by Lynn

"I'm not going to any more whorehouses with you," said Ensign Chekov, staring straight ahead, avoiding the looks of the companions who accompanied him down a gaudy alien street on a planet none of them cared about. Because his trousers had no pockets, he kept his hands clasped behind him.

"Chekov," the man beside him chided, too loudly, "this one's the best. They call it the Triple Cross. They let you have three for one if-"

"Three what for one?" asked Lieutenant Sulu quickly.

"Three times, my man."

First Navigator Kevin Riley had joined the game. "Whadda they measure it by, Stanford?"

"Measure what by?" Stanford countered. Another man tripped and was caught by Sulu. "What're you talking about, Riley?"

"I mean," Riley persisted, "it's a verb, friend, a verb, not a noun." He made an obscene gesture with his hands. "So what verb are we talking about?"

"Riley, you think you're f---ing James Joyce all the time," Stanford charged, not because he could have distinguished in a dozen lifetimes the old Irish author James Joyce from the modern pornographer Joyce James, but merely because Riley had often, loudly, and usually drunkenly asserted the equivalence. "Here's the verb." He reeled off half a dozen Low German variations for the procreative act. He turned to the very drunk gentleman behind him and said, "Howja say it in Jewish, Meyer?"

"Hebrew," the other hiccupped. "It's a secret." Grabbing onto Chekov's shoulder to keep himself straight, he whispered, "Like the name of God. Never say it. Shh."

"Hell. You ain't got even one for it," retorted Stanford, and then, eagerly, cried, "Here it is! Down here," as they reached an intersection.

"Christ, Stanford," Sulu said, "you really never turn off, do you?"

Meyer said, "Look how many words he got for it. Sure he never turns off. It's the only thing in his language."

"Whoa. Out of line, young fellow," said Stanford, "way out of line."

"Yeah, out of line? Who's out of line here first?" Meyer retorted.

Chekov stepped back a couple of steps. Someone was going to punch someone else. He was the youngest and most junior of the group, and, having only recently joined the Enterprise crew, had no intention of embroiling himself in a melee on a planet full of humanoid aliens with fur who had already shown little tolerance for the type of behavior Star Fleet personnel engaged in, ritually, on shore leave. He leaned against a wall while Stanford gave Meyer a push, and then Meyer gave a shove, and Stanford a punch, at which Meyer grabbed him. Then Sulu took hold of one and Riley the other, and they were pulled apart. Each man told the other to screw himself-oddly enough, each used his own native language-and then it seemed as if neither knew what to do next.

"Well you ladies can stay right here," Stanford announced. "I'm turning off."

"Not without me, you son of a bitch," Meyer added.

"Meyer," said Stanford, who was on better days one of Meyer's good friends, "you can't keep up. You have to go home. Watch me while I say it again. It's too much for you."

Meyer shook his head. "Let's go. Come on." He was already headed down the street. He glanced over his shoulder and gestured to the rest. "Well, come on."

Chekov remained where he was and shook his head. He really didn't care what any of them thought of him. Under ordinary circumstances intensely conscious of the impression he made on his superiors, he was at that moment too worn out to be interested in another alien brothel. And he found his drunken companions, none of whom could hold his liquor, rather disgusting.

"Well?" Stanford asked Sulu.

Sulu glanced sideways at the Ensign, and then surprised Chekov. "Count me out," he said.

"It's up to you, Riley," Stanford said, and all eyes turned to the young lieutenant.

Riley hesitated. He looked toward Sulu, who was the helmsman. He looked toward Stanford, who was number two in security. "Okay," he said after a moment, reluctantly. "I'll go."

Sulu shrugged and stood back against the wall with Chekov while the three other men strode off down the street for more of a good time.

For a moment the two young officers stood beside each other without speaking. Then Sulu continued on the route they had taken before, and Chekov trotted quickly to keep up with him. After a minute, Chekov asked, "Why didn't you go with them?"

"I'm sick of them," Sulu said, and glanced from the corner of his eyes at the new ensign, Riley's substitute. "Why didn't you?"

"I was sick of what they were doing," Chekov admitted. He looked ahead, rather than at his companion.

Sulu smiled, but restrained himself from reaching out and mussing this little officer's hair. "You have to lighten up, Chekov. Go with the flow."

Chekov replied readily, "I like to chart a course."

"Touche," the helmsman said. "A propos, though highly compulsive."

"Besides," Chekov added, "it's like being back at the Academy. They drink, they fight, they throw up, they waste good liquor. They should stop drinking if all it does is make them throw it up again."

Sulu raised his eyebrows. He had never heard the assistant navigator say so much, so assertively, since they had met a few months ago. "That's what alcohol's for, isn't it? To make you sorry you had it?"

"Not when I drink it," the boy stated stalwartly, and Sulu laughed. "Why are you laughing?" Chekov inquired, turning his head for the first time.

"You sounded so funny. So serious. 'Not when I drink it.' What happens when you drink it?"

Chekov grinned a bit, because he had to admit to himself that Sulu was right. "I become a philosopher," he said. Sulu was still laughing, but it did not bother the ensign a bit. There was something so unaffected and good-natured about his fellow officer that he simply could not regard his dignity as having been compromised. "What about you, really?" Chekov asked. "Why didn't you go?"

"Oh, I don't know. I've been to a lot more brothels than you. And I've had a lot less liquor than any of you. It doesn't agree with me." His expression darkened for a moment. "Poor Riley. He should stick to legal pharmaceuticals, because the alcohol is going to kill him."

They continued their walk until they had emerged from the red light district, which, on this particular planet, was actually separated from the ordinary commercial part of the city by fence and gate. On the other side of the gate the crowd thinned, the noise lessened, and the physical environment appeared more restrained. Another five minutes walk and they could have been on another world.

"It's nice here," Chekov remarked.

"A little quiet," Sulu observed.

"Really?" Chekov asked. "I didn't notice."

Sulu curled his lip. "Where the hell do you come from?"

Chekov tensed, awaiting another Russian joke. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I come from San Francisco. It's a big city, and it's noisy. I thought you came from Moscow. It's a big city, and it must be noisy, too."

It slipped before Chekov knew what he was saying. "Only the poor sections."

"Aha. Rich boy, philosophizes when drunk, doesn't like prostitutes."

"Wrong, wrong, wrong," Chekov protested. "Not rich, just not poor." That was the first lie. "And I never philosophize." That was the second lie. "And it's not prostitutes themselves, it's one alien prostitute after another." That was the only truth he told, and Sulu pounced upon it.

"Look, you can't keep thinking of them as aliens. They're intelligent life forms, just like us."

Chekov bristled and began to philosophize. "I'm not saying they're not intelligent life forms, like us. I'm saying they aren't alluring."

"Alluring." Sulu tried the word on. He was keeping his eyes open for a place to eat.

"After all," Chekov continued, "gorillas are intelligent, but I don't want to screw one. Klingons are intelligent, but I don't want to screw them. You're intelligent-but I don't want to screw you."

Sulu clicked his tongue. "Your loss." Several large white tents appeared before them-restaurants-and Sulu led the way. They took seats on the cool, mossy ground under the tent-everything on the planet was slightly furry, Chekov observed-and waited to be served. "You have the wrong attitude. You have to open yourself to new experiences."

Chekov rolled his eyes.

"Don't roll your eyes at me, young man," Sulu chided. "Maybe you ought to screw a few gorillas. Or Klingons."

Chekov tensed. He did not at all like where this conversation was going. Desperately, he tried to think of a subtle way to move it elsewhere, because he really, really did not want to know Sulu any better than he knew him at that moment. He started nervously to drum his fingers on the cool white slate that their food would be set on, and addressed the gist of the other's remarks. "Flying through space at warp speed and having conversations at arms length with creatures you have to keep in jars is enough new experience for me," he said.

Sulu shook his head and smiled at their server, a furry pink female whose name sounded like "Shawn." After they'd ordered, he returned to his point. "Spock's already gotten to you. You're limiting your experiences to the intellectual. You have to experience things sensually as well."

"Mr. Spock has not gotten to me. I've always been like this."

Sulu sighed. "You're closing yourself off, Chekov."

Chekov began to choke up. He did not want to pursue the topic. He did not want to lay himself open to his fellow officer and risk ridicule. And yet, he could not leave it alone. "What you sense in your body doesn't count if you don't sense it through your mind."

"How's your mind going to grow if you don't feed it through your body?"

"Feed it what?" Chekov demanded. "These females are five degrees too warm, and they're furry. It's like sex with a sheep-which I've never had, don't look at me like that. Where I grew up, decent people did not lie with animals."

"You have no imagination."

"I have a great imagination! I like women! Human women! There's half a starship full of human women up there. What's the big attraction of aliens?"

"Human women can get pretty boring," Sulu replied seriously.

Chekov's eyes nearly popped from his head. "There are trillions and trillions of them!" He took a breath and calmed himself. "How can you say they're boring? There are tall ones and short ones. Dark ones and light ones. Some are shy and some are bold. They're like snowflakes."

"Yeah. They're cold, and the minute you take your eye off them, they're gone."

"You are very odd, Mr. Sulu," Chekov murmured, staring at the soft green ground.

Sulu was laughing again. "I'm just giving you a hard time, Chekov. It's required. I'm your superior officer, and I'm supposed to make your life miserable. Oh, God. Keep your head down. Don't look, don't look."

Of course, all he needed was to be told not to look. Chekov turned immediately to the doorway and saw Mr. Spock glance rapidly through the tent.

As the Vulcan headed their way, Sulu said, "Chekov, you're a dead man."

"It wasn't my fault," Chekov insisted.

"Gentlemen," stated Mr. Spock, taking a seat.

"Mr. Spock," they both replied.

Spock was not planetside to visit houses of ill repute and taverns, but might have assumed that the junior officers on shore leave were. That, at least, was Sulu's fervent hope. The Vulcan's conversation-or monologue-failed to draw any distinction, however, between their respective purposes. Spock was doing an informal anthropological study of the Cassiopeaians, who had interested him for years, while the Enterprise coordinated a diplomatic exchange. He looked directly in the eyes of his young human companions when he asked whether they had drawn any conclusions about the natives' social structure based on their visit so far.

Mr. Sulu coughed. Mr. Chekov blushed.

"There is only one intelligent indigenous species," Spock observed, "but there seem to be distinct sub-species in various pockets throughout the planet."

"Races?" Chekov inquired.

"Possibly. Except they do not interbreed. Not as far as my DNA analysis has revealed to this point. There is the dominant culture, which seems to have permeated the entire planet. And then pockets of sub-species. The Vulcan anthropologist T'Pi-Sivik first observed the situation and commented on it in a footnote in an advanced text. It is indeed fortunate that I have this opportunity for first-hand observation."

"Do you have assistants, Mr. Spock?" Chekov inquired. Sulu gave him a sideways look and shook his head slightly but definitely.

"I am running tricorder readings directly back to the ship, where Dr. McCoy has kindly provided me with assistance," Mr. Spock responded. "This project requires more data entry than I am capable of performing myself, but it is my own private project. My hobby, you would say."

Sulu saw Chekov open his mouth. Sulu shook his head violently and shouted, "Where's our food? That girl was supposed to bring us something fifteen minutes ago."

Chekov sighed and remained silent as the plump and furry little pink girl appeared suddenly and set down bowls before them. "Here you go, boys," she told them through their translators, wrinkling her shiny nose at them. "Don't eat too fast, and remember to call me if you need anything at all." It was all the human men could do not to reach out and pet her.

Before she turned and left, Mr. Spock, having murmured quickly, "If you don't mind, miss," scanned her with his tricorder, which he then left on the table. Chekov picked it up and quickly scanned the food before beginning to eat. "Interesting," Spock remarked. "That young lady does not belong to the dominant species."

"She's kind of cute," Sulu remarked. "She reminds me of a hamster I had when I was a kid."

"I was about to say that she reminded me of a white mouse," Chekov added.

Spock stared at the tricorder, then sighed.

Shawn returned a moment later and squatted beside Chekov, informing him that there were two people who wanted to join them. Her cold little whiskery nose tickled his ear, not accidentally, and she whispered, "They're the quote-other-unquote type."

The quotes around the word "other" indicated that the translator had been unable to find an equivalent term. Chekov, loathe to let her and her adorable proboscis disappear, merely nodded.

And it was not his imagination that felt a warm tongue lap his earlobe for a moment before the girl rose and departed, to be replaced by two more of her type, who both took seats without invitation. They were taller than the waitress, more slender and graceful. If she had been a plump little hamster, these two were ferrets. Chekov sat back and, being the most junior officer, said nothing, but during the ensuing conversation he stared at the aliens, trying to determine whether they were of the same sex, and what it was, other than their body type, that so distinguished them from the sweet little waitress.

They introduced themselves-they could have been Oscar and Meyer, or Ike and Mike, or Caesar and Cleopatra. They worked for the local foreign ministry and had been sent on this emergency diplomatic mission before the local constabulary muddled things up. There would, naturally, be no trouble. The whole situation would eventually be allowed to die down and relations between Casseiopeia and other Federation members would remain as before. But until then, the pinker one said to Mr. Spock, it would be necessary for the three Federation guests to accompany them to their investigations unit.

"And may I ask," Mr. Spock began, "the nature of this investigation?" The Casseiopeians stood, and so did he and his men.

"Murder has been committed," the red one said.

Mr. Spock nodded. "That is a tragedy. The victim?"

"One of our citizens-certainly not one of our most illustrious citizens, but nevertheless-a life is a life, do you not agree?"

"Certainly. The purpetrator of the crime?"

"A human from Star Fleet.One of your own crewmembers. In addition, we regret to inform you that one of your crew has been victimized as well."

Sulu groaned, but Spock took no notice.

"We will accompany you immediately," he stated quietly. "Please lead the way."

***

There had been a full day's post-grad seminar on diplomatic incidents arising from drunk crewmen running roughshod over the citizenry, but Captain Kirk, then a young Lieutenant, had not taken it seriously. He had not intended going into the space exploration business in order to police a passel of inebriate humans on far-flung planets.

But, he realized, sharing a chaser in his cabin with Dr. McCoy, he should have taken the seminar more seriously. Because just about every damned time he sent a group of junior officers down to a planet, they got themselves in trouble.

"Who was it?" McCoy asked, hovering around, taking the news much harder than Kirk had.

"Meyer, from engineering. He's dead. Stanford's missing. Riley's implicated. Apparently they found him with blood on his hands. He's not talking."

"Can you get a lawyer down to him?"

Kirk put his head in his hand. "No lawyers, Bones."

"What do you mean, no lawyers? You mean they hang him as is?"

"At the moment, Mr. Spock is trying to finesse the situation. We want to see how much dilithium it'll take to buy Riley out of there. But we have the other problem, of Stanford. We don't know where he is."

"Dead? Phaser?"

"No phasers down there that anyone knows of. We're treating it as a kidnapping, actually. I'm hoping Spock will be able to trade Riley for Stanford."

"And leave Stanford there?"

"We'll get the one back, then worry about the other. Of course, in the meantime, we also have Spock, Sulu, and Chekov there, and the Casseopeians aren't giving any of them back or allowing any of us to beam down until they get some satisfaction." He rubbed his eyes, then rose abruptly. "No more shore leaves on planets." He held up his hand. "Doctor, I don't want to hear. They can have shore leave on starbases."

"Starbases, in case you've forgotten your own misspent youth, Captain, are missing some of the more exotic amenities of actual planets."

"Fine. Nowhere to get into trouble."

"Nowhere to cut loose and have fun."

"Bones, someone got killed. I'm surprised at you."

"I think it's a setup. It doesn't sound right. Riley killed an alien-what alien?"

"Hooker."

"Riley killed a lady of the night, then someone killed Meyer. Maybe she killed Meyer while Riley was trying to defend him."

The Captain told the doctor that he sincerely hoped that three of his crewmembers, one a security officer, were more than a match for a single alien prostitute.

"Maybe she had a pimp with her."

"This is what I mean!" Kirk exploded. "Why are the two of us debating something like this? We have more important things to do. It's like one of those police novels you're always reading."

Dr. McCoy said, "I love those things, it's true."

"You should have been a cop."

"Too dangerous."

"Ah, yes. Well, it was kind of you to settle on a safe career on a class A starship, boldly going where no man has gone before." He flicked the switch to communications. "Uhura. Contact the closest starbase. Explain our dilemma. Tell them to send us a couple of diplomats, some lawyers, and a big sack of money."

The first time Chekov paid any analytical attention to his environment was in the vehicle that took him, Sulu, Spock and the Casseopeian officials to the site of the local investigation. Previously, he had noted only whiffs of aromas, flashes of colors, sound or absence of sound. Now, in the silence he maintained born part of shock and part of fear, he fixed his eyes out the window like a small child on the way to a doctor's visit. Buildings flashed past, blurs of white marble and gold sandstone, with rounded forms favored over flat ones. The pedestrian ways were clean and of different colors; Chekov was reminded of old maps his grandfather used to collect, on which political units, roads, rivers, and boundaries were all carefully colored to set each apart in a lovely, tidy world that the young Pavel Andreievich would pour over in imaginative bliss.

Periodically, sour or pungent smells would reach his nose, but the predominant odor, behind everything, like the sharp odor of electrically charged oxygen, or the brassy odor of water, or the dense odor of damp soil that permeated the surface of Earth was, on this planet, something thick and sweet. Too much oxygen, perhaps, Chekov suspected, or perhaps more helium than he was accustomed to. It would be easy to get sick of the place after a while, he realized.

The Enterprise officers were led into a waiting room, where Chekov and Sulu took seats on the floor. The ceiling was painted to look like the sky, the walls like a bright summer meadow receding in the distance. Verisimilitude, sometimes to a surreal extent, seemed to be the dominant artistic motif of the place and time. Commander Spock had previously made friends with some members of officialdom, and was admitted into a private office, where he remained for close to an hour. Sulu and Chekov did not speak, as were their instructions under such circumstances. When Spock did emerge, he went directly to his junior officers and knelt beside them.

He stated that he had requested that Enterprise personnel be permitted to examine the body of Crewman Meyer. He had examined pictures and the report of the local coroner, and there appeared to have been no trauma. "Stanford has disappeared, but there is some physical evidence of an escape. We may be able to trace the trail with a tricorder specifically adapted to such a purpose. Again, I believe I have successfully convinced the constabulary to allow our people to assist the investigation." He paused. He recognized the impatience in the faces of the young men. "Our immediate problem is, unfortunately, Lieutenant Riley. He was found with blood on his hands and clothing that matches the blood of the victim, and he seems incapable of describing what occurred."

"Well, has anyone asked?" Sulu demanded, raising his voice.

"Mr. Sulu, your tone."

"I mean it, Mr. Spock. You don't think he killed anyone, do you?"

"I withhold judgment until I have examinee all the evidence."

"What about us? We weren't involved. Can't they let us go?"

"Our crewmembers have become the straws that broke the proverbial camel's back. Not long ago, apparently, some Orion traders kidnapped and tortured the scion of one of the wealthy local families. Before that, a couple of crewmembers from the Excelsior had an ugly altercation with some local merchants-I do not know what the merchandise was. The Casseiopeians have hitherto welcomed space parties because of the extremely favorable exchange rate they had been allowed by the Federation due to their strategic location. They are now discussing closing the planet to all but official and diplomatic missions. They have the capacity to do so. And should this occur, our Lieutenant Riley's name would echo throughout certain commercial circles for many years."

Sulu scowled, looked down, and shook his head.

"It is important that Riley talk in order to convince the Casseiopeians of our good faith." Spock folded his hands on his lap. "I would suggest that one of you speak with him and attempt to gain some information."

Sulu retreated physically. "I'm not good at that kind of thing," he said guardedly.

"You are the most likely candidate, Mr. Sulu. You and Mr. Riley worked together closely."

Me and Mr. Riley don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, Sulu thought. "Kevin's a pretty sensitive guy," Sulu said. "I've been telling him for the past year that one day he was going to go too far. I'm just being honest with you, Mr. Spock. The minute he's off duty he goes on benders-well, I don't want to say anything bad about him, because he's a friend, but believe me, he's not going to appreciate my showing up as if to say 'I told you so.' He'll pop off against me and start ranting about how inscrutable I am and work himself into a drunk without any liquor at all."

Mr. Spock nodded slowly. "I appreciate your observations, Mr. Sulu. Mr. Chekov?"

Chekov raised his eyebrows. "I don't know him very well, Sir. I say hello when he goes off and I go on, and he says hello when I go off and he goes on." He pitied the poor Vulcan, as he tried to imagine him drawing out the half insane, undoubtedly drunk and drugged young officer. "But I don't mind trying," he said amenably, standing up.

After a brief consultation between Spock and a blue-suited Casseiopeian, Chekov was led across a courtyard-the building was shaped like a torus-into a holding cell. The walls were painted the same soothing pink color as the fur of many of the locals. Chekov entered alone.

Riley was pacing, talking to himself.

Chekov kept his back to the door, and for a long time he said nothing. His mother had been a social worker. He had seen the mechanical pacings of many last stage alcoholics. After a while, he said, "Riley, it's Chekov."

"I see you. I see you." He paced a little more, then stopped suddenly, a few inches from his new companion, and squinted at him. "What do you want?"

"I have to know what happened at that last place you went."

"What happened?" Riley cackled. "Nothing! Nothing happened."

"Jesus, Kevin. If you don't talk soon, they'll give you something to make you talk, and you'll talk about everything that ever happened in your life that you didn't want anyone to know--everything you thought you'd forgotten." The other man turned as if to resume his pacing, but Chekov grabbed his wrist impatiently. "No you don't. Look, I'm sure they must have given you something to sober you up. You're losing your mind on your own now."

"I'm losing my mind."

Navigator stared at navigator. Chekov finally said, "You have to hold it together for a while. Get the little man in your head who directs operations to hold everything together and describe what you saw. Riley, you better hurry up and spill your guts before they hang me and Sulu with you."

"They're going to hang me?"

"Well Jesus Son of God, you killed one of their people for no reason, didn't you? What do you think they're going to do, give you a hero's parade?"

The man flopped down on the floor, his legs folded, and started shaking his hands violently in the air as if he had burnt them. Chekov knelt beside him. Riley said, "I had to. I didn't mean to." He started to sob, like a baby without a blanket.

"What did she do to you? Did she rob you?"

The weeping man shook his head.

"Did she threaten you?"

Again, he shook his head, a flush spreading across his fair complexion as he wept.

Chekov swallowed. He began to understand. Holding his hands to either side of his head, as if not to hear the answer to the question he was asking, he leaned closer, and whispered.

Riley nodded, then shook his head, then nodded, as Chekov continued to whisper.

Chekov, too, nodded. "What about Meyer? Did he try to help you?"

"Never saw Meyer. Meyer's passed out the whole time."

"Stanford?"

"He left with her. Him. Whatever. Out a window. Soon as he saw me he hauled himself out that window with a local so fast, you'd think Scotty'd shoved a warp engine up his ass." He looked at Chekov and smiled a little. "That son of a bitch is probably halfway to Betelgeuse by now."

Chekov stood up slowly. At least he knew why it had been so hard for Spock to get a coherent story out of the Lieutenant. "Do you need anything?"

"I need to piss."

"I'll let them know." He saluted his colleague. "Chin up."

"British bastard," Riley snarled, and saluted back shakily. He grabbed Chekov's arm and said, "Don't let them hang me."

"It was a ploy, Kevin," Chekov assured him, "to get you to talk. With your luck, they'll send down the three prettiest girls from the Enterprise to nurse you back to health."

"Luck of the Irish," Riley quipped.

Sure, thought Chekov, as the door closed behind him. And where were the Irish nowadays? Mars, for the most part.

He turned over in his mind several times what he would tell Mr. Spock, and how. Clinical, he told himself, as he followed the blue suit back, after asking whether there was a chance the detainee could be permitted the use of a toilet. Scientific. Just tell what happened. Don't even think about it. Pretend you're a Vulcan.

Spock raised an eyebrow inquiringly as his ensign returned, and when the young man nodded affirmatively in response, the pupils of Spock's eyes dilated in relief just slightly-a reaction that was not lost on the human. Chekov stopped some distance from Sulu, hoping to speak with Spock alone.

Both men walked up, Sulu with obvious eagerness.

Chekov pivoted ninety degrees, wedging himself between Sulu and Spock.

Sulu sidled behind and around Spock.

"I must speak with you privately, Mr. Spock," the poor ensign finally stated, throwing Sulu a dirty look.

"By all means, Ensign," the Vulcan rejoined, and walked to a far corner. "What have you learned, Mr. Chekov?" Spock stated, in a low voice.

Chekov allowed his vision to blur a bit; he looked like he was looking at Spock, but he could really hardly see him at all. "In Riley's mind, it was self-defense," Chekov began.

"Exactly what we had assumed," murmured Spock. "The female had threatened him with the knife-"

"Actually, it wasn't a female. That was part of the problem."

"The victim. We have been led to believe Riley was discovered in a house of ill repute with . . ." A human neuron kicked in, and Spock's voice trailed off.

Chekov decided simply to tell it all as quickly as possible and make it Spock's problem rather than his. "I don't know what kind of place they thought it was. I think they thought it was just a place with girls from different parts of the galaxy-those sailors places that all look alike, with the green girls who dance on tables. This was a local place and the practices here weren't what they were expecting-at least, not Riley. He's straight and narrow. Not only wasn't it what he was expecting, but it was males with males, and . . . ." He swiped some sweat from beneath an eye. "The guy he stabbed tried to do something that-Have you ever read-No, you wouldn't have-It's just not-Maybe Mr. Sulu can explain it."

Mr. Spock looked at the ground and nodded slowly. "I believe I understand your point, Mr. Chekov. I believe I have studied the novel to which you are referring-it is a novel, is it not?"

Chekov wiped his forehead and nodded.

"By one A. J. Foreman?"

Another nod.

"Thank you very much for your assistance, Ensign. It has been most valuable. I believe our Mr. Riley's best hope now is the expertise of his lawyers to make a case of self-defense." He led the way back to Sulu. "If I am not mistaken, there is in fact a significant body of law on the question of threats to bodily integrity constituting assaults justifying the use of deadly force. Most of it, of course, has occurred in the context of war and rapine, but learned counsel will undoubtedly be able to make use of the precedent."

Sulu had heard the last part of this speech, and was thoroughly mystified. "So what happened?" he asked.

"Don't ask," Chekov muttered. Then, glancing quickly at Spock, he pulled Sulu away and whispered a few angry words to him. Sulu's eyes widened, and he started to giggle. "He killed someone over that? He had to be drunk."

"Don't say that!" Chekov snapped.

"Diminished capacity," Sulu said, reciting a term sailors on shore leave had relied upon for centuries to keep them off the gallows.

"Just keep out of it," Chekov repeated, as they returned to Spock.

"I would advise you gentlemen," Mr. Spock said calmly, "not to discuss this matter with anyone, including yourselves. There should be no speculation over motive or capacity that might compromise any case to be brought on Mr. Riley's behalf. Ensign Chekov, my commendations on your performance. I would like to inquire how you were able to gain this information from Mr. Riley."

Chekov, who had tried to control the initial flush of pride that covered him, found that it controlled itself by the pallor that followed. He glanced at Sulu, who was scowling at him. He admitted, "I guessed. I asked him yes or no questions, and he answered."

"You guessed?" Spock insisted.

Chekov rolled his eyes heavenward. Spock, he assumed, had never spent much time below deck, in the maelstrom of confused sensuality and pressure to conform that typically arose in human single-sex groups. Then again, Spock had never been Chekov, never been cursed with that look that seemed to attract men as much as women, that look that still disconcerted its bearer, who still anxiously attributed it to some inner disability manifesting itself as sexual ambivalence. "You have such beautiful, delicate bone structure," a girl had once purred to him, running a finger along his cheekbone, "just like a china doll." He had run off to the gym to add some musculature to the bone structure after that, but it never mattered. No matter how much beef and pork he laid on top of it, there was still that delicate bone structure that some of the boys found as irresistible as some of the girls. To Mr. Spock, he said simply, "It comes up, now and then. Here and there."

"Of course," that man replied. "I shall conference immediately with Shanay and Onihc. Our next issues are discovering the cause of death of Meyer and the whereabouts of Stanford."

"It was probably an overdose or drug-alcohol reaction with Meyer," Chekov suggested. "Riley said he was unconscious before anything else happened."

"He'd probably taken something he didn't know," Sulu suggested.

Mr. Spock turned to him.

"That's their pattern," Sulu continued. "Meyer and Stanford. Stanford dares, Meyer follows. I don't know what was with those two. I think they were secretly in love and wouldn't admit it. It's just like your mother would say, if your friend jumped off a roof, would you follow? With those two, the answer was yes. Except Stanford's the size of a bull moose, and Meyer's more like a coyote."

"You are suggesting that he voluntarily imbibed these dangerous substances?"

Sulu shrugged. "I'm suggesting it could have been either, but I wouldn't rule it out. I mean, Meyer and Stanford were both okay, but I wouldn't want some local to hang for murder if it wasn't murder."

Spock nodded. "Stanford? Did Mr. Riley have any knowledge of his whereabouts?"

Chekov bit his lip. He really had to be careful here. The truth was that he, personally, had never liked Stanford and was not sure he could speak about him dispassionately. There was something ugly about him-he despised officers, he treated women disrespectfully, and he needled Chekov constantly. And it was not the playful banter of Riley, or the affectionate taking-down of Sulu, the type of thing that Chekov was used to. With Stanford, it was meant to hurt. There was a terrifying streak of bitter anger in him-it reminded Chekov too much of stories he had heard about Lenin and that cold, cruel, vengeful anger he had harbored over the death of a brother-the kind of anger that twisted itself around 180-degrees into lust and could possibly have ended in a locker room encounter that would have left Chekov where Riley now found himself. So he said simply, "He jumped out a window with one of the locals as soon as he saw what happened."

"Stanford?" Sulu cried. "Stanford did that?"

"That's what Kevin told me," Chekov said.

"Meyer's dead, Riley's just killed a male hooker, and Stanford jumps out a window?"

Chekov shrugged.

"Son of a bitch," Sulu intoned.

Spock parted from them soon thereafter to convey this new information to his local contacts. Chekov and Sulu returned to their places on the floor to wait. Increasingly restless, however, each would periodically jump up to look out a window, or find the bathroom, or chat with the blue-suited guard. At one point, the original guard left and a new one entered. The second guard looked just like the first one, who had looked like their driver, who had looked like the Ike and Mike officials who had first detained them. It was not as if they were identical androids. Rather, they were missing the types of personal adornments and physical variations that even Chekov, during his short time in space, had learned to expect of intelligent, congruent species. He remembered a remark of Mr. Spock's about unusual genetic clustering, or something to that effect, and so, informally, to pass the time, began watching passersby from the window.

"I'm getting hungry," Sulu remarked.

"We just ate."

"You ate. I got arrested before I ate anything. And for your information, that was two hours ago."

"Look at this, Sulu," Chekov said, pointing. "Look at that one, there. See? The chubby one."

"I see him."

"That's the third one like her I've seen in half an hour. The rest have all been like that one." He pointed to their guard. "Tall and sleek. But some of them have that other look."

"Subspecies. That's what Spock said."

"It's something else. I can't quite put my finger on it. Look at these tall guys. We'll call them-what's your word for those snaky rodents with the long tails?"

"Squirrels?"

Chekov scowled. "Those have bushy tails. They're nice."

"Rats?"

"Rats! I mean the long, thin ones with the little heads, like foxes."

"I don't know. Uh-gerbils, moles, gophers-weasels? Yeah, I think you mean weasels. They're kind of icky looking. In the pictures. I've never seen a living one. Long and wriggly."

"That's them. Don't these guys remind you of weasels?"

Sulu chuckled a little. "Sort of. Yeah. Except, you know, weasel has a negative connotation in English."

"And that other type are like-what did you call them when we were eating-"

"I wasn't eating!"

"Hamsters. But the hamsters show more variation. God, I wish I knew what I was talking about here. Sit and watch with me, maybe it will come to you."

So the two men watched the end-of-the-day parade of pedestrians until Chekov cried, "Look! Look who's walking by!" He banged on the window at the round pink waitress who had smooched his ear.

The waitress, who had been hurrying by, apparently deep in thought, jumped in fear and looked around. The hamster analogy had never seemed more appropriate than at the moment, as she twitched her little nose in the air. Chekov banged again, and she saw him. She hesitated, looked around, then walked over. Slung over her arm, where a human would have a shoulder, was a large bag. When she had reached the window, she gestured sideways with her hands. Chekov squinted, and she gestured again, tapped on the window, and gestured one more time.

He took hold of one side of the transparent plate-it felt like a thin slice of shell-and slid it, mindful of the fact that the building itself curved. In a couple of seconds, the window was open. He glanced over his shoulder at the guard, but the guard had some sort of bowl contraption covering his head and was paying no attention whatsoever.

"Hello!" Chekov said. "Remember me?"

"Sure I do. You're the big tippers."

They had, of course, not only not left a tip, but not paid the bill at all. "Listen," Sulu said, "if you have any food in that bag, I'll give you the bill, the tip, and something extra."

The waitress gave him a Casseiopeian smile and looked in the bag. "Can you eat any of these things? We have separate menus for aliens, so I don't know what will poison you." She began pulling out loaves and fishes from the bag.

"I wish I had Spock's tricorder," Sulu muttered in agony. "At this point, I'll take the chance."

"Here, try this," she said, handing him come doughy, loaf-like objects. "I know we give these to Vulcans."

Sulu dropped some coins into her hand and accepted the food.

Chekov was merely watching her with a smile, his chin on his hand.

"What is it?" she asked, rubbing her paw along her muzzle.

"I'm thinking how lucky it is you came by."

"I'm thinking the same," she said, smiling affectionately. "Why are you in there? This is some government building. Are you important?"

"No," Sulu told her. "Unfortunately, we're very, very unimportant."

"Oh. Are they trying to starve you?"

"Yes!" Sulu cried, and began poking in her bag again.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" Chekov said suddenly.

This apparently did not translate well for her, for she looked confused. "A kind of question?"

"About yourself."

"A question about myself. Yes, you may ask."

"Are you a female?"

Sulu, who had been tearing a piece of dough-food into portions, looked up quickly as the grocery bag tore into his arm. The alien, emitting a cry of distress, had stepped back several paces. She might have run, had Sulu not had hold of the bag.

"Come back," Chekov said. "Come." He gestured calmly. "Don't be afraid. Come back."

She stepped toward him hesitantly.

"I take back the question," Chekov said. "It's not my business."

She raised a paw in assent.

"What about the guard?" Chekov asked. "Let's talk about the guard. Male or female?"

She shook her head once more, narrowing her eyes. "The guard is the quote-other-unquote to me. I don't know. I don't want to know."

"Do you live with others of your type? Or do you live here, alone?"

"Listen. Do you have a name?"

He told her his name.

"Why are you asking these things?"

"Because," Chekov replied candidly, "your world is confusing to me. Several of my friends have just gotten in big trouble because of what they didn't know about you. I don't want the same to happen to me."

"What happened to them?"

"I can't give you the whole story. But one of them was at the Triple Cross-you know that place?"

Again the waitress stepped back. "A friend of yours?"

"Not a smart one."

"They give strong drugs there." She lowered her voice. "They steal from aliens." She came forward and placed her paw on Chekov's hand. Chekov restrained the urged to stroke the fur on the side of her face. "That is their kind of place-not for aliens. Aliens go for the drugs, then die."

"It's for men? Men only?"

"Males, males." She shrugged contemptuously. "That is the only way they know, these others. Males, males. Females, females."

"Shawn," said Chekov, "can you climb through the window?"

"No! I won't come in there. Those are the government."

"Tell me how I can reach you."

"I don't want you to reach me."

"Yes you do."

"No! Go away!"

There was little possibility of that, Chekov reflected, given his current predicament. But the fact that she had told him to go away, rather than simply take herself away, was a girl-to-boy signal he had learned long ago. "I can't go anywhere. I need you to come to me."

"What for?" she asked, softening.

"I want you to tell me all about your world."

"You should get a tape."

He shook his head. "They lie."

She nodded. "Yes, they do."

He convinced her, with promises, pleas, and bargains, to walk past the window just before dawn, on her way back to work. Sulu had finally satiated himself, and the guard was beginning to stir. They closed the window, and the girl walked off, but not without giving them a backward glance, and sticking her tongue out at them, which was as good as a wave. A minute later, Spock returned, with Dr. McCoy and Yeoman Martha Landon beside him, to announce that the doctor would be in charge of the forensic examination, assisted by the Yeoman, and that their Casseiopeian hosts had graciously invited them to dine together.

Chekov blushed. Sulu turned green.

***

Chekov and Landon had barely a moment to acknowledge each other's presence before Landon was whisked off with Spock and McCoy in the "A" vehicle, while Sulu and Chekov followed in the cab.

"Fancy meeting you here," Martha whispered, deliberately brushing her thigh against Chekov's as she passed through the door.

"I certainly do fancy it," he replied.

"Of all the luck," Sulu kept intoning during the ride to dinner. "You are the luckiest son of a bitch. An empty stomach, a good dinner, and a beautiful woman."

Chekov merely smiled.

Casseiopeia was an advanced civilization that had never explored space. Its communications network was all-encompassing, its planetary transportation efficient, its medical delivery far-reaching, and its computers sophisticated. Technologically, it was on par with the rest of the Federation, except that the Casseiopeians seemed to have had no interest in going anywhere. Off-worlders-the Vulcans, in particular, who had taken quite a shine to the Casseiopeian civilization-speculated at length on this odd development, or lack thereof. It was noted that the planet was remarkably resource-rich. There were no population pressures, as the birth rate remained absolutely stable. The history and literature of the people revealed very little of the picaresque, the lone adventurer, the frontiersman. The Casseiopeians seemed to have every reason to want to stay put, and none whatsoever to leave, thank you very much.

What the Casseiopeians had instead of space travel was mind travel. It was widely known that a good part of their medical research was devoted to the development of thought- and perception-altering, or controlling, drugs. The wide availability of these had initially hindered their entry into the Federation. The drugs, however, were employed for strictly therapeutic purposes, and no study had indicated any inclination of the Casseiopeians to market their products off-world, or to languish under their influence themselves. Behavioral scientists-humans, in particular-had sent numerous research teams to examine how the locals were able to restrain the indiscriminate use of pharmaceuticals, only to return to Earth in frustration and confusion, having concluded that the Casseiopeians actually appeared to be addicted to moderation.

In addition to the drugs, they had culture. Their exported artifacts were so exquisite that they transcended planetary boundaries. Orions and Andorans vied for ownership of Casseiopeian stone-sculpted objects. Humans and Romulans fell in love to the sound of Casseiopeian tone poems. Wealthy women from the rich planets-Earth, Vulcan, Rigel-had their names on waiting lists for the newest fashions from Casseiopeian designers. The planetary architecture, which so successfully merged the strength and beauty of curves, was employed throughout the Federation for new construction when a builder was hoping to make a good impression.

The fact that they were banqueting in one of the galactic vortexes of good taste was, for the most part, lost on the junior Enterprise officers, none of whom had had enough experience with alien cultures-or their own, for that matter-to have developed much aesthetic sense. At best, Martha Landon could appreciate the colors on the gown of the Casseiopeian beside whom she sat, Sulu could enjoy the naturalness of the music that played while they ate, and Chekov could make some connection between the layout of the room and one of the banquet halls at the Winter Palace in Petersburg. They knew that they had luckily stumbled into a very good dinner with a class of company they were not used to keeping, but they assumed that all members of that class, whomever and wherever they might be, sought equivalent perfection in a meal.

It was Spock and McCoy who knew better. Dr. McCoy permitted his wine glass to be filled many times. Yes, it was adapted on Casseiopeia from a wine grown in south-central France, purely for state dinners and occasions such as this, their host, the Foreign Minister, admitted. His own people were not so fond of the sharp after-bite of the blood of the grape, but it was a matter of pride for them that they were able to duplicate the bouquet so closely.

"You're going to be selling wine to the French," the doctor observed.

"Yes, we have," was the mild response.

"And the truffles?" McCoy inquired meekly.

"We have been unable to duplicate them here," his host confessed. "They are from France."

Spock alternated between his two dinner partners, one of whom discussed pre-Conversion Vulcan literature, and the other of whom answered questions about Casseiopeian biology. The DNA clusters, yes, it was something of an anomoly, the biologist admitted.

Chekov, who sat across from Spock, perked up.

There were rural pockets of village people who seemed rapidly to be evolving into their own species, but they were, of course, a long way from that yet-there was only one intelligent species on the planet.

"What I have found most interesting is that the genetic analysis I have performed on the few members of this subspecies here, in this city, conforms with the analysis performed some twenty of your years ago by the Vulcan T'Pi on the far side of the planet," commented Mr. Spock calmly. "This does not conform with a theory of local evolution."

The biologist looked surprised. "When you conclude your investigation of the unfortunate matter of your crewmembers, I would be most interested in reviewing your data," he responded.

Chekov's attention returned to his neighbor, one L'Tania, whom he had briefly ignored in order to eavesdrop on Spock's conversation. L'Tania, a young scholar of humanity, spoke English fluently without a translator. As was becoming Chekov's usual dilemma in dealing with the Casseiopeins, he was disoriented by their apparent lack of sexual dimorphism. How the others in his party handled the matter, given that their language demanded a knowledge of gender, did not much matter; even Mr. Spock's speech was handled by a translator. Chekov was the only one with the good fortune to be speaking directly to his dinner companion. So, adding to his natural diffidence before strangers was the dilemma of his not having the slightest idea whether to address his interlocutor as "sir" or "madam."

"Ah! This exquisite melody!" L'Tania exclaimed, and laid a soft paw on the back of Chekov's hand, resting on the table beside him.

Chekov forced himself to leave the hand where it was.

"You recognize it, do you not?" the young scholar asked eagerly.

The ensign remembered his angry threats to Riley several hours ago to compose his thoughts. He tried those words on himself. He told himself to ignore the very nice French wine, the hand on his hand, and his own reserve, and listen to the music, in order not to humiliate his ship, his species, and himself. "I need to hear more of it," Chekov suggested.

"Ah, of course. It will repeat. Here. It is one of yours." It was not Chekov's imagination that his companion was smiling at him as he rubbed the back of his hand. Surely, Chekov speculated wildly, the action had to be considered rude and forward here as well as on his own planet. "And, in fact, you do remind me, quite a bit, of a young Cherubino. A sweet, sometimes bold, sometimes timid little Cherubino."

Chekov's good luck was that he actually did understand, now, the allusions of the other. His grandfather, the map collector, had been a music professor, and had force-fed the subject to his adored and adorable grandson whenever he could. Chekov, who loved his grandfather mightily, even more than he loved his grandfather's maps, had dutifully listened and discussed. The same intellectual makeup that inclined the grandfather to manipulating sound patterns was repeated in the grandson, who had a strong mathematical bent. Therefore, in spite of himself, he was a somewhat apt student. Music was not his favorite thing, but it could have been worse. It could have been memorizing poetry, which his mother's family was always trying to get him to do. Listen to your grandfather! Chekov felt like shouting at that moment. You never know when you might need to know what he tells you.

His bad luck was, also, that he understood the allusion. He recognized the melody, now, as from an old Italian opera about men chasing women and women chasing men, and about the only other general notion he had of it was that, like so many of those old operas his grandfather had forced upon him, it seemed fixed on the conceit of the sexes impersonating each other. Daring a look at L'Tania, he realized that it was no accident that such a plot might be popular with these people. And Cherubino! He observed, summoning up as much dignity as he could while his hand was being stroked in public by an alien, "Cherubino was a boy. I'm not a boy."

The Casseiopeian, also quite young, laughed. "The woman protests too much," was the reply.

It struck Chekov that of all the heinous actions that had been performed on the planet by his fellow Enterprise crewmembers, pulling a hand out from under this alien's paw would by no means be the worst, and so he did, and then he faced the Casseiopeian full on. "L'Tania, I am not a woman. You lived on Earth for a year, and so you certainly realize that. And if you want to quote Shakespeare, you should do it right." Listen to all your grandparents! he cried to himself, as he recited the exact wording of the phrase.

The Casseiopeinan snatched away his own hand. A moist swelling rose to the sharp, quivery mammalian nose, and Chekov was stricken to observe that a bead of water was forming in the corners of the nostrils. It was possible that the kid was only suffering an allergic reaction to the food, but there was something about the expression on the rodent-like face that convinced Chekov that he had been very wrong in correcting the other.

"I'm sorry," he said gently. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"I meant no offense," the other murmured. "When I quote Shakespeare, it is with the greatest respect. I am a devotee of all he wrote." There was a sniff. "And as to the other, when you said you were not a boy, I naturally assumed you were a woman."

Do not laugh, Chekov's superego told his id sternly. Don't even smile. "It doesn't work like that," he explained carefully. "A boy becomes a man. A girl becomes a woman." Except in extreme cases, he added to himself. "I'm not a boy, I'm a man. It's a question of age, not sex." And then, he saw his opening. "On your planet, it is different?"

L'Tania sniffed. "We make none of these distinctions-boy, woman, man, girl. It is a trifle." He waved both paws, as if dismissing the idea.

"It was not a trifle to Shakespeare," Chekov persisted. "Nor to Mozart. We humans have spent a lot of energy on these distinctions. We kill each other for it. We base art on it."

"Yes!" L'Tania whispered eagerly, leaning close again. "That is what I have been attempting to study. I need another grant, to live on your planet and learn how you have thrived in spite of these distinctions."

"We're not the only ones," Chekov whispered back conspiratorially. "Most advanced species are dimorphic-"

"Casseiopeians are biologically dimorphic, of course."

Chekov nodded knowingly. "Of course. Have you been to Andromeda? They reproduce by mitosis."

"I have read of them. How is that possible for such complex creatures?"

Chekov explained the process in detail as the Casseiopeian's eyes widened. And then he talked about the spore-producing Valusians, and then about the Hydra of Cetii Epsilon, which budded. But those, he assured L'Tania, were the only advanced, non-dimorphic species. And, he added, it was suspected that there was an intelligent species, recently contacted, that was tri-morphic, but no one had yet figured out how to talk to them to find out.

"Fascinating," the Casseiopeian murmured, glancing periodically from side to side, as if fearful of being overheard.

"We study these things in lower school," the human said.

"It is not part of our regular study," the other admitted.

"You're the most undifferentiated dimorphic species I've ever encountered," Chekov remarked, and then added, philosophically, "I suppose it's just a fashion. On Earth, we have fashions. My grandmother was always complaining about how my girlfriends were always flaunting their-well, they dressed so you knew they were girls. My grandmother was at the end of a period when everyone looked alike." He paused. "Like here."

"We are not alike," the Casseiopeian remarked in an undertone, "we have simply outgrown that aspect. We in the cities, that is. That aspect of which your grandmother disapproved. That is for the country people. In the cities, it is like with like. But," and the Casseiopeian's voice dropped to a whisper, "please do not mention that I said so. I never know what is possible to say and what is not possible. And I very much need that grant."

Chekov nodded quickly and gave the thumbs up, one young person hemmed in by the rules of his elders to another.

The dinner proceeded for several hours, after which Mr. Spock reminded his hosts that the Enterprise was, after all, awaiting the results of the investigation that had not yet commenced. The local officials graciously accepted the hint and had a vehicle brought around for them, for the humans were to return to the office where Mr. Riley was being held and the body of Meyer was being maintained. Sleeping facilities were provided there, and the investigation could commence first thing in the morning.

Sulu, who sat in the back seat with Spock and Chekov, kept glancing at his chronometer. Seven hours! It had been seven hours since Riley had first spilled his guts to Chekov, and in that seven hours they had learned nothing of Stanford. After being elbowed the fourth time by Sulu twisting to get a better look at the chronometer, Chekov snapped, "Will you stop that? It's not going to speed time up or slow it down."

Sulu glanced toward Mr. Spock, to see if he was aware of this anxiety of his, but Spock was deep in thought.

Shortly before reaching their destination, Martha Landon, seated between the driver and Dr. McCoy, gave a quick look over her shoulder, and, cupping her mouth ostentatiously, whispered something to the doctor.

Dr. McCoy drawled with a smile, "I don't see why not, my dear," and also looked back. "It's a beautiful night. Mr. Spock, my assistant would like to get out and walk. She assures me she knows the way."

"Doctor, I caution against it."

"Oh, come on, Spock. Look at the night. Smell that air! It's like honeysuckle in June." He told the driver to pull over. "If I thought I'd add to your experience, Miss Landon, I would certainly accompany you."

Chekov coughed and turned to Mr. Spock. "I think the Yeoman should be escorted, Mr. Spock. It may not be safe for her alone."

Spock nodded mildly. "Very well. Mr. Sulu, would you care to accompany Mr. Chekov?"

"No!" cried Landon and Chekov at the same time.

Dr. McCoy stepped from the vehicle and allowed the lady to get out, but Sulu refused to budge. "You're a lucky son of a bitch. I'll say it again," he mumbled, as the young navigator scrambled over him toward the door. "Don't do anything to get yourself killed, arrested, or kidnapped," he told his colleague.

"Come get me if I do," Chekov replied.

They had been dropped off along a main thoroughfare. It was late at night, but the streets were not empty. Small clumps of locals could be seen here and there, and vehicles passed at a steady rate. Nevertheless, the moment Spock and McCoy drove away, Chekov's arms were entwined around his woman's body and he had her leaned against the side of a building. The woman's eyes were closed and her mouth half open before he had even gotten his proper bearings, and when he finally did kiss her, she had already managed to get her hands under some of his clothing.

"I miss you when you're gone," she murmured.

"I miss you too."

The planet was moonless, but the stars in this part of the galaxy were dense, the marble and sandstone of the buildings aglow, and Martha was pale, like a swan queen, reflecting some of the glory of the strange city around her.

"I can't just kiss you all night," he told her, eventually, pulling away. "And what I want to do I can't do here."

"You can't?" she replied innocently.

As if to prove his point, a small group of Casseiopeians passed close, making a lot of noise. Chekov reflexively pulled even further away from the woman.

"They're just teenagers," Martha observed contemptuously, being four full years from adolescence herself.

As if to prove this point, as well, the group began to circle them and make heckling noises. Many of the words did not translate. Chekov immediately placed his back against the wall, reached for his communicator, and said evenly, "Get lost, or I'm going to have to use this. It will melt the clothes onto your bodies."

The group discussed this among themselves briefly. Chekov raised the communicator, and they all backed off. "Hey, it was only a game," one of them said. "You better watch what you do in our town, you filthy aliens."

"They're disgusting," another remarked. "Pigs."

"Whyn't you just do it in the road like the quote-others-unquote," sneered a third, as they all stomped off.

When they were beyond voice range, Martha started to giggle. "That's just a communicator, Pavel."

He flipped it in the air and caught it underhand. "They took my phaser."

"Come on. There." The woman gestured with her lovely white chin toward a dark area. She remembered having passed some woods and fields on the way to the banquet, she explained, and the driver had told her that it was a park, closed after dark. "I'll bet we can get in. Anyway, it's probably where those little stinkers were just coming from," she stated, pulling her man behind her.

"I doubt it," Chekov remarked.

It was, in fact, a park, and "closed after dark" merely meant that no one bothered to walk through it. Like so much in the city, it was walled and gated, but the gate was wide open. The human couple walked in intrepidly, but lost all fear once inside.

"Oh my God, smell that!" the woman exclaimed. "Look! Have you ever seen so many beautiful flowers in your life?" She rushed from bloom to bloom like a butterfly, sniffing them all, running the petals against her cheek, stroking them between her fingers.

"It's just a public garden," Chekov stated, following her.

But Martha was from Mars, where there were no public gardens, and a field full of flowers was, to her, like a candy store to a child. She made him touch and sniff all the intriguing flora at hand. Nectar oozed from between the petals of a tightly closed bud, and she dribbled some onto her little finger and held it out to him as if she had discovered liquid dilithium. "Look! Is this that stuff bees used to make honey from?" she asked childishly.

He gave it a close look. "I think the bees are still doing it the old-fashioned way. We're the ones who've changed." He touched his tongue to her finger, after having glanced at the flower that had produced the substance and assured himself that it looked like something he had seen in gardens back on Earth.

"It might be poisonous!" the woman uttered, as he sucked on the tip of her sweet little finger.

"If it were," he told her, slowly withdrawing his tongue, "you'd be the antidote. No poison could stay poisonous near you."

And then, ah, the slow, languid smile that spread across her face, and the eyes that looked suddenly sleepy, and the quiver in the nostrils that said, "I am ready." He was like a walking tricorder, set to read only one signal: the mating call of the human female. Yes, he told himself lazily, exultantly, as he drew her into a nook between a couple of high bushes and began to unfasten her clothing: if he were Star Fleet issue, he would not be an aggressive phaser or a chattering communicator, but a quiet, respectful, yet constantly alert tricorder.

They had a routine arranged for public trysts. It had worked twice in the past, and was necessary because the goddamned women's uniforms were deliberately made to be impossible to get into from beneath. How do they pee? was a subject of significant discussion among male cadets, many of whom actually believed that along with the nonfertility drugs the women ate like candy, they also took ones that dried up all their bodily fluids. They didn't sweat, they didn't get periods, and they didn't pee, so they could go on working twice as long as a male, and still smell nice.

"Don't rip it-" Landon began.

"I won't rip it. I'm very gentle." He bit his lip while she pulled her arms out of her bodice, and tried to keep his eyes off her breasts, lest he hurry himself too much. Then he pulled off his own tunic and undershirt, tossed the tunic on the ground for her to lie on, and helped her pull his undershirt down over her head. Now it was a simple matter for her to strip off the uniform from below, while remaining reasonably modest under his shirt, should they be apprehended by the local love police.

"It's true," she intoned, drawing him down to her, "you're the gentlest man I know." With eyes closed, she kissed his earlobe as he stretched into position above her. "I think in a former life you were a woman."

He had been fumbling with the front of his trousers, but at this he withdrew. What was it about this planet? he asked himself irritably. "What do you mean by that?" he demanded.

She opened her eyes. "By what?"

Don't kill it, Chekov, he told himself desperately, gazing at her innocent expression. They don't lie down in public and spread their legs for you if they don't like you. Whatever it was, it had to be nothing. "Never mind," he said, and kissed her first on one eyelid, then on the next, and then returned to his trousers. "Just tell me how wonderful I am."

"You're wonderful," she moaned. "Marvelous. Oh, God, you're too good for the English language."

He whispered to her in Russian then, but she, of course, could not return these endearments.

He had so far, in his lovemaking with Martha Landon, had the extreme good luck of being quizzed, insulted, or intimidated by her at approximately the same point each time in his readiness to perform. The result of her unintentional offenses was always the same, as it was this night: his climax was set back a minute or two, and he therefore was always able to coax her along into her own. To her, rather than being just another young hare, quick in and quick out, which is what in fact he might have been, he was a stallion with the looks, energy, and grace of a young man, and the finesse of a mature one. One of Chekov's anxieties in his relation with Martha was that one day she would be simply kind and docile, and thereby uncover his secret.

"You're my swan," he told her, kissing her and pulling away. "You're my willow tree. You're my waterfall." He knew it was all nonsense to her. She'd never seen swan, willow, or waterfall. In Russia, the last place on Earth to be fully populated, there were still all those things.

"Pavel," she said, resting her head on her hand, leaning on her elbow, "you're a different kind of boy."

"Boy!" There it was again!

"You're sweet," she continued, ignoring his outburst. "You're like a poet."

He scowled.

"Don't make a face!" She stroked his brow. "All the women up there would die for you. I shouldn't even tell you this, it'll make your head swell. They all want to know whether you write me love letters and sing to me and call me nice names."

"They all make me sound like an idiot," he responded.

"No! No, you silly boy! Do you know Marla Cone?" Of course he did. She was an engineer, and she was gorgeous, and she was absolutely, completely off limits, because she was Captain Kirk's. "She came up to me one day and started asking questions about you. What you liked, where you came from, what it was like to be alone with you." Her voice turned comically harsh. "You know, Pavel, she's a predatory bitch. I'd stay away from her."

"I have every intention of staying quite far away from her," he confirmed.

"Good," his companion sighed. "Because she'd pick you up, turn you inside out, shake you a few times, and toss you in the heap. She's very bad news."

"Perhaps you should tell these things to Captain Kirk," he replied, once again defensive.

She did not notice the change in his voice. "Oh, Captain Kirk can take care of himself," she said breezily. "But you-I worry about you, you little darling. You're so vulnerable. Like-oh, I know! Have you ever seen the story of the Round Table? You're like that perfect young knight-I don't remember his name."

"Gallahad," he told her wearily, rolling onto his back. His grandmother had been a translator of Western medieval literature.

"Just like him! Sometimes you're bold, and sometimes you're timid, but you're always sweet."

Something about the statement discomforted him, and he sat up. Bold. Timid. Gentle. And then he heard footsteps close by.

"Hello, Chekov. I could hear the two of you from the street."

It was Stanford. He was standing over them as casually as could be, hands on his hips expectantly.

"Mitch!" Martha cried, and gathered her arms and legs together and stood up.

"What're you doing here, beautiful?" he asked.

"Just passing the time," she replied, glancing down at her partner, who was taking his time getting to his feet.

"Thank God you're back," Chekov was saying. "Now we can take Riley and get off this planet."

"Maybe," Stanford replied.

He was able to be intimidating without saying a word, Chekov observed uncomfortably. "Well, let's get out of here. Meyer's on ice and Riley's rotting in a cell without a toilet."

"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world," Stanford stated, and, pointedly to Chekov, said, "Poetry."

Chekov looked down and rolled his eyes. The only reason he had been on this shore leave in the first place was because if he had not gone, he would have lost the time, and shore leave with Stanford was better than none at all-but only barely. He had borne it for the first few hours because Meyer translated for Stanford, and Riley translated for Meyer, and Sulu translated for Riley, which was about as far as Chekov deemed he ought to be from the fellow. But now, alone, the two of them, together, were like acid and base, and Martha, he had an unpleasant presentiment, would be nothing but a catalyst.

"Where've you been, Mitch?" Martha asked, hastily grabbing her uniform from Chekov's hand.

"Around."

Around, Chekov thought. He didn't know whether it was because Stanford was a security chief or because he was an American that made him so infernally inarticulate. One word meaningless answers masqueraded as wit with him. Well, he certainly wasn't going to argue with the guy, it was like trying to teach a dog to talk. "Come on, we're just down the road."

But Stanford remained in his place.

Chekov, several steps ahead, stopped and looked back. The man had the woman by the upper arm, and one of his hands was planted firmly on the inside of her thigh. Chekov's eyes almost popped out of his head. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Go away," the other told him dismissively.

Martha shook her arm free, more in annoyance than fear. "Mitch, are you on something?" she inquired.

"I'm on a planetary high," he told her. "You're doing it to me, beautiful, the way you always do."

Chekov gave her a quick, piercing look.

She clicked her tongue. "Pavel, why don't you go back and tell Mr. Spock we've found him?" she said, in the high, slow, deliberate tone one uses with children and morons. "I'll wait here with Stanford."

"No," he replied. "Why don't I hail Mr. Spock on my communicator and tell him we've found Stanford? Wouldn't that make more sense?"

"No," Stanford insisted. "Why don't you do just what Yeoman Landon said?"

"Because," Chekov replied, "I'm not sure what Yeoman Landon said is what Yeoman Landon really meant. Maybe if you stepped back a few feet from her and me we could all get more comfortable."

For the first time, Stanford hesitated. He was second in command down in security, and was not accustomed to being disobeyed. Chekov realized that the man was really just a thug in Star Fleet uniform, and well on his way to getting what he deserved. The pity was that Meyer, who had been a decent guy, and Riley, who'd been a downright good one, had had to suffer in the process. "Don't touch the communicator, Chekov. Don't call Daddy."

"Mitch," Martha said, bristling, as if embarrassed by him, "you are behaving like an asshole."

"Well what do you expect, finding the two of you here-"

The woman flushed. "It's over," she fumed. "I've told you that a million times-"

"And you always come back-"

"You're a liar, and you're crazy. Here." She pointed to her head. "And for a while I must have been crazy, too."

This was all news to Chekov, who'd had no idea that his girlfriend had been sleeping with a miscreant. "We'd better all calm down," he said.

"No!" the woman cried. "I want you both to leave me alone! Go! Both of you!" Each man took several steps back. She stamped her foot. "You heard me! I'm walking back by myself."

"Stop shouting," Stanford warned, looking over his shoulder.

Chekov followed his glance, because it was very pointed. He thought he saw a movement behind a bush, but he was utterly weaponless, and there was nothing he could do but steel himself for an attack by the Casseiopeian who emerged from the vegetation.

Even that was not enough, however, because he was stunned before he saw the weapon.

***

When Chekov had not returned in two hours, Sulu hopped out the window to look for him. He knew Chekov well enough by then to understand his modus operandi: He would sweet-talk the woman, he would fornicate with the woman, and he would bring the woman home-very gentlemanly, very business-like. They had been dropped off fifteen minutes away. It would take Chekov about another fifteen minutes of foreplay-the woman was, after all, his girlfriend-and maybe fifteen minutes of postplay. The hardest thing would have been to find somewhere for all this play to take place, but Sulu had a pretty good idea where they had gone, for on the ride home he had disconsolately noted a walled garden with an open gate.

He found the boy almost immediately with the help of the tricorder.

"What did you do to her?" Sulu asked, having pulled his friend to a sitting position and administered a couple of whacks to the sides of his head.

Chekov shook himself. He felt like vomiting, and his body heaved for a moment.

"No you don't!" Sulu blurted, and pulled back.

Chekov fell backwards, hit his head, and was out again.

"Wake up, damn it!" cried Sulu, slapping him again. "Okay, puke all over me if you want. Just wake up."

"Sulu," the other muttered. His mouth was so dry he could barely detach his tongue from the back of his teeth-if, indeed, there were still teeth in his mouth. "God bless you."

"Are you going to be sick?"

This was not a euphemism with which the Russian was familiar, and he looked around. "I was stunned."

"I mean, toss your dinner. Throw up. Vomit."

"Oh! No, I'm fine. We have to find Martha." He rubbed his eyes and recounted the past events. "What time is it?"

Sulu showed him his chronometer.

"I thought I'd been here longer."

"Your colleague has impeccable timing," Sulu responded proudly.

Chekov took his tunic, rose, and tried to steady himself on his feet. He'd never been stunned before, and the nausea and nervous disorder that followed made him think that the next time he might prefer to be dematerialized. In addition, the electricity that had coursed through his brain momentarily seemed to have frozen certain circuits. He kept hearing Martha's description of him: "Sometimes you're bold, and sometimes you're timid, but you're always sweet." But instead of seeing Martha, he saw the young Casseiopeian with whom he had shared dinner. Because he had said almost the same words to him-a connection he might never have made on his own. But why? How was it possible? He fell into a cold sweat as he thought about the X, who could change shape at will. Could Martha be-or was it the Casseiopeian? He did not like relativism as a philosophy; as a way of perceiving the universe, it would drive him crazy. "Sulu," he said shakily, "my mind is whirling around, all these ideas, and they're scaring me."

"It's okay," Sulu said cheerfully, holding him by the arm and walking him slowly toward the street. "You'll be fine. That's just from being stunned."

Chekov explained his sudden notion about Martha and the Casseiopeian.

"You think they're the same person because they described you the same way?" Sulu asked, when his friend had finished his tale.

"Don't you think it's strange?"

Sulu shook his head. "I bet you think the Vulcans killed Kennedy, right? I mean, there they were all the time, watching us. Right? Same time, same place, must be related."

"But they said the same thing!"

"Maybe they were both describing what they saw. Maybe they're both good students of character. Come on, Chekov, you'll be fine. Wait here, there's a fountain. I'll get you some water."

The water, which Sulu delivered in his tricorder case, actually did help clear Chekov's head. They reached the park gate and Sulu turned immediately down the street, but Chekov remained in place, slowly donning his shirt. They had to go back, Sulu insisted, if for no other reason than to have Chekov examined by Dr. McCoy. No way, Chekov had replied. They had the tricorder, they could go after Stanford and Landon right away and be back before Dr. McCoy woke up.

"That's the stupidest damned thing I've ever heard!" Sulu snapped. "We don't know which way to turn-the only two human life forms this thing is registering now are you and I. We're on foot, we have no weapons, we have no transportation. Chekov, just come back with me."

"Sulu," Chekov said tightly, "I appreciate your saving my life, but if you won't come with me, I'll go myself. I'm not going back after being knocked on the head by an alien and having my girlfriend stolen from under my fingers."

After a pause, Sulu stated, "You couldn't live with the shame, could you?"

"Not a day."

Sulu sighed. "We didn't have any direct orders to remain where we were, did we?"

Chekov shook his head.

"Well, I guess as long as we have communicators we can't get into too much trouble."

"You're very optimistic," Chekov said. He tossed his own communicator towards the spot where he had laid unconscious. "If they can't contact us, they can't give us orders," he explained.

They tried to figure out which direction the party might have gone, but it was impossible. Besides, they had no assurance that they were not looking for three different paths. Chekov was reasonably certain that the alien was one of the hamster type, not the weasel, and that he had approached on foot. Sulu argued that they couldn't simply all have run off. He surveyed the sky, where there was the slightest trace of gray where the sun would soon be rising. "This is hopeless," he said.

Chekov stood still, closed his eyes, and began to pray.

"What're you doing?"

"St. Anthony. He never fails."

"What're you, a monk?"

Chekov did not open his eyes until he had finished the prayer. "I do whatever works. St. Anthony works."

"Who the hell is St. Anthony?"

"Patron saint of lost things," Chekov explained, peering up and down the street. "You don't want to get lost. If you get lost, you want to know who can help you get found."

"Is that the picture hanging in your cabin?"

Chekov thought back. "Maybe. No, wait. That's Jesus. God, Sulu, can't you recognize a picture of Jesus Christ?"

Sulu drew himself up. "Look, I'm not religious."

"I'm not religious either. It's not a question of religion, for God's sake. I'm not a Buddhist, but I recognize a statue of the Buddha."

"Well aren't you great. And anyone with a picture of Jesus Christ in his room must be religious, if you ask me."

Chekov turned on him. His brain was still buzzing a little, and the texture of the tunic against his bare skin was highly irritating. "You know, you Americans are starting to get on my nerves. Sometimes I think I'd be better off on a Vulcan ship. Just to enlighten you, you're not talking about a 'picture of Jesus,' you're talking about a painted icon. My mother gave it to me, it's valuable, and it's part of my heritage, which is getting flushed out of me day by day from so much contact with Minney the Moose and whatever other stupid fad you Americans are trying to jam down the throats of the rest of us on any particular day."

Sulu's jaw dropped.

"Here comes Shawn," Chekov said, matter of factly.

"St. Anthony," Sulu wondered.

"Never lets me down."

He trotted off after Chekov, asking about the name of the patron saint of sluggishly responding machinery.

Shawn was surprised to see the two humans where she did not expect them, but she did not turn and run. She carried another bag of groceries. "I bought these for you," she said. "Everything can be eaten by humans."

"We may need them later," Chekov assured her. The truffles, wine, and cream pastry from earlier in the evening were still making their way through his insides. He explained about having caught up with the friend from the Triple Cross, and about being shot by the member of her species. He touched on Martha Landon, but only enough to make clear that they were looking for two humans now, not just one.

"Where could they go?" Sulu asked. "And how?"

"I don't know where humans would go," Shawn insisted. "If they were with Casseiopeian, maybe they went with him."

"Do you have any idea where that might be?"

The girl put down her bag and looked up and down the street nervously. "This isn't a setup, is it? You're not trying to get me into trouble."

"No, no, no!" Chekov said. "We like you. We think you're cute. And we're in trouble ourselves. We're just trying to get back to normal."

"What does that mean, cute?"

Sulu explained, "Nice looking. A pretty woman."

She gave them both a quizzical look. "You know, I am a female," she said finally. "You asked before."

"We knew that," Sulu responded. "It's pretty obvious."

"And you're males."

Chekov froze a moment, waiting for the limitation or qualification regarding his own masculinity, but it did not come, and he wanted to kiss her for that.

"A human male, a human female, with one of my type? What color?"

It had been dark. Chekov had thought he had done well simply to recognize that it was not one of the ordinary city folk. After a moment, slowly, he said, "I think like you. Perhaps a little lighter."

The girl seemed stumped.

"Let's try to get a little logical here," Sulu suggested. "Let's eliminate. Okay. Stanford's running from something or to something. He's running away from us. Something made him jump out that window at the whorehouse."

Chekov thought back. "What was going on there, anyway? He was in a big hurry to get there. The rest of us just wanted somewhere to lie down, and he dragged those others-"

"No," Sulu said suddenly. "He didn't drag anyone. He was ready to go by himself, without Meyer. He wasn't interested in another good time, he was interested in the Triple Cross."

"Drugs," Shawn said calmly. "That's all you humans ever want when you come down here. They say they're going to close us up because of the drugs."

"Chekov," Sulu said quietly, "did Stanford show up with this other guy-her type? Or was he surprised by him? Or what?"

"He was looking toward the bushes, as if he was expecting him, or knew he might be there."

"As if he was making a drug connection?"

Chekov nodded slowly.

"I said so," Shawn said. "Right from the beginning. Remember? Now I think I know where they would be. Far away. I can take you."

"Where?"

"My village."

They walked for half an hour. The sky was gray. Vehicles were beginning to move again on the street. The city seemed to stretch on forever, but there was no other way of reaching their destination, for public transportation would not take them to a village. Finally, just as Sulu had reached his frustration threshold, they passed a vehicle lot. The two humans exchanged glances.

"Patron saint of stolen things," Sulu said, and ducked into the lot. Chekov followed. After learning from Shawn that vehicular theft was not a major problem in the city, Sulu reached for his belt and started pulling apart his communicator.

"What is he doing?" Shawn asked.

"Trying to break into this thing," Chekov responded.

"I know that. But with that implement. What?"

"First he's going to see if he can punch in an electronic code to open it. That's how most of these work. If you're not using Federation technology, he may have to take the communicator apart and create a magnetic field. If that doesn't work, he'll probably throw it through the window and climb through the broken glass." Chekov leaned over Sulu and started making suggestions.

After a while, Sulu turned on Chekov and said, "Look, just let me get this done. You're not making it easier. Once we're moving, you can tell me where to go, okay?"

Chekov took a deep breath and stepped back.

It took five minutes, but Sulu managed to break in using a randomly-generated code. He had chosen the worst vehicle on the lot in hopes that it would have the worst security, and he had been right. Once in the driver's seat, he smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere," he sighed. "Okay, ladies and gentlemen, next stop, Shawn's village."

Shawn had never ridden in a private vehicle. This was a joy ride for her, and with two nice young males-aliens, yes, but humans were not the worst aliens-she felt very happy. Her nose was cold and wet, her facial hairs aquiver, and she was purring in the back seat. At the start of their trip she had described the route that she was accustomed to take-the route of public conveyances-and Chekov had quickly sketched it and laid out the shortcut across fields and highways. She was fascinated with the magnetic pen that let him draw on the tricorder screen, so he drew a portrait of her with it. She was delighted, like someone who had never seen such a thing, which puzzled the humans, given the intense interest in art on her planet. He offered her the stylus to draw with.

She shook her head modestly. "I can't do that."

"Try," he urged.

"No. It would look bad. I don't know how to hold that. You draw something else."

"What shall I draw?"

"Draw a baby. Casseiopeian baby."

He asked, "Does it look like you, only smaller and fatter?"

"The head looks different. Big head, big eyes." She laughed as he drew, and made corrections by pointing. Eventually, he had achieved Casseiopeian perfection, and asked her the baby's name.

"Shannu," she said immediately.

He wrote the name in both Roman and Cyrillic letters, explaining that those were two ways the name would be spelled on Earth, and printed her a copy. When she took it and carefully placed it under her clothing, against her body, he questioned, "Is that your baby, Shawn?"

"Will be," she said, and placed her paws protectively across her belly.

The two men looked to each other for clues, but neither knew how to follow this up. After a pause, Chekov apologized to Sulu for insulting his culture. It was the tunic, he explained. It was itching him and driving him crazy.

"What happened to your uniform?"

"I'll tell you later," Chekov replied quickly.

Sulu whistled.

The sun had risen, and they began to hear news reports of the investigation into the incident involving Star Fleet officers. No mention, however, was made of their own escape. They began questioning their Casseiopeian accomplice about their goal. What could they expect to find in her village? Why did she believe their crewmates were there? Who would be holding them? Was this all a wild goose chase?

Shawn explained that hers was the closest village to town, and was where almost all those of her type who worked in the city came from. It was also the funnel for most of the illicit drugs traded off-world. Since contact with the Federation, she said, her village, and others like it, had profited from their location. They had easy access to a resource that many aliens wanted and would pay good money for. If drugs in quantity were what their friend wanted, he would have had to have gone to the village, because none of her people would risk being caught in town with that much contraband. And if he had been taken to the village the previous night, he would not leave the village until the following night, because the first thing they always did to off-worlders who bought drugs was give them a dose themselves. It would take about a day, the whole process.

"That Stanford's got to be the world's stupidest bastard," Sulu marveled. "Goes to a whorehouse. Takes some buddies with him. They get roughed up. He jumps out the window in the middle of a deal. Instead of turning himself in, he runs off and tries to finish the deal. And then what? What the hell does he think is going to happen after all this time? Does he really think he'll be able to set foot on the Enterprise without having Dr. McCoy do an internal organ search on him?"

"I hope he does," Chekov muttered.

"So tell me, Shawn, what's the big deal about these drugs? I spend my days under my commanding officer's nose. Our friend works down in the hole. What's he know that I don't?"

"I never take them. I'm healthy. We use them here when people get quote-sick-unquote." She rocked back and forth, as if to demonstrate.

"Schizophrenic?"

She thought a moment. "It happens to the city people. They stop and can't start, or they start and can't stop." At the questioning look from Chekov, she said, "Say, when it strikes, they're talking. Well, they keep on talking about that subject. It comes back over and over. Or if they're walking, they keep walking. They walk until they fall down. When they wake up, they walk again."

Chekov started to feel queasy, remembering Riley's pacing and his own obsessive concern about Martha and his dinner partner. But, he told himself, pacing was something humans did when they were drunk, constrained, and under stress. He had seen it many times. And obsessive thoughts-God, if he'd ever made a list of his own obsessive thoughts, he might require a sub-dermal implant of this magic drug. "It's a disease?" he asked nervously. "Why don't your type catch it?"

"No. You don't catch it. Like the nose illnesses, no."

He sighed.

"It happens to the brain. The drugs put it back right. We don't know why your kind likes the drugs so much. We don't know what it feels like for you."

They were silent a while. "You think they're going to catch us?" Sulu asked no one in particular.

No one answered. After another silence, as the heat in the vehicle grew, Chekov exclaimed, "I can't stand this shirt any more." To Shawn, he said, "I have to take this off or I'll jump out of my skin. In my culture it's considered familiar, but not rude." He pulled off the tunic and tossed in onto the backseat. "Now you can tell your boyfriend you were driving around with two alien men, and one was half naked."

She replied, "I have no boyfriend."

"The father of your child, then."

"That? I carry it for a city person."

"What?" Chekov cried, but heeded Sulu's warning look. More moderately, Sulu asked pleasantly why the city person did not carry her own child.

"Them!" the villager cried. "They are nincompoops."

Sulu broke into laughter. Chekov did not understand the word.

"It's true," Shawn insisted, picking at some of the food in her bag. "They do not conceive themselves-"

"Males and males, females and females," Chekov recited, now understanding thoroughly.

"-and they do not carry." She was drunk with the pleasure of the ride and the attention, and she was now talking freely. "They mix their stinky body liquids in a jar and give them to us. What do I care? They pay me well. Sometimes they forget to take back the baby they paid for, so we raise it. It's amazing there are any of them left at all."

They were passing through a narrow mountain range, and it was no longer possible to travel across fields. This brought them upon the highway, and Sulu became aware that they were being seen by numerous vehicles. "We're going to get caught if we stay in plain sight like this," he stated.

Chekov and the Casseiopeian assured him that there was no other route.

Several more vehicles passed. Another news broadcast painted the Death in the Brothel in the most lurid colors. "I'm starting to feel about this vehicle the way you were about your shirt," Sulu announced by mid-day. "How much further do we have?"

"Not far."

"How long would it take to walk?"

"Two hours, maybe."

"Okay. Hold on. I mean it. Hold on." And he took the vehicle down an embankment into some underbrush, then ordered everyone out. "Let's kill ourselves now," he said, and, after they gathered their food and equipment, set the vehicle's pilot to crash it down the mountain.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Chekov said, as they stood, alone and unarmed, on the mountain path. He had donned his shirt again. It was preferable to having his skin cut up by the local flora.

"Don't get smart with me, Chekov," Sulu warned him. "I'm here because of you, not the other way around."

Chekov sighed. "So, we walk," he said.

Shawn pointed, and the men headed after her.

By the middle afternoon, the humans could go no further. With the exception of Chekov's fifteen minutes in a coma, neither had slept for 36 hours. They found a spot in the woods, used the bushes, had something to eat and drink, and fell asleep.

They were wakened by the Casseiopeian female. Though neither felt rested, they took up the route she urged upon them. To buoy their spirits, she talked, asking questions and making herself freely available to answer their own.

She wanted to know about this human woman with the drug buyer. Was she buying drugs, too? Was she a crewmember? She smiled at Sulu and asked, "Is she your girlfriend?"

Chekov laughed. "Sulu doesn't have girlfriends, does he, Mr. Sulu?"

"Are you like quote-others-unquote?" Shawn asked quickly.

"No!" Sulu retorted, and scowled at Chekov.

"I only meant that he doesn't have relationships with women who would have relationships with him-right, Sulu?"

"You're a navigator, you're a monk, you're a psychiatrist," Sulu observed.

"I'm right."

"Chekov, your problem is you're a romantic. You keep confusing sex with beauty."

"That's romantic?"

"It is. Sex is an expression of appetite. Momentary. When you're hungry, you don't decide to eat for the rest of your life, you just eat."

Chekov thought about this for a while. "If eating produced a baby nine months later, maybe you'd be able to get away with that analogy, but that's not what it produces."

"Were you thinking about nine months later in the bushes last night, Mr. Chekov?" Sulu shot back at him. "Is that what was going through your little mind?"

"Not consciously, no. But I make a connection between the person I'm doing it with and-well, her character. Her beauty. I think it's built into our brains. It's why we fall in love."

Sulu shook his head angrily. "I don't get you," he snapped. The men were walking quickly, several paces ahead of their guide, now.

Chekov had not appreciated being called a romantic. It was yet another assault on his masculinity. He charged under his breath, "If Uhura'd give you a second look, we'd see who was romantic."

Sulu stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Chekov. "Never say that again. Never."

Chekov stared back. "I won't," he said. "I just wanted you to know I know." He rushed to keep up with the long, angry strides of his companion. "I'm sorry I'm the way I am. It's the way I was raised."

"Yeah, sure," Sulu relented. "And it's the way I was, too. I bet you had one father and one mother. Two grandfathers and two grandmothers." When Chekov nodded timidly, Sulu said, "I had seven mothers and five fathers. Two sisters, eight half-siblings, and a shitload of step siblings, some that I don't even remember. I had grandparents I never knew the names of." He took a deep breath. "I learned to smile, make friends fast, and duck out of trouble. And never expect a human relationship to last for two years."

Chekov was silent.

"Over that hill!" came Shawn's cry.

They decided that Shawn would do some initial investigation to confirm that Stanford was in the village with Landon. There was a particular house where he was likely to be, which was where he would probably stay. Unlike the cities, where aliens were welcome for their general spending properties, the village was a place that well-behaved aliens did not visit. If an off-worlder were there, the villagers knew why, and would, most likely, want him gone as soon as possible. The men were to wait in the woods for her. It was liable to be dark by the time she came back, but she assured them she would return as fast as she could.

The sun was setting. Colors were slowly extinguishing themselves. Reds and greens were gone, now just varying shades of gray to the eyes of the humans. They were not on a road, having traveled through woods and fields where they could travel unobserved, and the route to the village was down the side of a steep hill. The Casseiopeian female was built round and short-legged, with extra bulk that the humans now knew to attribute to her pregnancy. The men could not afford to lose their guide in an accident. Besides, they had both grown fond of her, and protective. Chekov volunteered to walk her part of the way, and she did not protest.

When they were three-fourths down the hill, having slid over loose rocks and grabbed onto vegetation that tore off in their hands, their path met up with the main road. The sun had disappeared, and only a few purple stripes remained to hold back the night. This was it, he thought, stepping away from her. Either she would betray them, or she would prove to have been worth the confidence they had placed in her. They shook hands. He heard a noise behind him and turned, and ducked-years of training had made the movement an instinct. The club that was meant to have smashed his skull instead badly bruised, but did not break, his upper arm and shoulder. Beside him, the alien girl was whimpering.

The wielder of the club, a native like Shawn, was far more massive and solid than the girl, and larger than Chekov as well. With the club, he was much larger.

"What do you want?" Chekov cried, facing his assailant, raising his arms to protect his head. The other swung the club again, and Chekov, who dodged sideways, caught the blow on his left knee. The pain traveled from one tip of his body to the other and back again. Chekov threw himself on his attacker, determined to kill rather than be hurt like that once more. The Casseopeian, who had not expected such furious retaliation, fell backward. They wrestled a minute on the ground, until the big man got hold of his stick again and rammed the short end into Chekov's gut. "Christ!" the human cried, trying to keep some breath in his body. With strength born of fury, he wrested the club from the other's hand. "I'm going to kill you," he panted, trying to keep the tears back. It felt as if a piece of his liver was now drifting somewhere on its own between his heart and his intestines.

The other uttered a sound that Chekov recognized as laughter for that species, but it did not worry him, because he now had the club, and with it, he smashed the head of his attacker.

The Casseopeian groaned once, then went limp.

Chekov, straddling him, dropped the club as if it were a burning coal and began to shake. Shawn ran over, asking if he were all right, gazing into his face, rubbing his cheeks with her pawlike hands. He trembled as he rose, and crossed himself. "God forgive me," he whispered.

He had never killed anyone face to face. This was the first time, and he was not yet twenty-three. He had known, intellectually, that eventually there would have to be a first time, if he were not to be killed himself, but he had never given it much thought. And what thought he had given the event had never been colored by the type of ignominy in which this event had just cast itself. He had somehow supposed he would, indeed, eventually kill at arm's length-face to face, yes, for those other things, those ship-to-ship phaser fights, did not count as killing-twenty paces at the count of ten, perhaps. Perhaps in a charge across a far distant field, or protecting the honor of a beautiful woman. Anything in which there was some type of music playing in the background. But not this, not this schoolyard brawl, in the dirt, with a stick, for nothing.

"Are you all right?" the girl kept asking.

"I'm fine," he kept answering, obediently, calmly, until she stopped asking. He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Do you know him?"

She nodded. "He's mean and stupid. Killed one of his women. Killed his only son." Grabbing his hands in her paws, she burst out, "We'll never change, my village-all the villages-because of ones like him. You're not feeling bad you killed him, are you?"

"Well," he admitted, taking a deep breath, "I don't feel good."

"Don't feel bad. Believe me! If you hadn't killed him, he'd have killed you. And he wouldn't feel bad about it. It's better this way."

He looked at her affectionately as she took his hand and again bid him good-bye. She was grateful for his protection, for the fact that destiny had thrown ugly work his way and he had done it. She wanted him to realize it was appreciated. God bless females, he said to himself. God bless their faith, their hope, and their charity. God bless the way they could understand one without forcing an admission. Without females on all sides of him, he thought, as he stumbled back to his hiding place with Sulu, he did not think he would ever have worked up the sustained courage to be a male.

***

It was getting cold, and the darkness on this moonless world was spooking them both. They squatted silently while anticipating the return of their Casseiopeian helpmate, like a couple of rookie catchers waiting nervously through a windup to a power hitter, and stared at their own individual spots in the distance.

Finally, Chekov could stand the silence no longer. "Sulu," he whispered. "Are you there?"

"You know I am," Sulu replied. "Where else would I be?"

"I meant-are you alive? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Cold. I hate the cold." There was a moment's silence. "I guess you like it, though."

"Like what?"

"The cold."

"Why would I?"

"It gets cold in Russia, doesn't it?"

"We have indoor heating."

"Oh," Sulu replied, as if absorbing a new fact.

"Actually, I do like the cold. It's best for hockey and skating."

"I've never skated."

"Oh," Chekov murmured, as if hearing about a slow, progressive illness. He picked up a pebble and tossed it at a flat rock on the ground 15 meters away. It struck and made a low, hollow sound. Sulu picked up his own pebble and did the same. They tossed pebbles at the rock, aiming blind, using their ears rather than their eyes, intent on this game rather than their talk. After a while, Chekov said, "Sulu?"

"What now?"

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

Sulu clicked his tongue after a miss. "What do you think happens every time I tell the Captain I've fired photon torpedoes?"

"I don't mean like that. I mean, someone you've seen. Right in front of you."

"Sure." He paused a minute. "Haven't you?"

It took a while for Chekov to get the words out in English. "Just now I did."

"Howcome?"

"One of the tribe came out and tried to smash my head in."

"Oh, hell, that's not killing, that's self defense."

"It's not murder, but it's still killing."

"You and Riley ought to form a law firm. You're always picking at definitions."

"I'm not!" Chekov insisted. "Killing is killing."

"Well, okay. So you killed some alien. What about it?"

"I just thought I'd tell you."

"Thank you for sharing that, Chekov. Do you want to tell me the details?"

"No." He was quiet for a moment, thinking. "What was the first person you killed?"

"I don't remember."

"Really?"

"Really. I know it happened. Probably-oh, God, let me think."

"You're not that much older than I am. It must have been recent."

"I don't see things the way you do. It must be the vodka. I don't worry about things. Hell, I don't even think about them. Just do them and get it over with."

"You make yourself sound shallower than you are," Chekov chided.

"How do you know I'm not shallower than I sound?" But his voice died out at the end of the question. "I think it was a Klingon woman, actually. They're like those German warrior women when they fight, you know." Chekov clamped his teeth together rather than name the warrior women for his friend. "I was really young and I wasn't expecting that from a woman, so I let her get so close that I had to take her down." He clicked his tongue again. "I think I actually was repressing the memory, Doc. Thanks for dragging it back to the surface. I feel a lot worse now."

"Sorry," Chekov said forlornly.

"I'm joking, Chekov. It's no problem."

"I suppose I get depressing sometimes," the younger man mourned.

"You? You're a hoot."

"What's that?"

"A hoot. Fun. You have that word in Russian, don't you?"

Chekov gave a quick laugh. "Yes. You're thinking about German." He smiled to himself at Sulu's German warrior woman reference. "What about sex?" he asked. "Do you remember your first time?"

"Whoa. Now that, I can honestly tell you, I wouldn't remember."

"What?" Chekov exclaimed.

"I was fooling around with this and that from the time I was a kid. It was always a little more here, a little more there. I couldn't tell you if it was man, woman, or dog the first time."

"God, Sulu, why do you say things like that?"

"To see you jump. It's my new avocation-getting a rise out of you. I can see it now, I'll be like those Greek witches who torment souls-"

"The Eumenides," Chekov chimed in with.

"That's them!" Sulu exclaimed eagerly, and then, turning hard to starboard, asked, "How'd you know that?"

"If you know it, why shouldn't I?"

"The name. I didn't know the name. How did you?"

Thinking quickly, Chekov explained, "Russian writing is based on Greek. We stole a lot of stuff," hoping that two non sequiturs would add up to one sensible answer.

Sulu hesitated, not certain that this added up, but not interested enough to pursue it. "I'll be one of those, chasing you throughout life, feeding you bullshit and trying to get you to eat it."

"I'm touched," Chekov responded. "I'll never be lonely again."

"There you go. And what about you? I was being truthful about not remembering the first time. In fact it was all true, except the part about the dog. What about you?"

"I remember."

"So?"

"It was nice."

"Nice. What kind of word is that?"

"It's a Martha word." The two men laughed. "Ooh, that feels so nice. Ooh, I love that necklace she was wearing, it was so nice. Ooh, he hit me on the head and dragged me through the bushes and it was so nice! Nice, nice, nice."

"Martha's nice," Sulu said. "Nice legs."

"Let me tell you."

"I bet."

There was a moment's satisfied silence, and then Sulu shook himself.

"I'll break a confidence here, man, but I'm beginning to feel as if my loyalties are shifting. You ought to know that Stanford's had it in for you for a long time."

"Stanford?"

"He talks a mean blue streak when he's high. I wasn't sure if Landon told you."

"Not a word," the ensign stated tensely. In fact, she'd played little come hither games with him for weeks, showing up on the bridge carrying messages for this person or that person as if Uhura's main purpose of life was not to relay such messages, wandering along the officer's deck when his shift began or ended, tossing little balls of lint at him when they sat in the same room. Not that he hadn't responded, of course. Actually, not that he hadn't thought, the moment he had first laid eyes on her, that if he could bed such a white goddess then he would truly have entered heaven. So it was by no means unexpected, when they had finally found themselves together on a planetside mission in the lush, exotic tropics, no less, that she had fallen into his arms with barely a protesting note in her voice, had let him take her under a tree, under the open night sky, and he, almost sick with the surfeit of luxury, would have gone all night if they had not been broken in on by a couple of miserable local teenagers. "She never said anything to me," Chekov told Sulu.

"Women make it hard to love them."

"They can't help being the way they are."

"And it doesn't matter, if they look like Landon."

"They can all look like her," Chekov confided. "They swallow stuff and inject stuff, and suck out parts of themselves and shoot them back in other parts-it's true! I'm not lying to you, Sulu, it's like they're made of putty. The first girl I ever kissed told me about how she had fat sucked from her thighs. I was thirteen, and I thought maybe I would vomit. They suck everything out of their bottoms and shoot it into their tops."

"You're joshing me. Who told you?"

"You just have to listen to them. They start out complaining about themselves so you'll tell them how beautiful they are-"

"Right. I know that," Sulu stated. "Got that one."

"After a while, they start making these suggestions. Should I dye my lips? Should I get bigger tits? Should I widen my eyes? Should I bleach my skin? Should I darken my skin? On and on."

"So what's the right answer?" Sulu asked. This was a real education for him. He never knew what to say to women, so he usually said nothing. When he did speak, he invariably said the wrong thing. He had had suspicions, based on statistical successes, that Chekov, young as he was, had some secrets in this department, and he had been waiting for the opportune moment to get at them. "Do you tell them yes, change it, or no, you're perfect?"

Chekov leaned back on his arms. He was smiling to himself, and there was a warm, contented hum in his brain. "Oh, God. I feel like saying, Don't do a damned thing, darling, just lie there and look sweet, and wrap those gorgeous legs around me, whatever shape or color they are." He stopped a moment. "But I never put it that way."

"Of course not." A pause. "How do you put it?"

"I tell them they're perfect. Because, you know, at that moment it's true."

Sulu agreed that that was the way to do it. "But," he added, "what's wrong with Martha? She's not perfect?"

"She's perfect. I think I'm not perfect enough for her," Chekov admitted seriously. After a while, somewhat guiltily, for he felt he was being disloyal, he said, "She's fine when we're just-you know. Although sometimes I feel I'm there just to-you know. She bustles around a lot, makes a lot of noise, but she keeps to herself." He did not know how else to characterize the feeling of formality between them, the lack of those small routines and knowing responses that lovers had. Sometimes he thought it was simply that he did not understand women from Mars.

"She give you the pink slip?"

"What's that?"

"Walking papers. Heave-ho. The slip."

"No!" He did not want to describe the entire scene in the public garden. "I have the feeling she has other things on her mind."

"Then screw her. Just leave."

"No. I don't want to hurt her feelings. I'll go along until she gives me the pink slip. Pink slip? That way no one gets hurt."

"What about your pride?"

"You can have lots of pride or lots of sex."

"A must-remember in the bible of everyday life," Sulu remarked, admiringly.

There was a long silence. Nocturnal animals began to call. Sulu grasped his tricorder. Both men, were they not so afraid of being eaten or beaten to death, would have dozed off. Chekov finally said, "Sulu?"

"What now?"

"I just wanted to thank you for saving my life."

"I didn't save your life, I just woke you up."

"If I'd been lying there bleeding, you would have saved my life. It's not your fault I wasn't dying."

"Chekov, you crack me up."

"I just wanted to tell you I have a lot of respect for you."

Sulu stopped laughing suddenly. His breath caught. He had never been told that before. "Thanks," he said softly.

It was not until almost midday that Dr. McCoy approached Spock with trepidation and announced that the only junior Enterprise officer that he could locate alive on the planet's surface was the imprisoned Riley. A Star Fleet communicator had been retrieved in a nearby park and returned to him. The Casseiopeians, McCoy mumbled, had given no appearance of believing anything was less than ordinary. They were apparently under the naïve misapprehension that the senior officers had any type of control over their subordinates. "I didn't want to disillusion them and say otherwise."

Mr. Spock nodded gravely. "Suggestions, Doctor?"

"Well," the doctor drawled unhappily, "if we can make any conclusions based on the analysis of Meyer, I think we have a problem."

"The alpha-z-fluorochlorohydroxidase."

McCoy nodded. "First we find a big dose in Meyer. Then we find a smaller amount in Riley. Now we're missing three officers after a long meal we were invited to. By the way, are we secure to talk here?"

"Probably not."

"I'm going to talk anyway. I think it smells."

"You are implying that our crew has been deliberately drugged?"

"I am, Mr. Spock."

The Vulcan gave this a moment's consideration. "We have four missing crewmembers, and two accounted for. Both of those accounted for did, indeed, reveal greater or lesser traces of the drug in their bodies. We further know for a fact that these crewmembers were discovered in a haven of illicit drug traffic. On the other hand, we have no evidence whatsoever of the same in the missing crewmembers. Furthermore, suspicions as to tainted meals do not bear close scrutiny. You and I attended the same meal and ate the same food. We were served from common platters. Yet neither you nor I are revealing any effects of the drug. If you wish, doctor, I will run tests on ourselves."

"Well, what do you suggest?" McCoy challenged.

Spock placed his hands behind his back and looked floorward for a moment. "Four missing crewmembers. Four communicators. Stanford's was recovered in the room from which he had escaped. Have you run a check on the one recovered in the park?"

"Chekov's."

Spock flipped open his own communicator and attempted to hail his crew, to no avail. "They are not receiving," he remarked. "Either they have turned off their equipment, lost it, or the equipment is malfunctioning." He replaced the device and looked up. "Doctor, if you will conclude the chemical analysis here, I will undertake a sub-investigation of this latest mystery."

"Amen, Spock. Go to it, boy," said McCoy.

Shawn woke up her human friends for the second time that day, this time with the triumphant announcement that she had located the missing crewmembers. Sulu and Chekov jumped to their feet.

"The communicator," Chekov urged.

"Oh, right," responded Sulu. "Give me a little time." He pulled his communicator from his pocket and began to reassemble it.

"Why is he playing with that thing again?" Shawn inquired, leaping nervously from foot to foot.

"He had to take it apart to break into the vehicle. He left it that way so we couldn't be contacted. Let's just say he never got around to putting it back together. But now we might need it to contact our crewmates. It won't take very long."

It took a very long ten minutes.

"They were coming off the drugs," Shawn prodded. "They'll be leaving soon."

"They?" said Chekov. "The woman, too?"

"I think so." Shawn stepped a little closer. "Chekov, are you carrying some drugs you could give me?"

Chekov gave her a withering look.

"They're angry at me in the village. You're always supposed to bring something from the city when you come back. But I didn't realize I was coming here, so I didn't bring anything."

Chekov rummaged through his supply belt. "What about money? That's the next best thing, isn't it?" He emptied out his and Sulu's entire supply of local currency.

Shawn counted it happily. "This is fine!" she cried.

Sulu, who was replacing the case on the communicator, did not look up when he said, "Why are you helping them steal drugs, Shawn? It isn't right."

"It doesn't hurt anyone."

"It killed one of our crewmembers."

"That was his choice," she retorted. "He should learn better."

"He's dead now," Sulu said in a dopey voice, "so it's too late, isn't it?"

"That's his problem," said Shawn, pocketing the money. "If you want me to help you, you better not criticize." She led them on the trek down the side of the hill.

The village began suddenly, after a few isolated houses on the outskirts of town. "First it's wilderness, then there's a village," Sulu remarked. "It's like a type-C civilization."

"Where do you get your food from?" Chekov inquired.

"Animals. Plants."

"Do you farm?"

"That's for those. The others. Not for us."

Sulu and Chekov exchanged glances.

The first homes were build of mud bricks, with roofs of thatch. Holes were cut in the walls to admit light, but they were open to the elements. Nowhere were evident the marble and sandstone, the intricate architectural curves, the thin plates of transparent shell that had characterized the beautiful city half a day's drive away. The one characteristic the village shared with the city was noise: more noise, mostly of voices shouting or singing, came from the streets and within the houses than they had heard at any time in the city they had left.

After the first straggler homes, they entered into the village proper. It was loud, it was undeveloped, and it was squalid.

"It's hard to come back," Shawn admitted, as if reading her companions' minds. "We go away to make some money and bring things back. When we're in the city, we work hard and the ones there treat us like we're very low. But when we come back, we're not used to it anymore." She sighed. "That's the real reason so many of us agree to have their babies. If we do, we're allowed to stay."

"What about the males?" Sulu asked. "Do they have babies too?"

"No males. No males allowed in the city."

"Ah," Chekov murmured, realizing now why he had been so thoroughly unprepared for the attack by the Casseiopeian on the road. He had been viewing only the females of Shawn's type. And just as the city people were so minutely dimorphic that their sexes were indistinguishable to the outsider, so were the village peoples extraordinarily dimorphic, with the women small and round like Shawn, and the men large and solid. "Shawn," he asked familiarly, "the city people have males and females, but they create their offspring artificially, and the females of your type give birth to them. What about your type? Do you mate?"

"Of course," she replied, equally familiarly.

He tried to phrase his next comment inoffensively. "The way the people in the city are doing it is very inefficient. It's been tried in numerous places, including Vulcan, and after a few generations it was found it produced weaker and more maladaptive offspring. Do you understand?"

"No."

"He means that it's better for a species to conceive, bear, and, and raise its own young," Sulu broke in. "When the steps are broken up, the way the city people here do, there are too many ways things can go wrong. And if they can go wrong, they will."

"I do not know what you mean," Shawn said. "The city people do it this way because it's the only way they can. The males will not mate with the females, the females will not bear. Some types of females bear their own clones-they belong to a certain political group. The clones are always ugly. We call them the Uglier the Better party."

They were being stared at by a cluster of large, mean males. Shawn placed herself between the humans and the natives, and hurried them down the street toward the center of town. Chekov remembered the adolescents he had encountered in the city. It did not look as if this group would be as easy to scare off with a communicator. When he glanced over his shoulder, having heard an angry bellow from behind, two of the group had taken to pummeling each other with their fists and their heads.

"Don't look," Shawn said. "They might come after you."

"What is it?" Sulu asked.

"A fight. They're butting each other with their heads, now," Chekov whispered.

"I can smell the testosterone from here," remarked Sulu, "among other things. You killed one of those? They're as big as gorillas."

"The one I killed was bigger."

"Those are only young ones," their guide told them. "But very dangerous. They usually have to be kept in line by several old males."

"It's like an elephant herd," said Sulu.

"What is that?"

"Just a species from Earth. Say, Shawn, no offense, but does the sewage have to go out on the street? Don't you guys have shovels? I'm really tired of stepping in this stuff."

She told him crossly to watch his step, then.

On their way to the center of town they passed seventeen males and no females except Shawn. When Chekov finally asked about this, Shawn replied that the females were busy with the children. "What about the females without children?" Chekov inquired.

"If they are too young to have children, they are children themselves. If they are old enough to have children, they have children." She swung open a door and walked in, crying, "It's Shawn, come with the humans. Put your weapons down. I have money."

This could have been a cottage on the furthest firth of ancient Scotland, an adobe hut in a Mexican desert, a yurt in Mongolia. It was dark within but for the red glow of a fire in a pit in the middle of the room, so deep that it seemed to be burning its way up through hell. There was no furniture, no decoration, and a distinctive acrid odor permeated the place, an odor that Chekov took to be Casseiopein sweat, and Sulu took to be Casseiopein urine. There was an adjoining room from which came more familiar sounds-the high voices of females, the shrill voices of children, scraping and clattering, and even the patter of little feet. But that room was separated from the one they had entered by a curtain made of an animal skin.

Seated on the opposite side of the fire, facing the door, were three local males and Mitchell Stanford. As the humans' eyes grew accustomed to the dark, they made out Martha Landon, slumped against the wall in a corner, motionless, but with open eyes.

Chekov moved immediately toward the woman, and Stanford as immediately jumped up.

"Stay where you are, little fellow," Stanford told him, and Chekov froze.

Sulu called across to his crewmate, "Stanford, you are in so much trouble that you ought to wish you were dead." He flicked off his translator, and Chekov followed suit.

"Who's that? Sulu? Go away. Go away."

"We're here to take you back. You don't intend going native, do you?"

"I'm going back when I damned well please."

"Yeoman Landon," Sulu called, "are you all right?"

The woman nodded slowly. Sulu could not help realizing what had happened to Chekov's undershirt. In addition, the yeoman had her legs bent up in front of her, and he had to avert his gaze from certain parts of her anatomy that revealed themselves whenever she stirred.

Sulu had diverted Stanford's attention enough to allow Chekov time to reach Landon's side. He took her hands, felt for a pulse, and looked in her eyes before Stanford grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet. "Mitts off, sugar," he said.

The Casseiopeians, for the first time, began to react. Things were getting physical with their guests, and they were starting to enjoy themselves, yelling and thumping their fists on the floor.

Shawn was no longer in the room. Chekov, who had had his arm wrenched out of the socket, realized that it was his moment to act as diversion, because Sulu was the one with the communicator. He twisted his arm out of his attacker's grasp and said, "You had to drug her to get her, and you'll have to kill me to keep her." Stanford snarled, "I didn't have to drug her, you dope," and pushed Chekov up against the wall.

"Oh, Mitch, leave him alone," Martha uttered wearily. "He's harmless."

Chekov's glance switched from the man, who stood immobile before him, to the woman, who remained seated with her head pressed back against the wall with her eyes now closed, and then back to the man. Stanford was one of that typical American type, all the races of the world mixed up in one body. Unlike many of the type, who had the look of mongrels, Stanford had all the right parts in the all the right places. His skin was just dark enough to set off his teeth, his bones long and his face chiseled like a Pacific island god. Chekov suddenly had no interest in competing for what he knew he had already lost. And besides, there was no need to do more, for Sulu had reached his communicator and had already signaled for help.

Stanford heard the familiar piping of the instrument and without even turning to look, had grabbed a plank from the wall beside him-it might have been a low shelf, it might have been a high bench-and started to swing it toward Sulu.

"Oh no you don't," Chekov cried and, instead of tackling the man and risking the humiliation of hand to hand combat, he threw himself in the path of the plank, over the fire pit, and, when the board hit him full in the face, went completely blank.

***

Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock were reaching similar conclusions via different routes by the end of the day. The lack of sexual dimorphism that had figured so prominently in the thoughts of the twenty year old second navigator, and not at all in those of the mature Vulcan, had been only one of numerous oddities McCoy had observed in the local biology. Using data from previous samples, plus samples he gathered on the spur of the moment to "help with the murder investigation," he decided to play a hunch, and performed a mitochondrial search. The Vulcans who had collected earlier data had done a textbook job in taking their samples. They had simply never thought to use it for the purpose that the doctor intended

He also began questioning a variety of locals who would talk. Because the only place where he could find a variety of locals was the brothel where Meyer had died, that was where he based his operation. A down home boy with a bent for the old fashioned and the historical, yet with the intelligence to hate tyranny however it masqueraded, McCoy had always been attentive to the plights of servants, serfs, drones, and any other class of people who bore a society's badges of slavery. He had never eaten a truly splendid meal without sympathizing with the intelligence behind the swinging door to the kitchen. Spock had already discussed, at significant length, the subspecies issue, and it was the subspecies that McCoy saw every time there was dumb or dirty work. His reading on every janitor, waiter, babysitter, and street sweeper he could find indicated that the subspecies consisted entirely of females. He naturally assumed, therefore, that the working ladies at the house of ill repute would be female members of this subspecies.

He was wrong. There were a few of them, but only two out of a dozen. The rest were members of the dominant species, both male and female.

He took one female into a room with him-a local investigator accompanied because he was never permitted separate access to the population for more than about a minute-and began badgering her. He believed she was the one who had fed Meyer the drug that killed him, he accused her.

She shrugged impassively.

"If you don't talk, I'm going to give you something to make you talk," the doctor announced.

"Dr. McCoy," the Casseiopeian investigator intervened mildly, "that is prohibited according to-"

"Get out of here, you!" the doctor shouted. He opened the door, grabbed the other by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him from the room, then locked the door behind him. It would take several minutes to get him out by brute force and, knowing what he already knew of the local society, brute force would be the last type of force resorted to.

The prostitute started to laugh. "What are you, a village man?"

"I'm a human man. Actually, you might say I'm a village man. I come from a small town."

She muttered, "That's where I ought to go. I hate this frigging place."

"Why don't you leave?"

She wrinkled her beady black nose at him. "You have to make choices, dad. That's life, right? You go to a village, you get a real man. You get punched in the face once a week, you're pregnant twenty times before you drop dead, there's shit in the street and you live in a shack. In the city, you get decent food, everything's clean, nice and pretty. And you're a freak."

"But you're not a freak," the doctor observed. "Your genetic and somatic makeup is identical with that of the prevailing female population here."

She tapped the side of her head. "Check out the brain, dad."

"Unfortunately, we still can't do that right. Every time someone maps out fastballs and sliders, the brain throws us a curve."

She gave him a look that told him either he was crazy, or she knew nothing of baseball. She stood up and went to the door. "You can do what you want to me." She turned and leaned against the door, thoroughly exhausted. "You want to kill me? Go ahead. You'd be doing me a favor."

Dr. McCoy covered his eyes with a hand and shook his head slowly. He didn't want her dead, he told her. In fact, he had very little interest in who had given Meyer his last dose, he assured her, as it was quite clear that he had voluntarily submitted to it. All he wanted was to find the rest of his human crew and to satisfy some morbid curiosity of his own. He handed her some money. All she had to do was open her mouth and spill her guts. And he meant that figuratively, of course.

Mr. Spock passed a university archive on his walk back from where Chekov's communicator had been discovered. Like Dr. McCoy, his interest in Casseiopeia now transcended the mundane issue of a murder/suicide in a brothel. He was, quite honestly, troubled. For many years now the Casseiopeian civilization had been touted as a near ideal, primarily because of the Vulcan pioneer research several generations ago. Mr. Spock was uncertain whether the discrepancy between this early research and his own observations were the result of faulty researching or reporting techniques on the part of the scholars, or faulty-that is, not fully Vulcan-perceptions or conclusions on his own part. Was there something demonstrably inefficient or unreasonable about the social milieu, or was it simply something that did not feel right to his irrepressible human part?

Although his spoken dialect was inadequate, Spock had absorbed enough of the written language to be able to do a rapid search of the archives without the translator. He was then stumped by the antiquity of the documents he needed. He began to feel a small gnaw of frustration as he tried to make out the ancient hieroglyphs. Without some sort of Rosetta stone, even the ship's computers might take more time that he felt could be spared on the project, and he could not find that Rosetta stone. The documents had been copied and catalogued, but not yet translated.

He rested his chin on his palm and thought of trees branching into infinity.

"Ah, Mr. Spock!" someone exclaimed, in English.

He turned his head and recognized, at the next research station, a guest from the previous night's dinner. "Good day," Spock said.

"We had the honor of making each other's acquaintance last night," the Casseiopeian explained eagerly, bobbing his head in greeting. "I had an enlightening discussion with one of your crew. Such a wonderful opportunity for me. So very grateful. Can I assist you here in any way?"

"Yes!" escaped from the human part before the Vulcan could resist.

There was not enough he could do to help, L'Tania assured the Vulcan. He would be happy to attempt a translation. Yes, he was somewhat familiar with the various old languages. He was something of a linguist, though it was not his main study. And he would, of course, be happy to provide Mr. Spock with the groundwork. No, there was no dictionary for the old texts, for they had only recently been compiled-they had been copied from walls in cave dwellings. It might be useful, the Casseiopeian suggested, to begin with cognates. It was believed, for instance, that the document before them was an earlier version of an oral history to be found in a compilation by Sh'wonda.

The young scholar enthusiastically led Spock through the vagaries of the ancient language until the Vulcan believed he could sit down and translate for himself. L'Tania had been so anxious to satisfy, and so accommodating with his time, that in the end Spock believed he could not but offer some sort of recompense. In his supply belt were items retrieved from Meyer's person that Dr. McCoy had reviewed and released as irrelevant. There had been very little: some family pictures, currency, identification, and one single tape. It was this last item that Spock presented to the Casseiopeian. "This belonged to the crewmember whose death we have been investigating," he stated. "On behalf of my crew, I would like you to have it in thanks for your assistance in the investigation. It is a tape of an ancient human art form which I believe is greatly admired by your people."

The Casseiopeian almost swooned in gratitude. He pressed the tape to his breast, then raised it and read it aloud. "Ah! A Night at the Opera! Our most cherished of human arts! I shall treasure it always."

"It is an asexual society," Mr. Spock concluded to the doctor, when they met up.

"No, Spock, it's a homoerotic society," the doctor corrected.

"It is, at any rate, non-reproductive. Which certainly explains the lack of population pressure."

"Spock, it's disgusting."

"Excuse me, doctor?"

McCoy shook his head. "They've created an entire servant class-your famous subspecies-just to bear their children for them. This non-reproductive class, as you call them, sits around getting fat, painting pictures and reciting poetry to each other, while their little country cousins are doing the work."

"As usual, doctor, in fabricating your sentimental human fairy tale, you have succeeded in entirely missing the point."

"Missing the point? Of course! You Vulcans love this place! This is nirvana to you-"

"You have reduced the truth to absurdity."

"Did you ever wonder why there are so damned many brothels on a planet that does a hell of a lot more exporting than importing? They're not there to keep the Enterprise happy, that's for damned sure. They're for your non-reproductive class. And when the population starts dipping too low, they call in the country folk to help them out, the ones who live like barbarians."

Spock shook his head slowly. "Except, doctor, for one salient feature which your informant failed to reveal to you, because she probably was unaware of it herself."

McCoy had run out of breath. "Which is?" he inquired. He sat and wiped his brow, and then folded his arms.

"That it was the country cousins, as you call them, who were the original dominant culture," stated Mr. Spock. "It was the country cousins who consistently and ritually expelled members of the tribe whom they viewed as, shall we say, deviant? And it was the double misfortune of these country cousins that by expelling those particular deviants, they on one hand lost the creative spur that has on other planets moved a culture toward higher expression and might have moved them out of their mud shanty villages, and, on the other hand, sowed the seeds of their own destruction by those same exiles who here and there formed their own villages and eventually exploited the exploiters. Which irony, I trust," he concluded solemnly, "should satisfy your human love of symmetry, if not melodrama."

"Is that possible?" McCoy uttered. "Cultural devolution?"

"This is what I have gleaned from the ancient texts. It is virtually impossible to get a cogent history from the dominant, cultivated population. They have no frame of reference for our inquiries, they consider any interest in the subject to be morbid or offensive, and they have a long and conflicting set of taboos on the subject themselves."

"I don't suppose you'd be interested in hearing about the drugs," McCoy said sullenly, convinced that his own discoveries were now anticlimactic.

"The drugs are at the heart of the original problem," responded Mr. Spock, "and I believe they may be involved in the disappearance of our younger crew."

McCoy explained that while he was waiting for the Enterprise computer to run the DNA search that had revealed the split society to him, he had done an old-fashioned review of brain reads of the dominant and the subdominant members of the species. The pattern-and pattern was the best word he could use-of the dominant species was markedly rigid. "I'd describe a human who displayed the type of behavior that usually marks that type as highly obsessive. Of course, it's quite a normal pattern for a Vulcan-which may be why no one has remarked on it before. But because of the limited breeding that goes on in the dominant species, there is clearly a developing pathology involving the trait. The dominant species has been self-selecting for it. There's no doubt their drugs are effective temporary antidotes. The subdominant species doesn't share the trait, so the effects of the various drugs on them would range from nausea to dementia. Which is why that group does not have a serious drug habit."

"And its attraction to humans?"

"Everything is attractive to humans," said McCoy. "You ought to know that by now."

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"The subdominant species is trying to get rich selling it off-world. I believe they had likely candidates in Meyer and Stanford. I will be broken hearted if I learn that they did in the others."

A signal sounded on Spock's communicator. "Spock here," the first officer said brightly.

"This is Kirk. Spock, not to make too fine a point of it, but-are you missing some crew?"

"'Missing,' Captain, is incorrect. 'Misplaced' would be a preferable alternative. We are investigating the matter now."

"Now?"

"Dr. McCoy and I have made significant discoveries regarding the Casseiopeian society, which may have some affect on its Federation membership. They seem to have established a fascinating, if highly inefficient-"

"Spock."

"Yes, Captain?"

"About the junior officers."

"Dr. McCoy has a lead as to their whereabouts." McCoy nodded excitedly in agreement.

"I know their whereabouts!" Kirk shouted. "They're here, on the Enterprise, in various states of damage, and they've already told me what happened and why. I would appreciate if you and Dr. Watson would wrap up your investigation and get back on board, with Riley."

When the channel had been closed, Spock regarded Dr. McCoy seriously for a minute, and McCoy scuffled his feet for the same amount of time. At last, Spock said, "The Captain is an excellent commander, but he lacks the intellectual curiosity of a true scientist."

Chekov grew conscious in stages, and he knew immediately that he was in sick bay, for, although he had not regained his sight, most of his other senses worked quite well. He could hear the whir and bleep of monitors. He could feel hands upon his body. He could sense the proximity of help. For a while he tried to say something, to ask how he was, whether his blindness was temporary, and why he couldn't smell worth a damn, but his jaw was not working either, and it was just too much of an effort. He was so cozy as he was, so warm and full of drugs, that he allowed himself to slip without any internal protest at all from moments of consciousness to long periods of sleep.

There was a period when he felt quite lucid, almost as if he could talk. He remembered having lunged at Stanford, and had concluded that he'd been whacked in the face with a large solid slab of something and had perhaps fallen into the fire. The morbid fear overtook him that something dreadful and irreversible had happened to his face. He tried to feel it, but could not get his hands more than a few inches into the air. Instinctively, he did what he always did when puzzled and stressed-he bit his lips-but couldn't manage to get any flesh under his teeth.

He started to panic. This was his first wound in action. He had never intended to be maimed, or even disfigured. He expected either to live, forever in his twenties, hearty and whole, or to die. He could not imagine how a blow with a board could have rendered him a permanent invalid, but in his semi-conscious state, he was more than willing to believe that it could have happened.

"For God's sake," he heard, "did they have to paralyze him, too?"

It was a woman's voice, and very familiar to him, in a hazy, distant way, but because haze and distance were an improvement over the prevailing darkness that had hitherto enshrouded him, he viewed this as an improvement in his condition, and the woman as a harbinger of good things. He managed to utter his first words since returning to the Enterprise. "I'm paralyzed?"

"What?" said the woman. There was a moment's silence, and he felt small air currents, as of someone moving around him. He thought he heard his name pronounced aloud. Then he felt the breath of a whisper in his ear. "Can you understand me? Could you repeat what you just said?"

"Am I paralyzed?" he repeated automatically.

"Wait a moment and you won't be," was the response. Within seconds he felt pressure on his upper arm, and shortly thereafter, feeling returned to his skin, movement to his muscles.

"I'm like the little girl in the old American film," the woman said to him.

"Oil can," he said.

She burst into laughter.

"Can you put some in my eyelids?" he asked.

"No. You're fine, Mr. Chekov. Not blind, just bandaged. Your chart says you have a broken nose, a couple of loose teeth, some retinal damage, and burns to a few parts of your body."

"What parts?"

"Good parts, all of them."

"You're a very sweet nurse."

"You're a very sweet patient."

"I must be a very ugly patient. My lips feel swollen."

The nurse said heartily, "I've seen worse. Your nose is already set, your retina's been reattached, the teeth are where they belong, and you're just a little black and blue. Doctor McCoy spent a lot of time making you pretty. Maybe prettier than you started. I don't know."

"You should take the bandage off my eyes now," he said boldly, "so that I can tell you whether I'm prettier than you are."

"Oh, I'm sure I'm prettier. Because you're not really pretty, of course, you're handsome."

He sighed happily, and when she suggested that he try to have a full night's sleep so that he would be up in the morning and ready to see, he willingly complied. It was only when he had placed a hand under the side of his head, in his characteristic sleeping position, and had almost drifted off, that he realized that he had been speaking Russian.

Dr. McCoy arrived in the morning and did, indeed, remove the bandages, remarking aloud on the rapid recovery of his young patient. Chekov was tempted to respond that if he had not been so heavily sedated and immobilized he might have progressed yet more quickly, but he did not know whether the nurse the previous night had acted contrary to orders, and he did not wish to cause her trouble.

Sulu showed up just before the beginning of his shift to find Chekov awake, reading, and fidgeting. "They ought to give you some muscle relaxant," he remarked.

Chekov, who could see well enough to know it was Sulu but not well enough to see the expression on his face, scowled.

"How're you feeling otherwise?" Sulu asked.

"Not bad. My vision's still blurred. I'm starting to smell again."

"No you're not. You're fresh as a daisy."

"What?"

Sulu laughed. "Didn't you think that was funny?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You got hit in the head with a board and I didn't. We'll be on two parallel planes for the rest of our lives." They debated for a while whether there was such a thing as "parallel" in the real universe. Sulu reminded him that after having jumped across the fire and placed himself between a wooden bench and Sulu, Chekov had fallen unconscious, one leg in the fire, and had been dragged to safety by some of the village men, who, although they seemed to relish a fistfight more than the next fellows, had no tolerance for a cremation as well. He broke off his description of the arrival of the security team from the Enterprise with the announcement, "You know, you probably saved my life. I know you didn't mean to, but I wanted to thank you now, before it started to fester between us. Before you started to remind me of it." Then he said, "I have to get up to the helm in a minute. I guess I'll see you on the bridge tomorrow morning."

"Evening," Chekov corrected.

Sulu, who had turned to leave, turned back for a moment. "Riley's on his way home, Chekov. Remember all that? You don't think they were going to let him have his old job back, do you?"

Chekov had not considered the matter at all. He did not want to think about it. He asked, instead, "What about Stanford?"

"In the brig. Riley's going home with a discharge and a ticket. Stanford's going home under guard."

"Martha? Is she all right?"

Sulu said gruffly, "She's fine. Same as ever. No trouble there. Stanford forced her into it."

"I suppose."

There was a pause. "It was just bitching luck, Chekov. It happens."

"I know. Really, Sulu. I'm older than I look."

"You okay?"

"Just fine."

"See you on the bridge."

Chekov saluted. "Tomorrow."

It was midafternoon, and he had just woken from a nap when Martha Landon finally appeared. He was by that time able visually to make out facial features, and he could recognize, quite clearly, fear in the woman's expression. For a few seconds she tried to bustle around him, but that was so contrary to her nature that even she was not convinced by it. So she simply took a seat beside his bed and held his hand.

After a minute of silence, he said, "My hand is starting to tingle."

She dropped it. "Why didn't you just pull it away?"

"I didn't want you to think it was a reflection on you."

"You think too much." Her voice was cold.

"Thank you," he replied. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"I can't even imagine what you must have been thinking about me over the past few days."

He said slowly, "Martha, I haven't been thinking that much recently. Until yesterday my nose was stuck somewhere between the two halves of my brain."

She smiled. "At least you're getting better. I'm going to visit you every day until you're better."

"I'll be back on duty tomorrow. I'm almost better now."

"Have you missed me?"

"Yes," he said, truthfully. He missed her as one misses the past, the lost, the dead. He missed the memory of her and the notion of her. He missed the hollow space that the future wrapped around the spot where she might have stood. The one thing he did not miss was her, the flesh and blood woman beside him. But he had not been asked that question, and to the extent that he had answered, he had answered honestly.

She rose, kissed his cheek-his lips were still tender, and he turned his head from her-and left, satisfied, if not happy, that things were as they had been before. "See you soon, sweetheart," she said.

"See you," he told her. The words escaped from his mouth in Russian.

He had been taking slow steps around the room, and was sitting on the edge of his bed, when Captain Kirk appeared, unannounced. Chekov attempted to spring to his feet, but the Captain raised a hand to indicate he should not move.

"As you were, Ensign." He folded his arms and stood silent for a moment. "Are you ready for duty, Mr. Chekov?"

"Aye, Captain."

"First thing tomorrow?"

Chekov swallowed, unsure whether he was supposed to know this fact.

Kirk said, "We've concluded our diplomatic and legal issues with Casseiopeia. In case you're interested-because one day you may need to know such things-we've received permission from the local authorities to try our crewmember in a military court at the closest starbase. In return, we have filed a complaint with the Federation regarding the trade in illicit pharmaceuticals, and the apparent targeting of Star Fleet crew by Casseiopeia. We have noted assaults upon you and Mr. Sulu, the self-defense killing of one Casseiopeian local, and the theft and destruction of a vehicle, which has been paid for by Star Fleet. We are now, blessedly, ready to warp out of here to another mission, and we need another navigator. Farrell wasn't hired to handle the first shift."

"Understood, Captain."

Kirk's voice dropped several notes. "Do you?"

"Sulu already told me about Riley."

"And?"

"I wish we could have run that five minutes backward. I don't think he really wanted to go with Stanford and Meyer." He shrugged, and admitted, "I'm not sure this is the way I want to move up-having greatness thrust upon me." As usual, the quote slipped out, only because it had been something he had heard, constantly, in his youth. He could not even attribute it to anyone, but the moment he had said it, he wished he could unsay it.

But the Captain smiled. "They're not necessarily exclusive, Mr. Chekov. In spite of what Mr. Shakespeare said, one can be born great or attain greatness and still find it thrust upon one."

"Yes, sir."

"And I believe that is the first time I have had Twelfth Night quoted to me by a junior officer."

Chekov filed Shakespeare and Twelfth Night in his memory and swore to himself, as penance, to read the play in English. It had never dawned on him that a starship captain might be versed in anything other than tactics, engineering, and maybe a little physics. He was overcome with admiration for his commanding officer's ready wit, and weak with gratitude at not being called to account for knowledge of the creative product of a dead European-knowledge that he had attained entirely against his own will. He said, "It will be the last time you have it quoted by me, sir."

"I hope not, Ensign. Shakespeare is my favorite man of letters. There's nothing I've ever felt in my life which he didn't make seem much better than it was."

"You should read Pushkin, then."

Kirk smiled. "Recommend me a translation." He held out a hand. Chekov shook it. "I'd like to have Dr. McCoy release you and have you come up to the bridge now to go over a few additional procedures that you might not be familiar with. Are you game?"

Chekov stopped in mid-assent. He thought of his night-shift nurse. If he were released now, he would never see her again.

"If 't were done, 't were well 't were done quickly," the Captain was saying.

Chekov hopped off the bed. He had no choice.

And besides, he thought, with Russian optimism, as he headed out of sick bay. There was a good chance that somewhere, sometime, he would be whacked with a board or tossed into a fire again.

The End