It had been Moray's turn to cook while Chekov was in Aberdeen. He did his best not to look at the gluey lump on his fork as he raised it to his mouth.

He wasn't sure why, but the atmosphere on the Nell had undergone a radical change in his absence. The pallid gloop masquerading as beef stroganoff was being eaten with inexplicable good humour, and Goudchaux was preening like a tom cat in possession of the sunniest window ledge.

The ensign tried to catch Sulu's eye without success. Khwaja, too, seemed very much preoccupied with things that didn't lie in Chekov's general direction.

Goudchaux was tapping with a stylus on a padd as he picked at his food. "You're an educated woman," he said to Jessie Alleyn. "How many 'p's are there in 'entrapment'?"

"Spell checker on that thing on the blitz again?"

"Doesn't have a standard dictionary," Goudchaux explained, waving Esme off with his free hand. "It's Gundalian trash, like the rest of this wreck."

Chekov frowned. The pirate sounded like a man who was planning to buy himself a new ship. With cash.

Moray frowned back at the ensign. "Eat up, sweetheart. I cooked it specially for you." She leaned over and peered at the padd's screen. "How d'you arrive at *that*, Captain?"

"Loss of earnings." Goudchaux stabbed at what appeared to be a list of figures. "Loss of educational opportunities, compensation for damage to my good name..."

Moray snorted.

"*Punitive* damages, loss of pension entitlements, impairment of health, mental and physical..."

"I wouldn't push your luck, Goudchaux," Brecht said irritably. "Because Starfleet's lawyers will haul Montgomery Scott up into the witness box and have him list out his earnings, his pension and his patents."

"Irrelevant," Goudchaux snapped. "That only goes to show that Starfleet can make a man if it wants to, just the same as it can break him."

"And all breakages must be paid for?" Moray laughed. "How much for an eye? Add on another five million?"

Chekov shoved his plate aside. "You are planning to demand compensation from Starfleet because... because..."

Khwaja nodded seriously. "Four young children without a stain on their characters one moment, peddling drugs the next, and it turns out it's all because some Starfleet renegade..."

"But I was..." Chekov stopped, everyone's eyes on him. "I was obeying your orders," he told Khwaja defiantly.

Goudchaux looked up from the figuring that had reclaimed his interest. "Khwaja? Starfleet? That's a damn fool notion. No, I've known him since... Didn't Old Mac take you on board the Isolde? Now, why did he do that? I don't recollect..."

"Because my father stood him up with the proceeds of a significant business arrangement, and Old Mac thought he might be sentimentally attached to me. Which he was, in his own fashion, but it didn't work out in quite the way Old Mac hoped. But that's hardly relevant right now."

Goudchaux smiled sourly. "As you say, it's another matter, but you were still young enough to cry yourself to sleep over it. I'd say I've known you man and boy, Khwaja, apart from the odd six months here and there. Perhaps they let you study for Starfleet part time these days?" He glowered significantly at Chekov. "And we all know just how much they've dropped the entrance requirements lately..."

Khwaja was shaking his head. "You're sadly mistaken, Captain. Ensign Chekov is absolutely correct, for once. Lieutenant Commander Yves Saint-Jean, at your service, ladies and gentlemen. Or leastways at your expense, if you'd ever paid any taxes."

"How d'you fix that?" Goudchaux demanded angrily. "Didn't you hear me just saying you've not been out of my sight long enough to trim your toe nails since you were in diapers?"

"You're obviously forgetting the eight years you spent in Hang Sen." Khwaja stared at Goudchaux, and the pirate backed down, mumbling discontentedly.

"Everyone told me..."

"Everyone was lying to you, Captain." The agent -- as it now appeared -- waited a beat. "For which I apologise. But as you've already remarked, it's amazing how Starfleet will seek out the talent it needs among the flotsam. And just how ruthlessly it can ignore the talent that doesn't quite fit its requirements."

Goudchaux ground his teeth. "But they're going to pay for it now..."

"Quite. Mister Chekov, clear the table."

Chekov looked up, startled. None of this was making very good sense, and if 'Commander Saint-Jean' was going to carry on behaving as objectionably as 'Khwaja' and 'Simon Hanton' before him, the ensign saw little reason to go along with the charade.

Khwaja leaned forward, until his nose was virtually touching Chekov's. "The point of all this, Chekov, is that the fifth shard still needs to go to the right place, and since this entire crew now consists of reformed criminals, eager to demonstrate just how virtuous they'd all be if you hadn't viciously led them astray..."

Chekov cleared his throat. "So, now everyone is planning to blame me for their criminal records. Brecht too? And Esme? No one has yet explained..."

"When my brother went missing with your drugs in his pocket, what did you expect me to do?" Esme snapped. "I knew he was always fantasising about stowing away on a merchantman, but I never thought he'd lay his hands on a kee of powder and buy himself passage right out of the system. I'd never have discovered that much if I hadn't been young and pretty enough, then, to persuade some of the lowlife around the docks to talk more than they should, and then give me a berth on a ship headed in the same direction. The authorities didn't try so hard, but they weren't family."

Chekov narrowed his eyes at the revelation that Esme was someone's sister -- Goudchaux's he assumed, but it hardly mattered. Maybe the fourth member of the gang. Maybe the 'Richard' with the brown eyes. Or she could have been lying. "And Mister Brecht? How do *you* propose to blame me for your criminal activities?"

"I just don't propose to be a criminal, Admiral. Much safer that way. I don't believe I've done anything illegal yet. I haven't even entered Federation space. So long as I can go home with something for the disaffected princeling who slipped me his family's chunk of the medallion..."

"You mean Mister Scott?" Chekov glanced at the engineer, who was polishing his plate earnestly with a crust.

"Not now I've made the gentleman's acquaintance," Brecht said. "I'm too tender-hearted for that. And for the same reason, I'd have to say no if you were to volunteer to pretend to be something for which the Klingons might pay a credit or two. No. I had in mind sending a discrete message suggesting that he hire a fleet of survey ships and spend a few decades looking around the point where the Nell vanished so completely. I don't have the capital to take the job on, but he does, and his father will probably give me a bonus for keeping him out from under the family's feet for a while. Even if the young termite only recovers a few baubles, he should be happy enough." Brecht looked thoughtful. "You know, I was joking about taking you back with me, but I've taken quite a liking to you, Commodore. If you're afraid the water might be uncomfortably hot when you get home -- and I can see you don't take kindly to following the commander's orders any more now that he's broken cover than you did when he was playing at being a pirate -- I'd consider taking you on as a partner. A salaried partner. On a small monthly allowance, at least. How about it?"

Chekov looked at Scott. Then engineer looked back, then sighed. "As I've said all along, Mister Chekov, it's not your business to trouble yourself with who's who and why, or anything else. You should obey orders and keep your opinion of them to yourself, if you hope to ever have the right to do otherwise. Now, why don't you clear the table, like the lieutenant commander told you?"

The ensign stood firm. "Why can't one of these..."

Khwaja stood up and pulled Chekov bodily out of his seat. He shook him. "You're not listening, Mister. I just gave you an order, and Mister Scott here just took the trouble to explain to you, in a polite and reasonable manner, why you should obey it. If you think that just because you've forced me to break cover, the worst I can do to you is to hand out a bunch of demerits, you're sadly mistaken. Aren't you?"

The game was now a familiar one: straight out of cadet dorm, where the seniors were allowed to practise their 'command skills' on the freshmen, and the freshmen were allowed to practise getting used to it.

"Yes, sir," Chekov said, loudly and clearly enough that Khwaja wouldn't immediately tell him to repeat himself.

"I didn't hear that," Khwaja said anyway.

"Yes! Sir!"

***********

Chekov realised he was beginning to feel rather proprietorial about the little galley. Once he'd cleared the table and disposed of the dishes, he rearranged the lockers. The activity kept him looking busy, in case anyone came in, and it gave him a chance to think.

Khwaja had mentioned one outstanding problem, the fifth shard, but he, and everyone else, had neglected a larger conundrum.

The time device had been in the pod. Therefore, once the pod was placed in Orion space ready to be retrieved, they would have to find another way to travel home through time.

Unless of course the pod was dropped off only a short while before the Nell found it.

Chekov narrowed his eyes and reconstructed the sequence of events around the recovery of the pod.

He and Sulu had sent out the code, his birthday, from the proper location. They had received, in reply, a radio message, apparently from a Nell in flames and disintegrating. Shortly afterwards, the pod had begun to transmit its 'here I am' signal, and they'd reeled it in. The Nell, the earlier Nell, had been attacked, and Scott had used the device from the pod to escape to safety in the past.

He considered. The message, the supposedly recorded message: he, and Sulu, had been assuming that it came from within the pod, but it could just as easily have been transmitted by a third party. The attacker need not have been an Orion adventurer or enforcer, or someone who had overheard Goudchaux boasting at Quondar. It could just as well have been the Nell itself, if she had survived the damage seen in the transmission.

How easy would it be to fake the damage altogether? And why bother if the Nell hadn't been damaged in the first place?

Chekov shook his head. They were beginning to do things simply because they had done things. But he wondered how general that motivation was: wondered whether some people might decide it was time to do something different, and change everything: wondered if he might decide that himself. 'If you are, as you say, a man of honour...'

Did honour lie in corrupting children, or committing theft and murder? it was hard to believe *no one* had been killed during the raids on the Orion treasure houses. Certainly legend spoke of bloodshed.

"Penny for them."

Chekov jumped. "Khwaja..."

The agent grinned. "Daydreaming about me, kitten. How sweet."

Scott and Goudchaux were crowding into the galley behind Khwaja. They had the look of men with a mission. Having no space behind him to allow a retreat, Chekov took a stand in front of the synthesiser. He folded his arms and endeavoured to appear relaxed. After all, they were playing at being reformed characters. They might be playing seriously enough to actually act that way, for a while.

"How good are you at math, Chekov?" Goudchaux demanded.

"Why?"

"Because if I'm going straight, I'll need someone to figure out how much tax I owe. Just answer the question."

"I... I studied advanced subspace calculus at the Academy."

Goudchaux's customary 'sucking lemons' expression at any mention of the Academy crept over his face. "But did you just study it, or did you understand it? Did you flunk the course or get a triple A? Can you figure the bloody stuff?"

Chekov glanced at Scott for some clue on what this was all about. The engineer's face could have been chipped out of ice.

"I would not have qualified as a navigator if..."

"We all know that the standard navcom calculations are handled by the computer. What we want to know is if you can do the out of the ordinary kind all by yourself."

"Computers sometimes fail," Chekov pointed out, reckoning he was safe so long as he stuck to stating the obvious.

"But we're not talking about navcoms," Scott said. "We're talking about the theory. The pure calculus. Three body systems. Infinite degrees of freedom. Not 'good enough' approximations. They don't even talk about that kind of stuff at the Academy, do they?"

"Not in Nav," the ensign agreed. He watched Scott's face fall. "I covered that when I was seconded to Cambridge for the graduate extension to Advanced Warp Methods with Professor Samok, of Vulcan. Triple A." He smiled a smile of pure spite at the engineer.

"Mother of God," Scott breathed. "Maybe you *can* do it."

"I knew he wouldn't let us down," Khwaja said, gesturing the other two out of the galley, and beckoning Chekov to follow them. The ensign complied cautiously, waiting until Khwaja moved out of the narrow doorway before passing through it. The agent smiled knowingly at him but kept his hands to himself.

"Sit down," Goudchaux invited, pulling a chair out from the table. "Khwaja, leave it out."

This consideration from his former tormentor increased Chekov's nervousness. Khwaja, feigning utter innocence, seated himself opposite Chekov and waited for Scott and Goudchaux to join them.

"As you've probably already realised, kitten, we have to put the device into the pod at some point before you and Sulu arrive to find it. Now, that didn't look like a problem, originally. Space is a big place, and no one was paying any attention to that corner of it until you came along. We could have put it there any time before we needed to: half an hour, a couple of weeks, a month, and then laid low, ready to reappear just as soon as our younger and less cautious selves had picked up the bait."

Chekov waited for the bad news.

"But it seems that when we emerge into ordinary space after using the device, we emit a big shower of chronomic particles. We've had a chance to observe the effect twice, back in Orion space, and again now, and Mister Scott doesn't think he can cure the gadget of this annoying habit."

"There was no way to observe chronomic particles until Professor Samok..." Chekov stopped.

"Right," Scott said heavily. "He pioneered the technique around 2261, and since then he's observed only steady background levels of the beasts. So we can't use the device after 2261. Now that means..."

"You want me to murder him?" Chekov asked, guessing wildly.

Goudchaux snickered.

"God, no. What good would that do?" Scott demanded impatiently. "Once he'd published, every high school student in the Federation was measuring them. Unless you're planning to murder them too..." The engineer looked at Chekov out of narrowed, disapproving eyes.

"Then what do you want me to do?"

"Well, it seems to me that it's obvious," Khwaja chimed in. "If we arrive before or during 2261, we have to hide, and stay alive, until the point when we left, and avoid changing *anything at all* that we know happened between those two dates. After that, of course, we're free agents again."

Chekov thought about it. It didn't seem *that* impossible to avoid meeting himself during the four years in question, and presumably, given a free and frank exchange of information, they could come up with a hiding place that would prevent any of them meeting themselves or each other.

Several hiding places, he corrected himself. He wouldn't care to share a bunker with any of his current crewmates for a minute longer than was absolutely essential.

"The problem is, that if just one of us decided to break cover, to use the information they would have about the future, information with huge current value, but a very limited lifespan..."

"Any one of us could wreck everything."

"Mm," Khwaja said, shaking his head sorrowfully. "For the sake of money, or power, or just, as you say, to wreck everything... Could you promise me, kitten, that you wouldn't be tempted to send yourself a postcard suggesting a more prudent approach to drinking with one-eyed pirate ladies?"

Chekov scowled. "I think that several others on this ship might consider accumulating some investments before claiming their free pardon from the Federation."

Khwaja smiled. "Ah, quite so. There is the pecuniary motivation too. So we can't risk it. Can we?"

"Presumably that is why you chose me to obtain the pod: not because any of them remembered me, but because you thought someone else might try to leave a message for themselves."

"I hadn't even realised there was a problem, Kitten. You had to get the pod because they *didn't* remember you. They'd have remembered me, or someone who reminded them of their parents, or even someone with his arm in a sling. You only had an accent to worry about, and Aberdeen was full of accents, from all over."

Shaking his head to make his scepticism clear, Chekov returned to the central difficulty. "We could return at the very last moment, a few hours before the Nell arrives at the coordinates. In that way, any investigation of the chronomic particles would not start until..."

"No good," Scott told him. "The device isn't that precise; or to be fair, it is, but tying it into *our* notion of measuring time seems to be a slightly hit or miss business. Going back to get the jewels in the first place, and going to Aberdeen, that wasn't a problem, because we didn't know what we were aiming for anyway. This next jump..."

"Surely the next jump will be to the time and place where we leave the fifth shard?" Chekov interrupted.

"Quite. Again, we don't have a precise time to aim for. It'll have to be before 2261 again, but otherwise we're okay. But the jump after that one..."

Scott took over from Khwaja. "The jump after that has to arrive *before* you and Sulu pick up the pod, but not more than two days before at the very, very earliest; twenty four hours is really the safe limit. I reckon I can only program the device to within plus or minus seventy two hours, maybe a little more. Now, you can work out for yourself, Chekov that we're trying to fit a quart into a pint pot."

Chekov calculated backwards that a quart must be larger than a pint, and both were measures that might be applied to fluids of one kind or another, probably alcoholic. Dismissing this information as useless, and not even interesting, he nodded. "So we can't use the device."

"Exactly." Goudchaux smiled at him encouragingly.

"And the alternative is... some time travel technique which the Enterprise..."

"It's only a theory," Scott said much too hastily. "Something I discussed once with Mister Spock. He reckoned he could work out how to do it, but he never got around to it, or didn't tell me if he had. But he did tell me that it was a matter of using the ship like the stone in a sling, with the sun... or another star, any star of a suitable mass... with the star's gravitational field as the sling."

"And this is only a theory?"

Khwaja and Scott shot each other poisoned glances. "It's been done," the engineer admitted. "Don't expect me to say any more than that."

Chekov frowned. "Professor Samok discussed it with us, but he also said that it was theoretically impossible."

Scott looked surprised. "Why?"

"Well..." Chekov had been a bit vague about this at the time, but he was at least sure of the Professor's firmly stated conclusions. "Because as a logical consequence, one would be able to change history. Since that involves various paradoxes, he concluded that time travel was impossible. It was not just common sense. The math involves a paradox also."

"And so?" Khwaja said guardedly.

Chekov shrugged. "Well, if the Professor was wrong, and I am using his methods... And he gave me the triple A grade. Are you sure you want me to make the calculations?"

Khwaja stood and patted Chekov consolingly on the head. "Kitten, I have enormous faith in your abilities. And anyhow, you're the only triple A grade mathematician we have."

***