She seated herself, crossing her legs. The doctor carefully pa.s.sed the cellular regenerator over arms and chest, down to her legs. "You'll need to get one cellular regeneration treatment a day for the next few days."

"Thank you, Doctor," she said.

McCoy chatted with Commander Teral for a few more minutes, asking about her work. But Kelley was waiting patiently near the door, and he had patients waiting for him in sickbay, so he cut their conversation short.

As McCoy hurried through the corridor, heading back to sickbay, he ran into Captain Kirk.

"You look cheerful, Doctor," Kirk said abruptly. "I thought you had an emergency situation down here."

"Uh, we do. That is, I just came from seeing Commander Teral," McCoy explained lamely. "She's traveled the galaxy, you know. The stories she tells ..."

"Oh, really?" Kirk responded. "She seemed rather severe to me. I take it you didn't find anything in the scan."

McCoy shook his head. "No, nothing unusual. She has a mild form of radiation sickness, rash, some nausea. It could be worse."

As they neared sickbay, the situation became apparent. Several patients were waiting in the halls, and only one was still standing, hunched over. The others were sitting or lying on the deck.

McCoy felt a pang of remorse for staying away so long. He had been talking with Commander Teral while all these people needed his help.

He helped Specialist Trey into the examining room, so he could sit on a mat along the wall. Trey immediately lay down, groaning.

Kirk was holding up Lieutenant Marley from the science lab. Her knees were buckling, but she was trying to walk. As he helped her sit down, Kirk told McCoy, "Spock says the Enterprise was. .h.i.t by multiflux gamma radiation."

"Multiflux gamma radiation?" McCoy repeated incredulously.

Kirk slowly straightened up, looking at the full room and listening to the sounds of people moaning in the next wardroom. He asked, "Isn't there anything you can do to help these people, Doctor?"

"I'm trying!" McCoy irritably took the padd Nurse Chapel was holding out to him, and checked the number of people who had arrived since he'd left. The medical staff was commandeering the nearby quarters to bed down all the casualties. Nurse Chapel was already directing a medical tech nician to take the overflow patients to the temporary wards.

"How many crew members are ill now?" Kirk asked.

"Forty-two. It comes on with hardly any warning."

McCoy rapidly accessed the medical database and ran through the recommended procedures for gamma radiation exposure. There was no mention of multiflux gamma radiation except as a theoretical phenomenon. "There's nothing I can do but give them cysteamine to reduce the biological effects of the irradiation. And perform regeneration and DNA rese-quencing."

"Spock has filed his preliminary a.n.a.lysis," Kirk said. "Perhaps that has additional information."

McCoy accessed the science report and compared the information to the patient data that had been gathered. "Exposure must have been at least 30 kilovolts to cause this amount of damage. The first casualties came from the ship's perimeter, but they weren't the worst cases. I've seen crew members from every section on the ship, including the bridge."

Kirk glanced up sharply. "Who?"

"Chekov." McCoy gestured with his head. "He's lying down inside."

Kirk paced over to the door, glancing into the darkened room. "Chekov..."

McCoy joined him, his voice low and urgent, "Jim, I don't think we're dealing with gamma radiationat least, not just gamma radiation. The length of onset time, the severity of the symptoms, even the dispersal pattern doesn't fit typical gamma particle reaction. I need to know more. Gamma decay is usually the product of other types of radioactivity. So what was the source? And what put the radiation into a state of subs.p.a.ce flux?"

Kirk considered it, then hit his comm badge. "Scotty, do we have impulse power?"

"Aye, sir, just getting impulse engines back on-line now."

"Very good." Kirk relaxed, as if he was glad to finally have something go right.

McCoy stood nearby as the captain signaled Spock on the bridge to proceed with the salvage of Romulan wreckage. 'Try to stay within the sensor shadow of the Badlands. And send anything you discover to Dr. McCoy," Kirk ordered.

"Aye, Captain," Spock acknowledged.

"Kirk out."

After overhearing their terse exchange, McCoy was ready for Kirk's next question. "Bones, when will the injured crew members be back on duty?"

"With exposure to gamma radiation, up to 60 percent of the acute symptoms disappear within several hours. Some of these people may be up and around by evening shift." McCoy frowned at the data graph that the medical diagnostic had computed. "But from what I can tell, it could take as much as a day or two for them to fully recover. And the worst cases will need regular regeneration treatments for several weeks."

"Do whatever you can, Bones."

"I will, Jim." McCoy felt a familiar sinking feeling, the kind he got when he was faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem. "I'm not going to sit around and wait for Spock to pick through that wreckage. I'll start a reverse spectral a.n.a.lysis of these blood samplesthat could tell us something...."

Yeoman Harrison tightened her arm around her stomach. She stumbled the last few feet through the door. The effort of getting to sickbay without pa.s.sing out had caused sweat to break out on the back of her neck.

She had started to feel ill in the communications lab, while preparing the logs for dispatch to Starfleet Command. There had been an urgency in her work after seeing one colleague after another fall sick, she felt as if a strange plague had struck the Enterprise. She fought the first waves of nausea. She tried to ignore the p.r.i.c.kly heat rising in the skin on her arms.

And when she finally fled to sickbay, walking had been excruciating. Every step jolted her head and stomach.

She braced herself against the desk. The examination room was filled with people, but no one noticed her at first. She tried to catch her breath to call to Nurse Chapel, a distant blurry figure in blue.

Then she saw Captain Kirk standing with Dr. McCoy in the door to the wardroom. Kirk's expression was strained, and he was saying, "Do the best you can, Bones. I need to repair the ship, and a third of my crew are flat on their backs!"

Harrison's first instinct was to flee. She couldn't let him see her like this. She couldn't bear to let him down. The nausea wasn't that bad, and she had ointment she could put on the rash that was reddening her chest and neck.

Swaying, she tried to get away before they saw her. But Nurse Chapel called out her name.

A wave of dizziness. .h.i.t her, and Harrison couldn't see for a moment. She felt Chapel steadying her, rea.s.suring her, "You'll be all right, dear."

Then she felt stronger arms take hold of her, holding her up. "Yeoman, you're sick," Captain Kirk said.

Adrenaline made her stand up straighter, and she forced herself to look him in the eye. "It's not too bad, sir. Just give me a hypospray and I can get back to work."

From somewhere behind her, Dr. McCoy said, "Put her here."

Kirk guided her to a medical bed. She wished her legs didn't feel so wobbly. She also shook with frustration at appearing so weak in front of the captain. It had taken her many long months to gain his respect, and she intended to keep it.

She took slow, regular breaths, closing her eyes as she lay back and let Dr. McCoy perform his examination. Her pulse beat was fast, too fast, and she knew she had to get herself under control.

By the time she opened her eyes, the captain was standing next to the bed. She tried to offer him a rea.s.suring smile. Maybe it was because she was lying down, but she was starting to feel better already. She tried to sit up.

"Stay still," McCoy ordered. He expertly filled and administered a hypospray. She felt it going in, but nothing noticeable after that.

"You'll have to get some rest," McCoy told her. His hand fumbled with the cellular regenerator as he ran it over her shoulder and down to her fingertips. The rash was maddening, itchy and burning at the same time. She couldn't bear to touch it, but the compulsion was almost too strong to withstand. Her fingers twitched next to her thigh.

Kirk watched as the doctor pa.s.sed the regenerator up the outside of her leg, carefully following the contours of her calf and thigh all the way up to her short uniform skirt. She was watching his face, and for a moment his eyes met hers.

"Well, it looks like you're in good hands," Kirk said suddenly. "I'll leave you in the doctor's care."

"Uh ... yes ...," Dr. McCoy replied vaguely.

The captain didn't see McCoy sway because he was already heading toward the door. The doctor braced himself for a moment against the bed, and the regenerator b.u.mped into her.

"Doctor?" she asked.

He slumped forward, supporting himself with his arms. "Sa'right..."

She lifted up on her elbow, trying to brace him. "Doctor, what's wrong?" Her voice raised, "Captain! Something's wrong with Dr. McCoy."

Kirk rushed back in time to catch Dr. McCoy and keep him from falling. "Bones!"

Harrison slid off the bed, helping Kirk pull the doctor onto it in her place. Beads of sweat were forming on McCoy's forehead, and his head moved back and forth slightly. She recognized that utter preoccupation. He was feeling so dizzy he didn't know which way was up and which way was down.

Nurse Chapel ran over with a hypospray. Kirk bent over McCoy, showing far more overt concern than he had shown toward her. But then again, she had been feeling like McCoy was now, blinded with nausea and unable to see anything, when Kirk had helped her to bed, The room reeled and she closed her eyes. Here it comes again, she thought. Her stomach clenched. She thought she was going to die.

"You'd better sit down," Kirk told her. He was supporting her elbow again, helping her to sit on the deck of sickbay. She knew her skirt had shifted absurdly nigh, out she almost didn't care.

Curling her legs underneath her, she bent far over, bracing herself with her hands, trying to keep from pa.s.sing out. With every ounce of strength, she raised her head to blink up at the captain. "I'm sorry, sir."

"It's all right, Yeoman," Kirk said gently.

He couldn't blame her or McCoy. They both looked as if they had been dragged through a conduit during a coolant leak. The yeoman's grooming was usually impeccable, uniform neat and hair meticulously tended. Now she looked disheveledand very, very ill.

Nurse Chapel began pa.s.sing the regenerator over McCoy's face, which was turning bright red. "Look at bis arms, too," she said, pushing up his sleeve.

Kirk noticed that her hand was shaking as she held the regenerator. He gave Chapel what he hoped pa.s.sed for a rea.s.suring smile. "We'll get through this."

McCoy was muttering something about "getting to work on that reverse spectral a.n.a.lysis."

"You're staying right there," Kirk told him. Not that it looked as if Dr. McCoy or Yeoman Harrison were in any shape to defy him. The doctor had said a few hours would see them over the worst of it. Kirk hoped he was right Otherwise they would be left with no functional crew at all.

They had to complete their mission. If they just could find proof that Commander Teral carried the information on the plasma beam weaponthen they could leave the Badlands, even if only at impulse power....

Suddenly the red alert klaxons went off with a penetrating sound that cut through everything else.

"Captain Kirk, to the bridge please."

Kirk moved away from McCoy's bed. "This is Kirk. Report."

Spock's voice came on line. "/ have a vessel on long-range scanners, sir."

"What kind of ship is it, Mister Spock?"

"Sir, according to the remote sensor relay, it is a Klingon battlecruiser."

Chapter Five.

Kirk stepped onto the bridge and went straight to the captain's chair. Spock slipped out of the seat to stand next to him. Kirk noted that Lieutenant Meghann was at the helm, Mister Chekov's usual station.

"Status report, " Kirk ordered.

Spock faced the viewscreen. "A Klingon D7-type battlecruiser is advancing toward the Badlands at warp 7, Captain."

"Have they seen us?" Kirk asked.

"Negative, sir. The Enterprise has remained within the sensor shadow of the Badlands."

Kirk leaned closer to Spock. "Did you find anything in Commander Teral's ship?"

"No additional storage s.p.a.ces have been detected," Spock said. "However, the diagnostic is not yet complete."

Kirk dismissed Spock to his station. "Put the Klingon battlecruiser on screen."

"Switching to visual," Sulu confirmed.

The starfield shifted, but there was no sign of the ship.

"Go to full magnification," Kirk ordered.

"Full magnification," Sulu confirmed.

"There she is," muttered Meghann at the helm.

The bulbous nose of the green battlecruiser swept through s.p.a.ce. Kirk felt a tingling in the back of his neck. The Klingon vessel was moving with stealthy speed, straight towards them.

Scotty was staring up at the screen, distracted from his a.n.a.lysis of the dilithium crystals. Unable to restrain himself any longer, he exclaimed, "But Captain, it can't be the Klingons! Not hi this part of s.p.a.ce."

Kirk silently agreed. Klingon territory was on the other side of the Federation, curving to meet the opposite end of Romulan s.p.a.ce. Yet Kirk hoped it was Klingons, however unlikely that might be, because the alternative would be worse. Romulans had recently acquired Klingon-design battle cruisers, incorporating their own cloaking technology into the deflector shields.

If that was a Romulan ship on an intercept course, it would be very difficult for him to explain why the sector was full of pieces of an exploded Romulan bird-of-prey. Or why a Romulan cruiser was in their shuttlebay.

"Ready phasers," Kirk ordered.

"Aye, Captain, all banks ready," Scotty acknowledged.

Shields had automatically been raised when they went to red alert. But without warp drive, they couldn't escape.

They waited as the battlecruiser rapidly closed with the plasma storms. It slowed to warp 3 as it approached the sensor shadow. Like the Enterprise, it finally had to drop out of warp because of the ion interference from the plasma.