Three - Michael Jan Friedman [9]
“That’s good to hear,” said the weapons chief.
Idun’s warning turned out to be a timely one. The shuttle began to bounce as if it were hitting one solid object after another. It went on like that for a minute or so, jolt after jolt. Then the ride began to flatten out.
By that time, they were diving through the bottom of the cloud layer and heading for the barely visible northernmost continent, a massive spiral with a spine of high mountains that boasted one of the few patches of fertile green on the entire globe. Idun made a small course adjustment and pulled the shuttle toward the innermost part of the spiral.
[22] Vigo watched as the clouds thinned and then fled altogether, leaving him with an unobscured view of his destination. That was when he caught sight of it—the dark, U-shaped building where some of the Federation’s greatest engineering minds labored to improve Starfleet’s existing array of tactical options.
And one of those minds belonged to Ejanix. It was hard for Vigo to believe—and not because Ejanix’s brilliance had ever been the least bit in question. It was simply that university instructors on a world like Pandril seldom rose to interstellar prominence.
Vigo laughed softly to himself. Not seldom, he thought. Never.
Idun glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Did you say something?” she asked.
“No,” the weapons chief replied. “Nothing. I was just thinking of something humorous.”
Humorous indeed, he added silently. The first time he met Ejanix, he had been a university student and Ejanix a fledgling instructor. It was clear to Vigo from the first day of school that his new teacher was someone special—someone brighter and more dedicated than his colleagues.
But no matter how bright Ejanix might have been, no matter how dedicated, no one had expected him to receive an invitation to teach on Earth.
Nonetheless, that is what happened. A man named Onotoyo, who was retiring as Starfleet Academy’s tactical-engineering expert, was asked to make a list of recommendations as to his replacement.
He gave only one name—that of a university teacher on Pandril who had published a monograph on cutting [23] recharge times in phaser batteries. Before Ejanix knew it, he was being wined and dined by the head of the Academy, who entreated him to move to San Francisco and become a member of the most prestigious faculty in the Federation.
Of course, Vigo reflected, the Vulcans might have taken exception to that honorific. In any case, Ejanix accepted the position—which put him in a position to instruct Vigo a second time when Vigo was accepted into the Academy.
And no educator was ever happier to see a former student. Ejanix was waiting for Vigo in his dormitory room when he arrived, defying any number of unwritten rules against professor-student fraternization. And he stayed there for hours, discussing everything from the deficiencies of Niagara-class propulsion systems to his travails in trying to replicate traditional Pandrilite delicacies.
Had Ejanix been less prized by the Academy, he might have been reprimanded. As it was, the institution seemed willing to look the other way.
In later years, Vigo came to understand the intensity of Ejanix’s friendship. Vigo himself had always wanted to join Starfleet and see the galaxy. He had looked outward to the stars, seeing his future there.
Ejanix, on the other hand, had only aspired to be a university instructor. He hadn’t ever envisioned a time when he might leave Pandril and live on some other world. As a result, he wasn’t prepared for the loneliness, the cultural isolation, the lack of the familiar in everyday existence.
So when Vigo showed up at the Academy—not just a fellow Pandrilite but someone Ejanix had actually [24] known and taught—Ejanix latched on to him the way a drowning man might latch on to a buoyant kyerota sac.
Over the years Vigo spent at the Academy, the urgency of Ejanix’s need for companionship diminished. But at the same time, the two Pandrilites