McCoy paused at the table, and set down the beaker of blue liquid. He stared at it for a moment, as though it might begin to speak and answer the question for him. It didn't. He rubbed his eyes wearily and decided it was time for a coffee break.
He walked to the officer's lounge and found it uncharacteristically empty. The silence was pervasive, and made him nervous. The sound of the coffee as he stirred it, and slurped it, sounded hauntingly loud. He stepped out into the hallway, also quiet.
There had been a few times when the ship had been stilled like this; usually when the crew was sick with some virus, like the disease that brought on sudden aging, or quarantined as they had been with the space madness. McCoy chuckled at the memory of Sulu with a sword.
This was not one of those times.
The ship was quiet because she was in orbit around Vega III. The crew, all but a skeleton crew, was on shore leave.
He turned a corner on his way back to Sick Bay. He was supposed to be on leave, but had decided to stay behind. He said he'd had some work he needed to catch up on, but Kirk had seen right through that.
"You're not fooling me, Bones. You're just trying to avoid Spock."
"That's insane, Jim. Why on earth would I be trying to avoid Spock?" he had tried to laugh it off.
"I don't think I have to remind you," Kirk had given his trademark smirk, and then walked off to the transporter room.
McCoy sipped his coffee again and walked into sickbay. The blue beaker was still there, and if it could talk it might have asked McCoy where he had gone. He set his coffee down on the table and reached for a glass rod to stir the mixture again. He wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to accomplish, but whatever it was, it would keep him off the planet.
Some time alone in the quiet lab was just as good as shore leave anyway, he thought to himself.
He tapped the glass on the beaker to shake off the last drops of the blue liquid, and then reached for a heating element. As he did so, his arm struck the beaker and the coffee cup, tipping them both over.
"Dammit," he swore as the blue and brown swirled together and began to congeal into a muddy gelatin. He reached for a thick paper towel, and began to rub, but it was too late. The mixture had solidified completely to something that was similar to hard candy, yet brown and foul.
McCoy wetted the towel and rubbed at the rock-hard lump, and after awhile a layer had come off. He could see that he'd be scrubbing for awhile if he wanted to get it completely off his lab floor.
He straightened. "Well, I can't have them come back and see this here," he thought aloud. The cleaning staff was gone, too. Probably enjoying themselves at a cabaret somewhere, and in no mood to come back and clean up the mess McCoy had made.
McCoy surveyed the lab quickly. He spotted a wall decoration of antique scalpels. They were replicas, and standard issue decorations in starships. McCoy would never have chosen anything so gruesome for his office personally. He grinned, and went for the case. He broke it open and chose the shortest scalpel of the bunch.
Kneeling on the floor, he set the blade at the underside of the mess and tried to peel away the inch think layer of hard goo. The scalpel snapped in half at the strain, and the blade flew across the room, striking a string of test tubes on the far wall. Glass shattered and tinkled to the floor, with a few shards bravely clinging to the wall in the face of the increasingly angry McCoy.
"For the love of," he stormed to the wall and examined the new mess. Pinkish ooze dripped down the bulkhead, and collected on the lab table. Green foam was forming on the floor where some mild acid was slowly eating away at the metal.
Grabbing more towels, he wiped at the table and floor. Carefully avoiding the glass shards, he managed to clean up most of it with the exception of the floor. The floor had been visibly damaged, its usually smooth surface now roughened and dull by the acid wash. McCoy stood back and thought a moment.
He snapped his fingers and ran to his waiting room. He grabbed a large potted palm and began dragging it back to the lab. As he tugged, he couldn't help but hear the loud grating sounds on the deck. He catiously peeped out from behind the fronds, and his heart sank when he saw the large black marks being left on the deck by the plant.
"Too late now," he said angrily, and continued to drag the plant.
He got it into the lab, and set it over the damaged floor. The plant looked markedly out of place, but it hid the acid stain very well. He shrugged and then turned to the hallway that had been streaked in black mud and pottery scratches.
He grabbed the box of towels and wetted a handful. He wiped up the mud, but his uniform was increasingly muddy and stained in sweat.
"Should have gone down for shore leave," he panted, thinking that this was a lesson not to let his pride get in the way of a vacation.
He finished cleaning the mud, and then went back to the lab. That potted palm looks ridiculous, McCoy thought unhappily. Someone is going to say something.
He then turned to the original mess. He paused. It looked bigger than it had before. He kneeled down and reached for the broken scalpel. He couldn't pick it up. An edge of the brown goo had seeped over the scalpel end, sealing it to the floor.
"Don't you dare get sentient on me!" he pointed to the brown goo. He sat back on his heels and sighed. He had to admit that he was finally in over his head.
He stood up and walked slowly to his office. He touched the comm panel. "McCoy to Bridge."
"Bridge here, Lieutenant Davis speaking."
"This is McCoy. Get me Captain Kirk on the surface, please."