Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [16]
McCoy just nodded. “I don’t mind a good mystery, but this one’s a bit too much for my taste. The only medical problems listed in his record are things that happened to the whole crew, like the spores on Omicron Ceti III.”
“How could he come down with something this serious that affects no one else on the entire ship?” asked Chapel.
Doesn’t affect them yet. McCoy brushed the thought aside—no sense worrying about something that hadn’t happened. “There’s only one thing that stands out about him, and only in the context of a brain injury.” He was about to flip through the pages of medical data when the intraship squealed. Annoyed at the interruption, he jabbed the button. “Sickbay here.”
“Doctor, this is the bridge,” the voice of Lieutenant Uhura replied. “Lieutenant Sulu is taking the ship back up to warp speed.”
McCoy asked, “Could there be another of those space sandbars out there?”
“We’re proceeding forward at warp one,” said Uhura. “It’ll take a while to clear the zone of spatial distortion, but we should get through smoothly enough to avoid any ill effects.”
McCoy could hear the slight uncertainty in her voice. “Or at least that’s the theory, right?”
“Sulu decided it was the safest option. There are distortions both ahead and behind now.”
“What does the captain think of this plan?”
“There’s a lot of subspace interference, and I haven’t been able to punch through yet. Expect warp speed in another thirty seconds.”
“Well, good luck to Mister Sulu, then,” McCoy said as he flipped off the comm. “And to all of us.”
“You’re worried,” said Chapel.
“I’m always worried when one of my patients is dying from something I don’t know how to treat. And this time it’s even worse because we keep getting tossed about like a toy in a hyperactive child’s hands. Forward into unimaginable danger, that’s the Starfleet way.”
And your way, too, to be fair, even if for different reasons.
As if to mock him, the deck plates vibrated slightly, indicating that the ship had begun the transition to warp speed. All too aware of how the last warp jump had gone—McCoy’s back still hurt from the fall on the bridge—he gripped his desk as the ship accelerated…
And nothing happened.
“Well, that went better than last time,” he said, letting go—but slowly. “Maybe Sulu does know what he’s doing after all.”
Chapel gave him a disapproving look. “Doctor—”
“Yes, Nurse?” He wondered if she’d actually say it. He’d welcome it, certainly. Sometimes he needed someone to tell him to stop grumbling and get to work, and Jim wasn’t here to do that.
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s get back to Bouchard.”
“Right.” McCoy pulled back the monitor, retrieving the page he wanted. “Take a look at this.” He turned the screen around to show her.
“Aperception quotient of twenty over a hundred and one, and a Duke-Heidelburg score of two hundred sixty? He’s an esper.”
“Right. Overall ESP rating of eighty-seven.”
“I don’t have much experience with human telepathy.”
McCoy turned the screen back around. “According to the report, he’s not powerful enough to be reading anyone’s mind on a conscious level, but he can pick up on things. This says it was first noticed because of his skill at board games in school. Always knew what his opponents were going to do, but never quite why.”
“Good attribute for a phaser officer.”
The typical human was no more telepathic than your average rock, but extrasensory perception had been scientifically documented in human beings in the early twenty-first century, and the number of recorded human espers had risen steadily ever since. Even so, they were still fairly rare.
“Could that be it?” asked Chapel. “Have we come into contact with any psychic phenomena?”
“Not that the science section has noticed,” said McCoy. “Just these spatial distortions.” The deck hadn’t moved at all this time, thankfully. It looked