CHAPTER SEVEN

Mal was still asleep when Simon knocked on his door two hours later, and his response to the noise was less than articulate.

"Huh?"

"Mal?"

"That you, Doc?"

"Yes, it's Simon. I wanted to talk to you. May I come down there?"

"Sure. Knock yourself out," answered Mal.

Simon carefully made his way down the ladder that led to Mal's sleeping quarters. When he reached the bottom, he found Mal rubbing sleep from his eyes and slowly sitting up in bed.

"You feeling alright, Captain?" asked Simon.

"I'm fine," said Mal. "Just figured I'd sleep while I could. Don't think none of us gonna get much of that in the next bit."

Simon snorted. "True."

Silence fell for a moment as Mal continued to blink sleep from his eyes and Simon found the pattern on Mal's floor far more interesting than anything else in the room. After a moment, Mal spoke up, since it was clear Simon wasn't going to.

"So, somethin on your mind, Doc?"

Simon let out a big breath and gave Mal an apologetic look. "I can't figure it out."

Mal shook his head. "Son, you're gonna have to give me more than that to go on here. Can't figure what out?"

"There is no possible way I can administer any sort of anesthetic to the crew of the Nova. Even if I had enough inhalant anesthesia on board to sedate that many people, which I don't, I couldn't administer it. I'd have to get it into their atmospheric system and in order to do that I'd have to be on board the ship."

"Oh, I'm sure there's some way we could arrange that," said Mal.

Simon appeared not to hear him. "Kaylee knows the ship layout. That's not the problem. The issue is that with that much dead space I'd have to have even more of the agent and we frankly just don't have it. And like I said, there's still the matter of getting aboard to begin with and making sure all the relevant parties are on board before letting the drug loose and we'd need more gas masks than we have and…"

Mal interrupted.

"Doc!"

Simon blinked. "Um… what?"

"Much as I appreciate all this explanation, I don't need it."

Simon had the grace to blush lightly. "Sorry."

"It's alright. Fact is that I'm sure we could get you on the ship if we needed to. I've already got some ideas in that way, but I don't think we'll need 'em."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you said yourself that we ain't got enough gas. So that's that. We can't go that route. It was just an idea."

"So you've got a new plan, then?"

Mal nodded. "Sure do."

Mal seemed confident, but Simon wisely gave him a skeptical look. Mal noticed, and he fudged the truth a bit to comfort the younger man.

"It was Zoe's idea, actually, so don't you be lookin at me that way," he said.

Simon grinned. "Sorry. It's just that your plans don't have the best track record."

"Too true," admitted Mal. "But this is a good plan. Tell you what. It's almost dinner time. We'll talk about it then."

Simon knew when he was being dismissed, and he took the hint.

"Deal."

Mal nodded and Simon stood to leave. Mal waved him up the ladder and then ran a hand over his face. He stopped when he got about half way through the motion and let his head fall into his hand. Then he let out a groan and silently asked himself the same question he always did before a job.

'What have I gotten myself into now?'

But as always, he ignored his inner doubt as best he could and stood to face whatever music was coming his way. He had a job to plan, and that was that.