Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [56]
Spock brought the Hofstadter down in front of the squat building. There were items strewn all about, resembling crates and shipping containers. The building possessed semicircular entrances, but large enough for the shuttle to pass through. Spock sent Kologwe and Emalra’ehn outside to open one, and once they had, he moved the shuttle inside and shut it down. Scott immediately set to work on repairing the shuttle systems.
The landing party moved out in order to take stock of their temporary refuge. A few items of uncertain function littered the ground, as well as more of the containers they had seen outside. Kologwe and Emalra’ehn examined their shelter with flashlights and drawn phasers, the others with their tricorders. Having achieved a temporary reprieve, Spock turned his mind to their present situation. A check-in with the captain was due. Spock activated the shuttle’s communication systems and signaled the captain’s communicator.
No connection. During their last contact, Captain Kirk had reported that his landing party was about to enter an underground chamber, and Spock assumed that they must be out of range. He signaled the Columbus. Receiving no reply, he recorded a succinct report to be stored in the shuttle’s memory.
Outside, the storm continued to howl, fierce bouts of rain reverberating as they bounced off the roof of the structure. Spock restrained an emotional desire for the dry skies of his homeworld.
Finally, they’d caught up. McCoy ordered Chapel to rest, while the med techs moved out to check up on the people who were recovering in quarters.
The biggest problem still remained: What was causing the comas? If he applied himself to it, without interruption, the voices wouldn’t take over.
Vanishing your own inner demons isn’t really an admirable reason to practice medicine.
McCoy willed Jocelyn to shut up. But it was pointless—every time he began to think about anything, there was one of the voices, whispering in the corner of his mind. Part of him knew he should relieve himself of duty. With M’Benga off the ship, he was the only doctor.
And that’s not very much as it is.
The most recent addition to the list of perplexing facts was that the espers’ readings had taken a sudden dip around the same time the Enterprise had hit the last distortion. They’d risen slightly when the ship had pulled out of it, but not to where they’d been before. There had to be a connection between the distortions and the espers’ comas.
The medical computer was already poring over and analyzing every scrap of data on the comas. McCoy sat down at his office desk and called up every report the spatial physics lab had generated on the distortions and added that to the mix. Then he added in a treatment he’d thought of: shutting their brains’ higher functions down and letting the neural stimulators take over. While theoretically possible, it was exceedingly risky.
Depending on a machine to do your job for you? Very good medicine, son. I’m glad you got that MD so you could stare at a screen.
That was not what he intended to do!
If you were any good at what you were doing, his father continued, you’d have figured this out already. Should have been a general practitioner in Georgia, like me. Do what you’re somewhat good at, not what you have to fake your way through. No McCoy ever went into space until you had to run away from everything.
His father was right. All he’d ever wanted was to be was a doctor, but if he’d stayed on Earth, he’d have been too close to Jocelyn. Too close to everything—
“Making any progress?”
McCoy raised his head to see Chapel standing at the entrance to his office. Had she slept? How long had he sat here wallowing in doubt? “Not really,” he admitted. “No physical injuries, and if they’ve been infected by a virus or bacteria that somehow only affects espers, it’s nothing we can detect.”
“So it has to be the distortions.”
“That’s the logical conclusion, as a certain pointy-eared hobgoblin