With an agonised screech, the door gave the six inches Scott needed to slide through. "Don't touch a single switch," he hissed at the two men in the cockpit, before vanishing into the darkness.

"You just killed a woman in cold blood." Sulu sounded more puzzled than accusing, for the moment.

"No. I turned off the lateral engine feed. On Mister Scott's orders."

"But the feed was powering the stasis unit."

Chekov shrugged. "I suppose it was."

"But..."

"She was already dead. She was probably dead for too long before he placed her in the unit. Turning it off probably didn't make any difference at all." Chekov realised his voice was getting louder.

"But..."

"And there was no alternative."

"I didn't see you looking very hard for an alternative."

Chekov didn't say anything. He clenched his fists hard.

"It's just..."

"Look. She probably stole the battery herself. Or Goudchaux did. Goudchaux killed her. Not me."

"If that's how you see it..."

Chekov bit his lip on this reluctant concession. He decided to change the subject, but Sulu got there first.

"How long do you think it will be before we have to attack the Nell?"

"About ninety minutes, I think. I'm not sure." That seemed about right, as Chekov tried to remember what had happened between reeling in the pod and hearing the frantic exchange from the bridge as the Nell was unexpectedly attacked. But ninety minutes was a long time to spend in cramped darkness with someone who'd decided you were a murderer. He cast about for a diversion, but without power or light, there was only conversation, and that wasn't going too well.

"You're quiet in here, boys." Alleyn/Chalmers squeezed through the partly open door with a little more trouble than Scott.

"We lost interest in swapping our 'in bed with an Orion warlord' stories," Sulu said.

"I knew I should have come in here and gotten out of Scotty's way a little earlier," Alleyn/Chalmers laughed. "I've slept with a few of them, or a few who'd like to think they were. Never found them anything to write home about."

Chekov looked up at the invisible ceiling and sighed. "I thought you just *ran* the brothel. I didn't realise Starfleet would actually require you to service your clients yourself. Or didn't they want to waste an obvious talent?"

"Chekov!" Sulu hissed, but Alleyn just laughed.

"Who said anything about 'require', Peterson? I was curious. Seems to me you've passed up a lot of interesting possibilities on this trip yourself."

Sulu obviously sensed the surge of resentment in his friend. Laying a restraining hand on the ensign's forearm, he swung round to face Alleyn. "I know how Mister Scott came to join Starfleet, but what about you?"

She chuckled. "You think everyone gets in by working hard and collecting straight A's for conduct and teamwork? I guess 'Fleet needs those suckers, but they need people who can think for themselves too. Particularly for Intelligence, and for other less savoury activities. I dipped out of school from about twelve... from about the time I first met you, Peterson. What a bad influence you are. Got into a stack of trouble. Starfleet offered me a deal. Pretty much the same story as Mister Scott. Probably the same person was handling both our files. Maybe he grassed me up." She thought about it. "Or I spilled the beans on him. They psych probe you. Obviously, they want to be careful to know everything about you, before they let just any teenage gangster in."

"Why don't we know there are people like you in the service?" Chekov demanded.

"I suppose..." She reached out and brushed his bangs out of his eyes. "...because your mothers might take you home."

"What were you doing on Quondar?" Sulu asked quickly, forestalling any reaction on Chekov's part.

"On Quondar?" She sounded surprised. "Waiting for Chekov. Intelligence has known for... I don't know, at least five years, that this was brewing, maybe more. I was keeping my eyes and ears open on a few other matters too, of course, but that was the priority."

"The message I sent..." Chekov said, sounding less than pleased. "I meant someone to stop what was happening. Instead, I just seem to have started it all."

"I don't know," Alleyn admitted. "I was just told to look out for you around that time. I put out some feelers and when someone let me know there was a cute human kid about to run out of ticket, I kicked in to action. Nothing personal."

Chekov tensed for a moment, then realised she was saying he wasn't an obvious candidate for her particular line of business.

She continued: "If anything, present day Klingons and Orions prefer the oriental type. I could've made a tidy profit with Hikaru here."

Sulu laughed the comment off.

"How much longer do we have?" Alleyn asked, peering out of the viewscreen for any signs of activity.

"About eighty minutes." Chekov cupped his hand around the tiny chronometer reading on the navigation console. "Yes. Seventy eight minutes."

"How can you be so sure?" Sulu asked. "We didn't have any kind of time reference in that cell..."

"I picked a time," Chekov said. He shrugged. "So long as I don't know I'm wrong..."

"I looked at the time just before the Nell was attacked," Alleyn said. "One or two minutes before. It was one one oh seven, by whatever time the Nell was on right then."

There was a moment of silence. "I wish you hadn't remembered that." Chekov peered at the chronometer again.

"Why?"

"Because now we have to worry about getting it right."

"No more than we already did," Sulu said firmly. "Before you were guessing 'when we attacked', and now you're guessing 'when it's eleven oh seven'. Same difference."

Chekov shook his head. "There's too much riding on it..."

"I don't see what we can do about it," Sulu argued. "We can't call them up and ask for a time check."

"We have to get it right." Chekov said. "There's no point coming this far, and getting it wrong now." He knew the minutes were ticking away dangerously slowly. Every second was another opportunity for a mistake, and with every second that passed, there was less time to put things back on course if they did mess things up.

Sulu said coolly, "Well, we could kill her, and assume she was lying to us about knowing the time, then what she said wouldn't matter."

There was an outbreak of swearing beyond the half-closed door, and Scott came to the opening. "This is worse than I thought. I need a hand..."

"I'll help," Chekov and Sulu said together.

Scott snorted. "Not you, Sulu. You've only one good arm and anyway, I need someone who can read braille."

Chekov sighed. Replacing components in near darkness -- the only occasion when 'engineers' braille' was useful -- was always a nightmare. Learning the code had been yet another of those 'it'll look good on your record' courses that only seemed to lead to the more unpleasant duties aboard ship. Sulu had plainly had the sense not to volunteer.

But he could do with a break from the lieutenant's company.

He tangled with Keane, as Scotty took his flashlight with him into the under-deck cavity. The commodore laughed apologetically. "I'll go forward with the other two. The air's getting pretty blue back here."

"At least the temperature is above freezing," Chekov muttered to himself as he lowered himself through the opened deck plates, through an awkward ninety degree turn in what passed for crawl space, and into the small alcove where Scott directed him. Once in position, he waited in silence for instructions.

"Have you gone to sleep, man?" Scott hissed eventually.

"No, Mister Scott."

"Pass me a 4793GB4," the engineer snapped, referring to the assortment of components in the tool box that was located right under Chekov's nose.

Chekov began fumbling through the compartments of chips and connectors. His fingers seemed to have gone numb.

"We don't have all day, Chekov."

"I know. We have sixty four minutes."

"That long?" Scott said sarcastically. "Maybe we could tune up the impulse thrusters and give the old girl a lick of paint too."

"Here."

Their fingers met and the tiny part dropped through the crawl grid and rattled out of reach.

"There's another one..."

"There had better be."

This time, twisting awkwardly, Chekov cupped one palm under his fingers as he passed the component to the engineer.

"Mister Scott..."

"Aye?"

"Do you know... do you *really* know, that Commander Alleyn is a Starfleet officer?"

"Chalmers. Commander Chalmers. Yes. We shared a few classes. It's a while back, but yes. Now I need a 957Z45. They're the fat ones. Why?"

"It just occurred to me... that we still have the treasure, but we only have Lieutenant Sulu's word that Brecht is Commodore Keane."

"Why would he lie about that?"

"For a fifth share of the Orion treasure. Or a half." He passed a 'fat one' safely into Scott's grasp.

"Ah. Well." The flashlight swung briefly into Chekov's eyes and away again. "Jessie Alleyn... now, she could be lying. I don't like to say such a thing about a lady, but... well, she could be lying. As for Hikaru Sulu... I don't honestly think so. Not even for the whole treasure."

"Oh."

"'A half' you say? You think he and Brecht are planning to get rid of Jessie too? Or him and Jessie are planning to kill Brecht?" Scott chuckled. "Or me and Sulu, are we planning to kill the three of you?

"No. I'm just... expecting something else to go wrong."

"It can't, can it? We know the Nell was attacked." There were some fumbling noises, a couple of sharp *clicks* as components snapped home, a muffled oath and the sound of a finger being sucked vigorously. "That's all we need. Blood in the refraction chamber." Glass shattered and the flashlight's narrow beam vanished. "Frigging hell..."

"Can I..."

"Don't you move an inch, Chekov. Don't breathe. Don't fucking talk."

The noises continued. Chekov began to feel ominously claustrophobic. His right leg suddenly cramped.

"What's the bloody matter?" Scott snapped, alerted by his sudden intake of breath.

"Cramp."

"Tuck your toes up towards your shins and think about your girlfriend," Scott said. "We're almost done." A panel closed with a hollow clatter and fabric scratched over metal. "Okay?"

Chekov bumped his head hard against the back of his refuge. Scott was only about six inches from his face.

"Is the cramp gone?"

"No."

"You've got to let it go, Chekov. We've all had some illusions shattered. Point your heels down and your toes up. Okay, we're ready to run some tests."

"Do we have enough power?"

"So long as we get everything right first time." Scott chuckled unexpectedly. "Like I said, we know nothing is going to go wrong. Not that we can't put right."

The claustrophobia intensified. Chekov closed his eyes against the darkness, turned his face down to the deck and swallowed a mouthful of saliva. He was beginning to feel he'd snap from the tension.

"Now, take this tricorder. Can you see the readout?"

Chekov peered at the screen. It was running a diagnostic routine of some kind. "Yes."

"Okay. I'm going to run a partial power up of the system. Tell me the instant you get a reading of point seven two one on the second scale. Can you see that?"

"The one labelled 'G97-A'?"

"That's the one." A low vibration in the deck beneath Chekov was accompanied by a rising warmth and a strong smell of ozone. "Is it safe in here while..."

"No. Concentrate!"

Scott was doing things in the dark. Occasionally, tools made bruising contact with Chekov's legs. He shrunk back as far as he could, but that made things hotter, and his teeth were reacting to the vibration. He bit down, it got worse. "Point six five, Mister Scott."

"Aye."

The heat at the small of his back was beginning to hurt. "Six eight five."

"What is it now?"

"Still six eight five."

"Damn. And now?"

"Seven two... and seven two one."

With a satisfied grunt, Scott shut everything down. Metal plates 'pinged' as they began instantly to cool.

Chekov eased away from the heat behind him and stretched one leg straight. The cramp returned with a vengeance. He yelped and kicked, sending a shock wave of pain up his thigh.

"Okay. Out of here," Scott said.

"It worked?"

"Of course it bloody worked."

"Moray Morgaine..."

"Ah. She wouldn't have made it. Not even if McCoy had been here from the start. I was clinging on to straws, for... for old times and old friends. Do you understand?"

Chekov swallowed the final mouthful of bile. "Yes, Mister Scott."

As Chekov clambered into the main compartment and sat massaging his calves, Scott followed him.

"Brecht!"

The commodore joined them. "It worked?"

"Sounds to me like there's a bloody parrot in here. Yes."

Sulu squeezed through from the cockpit and came over to slap Chekov across the back. "Well done." The ensign started to shrug him off, but managed to force a smile instead.

Brecht stepped forward to stop Scott moving off into the cockpit. "I'm very grateful to you, Mister Scott, Admiral. And, uh... Hikaru. Oh, about that... Commodore Keane was meeting an Orion agent. Me."

In the near darkness, it took Chekov a moment to realise that Brecht was holding a phaser. Before he could wonder why, it was too late.

***

"Chekov?"

The ensign surfaced out of a sweet dream about Britta. She was being very, very nice to him.

"Chekov?"

He opened his eyes and closed them again. There was something very strange about the lights, and the atmosphere. The atmosphere particularly had a most peculiar quality to it. It was so fresh and... and salty?

"I know you're awake."

He rolled over and focused on Sulu, and beyond him, on a terrace with a stone balustrade, a fountain, and curtains that fluttered in a breeze. He identified a background murmur as being surf, not engines. "Where..."

"Nesta Four. Non-aligned 'resort' world on the Orion Federation border. For 'resort' read 'lacking extradition treaties with either side.'"

Chekov blinked at the obviously expensive fittings within his limited field of vision. "How..."

"I guess Brecht dropped us off here. He even paid our hotel bill in advance. We're free to stay here until Starfleet send someone to pick us up."

"And Mister Scott?"

There was a splash from outside the window, sounding remarkably like someone making an inelegant entry into a swimming pool.

"He's enjoying the facilities. There's breakfast outside on the terrace. There are clothes in the closets -- more Stuart Brecht's style than mine or yours, but you can probably make do with a robe for now."

"Sulu..."

"Yeah?"

"The time device didn't come from anywhere, and no one ever wrote my name on it, or that message..."

Sulu frowned for a moment. "Does it matter?"

"I just wonder if we really are trapped, if we really have to go on repeating the same circle forever. Perhaps it's slightly different every time."

"Maybe." The helmsman shrugged. "I don't pretend to understand how it works. I'm just glad we're out of it and it's all over. Speaking of which, I've spoken to Captain Kirk. We're not in any trouble. Oh, and he sent us confirmation of Commodore Keane's identity, just to settle any uncertainty. It seems I did... uh, jump to the wrong conclusion." Sulu leaned across to the control panel beside the bed and brought up a picture of Khwaja, in a Starfleet uniform liberally adorned with medals, on the huge video screen built into the wall next to the French window.

"Oh, God. Turn it off."

"And there's one other thing..."

"What?" Chekov demanded, in a tone which clearly warned that any further news had better be good.

"The hotel's owner is anxious to be told when you wake up."

"Huh?"

"She said to tell you she's looking forward to seeing you again."

THE END