"You are very lucky to be alive. You took an absurd risk for a ridiculous reason. What good will pieces of stone do you when you're dead?"

Phlox's voice was as stern as Jon had ever heard it as he and Trip walked into sickbay, but it also portended good news. The surgery on the last miner to be extricated had obviously been successful if Phlox could lecture his patient, who had sustained several broken ribs, a shattered collar bone and a fractured skull. But for the fact that the piece of rock that had fallen on him had partially lodged against the wall, he would have been crushed completely. It had been something of a miracle that he had been able to struggle out through a gap in the boulders, with the rushing water sweeping him through the tunnel towards the surface. There he was dragged out of the flood by Travis and his fellows.

Normally, Phlox would be the picture of solicitude with a patient. Jon knew, however, that the doctor was venting his ire over a search that had gone so disastrously wrong.

The patient had the grace to look slightly abashed, though the expression looked odd on the hirsute, porcine face. "What would you know about it? You're the most useless physician I've ever encountered. We wouldn't employ you on a garbage scow. No wonder they took you on to look after these stupid, ugly humans on this rubbish-heap of a ship!"

"Easy, Trip," murmured the captain, putting a hand on his chief engineer's arm as Trip's fists clenched. "You know it's just the way they talk."

"Doesn't make it any easier to listen to," muttered Trip. "If we didn't need him to tell us what happened, I'd say throw him in the brig and forget about him."

"Unfortunately, that's exactly what we do need." Squaring his shoulders, Jon stepped forward.

The Tellarite's gaze switched to him. "My, here's a couple of them now. I'd heard you were revolting, but you're even worse than I imagined."

"Sonofabitch! Ugly, comin' from you–!"

"Trip!"

Under the scorching look from his superior, the chief engineer shut his mouth like a trap. It did not, however, do much to abate the expression of barely restrained hostility as he took up position on the far side of the bio-bed.

"My name is Captain Jonathan Archer," the captain began, folding his arms and fixing the patient with a look that wasn't much friendlier than Trip's. "I believe yours is Nraat."

"Not that that's any business of yours," said the miner pugnaciously.

"When you're the one person who can tell me exactly what happened to my tactical officer, mister, I'm making it my business!"

"Who asked him to butt in?" cried Nraat indignantly. "I was only trying to defray some of the costs of the expedition!"

"'Butt in'!" roared Trip. "He was tryin' to save your goddamn worthless life!"

"Nobody asked him to," came the sullen reply.

"He didn't need to be asked. He believed it was his job." Jon realized that he was speaking as if Malcolm was dead, and corrected himself hurriedly. "He's a valuable Starfleet officer, and if we want to get him back alive – which we do – then we need to know exactly what happened. And you–" He leaned menacingly over the patient, ignoring Phlox's look of professional indignation "–are going to tell me!"

Nraat subsided onto the pillows. His mouth folded in a look of obstinacy. "This planet is in Tellarite space. You're trespassers. I don't have to tell you anything."

Trip spoke up again. "Look. We're not askin' for state secrets here. We just need to know–"

"I'm not telling you anything!"

Jon stared down at the obstinate alien in mingled frustration and bewilderment. This man was the only person who'd been a witness to what had happened. The other two miners – currently residing in guest quarters and under guard – might have been more cooperative, but they didn't have the information he needed so desperately. "If you're worried we'll press charges–"

"You wouldn't dare!"

The captain's own hard-held wrath ignited. "Keep this up, mister, and you'll find out what I wouldn't dare. You're on board my ship, under my authority. I answered your distress call and risked my officers to save your worthless hides, and now one of them is missing and in danger. You're too damn stupid to know just how far you're pushing your luck. I'll give you ten minutes to think it over, and when I come back, you'd better be feeling a whole lot more cooperative!"

Trip at his back, Jon stormed into the corridor. He wasn't sure how much longer he could look at that stubborn expression without wanting to plant his fist in it.

As he'd anticipated, a wrathful Phlox followed him out.

"Captain, I must protest–!"

"I know what you're going to say, Phlox. You think I like having to do this? Malcolm Reed is missing. He's got to be in grave danger. I've let two volunteers go down to join Travis looking for him, and T'Pol says that volcano looks like it's cranking up its act. And that's even without the fact that that star out there could decide to fry us any minute! Every second we waste is increasing the risk this is going to turn from a rescue into a tragedy. Frankly, I don't have the time to spare to play nice with a Tellarite."

"What the hell is wrong with that guy?" demanded Trip. "Why won't he just tell us what happened? Did they have a fight or something?"

Jon scowled. "Malcolm would be too professional to start something like that."

"I wouldn't say he'd start one, Cap'n, but he'd sure end one."

"The patient made no mention of any assault," the doctor put in. "I'm sure he would have said something if there had been. As a matter of fact, I'm somewhat surprised he hasn't decided to press charges for being rescued and operated on without his consent."

"It probably hasn't occurred to him yet." Jon's scowl changed to a grin as he said, "I've got an idea. Are his things here in Sickbay? Everything he had when they brought him up?"

"Certainly." Phlox looked puzzled for a moment, and then a smile of Denobulan proportions spread across his face. "Ah."

The three men turned and re-entered Sickbay.

Nraat's face turned in their direction. His truculent expression changed to one of acute unease when they went to the cabinet where his things had been placed. On top of his clothes, which had been cleaned and dried, was the single backpack he'd still been clutching when he was pulled out of the water. The way he'd held on to it until anesthetized suggested it was extremely valuable to him. Jon picked it up.

"What – what are you doing with that?" Nraat demanded.

"Foreign material," said Jon. "Very strict regulations about what we're allowed to bring on board a starship. Have to get it checked out – and if it doesn't conform, we'll have to jettison it immediately."

It was difficult to be sure under all that ingrained dirt, but it seemed that the Tellarite paled. "J-Jettison it?" he stuttered. "You're not serious!"

"Never more so." Jon tipped the bag's contents on to a table top. Chunks of stone, full of blades of some kind of crystal that reflected light with a deep green gleam, thudded dully on the table. "Can't say this looks familiar," he mused. "I'll have to take it over to the Science lab to find out what it is. They have a disposal facility there if necessary."

"No! I – that's my property! The property of the Tellarite Mining Consortium! You've no right to touch it!"

"You're on board my ship. Right here, I call the shots. And right now, I say that this is unauthorized material and if I say it has no place on board, out it goes. If the Tellarite Mining Consortium wants it, they can come get it – whatever's left of it after it burns up in the atmosphere!" The captain scooped the rocks back into the backpack and turned on his heel to leave.

The Tellarite's shriek stopped him before he reached the doors. "I'll tell you what you want to know! Nothing happened, nothing! He found me – he tried to stop me bringing out the minerals we'd found. There was a tremor. It brought the wall down. I think he was washed away. Everything happened so quickly, I can't be sure."

"That's all? Why in hell wouldn't you just tell us that in the first place?" shouted Trip.

The miner's gaze fell. He muttered something, the only word of which they caught was 'unauthorized.'

"You weren't supposed to be there at all?" demanded the captain. "Why not?"

The Tellarite's hesitation lasted a second too long. Jon turned back to the doorway.

"No wait! The government put a ban on underground exploration down there. We discovered centuries ago that it has some huge underground lakes with their own ecosystem, but no-one ever found out much more than that. I tried to find out the details, but it's classified. All I could get was that there's some kind of danger associated with the caves. That's all, I swear it!"

"And you didn't see anything, or hear anything unusual, when you were down there?"

Another shifty look. "Nothing definite."

"Whatever you saw, or thought you saw, I want to know. It may be the difference between me getting my officer back in one piece or me ordering this junk put in the nearest airlock and spaced!"

"It was close to one of the caves," Nraat said sullenly. "Tgrel said he saw something moving, like a shadow. Then he said there was more than one. So we ran."

"A shadow. That's it?"

Nraat shrugged. "That's what he said. You'll have to ask him."

"It didn't attack you? Or follow you?" Trip asked urgently. "You didn't see anythin' yourself? Or hear anythin'?"

The miner shook his head. "I've told you all I know. But I'll admit, I did feel scared." He fixed a pleading glance on the backpack that the captain was still holding. "Captain, those stones are worth a fortune!"

"Enough for you to ignore your government's ban on explorin' the planet to begin with," said Trip disgustedly. "You just had to go diggin' up the place!"

"At least now we know why there was no ship in orbit," observed Jon. "That would be too obvious that someone was somewhere they shouldn't be." He tossed the pack on to the nearest counter. "This can stay on the ship."

"Thank you," muttered Nraat.

Jon stared at the Tellarite. "I'll be handing you and your friends over to your government as soon as we can organize a rendezvous after all this is over. I'm sure this will be useful as evidence." With a glacial smile he turned and walked out of Sickbay.

"Haven't heard anything from Travis yet," observed Trip as he followed the captain down the corridor. "Kind of ironic, that you told Malcolm to keep him out of trouble, and Malcolm was the one who ended up in it."

"That had occurred to me," the captain said wearily. As much as the possibility of losing an officer worried him, he knew Trip must be feeling worse. The engineer and Malcolm had developed a strong friendship while serving together on Enterprise. "I'm going to see if the other two can add anything to what we got out of our friend back there. Then when I get back to the Bridge, I'll have Hoshi pass on the information to the landing party about what we've heard. If our people on the planet's surface have any news, I'll make sure you hear about it."

Trip nodded. "After what you told us about the chances of us needin' to make a quick getaway, I'll make sure the engine's at a hundred percent, just in case we need it."

"You do that." Jon slapped him on the shoulder and gave him a rueful smile. "And keep your fingers crossed."

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