By the Book (12 page)

In the meantime, Dr. Phlox has informed me that he can find nothing physically wrong with Crewman Edwards. I plan on being in sickbay when Edwards wakes up. There are a number of questions I want to ask him about those aliens and how they managed to get so close to him on the surface.

Archer stood beside Crewman Jamal Edwards' biobed. The bright lights in sickbay made the crewman's toffee-colored skin look sallow, or perhaps it was the effect of whatever had happened to him.

Sickbay itself stank of rotted fish, a smell so strong that Archer thought of asking for a breathing mask. Phlox had adjusted the environmental controls to clear out the odor, but it wasn't working as well as it was supposed to. Archer was sure the smell wasn't going to help Edwards recover.

"I am cleansing the air, but it will take a few minutes," Phlox said in his curiously cheerful singsong voice. Even when he was being serious, he sounded a little too cheerful. Hoshi had once explained to Archer that Phlox's cheerful tone came from the fact that his voice rose at the end of a sentence instead of lowered. That, she said, was an auditory clue toward good spirits, one that wasn't true of all species.

The implied cheerfulness had taken some getting used to, and Archer still noticed it in moments of crisis.

"Those things stink," Archer said, nodding toward the alien. It looked like a dead beetle, on its back on two biobeds as far from Edwards as possible. The carapace didn't bend, so Phlox had to put a second biobed near the first just to accommodate the creature's size.

Its legs hung awkwardly at its sides and trailed along the floor, leaving a slime path every time they moved. The slime was a brown mucus color and made Archer wince.

What was even worse was the creature's face. The face hadn't been visible until the security guards had deposited the creature onto the biobed. When it was on its carapace like this, its mouth became visible. Once Archer had seen the mouth, he located the eyes, which appeared to be the same black as the carapace.

The mouth was what disgusted him, though. It was filled with wormlike larvae attached on both the upper and lower lips where teeth should be. The mouth seemed to bother the two security guards as well, because Archer caught them taking peeks at it when they thought he wasn't looking.

He returned his attention to Edwards. There were no marks on Edwards' body, no open sores or wounds. If he had viewed the video from the surface correctly, Edwards had started screaming before the alien reached him.

Perhaps these aliens were like skunks, throwing off a stench that stung as well as reeked. But the smell wasn't as strong here as it was near that alien. Unfortunately, Archer knew that from personal experience.

Even though Edwards was unconscious, he still seemed agitated. His eyes were moving back and forth under his lids. When Phlox saw that, he restrained Edwards. Phlox said patients who were so upset when they rested often awoke agitated and hurt themselves before anyone could help them. Prevention, Phlox had said, was the better part of valor.

At some point, Archer would explain to Phlox that he shouldn't mix his clichés.

But not now. Levity seemed inappropriate at the moment. Archer had no idea how a simple mission to retrieve a sample had gone so very wrong.

Phlox walked away from the environmental controls and joined Archer beside Edwards.

"Not good," Phlox said.

"What's wrong with him?" Archer asked. "Besides having been surrounded by a bunch of those guys and being stunned with a plasma pistol."

"He's still agitated," Phlox said, "and he shouldn't be, considering how deeply unconscious he is. I had him hooked up to a brain monitor that is supposed to be fairly accurate for humans and it gave me readings I'm not sure I understand."

"That's why you called me here?" Archer asked.

"I called you here because I'm going to rouse him," Phlox said. "Who knows what will happen next."

Archer didn't like the sound of that at all. "Shouldn't you keep him sedated? Let him rest?"

"No," Phlox said, injecting Edwards with a blue liquid. "We both need information and at the moment letting him awaken is the best way to get it."

Archer just stared at Edwards. If the doctor thought this was best, then letting Edwards wake up would be the course of action.

The alien hadn't moved. It wasn't even twitching. If Phlox hadn't told him it was alive, Archer would have thought it was dead.

He only hoped Edwards didn't see it.

Edwards strained against his restraints, then moaned, twisting his head back and forth a few times. He sounded and looked as if he was in pain, as if something was chasing him.

Phlox moved to check a reading on a panel beside Edwards, shaking his head as he did so.

Edwards' eyes snapped open wide, staring at something unseen above him. And then he screamed.

It was not the scream of a solid, young man who had a life ahead of him. This was a pure, deep scream of terror that sent shivers down Archer's back.

Archer moved closer to Edwards to try to reassure him, but Dr. Phlox held up his hand, signaling Archer to stay put.

Edwards took another long breath and then screamed again, fighting hard against his restraints, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. Something was terrifying this young man deep in his soul.

"Edwards!" Archer said, his voice firm with command. "Crewman Edwards, this is the captain."

Archer's words did nothing. Edwards kept thrashing against his restraints, staring at the ceiling, and screaming.

Finally Dr. Phlox injected Edwards again and almost instantly the strain in the young man's body eased. He stopped fighting. His eyes blinked, then closed. And from his still-open mouth came a sigh.

"Well, that worked," Archer said. "I'm now much clearer on what happened."

Phlox was still looking at the readings. "You got no answers, but I did. Give me some time to make sure of my findings."

"Report as soon as you can," Archer said. "I need to know what happened to him."

"I know. I have the same curiosity."

Archer nodded at the alien. "Should he be restrained as well?"

"I'm not sure it is a 'he,' " Phlox said. "I'm not certain these creatures have gender divisions. I've seen no indication one way or another, although I must admit, I haven't had a lot of time to study its physiology."

"Whatever it is," Archer said, determined not to be sidetracked, "should we restrain it?"

"No." Phlox sounded confident. "With two armed guards, it isn't going anywhere. And, from what I can tell, that creature won't come around for some time."

"You can't even tell if it's male or female," Archer said. "How can you figure out its level of consciousness?"

Phlox gave Archer a grin. "Some things are easier to determine than others."

Archer shook his head. "Okay. I'll trust you on this one. But I want to be here when that thing wakes up."

"I'll notify you as soon as it twitches."

"Thanks," Archer said.

With one more look at the slack-jawed Edwards, Archer turned and headed for the bridge. Everyone on this ship knew this mission was dangerous. But he didn't want to lose anyone just because he was in a hurry to have a first contact.

He didn't tolerate carelessness in his subordinates. He certainly didn't tolerate it in himself.

Captain's log.

I've taken the best and the brightest to be the Enterprise crew. People who've withstood Starfleet training and rigors that would make the average person cry. Psychological testing that bordered on inhumane and risk-aversion studies that seemed to go on forever.

Not all of my crew scored in the top ten percent of those tests, but the ones who didn't usually had a specialized skill that I couldn't do without.

Jamal Edwards, as valuable a crewman as he is, wasn't chosen for his special skills. He was chosen for his courage, his ability to take risks, his personal strength.

The fact that a man like that could be reduced to this in a matter of seconds baffles me. I have never seen such terror in a person's eyes. It was as if he was being chased through the very depths of hell.

I can barely wait for the results of Dr. Phlox's tests. I want the answers now. The damned impatience is rearing its ugly head again.

I'd been so patient waiting to get to space and now that we're here, I want to do everything at once. But I don't want to risk my crew, and that seems to be what I'm doing.

I have no idea how this has come about. The mission was a simple one. Nothing should have happened.

The alien from the southern continent that we inadvertently captured is still unconscious and I honestly have no idea what to do with it. I'm half tempted to just put it on the transporter pad and beam it back to the surface and pretend nothing happened. So far I have resisted the temptation.

I'm hoping that we'll learn something through this alien or about this alien that will help us. I'm not sure what that something will be.

Oddly enough, what bothers me the most is not what happened to Edwards, but my last conversation with the Fazi. In hindsight, the conversation feels like another warning that I should have heeded.

That conversation ended when I mentioned the other race. There's a connection between the Fazi's reaction and what happened to Edwards. I know it, deep in my bones, but I also know that this feeling is a hunch, a hunch that-at the moment-doesn't seem to be based on any concrete evidence.

I'm tempted to contact the Fazi again, but I won't. Not until I know exactly what went wrong in that last conversation. I'm not going to operate on the assumption that the Fazi were offended by my mention of the other race only to learn later that they found my head movement inappropriate.

I have T'Pol and Ensign Hoshi working as hard as they can searching through the Fazi history and language to see if they can discover anything. So far they are both very disturbed at the fact that to the Fazi, neither the southern continent nor the aliens living there exist.

T'Pol even managed to get a map from a Fazi library database and there was no southern continent on it. This is either the worst case of mass denial I could have ever imagined, or there is something far stranger happening on this planet.

It seemed like the entire ship smelled faintly of rotting fish. The odor had clung to everything since Elizabeth Cutler had returned from the planet the day before. The smell even followed her to the mess. Last night, she hadn't been able to eat dinner-no surprise, Mayweather had said, given what had happened on the planet.

He seemed calmer about it than she was, but she knew that was an act. When she'd seen him in the mess this morning, he'd had shadows under his eyes, and she could tell he'd slept as well as she had, which was hardly at all.

The entire day had been very frustrating. She had asked both Dr. Phlox and the captain if she could visit Edwards, and they'd both refused. Neither would say what was wrong with him. She had a hunch they didn't know.

What had happened in those moments on the planet? Was it something she and Mayweather could have prevented?

Those questions had been going through her mind ever since she got back. They even interrupted her work during her duty shift. She had been studying the bits of the building she'd brought back, trying to determine how creatures built like spiders made buildings that looked like igloos.

So far she had had no luck.

After dinner, she had planned to go back to her station to look up information on spiders of all types, but her immediate commander had forbidden it.

"Elizabeth," she had said, "you look exhausted. The best thing you can do is take your mind off everything, and rest."

But she couldn't rest, and her mind was working overtime. So when Novakovich, somewhat oblivious of the events of the past two days (he'd been out of touch since he was placed on light duty), asked if they were playing the game that night, she said she would if everyone else wanted to.

Apparently they did. Anderson had shown up for dinner, but Mayweather hadn't. He had come into the mess as most of their shift's members were finishing their meals, taken a chocolate-chip cookie from the plate left beside the coffee, and hadn't even touched that.

"You have to eat," she had said to him quietly.

He'd given her a small smile. "I know," he said. "I will. Maybe after the game."

Maybe. Just like she might sleep after the game. They had gone through this routine before, after the last away mission they'd been on together, the one where Novakovich had gotten hurt. Cutler had barely slept for three days upon their return and Mayweather had hardly eaten. Both of them had consulted Dr. Phlox, who hadn't seemed too upset by it.

"You're processing," he said. "We all process differently and sometimes that means that something else will lose significance while the brain is full of new matters it must assess. What you need to do is find diversions-not that this ship has many of them. Healthy diversions. I would suggest a hobby of some sort, whatever interests you and has nothing to do with your work."

In some ways, the role-playing game had nothing to do with work, but in other ways, it mirrored work too closely. Cutler spread the towel on the table that Anderson had just cleared. At least she wasn't "exploring" Mars. At least she was designing it. That was different enough.

Mayweather had put his coffee and his cookie on a nearby table. Novakovich already had his padd out. His skin was looking better today, less inflamed. He seemed calmer too, and Cutler couldn't help wondering if it was because of Edwards. Now Novakovich wasn't the only one who had had trouble on an away mission and a bad transporter experience. Now he could share that experience with Edwards.

If Edwards ever got better.

Anderson came back to the table and grabbed his padd. Cutler was surprised that even with all the activity going on, and the alien in sickbay, the four of them could find time to continue the game. It seemed the ship, at least for the moment, had settled back into a routine as the crew searched for information about this planet and the two races.