Here is another chapter, one that hopefully will make you smile!

§ 4 §

Malcolm woke up with a start. Was it a dream or…

Bloody, bloody, bloody…

Slowly, he turned and pushed to a sitting position, hands on the edge of his bed, eyes staring into the darkness. He stayed like that for a long time, racking his brain for the truth. No, it had been too vivid, he finally decided. It couldn't have been a dream. He hadn't fainted because of his bad digestion; that might have had a part in it, but hadn't been the triggering cause of his fainting fit. There had been… something; a zap, a flash, a… weird phenomenon. It had engulfed Archer and then…

Then, just when a Security Officer should have proven his usefulness, he had slumped to the ground like a bag of potatoes. Brilliant. And now the Captain was-

At the thought of how much smaller Archer would have become in the few hours since they'd last met in the ready room, Malcolm scrunched his eyes closed. He catapulted himself to a standing position. He had to tell someone, but who? The Captain? The man had told him to report to him immediately if he remembered anything, but this was the middle of the night. The mere thought of knocking on Archer's door at this hour made him cringe. The Second Officer? Again - he couldn't barge into T'Pol's quarters in the middle of the night! You dumb, that voice immediately said, this is important, and it doesn't matter if the SIC of this ship happens to be a beautiful woman wearing scanty pyjamas. No, no, not T'Pol – he told the voice sternly. Not after the time that wisp had taken him over and led him to make lewd advances to the woman in her quarters.

There was Trip. He felt a lot more comfortable waking Trip up.

Archer woke with a start.

He stayed very still, almost afraid to move. Definitely afraid to move. His spatial perception was continually changing, and now, even without moving a finger, he felt the bed around him to be excessively large. He had gone to sleep in his skivvies, but even they felt excessively large. He didn't want to think what that meant, in terms of centimetres, so he forced his mind back to what had woken him. Was it a dream or…

Maybe, just maybe, it was the missing piece; what he'd sensed he couldn't remember. It couldn't have been a dream, could it? Everything had been so clear, and so responding to the truth. It had to be a recollection. He had told them he'd seen Malcolm faint, but now he'd obviously remembered: he hadn't actually seen Malcolm slumping to the ground; the man had been on the ground, unconscious. That was because something had gone through himself and… he'd missed a beat, so to speak. Strange that he should have forgotten, there and then. Come to think of it, strange that Malcolm should have forgotten. Unless he had already been unconscious by then.

He must speak to the man.

Cringing, he ordered the light on and looked down himself. He felt like switching the light off and curling up under the covers again. Instead, uttering a few silent curses, he gave himself a mental slap and slipped off the bed, which proved a task in itself.

He must be less than a metre tall by now, he calculated. Everything around him felt so damn huge. Porthos raised his head, and Archer took a wary look at his beagle. What had been an inoffensive pet could turn, any moment, into a fearful enemy. To his relief, Porthos yawned and lowered his head again.

Page Malcolm, Archer reminded himself. He walked to his desk and climbed – literally – on his chair. He pressed the comm link open. "Archer to Reed." His voice was faint and almost childish, but he threw even that in a corner of his mind.

There was no reply.

Cursing some more, he jumped off his chair and…

Damn!

He couldn't exactly go around the ship in overlarge skivvies. The Quartermaster hadn't downsized enough uniforms. Or, rather, downsized uniforms enough. He looked around the room. He needed… Yes.

Followed by Porthos now, who had given up on sleep, Archer went into his bathroom, climbed on the stool, and got his robe, which was hanging on a hook. He rolled the sleeves up, thrust his arms into them, crossed the two edges of the enormous garment in front of him, turned the belt around his waist a couple of times and tied it. He was swimming in it, but it was better than nothing. Now, all I need are a couple of stilts, he thought dryly. Ah, what the hell. Holding up the hem of the robe, he jumped off the stool; then went to the door. Here he found that he could still reach the panel – if he went on his tiptoes. Not for long, he mulled despondently, stretching to trigger the door open.

His determination threatened to vanish again at the sight of the huge corridor in front of him. He'd be the laughingstock of the ship, walking around in a robe that was so many sizes too big he had to hold it up in the front and dragged behind him like the train of a wedding gown. He felt like a cartoon-like figure, the caricature of a midget king. But Trip was right: he wasn't going to brood alone in his quarters. Porthos was beside him, tongue dangling and eyes begging Are we going for a walk? His pet wasn't judging him by his appearance. Hopefully nor would his friends and crew.

Drawing a deep breath, Archer stepped out, with Porthos following happily in his wake. He was glad for the company; it gave him a bit of courage, silly as that might be. Bunching up the front of his robe, he started on his way to Malcolm's quarters.

This being the middle of the night, the ship was quiet. Most of the crew were sleeping. Archer thanked God for that, and that the turbolift's buttons were also within his reach. He got to B deck and walked to his destination, thankfully without meeting anyone. At Malcolm's door, he did another stretching session to reach the bell. He pressed it repeatedly, but there was no answer.

Where the hell was the Lieutenant?

Archer looked right and left. Should he go back to his quarters? Porthos gave a muffled bark, wanting to keep going. "Quiet," Archer told him.

Maybe he could wake Trip up. He needed to talk to someone, and who better than Trip?

Hoshi woke with a start.

Quickly, she sat up and turned on the light. Her heart was racing with the last strands of memories from her nightmare. In her dream, the Captain had shrunk to the size of an ant, and had been running frantically around the ship trying to escape the soles of the crew. He had made it to Sickbay, where Phlox had picked him up, uttered one of his "hmm's" and, with a shrug, fed him to his menagerie.

Hoshi bit her lip. All this wouldn't be happening if she'd been able to understand what that faint signal had meant, or managed to pick it up again. She had to try harder.

She threw her legs off the bed. In a matter of minutes she had washed her face, donned a uniform, and was leaving her quarters. On the Bridge, she strode determinedly to the communications station, manned by Johansson, a Gamma shift crewman who seemed more relieved than surprised to see her.

"Ma'am," the young man said as soon as she was close enough. "I was about to page you."

"Oh?" Hoshi frowned. "What about?"

On Johansson's elongated face, his eyes became mere slits. "That signal… I've picked it up again."

Malcolm had been standing like an idiot in front of Trip's door for the past couple of minutes, debating whether he was really going to wake his friend up at o-three-hundred-something to tell him he thought he had remembered something from their away mission but-on-the-other-hand-it-might-have-been-a dream, when he heard a shrill voice say, in an urgent but clearly restrained tone, "Not so fast, Porthos!"

Horrified to come face to face with Archer again, against all logic he looked around for a place to hide, but of course those clowns in Starfleet's Design Department had made corridors as smooth as a bald man's head. Hadn't consulted with any security officers, had they? Not that they should anticipate a crew member trying to escape his captain, but you could want to hide from an enemy, couldn't you?

No, you couldn't. Bloody hell!

Malcolm's mind frantically searched for a way to explain why he was standing in front of Trip's door in shorts and T-shirt at this hour, but drew a blank. His only option was to sprint the other- Too late.

"Porthos, come here!"

Porthos – and Malcolm wondered if Archer's new format had anything to do with it – totally disregarded his master's order and ran up to him with a friendly bark. A second later, a curious figure appeared. It had the Captain's face but looked more like a medieval court jester.

Malcolm snapped to attention, which he normally wouldn't have done in both their state of undress. But the changes in Archer made things complicated, twisting every interaction he had with the man. He felt Archer would feel disparaged if he didn't show him the respect a captain deserved.

"Sir!" he said Marine-like, eyes straight ahead. He'd always had a difficult time doing that and not looking at Archer's face, but now his aim was well above the man's head. With his peripheral vision, he saw the Captain stop dead in his tracks.

"Lieutenant," he sputtered in that terribly wrong voice.

It was impossible to resist the temptation. Malcolm's gaze flicked to his CO, whose cheeks were beginning to take an uncharacteristic pink colour. Archer blushing was a horrible sight. Malcolm resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes closed, but neither could he shift them away. He'd been caught looking, and it would seem contrived.

"Er – taking Porthos for a walk, Sir?" he made himself ask.

"Uh – yeah. More like Porthos is taking me."

Hearing his name, Porthos gave another happy bark.

"Quiet!" Archer scolded him. The rebuke, in that almost adolescent voice, didn't carry the same impact, but this time Porthos sat down obediently. "And – ah – what are you doing here, if I may ask?" his master continued.

"I – uhm…"

Malcolm faltered, finding no joy in the fact that he wasn't the only one giving a poor example of eloquence. Lots of ers and uhs and ahs and uhms from both sides.

He was saved by Trip's door, which suddenly swished open. A bleary-eyed, tousled, barefoot and underwear-clad Tucker appeared.

"Would you mind removin' yourselves and your conversation?" he complained. "This is a big ship and..."

As soon as he took in the small figure in the overlarge robe, he faltered and was instantly wide awake. His face crumpled in an expression of remorse.

"Capt'n, I'm sorry," he muttered contritely.

It wasn't clear if he was sorry about Archer's further shrinkage, or his own outburst. An awkward silence took centre stage.

"I… had a strange dream," Archer finally croaked out. His mouth tensed in a brief humourless smile, and he raised his gaze to Trip. "I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd take Porthos for a walk."

"Like that?" Trip blurted out.

His words skidded on Malcolm's consciousness like a stone on water. His mind was too busy analysing Archer's pronouncement. Maybe he could after all venture to tell the man about his own nightmare. "How odd," he said, carefully. "The same happened to me. I had a strange dream and… I… well, I came to..."

Trip's eyes shifted from Malcolm to Archer and back. In the frown that accompanied them, Malcolm could read that the man was coming to the conclusion that it wasn't accidental he'd found them outside his door.

Trip stepped aside and waved a hand. "Want to compare dreams?"

Archer accepted the invitation promptly. He crossed the threshold into Trip's room, looking relieved to remove himself from the corridor. Porthos followed him at a trot. Malcolm hesitated, but Trip gave him a get-a-move-on jerk of the head and, in truth, he could not refuse at this point. There was nothing left for him to do but join the party.

Hoshi closed her eyes, the better to concentrate on the faint sounds she was finally hearing again. She was recording them, just in case they disappeared as quickly as the first time, but it didn't seem the case. The sounds were coming in a flood, with hardly any interruptions.

They were soft and melodious, and she was sure they were the product of an intelligent mind, a new language for the discovering. There was a rising and falling of the pitch, and then small pauses and staccato sections. Her UT was working, trying to untangle the mystery, but she was already starting to recognise patterns and similarities with other exo-languages.

"You go first," Archer ordered.

With incredible nonchalance and a laid-back "let me help ya," Trip had picked him up like a small kid and put him on his desk chair. The Captain had hissed a "thank-you," but then had settled on the seat, his robe almost reaching the ground, and covering his legs, and turned to Malcolm, who had come to stand a couple of metres away.

"It was…" Malcolm gave a tense shrug. "…a strange dream. Probably. A dream. Probably a dream, I mean," he clarified. Archer made an impatient gesture with one hand, and he continued, "I dreamt something had happened just before I fainted. To you. Something had happened to you. Something had happened to you, Sir." He sounded like an idiot.

"No kidding," Archer commented deadpan.

Malcolm cringed. "I mean-"

"I know, I know," the Captain waved him off. He uttered a pensive grunt. "It's exactly the same dream I had."

Trip, who was watching them with his hands on his hips, lit up like a Christmas tree. "That means it can't be a dream. It's got to be true! It must be the key to your…" His eyebrows shot up. "Change." He turned to Malcolm. "Can't you be a bit more specific than something happened?"

Malcolm pulled on his neck, displeased with himself. He had the training to notice things, but not this time. "Not really," he had to admit. "All I know is that a strange phenomenon engulfed the Captain, and then I lost consciousness."

"It was like a shockwave," Archer filled in. "It hit me; went through me and… Well, the next I knew, Malcolm was unconscious on the ground. I hadn't remembered until tonight."

Just then the door chime rang. With a frown, Trip went to answer it, followed by Porthos. Hoshi and T'Pol stood in the corridor.

"Well, hello," Trip said. "Did you have a bad dream too?"

T'Pol's eyebrows lifted. "Internal sensors indicate that Captain Archer is in your quarters," she said, ignoring the gibe.

Trip smiled. "Come on in. We're having a party."

"Trip!" Archer barked, and it sobered the man up instantly.

"Ensign Sato has picked up the signal again." T'Pol informed them once they were all inside.

"I have, Captain," Hoshi butted in excitedly.

Malcolm couldn't but admire her for not gaping at Archer's size. With T'Pol it was understandable, but Hoshi…

"And I know what it says," the linguist exclaimed.

Archer's eyes went wide. "What does it say?"

Hoshi took a deep breath. "Return to us. We await you."

TBC

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