by Teegar Taylor

DAY ONE.

Life is not always bad, Ensign Pavel Chekov reflected happily to himself as he materialized into the environmental monitoring station with the three other members of the landing party. Assigned to spend the next 120 hours alone with three lovely ladies... Not an unpleasant prospect at all.

To his left was the team leader, Lieutenant Vicki Fong-Yee, of the zoology section. In addition to being a competent scientist and officer, she was an extremely attractive young woman with a trim figure and long, silky black hair. Her face was doll-like with surprisingly mobile almond eyes and a tiny bow-shaped mouth.

Ensign Anne Gadzicki stood to the lieutenant's left. Gadzicki was the group's engineer, assigned to perform the necessary maintenance on the station's automated systems. The engineer could be described as petite since she stood only a few inches over five feet, but "petite" was far too dainty a word for Anne Gadzicki. Her aggressive manner and close-cropped haircut made it some times necessary to double-check that this was not a very small man.

Behind them was the other science specialist, Lieutenant Kaplan, a biologist. Carole Kaplan was a tall as Anne Gadzicki was tiny. The top of her head was an impressive six feet away from the soles of her lovely feet She was, in Chekov's considered opinion, the true beauty of the group with soulful brown eyes, sensual lips, luxurious brown hair, and a body bestowed upon her by Aphrodite on one of her more generous days.

Not an unpleasant prospect at all. Chekov smiled to himself before looking up to take his first view of Ehrens, the planet they'd come to study.

This seven planet solar system had been set aside by the Federation for scientific research in the belief that it was completely uninhabited by any intelligent life form. Several of these environmental monitoring stations (commonly called EMSs) had been established at locations on each planet of the system and many of the natural satellites. The project was almost cancelled when a species of plant on Ehrens, the planet possessing the system's only class M atmosphere, was determined to exhibit characteristics of intelligence. Out of Ehrens' five original EMSs, only this station was left in place in its location far away from the sentient plant life.

The Enterprise was placing research and maintenance teams like the one Chekov was a member of for a short stay at each of the stations in the system. The young Russian considered himself extremely fortunate to have drawn an assignment on the only class M post and shuddered at the memory of his last research and maintenance billet. He'd ended up spending a miserable week in a tiny station on a frozen moon with two bickering geologists.

At least I have scenery here, he thought appreciatively as he looked out the station's transparent dome at the tropical forest surrounding them.

Lieutenant Fong-Yee put her hands on her hips. "Well, here we are -- Dome away from home-"

Despite the lieutenant's blase attitude, the view was actually quite spectacular for a group of people who'd been cooped up in a starship for the past month and a half. Above the familiar computer consoles that filled the room's circular perimeter, the transparency revealed the rain forest in all its teeming glory. Alien flora and fauna of wondrous variety and color swarmed all around them, seemingly close enough to touch. Only when one realized that one was not feeling the warmth of the bright sunlight that streamed in, was it possible to get an idea of the density of the shielding that separated them from the riverbank scene.

Ensign Gadzicki stepped over to a console and activated the dome's polarizing filter, relieving their sensitive eyes from the mid-afternoon glare off the water. "What the hell is that?" the little engineer asked, grinning at the whimsical looking creature perched on one of the station's support struts.

Fong-Yee unshouldered her pack and gave the thing a dispassionate examination. "That's a bird," she announced. "A diadato, to be precise. We'll be seeing plenty of those."

"Bird?" Gadzicki snorted. "You're pulling my leg, Vick."

The creature did have a roughly chicken shaped body, but had no wings or feathers at all. With its scaly red skin, membranous neck ruff and long eyestalks, it looked more like a weird two legged lizard.

"The rule of thumb on Ehrens is that if it looks like a reptile, it's a bird; if it looks like a bird or a mammal, it's an insect; and if it looks like an insect, it's a fish," the zoologist explained dryly.

Unnoticed by the other two women, the botanist, Lieutenant Kaplan, was undergoing a transformation. She stood very still for a moment, hugging her heavy pack tightly to her chest completely in the grip of a kind of rapture. She gazed out at the alien landscape with a naked, misty-eyed affection that made it seem as though she were seeing an old lover after a long and painful separation.

And then, in a gesture that was halfway between spiritual transfiguration and sexual surrender, she closed her eyes and opened her arms, welcoming the sun into her body. In the sunlight, her skin and hair seemed to take on a vital glow, as if receiving nutrition from the rays.

Lieutenant Fong-Yee stepped past her as if seeing a human being simulate photosynthesis was nothing out of the ordinary. "Have you been on a R and M team before, Mr. Chekov?" she asked, punching the team's ID code into the log recorder.

"Yes." Chekov pulled his eyes away from the botanist with some difficulty. "Once before, Lieutenant."

Fong-Yee gave a short laugh. "Oh, we don't stand on protocol much down here, Pavel. In quarters this small, it's just more realistic to be on a first name basis with everyone. I'm glad you have a little experience. Carole and I have been on a few field trips together and I'm sure our Anne has too - since she's already done everything else worth doing." The zoologist's voice took on a tone of ironic mockery when she referred to the engineering ensign.

"And all the good things twice," Gadzicki replied in kind.

Observing the look of mutual disestimation that passed between the two women, Chekov's saliva glands began to pump the bad taste of the battling geologists into his mouth. "I suppose we'd better stow this equipment before it gets any heavier," he suggested genially, swallowing the premonition.

"Right." Fong-Yee briskly retrieved her gear and crossed to the transparent lift tube in the center of the room.

Because of the possibility that it could be needed for emergency evacuation, the 'lift was constructed to easily accommodate the whole team plus the equipment they'd brought.

"Roll up your leaves, Carole," Fong-Yee called as Chekov and Gadzicki joined her on the pad. "We'll be out in it soon enough."

They waited as the botanist leisurely drifted into the 'lift. "Deck four," she ordered the control unit unexpectedly as she entered.

Fong-Yee rolled her shoe-button eyes expressively as they descended through the flooring. "I guess we take the scenic route."

The second level of the station was considerably larger than the top. From the furnishings, it was apparent that this was the main living area for the crew. A large circular lounge and dining area comprised most of the visible deck area. Doors could be seen that would open into the individual sleeping compartments. This obviously should have been their destination, but the 'lift kept moving as it followed Lieutenant Kaplan's orders. Chekov frowned at this, not knowing what could be on the lower decks that should require their attention above getting rid of the cumbersome packs they each carried. He looked up at the botanist (and because of her proximity, he had to look straight up) for an explanation, but she was staring dreamily at the small patch of sky still visible through the top of the transparent turbolift tube. Feeling that he was being observed, Chekov looked down to find Ensign Gadzicki looking up at him.

The little engineer shrugged apologetically. "We had to turn on the water circulation system, anyway," she said as they sank through to another deck.

The third level was a hangar for the shuttle's mobile units. There was a submersible and two land rovers in addition to the special four-man shuttle that was intended for emergency evacuations. The hangar was supplied with all the instruments and hookups necessary for the upkeep of these vehicles. To Chekov's eyes, accustomed to starship scaled engineering systems, these looked like miniaturized versions with which children could play.

As they descended lower and the mysterious fourth level finally came into view, Chekov's mouth opened in surprise. This level was an inverted duplicate of the first. A small ring of computer consoles was suspended in a transparent shell. All around and below them flowed the river that had been visible from the top dome.

Chekov was disoriented at first. He could have sworn they were much too close to the shore to have a bubble projecting downward this distance.

However, as his eyes adjusted to the dim green waterlight, he could see that part of what he'd assumed was dry land was actually a ledge of tightly interwoven root structures. Instead of being located on the bank of a small river, the station was sitting in a deep channel near the center of a major waterway.

Lieutenant Fong-Yee smiled at his wide-eyed amazement at the unusual natural structure. "Plant life here is exceptionally adaptive and aggressive." The zoologist crossed her arms amiably as the engineer and botanist exited the 'lift. "I grew up in Florida, but it still manages to impress me."

From the ardent way Lieutenant Kaplan arched her body over a computer console to get the fullest possible view, it was apparent that "impressive" was a mild adjective for her estimation of the massive organic ceiling. "Just look," she whispered, mostly to herself, watching the mass of tendrils stream in the current. "So strong..."

Under Gadzicki's fingers, the sound of machinery worked its way up the scale to a treble hum.

"We're in business," she announced as she stabilized the level down a halftone.

"Good," Fong-Yee acknowledged.

As Gadzicki turned, her eye was caught by a large pale blob visible in the stream beyond them.

The creature was a peculiar blend of fish and fowl It looked like it had streaming feathers instead of scales. Its large weasel-like head was dominated by a lipless, sucker mouth that casually consumed any bit of flotsam that stood in its path.

"Now there's an ugly S.O.B. for you," she commented, pointing the beast out to the group.

"I'd be careful of that kind of comment, Annie," Fong-Yee warned lightly. "Your next roommate may look like that."

Despite the Lieutenant's pleasant surface, Chekov could still hear the whiz of a concealed barb in her words.

"To a roommate, I'd be tactful," Gadzicki replied, deflecting whatever had been implied without registering its impact. "But to your fish through three feet of soundproof duraplast, I say, 'Babe, start saving for that nose job now'."

Lieutenant Fong-Yee's lack of appreciation for the ensign's levity made her purse her small, painted-on lips even smaller.

.

"Well," she said somewhat shortly, "let's not waste time."

"I'm done," Gadzicki replied cooperatively, flipping a final switch. "How 'bout you, Carole? Had enough yet?"

"No." Kaplan turned to them with the kind of smile on her face only commonly achieved by Catholic saints during visitations from the. Virgin Mary. "I could never get enough of this."

***

"Carole's kinda funny about plants," Gadzicki's face on the screen was saying. "But I guess you noticed that."

Chekov nodded, his eyes on the indicator to the left of the commlink monitor. "You are up by a third. Reduce pressure to 8.5."

As soon as one of the land rovers could be declared in running condition and fit for travel, the science officers had embarked on a journey into the interior, leaving the two remaining members of the team to start on their schedule of exhaustive diagnostic tests for the station. Most of the testing was actually done by the computers and required an operator only to initiate the testing and visually verify the results. Right now, they were working on one of the rare double checks that required the close cooperation of both maintenance personnel. They were testing the capabilities of one of the underwater probes. While ensign Gadzicki manipulated the remote controls from the engineering deck, Chekov directed her, using feedback from the station's sensors. This data would later be crosschecked by data collected by the probe's own internal monitoring devices.

While this monotonous check was being carried out, Gadzicki kept him entertained with a colorful commentary on the station's absent members.

"She's harmless, though," the engineer continued, referring to the botanist. "Weird, but harmless. I've known engineers who were the same way - just nuts over engines, like they were people or something. Yeah, Carole's all right, if you can remember that she only cares about two things, plants and..."

"And what?" Chekov prompted when her voice trailed off.

Gadzicki cleared her throat. "And how about that specimen tank?" she asked brightly, quickly changing the subject.

Chekov checked the gauge. "Still half empty," he reported.

"You're a pessimist, brown- eyes," she reproved him with a laugh. "I would have said half full."

Chekov was burning with curiosity about Lieutenant Kaplan's mysterious second interest. Any subject that could produce a response equal to the beautiful botanist's passionate reaction to flora could prove a handy conversation starter.

"You were saying..." he prodded, after a few moments of silence.

Gadzicki was suddenly much more interested in the instrumentation in front of her than in conversation. "Hmmm?" she replied absently. "Oh, nothing."

Chekov sighed in silent frustration, then quickly consoled himself that finding the botanist's other hobby could prove a pleasant topic for private investigation. "What about Lieutenant Fong-Yee?" he said, moving to other fields of interest.

"You know what a barracuda is?" Gadzicki asked.

Chekov blinked at the non-sequitur. "A fish with teeth?"

Gadzicki grinned maliciously. "That's Vicki."

"I don't think I understand," Chekov replied with a frown, then his attention was suddenly drawn back to the testing by a flickering light on his panel. "Stabilize lateral movement and apply a short burst of forward thrust."

"Check," Gadzicki responded. She looked off screen into her set of monitors that reported from the probe's point of view. "Oh, yes, That'll finish the specimen requirement in style."

They both watched silently as their respective computer displays registered the probe's collection of the plankton specimens. It alternated between a cycle of laudable machinelike efficiency and programmed patience.

"Vicki's expecting a lot out of this mission," Gadzicki said, as the novelty of the probe's plankton sucking waned. "She's very career conscious and missions like this one don't come along too often. I mean, when was the last time you found yourself taking orders from a zoologist?"

"I see what you mean," Chekov nodded, keeping an eye on his monitors.

"It's even more than that," Gadzicki continued. "On Ehrens, since we can't speak plant language and don't know the native name for anything, if you discover a new species, it's named after you."

"I was aware of that."

"Well, I' d keep it in mind, kid, because Vicki's dying to get her name into the textbooks. As a matter of fact, Carole is too. There's nothing that would please her more than to have a plant named after her. If you get between either one of them and a new species, you're going to get mowed down. Carole would do it out of pure blindness, but Vicki... I think she'd get a kick out of it."

"Why?"

"Because you work on the bridge. So even though you're just an ensign, you rub elbows with the powers that be. To her, that makes you kind of a big shot and I think it'd give her a charge to knock you down to her size."

Chekov shook his head, finding it hard to attribute such malice to the doll-faced zoologist.

"Your specimen tank is full."

"Okay, don't believe me," Gadzicki said, as she directed the probe to return to base. "But if I were you, I'd be very nice when I was around Lieutenant Fong-Yee."

"Oh, I intend to be," Chekov assured her with a small smile.

"Now don't be too nice," she warned, "or Vicki might decide that you'd make a worthwhile trophy... Oh, I don't suppose you'd know what I meant if I told you she's a headhunter?"

Chekov grinned mischievously. He had associated with the "powers that be" long enough to be familiar with that term as it was used to describe individuals who believed sex could prove a shortcut to status. "That I think I understand."

"Well, keep it in mind, kid." Gadzicki opened the bay doors for the probe's re-entry. "That is, unless you think you' d like to end up hanging from Vicki's bedroom wall."

Chekov shrugged. "That might not be such a bad thing."

Gadzicki snorted derisively at the serious half of his half-joking remark. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you," she said, typing in a final set of instructions to the computer. "Okay, that's got it for me. I'm on automatic diagnostics for the next two hours. Wanna grab a bite to eat with me?"

Chekov shook his head. "I can't. I have core transferrals that must be monitored continuously."

"Sounds pretty boring. I could bring something up if that wouldn't bother you."

Chekov considered the prospect of spending the next few hours with a program that required little more of him than pushing the correct button every five minutes and sighed. "Any diversion would be welcome."

"Diversion? Hmmm..." Gadzicki's brown eyes twinkled wickedly. "D'you play poker?"

Chekov shrugged. "Is that a card game?" he asked innocently.

"Kid," Gadzicki replied, grinning broadly. "I like you more and more all the time."

***

"Are you sure we are playing this game by the correct rules?" Chekov asked some time and a great deal of money later.

Other than his mathematically inexplicable losing streak, all was going perfectly normally. Ensign Gadzicki's diagnostics were proceeding without her and Chekov's transferrals were not suffering from his distracted supervision. The science party had reported in a half hour ago to say they were proceeding as planned and had observed an unusual number of radiri, a toad-like amphibian. They'd also spotted some out of season flowers.

Ensign Gadzicki dropped her feet off the edge of the computer console with a thud and leaned forward menacingly." Are you trying to say I'm cheating?"

After losing eleven straight hands of this game, Chekov was beyond being intimidated. "Yes". He nodded. "I believe that is exactly what I'm saying."

The engineer unexpectedly grinned and leaned back in her chair. "You' re smarter than you look, brown-eyes." She laughed as she propelled the deck of cards from one hand to another in an expert stream. "Here we go. Deuces are wild... that's the "two" card, in case you forgot."

Chekov looked at the cards dealt to him without enthusiasm even though the statistical possibility that he could win with this hand was high. His faith in statistics had dwindled in direct proportion to his disappearing finances. "When does this game end?"

"When someone loses all their money."

Chekov pushed his remaining credit pieces toward her. "Congratulations."

"Aw," she said, shaking her head at the money. "You don't think I'd do that, do you?"

Chekov watched in surprise as Gadzicki counted out an amount equal to his original stake and pushed it back to him. "I don't play for keeps with amateurs," she explained.

"Thank you," Chekov said, somewhat unable to credit this kind of magnanimity to this woman who would be ruthlessly draining him dry for the past hour.

"You'd have won it back anyway." Gadzicki collected her cards. "You were starting to catch on. You'll be able to beat me by the end of the week... if you get fantastically lucky."

The terminal behind him beeped for his attention and Chekov turned to it, resolving to do a little extracurricular study on the game of poker before their next encounter.

Gadzicki leaned back, folding her arms behind her head and propping her tiny feet on the edge of a console. "So, how do you like Ehrens so far?"

"It's somewhat less expensive than it appeared to be a few moments ago," Chekov replied dryly.

"No, I'm serious," Gadzicki insisted. "I mean, when you think about it, this is really an optimum type mission. You get off the ship for a couple of days, get to soak in a little sunshine... and although you and I probably won't get in the botany textbooks, there is the chance of a promotion if all goes well. Hell, there's even the possibility of a little romance... for some of us. What more could you ask for?"

"Lunch," said Chekov with a smile. It was a relief to see that beneath all her hard-boiled exterior, Gadzicki was, as she had claimed, an optimist.

"Comin' right up," she said agreeably, holding out a hand for his diet card.

Chekov quickly retrieved the requested card from a nearby terminal and handed it to her. "Thank you very much."

"Sure." Gadzicki stood up and turned towards the 'lift tube. She then suddenly jumped back, drop ping all her cards. "God! Look at that thing."

A long snakelike creature was crawling down the transparency on extended spidery legs. Chekov punched a shorthand description into the zoology computer. "That is a Hiatt," he reported. "An amphibious herbivore."

"Man, those things give me the creeps," Gadzicki explained, stooping to gather the cards. "Y'see, I grew up on a space station. No crawly things at all. The first time I ever saw a snake was in the tropical survival course at the Academy, and the son of a bitch bit me. When I got over that, I went back in the same course and had to drop out again because I got bit by a poisonous spider. It took me the longest time to..."

"Rover One to Ecobase," a crackling voice over the intercom system interrupted her. "Come in please. Rover One to Ecobase."

Chekov was at the communication console in three steps with Gadzicki at his side. The fact that this was not a scheduled check-in and the tension in Lieutenant Fong-Yee's voice set off the equivalent of a red alert in each of their brains. "Rover One, this is Ecobase."

"Situation is not presently critical," she reassured them immediately. As the image of her face flickered into focus on the screen, she was wiping her sweat plastered hair off her forehead. "However, we've been attacked by a drove of mathis and have aborted this run. Our ETA to base is approximately two hours. Do you have us on screen, Mr. Chekov?"

"Aye." Chekov had been in the process of activating the directional cross references for the station's long-range sensors even as she spoke.

"Like I said," Fong-Yee continued, "we're in no immediate danger, but the mathis are continuing to follow the rover. Do we have any kind of back up from base if our shielding should fail for some reason?"

"Rover Two is powered up and ready, Lieutenant," Gadzicki replied, with no hint of her usual sarcasm.

"Good. Stand by."

"Acknowledged, Rover One."

"Fong-Yee out."

"What's a mathis?" Gadzicki asked as Chekov deactivated the comm screen.

Instead of answering, Chekov relayed her question to the computer, which gave them a screen full of information.

"...carnivorous," Gadzicki read aloud. "Large and fairly intelligent. Nice dinner guests."

"Not if you're the dinner," Chekov replied, completing the old joke. "Another of Miss Fong-Yee' s birds who look like mammals, I see."

"At least this one has wings. Isn't there a picture?"

Chekov consulted the file. "No. They seem rare. Firsthand reports and sensor images only. They were named after a cartographer that was killed by one."

"I wonder if Vicki' s thought about getting into the history books that way?"

"Our party was very lucky," Chekov commented, checking the rover's progress on the sensor readout. "Live footage would be invaluable scientifically."

Gadzicki gave him a sidelong look before exiting the shuttle bay. "Kid, you're more of an optimist than I thought you were."

***

By a number of standards, the group's encounter with the mathis did turn out rather fortunately. First, no one was eaten by a mathis. Secondly, they were getting hours of rare recordings of the malicious beasts. And thirdly, none of their equipment was destroyed - despite the mathis' best efforts. Beyond these considerations, though, even Lieutenant Fong-Yee had to agree they were less than ideal guests. To begin with, the mathis had outstayed their welcome. Rather than being content to harass the foray party, these elusive carnivores had forgotten their customary shyness and had followed the rover home, terrorizing wildlife and denuding foliage all the way.

There were eight mathis in this drove. They stood ranging from around two and a half to three feet tall. Their rounded bodies were covered with shaggy fur. Their wings were bat-like and they had a set of clawed feet for catching and ropy arms for holding their prey. The most notable feature of the creature was its head, which looked exactly like that of a small horse, complete with large brown eyes and a long mane.

"Haven't the ponies gone home yet?" Gadzicki asked as she came up through the 'lift tube.

"No," Lieutenant Kaplan answered pointedly.

Their visitors were not in favor with the botanist. Their untimely arrival had aborted a most promising field trip and their continued presence made any forays to observe normal behavior in the area pointless. Worst of all, these supposedly confirmed carnivores kept eating all the out of season blooms that she was trying to gather through the station's remotes.

"They'll go home when they get hungry," Lieutenant Fong-Yee promised for the third time, keeping her eye on the screen while annotating the recording with quickly typed comments.

At first, Chekov too had been caught up in the zoologist's excitement. They had all expected the creatures to leave after the rover disappeared into the craft- That's why no one had minded the extra amount of time it took to accomplish the difficult "bubble" entry where the station's shields were slowly extended as the rover's were slowly retracted, forming a "bubble" around the craft that prevented any of the creatures from becoming accidentally entrapped inside the station's zone. However, after hours and hours of recording mathis, the botanist's melancholy at being shut inside the base was beginning to pervade Chekov's feelings also.

Indeed, sitting at the console next to her was making Chekov extremely sensitive to Lieutenant Kaplan's every reaction. Even in the drab coverall of her environmental suit, with her hair still in a streaming disarray from the mad dash she'd had to make to flee the mathis, she seemed unbearably beautiful The very smell of her -- musky and earthy -- was somehow attractive. She seemed like a woodland goddess, sitting in the midst of the station's technology by some divine mistake.

"Vicki," the goddess said in a flat complaining voice, "the flowers that they're eating contain driesol, a known hallucinogen to native systems. If these plants keep blooming, the mathis may stay here the rest of the week."

"Wonderful," Fong-Yee replied without turning around. "May I remind you, Lieutenant, this is not exclusively a botanical expedition. The recordings that we are making now are of great zoological interest and that is not diminished by the fact that they may be under the influence of a natural chemical by-product Anyway, if that turns out to have been an Itkin we saw, this may be anyone's last chance..."

"You sighted Itkin?" Chekov interrupted. The Itkin were the sentient plant life of the planet whose privacy was not to be disturbed. A con firmed sighting in such proximity to the station would mean the cancellation of their trip and the removal of the station.

"I wouldn't say it was an Itkin," Kaplan said, positioning her remote unit over a bush where she believed one of the flowers would next appear. "But it was a related plant."

"The Itkin's kin," Gadzicki quipped, settling into the console at Chekov's left to compile her test results.

"It doesn't matter if it's the Itkins' cousin twice removed," Fong-Yee replied. "If it's intelligent, we've got to go."

As that sobering thought descended on the group like a wet blanket, Chekov watched the latest flowering of the botanist's target plant. The flower blossomed at a remarkable rate, like a rose filmed in stop motion. "Those flowers remind me of an old Russian fairy tale..." he began as one of the crazed mathis swooped down and ripped the bloom right out from under the remote's grasp.

Anne Gadzicki, after an afternoon of his acquaintance, rolled her eyes. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."

However, Chekov was too dazzled by the curious smile he got from Lieutenant Kaplan to hear her. "It is called 'Lucky Pavel and the Three Virtuous Maidens of Gdansk.'"

He paused uncomprehendingly as all three of his listeners exchanged a significant glance. After a moment of consideration, he blushed as the obvious reason for their reaction dawned on him. "'Pavel' is a very common Russian name," he assured them.

"Sure, say the maidens one through three," Gadzicki replied dryly.

"Oh, go ahead." Lieutenant Kaplan gave him a smile as generous as the afternoon sun. "Tell the story."

"If you'd like." The only trouble with such beneficence from her was that it made it hard to concentrate on remembering what to say. "Once there was a very brave Russian soldier named Pavel who was called Lucky Pavel because of his extreme good fortune in military engagements as well as various civilian pursuits..."

"Russian fairy tales always have soldiers in them," Lieutenant Fong-Yee complained from across the room.

"Russian history is full of armies," Chekov explained. "At any rate, on his way back from one such military engagement, the soldier, Pavel, came upon a small village..."

"Gdansk," Fong-Yee supplied.

Chekov shook his head. "No, not Gdansk. That's a large metropolitan area in Poland."

"But you said this was 'Lucky Pavel and the three Virtuous Maidens of Gdansk,'" Fong-Yee argued.

Chekov frowned, not only at his inability to remember the correct title for the story, but at the lieutenant's continued interruptions. Did this indicate that he was disturbing her or merely that she felt excluded from the group seated on the other side of the dome's perimeter?

"That could just mean that the girls come from G'whatever," Gadzicki said, coming impatiently to his defense. "Let the man tell his story, Vick."

Chekov turned to watch Fong-Yee's reaction. If she had any objections to his idle recounting, Gadzicki had just given her the perfect opportunity to state them strongly.

However, the zoologist merely shrugged as she turned back to her work. "Sorry."

"Go on," Lieutenant Kaplan urged.

That sort of encouragement was irresistible, so Chekov cleared his throat and continued, "Pavel, upon arriving at this small village, went immediately to the local tavern in order to obtain some liquid refreshment..."

Gadzicki nodded her approval. "Good guy."

"...and there he heard an improbable account of three beautiful sisters who maintained residence nearby..."

"...After moving there from G'whachmacallit," Gadzicki prompted.

"Apparently," Chekov agreed for the sake of consistency. "From all reports, these sisters were fabulously affluent. Freedom from economic concerns was guaranteed to the man who would enter into a marriage contract with any one of them..."

"I see where their reputation for beauty comes from," Gadzicki remarked, as she cross-referenced engineering data on her terminal. "A big dowry will still cover up a big nose any day'"

"...However, none of the young men who went out to enter romantic negotiations with these young women ever returned."

"And they were still 'virtuous'?" Fong-Yee asked dubiously.

"Yeah," Gadzicki agreed. "Sounds to me like they were stockpiling men."

Chekov decided to let these speculations go without comment. "At any rate, since Pavel's economic status was far from secure, he judged the potential risk to be worth the promised rewards of the expedition and set out for the residence of the first sister. When he arrived, he found a fantastic house constructed of inlaid pearl and precious gem stone, as structurally unsound as that may seem. The eldest sister was wearing a gown embroidered with gemstones and several long strings of real pearls as she came out to greet him..."

"...But she had warts all over her hands," Gadzicki inserted eagerly.

"No, she was very beautiful-no big nose, either. They talked pleasantly together for a time, then the sister said to him:

"Handsome soldier, I will come to thee if beneath yonder ash tree at midnight you will wait for me."

"Strange that a poem for a Russian fairy tale should rhyme in this language, too," Fong-Yee observed skeptically.

Chekov shrugged charmingly, not giving in to her implication that this might not actually be a Russian fairy tale despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. "At midnight, Pavel returned and stood beneath the ash tree waiting for the sister. However, much to his surprise, at the stroke of mid night, the ash tree vanished and rematerialized as a gigantic rooster."

"A what?" Gadzicki asked disbelievingly.

"There's always a giant chicken in these stories," Kaplan hushed her.

"When you think of a rooster in its normal proportions, it is not very frightening," Chekov conceded. "However, this creature was... well, if you can visualize something like the Chari of Antos IV? ."

"Oh," Gadzicki said, much illuminated. "Okay."

"The creature attacked him and very nearly killed him, but Pavel escaped by some instance of extreme good fortune that I, unfortunately, can no longer remember..."

"Aaaw," chorused the listeners.

"They fought the remainder of the night and when the first light of day struck the creature, it was transformed again into a tree. Lucky Pavel was very puzzled..."

"And pretty pissed off at this eldest sister chick," Gadzicki concluded.

Chekov nodded. "Very much so. So he decided to visit the second sister. Her house, he found, was made entirely of silver."

"No doubt she had a little team of elves who came in and polished it every week," Fong-Yee commented.

"No doubt," Chekov agreed. "Her dress was embroidered with silver threads and she wore a necklace of emeralds."

"No warts on this babe either, huh?" Gadzicki asked.

"None at all," Chekov confirmed. "They talked pleasantly for a time and then the sister said:

"Brave soldier, I will come to thee if by yonder silver brook at midnight you will wait for me."

Fong-Yee frowned. "That didn't rhyme the same way."

"It was a different sister," Kaplan offered.

"So Pavel goes to the brook, but at midnight, the water transformed into a gigantic snake..."

Anne Gadzicki made a face. "Oh, no."

"Sorry'" Chekov apologized, recalling Gadzicki's feelings about reptiles of that sort. "All night long..."

"...He fights the snake," Gadzicki finished for him. "Okay, just cut to the morning when the snake turns back into water."

Chekov crossed his arms. "That would be omitting a very exciting part of the story."

"I can imagine," Gadzicki replied grimly.

Chekov relented with a sigh. "Suffice it to say that he came much closer to being killed and spent nearly a week recuperating, but Pavel did survive and the snake did rematerialize as water."

"Well, thank God that's over," Fong-Yee said, mocking Gadzicki's squeamishness.

"So when fully recovered. Pavel set out for the youngest sister's cottage..."

"This guy's a glutton for punishment," Gadzicki observed.

"This is a story about Lucky Pavel, not Clever Pavel," Chekov reminded her. "the residence of the third sister was constructed of gold studded with diamonds and she was wearing a golden dress with diamonds for jewels."

"And she was another beauty queen," Gadzicki projected.

"No, she wasn't perfect." Chekov, who was also beginning to find the heroines' conformity monotonous, paused to think of an appropriate flaw. "She had... what did you say before?"

"Warts."

"No," Lieutenant Kaplan interrupted. "A big nose."

Both Chekov and Gadzicki turned to look, because Carole Kaplan herself had a nose that proudly proclaimed her middle eastern heritage.

"Yes." Chekov smiled. "She had a prominent, but lovely, nose."

"With a wart on it," Gadzicki suggested, breaking the spell.

"No, not on her nose." Chekov shook his head. "All right, a small one - on her finger."

Gadzicki nodded. "I'm satisfied."

"She and Pavel conversed, but not so pleasantly, since she knew he was only after her money and he was getting a little tired of these sisters. However, as he started to leave, she said:

"Valorous soldier, I will come to thee and thy one love forever be if at midnight by yon rose briar you will wait for me."

"That one was totally different, too," Fong-Yee pointed out.

"Sorry." Chekov smiled and shrugged. "I got carried away this time. As the sister turned to go, a diamond fell off her dress without her having seen it. Pavel, however, did see and picked it up. It was about this size..." Chekov held his fingers far enough apart to carry an egg. "...which is very large for a natural stone. This, he knew, would stabilize his financial state, at least temporarily. He was about to put it in his pocket and go his way, when he remembered something his old mother had told him before he left home..."

"Never work in the complaints department of a Tellarite department store," Gadzicki suggested.

Chekov shook his head.

Gadzicki shrugged. "That's what my mother told me."

"Lucky Pavel's mother said, 'No good deed goes unrewarded.'"

"I think his mother was a little more naive than mine."

"So Pavel said, 'Excuse me, miss, but you dropped this jewel' and the youngest sister was very impressed by his honesty. She gave him a vial and said, 'At a minute before midnight, throw this holy water on the briar and pluck the rose that grows'... that wasn't supposed to rhyme," he added quickly for Fong-Yee's benefit. "So, at a minute before midnight, Pavel spills the holy water on the briar and a single red flower grew right before his eyes... as quickly as those flowers out there are growing. He plucked the rose..."

Chekov paused long enough to force an impatient "And?" from Gadzicki.

"...And nothing happened," he concluded anticlimactically. "Pavel was very angry, thinking he'd been made a fool of, but then the clock struck and the briar was transformed into a huge bear. It was a ferocious beast, and Pavel knew he stood no chance against it. However, this bear was bleeding from its chest. It pointed at the flower in Pavel's hand and said, 'Give me my heart!' When Pavel looked at his hand, he was holding not a flower, but the cardiovascular muscle of a bear - still functional. Immediately, he took it and ate it whole..."

"Uhhhgh!" his listeners commented in unison.

"...And the bear vaporized into minute particles. When he turned, he found that the cottage had also rematerialized as a simple hut made of wood, not gold. The third sister came out of the house wearing a plain dress..."

"And still had a big nose," Gadzicki prompted.

"Oh, yes," Chekov agreed. "And the growth or her finger seemed larger. She told him that this had all been a fabrication designed by her father to protect the sisters from unscrupulous suitors. She then asked if he still wished to marry her. Of course, Pavel would have preferred to remain a bachelor."

"Of course," chorused Fong-Yee and Gadzicki, recognizing an autobiographical comment for what it was.

"But his old mother had also told him that it never hurt a man to have a clever wife..."

"Boy, was she naive," Gadzicki laughed.

"...And since the youngest sister seemed reasonably clever, Pavel agreed to wed her. Suddenly there appeared a projection of the young lady's father, who was a prominent prestidigitator. He announced that Pavel had passed the final test and was suitable as a marital partner for his daughter and all the diamonds and gold reappeared..."

"And the girl didn't have a big nose any more," Gadzicki conjectured.

"No," Chekov said with a smile for Lieutenant Kaplan, "she always had a large and lovely nose."

"And they lived happily ever after," Fong-Yee concluded.

"Well," Chekov conceded with a shrug, "they did certainly live in a state of continued economic security."

DAY TWO

"Oh, God," Lieutenant Kaplan sighed in a manner that unnerved Chekov so badly it nearly made him drop his tricorder. He was aware, however, that this outburst was prompted by the deep satisfaction that Lieutenant Kaplan received from discovering a particularly unusual or interesting plant life specimen regardless of what other type of deep satisfaction it may sound like. There had been many occasions for such utterances this morning. The two of them had dodged the last of the remaining weary mathis and taken the rover to a riverbank site east of yesterday's foray. Lieutenant Fong-Yee had declared that site off limits until they determined what they had done to trigger the mathis' frenzied attack. This forestalled, for now, further investigation of the potential Itkin-like plant.

Chekov cleared his throat and focused on the beautiful blue water lily he was analyzing and squashed the impulse to turn and ask, "Is there something wrong?" as he had so many times already this morning. It was becoming quite embarrassing.

"C'mere," Lieutenant Kaplan ordered, taking the restraint from him.

Obediently, he turned and had to stifle a sigh at the breathtaking sight of the shapely lieutenant bending over a small conifer in her skin-tight environmental suit (which was the reason that he'd responded so eagerly to so many false alarms before).

They both wore environmental suits on this class M planet-not to protect them from the environment, but to protect the environment from them. Studies had shown that something as seemingly insignificant as the fluid transferral that took place during a mosquito bite could skew the results of scientific studies for generations.

Kaplan beckoned him to the piece of equipment she had trained on one of the little tree's cones. "Look at this."

"It's the archeogonium," she explained as she bent to look through the optiscope's viewfinder.

"Yes." Like everything else on Ehrens, even the specimen's internals had a colorfully vital look. "We can definitely record this as a gymnosperm."

"I know what it is." Kaplan laughed and shook her head at him. "Turn off the computer brain and just look."

Chekov felt a blush creep across his cheeks. Among other reasons, it was amazing, after discarding a certain amount of scientific objectivity, how very human the female reproductive system of the alien conifer looked.

"That's life," Kaplan whispered near his ear. "That's a womb open and ready to begin the cycle. All year she's been dormant, waiting, and on this one day that she had judged to be the most perfect day of the year for giving life, we're here to witness it."

Chekov looked into her liquid brown eyes and knew a moment of intense intimacy was passing between them. Unfortunately, this realization robbed him of the brain power sufficient to figure out what he should do about it. "It... it... it's very beautiful," he stammered.

She nodded, waiting.

For what?!! his non-functioning brain screamed in silent panic. Small voices from within urged him strongly to take her in his arms and reproduce with her madly. However, in full gloved and helmeted environmental gear this was not an option.

"Carole..." he began, but after formulating this bold beginning, his brain abandoned ship again.

Carole (and she would be simply, gloriously "Carole" to him henceforth) smiled. "What?"

"Anne told me you had a hobby," he babbled without benefit of brain.

Puzzled, she shook her head. "Botany isn't a hobby with me and that's all that really interests me... other than sex." She turned the full radiance of her earth goddess srnile on him. "And sex isn't a hobby'"

Chekov remained very still, knowing that the tiniest sound or the smallest gesture would betray him as being a total idiot at this point.

Fortunately (since there was only a finite time he could remain motionless without making a fool of himself), the botanist raised her head sharply. "I think I smell..."

"What?" Despite the fact that they were wearing helmets, they were breathing filtered planetary air rather than from tanks.

Carole ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth, trying to define the aroma. "1 smelled something like that the time we spotted the Itkin relative."

Like a person in a trance, she moved slowly up the riverbank trying to trace the brief scent with Chekov in tow. They hadn't travelled more than thirty or so yards when she finally slowed to a complete halt. "I could've sworn..."

"Perhaps the scent is corning from those water lilies," Chekov said, aiming his tricorder at them.

"No." She glanced at them briefly. "Not likely."

Chekov's eye was caught by a reading on another area of the display. "I have readings of large life forms in this immediate area."

"What kind?"

"Amphibious." As the word left his lips, two blue eyes the size and shape of baseballs broke the surface of the water about twenty feet from where they stood.

"They're called plueger," Chekov continued as they both took an involuntary step backwards.

"How many?" Carole asked as another pair of eyestalks emerged to the left of the first. The first pleuger's white and purple splotched, basketball sized head was now visible along with part of its bulbous nose.

"Two, four...no, eight," Chekov corrected him self as mow readings became intelligible, "...several."

Five more pairs of huge blue eyes were watching and the broad, ape-like chest of the original plueger was now above water. Chekov and Kaplan exchanged a look. They were both armed with phaser one, but regulations strongly discouraged using it.

"Carnivorous?" Kaplan asked.

Chekov nodded as he consulted his readout. "Omnivores."

It only took another split second glance to come to a consensus. Then, in total agreement, they both turned and ran for the rover as fast as their respective legs could carry them.

***

"Well, that's too bad," was their team leader's response when they related their story. "that's just too damn bad."

"Is there something wrong?" Chekov asked, although it was abundantly clear that something was. Even had he not noticed the venomous looks that Fong-Yee and Gadzicki were exchanging, the fact that the two had just met them in the hangar preparing to take out Rover Two as soon as their rover was docked, informed him that the situation was not normal.

"Just another fun day at the dome," Gadzicki said sarcastically as she brushed by him to connect Rover One to its refueling unit

"We've lost the probe unit we left at the site yesterday'" Fong-Yee informed them, donning her environmental gloves.

"Thanks to me, Vick," Gadzicki added insolently. "Don't forget to mention that."

"Ensign Gadzicki activated the probe," FongYee continued, "without my orders."

Gadzicki slammed the wheel locks into place noisily. "Look, Lieutenant, you don't have to tell me to breathe, either. It's just something I know I've gotta do. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary."

"Mathis attacked the unit and managed to expose some circuitry on a display." Fong-Yee made a show of ignoring Gadzicki's outburst. "We know we've electrocuted at least one mathis thus far."

"Look on the bright side, Vick," Gadzicki said as she opened Rover Two's door and gestured Fong-Yee to it like a chauffeur. "Now you have something to dissect and still have enough left for lunch next week."

Fong-Yee crossed to the rover like an ice princess ascending her royal carriage. "I can't begin to imagine how bad this is going to look on a report," she said, sliding into the seat.

"Especially yours on me, right?" Gadzicki said, closing the door on the lieutenant with a loud snap.

Kaplan sighed as she drew off her gloves. "God, it's hot."

"It ain't the heat, Carole." Gadzicki said before slamming the rover's other door dosed behind herself, "It's the damned humidity."

***

Chekov gratefully switched off the commlink to Rover Two. He'd been on standby in case of any emergency arising during the probe's recovery. However, the operation had gone unexpectedly smooth, and Lieutenant Fong-Yee had informed him if they required any assistance during the two hour trip back, they'd call. Chekov was very relieved. He had no desire to be a fly on that wall.

On impulse, he turned on all the internal visual monitors and found Lieutenant Kaplan sitting in the bottom level observatory staring out into the misty river. He cleared his throat carefully before thumbing the intercom button. "Lieu...Carole?"

"Yes," she said without turning.

"Would you like some tea?"

"Sure." Kaplan smiled at him over her shoulder. "Would you mind bringing it down here?" In the face of that smile, Chekov had to re-clear his throat before he could answer, "Of course not. I will be there momentarily "

What am I getting myself into? he wondered as he rode down to the next level and the servo machines. Another thought struck him as he carried the two steaming cups back to the 'lift tube. Would offering herbal tea to a devout botanist be like giving a platter of roast meat to an animal lover? The thought nagged at him as he sank through the second and third floors, but as soon as he arrived at the fourth, the worry, along with any other thoughts he may have been thinking, evaporated like a mist.

Carole Kaplan was dressed not, as he had assumed, in a uniform, but in a rather short bathrobe. She turned (no doubt alerted to his presence by the sound of his jaw as it hit the floor) and beckoned. "Come look at this. They're talking about you."

Like a man in a dream (and a rather nice one at that), he stumbled forward and handed her the cup of tea.

"Can you see that?" She pointed upwards at a cloud of colored water hanging around the root clusters above them. "It changed color when you came in."

"What's that coming from?"

"The plants, or something in the plants, I guess." As they watched, the color spread to other water clouds before dispersing downstream. "I've never seen a report where anyone mentioned seeing this, but I've seen this color change several times already. It's like something is trying to tell something else what we're doing."

The eerie feeling of being watched crawled uncomfortably up Chekov's spine. "We seem to be experiencing more natural anomalies than are statistically probable."

"I know." She leaned back in her chair. The movement caused her skimpy robe to part and reveal smooth olive skin in a V that pointed to her as yet unseen navel. "There's something going on, and I think it's all connected, but it's still in some way you can't put into a tricorder. I mean, you can't say in a report, 'I feel at the center of my being that a mystical change is taking place on Ehrens.'"

Chekov laughed weakly as he politely averted his gaze. "I can't imagine what Mr. Spock would say about that."

"Oh, I think I can." Instead of re-covering her exposed flesh, Kaplan sat and waited for his eyes to return to her body. When they did (inevitably), she watched him watch her for a long moment. Then, in a gesture so natural it didn't seem deliberate, she yawned and stretched. This caused the V in front of her robe to grow so wide as to definitely confirm Chekov's hypothesis that she had absolutely nothing on under it.

"God, it's hot..." She smiled, watching his reaction through lazily slitted eyes. "...Don'tcha think?"

Abstractly, Chekov observed that this was like the way a flower seduces a bee -- not terribly subtle, but terribly, terribly sweet.

"It's not the heat," he answered, knowing he would never again consider Botany a dry subject, "it's the damned humidity."

DAY THREE

"Good morning, Pavel."

At the sound of Fong-Yee's voice, Chekov snapped back to doing something more constructive than staring longingly at the sensor image of Rover Two on the location indicator. It was pure foolishness, he knew, but it did make him feel that much closer to Lieutenant Kaplan while she was away on a foray with Ensign Gadzicki. It also helped him resist the temptation to make totally frivolous calls to the rover as he manned the station's communication center.

"Good morning, Lieutenant"

Fong-Yee shook an admonishing finger at him.

"Good morning, Vicki," he corrected himself in accordance to her wishes rather than because he felt like addressing her informally.

Instead of crossing to the Biology station as he thought she would, the lieutenant sat down on the edge of the communications console and smiled at him. "So, how do you like Ehrens so far?"

Chekov couldn't help but smile as he said, "It seems to be a very pleasant place."

"Except for attacking mathis, plueger, and inept engineers...sorry," she immediately retracted upon his reaction to this unfair criticism of Gadzicki. "Annie and I just don't seem to get along. Opposites don't attract in this case... at least not on my part."

That's a strange thing to say, Chekov thought silently.

The doll-perfect smile returned to her face. "You and I haven't had the chance to spend much time together," she said warmly.

Chekov cleared his throat as he keyed in sensor efficiency comparisons and wondered at his sudden popularity. It must be something about this jungle air... "I suppose not."

"I think that's a shame." Fong-Yee casually propped her arm in front of his monitor screen, effectively interrupting his work. "Because you and I probably have much more in common than the others."

"Oh, really?" he answered, grimly realizing that between duty and politeness, he was quite trapped in his seat.

And Lieutenant Fong-Yee showed no signs of moving any time soon. "For one thing, I con tell you're as serious about Starfleet as I am, a career officer, and that's not something you can say about our friends. Gadzicki's attitude makes that very clear and Carole... 'Fleet' s just an expensive hobby for Carole."

"Oh, really?" Chekov replied, a bit sharply, in defense of his lady love.

Fong-Yee rolled her shoe-button eyes at him patronizingly. "You don't know Carole... not like I do," she said, zeroing in on the botanist with uncanny accuracy. "And that can be dangerous. Not too long ago, a young man ruined his career because of her. They were making love on an observation deck while he was supposed to have been on duty."

Chekov swallowed any reaction that would have betrayed how close to home this hit.

"It's her standard practice to seduce some poor unfortunate during a landing party like this," Fong-Yee continued with casual ruthlessness, "and then drop him sometime before beam up. I'm surprised she hasn't tried anything with you yet."

Although what she had just said twisted his insides into a painful knot, Chekov shrugged and smiled.

"At least you don't have to worry about anything like that from our Anne and as for me..." She lowered her long lashes enticingly. "Were I to indulge... at the very least, I have a little more discretion."

A squeal from the communications console saved him from responding to the surprising proposition, however Chekov still had to take a second to put his teeth back in his mouth before he could say, "Ecobase, Chekov here."

"This is Rover Two. We have a medical emergency." Despite the urgency of her message, Carole's voice was flat and dull. "Gadzicki's been stung by a psycha."

"Oh, hell!" Fong-Yee was immediately off the console and checking the rover's position. 'That's poisonous. We've got less than thirty minutes to get an antitoxin to her and they're two hours away by rover. We'll have to use the emergency shuttle. Can you handle it?"

"Aye, Lieutenant," Chekov turned back to the comm console. "We're on our way, Rover Two. Ecobase out."

"Damn," Fong-Yee swore as they rushed to the 'lift tube. "If she dies, I'll never get promoted."

***

"Is she going to be all right?"

Anne Gadzicki's unconscious form still quivered with the effects of the poison in her system as Chekov knelt and checked her vital signs on the shuttle's portable mediscan. Her body looked very tiny and frail lying on the stretcher they'd laid across the shuttle's rear seats. There was a large rip in the back of her environmental suit that the psycha, a bird-sized insect, had torn away with its pincered feet before inflicting the swelling wound on her shoulder blade.

"The antitoxin is working," he said, carefully laying the thermal blanket over the little engineer. "She'll sleep now."

It was Lieutenant Fong-Yee's question he was answering. It was she who stood anxiously over his shoulder-probably more concerned with the effect this would have on her efficiency report than with Gadzicki's well-being. Carole Kaplan stayed as far apart from the situation as was physically possible in the small shuttle. She sat on the edge of the for ward console with her back uncharacteristically to the outside view, her eyes dejectedly on the floor.

"What happened, Carole?" Fong-Yee asked.

"A swarm of psycha come in...to feed, I guess." Kaplan didn't even raise her eyes. "We ran for the rover. Anne was a little slower than me and got stung."

Kaplan sounded bitterly discouraged and Chekov felt sure it was about something other than Gadzicki's misfortune. "It's just more of the same, Vicki," she said sighing and taking a step toward the door. "I'll write a report for you when we get back to base."

"Where are you going?" Fong-Yee asked her before the same words had a chance to leave Chekov's lips.

"Somebody's got to drive the rover back."

"I'll go with you," Chekov offered impulsively.

"No," both women discouraged him simultaneously.

"You've got to fly the shuttle," Fong-Yee reminded him.

"I'd rather be alone, anyway," Kaplan said, opening the hatch.

The snap as it closed behind her echoed hollowly in his stomach. There was a rejection of him implicit in her words. In a way that he couldn't define, he felt there was an unmistakable finality to that rejection. The hypersensitivity that all people in love are gifted with told him that his precious, barely-begun affair of the heart was already over except for the formalities.

"Oh, well." Lieutenant Fong-Yee smiled her self satisfied china-doll smile at him as he sat there feeling as numb with shock as the sedated poison victim behind him. "Looks like it's just you and me."

DAY FOUR

"What are you doing here?" Chekov blinked at Gadzicki angrily in the dim pre-dawn light. He'd been surprised to find her room empty when he'd stopped to check on her this morning, and had grown quite concerned when he found himself to be alone on the quarters deck. Having appointed himself the pro tern medical officer for the team, he had developed a protective feeling towards his patient. Standing there with the left arm of her baggy fatigues dangling empty because that arm had been immobilized to prevent reopening the wound, his patient looked like she needed protection.

She put the fingers of her good hand to her lips. "Shhh."

"You should be asleep," he scolded quietly.

Gadzicki made a wry face at him. "Sleep's great, but sixteen hours of it is all I can stand at once." .

"Where is everyone?"

"They took the rover out about an hour ago. Trying to beat the bugs."

Chekov frowned. "I should have been woken up."

Gadzicki shrugged. "there wasn't any point. I was already up and all I had to do was wait by the comm station and call you if something happened to them."

"Oh? And what if you had fainted or..."

"Shhh," Gadzicki interrupted. "Can't you see we're in the presence of one of Ehrens' rarest natural phenomenons?"

"Again?" Chekov sighed, but then had to blink in wonder at the spectacle outside the dome's transparency. Above the riverbank's flowers danced a five-member swarm of six-inch creatures. They were rosy in color and incredibly and comically elephantine in appearance.

Gadzicki grinned at their antics. "1 don't know their official name, but a friend of mine who was here once said his team called them 'hangover birds.'"

"Why?"

"I was told that among Earth people, which apparently doesn't include Russian Earth people, there's a tradition that people see pink elephants when they're drunk, hung over, got the D.T.s or things like that."

Chekov was unfamiliar with the metaphor, but the little pink creatures did look like something a cartoonist might create to cavort in a drunkard's hallucination. "Remarkable."

After a moment of watching the tiny flying elephants, he looked down to confirm that his patient was indeed feeling as well as the front she was putting up. To his surprise, he found himself distracted by the discovery that when she was conscious and smiling, Anne Gadzicki had a very pretty face. There was something about her shining eyes and the way her sleep-tousled hair framed her elfin features that made a person want to put his arm around her little shoulders. If she were a homosexual, as Lieutenant Fong-Yee had strongly hinted yesterday, then Chekov felt at this moment it was a great pity.

Gadzicki heard the sigh that he hadn't realized he'd sighed and her smile faded.

"How was Carole doing yesterday?" .

"Fine," Chekov answered, ignoring the stab from his still fresh wounds.

Gadzicki sighed for him this time. "She got real depressed yesterday morning, even before anything happened."

Kaplan hadn't spoken to him or looked at him even while sitting at a console next to him for almost an hour preparing her report. It wasn't so much she was snubbing or ignoring him, as it was that she had simply become unaware of his continued existence.

"I told you she was funny about plants," Gadzicki said, as though that explained everything. "She's upset about something she's found out."

Chekov's heart leapt into his mouth, but he swallowed it calmly. "Oh?"

"Yeah, we were on the trail of that Itkin relative she's been looking for. We found some, but as we got closer to them, they curled up and went dormant. That's a funny thing, when they go dormant, they turn into what we call Olsen's weed, which grow all along the river."

Chekov lifted his eyebrows. "The Itkins are all around us?"

"Itkin kin," she differentiated. "Second cousins. But the bad thing is that when they go dormant they sprout flowers for camouflage, I guess. But we scare them so badly, they overproduce and attract the attention of the local herbivores, omnivores, and even carnivores who then destroy the plants. Carole says it's like they're committing suicide because of us." "Oh." "Exactly," Gadzicki nodded. "To you and me that's, 'Oh, well. Too bad,' but to Carole it's really a big thing. It's something that really sours everything... everything for her."

There was an awkward silence between them.

"Look," Gadzicki began, then bit her lip. Mustering up her resolve, she began again. "I had a friend who dated Carole for a couple of da... for a while. Look, I don't want you to think I'm making this up or being a wise guy, okay. But I thought you'd like to have an explanation...of things...since you noticed she was depressed."

Chekov made no comment on her coherency.

"Right." Gadzicki took his silence as consent. "Like I said, Carole's kind of funny about plants. She's what you might call a pagan, really. She feels that things -- like sex, for a purely hypothetical example -- need to happen in conjunction with nature. If the omens, as she perceives them, go wrong, then it just wasn't meant to be. Nothing personal, but it just wasn't meant to be."

Chekov self-consciously straightened his uniform and tried to look like he'd not been kicked in the gut To say that he felt badly would be to grossly understate his disappointment and totally ignore the humiliation of being informed of such a thing by a neutral third party, but he did feel very badly about it As long as Carole never actually gave him a reason, he would still hope he was imagining things. However, with this explanation, no matter how bizarre and second-hand, all hope was lost.

Gadzicki chewed her lower lip miserably, her eyes full of such empathy that Chekov thought for a moment she might put her arm around his shoulders.

"Aw, c'mon, brown-eyes," she said, giving him a fraternal thump on the shoulder instead. "Don't take it all so serious."

"Miss Gadzicki," he said coldly, "by some statistical phenomenon that you do not seem to have noticed, everyone on this team has brown eyes."

The engineer's face went as pink as the tiny elephants outside. "Y'don't say." She cleared her throat and headed for the 'lift so he couldn't see her blush. "Guess I hadn't been looking at anybody else."

***

Chekov sat alone in front of the library computer on the station's uppermost level, surrounded by the gathering gloom of Ehrens' sunset and decided that he owed Ensign Gadzicki an apology. After a full day of feeling sorry for himself, he had come to the conclusion that she had told him about Lieutenant Kaplan in the most tactful and painless method she could devise. It wasn't necessarily her fault that there simply was no tactful and painless way to tell someone a thing like that.

Carole Kaplan had finally spoken to him, but that was only to hand him her log tape and ask him to edit it into the correct format for entry into the library computer. At first, he was puzzled and somewhat offended by her request. It seemed like a ridiculous imposition. Any competent officer could and would do that task for him or herself. However, as he went through the log, her intent became clear. There, couched in botanical terminology and report formalities, was the same message that Gadzicki had related to him, although he doubted that he would have been able to translate it without the engineer's help.

He filed the last of the data in the flickering computer light. As he scanned for her through the channels of the internal monitors, he tried to remember if he'd actually said anything impolite to Gadzicki. He remembered feeling like saying something impolite...

"...got a lot of damn gall!" blasted through the speaker.

"Anne," Lieutenant Fong-Yee was saying. "You're being hysterical..."

"No, I mean it," Gadzicki was saying.

Chekov groaned, "Oh, no. Not again."

"You've got Carole believing I'm a lesbian. You're standing there trying to convince me I'm a nymphomaniac. God knows what you've told Mr. Chekov. He probably thinks I'm a Vegan sporophite."

Chekov's finger froze halfway to the off switch.

"You're over reacting, Anne," Fong-Yee protested. The monitor showed them to be standing in the shuttle bay. The lieutenant was clearly visible, but Gadzicki had her back to the monitor's eye. "Please, I'm only saying this as a friend..."

"Some friend."

"Believe it or not," Fong-Yee persisted. "But it really hurts me to see you throw yourself at him this way when I know he's not..."

"Yeah," Gadzicki interrupted brittlely. "I can imagine. It must really hurt you. It must be painful for you to watch me. I mean, someone like you-so pretty, so perfect, so good with men -- watching me, who doesn't have a chance in hell, waiting around hoping beyond good sense that he'll notice me..." Gadzicki turned, and the monitor's eye caught what she'd not wanted Fong-Yee to see. "It's got to be so painfully embarrassing for you to watch that it must really hurt."

After a long moment, Fong-Yee stirred. "If you want to talk about this tomorrow---"

Gadzicki swiped at her nose and eyes with her good hand. "Yeah, sure."

Chekov's finger finally made it to the off switch as the lieutenant exited. He sat back in his chair, not quite sure what to think. "There' s definitely something to this jungle air," he decided at last.

DAY FIVE

"Well, Doc," Gadzicki asked as Chekov carefully peeled back the layers of drying dermaplast, "will I be able to play the violin?"

"Only if you could play it before," he replied, his joviality as forced as the humor. He'd come down to the shuttle bay this morning resolved to talk to the engineer, but when confronted with her face to face, his prepared speech dissolved and he was glad to have his pseudo medical duties to fall back on.

Oh well, he thought, taking a deep breath. The only way to say it is to say it. "Miss Gadzicki...Anne, I must admit that I accidentally eavesdropped on you last night."

"Yeah." Gadzicki fastened her eyes on the ground in front of her. "I know. I saw the intercom light go off."

There was an awkward pause as, once again, Chekov's prepared script collapsed into meaninglessness.

"So," Gadzicki said at length, "what do you think?"

Chekov gently pulled the empty sleeve of the engineer's fatigues over her exposed shoulder and turned her around to face him. "I think," he said slowly, "that Lucky Pavel has been romancing the wrong one of the three beautiful sisters."

Then, carefully, as if he were afraid of jarring her, he leaned forward and kissed her

He drew away and watched as her mobile features ran through a gamut of emotions as she tried to assimilate this unexpected turn. She started with simple dumbfoundedness and quickly crescendoed into something so intense that she had to turn away again.

"Don't you need to spray this or something?" she asked, making furious swipes at her nose.

"Funny you should mention that," she continued, as he silently resumed his role as medic. "I mean that story you told...y'know, 'Pavel Gets Lucky with Three Girls at the Dance,' or whatever it was? I was thinking about it last night. You remember that part with the bear? There's a briar that magically grows a rose, then the monster comes. And it made me think about what a coincidence it was that every time that Olsen's Itkin thing sprouts flowers, it always attracts something that's harmful to us, too."

Chekov had to rapidly downshift mental gears to be able to perceive what she was saying as something other than panicked babbling. "What?"

"The yellow flowers we saw before the psycha swarmed us were the same color as these rare flowers that the psycha eat," she continued, gradually regaining lucidity. "The blue flowers you and Carole saw before the plueger chased you are just like the blue flowers plueger like to decorate their nests with. And you remember the mathis and the red flowers? They have something to do with a mating ritual thing the mathis do, according to Vicki. the only thing that they attacked on the probe was the red indicator lights that came on when I activated it."

"Wait, wait, wait," Chekov said, not so much to her as to the wild convergence of previously unrelated data that was going on in his head. "Do you think Lieutenant Kaplan is still in her room?"

Jealousy pulled the comers of Gadzicki's mouth downward. "Why?"

"I think I have a theory."

"You could just file it and Vicki would..." As soon as that name left her lips, Anne knew Chekov's desire to inform the other ranking officer on the team probably had more to do with distaste for Fong-Yee than lingering love for Kaplan. "Last time I saw Carole, she was on the bottom deck."

Chekov grabbed her good hand and pulled her after him. "Perfect!"

***

"Are they talking about us?" Chekov asked, pointing upwards as he and Gadzicki stepped off the 'lift.

The botanist looked into his smiling face as if she were sure he'd lost his mind. "There was a color change again, if that's what you're asking."

"Carole," Chekov began, kneeling dramatically in front of the console where she was sitting.

"He's got a theory," Gadzicki explained.

"We've got a theory," he corrected. "Carole, the plants aren't killing themselves; they're trying to kill us."

"What?"

"Tell me this," he said, trying to slow back down to impulse-speed. "Why do you believe the plants that you found are Itkin relatives? Is it because they have the photosensitive 'eye' organ typical of Itkins?"

"Yeah," Kaplan agreed slowly. "They have a version of it."

Chekov sat back on his heels. "Tell me about the Itkins. How were we able to determine they were intelligent, thinking creatures when we weren't able to communicate with them?"

"The main thing was the domestication of animals," she answered, still completely in the dark.

"Ah," Chekov said eagerly. "But how can a stationary plant domesticate a mobile animal?"

"They work as a community'" Kaplan explained, deciding to humor him. "Itkins lure the kind of small amphibians that they feed on into what we call 'natural corrals' by chemically stimulating the growth of plants that those amphibians like to eat. When they've collected a sufficient number, the Itkins extend their branches, joining to form an impenetrable briar wall. Inside the corral, the Itkins control the growth, behavior, and even breeding of the animals by stimulating or failing to stimulate the growth of certain feed plants."

"Very interesting." Chekov folded the palms of his hands together sagely. "Then we can state broadly that Itkins are creatures that observe the behavior of other creatures around them and then manipulate their environment by means of ejecting certain chemicals which modify the environment to suit their needs?"

Kaplan nodded. "It's the text."

"The other day, I took some readings of what I assumed was a specimen of Thompson's water lily. Was it in fact a Thompson's water lily?"

"No." The faint glimmerings of understanding were extinguished from Kaplan's eyes at this unexpected track change. "This was all in the report. The shape, color, and aroma were correct, but the cell structure showed it to be an extension of the Itkin relative. The same way the Itkins can grow a branch with thorns when they need to, these plants can imitate flowering plants around them for protection."

"It's not very good protection that draws marauding mathis, plueger and psycha, is it?" Chekov asked. "Tell me, does it actually hurt the plant to lose these false limbs?"

"Yes, they go totally dormant."

"Ah, but when the mathis attacked, the red flowers that were attracting them bloomed all the way to our shuttle bay doors. Are there any active specimens of the Itkin relative in this immediate area?"

Dawn began to break over the botanist's face. "No, only what we thought were dormant ones."

"Which brings us to the issue of dormancy. When the Itkin relative is..."

"We could just call it a Kaplan plant, y'know'" Gadzicki interrupted.

"An excellent idea," Chekov said, pausing to beam at her. "When the Kaplan's plant is in its dormant state, what does it become?"

"We were calling it Olsen's weed."

"And there are many examples of that plant growing in the ledge above us right now, aren't there?"

"Yes."

"What was, in your report, defined as the most significant characteristic of Kaplan's plant dormancy?"

"The retraction of the photosensitive 'eye' into a protective subterranean pouch."

Chekov nodded. Those seemingly vestigial eye pockets had been a source of great puzzlement to the Lieutenant Olsen who gave the dormant plant its name. "Such a retraction is a rather useless seeming gesture for a land-bound plant, but in a plant who lives on the surface of a river -- especially one that feeds on a kind of small amphibian like its Itkin cousins do..."

"God," Gadzicki interrupted. "You mean those things are watching us right now?"

"And talking about us," Kaplan nodded, remembering the mass exodus of amphibians that she and Fong-Yee had witnessed on their first day on the planet. "The colored clouds we see are chemical ejaculations that carry signals downstream and possibly inland."

"Theoretically," Chekov reminded her. "We have no proof."

"Yes, but we do have seven years worth of detailed, day by day sensor recordings of this immediate area alone in the library computer upstairs. If our theory's correct, then we've probably even got enough old recordings of these colored chemical bursts to codify them into a rudimentary language." Kaplan fell back in her chair, overwhelmed by the enormity of the task in front of her. "My gosh, we've got another five days worth of research and only six more hours until beam up!"

Chekov smiled proudly. "Then I can assume this makes you happy?"

Instead of answering, she stood up, pulling him with her into a hug that nearly took him off his feet. "You'll never know how happy."

Like the generous Earth goddess she was, Carole reached out to include Gadzicki into her embrace, but the little engineer hung back, looking away. Kaplan took a step back from Chekov and, although it had taken him a long time to make her change her mind about the Itkin relatives, it only took a split second of silent exchange between Chekov and Gadzicki to convince her of the reversal that had taken place here.

"I knew it," she said, taking Chekov's hand and reaching for Gadzicki's. "I knew there was some thing that was not exactly right." She pulled them closer and joined their hands under hers. "Now everything fits," she said as a solemn benediction, then stepped back to admire her handiwork. Her greater height made her look like a doting adult admiring two beloved children.

"Oh, look at the two of you," she said, laughing. "For God's sake, go ahead and kiss. I've got work to do!"

They stood silently in the botanist's wake, feeling suddenly uncertain as Kaplan floated up the 'lift tube.

"Oh, well," Anne said, breaking the hesitant silence. "I guess if Carole really wants us to..."

"Yes." Chekov grinned. "I suppose we must for the good of all the natural omens involved."

They kissed, and although he was not yet convinced of a mystical relationship between the affairs of human beings and the harmony of an alien ecosystem, for that moment Chekov felt truly one with life.

Anne Gadzicki smiled up at him. "See, I told you Ehrens was going to be a great place -- plenty of nice scenery to walk around in, a chance to get in the history books..."

"...And the possibility of a little romance," they finished together.