chance that no-one would hear his cries, nor find him in time.  He threw back his head, and shouted louder, aware that his voice would barely be penetrating the melted metal that had trapped him.  It meant that anyone in their quarters would also be unlikely to hear him.

Lucas kicked his feet hard against the sides of the shaft.  Somebody had to hear him.  They would notice that he was missing and come looking.  Krieg would come off-duty and see the signs of what had happened.

 And he’ll be attacked too.

Lucas was silent again, thinking, listening for any signs of life, signs of someone who might save him.

It was that little sphere.  In Ben’s room, it came from that.  Had to be off the alien ship.  Or maybe our visitor left it...nah, this is Ben we’re talking about.  Probably thought he could sell it for a fortune, pulled it out of the dead alien’s hands... Like robbing Tutankhamun’s tomb, the curse is starting!

Despite his predicament, the thought appealed to Lucas, and he grinned.  But his back hurt, the burns on his skin stung, and the grin soon faded.

What if it’s what the aliens really look like, if it sneaked back with them and now it’s hungry?  What if they’re like spiders, they trap their prey and preserve it until they want to eat it?  What if it comes back for me...?

He lay still, listening.  But he knew that he would not hear it come.  It had not made a sound.  The first he would know would be when it was on him, biting him, tearing at his flesh.

Lucas shuddered, and began to call out anew.

-----

Kristen Westphalen and Jonathan Ford stared at one another morosely from opposite ends of the long table that had been set up in the newly-designated interview room just off the Science Labs.  Doctors McCall and Cioffi were seated midway down the table, quietly reading through their notes and occasionally adding more to them.  They were interested only in their subject, and in doing their job.  Doctor Joseph, on the other hand, was pacing furiously up and down the room, her scowl deepening with each lap.  Her interest, Ford was convinced, was in making his life as difficult as she possibly could.  And in the past few hours she had certainly succeeded.

The morning was supposed to begin with a tour of the ship.  Doctor Joseph had not been interested in the ship, and told him so.  The tour was cancelled.  McCall and Cioffi had gone down to the Mess for breakfast.  Joseph had demanded it in her room, much to the disgust of the ship’s cook whom she had ordered to deliver it to her.  The cook had complained to Ford, as had the Ensign who had delivered the fresh bedding to Joseph’s cabin the previous night and been sent back with it three times and then had to make the bed up for the woman.  Jonathan could not explain to either of them, or to most of the growing list of people Joseph was offending, the real reason that they did not want to offend the woman, and he knew his own personal popularity was waning to an all-time low amongst the crew.

“Where the hell is your captain?!”

Joseph’s harsh voice grated on Ford’s ears, not for the first time since they had gathered together in that room.  Westphalen winced at him, herself as much on the end of the abuse as he was.  It was a unique situation for them both, neither was used to tolerating this level of rudeness from anyone.  Ford was not sure how much longer he could hold his temper.  He took a deep breath.

“Captain Bridger will be here soon.  The MAG-LEV shuttle is undergoing maintenance, he and the lieutenant have had to walk.”

“The time it’s taken them, I’ll be surprised if they haven’t crawled!” Joseph retorted angrily.  “Hell of a way to run a ship!  No wonder they relieved him of command.  I just wonder how he managed to get it back so quickly!  The man’s obviously an incompetent...”

“That’s enough!” Westphalen jumped to her feet, livid.  “Nathan is one of the finest captains...”

“Nathan?” Joseph repeated, interrupting her and raising an eyebrow meaningfully.  “I see.”  She regarded the seething doctor with a vague air of amusement.  “Not above consorting with the staff along with everything else then?  Fine way to run a ship.”

Kristen stared at her for a long moment, collecting herself before she answered.  She sat down again, and folded her hands under her chin, leaning forward on her elbows, looking very calm.  Ford could almost hear her saying to herself I am the professional here.

“I think,” she said, her voice gentle but firm, “that as a guest here it’s not really your place to comment on the running of this ship.  If Secretary General Noyce felt for one moment that our captain was in any way incompetent, he would have replaced him long ago.  Now,” she looked down the table to McCall and Cioffi, who were still engrossed in their notes.  They had looked up briefly when Westphalen had exploded, but they were so used to their head’s affect on people that they had taken little notice.  “As head of the Alien Encounter Programme and its main representative on this vessel, I suggest you sit down and wait patiently as your staff are doing.  I always gain a certain amount of personal satisfaction from the knowledge that I myself am not discrediting the organisation I work for, no matter how unprofessionally those around me behave.  Perhaps you might consider joining me in following that dictum during your stay here?”

Ford inclined his head towards her admiringly.  He doubted that he would have been able to remain as calm if faced with a similar snub from the obnoxious woman.  The longer he spent with Doctor Westphalen, the more he could see why the captain liked her so much.  To Joseph, no doubt the woman was a threat, intelligent, well-liked, articulate, graceful and attractive.  Joseph herself was intelligent, and probably articulate too - her tongue was sharp enough.  But of the other qualities there was no sign.  The woman’s face was as sharp and pointed as her tongue, her hair was tightly permed to her head, and the dark-rimmed glasses she chose to wear over her pale skin did nothing for her at all.  All other things being equal, a woman like Kristen would be almost guaranteed to win a post over a woman like Doctor Joseph on looks and personality alone, and he could see how that might have embittered her over the years.  But she had still managed to rise to the top of her tree, he could not understand why she had to be quite so unpleasant.  Then, to his everlasting shock, Alex Joseph almost smiled at Westphalen, and sat down.

She was soon drumming her fingers on the table impatiently, but before she could start up again, the door opened and the wait was over.  Bridger strolled in, pretending to be totally oblivious to the tense atmosphere. Scott Keller and Krieg followed him, the astronaut immediately dropping easily into the chair beside Doctor Westphalen.   

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Doctors,” the captain breezed across to Joseph and shook her by the hand.  “I’m Captain Bridger, I hope Commander Ford’s been looking after you all!”

Ford’s expression left Bridger in no doubt as to what he thought of the job.  He and Westphalen waited with bated breath to see how impolite the doctor would dare be to their captain.  Joseph snorted contemptuously, but miraculously merely introduced her staff.  Bridger in turn introduced her first interviewee and Ford cringed inwardly as Ben gave the woman his most ingratiating smile.  He almost felt that he could count down to the woman’s next explosion.

“Doctor Joseph!”  Krieg was grinning from ear to ear in unrestrained enthusiasm.  Ford thought he was laying it on a little too thick, and even Bridger looked concerned.  “Wow!  They never said it was you leading this project!  I’ve been reading your articles in Omni for years, and I never missed a single edition of Let’s See What’s Out There either!  That was great, but then it just vanished off the airwaves.”  Krieg glanced briefly around as Ford groaned quietly.

Oh no, he’s gushing!  And going over the top with it!  I think I'm gonna be ill!

But Joseph beamed at Krieg, the smile lighting her straight features and making her almost pretty.  “The network pulled the plug on it,” she explained.  “I was getting too near the truth, too near to truths that people high up didn’t want made general knowledge.  So they pulled me out of the media spotlight and offered me this.  I’ve been on the project now for five years, and I’ve found out less in that time than I did in just a year on that show.  People confide in you when you’re with the media, especially if you go freelance like I did.  You work for the government, they clam up, think they’re going to be thrown in the funny farm.”

“Maybe they just lie to get on T.V.” Ford pointed out.  He was at the stage where he disliked the woman too much to be at all interested in her background, and Krieg’s interest in it worried him more than a little.  He hoped that the lieutenant’s enthusiasm did not carry him away and lead him to reveal what had really happened as a result of their discovery of the alien ship.

Joseph glared at him.  The dislike was mutual, and Ford was not quite sure what he had ever done in the first place to antagonise her.  He did not particularly care now, and was wondering if he might be able to persuade the captain that Krieg would be a far better candidate to baby-sit the woman.

“Maybe some of them did!  But I can always tell when someone’s lying, Commander Ford!  And believe me, I’ve had far more people lying to me since I took this post than I ever did before.”

Unseen by Joseph, Bridger and Krieg exchanged wary glances over the top of her head.  But Ford noticed, and like them he hoped that it was just an idle boast.

But then, where lying and Krieg were concerned, all anyone had to do was look and see if his lips were moving...

-----

Katherine Hitchcock was not having a good day.

The ensign that she had sent to look for Lucas when she could not raise him on the intercom still had not returned.  The glitch in the computer was still there, it had worsened shortly after the captain had left the Bridge with Krieg, and it had begun to affect the power supply.  Whilst the fuel converter was apparently still working perfectly, there was a definite drainage of their power from somewhere and she could not isolate the cause.

As yet the power drain was not serious.  A detailed analysis showed that it had begun in the early hours of the morning by the shipboard standard time, what they had noticed was an increase in the loss, not the start of it.  It had started at the same time as the computer glitch, the two had to be related but as yet she could not see how.  The bug seemed to affect everything for short periods, but the drain was continuous.  She tried to reach Lucas on the intercom again.  The teenager would be cocky about their needing him, but his abilities when it came to computers were undeniable.  There was still no reply.

It had long since occurred to Katie that the random pattern of the disruption in the system was not at all dissimilar to the movement of the alien around the ship during their encounter.  However, she had numerous witnesses to the disturbances, including herself when several stations on the Bridge had momentarily gone off-line, and there had definitely not been any golden-hued creature in the vicinity.

Which, given their current visitors, was something of a relief.

-----

Lucas was not very cool.

The little space that his head and torso were trapped in had become hot and stuffy, and the air was getting thin.  Intermittently, he still continued calling out for help, but most of the time he just tried to take shallow breaths and not to panic.  Whenever he thought about the implications of his situation, and it was very hard not to, his heartrate quickened, and his breathing turned to breathless panting.  From that state, hampered by the low oxygen, he had almost fainted on two occassions.  Most of the time he felt nauseatingly light-headed and dizzy.

Now he lay still and quiet, constantly fighting to keep down the panic that threatened to rise up and engulf him.  He did not want to pass out down there, afraid that he might not ever wake up.

The burns to his skin were very sore, and his back ached terribly from the punishment it had received when the creature had thrown him against Krieg’s wall.  He could not tell whether the ribs that he thought he had broken were actually smashed, that part of his body was out of sight and unreachable even if his hands had been free.  It hurt though, every time he breathed too deeply, which did not bode well.

Taking as deep a breath as he could manage, imagining that he could faintly hear footsteps somewhere nearby, he called out once again...

-----

Doctor Kristen Westphalen breathed a huge sigh of relief as soon as the door closed on Doctor Joseph and her initial interrogation.  Seeing this, Bridger could not help but smile.  Despite all their worries, watching Ford and Westphalen coping with the doctor from hell was amusing him.

“Glad to be out?” he enquired, trying to keep the wry smile off his face.  It refused to obey.

Kristen tried to look disgruntled, then just laughed, taking his arm.  “Oh that woman!” They started the long walk back to the Ward Room, where O’Neill and Crocker were now waiting.  “I swear, if I had to spend another moment in her company I would have strangled her!  And poor Jonathan!  The look on his face when you told her you wanted him and Scott to sit in on all the interviews...!  You’re definitely off his Christmas card list this year!”

”Probably.  I really did want him to sit in on them, it wasn’t just for the hell of it.  Besides, I might have Ben relieve him outside of the actual interviews, he seems to get on with ‘that woman’!”

“Too well!  What if they get a little too friendly and he lets something slip?!”

“Too friendly?”

“You know what I mean.  She definitely likes him, and he’s a bit star-struck...”

“Maybe he is, but I assure you there’s no chance, not now,” Bridger glanced around as they turned into the next corridor.  There was a dolphin access tube running alongside it, and sure enough Darwin was swimming there, waiting for him.  Stopping, Bridger pressed his free hand to the glass in greeting.  Darwin turned, flicking his tail happily, and let out a stream of little squeaks and whistles.  Without the communicator there was no way of telling exactly what he had said, but Bridger knew his dolphin well enough to realise it was just a greeting, and that probably Darwin was telling him off for spending so little time with him.

“I think he’s feeling neglected!” Bridger commented, walking on, aware Darwin was keeping pace.  “He usually follows Lucas like this nowadays.  I thought he’d given up on me.”

Westphalen nodded sagely.  “Hmmm.  Lucas is probably still sulking because I wouldn’t let him near the alien doctor from hell.  Darwin doesn’t like being near him when he’s like that, I’ve noticed it before.  One day, when I’ve got time, I’d like to do some research into it.  He definitely picks up on something.”

“Yeah,” Bridger was still watching the dolphin.  “I’ve noticed him behave the same way towards me.”

Kristen laughed at that.  “You?!  Sulking?!  Now I see why you and Lucas get on so well!”  She hugged his arm, enjoying teasing him, enjoying his company.  It had surprised her how much she liked to be with him, when she initially acknowledged the fact.  Now it no longer surprised her, and was merely a little frustrating.  But she knew how deeply he had loved his wife, recognised that in order to try to replace that woman’s position in his life she would need to be patient.  Her affection was returned, of that she was confident.  “I thought it was just a little father-son substitute thing you two had going, when really you both just recognised your kindred sulky spirits!”

“Thanks!  Just for that you can walk to the Ward Room!”

Kristen smiled, quite happy with the prospect.  Besides, she could see the MAG-LEV doors fixed wide open ahead of them, it was still out of order.

“Doesn’t look as if we have much choice!  Katie must be slipping!”

-----

It was Lieutenant-Commander Hitchcock’s grip on her temper that was slipping.

Exhaustive tests on the MAG-LEV had revealed nothing, everything showed up as normal.  Then, as soon as they resealed a shuttle’s mechanisms, it would show up on the diagnostics as faulty again.  It had to be the computer, but there was still no sign of Lucas.

She had one ensign scouring the ship for him, had done for several hours now.  On top of that she had put out numerous calls for him, all to no avail.

”When I get hold of that kid, I’ll wring his neck!” she muttered through clenched teeth, as she replaced the cover on the captain’s navigation table, the latest piece  of equipment to go wrong.

“What’s that?” Phillips called up to her.  He was on his back under the table, finishing the last few tests.  He slid out, and got to his feet.

Katie shook her head.  “Never mind.  I just can’t shake the feeling that Lucas is behind this.  Don’t you find it just a little strange that he can’t be found and there’s a bug in the ship’s computer system?”

“Nope!”

“Oh?”  She was wiping her oily hands clean with a rag, none too successfully as the cloth was already filthy.

“No, if I screwed up the ship’s computer in a big way and couldn’t fix it, I’d run off and hide ‘till everyone cooled down, too!”

Katie stared at him for a moment, then saw he was joking and laughed too, throwing the filthy rag at him.  “You’re a great help!  You just check this thing’s working, I know who’ll be able to find Lucas.  I’ll be back in a minute.”

Darting across the Bridge, she was through the clam-shaped doors and on her way to the Ward Room before Phillips could even think about protesting over being left temporarily in control of the Bridge.

Phillips looked around reluctantly.  “Please,” he whispered, crossing his fingers.  “Just let everything run smoothly for a few minutes, that’s all I ask.  The ship can crash, and we can all die, just wait for the commander to get back before it does, okay?”

There was no scream of sirens answering his plea, so he assumed that it was granted.  Quickly, he checked their handiwork on the navigation table.  It still was not quite working properly.

Phillips sighed.  Hitchcock was right, it had to be the computer.  But there were at least ten crewmembers working on it, and not one of them had come up with anything at all.  He looked down at the table, not wanting to open it up again, and also not wanting to move onto whatever the commander decided needed checking next.  He glanced over at the clam-shaped Bridge doors, through which Hitchcock had not yet returned.

“If that kid can’t fix what he’s done, I’m gonna feed him to that computer!”

-----

Lucas’s position had not improved.  At that moment, trapped under the collapsed area of shaft, in the thin air and suffocating heat, he would have infinitely preferred the entire crew’s wrath to his current position.  Especially as for once he was not guilty of the supposed crime.

There had been no footsteps.  Eventually he had come to the conclusion that the sound he occasionally heard was in fact just the air conditioning echoing down the endless shafts as it adjusted the temperature around the ship.

Surely, he thought to himself, someone should have noticed that it was not working properly by now?  The routine hourly checks should have shown it up if nothing else.  Lucas had no idea how long he had been down there, but he knew it had got to be longer than an hour.  Much longer.

The lack of any sign of life from the rest of the ship was almost more frightening than his own position.  Because Lucas could see, quite rationally, the most likely reason for the silence was that the same creature that attacked him could have attacked the rest of the ship as well.

And then there would be no help, ever.

“I hope it got Ben first,” Lucas muttered darkly.  “An’ I hope it ate him for stealing its treasure!”

With that happy thought in mind, he called out, fruitlessly, once again.

-----

Crocker and O’Neill looked around as Lieutenant-Commander Hitchcock tapped lightly on the Ward Room door then slipped inside.  She apologised for disturbing them, but neither man minded, both glad to be away from the subject of the aliens, if only for a few moments.  The captain frowned, however.

“What is it, Commander?”

”Lucas, Sir.  Nobody can find him, and I’m convinced the problems we’re experiencing are due to a fault within the computer.  None of my staff have managed to identify it, and frankly I could use all the help I can get right now.”

“And?”

“And I thought you might know where he was.”

“Sorry.  If I see him I’ll send him along.  And don’t let him know you’re so desperate for his help, I’ll need to transfer him to a larger cabin if his ego gets any bigger!”

O’Neill and Crocker chuckled at that, both men having been caught out by Lucas’ sharp brain on several occasions.  Even Hitchcock smiled, but only briefly.  They could see the concern written in her face.  She did not like problems with the ship that she could not identify.

“Yes, Sir.”  She stood for a moment, biting her lip, then quickly added: “And would it be okay to use Darwin?”

Bridger raised an eyebrow at that.  “Whatever for?!”

Hitchcock looked embarrassed.  “To find Lucas...look, I really do need this sorted out, Sir, and I think there’s a good chance Lucas has some idea what’s gone wrong, he’s never this hard to find.  It’s only minor interference at the moment, it’s probably just the tiniest bug, but supposing we run into trouble whilst the ship is like this?  I can’t...”

“Okay,” Bridger cut her short, wanting to get back to the matter in hand.  Westphalen had really got through to Tim, it seemed, and he was no longer worried about their communications officer getting caught out by their visitors.  But Crocker was decidedly uneasy about the whole thing and Bridger wanted as long as possible with his old friend before he was sent up for the grilling Krieg was currently undergoing.  “You know how to use the vo-coder?”

“Of course.”

“Then be my guest!  If you have any problems with it, call Doctor Levin.  Was that all?”

Hitchcock recognised that it was not a question but a request to leave.  “Yes, Sir.  Thank you.”  She hastened out of the room.

Bridger watched her go, waited until the door closed, then leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh.  “She didn’t need to ask permission.  Darwin’s supposed to be part of the crew!”

“I think some people still regard him as ‘your’ dolphin,” Kristen suggested gently.  “Those who don’t spend that much time in the Science section watching him with Lucas.”  She glanced at her watch, and stood up.  “Anyway, it’s about time for whichever of you wants to go next to start walking!  I assume from our little interruption that the MAG-LEV is still out of order!”

O’Neill and Crocker both looked to the captain with a certain amount of dread.

“Lieutenant...”

O’Neill’s expression dropped several notches into the realms of that of a condemned man. “...if you wouldn’t mind going with the doctor now?”

“Thanks.”  He did not brighten even when Westphalen took his arm and smiled warmly at him.  Bridger had no doubts that a lengthy pep-talk would ensue all the way to the interview room.  He watched them go, then turned his full attention to his old friend.

“Just you and me, then, Chief.”

Crocker shifted uncomfortably.  “I ain’t gonna be letting you down, Cap.  I shan’t say a word about them funny-lookin’ critters.  You can rely on that.”

”I know.”  Bridger pulled his chair closer.  “I’m not worried that you will.  Look, I’m sorry I sent you over there, I should have sent Shan, or Hitchcock.  I just didn’t dream that after so long there would have been any form of life left.”

Crocker stiffened at the incorrectly perceived criticism.  “Wouldn’t have made any difference who went, Cap.  They didn’t give me a chance.”

Bridger nodded.  “I know.  Nobody would have done any better.  I’m not criticising what you did, it’s me.  I know how you’ve always felt about the supernatural, and I’ve never taken it as seriously as perhaps I should.  I should never have asked you to go, knowing that.  It really shook you up, didn’t it?”

The ageing security chief looked back at him for a moment, tiredly, then dropped his gaze to the floor.  Bridger knew him well enough to realise that the proud man was ashamed of the way he was feeling.  “I’m sorry, Cap.  I should’ve stayed with the others.  But when Commander Keller asked me to stay on the launch, that big old ship looked so cold and dark, I just couldn’t face it.  If you want me to resign...”

“Resign?” Bridger reached over and patted him on the shoulder.  “Not while I’m captain!  What you’re saying is that you stayed behind because the thought of entering that ship scared you?”

Crocker nodded, too mortified by the confession to actually put it into words.

“And then when we lost the signal, when there was a genuine reason for believing something was wrong, you went out there anyway, on your own?”

”Well...” Crocker had not thought of it that way.  It had only been the fear, and his shame over that which had stuck in his mind.  He managed to meet Bridger’s gaze again.  “I’m Security Chief.”  He shrugged.  “I didn’t have a choice.”

“I know.  And that’s why I asked you to go.  I knew that when it came to the crunch I could trust you over any man or woman on this ship.”  He stood up.  “Listen, I’ve got a secret supply of brandy stashed away in my cabin...”

Crocker rose, still a little uncomfortable.  He could do with a drink, Bridger could tell.  They all could.  “No thanks, Cap.  I’m on duty.  And I’d like to keep a clear head for these scientists.  Maybe in a few days?”

“Okay.  Coffee then?”

They looked at each other, seeing the total lack of enthusiasm for the drink reflected in the other’s face.  Then they both started to laugh, and Bridger dropped back into his chair again.

”It was a sorry day for the Navy when they banned alcohol, Chief!  Do you remember that New Year’s Eve party on the Idaho when Noyce was still just a commander, and we spiked all his drinks?!”

“The captain found him on the Bridge broadcasting Auld Lang Syne to any ship within range!  No-one would’ve minded, but the guy couldn’t carry a tune to save his life!  Say, who was it that banned alcohol on U.E.O. ships, anyhow?”

“Several people.  Mainly Noyce though!  Can’t think why...!”

-----

The scene on the Bridge had not changed in the short time that she was away, Hitchcock noted with no surprise.  Everyone was still so totally engrossed in checking out whatever problem they were experiencing at their own particular station that none of them noticed her return.  None, except Lieutenant Phillips, whom she was sure breathed a sigh of relief as he trotted over to her.

“You didn’t find him then?”

“Give me a chance.”  She was heading for the moon pool, and he followed.  “Any change?”

“No.  The navigation table still isn’t right.  Nobody’s come up with any possible causes.  Oh, and the ship’s cook’s complaining because his supplies are due in any minute and not only is Ben unavailable to check them in, but the MAG-LEV’s not working and...”

“Okay, I can guess!  He’ll have to wait.  Ben should be free soon... I can’t believe anyone actually wants that man loose on their supplies, he was in the weirdest mood this morning...”

“The man’s new.”

”Oh.  Well, if this works, I hope we’ll have everything in working order again fairly soon.  Find the cause, and you should solve the problem!”  She opened the moon pool, and picked up Darwin’s vo-coder.  “I just hope he’ll come to me.”

Katie had never actually used Darwin’s vo-coder before.  Certainly she had watched others do so, but he always seemed to be almost Bridger and Lucas’ exclusive property.  Besides, she had never had any idea what on earth she could possibly say to a dolphin.

“Darwin...Darwin...”

The vo-coder emitted a high-pitched whistle which even Katie was beginning to recognise as Darwin’s signature, his dolphin name.

Darwin was still in Bridger’s vicinity, feeling a little neglected, and so responded eagerly on hearing his name called.  A few moments later Hitchcock and Phillips had an excited, playful dolphin come rushing into the moon pool, raising his head out of the water and splashing his tail to eagerly greet them.

«Play!»

“Aw, isn’t that cute!” Phillips leaned over and stroked Darwin’s head.  Darwin squeaked delightedly, and flipped a wave of water at him.

«Play!  Play!»

Phillips looked down at his soaked uniform front in dismay, then glared at the perpetually smiling mammal in mock-anger.  “I’ll have the new cook make dolphin-burgers out of you,” he warned.

«Dolphin?  Darwin dolphin.»

“Oh for goodness sake, he doesn’t understand.  Leave the poor thing alone,” Hitchcock pushed Phillips out of the way, and leant over the edge of the moon pool.

“Poor thing?” Phillips protested, feeling the water seeping through his uniform.  Hitchcock ignored him, and he went back to his station, well aware that everyone was far too fond of the dolphin to entertain even the most humorous thoughts of retribution.  Even Hitchcock was cooing at him now.

“Hello Darwin!”  She held the vo-coder in full view, hoping he would not risk splashing that.

«Kay-ty play with Darwin?»

Momentarily she was taken aback that he recognised her and knew her name.  “Later,” she promised, hoping that the dolphin would forget.  Not that she would have minded, it was just that the mess on the Bridge was going to take a very long time to sort out.  “Darwin, I need to find Lucas.”

«Lucas not here.»

“Lucas is hiding on seaQuest.  I would like you to find him for me, please.”

«Why Lucas hide?»

“I don’t know,” she told him, but had a pretty good idea.  “Can you find Lucas for me?”

«Darwin find Lucas?»

“Please.”  Darwin looked at her, still apparently waiting for a response.  “I mean... yes, Darwin find Lucas.”

The dolphin flipped over eagerly and sped off through the ship, obviously treating it as some sort of game.  Hitchcock watched him go, slightly awed that she had actually had a conversation with the creature.  Mammal Engineering, they called his network of pools and passageways.  She stood for a moment, wondering why she had never bothered spending any time with the dolphin before.

Maybe I should check out the other side of the engineering on this boat?!

“Commander!”

Ortiz had returned to the Bridge.  She could tell from the expression on his face that he was not bringing good news. Reluctantly, she turned her back on the moon pool, and went over to hear what the latest was on the state of the MAG-LEV.

-----

One down.

Westphalen watched in amazement as Doctor Joseph actually got up and walked to the door with their supply officer.  Krieg was wearing his most ingratiating smile, the same one he tried in a thousand attempted cons.  On most people, it did not work.  Joseph, however, seemed unable to see through it and found him charming.  Behind them, Westphalen saw Ford catch O’Neill’s eye then mime jamming two fingers down his throat to show exactly what he thought of it all.

Momentarily she smiled at that, not used to seeing that sort of thing from Ford.  But she could imagine how he had been pushed to the limits in there, and having Krieg of all people succeeding so easily in getting the woman on side had to be sickening.  Then she caught Ford’s eye herself, and quickly changed her look to disapproval.  Fortunately, Joseph saw none of it, whilst McCall and Cioffi were too busy with their notes to notice.  Scott Keller looked as if he were asleep in his chair.  On closer look, she was not at all convinced otherwise. O’Neill sat down beside Ford, and looked up at her worriedly.

“If you want her autograph too, I’m outta here,” she heard Ford mutter.  O’Neill turned to frown at him in puzzlement, and she decided to leave them to it, especially as Joseph was returning to her seat.  She hurried out into the corridor, and closed the door behind her.

“Ben!”

The tall figure of the supply officer was fast disappearing down the passageway in front of her.  He halted at the sound of his name, and turned around.  “Doctor?”

“Hold on a minute, I want a word with you.”

Krieg waited patiently whilst she caught him up.  “Something wrong?”

Westphalen narrowed her eyes suspiciously, not liking the too-innocent expression on his face.  “You seemed pretty friendly with Doctor Joseph back there.  What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” the innocence was genuine for once.  “I used to watch her shows, they were interesting.  I just told her so.  Hey, everyone likes to be appreciated!”

“Mmm,” Kristen folded her arms across her chest, not totally convinced.  “You’d like to work on that program, wouldn’t you?”

“Me?” Ben frowned, puzzled.  “Maybe.  But it’s a bit late to change track now.”

“Unless you had help in the right quarters.  Like maybe a single lady doctor’s quarters?  Never miss a trick, do you Ben?”   

His eyes darkened, and for the first time since she had known him, she thought she saw a tinge of anger in his expression and regretted her words.  “I liked her work.  That’s all.  What’s so wrong in that?”

“Nothing.  Nothing.  I’m sorry, it was an awful thing to say, I don’t know why I said it.  Forget it.”

He nodded, still not looking too happy, but this time it was due to concern over her.  “Still worried they’re gonna find us out, huh?”

“One slip of the tongue, that’s all it’ll take.”

“Not from me.  I plan on being around when the aliens come back.  See, all that back there, the doctor was distracted, thinking about her thwarted media career.  She wasn’t gonna push too hard for answers, and those I gave she believed.  It’ll be easier for the others, too.  They just tell the same story and we’ll all be fine.  Those docs’ll go home happy, and the captain stays out of jail!  Actually, it was a stroke of genius!”

Krieg looked so pleased with himself that she almost thumped him.  But there were other ways to bring him back down to earth.

“You’re so right!” she beamed at him delightedly, taking the surprised man’s arm and starting to walk him back to the Ward Room.  “And do you know, Nathan was so impressed by your rapport with those doctors that he’s going to have you take over from Jonathan!  Isn’t that good?!”

Just for once, Benjamin Krieg was quite, quite speechless.

-----

«Find Lucas.»

Darwin was perfectly happily racing down the endless maze of water-filled tunnels which was Mammal Engineering.  He had been given something to do, something which he saw as an enjoyable task.  Lucas and Bridger were his favourites amongst the humans, and although he had known Bridger longer Lucas was far more fun these days.  So searching for him was no chore but a pleasure.

True, he had already given the boat a cursory check, looking for the teenager, and had seen no sign of him.  But now he knew Lucas was somewhere on the ship, he searched harder, sending out his sonar, seeking the familiar reaction.

For a long time there was nothing.  Crewmembers seeing him pass tapped on the glass occasionally, distracting him.  But he ignored them, trying to concentrate on the task in hand.  He had sensed that Katie felt it was very important that Lucas be found soon.  Darwin hoped it was so that they could all play underwater football, but he had learnt long ago that whenever the humans wanted him to find something it was never in order that he himself could utilise it.

Still, it would certainly mean a large helping of fish if he succeeded, that always was the outcome of a successful search.  And Lucas might play...

It took Darwin nearly an hour, when he was in a lesser-used tunnel, before he sensed his friend.  Faint at first, but as Darwin moved closer the sound echoed at him again.  He listened, and called back, but he could sense that Lucas did not hear him. 

Darwin stayed, listening, sensing for a few moments more, until he was sure.  Marking the spot, he shot out of the tunnel and raced back to the Bridge.

He had never swum so fast within the confines of the ship.

-----

"I think I've found something!"

Hitchcock's third engineer had been monitoring the system's faults for several hours, watching them, trying to  establish a pattern, trying to locate cause and effect.  Hitchcock and Ortiz were at her side in moments.

"It's a power drain," the woman explained.  "The minutest amount each time, and the ship can compensate long before there's any real danger in most cases.  I wouldn't recommend using the HR probe until this is sorted though!"

"Surely a power drain would have shown up sooner?" Hitchcock leaned over the woman's shoulder, quickly seeing the truth in what she said.

"It's virtually negligible.  And the computer seemed to be totally missing it for a while.  On less sophisticated systems it might not have shown up at all.  I'd say most of our systems can be safely operated with this occurring."

"Even the MAG-LEV?" Ortiz wanted to know.  He had spent a back-breaking morning working on the shuttles, he would have liked to hear that it was not in vain.

"Looks like it," Hitchcock tried to look apologetic.  "Sorry!"

"Oh great!"

"I still don't have any idea what's causing it, though," Hamilton pointed out.  "I...oh!"

She stopped, and turned to look, along with most of the Bridge crew, as Darwin came speeding into the moon pool.  The dolphin virtually leapt right out of the water, splashing the deck.  He continued to thrash his tail violently, drawing everyone's attention, whistling and clicking excitedly.  Katie raced across to the vo-coder, and switched it on.

«Lucas hurt!  Dark place, danger!  People come, bring help!  Lucas danger!»         

Hitchcock put out a hand, trying to soothe the agitated dolphin, but he was having none of it.

«Lucas hurt!  Katie come now!»

Ortiz tapped her shoulder.  "I'll get the captain."

"Thanks."

«Come now!  Bad shining hurt Lucas!  Darwin show!»

"Bad shining?" Phillips wondered, standing beside her.  "Now what does that mean?"

"Fire?  I don't know," Hitchcock was kicking her shoes off.  "Get me a rebreather and an audiolink.  And a transmitter so you can follow us."  She shrugged off her jacket and began to pull off her sweater, then realised Hamilton was staring at her.  "What?"

"You're going in with the dolphin?"

"Can you think of a faster way?  Here," Hitchcock pushed her sweater and jacket at the woman.  Phillips came back with the items she had requested.  He watched as she clipped the transmitter to her vest, then handed her the sealed handset and the rebreather.

"Have a team follow me," she ordered, strapping the handset to her waist, then climbed into the moon pool.  The water was cold, and soaked through her light uniform trousers immediately.  Trying to ignore the discomfort of the temperature change, she clamped one hand firmly on the dolphin's dorsal fin, and held the rebreather to her mouth with the other.

Darwin wasted no time at all, barely giving her time to get used to swimming with him before he increased his speed and pulled her away from the Bridge area, heading back the way he had come.

The water rushed past Hitchcock's face, making it hard to see where they were going.  She trusted the dolphin not to run her into a wall, but she also knew that she would quickly be completely lost.  Phillips, following through the corridors with his team, would have to rely totally on the signal from the transmitter, because she would not be able to tell him where they were unless they surfaced in a familiar place.

Everyone Katie had ever spoken to on the subject was of the opinion that swimming with dolphins was a relaxing experience, but this was more like one of the more stomach-churning water rides at Disneyland.  She clung on, grimly, kicking her legs, trying to keep pace.  Twice she lost her grip and he had to come back for her.  Even without the translator she could sense his impatience.  The little dolphin was very worried about Lucas, and she was probably not his primary choice of rescuer.

Abruptly, the dolphin stopped.  Katie bumped against him in the dimly-lit tunnel, barely able to see where they were.  She surfaced, briefly, and did not recognise the tunnel at all.  Darwin banged his nose several times against the wall, and squealed at her.

"Here?" she asked, but he could no more understand her without the translator than she him.  She hit the wall with the palm of her hand, and looked at him questioningly.  "Lucas?"

Darwin splashed and whistled excitedly.  Katie pulled out her handset, unsealed it, and called to the rescue party.  She was not at all surprised to hear Bridger's voice answer her, and caught the concern there, barely concealed.

"Commander?  Did you find him?"

Hitchcock looked around her at the bleak, empty tunnel.  Darwin pushed at the communicator with his nose, recognising Bridger's  voice.  "He's not in here, I think Darwin senses him through the wall.  His sonar must be amazing!"

"Stay there, Commander, we're tracking you."  There was a pause, then: "Katie, Ortiz says you're out past the end of one of the maintenance tunnels.  There's nothing there."

Hitchcock looked down at the agitated dolphin, who was rubbing against the side of the tunnel again.  "Darwin seems to think there is.  And..." she paused, thinking that she heard someone call out, very faintly.  Darwin heard it too, swam around and tried to nose her towards the wall.  That was enough to clinch it for Hitchcock.  "I believe I can hear him, Sir.  You'd better get that team down here fast!"

"We're already on our way," Bridger assured her, and broke the connection.

Hitchcock resealed the communicator, and moved closer to the wall, pressing her ear against it.  There had only been the one cry, she could hear nothing now.  Still, she hammered with her fists on the solid panels that made up the tunnel.

"Lucas!  Lucas!"

She stopped, and listened, hampered by the dolphin who was splashing around excitedly beside her.  Hitchcock kept her ear to the wall, concentrating, and this time she was certain of what she heard.  But the teenager's voice, calling briefly back to her, was muffled and faint, and only called out once more.

Then there was silence, and no amount of shouting could provoke another response.

-----

The maintenance tunnel had come to a dead end, just as Ortiz had predicted.  Nathan Bridger, Chief Crocker, and four of Crocker's men found themselves staring at a blank wall.  Ortiz, however, was crouched in front of them, still monitoring Hitchcock's signal.

"It's right through this, Sir.  She's about five metres away from us."

Crocker rapped on the heavy panel in front of them.  "Reckon my men could cut through this, Cap."

Bridger chewed on his lip, worried for Lucas' safety, but trying not to let that cloud his judgement.

"We're sure Darwin's indicating Lucas is this side of his tunnel?"

"Unless the transmitter's faulty on top of everything else, yes," Ortiz told him.  "I asked Commander Hitchcock to move to the closest position she could get to Lucas.  It's this side.  If Darwin is right, he's somewhere between them and us."

Bridger sighed.  "Take a heat-reading scan.  We'll have to locate him before we act."

Ortiz obeyed, bent over the small recorder he carried, moving it to encompass the area in front of them.  It took a moment, then:

"I've got something, just to the left of us.  Low down," he tapped the wall to show where he meant.  "It's about the right mass for Lucas."

"Cut it open," Bridger ordered.  "But be careful!"  He and Ortiz moved back out of the way as Crocker and his men moved in with the cutting equipment they had brought expecting something like this.  Two left to fetch better equipment, but the others patiently cut through the thick metal panelling.

"What the hell would he be doing down here?" Bridger wondered out loud.  "There's nothing down here."

Ortiz knew differently, but even he could not see why Lucas was this far out.  Lucas knew the maze of shafts and tunnels within the ship like the back of his hand.  Even if he had missed one turn-off down to the lower level, there were three more  between this point and Krieg's quarters.  From that he convinced himself that this was not due to a continuation of their joke the previous day, and had to be something else.

"He does like crawling around the interior of the ship, Sir.  We...uh...we were playing a joke on Ben yesterday..."

"I know, I heard about it," Bridger nodded towards the oblivious Crocker.  "Never tell our security chief anything you want kept quiet!"

"No Sir."  Ortiz fell silent, worried that it did not seem to have amused the captain.  Ben had been the best of friends with Robert Bridger, and it occurred to Miguel that perhaps Bridger senior might have a soft spot for the cheeky supply officer as a result.

Bridger's lack of humour, however, had only one source.  Lucas could never replace Robert, but he came pretty close.  The thought of the irrepressible teenager trapped and injured - and he had to be one, if not both - filled him with dread, and he was completely ignorant of Ortiz's erroneous fear.  He mis-read the Cuban's concern as being for Lucas, which of course partly it was.

"You'd better call the doctor down here, in case he's injured."

Ortiz did as he was bid.  A few moments later, Crocker and his men lifted down a large slab of panelling.  Bridger stepped forward to peer into the hole they had created, as Ortiz shone a torch into the gloom.

"Lucas?"

There was no answer.  Bridger took the torch and cast the beam around the chamber they had revealed.  Almost at once he spotted the crippled end of the ventilation shaft, where Lucas was trapped.

With Crocker's help, Bridger climbed into the confined space.  He could see the solid structure in the far wall which was part of Darwin's tunnel.  It protruded out into the space, but not far enough to be hindered by their cutting process.  But it was the ventilation shaft that caught his attention.

Further along, he could see where it branched off in several directions, feeding the crew quarters, and even the access tunnel he had just climbed out of.  But where he presumed Lucas was trapped, it did not lead anywhere, a short length of shaft that was only there to finish off that particular section of the system.  Why Lucas would have gone anywhere near to it was a mystery.  But that was nothing compared to the mystery in front of him.

The shaft looked for all the world as if some giant hand had crushed it in its fist.  Mangled and scorched in just one short section, he could not conceive of any accident that could cause this.

Behind him, one of Crocker's men was dismembering the rest of the wall, trying to make more room for them all.  Crocker himself, and Ortiz, had climbed in behind Bridger and hovered worriedly beside him as he crouched next to the mangled shaft.

"You reckon the lad could be in there, Cap?" Crocker wondered, unable to keep the concern out of his voice.  It did not look good.

Bridger stared at it, wanting to tap on the side, let Lucas know they were there, that help was coming.  But even so slight a noise would echo in that tiny space and just add to his discomfort.  Assuming the teenager was in there.  Reluctantly, Bridger looked to Ortiz for confirmation.  The Cuban had been searching the wreckage, and looked up from his scanner, apprehension clear in his eyes.

"There's a...there's someone in there, Sir.  Definitely.  Alive," he added quickly.

Bridger placed his hand on the surface of the shaft.  What he discovered did nothing to reassure him.  "This is warm!  At least that probably means he's still breathing!  But in that confined space without fresh air... Crocker," he turned to the concerned security chief.  "How can we get into this, fast, without harming the boy?"

Crocker looked down at the cutting tool he carried.  It emitted, even on its lowest setting, a very powerful torch of flame.  Even if it missed Lucas, the sparks and molten metal would drip on him.

"Can't use this." Crocker leaned over the top of the shaft, a feat made more difficult by the fact that it was suspended a foot off the deck, and tried to see the other side.  Not succeeding, he ran a hand over the surface instead, and breathed a small sigh of relief.  "Feels like this end panel's been bolted on, Cap.  Reckon we can get it off without cutting."  He stood on tiptoe, still trying to see the other side, without success.  "Don't rightly know if I can fit over there, though."

Ortiz looked at the narrow gap, then at the rest of Crocker's men.  He had brought his largest, including the giant Mars, and there was no way any of them could work in that cramped space even if they managed to get into it.  To his surprise, however, the expected request that he try did not come.  When he looked back the captain was already squeezing under the shaft, cramming himself into the narrow space beyond.  Inwardly Ortiz breathed a sigh of relief.  He was starting to ache from the strenuous work on the MAG-LEV, where they had literally pulled one of the shuttles apart to see what was wrong, and had visions of seizing up whilst freeing Lucas and needing rescue himself.

"Lucas?" Bridger was very gently tapping the panel as Crocker sorted out the new tools his men had brought.  "Lucas, can you hear me?"

There was no answer at all.  Ortiz quickly checked his scan.  When he looked up to report his findings, he found Bridger looking at him expectantly, almost fearfully.

"It's still indicating he's alive, Sir.  Maybe he's just passed out, you said it must be pretty hot in there."

Bridger's gaze jerked instantly to Crocker, and his voice was sharper than usual when he spoke: "Hurry up with that, Chief, he could be suffocating."

Crocker wordlessly handed over one of the tools.  He had known Bridger most of their working lives, and he could judge his moods better than anyone else on the ship.  He also knew better than to take any sort of offence at being snapped at, or at having the tool snatched from his hand as soon as it was in range.  Bridger had lost his family, Lucas had more or less been abandoned by his, and Crocker had watched almost a father-son bond develop between the two over the past year.  He did not think Bridger could stand to lose a second son.  Edging closer to Ortiz, worried about what the captain was going to find when he opened that panel, he whispered:

"You sure he's okay in there, son?"

Ortiz passed him the monitor to look for himself.  "Alive, yes, okay - there's no way of telling.  It’s not a medical instrument.  No, from the looks of the shaft."

Crocker bit his lip, and crossed his fingers.  Phillips had told him Darwin had leapt out of the water with the news.  That was luck, a dolphin leaping was a sign of good luck, a good omen.  Lucas would be okay.  The ageing security chief gazed worriedly at his captain's set expression.  He had to be okay.

"Nathan!"

Doctor Westphalen's voice made them all look around.  Even Bridger glanced up momentarily, then instantly returned to the job in hand.  Westphalen had just reached the Bridge when the call went out for her, there was barely time to ascertain from Phillips what had happened before she and Krieg were racing back the way they had come.  The MAG-LEV was working again, but did not go down this far.  So she was breathless when she skidded to a halt at the end of the corridor.  Clambering over what was left of the corridor wall, Westphalen and Krieg quickly joined them in the cramped room.

"Where is he?" the doctor demanded, pushing between Crocker and Ortiz.  She took in the mangled shaft, and Bridger struggling to open the panel.  "Oh..."

Crocker caught her arm and gently guided her back.  "Best keep out of the way 'till we've got it open, Doc," he advised.

Mars was lifting a heavy-duty cutter into position further down the shaft, intending to slice off the damaged portion so that they could move the boy to a more accessible spot and free him.  There was no point in saving the area of shaft, it was wrecked.  Kristen caught sight of him, and turned to the security chief in alarm.

"Surely he's not using that thing?!"

Crocker nodded.  "There's no danger to the lad, we'll be cutting well past him."

Westphalen looked doubtfully at the hulking Mars, but managed not to comment.  She knew none of them wanted anything other than Lucas' safe rescue, they would not place him in further danger.

Bridger called Krieg over at that point, the panel was loose and he wanted someone to hold it steady whilst he finished the job.  Unobtrusively, Crocker quietly radioed Hitchcock to tell her that she could come out of the water-filled tunnels now.  Westphalen absently chewed on her thumbnail, her gaze never leaving Bridger.  Even Krieg's face was deadly serious as he steadied the panel for the captain as the older man severed the last connection.

"Careful now," Bridger stood up, helping Krieg lift the panel gently over the top of the shaft. The warmth emanating from the open shaft was unpleasant, and the thought of Lucas trapped within getting hotter and hotter was unbearable.  Bridger crouched down, took a deep, steadying breath, and looked inside.

Lucas lay on his back, unconscious.  His eyes were closed, and a lock of his soft golden hair had fallen across his face.  His head lolled to one side, and he was very still, but he was alive.  He was also trapped from the waist down by the mangled mass of metal.

"Lucas?  Lucas?"  Bridger batted the boy's cheek gently, trying to wake him, but there was no response.

"Is he okay?"

Bridger looked up to see Krieg trying to lean far enough over the top of the shaft to see inside, and not quite succeeding.

"He's alive."

"Then let me get in there," Westphalen insisted, already crouching with her kit beside the shaft, eager to help her latest patient.

Reluctantly, not wanting to leave Lucas, Bridger slid out and let the doctor take his place.  Standing up, he gratefully stretched his limbs, only now registering how very uncomfortable the cramped space had been to work in.  Krieg, he noticed, was still leaning over the shaft in concern.

"Ben," Westphalen's voice carried the sharp tone she used when she would accept no arguments.  "You're blocking my light.  Move back or move out!"

Krieg took a step backwards, quickly, not wanting to hinder Lucas's rescue.  Whilst Bridger had been working, some of Crocker's men had set up emergency lighting, but it was not quite good enough to reach the awkward little corner Westphalen and Lucas were stuck in, and she was in no position to hold the torch that she had placed in the shaft.  Seeing this, and genuinely wanting to help, Krieg pulled down one of the lamps and resumed his position beside the shaft.  Westphalen looked up in brief annoyance as he accidentally shone the light in her face, but saw what he was trying to do and soon had him using it almost as a spotlight for her work.  She covered Lucas's face with an oxygen mask, resting the cylinder that fed it on the floor beneath the wrecked shaft, warning the others not to dislodge it.

At the other end of the shaft, Mars and Crocker were preparing to slice through the metal, having placed supports all along its length.  Crocker and Ortiz were checking them, wanting to be as sure as they could that the shaft would not fall to the floor when it was detached, further injuring Lucas.  Bridger trusted the two mens' judgement implicitly, but he could not stop himself making a further check.

"Looks okay to me," he told Crocker.  "Let's cut it and see.  Kristen," he turned back to the doctor.  "We're cutting it.  Get out of there."

She glared at him for the very idea.  "I'm staying with my patient."

"I'm sure your patient would much rather you were still in one piece to treat him, Doctor.  If this falls on you..."

"If it falls this way, it'll hurt Lucas a lot more than me.  Maybe I can stop it."

"I'll do it." Krieg volunteered.

Kristen looked distinctly uneasy about leaving Lucas, but saw the sense in having a stronger person there.  Krieg took her place with some difficulty, and struggled into a standing position behind the shaft, pausing only to peer momentarily at the unconscious teenager.

Crocker looked to Bridger questioningly, and the captain gave a quick curt nod.  Immediately, the two security men began to slice through the shaft.

The cutting tool eased through the relatively thin metal easily, minimising the amount of jarring to the boy's prison.  Certainly the shaft did not show any signs of slipping away from the supports they had so carefully placed.

They lifted it, between them all, carefully out into the corridor beyond.  Quickly and efficiently, whilst Kristen protected Lucas with a fire blanket, Crocker and Mars sliced away most of the metal covering his head, upper torso and legs.  But when they had finished it was plain to see that the mangled mess remaining was going to take a little longer.

Crocker looked from the cutting torch he had used to Lucas, then handed it over to Mars.  "No more use for this, son.  Have to do it the old way."

Mars stared at him blankly, even when Crocker reached into one of the tool kits and pulled out what looked like an old-fashioned pair of wire clippers.  Westphalen understood, but did not like it.

"Chief, cutting like that will pull the metal.  If he's broken any ribs one could puncture a lung if you jolt him around too much."

Bridger took the cutters from Crocker, aware the metal was too close to Lucas' skin for any other option to be viable.  "No-one's going to be careless, Kristen.  We've nothing that won't risk cutting or burning him, and we have to get him out of that."

Kneeling beside Lucas's inert form, he positioned the cutters and with difficulty made the first cut.  It did not pull too much, but the material was hard to get through and it would be a long job.  Crocker immediately found three more pairs and had himself, Mars and Krieg working on it. 

Westphalen stood back, watching the four men working, Mars calmly methodical, getting the job done.  Crocker almost the same, but the security chief could not help glancing over his shoulder occasionally at the still unconscious teenager with more than a little concern.  Krieg was not doing very well with the cutters.  When Ortiz quietly offered to take over the supply officer reluctantly agreed.  Krieg got up, and moved over to her side.  She could sense how frustrated he must feel, knowing that he and Lucas had struck up a strong friendship over the past year.  He obviously wanted to do something to help, yet was unable to do anything except stand by and watch.  She felt the same frustration herself, until he was freed there was no telling how badly he was hurt internally.  And there was always a risk that perhaps the shaft had cut into him somewhere they could not see.  No blood was in evidence, but there was still the chance.  Her gaze strayed towards Nathan Bridger.  The man was working faster than any of them, ignoring personal safety in favour of freeing the boy.  She could see a deep cut on his left hand already where in his haste he had caught it on the jagged edge of the metal he was cutting into.

"Doc."

She glanced around at Krieg, who nodded towards Lucas.  The boy's head was moving slightly, he was waking up.  Immediately she rushed forward and knelt over him, gently holding his head still, and talking to him.  The four men glanced at them, saw Lucas was regaining consciousness, and worked faster.  They all knew that if he woke up in pain, their job would instantly become infinitely more difficult.

Lucas groaned, trying to move his face away from the doctor's cool hands, weakly struggling for freedom.

"Keep still," she urged him, but he was still too far gone to pay her any heed.

Westphalen looked up, but only Krieg met her gaze with eyes as concerned as her own.  The others kept their heads down, working at freeing the boy.

Kristen bit her lip, still gently stroking Lucas' face, and waited.

-----

O'Neill's interview had come to an end.

The communications officer got up and extended his hand politely to the three doctors only to be regarded coldly by Joseph.  Feeling awkward, Tim dropped his hand to his side and looked down at Commander Ford. 

Ford was still seated at the table.  His experiences that day had left him in such a state of near fury that the only way he could keep himself from throttling the woman was by remaining seated, fixing his vision on a point beside the interview room door where the decorators had obviously missed a small spot of paint, and going through in his mind all the Standing Orders he could remember, several times, only half-listening to the woman as she grilled Tim with all the wrong questions.  In that, at least, Ford felt a little grateful to Krieg.  He had persuaded the woman so thoroughly that they had done nothing more than explore a ship so old that contact with sea water caused it to disintegrate rapidly, that she was no longer looking for evidence of live aliens, if she ever was.  Her questions were of the design of the ship, of what O'Neill imagined the crew might possibly have looked like, of any clues at all.

They had all told about the body, there was no point in hiding that, and much of her questioning was on that, the cockpit, and the engines.  Nothing about hologram-like aliens that could make more than thirty people vanish without the slightest effort.  Ford looked up at Tim, who obviously wanted to leave.  It was a feeling he understood all too well.

"Sir, should I send in the chief?"

The water jug in the centre of the table was almost empty.  Ford could have killed for a coffee, but he knew that any such suggestion coming from him would be rejected by Doctor Joseph.  So instead he worded it more carefully.

"Sure.  Thanks for your time, Lieutenant.  Take a lunch break before you go back on duty, I hear there's steak on the menu today."

Krieg, he knew, would have told him exactly what he thought of that 'steak', and they would have been stuck in the room all day with no break.  But Cioffi's eyes lit up at the sound of that, and he closed his file with a flourish.

"Tell the chief to hold, Lieutenant.  I'm starving."

Cioffi and McCall both got up, and headed for the door with a firmness that initially surprised Ford.  But then he realised that they had worked with Joseph for a long time.  Most likely they disliked her as much as he did, and their quiet was in fact them ignoring her ways.  Scott Keller also jumped to his feet, surprisingly alert for a man who appeared to have spent most of the past six hours asleep, and beat them to the door.  Ford decided to take a leaf from the doctors' books, and just got up with them, forcing Joseph to follow.

He was a little puzzled on not finding Bridger and the chief outside, but assumed they had gone to lunch also.  Even when the lights in the MAG-LEV flickered, he did not pay it any attention.

There was, after all, still another two and a half days of Doctor Joseph to suffer.

-----

The first thing Lucas was aware of when he woke was how bright and warm everything was.  Even though his eyes were closed, the hot spotlights were centred on him whilst his rescuers worked, and even opening his eyes just a fraction blinded him.

He could not think where he was.  Confused, he thought for a moment he was lying in his bed in the house he had once shared with his parents, lying with his light over his head, listening to them arguing downstairs, like they were now.  It took him a little while to adjust to the idea that it was not his parents but the now more familiar voices of Bridger and Westphalen that he could hear, and reconciled himself to the fact that the cool hands on his face were not his mother's after all.

He opened his eyes, and quickly shut them again, unable to bear the spotlight.  He heard the doctor ask Ben to move it, and a moment later the dazzling brightness no longer seared through his eyelids, and he cautiously opened his eyes again to look up into the beautiful calm face of seaQuest's chief medical officer.  He frowned at her, puzzled.

"What happened?"

She smiled at him.  "We were hoping you would tell us!  Darwin heard you in the tunnel.  He and Commander Hitchcock almost certainly saved your life, you wouldn't have lasted much longer in that shaft.  Now how are you feeling?  Does anything hurt?"

Lucas ignored the question.  "The shaft...I remember, I couldn't breathe... The creature...there was a creature in the shaft, it came after me..."  He began to struggle, trying to sit up, panicking at the memory then growing more afraid at the discovery that he could not escape if it came back.  "I can't move!  Doctor, I can't move!  The creature..."

"Shhh, keep still," Westphalen's cool hands stroked his hair, trying to soothe him.  "It'll be all right, there's nothing here to hurt you now."

"But if it comes back..."

"Don't you worry none, lad," Crocker's round, kindly face peered quickly over the top of the shaft, winking down at him.  "Any big scary monster comes in here, I'll personally have it keel-hauled!"

Lucas looked up into the doctor's eyes, despairingly.  "It came out of the air, like a ghost.  It was real..."

Westphalen smiled at him fondly.  "Of course it was.  Don't worry, the chief'll catch it for you.  Now just lie still and stop talking, you're making it difficult for them to cut you free!"

"But it was real!  Captain," he tried to sit up again, and this time the shaft was loose enough to almost allow him to.  But it only gave so much, then the hard metal pressed on his damaged ribs, and he fell back with a cry of pain.

"Keep still Lucas!" the doctor chided him, but he could see the concern in her eyes.  It was precisely because of that concern, because she and the others cared so much, that he could not give up.  But the movement had cost him much, and now it was painful to breathe deeply, and thus difficult to talk.

"The creature...it was in the shaft...it did this...what else...could have done?"

He could tell that they were not listening, probably believing it was something he had hallucinated whilst short of air in the shaft.  Moreover, they had cut through the wreckage now and were preparing to lift the shell off him.

"Lucas," Bridger's lined face filled his field of vision, full of concern for him.  "We're going to move this now.  I want you to keep very still whilst we do it, even if it hurts.  Think you can do that?"

Lucas nodded.  The heavy metal did hurt already, pressing on his ribs and making it hard to breathe.  He did not like the way Olden had crouched at his feet.  He could feel that the security guard had taken a firm grip on his legs.  He liked even less that Krieg had changed places with Westphalen and the supply officer was now grinning down at him.  The cheerfulness looked forced to Lucas, who knew the man well enough to tell the difference.

"Ben?  What's going on?"

Krieg was holding his shoulders down.  Not too firmly, but Lucas had the distinct impression that if he had tried to get up the man would have stopped him.

"The doc' thought you needed some of my morale officer crap!"

Lucas heard Westphalen give an exasperated tut at the description, and could imagine her rolling her eyes.  He grinned back at Ben, more because of this than anything.

"So, you want me to tell you how this is gonna stretch you as a person?!  Or maybe how this'll teach you to go sneaking round these shafts into other people's rooms, messing up their stuff, huh?  No, don't answer, the captain says you have to keep quiet...boy, I could enjoy this one!"

"Pity he didn't order you to keep quiet as well, Ben," Ortiz could not help putting in, then regretted it as Lucas moved his head to look at him and saw them all crouching ready to lift the shaft.  He tensed, and Krieg physically turned the teenager’s head so that Lucas was looking up at him again.

"I don't keep quiet.  See Lucas, all those brains and it doesn't do you any good.  Me, I get paid money to just talk like this, I could talk and talk all day..." he saw Lucas start to smile again at that, and continued faster, watching Bridger signalling to the others out of the corner of his eye.  "...and get paid for it.  Get paid more than you do as well!  And don't think I don't know how all those little piles of nuts and bolts appeared in my room, kid!  See, what goes around..."

Lucas gasped with pain as Bridger, Crocker, Mars and Ortiz as one lifted the heavy shaft away from his body.  Krieg and Olden held him down, preventing him from moving and risking further damage to his battered body.

"...keep still, keep still, look, the doc's here now..."  Krieg's voice was calming, the endless stream of distracting nonsense evaporating, replaced by a soothing tone.

Lucas winced as a spasm jerked through his body, and looked down at Westphalen and Bridger, who were kneeling either side of him.  The doctor gave him a cursory check, saw he was still not bleeding, and began a more thorough examination.

"Now can you lift your arms?"

Lucas showed her that he could, much to his own relief.  His left leg felt burning hot with the rush of blood to it now, and the pain in his chest was worse than ever.  There was no need for anyone to hold him down, he had no intention of moving anywhere.  He submitted to the rest of her checks, listening without surprise to her diagnosis of two probable cracked ribs.  The burns, however, puzzled her, spread across his stomach and arms, with one of his hands quite nastily scorched.  He listened to them all arguing over the possibility of a fire down there, then deciding it had to be some kind of electrical burnout or a fault in the temperature controls.

"It was the creature," he told Westphalen.  "It was hot, it burned me."

The doctor smiled at him and nodded, but when she turned to Bridger and spoke in lowered tones, he could still hear her tell him: "He's confused.  It's the lack of oxygen."

"Captain," Lucas struggled to sit up, but Krieg and the pain in his chest stopped him.  Bridger leant over him immediately, still very concerned.

"I'm here.  Keep still like the doctor says."

"But the creature... you have to believe me about the creature, it came out of nowhere, it was burning hot... it was from the aliens..."

Bridger nodded seriously.  "Okay, I'll have it checked out if you're so worried.  But in return I want you to lie still and do what the doctor says."

"Be careful."

Lucas sank back, exhausted.  All he wanted to do was sleep, and now that the captain appeared to be taking him seriously he no longer needed to try so hard to stay awake, to struggle to be understood.  He watched Bridger and Westphalen a moment longer, then closed his eyes, trusting the captain to take care of them all.

-----

Bridger left the medical section with a tremendous feeling of relief.  Lucas was sleeping peacefully after Westphalen had patched him up, a draft of painkiller blocking out what he would otherwise have felt whilst she strapped his ribs.

Bridger had sent a reluctant Mars and Olden off in search of Lucas' 'monster', agreeing with Westphalen that it was almost certainly an hallucination, but wanting to be sure.  They had, after all, not found any satisfactory explanation for the condition Lucas had been discovered in.

Crocker had been despatched, even more reluctantly, to Doctor Joseph, and now Bridger turned his concerns back to the ship.  Something was causing that power drain, and he had not missed the similarities to the virus Stark had injected into the computer's core that had sparked off the chain of events leading to his taking command of the ship.  A virus from the alien ship was the most likely, if the least welcome, explanation.  He prayed it was something they could sort out before their visitors from the Alien Encounter Program found out about it.

"Captain."

Commander Hitchcock's voice startled him.  He had not noticed her, still wet, waiting outside sickbay with Darwin, beside one of his pools.

"Is Lucas okay?"

Darwin punctuated the question with a series of agitated clicks and whistles, which Bridger could recognise even without the instant translation as concern.

"He'll be fine, Commander.  You go and dry off, I'll see to Darwin.  And good work, you saved his life."

"Thank you, Sir."

He watched her go, giving the dolphin a final pet, then turned his own attention to Darwin.

"Now, old friend, what are you making such a fuss about, hmm?"

-----

Ben Krieg could not hold a tune to save his life.  That did not stop him singing happily to himself as he made his way back from his cabin towards the MAG-LEV, having ascertained that nothing had been removed in his absence.

Having found Lucas trapped in an area of shaft not so very far from Supply, Krieg's suspicions had been rightly aroused.  Once the teenager was safely in Medbay he had hurried back to his cabin.  Everything was as he had left it, however, even the grille over the ventilation shaft entrance was firmly in place.  The small globe he had stolen from the alien ship sat on his bedside table, still glowing faintly.

So he closed the door, locked it, and went off down the corridors.  Singing tunelessly, he headed back to the Bridge.

Life on the UEO's flagship had, until now, been something of a disappointment to him.  The initial shock of being reunited with his abrasive ex-wife had been tempered by the prospect of what he hoped was a fortune to be amassed in personal profits from the black market side of his role on the ship.  Captain Bridger's eagle eye had soon put paid to that, and try as he might, Krieg had never managed to acquire more than the barest minimum of profit from these activities.  Often Bridger had ensured that the only thing the supply officer made was a distinct loss.  But the alien ship made all that redundant, made everything worthwhile.  And Katie...

Katie was walking down the corridor towards him, a damp towel draped around her shoulders over a soaked vest and trousers that clung to her like a second skin.

Ben stopped, his expression slipping easily into a lopsided grin that he had no idea was so close to a leer.  He leaned against the wall, watching as she absently rubbed at her hair with the towel, so deep in thought that she did not notice him at first.

"Hey baby," he called softly as she drew closer, and she jumped, startled.  "You want me to help you with that?"  He tried to pull the towel out of her hand, but she hung onto it and instead he took hold of both ends, pulled her close to him and bent his head slightly to kiss her.

"Ben!" Hitchcock pushed him away, with enough force to cause him to almost lose his footing.  He steadied himself against the wall, gazing at her in confusion.  "Have you been drinking?!"

"No!  You..."  he stopped, then a slow smile of understanding spread itself across his features.  "Ah, not in the corridor, right?  Not where someone might see..."

"Not anywhere!  I don't know what's got into you, Ben, but if you don't stop harassing me there's going to be trouble!"

"Harassing you?!"  It was Krieg's turn to look amazed.  "Honey, last night you..."

"I am not your honey!  And as for last night, if you think you can read anything into that then you're just kidding yourself.  It's over.  Finished.  I thought we'd become friends again, but no, you have to read more into it and spoil things!"

Krieg could hardly believe what he was hearing.  Katie could be moody at times, he knew that better than anyone, but she was rarely this unreasonable unless pushed.  And he had not pushed her.  In fact, the last time he had seen her to talk to properly she had been warmer and friendlier to him than he could remember her being in a very long time.  That was even before she had come to him in the night...

"Me?  What do you expect when you come sneaking into my room wearing next to nothing, then climb into bed with me, huh?!  What?!"

For a moment Katie stared at him in a stunned silence.  Then she began to laugh.  She tried not to, but it was impossible.

"Oh Ben," she shook her head, trying to control her humour.  "It's very flattering to know you still feel like that, but do me a favour... Next time you have a wet dream, keep it to yourself, huh?"  She flipped her towel at him, and, still smiling to herself, continued on her way.

Krieg turned to watch her go, stunned by the change in her.  He was totally confused, and not a little hurt.  Last night he had taken her back gladly, without a second thought, her compliance allowing him to acknowledge feelings he had been at pains to suppress over recent months as they had grown closer again.  He knew Katie well enough to be certain that she would never allow him back into her bed lightly, and he could not believe she would use him for a one night stand.  He could not let her go that easily.

"Katie!"  Krieg ran after her, and caught her arm, pulling her around to face him.  "Honey, don't do this.  Yesterday you were kissing me, then swearing blind it was a mistake.  Last night you threw yourself at me and now you say you didn't.  What's going on?!  I mean, I'd like to know, I am the one you're taking out your frustrations on!"

"Frustrations?  Me?!  I'm not the one having perverted fantasies and then trying to persuade people they actually happened!  Now look," she straightened, reminding herself that she was the senior officer here and he had no right to be behaving like this towards her.  "You'll stop this, right now, or I'll report you.  And don't think that I won't just because we were married once!"

Krieg stared at her, and she glared back.  He recognised the signs, seeing that they were squaring off for a gigantic fight, and this time he had no idea what he had done to deserve it.  But the captain's warning came back at him, and he knew that whatever was wrong, they could not afford to let this one boil over.  Holding that thought uppermost in his mind, he swallowed his pride with extreme difficulty, and backed down.

"Okay.  If that's what you really want.  But..." Krieg paused, trying to find the right words to tell her that whatever the problem was, he was there for her, let her know he cared about her, tell her he did not understand this, all in a way that would not infuriate her further.

She was waiting for him to finish, and he could see the anger still there in her eyes.  He knew her well enough to recognise that anything he said whilst she was in this mood would only make things worse.  So he gave in, bitterly disappointed, terribly hurt, and trying desperately not to show it.

"Well?"

"Nothing.  You...did a great job finding Lucas.  I've gotta go."

Before she could say anything else to cut at him, he quickly turned away and headed back on his original course towards the Bridge.  This time he did not sing.

-----

Kristen Westphalen stood at the end of the Medbay bed that they had settled Lucas into, watching her young charge thoughtfully.  Lucas was asleep, which was something of a relief as his ramblings about the creature which he believed had chased him had got more difficult to make sense of by the moment.

Nobody could understand how or why the shaft had collapsed like that.  The flaw somewhere in the computer, that most of the crew were still desperately trying to sort out, was thought to have been responsible in some way, but nobody could see how.  Even if it had all given way under Lucas's weight, it did not explain why the metal had virtually formed itself to his body, only leaving him the tiniest space to breathe.  And then there were the burns.

Wherever the metal had touched him, his skin was burned.  Not badly, fortunately, but that in itself deepened the mystery.  If some sort of gigantic power surge had caused the metal to melt, it would have burned him terribly.  As it was only the palm and fingers of his right hand were in need of serious treatment.  It was as if he had picked something up and that had burned him.

When he awoke, she hoped he would be more coherent and provide the answers they wanted.  But he had been starved of oxygen for too long, his system needed to recover from that and the shock, so reluctantly she let him sleep on.  Mars and Olden were still searching for the mythical 'monster', none too seriously, whilst a small team from Engineering were investigating the site to see what had gone wrong.

"Kristen?"

Levin had come up silently behind her, and the sound of his voice made her jump.  He had been quite fascinated (too clinically so, Kristen privately thought) with the burns on Lucas's hand, and had spent the past two hours running tests on tiny samples of the damaged area.  Now he gently pulled at her arm and inclined his head towards the laboratories, indicating that they should go there to talk so as not to disturb Lucas.

"Leave the boy, he'll be fine," Levin whispered when she automatically glanced back at the sleeping teenager in concern, and Kristen smiled, aware she was starting to be over-protective.  The numerous monitors around Lucas would signal the moment anything was wrong.  Quickly she went with Levin.

The doctor had been busy with the samples, she could see that at once.  His corner of the lab, whilst normally a mess, had escalated into a certifiable disaster area.  Crocker, she knew, would not come near this part of the lab, disliking the subject matter of the majority of Levin's books and magazines, all of which were heaped under his desk.  The crystal skull he kept on top of his monitor did little to help matters either.  Kristen was unconcerned by Levin's interest in the paranormal and was broadminded enough to often be interested herself.  It was the number of discarded, half-empty coffee mugs strewn around that she disliked.  Especially the ones that had been there long enough to develop a head...

In the midst of all this was Levin's computer terminal, complete with microscope attachment and component analyser.  It was the readings from this which he immediately drew her attention to.

"This," he told her, displaying a badly burned hand on the screen, "is the damage a burn should have caused to Lucas's hand according to the scorching on the epidermis.  However, this," he changed the view on his screen to that of another hand, far less badly damaged, "is the depth of damage to Lucas.  Whilst it's just possible he pulled away in time, it's very unlikely considering how badly damaged the skin is.  So I checked further.  And what I found doesn't explain the burn, but it's so unusual I think it's worth taking a look at.  Here," he changed the display again, and this time Kristen found herself looking at the breakdown of some sort of chemical compound.  It matched nothing she had ever seen before.

"What is it?"

Levin shrugged.  "I don't know.  There's only the faintest traces of it, but it's just on  the boy's hand, where he's been burned.  It's nothing from the Earth, unless I'm very much mistaken."  He sighed, and looked back over his shoulder towards the still sleeping teenager.  "I'd say the kid's been messing with one of the samples Commander Keller brought back.  It may have somehow reacted with the metal and caused what happened.  The dust, residue, or whatever it is, seems like it could have mildly hallucinatory effects.  It would explain his 'monster'."

"Yes," Kristen was fascinated by the readout, and relieved at the logical explanation.  When Lucas woke up he would have some explaining to do.  "I told him not to touch those samples!"

"And you thought he'd listen?!"

She shrugged.  "There's always a first time..."

-----

Jonathan Ford had lived through better days.

When Doctor Joseph and her colleagues finally finished questioning Crocker, and the chief had gratefully hurried away, they had started on one of the samples Keller had brought back from the ship.  They had taken over a small area of the science labs for this, and Joseph had virtually thrown Ford out.

Leaving Keller to it, Ford made a bee-line for the captain, who was on the Bridge trying to pinpoint the source of the power drain without any success.

"Captain."

Bridger, Hitchcock, three of her engineers, Shan and Ortiz were all huddled around the Engineering station, scouring the systems for an answer to the question that had foxed them all day.  Bridger was not at all reluctant to leave the fruitless task to the others, and stepped down to see what the XO wanted.  He could guess, of course.

"Who's watching our visitors?"

"Keller.  They've locked themselves in the lab and won't be out for hours.  Captain, I'd like to request a week's leave, starting now!"

"That bad, huh?"

"Yep!"

Bridger laughed, knowing Ford was not totally serious about the leave.  "Request denied.  Have Krieg take over from you, take a break, then come back here."

"Yes Sir!"  Ford was grinning from ear to ear.  "Thank you!"

"Thank me later, when you see the problem we've got up here."

"Can't be worse than the problem I'll be leaving!"

"Don't bet on it.  We've got a power drain on all systems, can't find what’s causing it.  It's only very small but it's slowly increased since we first noticed it.  We could be up all night searching for the cause.  You might wish you returned to those scientists!"

"No way!  Ben can keep them.  Say," he caught sight of the captain's hands.  Both were covered in numerous cuts, and one was tightly bandaged across the palm.  "What happened to you?!"

"Lucas had an adventure in the ship's innards.  A ventilation shaft collapsed around him.  He's in Medbay, a little worse for wear but he'll be okay.  Don't ask what he was doing in there, he says he was chased by a monster!"

Ford grinned, then thought about it and asked seriously, cringing inwardly as he did so:  "Could all this be residue from our encounter?  A monster... that alien did just vanish..."

"I know.  Crocker has two very unhappy security guards currently combing the ship on a monster hunt.  Which reminds me, how did the chief's interview go?"

"No problems."  Ford's gaze roamed over the scene before him - the tight bunch of engineers working furiously together, the frustrated expression on each of their faces, then the argument breaking out over at the helm about who had sent the ship several centimetres off course...  It was a result of the power drain, but nobody was registering that, just reacting to the growing tension on the Bridge caused by everyone's inability to discover the cause of the fault.  "Guess I've really been out of things!"

"Believe me, you've missed nothing!" Hitchcock muttered to him as she broke away from her junior engineers and strode over to break up the argument.  She looked exhausted, and her intervention was neither patient nor gentle.  Bridger nudged Ford's arm, noticing it.

"The commander's well overdue a break too, take her with you, she can fill you in on what's happened.  I'll manage here.  She's too tired to be effective."

Hitchcock, as both Ford and Bridger expected, was less than pleased with the decision.  She liked to follow a job through, and would work at something until it was finished, no matter how long it took.  Jonathan knew her well enough to recognise that there was more to her stony-faced silence in the MAG-LEV than just that, but he was not really in the mood to pursue it.  Instead, he tried cheering her up with a brief description of his time with the doctor from hell, but when he began to describe her total change of attitude once Krieg had started soft-soaping her, Hitchcock's expression grew several shades darker again.  He was always suspicious whenever she reacted to anything regarding Krieg, be it positive or negative, and a frightening thought crossed his mind.

"Tell me that face isn't because you're jealous, Katie!"

Her jaw dropped, and for a moment he thought he was going to get the full force of her pent-up temper.  But Hitchcock had more restraint than that, and she just shook her head.  As the MAG-LEV doors opened she stood up and led him out.

"So what's wrong?" he asked after all.

"Nothing.  I just want to get the ship back in working order.  It's so frustrating!"

Ford dropped the subject, heading for the Mess.  He expected to find Krieg there but intended despatching the man to the Science labs immediately so foresaw no real problems even though he was obviously the source of Hitchcock's mood.  She was walking beside him when they entered the Mess.  When she saw Krieg she averted her eyes and headed very pointedly for the self-service counter, as far from the man as possible.

Krieg's eyes, Ford noticed, followed Hitchcock as she moved across the room.  He looked no happier than she did, his face pale and shadowy from lack of sleep.  It had not been noticeable before, during the interview, when his bright and breezy mood had lifted him and everyone around him.  Ford coughed, drawing his attention, and Krieg looked around.

"The captain wants you to take over from me with baby-sitting the alien doctors, Lieutenant.  Westphalen's agreed you can go back in the labs, just as long as you don't start interrogating people again!"

"Okay."  The tone was dull, disinterested.  Ford waited for the expected smart or snappy remark but it never came.  Krieg remained where he was, gazing down now into an empty coffee mug.

"He meant now, Krieg," Ford added, when the lieutenant showed no signs of moving.  Across the room, Katie was deliberately dawdling over her meal.  Ford knew that there was no way it could take more than a minute to choose the two lettuce leaves and teaspoonful of salad cream that the woman seemed to survive on.  She never wasted much time on food normally, especially when she was busy, her current apparent interest was unusual.

Ben pushed back his chair with a loud scraping noise which reverberated around the quiet room, picked up his tray and stood up.  Ford followed him as he went to dispose of it, seeing him pass two disposal units in favour of the one closest to Hitchcock.  As he utilised it, and turned as if to speak to the woman, Ford caught his arm.

"Don't screw this up, Ben.  Concentrate on the job, not anything else."

"No problem."

Ford frowned.  It was Ben saying the words, but in a tone so unlike the easy, confident one he normally used that the XO was concerned.  The basic reason was fairly obvious, and he could not stop himself wondering what had happened this time.  It was not unusual for Hitchcock to be in a bad mood over something that Krieg had said or done, but for the easy-going supply officer to be equally affected had to mean something more than their regular little disagreements.  Hitchcock had gathered her lunch and headed straight back across to the other side of the room the moment Krieg had turned to her.  Now he was looking after her, and moved to follow, but Ford stopped him, placing a hand firmly on the junior officer's chest.

"No.  I don't know what you've done this time, but let her cool off."

Krieg gazed at him despondently.  "It always has to be something I've done, doesn't it?"

Ford shrugged.  "Check your track record."

Again the expected snappy reply never came.  Krieg just turned and wandered off.

Collecting his own meal, Ford made his way back to the table where Hitchcock was sitting.  She was not eating, merely turning the food over with her fork, lost in thought.

"Penny for them?" he offered as he sat down.  "Or shall I guess?"

She looked up, and met his gaze with eyes which even after all the years he had known her he still found startlingly attractive.  "Not if that guess involves your jealousy theory, Jonathan, because it would be wrong."

"It's Ben, though, I can see that.  What's he done this time?"

Katie shook her head.  "Nothing.  Not really."

"Well you're both acting pretty tetchy over nothing!  Come on, Katie, Bridger's already worried, if he sees you acting like this he'll haul the pair of you up in front of him and..."

"Okay!"  her tone was unexpectedly sharp, and her eyes flashed with anger.

  Ford had known her a long time, but still he found her difficult to comprehend at times.

  "Yes, it's Ben."  She glanced quickly around the virtually empty Mess, then continued in lowered tones:  "He's...made it clear he wants us to get back together.  He got the wrong idea, it's partly my fault, but he's confusing fantasy with reality, and reading too much into everything!  When I put him right... well, you can see how he took it.  I feel bad, but what else could I do?"

Ford nodded slowly, chewing on his dinner.  The idea that Krieg might be even considering renewing their relationship angered him, and he was aware that the anger did not stem merely from indignation on behalf of his friend, which only served to make him angrier.  He hated the way that someone as unworthy as Krieg seemed to still be able to influence that beautiful, intelligent woman, despite everything he had put her through.  He could  see, even if Katie could not, that she and Krieg were drawn irresistibly together and always would be.  Poles apart, which caused constant friction, it was the worst case of opposites attracting that he had ever seen.  He had watched their relationship change over the years, when he had first known Katie she was fresh off the Coleridge and in the midst of a messy divorce.  Perhaps it was knowing her in those days, seeing what the broken relationship took out of her, that had caused him to dislike Krieg so much when they were finally posted together.  Or perhaps it was just  the speed at which,  to his  way of thinking at least, she seemed to have forgotten all the unpleasantness and become what he saw as too friendly with her ex-husband again.  When she and Krieg had come away from preparing the launch for its visit to the alien ship, Hitchcock had trotted straight down to the Captain.  Next thing Jonathan knew,  Krieg was on  the exploration team and a huge bunch of flowers had mysteriously materialised in  Katie’s quarters.  This current problem was exactly the sort of consequence he feared.

No.  He feared that it would go further, that the pair would get back together as Ben wished, and that in the future, when they were no longer on the same boat, every time he wanted to see his friend there would be that obnoxious husband/ex-husband/whatever tagging along.  Jonathan Ford was far too professional to ever get involved with someone he worked with, or so he told himself, but he knew that professionalism was not ever going to be a major problem for Krieg.  Occasionally now, Ford was starting to question his own standards, to wonder if perhaps they might not be too impossibly high.  This latest turn of events would cause him to question them further.  He and Katie were so perfectly suited, they got on so very well, and they looked good together.  And he knew that, no matter what, he would never hurt her like Ben had done.  He resolved to wait until they were next on shore leave together, and then sound her out.  But in the meantime...

Ford was quite sure that he did not want to know the details of what had happened, but Katie was his friend and obviously needed someone to talk to.  He knew that if their positions had been reversed she would have been more than willing to help him.

Except I'd never be dumb enough to get involved with someone like Krieg in the first place...

Sighing inwardly, he reached over and took the fork out of her hand.  "Maybe you'd better tell me what happened.  Slowly..."

-----

Nathan Bridger was not having the best of days.  The knowledge that he was not the only person on the ship in that situation did not make it any easier.  He found it extremely worrying that in his entire (albeit still rather depleted following the mass exodus two days earlier) crew of top quality staff, there was nobody who could discover what was causing the power drain.  Worse, they seemed to be of the unanimous opinion that once Lucas was back on his feet the teenager would find it right away.  They had, he realised, got all too used to calling on the wunderkind every time something went wrong.  In truth, Lucas would no more have been able to find the fault in this case than any of the others, but neither Bridger nor his staff had any way of knowing this.

Sickbay, Bridger was a little alarmed to see, was almost deserted.  Most of the science section were busy working on the samples brought back from the alien ship, or on their own private research.  But when he went into the small room where Westphalen had settled Lucas, he found the doctor seated beside the boy's bed, working quietly on her laptop computer.  She looked up at his approach, and smiled.

"How is he?" Bridger whispered, crouching down between her and the boy.

"Still sleeping.  He'll be okay, don't worry."

"Who said I was worried?!  I just want our expert here to wake up and fix the computer!"

Kristen laughed, knowing he was not serious, and placed the laptop carefully on the floor.  "Maybe in a few days."

"Hmmm.  It might have to be sooner than that."

"Trouble?"

"Power drain.  Negligible at the moment, but it's definitely increasing.  In a few days it'll be serious.  A few days beyond that and we'll be dead in the water!"

"Oh surely you have staff that can deal with it as well as Lucas?!  Nathan, this is supposed to be the UEO flagship, crewed by experts!"

"That's what I thought too.  This is a tricky one, Kristen, nobody, in any area of expertise, can find the cause.  I don't like pushing him when he's ill any more than you do, but right now we need all the help we can get."

"Well," she looked across at the sleeping boy.  "There's nothing he can do at the moment, so I suggest we leave him in peace.  Come and take a look at what Josh found out about how this happened."

Bridger stood up and followed her out to the main laboratory.  "You've found the monster?!"

"Sort of.  We think he couldn't resist poking around the alien artefacts Scott brought back, and some sort of dust on them caused hallucinations.  One more thing to hide from those scientists, I'm afraid.  They've locked themselves in with some of the things, but fortunately Josh and I managed to 'remove' the items we think caused the trouble."

Bridger raised an eyebrow.  "Pity.  That doctor Joseph could use a good trip!"

For a moment Kristen frowned at him, then burst out laughing, unable to keep the appearance of disapproval up.  "Oh Nathan!"

"So how're things going with our guests?  I had Krieg relieve Jonathan, I thought I was about to be minus one good XO!"

"Mmm.  She really doesn't like him.  And what on earth's wrong with Ben?!  He's moping around like someone just died!  He was on cloud nine earlier, now he's been slouched in a chair outside Joseph's lab for the past five hours looking the picture of misery.  The other three seem okay, or else I'd be thinking it was an after-effect of their visit to that ship!"

Bridger groaned inwardly, well able to guess what it was going to be.  Hitchcock had been tetchier than usual that afternoon and it did not take a genius to work out roughly what the causes were.

Well, I warned them both...

"I've got a pretty good idea what it is, and it isn't anything to do with that ship.  Leave it, we haven't got time for an ex-marriage counselling service, the main priority has to be getting the seaQuest back in working order and getting those damned scientists out of our hair!"  He stopped, realising that she was no longer listening, and followed her gaze back towards the room where Lucas was.  "What's wrong?"

Kristen did not answer, but her pleased smile as she hurried back to her patient told him that it could not be very much.  He followed her through, and found Lucas lying in the sickbed looking around in confusion.  Westphalen sat on the edge of his bed and gently stroked his forehead, pushing his soft fall of blond hair back out of his eyes with as much tenderness as she would have had he been her own child.

"Where...what's going on?" Lucas looked dazedly up at her.  "Where'd everyone go?"

Westphalen smiled fondly down at him.  "You've been sleeping for quite a while, Lucas."

Bridger joined her, relieved and pleased to see that the teenager did not appear to have suffered any major damage.  "They all got fed up and went home when they found there was no monster after all.  I think Crocker was hoping it was Bigfoot at least!  He had his camera all set up ready!"

Lucas rolled his eyes in disgusted.  "There was a creature," he stated pointedly.

"No.  There was a young man who decided to disobey everyone and go nosing through things that he'd been specifically told to leave alone.  There's a fine dust on some of the alien artefacts that can cause hallucinations if inhaled."  Bridger tapped him on the end of his nose, and Lucas scowled at him.  "You must've breathed in!"

"I didn't know it was one of the artefacts.  And it burned me, I dropped it right away.  That was when the creature came after me."

"And the creature came from where?  Out of the air, perhaps?" Bridger asked quizzically, vaguely amused now that he was sure Lucas was safe and well.

Lucas did not answer, but the annoyance on his face spoke volumes.

"Yes, I thought it might have.  When you're ready you'd better show us which it was so that no-one else gets scorched by it."

Lucas screwed up his face, trying to remember what the artefact looked like.  He found that he could not even remember where he had discovered it.  "It was round," he managed after a while.  "And it burned me.  That's all I remember about it."

Westphalen patted his cheek reassuringly.  "That's okay, we'll find it.  What I don't understand is, why did you climb into the ventilation shafts afterwards?"

Lucas shook his head.  "I don't remember.  We were playing a trick on Ben earlier...  I just don't remember anything very clearly."

Westphalen nodded, understandingly.  "That's natural with hallucinogens.  It may never come back."

"And we'll never know why that shaft collapsed," Bridger added.

Lucas lay back, staring up at the ceiling.  "It was the monster," he repeated.  "It crushed the shaft in its bare hands..."

-----

It was late, and Katherine Hitchcock was very tired.  Earlier, she had been fine, having reached the point of tiredness where it abated and she felt as if she could go on for hours.  But now she was exhausted, totally, and wanted nothing more than to crawl into her bunk and sleep for a month.  Only she, Bridger and Ford were left on duty, even Krieg had been sent a relief after it became apparent that Doctor Joseph was going to stay up studying the artefacts all night.  She rubbed at weary eyes and tried to focus on the screen in front of her.

"Katie."

The woman looked around at the sound of Ford's voice, and saw her second engineer standing beside him, ready to take over from her.  "Relief?"

"Don't even think about denying you need sleep," the XO warned, and she had little choice but to agree.

Once she had handed over, she headed straight for the MAG-LEV, but Ford caught up with her and steered her towards the Ward Room.

"Sorry.  I'd kill for a rest too, but the Captain's just come back from talking to Lucas again and he wants to see us."

"More trouble?"

Ford shrugged.  "He wouldn't say.  I think it's a safe bet though!"  He tapped on the door, held it open for her, then followed her inside. 

Bridger was sitting at the desk, watching a series of images pass across the screen on the wall in front of him.  Hitchcock recognised some of them as artefacts and samples that Keller and his team had brought back from the ship.  Lucas and Westphalen were sitting beside him, Lucas in particular looked quite miserable.

"Hey Lucas," she grinned at the boy, still feeling pretty pleased with herself for saving him despite all the other events of the day which seemed to have conspired to drag her down.  "How're you feeling?"

His disgruntled face said differently, but "Okay," was what came out of his mouth.  "Thanks for finding me, Commander."

"Thank Darwin."  Hitchcock and Ford settled themselves around the table.  Katie instantly regretted sitting down, not entirely sure that she could make it back up again.

"What's the problem?" Ford asked the doctor, too tired himself to do anything other than go straight to the point.

Westphalen quickly explained what they believed had happened to Lucas.  "When he was ready, I went through the artefacts we had put aside with him.  The one he touched wasn't amongst them.  These," she indicated the images before them, "are the ones Doctor Joseph is looking at.  He says it's not one of these either, but of course we can't get in and find out."

"It's not one of these," Lucas insisted.  "It was small and round, like a little globe..."

Hitchcock froze, a dreadful suspicion forming in her mind.  She had seen that artefact...

"...and it was warm, hot, it burned me."

Hitchcock pushed back her chair and stood up very, very quickly.  They all looked around at her in surprise.

"What's wrong, Commander?" Bridger asked.

"I think... I might know... I have to check something, excuse me!" 

She fled from the room, not caring how strange it looked, or how puzzled they were.  Ahead of her, the MAG-LEV doors were starting to close, and like Krieg had done earlier in the day she ran for the shuttle and leapt through the closing doors.  As she fell into a seat opposite, she saw Jonathan fast approaching the shuttle himself, coming after her.

But she would not wait.  Ben, she knew, had come off duty nearly an hour before, and would have gone straight back to his cabin in his current mood.  If Lucas's description and her own suspicions were right, then there was not a moment to lose.

If it was not already too late.

-----

Ben Krieg had not gone straight to his cabin.  First he had tried to raid the Mess bar, but had come up empty-handed, the alcohol ban still strictly in force.  Next he had tried Crocker, but the security chief's cabin was in darkness which either meant he was asleep or out.  Either way, he was not likely to part with any of the secret whisky supply Krieg was convinced he had hidden away somewhere.

Having totally failed to obtain any Dutch courage, (the supply in his cabin too revolting to even consider drinking save in the most dire emergency) he finally slunk along to Hitchcock's cabin, forced to face her without it.  Like Crocker's, this was in darkness, but he rapped on the door anyway, knowing she was often more willing to see his side of things when she was sleepy.

Unfortunately, Hitchcock's cabin was in darkness because she was still on duty, and soon enough he had to admit defeat and return to his own quarters.

Stripping down to a T-shirt and shorts, he stretched out on his bunk, tired but far too tightly wound up to even think about sleeping.  He considered going back and waiting outside her cabin until she came off duty, but knew how angry she would be at this, especially if anyone saw him there.  So instead, he stayed where he was, lying on his back in a brightly-lit room, brooding on the day's confusing events.

Eventually, sensing his lack of activity, the lights in the cabin automatically dimmed.  He sat up, intending to turn them back onto full power, then thought better of it.  Instead, reaching into one of the cupboards over his bed, he pulled out one of the bottles of illegal beer that he had hidden there after all.  It was dreadful quality, only for use as a very last resort or for sale to the highest bidder.  With this particular beer, most people on the ship would sooner go without, so Krieg's little supply was a permanent fixture.  The wine beside it, he knew, tasted so bad that it was a wonder it had not burned through the bottle by now.  Still, he took the beer and closed the compartment, then on impulse opened the one next to it and pulled out a handful of photographs.

Krieg settled himself back down on his bed, opened the bottle, and took a swig.  Immediately he wished that he had not as the unpleasant taste filled his mouth, and, swallowing with difficulty, he put the bottle on the floor.  Picking up the little globe he had stolen from the alien ship, he lay back down and began to look through the photos.

There was something very reassuring about the little sphere, the way that it glowed and hummed to itself in his hands, and after a few moments he began to feel better.  It had already occurred to him that perhaps it was some form of alien relaxation device that he had taken.  It had also occurred to him that it could be an innovative cure for all stress and that if he could ever find out how it worked he would be made for life.  At some point he knew he would have to let Lucas in on the secret, let his super-brain figure it out, then they would both be multi-millionaires.

"Bet you wouldn't blow hot and cold on me then, would you honey?" he told the picture of Katie which had somehow found its way to the top of the pile he was looking through.  The face in the photo just smiled at him, young, loving and open, with none of the suspicion that punctuated it whenever she looked at him now.  It was an old photo, taken in their early days at the academy, long before they were married, or divorced, or involved in the peculiar relationship she had now initiated.

Dropping the rest of the pictures to the floor, he stood just that one up beside his bed, and lay on his side with his back to the door, staring at the photo.  It brought back so many memories, not just of Katie as she was.  The academy building in the background reminded of other things, of friends he had known, of the fun they had all had at that place, friends he would never see again.

And now it was many years later and he knew that she would never smile at him like that, ever.  It hurt, no matter how much he tried to pretend that it did not, it hurt, it always had, and now he was beginning to wonder if it always would.

As before, he did not see her come in.  He was not aware that anyone had entered the room until a long, slim, bare arm reached across him and picked up the photo.  When he rolled over, startled, he found himself looking up at his ex-wife, who was smiling down at the photo.

This time, however, she looked different.

"Katie?"

She did not answer him, but looked up from the picture and smiled.  She smiled the exact same smile as the one she was smiling in the picture.  All the tiredness that he had seen in her face during the day was gone.  She looked younger, brighter.  He knew it had to be his imagination, but even her hair looked longer.

In fact, she looked exactly the same as she did in the photograph.

"Katie?" he asked again, no longer quite sure.  The woman before him was wearing the same green cotton print dress that Katie had been wearing in the picture.  It was too much of a coincidence.  Either someone was playing a pretty nasty trick on him, or there was something very strange going on.  The figure in front of him still said nothing, but put down the picture, leant forward, and tried to kiss him.

It took more force of will than he thought he had, but he managed to push her away, and got up quickly.

"No, not again.  Tell me what's going on, Katie."

Again she did not answer, but smiled at him and draped her arms around his neck.  He thought that he could hear her faintly purring.

"Katie!"

Disentangling himself, he caught her arms and made her sit down on the bed beside him.  She did not stop smiling at him whilst he did so, and if he had any doubts that something was wrong, this dispelled them.

"Talk to me, honey.  Did you take something?  Drink something?  You want me to call Doctor Westphalen?"

She shook her head, still smiling, and lay back on the bed, opening her arms out to him.  Krieg stared at her, not sure what he should do.

No, he knew what he should do: call Doctor Westphalen at once.  But if Katie was drugged, or drunk, it might go on her record and she would never forgive him.  If he could pull her through this, it might get him back in her good books again.  And, he told himself as he looked down at her lying there, being in her good books could have distinct advantages.

"Now honey," he stood up and leant over her, keeping just out of reach.  "I don't know what's wrong, and I'm gonna hate myself for this in the morning, but if anyone else sees you like this you're gonna be in big trouble.  Now," he stepped back as she half-sat up and reached for him again, "I'm gonna make you some real strong coffee, and you're gonna drink it and keep drinking it till you come out of this.  Okay?"

The woman did not answer him, just continued to smile and reach for him, totally unpeturbed.  When he walked across the room to fix her some coffee, she followed and draped herself over him again, kissing and nibbling at him.

Ben nursed the fervent hope that the coffee worked, because he doubted he could continue to do the right thing for all that much longer...

-----

The rather full MAG-LEV had stopped only once on its route across the ship before Hitchcock lost her temper and overrode the controls.  The other passengers looked at her, saw how angry she was, and made no comment.  Some of them had just come off duty with her and were well aware how foul a mood she was in.

Reaching her destination, she jumped out, pushing ahead of the other passengers who wanted that stop, and ran off down the corridor, colliding with O'Neill, Ortiz, Phillips and Shan, all coming away from another successful poker game.  O'Neill spilled chips all over the floor, whilst Ortiz almost lost his favourite pack of cards.  Hitchcock just muttered an apology and raced on, leaving them looking after her in puzzlement.

"Hey," Phillips called once he thought she was out of earshot.  "If you wanted to join the game again you only had to ask..."

Hitchcock could not have cared less about the poker game.  She sped down the corridor and saw Krieg's cabin ahead of her.  Without a second thought she burst in through the door.

"Ben, the artefact!  You have to..."

She stopped, dead in her tracks, taking in the scene before her.  After their little scene earlier in the day, she had not considered for one moment that he might have had anyone in there with him.  Especially not the tall brunette who was draping herself all over him, halfway out of a long green dress and trying hard to remove what remained of her ex-husband's clothes.  Embarrassed, and temporarily thrown, she took a step back, not sure where to look.  Krieg had turned towards her.  He dropped the coffee pot he was holding and it fell to the floor with a loud crash, smashing and splattering hot coffee everywhere.  He seemed not to notice, staring at her in disbelief.  Then, slowly, he turned to look at the woman with him, and as the woman's face came into view, Katie saw why.

It was almost like looking into a mirror.  Almost, but not quite.  The woman before her was a little younger, her hair was longer, her chest too well-developed, her demeanour too compliant.

"What the hell...?"  Ben moved away from the woman, totally confused now.  He looked from one to the other.  It did not take a genius to work out which was the impostor.  "How...?"

Hitchcock had not expected this.  She had come rushing in to stop whatever defence system Lucas had activated within the artefact from attacking Ben, not this.  She had supposed his belief that she had slept with him the previous night was due to the same hallucinatory compound which Lucas had succumbed to, and been prepared to explain that to him and even forgive him for his behaviour that day.  But this was something else again.  And it meant that if this woman could exist, so could Lucas's monster.

"Ben..." She held out her hand, moving and speaking very slowly and calmly, hoping not to scare whatever it was that shared the room with them.  "Come to the door, very, very slowly..."

"Okaaay."  Gently pushing the woman away, he tried to do as he was bid, but she would not let go.  He looked across to Katie.  "What should I do?  Where did she come from?"

Katie indicated the fiercely glowing globe, now lying in his bed.  "Where do you think?  It's what attacked Lucas.  Come on, before it turns nasty.  We can talk about just why it looks so much like me later!"

For some reason, that clinched it.  Ben disentangled himself, and walked quickly over to her side.  The creature that looked so much like Katie followed, but he turned on her, angry at being fooled.

"No.  I don't want you, do you understand?  Keep away!"

The creature stared at him, the smile fading a little.  Katie found herself momentarily almost feeling sorry for it.  Ben rarely showed any bad temper towards anyone, but she could well understand his anger towards the creature in this case.  All the same, it seemed gentle, fawning, almost like a puppy.  It was raising one hand now, in a forlorn, imploring gesture.  Ben had the door open and was waiting for her to go through it, but she delayed, just a moment, wanting to reassure the creature.

"Look, we don't mean you any harm..."

The blast, coming seemingly from nowhere, hit her full in the chest.  Just for a moment she felt it lift her, saw Ben's horrified face staring at her.

And then nothing.

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