Spock

An erratic breeze lifted some of the oppressive heat as evening descended upon them. Spock watched Kirk's face intently, because an experiment was about to begin. Not entirely ethical in that it did not involve informed consent or carefully controlled variables, but Spock was a third party, and not responsible for the parameters.

Sure enough, the symptoms were making themselves known. Kirk's eyes were glazing over as he stared into the darkening forest beyond the ring of firelight.

"Captain?" Spock received no response. "Captain? Is something wrong?"

Kirk blinked and shook his head. He looked at Spock briefly and fixed his gaze on the fire, his expression troubled. "I don't know."

Spock shifted to a more alert posture. The pheromones were no doubt released by now, and this was his opportunity to observe the full process of attraction. "Elaborate."

"I just feel like… I feel like there's something…" Suddenly Kirk's entire body tensed, and his eyes widened in horror. "No."

In that instant Spock realized something was different, something was wrong, and three things occurred within the span of as many seconds. The faint breeze shifted directions, Kirk clambered to his feet and started stumbling into the darkness, and Spock dove toward him. Fortunately Kirk was still too weak to move with any real speed, and Spock caught him well before he could duck out of sight.

Kirk let out a strange, animalistic whine and fought Spock's grip as he dragged the captain back toward the fire. Spock quickly determined that Kirk was thrashing about not with intent to injure, but rather to free himself of whatever irrelevant burden was holding him back. Spock ignored the flailing blows, none of which were strong enough to deter him. Nonetheless, the fierceness of it all was highly concerning.

Then Kirk regained enough of himself that he found his voice, and he started rambling senselessly. "Let me go, you have to let me go, I'll die if I don't, get off me!" He twisted against Spock in such a violent and desperate way that Spock almost lost his balance.

There was a faint popping sound, and Kirk cried out, his legs crumpling beneath him. When Spock tried to hold him up, he howled in pain, and Spock could no longer feel resistance in his right arm. He lowered Kirk to the ground as quickly as possible and tried to keep him still with one hand while he probed the arm with the other. Nothing seemed to be wrong until he reached the shoulder, where he discovered the humerus had separated from the scapula.

Kirk was still struggling to escape, shouting pleas and obscenities and invoking the chain of command. He would have crawled away onto his stomach if Spock hadn't been holding him.

"Captain, you must remain still. Your shoulder is dislocated."

"Let me go! I have to go!"

Spock wished briefly for the sedative hyposprays that were several meters away, and settled for the next best thing. He pressed his knees into Kirk's back to pin him in place and closed his hand around the base of the uninjured shoulder. Kirk slipped into unconsciousness, and Spock slumped onto the ground beside him.

He permitted himself an almost objectionable five point three seconds to sort through these results before he addressed a more immediate concern. He carefully bent Kirk's right arm and rotated it inward and outward until the joint popped back into the correct position, grateful the captain was not aware for the procedure.

His hypothesis was flawed. He had not anticipated such a violent outcome. He assumed he could extrapolate from existing data, that the captain's only reaction would be the same vague compulsion he witnessed before.

This was not so simple. This was an addiction, consuming and insidious, more potent than anything Spock had encountered. Progressive also, if Lombard and Phillips were any indication. With sufficient exposure, organisms with the right biochemistry fell under the influence of the plant so completely they cared about nothing else.

Kirk started to tremble despite being neurally knocked out, and his face shone with sweat. Spock carried him back to their crude shelter and placed him inside. He identified the classic symptoms of withdrawal and treated them as best he could with their remaining hyposprays, which had little noticeable impact.

The stars began to appear, forming unfamiliar constellations across the bright band of the galaxy. Spock set to work improving their shelter by the faint light, recalculating an ever-shrinking percent chance of survival.

Spock was fletching his last batch of arrows when the captain stirred on the dirt floor beside him. He opened his eyes, squinting at the early morning light, and grunted in displeasure.

"Good morning," Spock said automatically. Nine days ago, Jim complained he was tired of being interrogated the second he regained awareness, so Spock resorted to various human civilities instead.

"Mmm. Not so much." Jim had difficulty forming these words, and his voice was strained and hoarse. He fell silent for close to a minute, staring at the roof of the shelter as he adjusted to his surroundings. "Thought I was getting better for awhile there," he mumbled. "I guess it was just the rain."

"What I have observed thus far supports that conclusion." The images of the past several hours began to replay themselves in Spock's mind, and he experienced a flash of unease before he could shut them out.

Some nights Jim tossed and turned in fitful periods of sleep, tormented by a suite of symptoms as he fought the pull of the bulbweed, while other nights the pull was so strong he did nothing but try to escape. This was in part dependant on the weather – wind direction, temperature, rainfall – and all it took to erase any improvement after multiple milder nights was one severe one. Either way, morning frequently found both of them in various degrees of exhaustion.

"Are you thirsty?" Spock retrieved a pouch from their hut's makeshift shelving.

Jim nodded and tried to reach for the water, but met resistance from the vine ropes that were tied around his wrists and ankles, staked to the ground. He blinked and frowned, peering down at himself in a daze.

"I apologize, Captain. You were particularly belligerent last night."

"Right. What is this, three times now?" An exhausted but sly grin crept over Jim's face. He tilted his head back, as though he were exposing his throat. "You know, standard human protocol says you have to take someone out a few times before you get to tie them up."

"Captain," Spock began hesitantly, "do you feel that your mental state is–"

"Relax, Spock. I'm messing with you." The strange intensity in Jim's gaze dissipated as he rolled his eyes. "If I can have a sense of humor about this, you'd damn well better grow one too. Now if you'd be so kind…" He wiggled his hands and feet, and Spock freed him from the vines, resolutely ignoring the red welts.

Spock stepped outside of the shelter and into the open space they had cleared out of the jungle via intentional and unintentional means. Jim crawled after him, muttering about 'the great glowing plant of doom.' He hissed and grunted through some morning stretches as Spock bundled the arrows into a quiver and checked the integrity of his bow. Jim's face was pinched even sitting still, and Spock knew the headache was particularly aggressive today.

He performed a covert visual inspection while the captain was occupied with a hamstring stretch. There were perpetual dark blotches around Jim's eyes, and he was beginning to lose weight. The fact that his mental acuity remained largely intact despite these stressors was a recurring source of astonishment to Spock. Humans were known for being resilient under pressure, but juxtaposed against such obvious physical fragility, that robust will was impressive.

"Heading out?" Jim tried to peer up at him, but hissed and snapped his head back down, clutching the nape of his neck.

"Affirmative." Spock secured the last strap of his quiver and looped a coil of rope around one shoulder. "I should be back within four hours' time."

"Good luck," Jim said. "Bring back more slime if you can." He nodded toward the drying racks, where he was curing tree slime into a tough, leather-like material to use as cloth. Spock nodded and set off on his daily route.

At first, the captain insisted on going with Spock on these excursions, but his nightly ordeals left him too weak. The first time he tried, he collapsed from sheer exhaustion. The second time he fell behind, and Spock found him standing at the edge of a bulbweed clearing with an unsettling expression much like resignation. In any case, he had to take frequent naps during the day to compensate for night, much of which he spent half-awake and intensely ill.

Spock passed by that particular bulbweed on the way to check his snares. Over the course of the past thirteen days, he discovered the massive plants were ubiquitous in the Sigma Nox forest, almost evenly distributed in every direction as far as he traveled.

He studied several of them for close to a week, but was still puzzled by the species' modus operandi. The cattlebugs spent most of the day grazing in the forest, and at night they were inexorably drawn toward the closest bulbweed, where inside they regurgitated a significant portion of their stomach contents. They were released the next morning to proceed with another day of lethargy before the bulbweeds activated at dusk and called them back. Whatever benefit the cattlebugs derived from the evolutionary deal escaped him; he could not imagine how such a strange and unequal association came into being. It was almost parasitic, but instead of many small organisms feeding off a larger host, the reverse was true.

In any case, he employed the variations in bulbweed patterning to use them as waypoints in the jungle. This individual had more blue flecks than average, confirming that he was headed north.

There was nothing in the snares he set two days before except a few pincushions. Their long, jagged red spines were good for arrows and spearheads, but he had more than what he needed back at camp. Spock released the creatures, and one of them scuttled sideways and pricked his hand before he could move away. They puffed up to perhaps three times their normal size when threatened, and the danger radius was difficult to calculate.

Spock strung his bow and tested the pull. Nothing useful in the snares meant he had to hunt. While he might be able to subsist on roots and fruit and certain nutritious leaves for long periods of time, Jim's metabolism could not synthesize all of the amino acids necessary for his survival. And so Spock put aside the pacifism and vegetarianism of his race in favor of the most nutritionally-dense food supply available: the flesh of animals. Although he had the blessing of Surak, who stated that self-preservation might require the logical application of violence, the taste of meat made his stomach churn.

Their options for food animals were quite limited. The cattlebugs were reservoirs of bulbweed pheromones, the immense, beetlelike rhinopterans were dangerous when provoked, and only the larger species of drake were worth the energy required to hunt them. Spock caught a tree squid once and never again. They were roughly similar to baboons in terms of intelligence, and they avoided him quite adeptly.

The situation was complicated by Spock's own suite of physical difficulties. These were not the ancestral hunting grounds of his people. Vulcan physiology was not compatible with this environment. The humidity interfered with his respiration and put undue stress on his ability to thermoregulate. His heart rate was perpetually elevated as a result, and he found himself reluctant to consider potential long-term consequences of this disturbance. His eyes instinctively sought movement, a twitch against a still backdrop of sand and stone, even though his actual surroundings were constantly in motion. Leaves fanned the air, branches dipped in the slightest breeze, and the activity of animals he had no interest in all commanded his attention.

Spock shut his eyes to remove this one distraction among many. The darkness behind his eyelids helped him clear his mind, shift his focus to the other, more subtle senses. Vulcans were not merely sight hunters in the not-so-distant past, but sound hunters as well. Spock remembered when his father had taken him on a diplomatic visit the clans of the M'dun Range, strange living relics of Vulcan's brutal past who rejected technology and existed in a pre-Reform state. They pursued le-matya at night, eighty percent dependant on hearing to guide them.

There. The throaty clicks and whistles of an adult rusty drake, approximately one hundred meters to the west. Spock picked his way around a cluster of pitcher vines and made his approach.

As he got closer, he nocked an arrow and sank into a crouch, placing every step with care to avoid startling his prey. Most of the drake species blended in with their surroundings extraordinarily well, and they never flew above the canopy. But there were several types of tree fern, all slightly different shades; Jim had named most of them by the end of the first week, which assisted in discrimination. Once Spock learned to perceive the subtle color variations, his success at spotting drakes increased roughly three-hundred percent.

The whistles resumed almost directly over his head. His target was perched high on a coral tree, well out of range. It was one of the largest drakes he had seen so far, and could probably feed him and the captain for several days. He waited for it to move, but it seemed content to stay in one place, folding and unfolding its leafy wings.

A second drake appeared then, smaller than the first. It landed much lower on the coral tree, and Spock took his chance. He drew, aimed, slowly exhaled. In the fraction of a second it took him to loose the arrow, the drake launched back into flight.

He was ninety-six percent sure he had failed when the drake jolted mid-air and began to fall, emitting a sound like a stick being dragged along a wooden fence. The other, more desirable drake hissed and fled in response. Spock hurried over to the thrashing heap of wings and bony limbs. The arrow had pierced through the fragile flesh of the wing, but the animal was very much alive. Its round, black eyes fixated on him, and it tried to lurch away.

Spock grabbed it by the head and snapped its neck. The drake shuddered and went still.

There it was, the same as it had been the past three hunts. A minute sense of accomplishment, bordering on a thrill, that bubbled up within him when his prey took its last breath. No matter how he tried to ignore the feeling, no matter how much he meditated, this primitive sense of victory claimed him every time.

He remembered a conversation he had with Nyota not long before they parted ways. As per their usual routine, he came to her quarters after his shift and found her reading, still in uniform despite the late hour. She smiled at him, but appeared distracted.

As their fingers met in the ozh'esta, Spock initiated 0.25 seconds of telepathic contact, and what he discovered alarmed him. He hesitated, regretting the action immediately, but was unable to leave the matter unaddressed now that he knew. "You remain concerned for my emotional state."

Nyota lowered her PADD, keeping her eyes trained on the screen. "I don't like it when you do that without asking first."

"One could have come to such a conclusion based on your expression." Spock should have known she would see through the ruse, but he did not want to upset her further.

"Maybe 'one' could. But you didn't." She turned off her PADD and set it aside to fold her hands on her lap. "I'm sorry, Spock. I can't have you reading me all the time without reciprocation."

"I apologize, but I can only reciprocate with thoughts, not feelings."

"You keep saying that. I don't buy it. Especially now." Spock could tell she was angry based upon the subtle shift in her tone, the sharpness to her movements as she stood and headed for the bathroom.

"Nyota, the Terran calendar year is an arbitrary period," he insisted for the third time, following her a few steps. "It has no significance."

"Not when you're half human," she retorted. She searched the vanity and cabinet above with ever-increasing zeal. "Not when everyone around you is thinking about it. I can't tell you how many crewmembers I've comforted the past few days, and they just had a mentor or friend die, not...Where on Earth did I put my brush?"

Spock touched her shoulder and handed her item in question. Her face and tone softened abruptly, and she took it from him. Her hand lingered on his, a soft palm and calloused fingertips. "I'm not asking you to act like a human," she said. "I never will. I just want things to be how they were at the Academy."

This assertion was new, and puzzling. "Clarify."

"You were never emotional, but you were warm. To me, at least. You were open, and empathetic, and just… different. Nobody else knows you like I did, so I might be the only one you hear it from." She sighed and moved past him to sit on the edge of the bed and brush her hair. There was a time he enjoyed watching her perform this nightly ritual, but now he was indifferent to the activity.

"I know you've been doing a lot of work with the colony," she continued as he pondered this fact, "but you can't let them get to you. Just because they're becoming more conservative doesn't mean you have to follow their lead."

Spock slung the drake over his back and tied it into place. Nyota was well-meaning, of course, but ultimately mistaken. He attacked an innocent man in an animalistic rage. He relished the downfall of another sentient being. Perhaps his father's people had been wrong to ostracize him for most of his youth, but they would not be wrong for ostracizing him given that evidence. All it took was a time of intense stress, and his human blood fractured him down the middle into a dangerous creature, the physical strength of a Vulcan coupled with unstable emotionalism.

Either he worked harder to live the Vulcan way, heed the teachings of the masters he helped relocate, or he opened the door to savagery. Every day spent on Sigma Nox served to reinforce this fact.

Spock searched for another two hours, but had nothing more to show for his efforts except a few small slimes, a single duskmelon, and more sungrapes than either he or the captain wanted to eat. Some part of him was grateful for his misfortune, because it meant he would not be forced to kill again today, and confront a problem he did not know how to solve.

He returned to camp to find Jim working on a new spear, or perhaps a walking stick. He had a long branch resting against his shoulder and knees, and was systematically slicing off the fronds. Spock hung the drake on the rack they used for skinning, and Jim looked at it briefly, his brow knitting together.

"Kind of a little guy, isn't he?"

"Yes," Spock said, turning so the duskmelon was visible hanging from a sling on his shoulder. "I also found this."

"Well, why didn't you say so!" Jim's mood lifted immediately, and he gestured for Spock to join him on one of the logs arranged around the fire pit. "C'mon, cut it up. I'm starving." This was what he said at every meal, because there was never quite enough food to satisfy them both.

Spock sat down and began peeling the deep red, oblong fruit with his knife made from phaser casing. He was halfway through the task when Jim spoke. Jim frequently engaged him in idle conversation, even when he was reluctant to participate.

"What's your favorite color?"

"Captain?" Spock knew his hearing was not suspect, but perhaps the captain misspoke.

"Just trying to kill time." Jim struggled with his knife, stuck in a frond joint on the branch. "And I've been thinking, lately. I know you, but I don't knowyou. Superficially, I mean." He paused to examine the problem point and kept going. "So what's your favorite color? And don't you dare say red or orange, because I think I might hit you."

"It would be illogical to prefer a particular electromagnetic wavelength over another for purely aesthetic purposes." It almost surprised Spock, how automatic his own answer was.

"No, see, that's not how it works." The knife freed itself, and Jim grunted and almost fell forward at the sudden lack of resistance. He looked at the tool, then the now-smooth spot on the branch, and shook his head before continuing his task. "Here, I'll go first. My favorite is green, because that's the color trees are supposed to be. I usedto like red, but then, you know." A vague gesture at their surroundings, and Spock was fairly confident that he did.

Even so, this topic was fundamentally frivolous. "I do not understand the purpose–"

"Mr. Spock, you're a stubborn man," Jim interrupted, smiling at him. "I respect that. But I'm going to win this one way or another, so humor me. If you had to pick. Imagine someone's holding a phaser to your head, if that helps."

Spock decided not to pursue his curiosity about the scenario that Jim's final sentence would necessitate. "Blue," he said, after a moment's pause. He kept his gaze fixed on the pile of melon rinds.

"I guess you lucked out in the uniform department." Jim chuckled. The irregular, scraping rhythm of metal on wood stopped for a moment. "How come?"

He had an answer, even though he had never contemplated the question before. It was not something he was eager to share, but he decided to indulge the captain for the sake of his mental well-being. "My mother talked a great deal about Earth when I was a child. She said that the sky and the oceans were blue. Considering that Earth is over seventy percent ocean, I was intrigued by the notion of a planet that was overwhelmingly blue. The color was rare on Vulcan." Spock hesitated. "When I first visited myself, I found that any descriptions, including hers, were not adequate to prepare me for direct observation."

"Spock." Jim's tone was incredulous, and Spock looked up from his work again to see Jim grinning at him. "Are you saying you had an emotional reaction to your first encounter with our lovely blue marble?"

Spock had read enough of human space history to recognize the reference. "Not an emotional reaction, Captain. An intellectual one."

"I'm sure." Jim smiled and shot him a brief look, his eyes bright in the sunlight, and blue as the Terran sky. "By the way, I've got something to show you later. Remind me at seventeen hundred."

"I shall." Spock passed him a piece of duskmelon, which he devoured in an impressively short time.

The day passed much like the others. Sometimes one of them experimented with the spare parts from the ruined electronics, usually to make a more primitive but useful tool. Sometimes they improved the shelter further, which had expanded from a lean-to against a tree fern to a structure more like a hut. Recently they had finished an underground storage compartment for food and water, and today Spock made a woven frond and stick door to keep the elements out. Jim tried softening the desiccated slime by abrading it over a rock, with some degree of success. He also made minor repairs to their uniforms and fixed Spock's insignia, hanging by a few threads since it caught on a branch yesterday.

A significant portion of the day was spent in alternating periods of rest. Normally Spock could function with less sleep than a human, but the nature of their environment was such that he tired more readily. He meditated at night, unable to sleep knowing that neither one of them was keeping watch, so the only other time for sleep was during the daylight hours. Mid-afternoon, Jim insisted it was his turn to rest, and he was not inclined to disagree.

He awoke to the smell of dinner. Jim was remarkably creative with their limited resources when it came to cooking. In his own words, he often had nothing better to do than mash things up and stick them over the fire. His concoctions were usually more appetizing than the ingredients would have been in their natural state, with a few disastrous exceptions.

Fortunately, this meal was not one of those exceptions. Jim cooked the drake in such a way that that Spock could almost forget what they were eating. His palate appreciated the effort, even if his digestive tract still struggled to assimilate the radically different diet. Plants alone were not as calorically efficient, and he was determined to make his body adjust.

"You want to come feed the bugs with me?" Jim asked after they finished, picking up a basket stuffed with fronds. Spock nodded and followed him.

They entered a grove of blood trees about fifteen meters away from camp, where three cattlebugs were tethered to the sturdier tree ferns by vine rope harnesses. The smaller two were currently lying down, their jointed legs folded under them so that they looked like segmented, glossy brown stones on the forest floor. The largest was at the end of its tether, apparently trying to reach the one close patch of vegetation they hadn't yet stripped away.

Jim offered this one a handful of fronds first, and it shuffled over to him, its pinchers shredding over the ends with great dexterity. They caught these specimens yesterday afternoon – although 'caught' was an inaccurate verb, considering they offered no resistance at the time. Last night was another matter entirely. They shrieked and struggled until a few hours before dawn. Even though the harnesses were designed in such way that they could not injure themselves, the stress of the event had taken its toll. Spock did not think it was possible, but they appeared even more listless than before.

"I kind of like this guy." Jim patted the largest cattlebug, and it tilted its head to follow his hand, jaws working the air. "I think I'll name him Junkie." He frowned and glanced at Spock. "Him? Her?"

"Unclear." Thus far Spock had not seen been successful in identifying any distinguishing sex characteristics on the cattlebugs. There were many the size of his fist roaming the jungle, but their origin was not yet obvious. Perhaps they reproduced asexually, and were all essentially clones.

Jim passed Spock a clump of fronds, which he split in half and offered to the smaller cattlebugs. "I'm starting to worry it'll never go away," he said suddenly.

"To what are you referring?" Spock glanced over at the captain and almost got his fingers bitten for his inattentiveness. Jim waited until he withdrew his hands to a safe distance to continue.

"The urge. The whole crazy pheromone thing." Jim's eyes were downcast. He gave his cattlebug more to eat, but showed no more interest in watching it feed.

"I believe it is too soon to speak in absolutes," Spock said. It was the closest thing to reassurance he could offer.

Jim shifted his weight, bowed his head a little more. "Some part of me wants it, Spock," he confessed, voice low. "Not just at night, either. It's like nothing else I've ever felt. I forgot… I forgot everything. I didn't worry about anything, I didn't want anything, I didn't careabout anything." He gave the large cattlebug a final pat and brushed off his hands. "Ignorance is bliss, I guess."

The admission was so incongruous coming from the captain, Spock was mildly stunned. "I must admit, I could never comprehend such an illogical human sentiment."

"I couldn't either, until this happened. And hell, if really stupid people walk around like that all the time, I'm not sure who's got the worse deal anymore."

Spock squared his shoulders and placed his hands behind his back. He had noted in the past that people listened to him more carefully when he assumed this particular posture. "Statistically speaking, IQ is in no way negatively correlated with long-term happiness."

A barely perceptible smile tugged at the corner of Jim's mouth. "I hope you're right. I'd hate for you to spend your whole life miserable."

"Misery is an emotional state. Lacking emotion therefore precludes being miserable."

"Of course." Jim's smile widened. "I forget myself."

It occurred to Spock that the time Jim specified earlier was approaching within the next five minutes. He relayed this information, and Jim led the way out of the grove, hastily scattering the remaining fronds. Whatever the captain had in store seemed to snap him out of his bleak mindset, and Spock hoped the entire incident was an anomaly, one of the passing emotions humans were wont to fall prey to.

Jim sprawled out on his back in front of the shelter and patted the ground beside him. "Come here. Keep an eye on the east side of the sky, by the tree that looks like an elephant."

Spock joined him and searched the indicated area. "An elephant?"

"Yeah, you know. That one big frond is the trunk, and there's an ear over that way… don't you see it?"

"Negative."

Jim sighed. "Right ascension, six hours, seventeen minutes, hell-if-I-know seconds."

"Ah." There still wasn't anything resembling an elephant under his scrutiny, but he had the correct location in any case. "Precisely what are we looking for?"

"You'll see."

Two minutes, thirteen seconds passed in silence. During the hour before sunset, the faint green tint to the atmosphere of Sigma Nox became more apparent due to a curious optical effect. A few drakes whistled in the distance, and the tree squid started up their high-pitched calls, somewhere between a crying infant and a siren.

Spock shifted to remove a twig from beneath his back. "Captain, are you certain–"

"Keep watching. It'll be there."

Not ten seconds after that reassurance, a point of light as bright as a medium magnitude star appeared overhead, drifting across the sky in a definite linear path. It was visible for approximately one minute before it vanished behind the trees on the other side of their camp.

"Fascinating," Spock murmured.

"I've kept track for three days now. It's got a regular orbit. There shouldn't be any satellites around this planet, right?"

"Correct."

"And it's reflective, too. I'm betting artificial."

"That appears to be a viable hypothesis."

"So," Jim rolled onto his side and propped his head up on an elbow with a self-satisfied smirk, "what massive piece of space junk do we know of that just might be drifting around up there?"

Spock raised an eyebrow. "The Galapagos."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner."

Spock spent fifteen point eight seconds examining alternative hypotheses, but indeed, the Galapagos was the most likely candidate. A great deal of questions came to mind, none of which he could answer, or even had the means to investigate. It was simultaneously an interesting and disappointing discovery.

Jim had gone conspicuously quiet, and Spock sat up and peered down at him. "Do you feel anything yet?"

"Maybe." Jim closed his eyes for a few seconds, visibly concentrating. His face grew troubled before he opened them again. "Yeah. Coming on fast."

They headed inside the shelter and Spock shut the door, in case the compulsion hit strong enough that Jim decided to bolt. Spock doubted he had the strength for it after the previous night, but Jim had surprised him before in that regard. He lit the small fire in the interior fire pit and watched Jim settle down on the pile of fronds that served as a cot, already shivering with fever.

"One of these days… I'm making us… hammocks," Jim said between gasps. "You remember the… the Taril? Taught us knots. So boring. I can't… remember any."

A strange species, whose primary export was their skillful weaving of various alien fabrics. That particular diplomatic meeting had been punctuated by the snores of at least one Federation ambassador. "Nor can I," Spock admitted. "However, I am certain that between the two of us, we could design a passable apparatus."

Jim grunted in response and closed his eyes. Spock scrutinized him awhile longer, then assumed a meditative posture. He used the fire as a focal point, regulating his breathing and heart rate as close to normal levels as possible. He began seeking out the feelings that had beset him earlier, but outside of the moment, he could no longer understand them. Examining his memories was like observing the event from a distance, or listening to a secondhand account. He meditated on the Galapagos for a time to no productive end. So he turned his thoughts instead to the planet, and the unique interrelationships between its organisms that evolution had shaped with an unforgiving hand.

The next morning, the cattlebugs were dead.