Summer of Love

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 1

The mini-bus wound its way through the streets of San Francisco as if it was unsure of its welcome. Dusty and faded, the van appeared derelict. Its undercarriage and failing shocks sagged under instruments, amps, a summer's worth of luggage, and the weight of six band members. It hesitated at a turning, stalled briefly, re-started with a back-fire and a puff of exhaust, then made its way laboriously up a hill, the motor hitching a bit. Finally with a burst of speed it accelerated through the signposts marking the campus entrance for StarFleet Academy.

"Wake up, Richard," Chad said, poking the unconscious drummer. "Spock's getting out here."

"Five more minutes," Richard muttered, his head turned into the side of the seat as if on a pillow.

The bus halted with a jerk and squeal of braking systems just before a checkpoint.

A Starfleet M.P. came over to the driver's side of the unorthodox vehicle. "Hey, you can't bring that thing in here."

"We're not parking," Drew Cobb politely said. The band's lead guitarist when he wasn't playing chauffer, he was their best spokesman. "We're just dropping someone off."

"Unless you have a visitor's pass, you aren't authorized. Appointments for tours are made—"

"Richard, would you wake up!" Chad said. "It's the attack of the toy soldiers here. And the natives are restless."

"I'm going to have to ask you to move this … this vehicle immediately," the M.P said, staring in outrage as the shabby van's motor hitched and belched more fumes.

"Keep your hair on," Finn McNeary, their bass player, riding shotgun in the copilot's seat complained. "We've got one of your own here. If you give us a minute-"

"I don't think that can be true," the M.P. said. "And you're blocking traffic. Please turn around, or pull aside and -"

"What's going on up there?" Captain Christopher Pike, resplendent in dress whites, stuck his head out of his aircar, first in line behind them.

"Sorry, sir," the M.P. said. "This vehicle is unauthorized. No transponder, no decal and we had to intercept –"

The side panel door of the van opened, and a figure dressed in jeans, a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a rock club, covered by a somewhat grubby sweatshirt, struggled clumsily past the semi-conscious and grumbling drummer. "I said five minutes," Richard growled, kicking out as Spock leapt over the drummer's flailing feet. He somehow managed to keep to his own as he half exited, half fell out of the vehicle.

"There's no unauthorized personnel – " the M.P. said.

"I am authorized," the former passenger claimed, as he was passed a duffle and an instrument case from various hands inside the vehicle. The bags and clothing, the air wafting from the van carried the sweet herbal tinge of euphorics. The M.P. snorted and waved at the smoke before his face, half bus exhaust, half something even more illegal.

"Fat chance," the M.P. said. "I ought to arrest you right now for-"

"I have a pass," Spock put a hand in his coat pocket, the jacket's hood inadvertently falling back. "I'm –"

"Spock?" Captain Christopher Pike came out of his aircar. "Is that you?"

Spock shrugged his duffle and lyre case over his shoulder and turned. His hair, tousled by the falling hood, fell back into perfect Vulcan lines. But three months since his last regulation Fleet haircut, it also fell into his eyes and over his ears. He blinked and shook the bangs away from obscuring his vision. "Yes, sir. Captain, sir."

"You know this-" the M.P. said in astonishment to the Captain.

Spock handed over his pass to the M.P. "Cadet Spock. Returning sophomore."

"What the hell?" Pike said. "What have you been doing all summer, Spock? And why?" He looked from the Vulcan's clothes to the shabby van, stacked with boxes and cases, and its non-regulation occupants.

"Well," Spock tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug, belatedly trying and failing to straighten clothes wrinkled from hours of travel in the cramped van into something of Fleet neatness. "I had to eat. Captain. Sir."

"Eat?" Pike said, dumbfounded.

"Eat, sir." Spock said, reasonable as only a Vulcan can be.

Horns blared behind the vehicle.

"Sir, please," the M.P. begged.

"He's clear," Pike said. His gaze focused back on the shabby van, "but these-"

"Colleagues of mine," Spock clarified.

"Colleagues?" Pike said, disbelieving.

"Friends," Spock added.

"Hey, Junior? Are you sure you want to play this gig?" Chad stuck his head out past the still comatose Richard. "This scene is a drag."

"Yes. Thank you for the transportation," Spock said, gesturing them to go. "But the M.P. is correct in that –"

"Hey, we're leaving," Drew said.

"Great summer, Spock," Finn added.

"You take care, Junior," Chad said, waving. "And keep cool baby. In spite of Captain Hard Lip here," he added. "We'll catch you later." He poked his seatmate. "Richard, wake up and say goodbye to Junior."

"Yeah, yeah," Richard muttered. "Later."

"Bye, Spock," Finn said, and Drew tooted the horn in salute.

The van wheeled around, and vanished in a puff of exhaust that left Pike and the M.P. choking. Even Spock coughed the noxious fumes out once before holding his breath until the air cleared.

"At attention," Pike snapped to him. "And I want an explanation, Cadet."

Spock frowned as if at a loss and belatedly straightened, looking straight ahead, Vulcan innocent, in spite of the hair, the clothes, the sweet scent of herbal euphorics. "An explanation, sir?"

"Sir, if you would-" the M.P. said. "There's a line forming. We have to clear-"

"Yes," Pike said. "Not here," he added to Spock. "My office, seventeen hundred hours. In uniform cadet. And with a haircut." He headed for his aircar.

"Yes, sir," Spock sighed, looking almost wistfully after the van now climbing in the sky toward the Los Angeles flight path.

"Junior?" Pike turned back, brows raised, still disbelieving.

Spock said nothing, merely returned his gaze to front and forward and stood at attention while Pike shook his head and made a placating gesture to the nervous M.P. He crossed to his vehicle, giving Spock one more skeptical glance before flying off.

"I wouldn't want to be in your shoes come seventeen hundred," the M.P. gloated in slow relish.

Spock's shoulders dropped in relief as Pike's vehicle disappeared. He then panned his gaze from the M.P.s feet to his own grubby sneakers. "They would not fit. Nor is my present attire regulation-"

"Get out of here," the M.P growled.

Spock shrugged, human style this time, and picked up his duffle and lyre case. He slowly headed off to his dorm, his clothes and hair still redolent of outgassed euphorics trailing behind him in the air, drawing more than one curious glance from the uniformed and bandbox neat cadets filling the walkways around him.

His summer of music, and of love, was fading fast behind him like San Francisco's morning fog burning off in mid-day sun.

But it had been a fascinating summer.

To be continued…