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“Doctor, I was wondering if you could give me some advice.”

“Advice?”

“You’ve, um, helped out others before, and I was hoping you could do the same for me.”

“You’ll have to tell me what this is about first.”

Kelowitz avoided looking directly at him. “It’s personal. You see, I’ve been working with Mister DeSalle recently, and—He’s kind of—”

McCoy was beginning to get a pretty clear idea of what the young man was really here for. “Lieutenant, I’m just the ship’s doctor…”

“Um… sorry, sir. But Demick told me that Brent told her that you told him that when he—”

McCoy breathed in deeply. Clifford Brent, one of his med techs, had landed a secondary assignment on the bridge, and the doctor had given him advice on how to handle the senior staff, especially Spock. The thought that his advice was a sought-after commodity evaporated his bad mood. McCoy stood up and sat on the desk, adopting a casual air. “Okay, tell me what the problem is.”

Ten minutes later, McCoy had sent Kelowitz on his way, no longer fidgeting. Chapel gave him an amused look as he emerged from his office. “What was that about?”

McCoy shook his head. “Just a young man needing some advice.” He looked at the tray of tri-ox cartridges in front of him, waiting to be sorted, and just like that, his bad mood was back. He could use some advice.

Hoping to keep his mind from lingering on painful thoughts, he started counting off cartridges, but lost track in the low twenties. He grumbled, “Why do I have to be stuck here while Kirk and Spock are having fun? M’Benga should be here, and I should be there.”

Chapel had put up with his complaining the past few days, but this time she surprised him. “So you’ve said repeatedly, Doctor.” Her gentle tone didn’t quite cover her annoyance.

McCoy snorted and restarted his counting.

“What’s the matter, Doctor?” asked Chapel at last.

He lost track in the upper fifties this time. “Dammit, Christine! I was almost done!”

“Sorry, Doctor.” She turned her attention back to her slate.

“Nothing’s the matter.” He was unable to stop himself. “Why should something be the matter? I like counting tri-ox capsules and supervising cargo transfers and being trapped on a boring starship on a boring mission while Kirk and Spock gallivant around the galaxy.”

Chapel didn’t look up, but even so, McCoy realized that maybe he was going a little too far. His volatile nature was sometimes difficult to manage, especially when he felt he was doing work that didn’t make use of his experience. Well, Chapel had taken worse from him before; she was certainly used to his occasional dark moods.

McCoy reached for the first tri-ox capsule, to start yet again, when the deck under his feet moved abruptly and he was knocked forward. In an instant, the lights went out and all the displays shut off. His hand hit something large and flat, which shot away and crashed onto the floor—it must’ve been the tray.

“What—” Chapel began, but she cut herself off when the lights all whirred back to life. No sooner had McCoy regained his bearings than he felt the deck shift again. Nowhere near as badly as the first time, but longer. What in blazes was going on?

“I’ll check the situation monitor,” he said, heading back to his office. The deck moved underneath him yet again. The doctor almost fell, but he made it to his computer. Nothing. Even intraship was down.

He returned to Chapel, who was preparing for casualties. Their first one came in barely a minute after the mysterious incident: Jacobs, a security guard, whose limp indicated to the doctor that he’d twisted his ankle.

McCoy hated being left in the dark. With Jim in command, he was accustomed to barging up onto the bridge whether he was needed or not, but with Lieutenant Sulu?

To hell with it. “Can you handle things, Nurse?”

She already had the hobbling Jacobs on one of the beds, and she nodded at McCoy, who headed out. Even though she’d never admit it, Christine was probably glad to get rid of him.

When Pavel Chekov was a teenager, he had been fascinated by the massive raised highways