Reunion - Michael Jan Friedman [83]
Jack. The thought of him made her turn to the box of tapes resting on her commode. She wanted-needed-to hear his voice.com
Opening the box again, Beverly peered inside. She longed to hear something upbeat, optimistic, like the last one-but after a moment she realized that she didn’t remember the content of any individual tape very well. In fact, they were pretty much a blur to her. It took her a few minutes, but she eventually found a tape that seemed to fit the bill. In fact, she realized with a little pang of delight, it was one of the first subspace messages Jack had ever sent her. She even remembered the messenger who had brought it-a stocky young woman who took her duties quite seriously. She used to check and double-check Beverly’s signature against her records before releasing a tape, no matter how many she brought-at least until they replaced her with someone less memorable. And it was summer, wasn’t it? Beverly remembered that too, because she couldn’t understand how it could be summer and be so cold. Of course, she’d never lived in San Francisco before. She’d never even lived on Earth before.
But Starfleet’s medical college was in San Francisco, and it was the best in the Federation. And when she’d actually gotten accepted there, she could hardly justify staying on Arvada Three, as much as she loved the colony.
So, shortly after her marriage to Jack, they’d moved to a second-floor apartment in. the shadow of Startleet headquarters—which seemed a little oppressive at first.
Later, however, she came to appreciate it; it had made her feel closer to her husband and his work. And it enabled her to get subspace messages that much more quickly. Shaking her head, she inserted the tape into the player. It took a second or two before Jack’s message came up. “Hi, sweetheart. Life on the Stargazer is … how can I put it? Eventful. For the last couple of weeks we’ve been charting a couple of gas giants on a collision course in the Beta Expledar system. The theory was that if two of these gas giants come together with enough force, the resulting body will be heavy enough for its own gravity to instigate fusion-in other words, for the thing to become a star in its own right.
“Well, it’s no longer a theory. I wish you could have seen it. You can’t imagine the outpouring of light … the sheer magnitude of the spectacle … I know I’m not very good with words, but I think you get the idea. It was magnificent.
“On a more mundane note, I’ve made friends with my first Pandrilite-a fellow named Vigo, who’s in charge of the weapons around here. Don’t worry-he hasn’t had any chance to use them yet, and he probably never will. In any case, he’s trying to teach some of us this game called sharash di. I’ve never heard of it, but it looks interesting, and Vigo says I’ve got quite an aptitude for it. I think he means for a human-but I just might surprise him one day. “Fortunately, we’ve got a good group on the Stargazer. When you’re working in close quarters, that’s pretty important. You’ve been hearing about Jean-Luc for a long time, of course, but my respect for him grows each day. There can’t be a man alive better suited to head up a deep-space exploration. Ben Zoma’s another born leader
comthough he’s got a much more low-key approach. Sometimes I think he’d rather hear a good joke than eat. And then there’s-was Jack’s voice was drowned out by that of Jean-Luc Picard, coming over the Enterprise’s intercom system: “This is the captain. Once more we will be attempting to free ourselves from the subspace anomaly. The maneuver may take some time and involve a fair amount of turbulence; please take all necessary precautions.”
Reluctantly, Beverly switched off the tape mechanism and got to her feet. She would resume, she promised herself, once this “maneuver” was over.
Off duty or not, she wasn’t about to let sickbay get bounced around without being there to pick up the pieces. As Worf approached the brig, the two security officers faced him and straightened.