"Healer Telek," Archer nodded at the tall and thin man who had just materialized on the transporter platform, his snow white hair a testament to his age.

"Captain Archer" the man replied without a drop of emotion on his face, "where is the patient?" This time Archer didn't mind the Vulcan lack of social graces. It meshed perfectly with his own agenda.

"She's down on the surface, in the shuttle. I thought you'd might want to settle in your quarters first, but otherwise we could transport you directly there."

"Please transport me. My quarters will still be there when I return."

Archer nodded. "Logical. Ensign Sato, if you please." The man disappeared in a shimmering of lights. Archer exhaled deeply. Outside of T'Pol, perhaps T'Pau and maybe Soval, he really was no fan of Vulcans.

Telek materialized in the shuttle, noted with a degree of surprise the two MACOs by the airlock in the ceiling, then saw the stretcher and walked over. An effusive Phlox was walking towards him. "Healer Telek! I'm so happy you came."

Telek hardly gave him a glance, his gaze focused on the still form on the stretcher. "I read the diagnostic pad you sent, Doctor. I need to assess the true extent of the synaptic functioning."

"By all means, Healer." Phlox stepped aside and Ademoutsis seeing that he was no longer occupied came over "Doctor, we need to take out the cabinets along the aft walls, that will give us more torque" he said "do you think that would be okay?"

Phlox and Telek stared back at him in puzzlement. "Why would that not be okay" Phlox finally asked.

"It's going to make some noise, and I know you don't want to jostle T'Pol" Ademoutsis explained.

"How exactly are you planning to take the cabinets off? With a sledgehammer?" Phlox was nonplussed. How could taking down a cabinet move the shuttle?

"No, sir" Ademoutsis was inured to that kind of questioning from civilians "but it's going to be noisy and I thought perhaps that would be an issue."

Phlox looked interrogatively at Telek, who looked up from where he had his hand on the psionic points on T'Pol's face. "There is nothing wrong with her auditory nerves" he said, "the noise in itself will not have an adverse impact on her condition, but the stress it precipitates may. There are ways to block the noise from reaching the auditory nerves."

Phlox nodded gravely. "The solution didn't need to be intrusive. "How long will it take?" he asked Ademoutsis.

"No more than a couple of hours. Then I'll go back to Enterprise to practice with the team." Ademoutsis shrugged. "We're ready already, we could proceed with the recovery right now, but the extra time will helps us take it to the next level."

xx

Kuruya and Reed were deep in discussion when Archer entered the command center. He had tasked them with finding a way to dig through the bluff faster than current estimates of sixteen hours of digging, which was just to get to the minimum clearance Kuruya had calculated. Now that Telek was on board sixteen hours seemed way too long. Only the remote risk of a catastrophic event prevented him from flying a shuttle in and retrieving T'Pol right away. There had to be a point when the risk balanced the hours.

Kuruya looked up when he came in, obviously preoccupied. It meant she didn't have an answer yet. Archer looked over at Reed. He knew that the science part of the question was beyond Malcolm but his tactical officer had a nose for thinking through and preparing for the worst. "Healer Telek is on the surface" Archer informed them.

Reed slapped a hand on the center console in frustration. "We should have replicated two excavators, the job would go twice as fast."

"And the second excavator would be ready within hours of the digging being completed" Kuruya calmly countered. Archer wondered if she modeled her dispassionate attitude on her Commander. "What other options do we have?" he asked "there are always other options."

"Short of blowing up the darn bluff," Reed was talking half to himself "there are no good options."

"Blowing up the bluff?" Archer asked. There was something there that made sense to him.

Reed realized he was taking him seriously "We can't really do that" he hastened to add. "The shock wave could send the shuttle careening away or simply destroy it."

"That's if we fire on it with Enterprise canons" Archer replied "but is there a way we could blow up enough of the bluff and all we'd have to do is cart the dirt away?"

"That's how mining operations operate" Kuruya jumped in "but we didn't use that approach because the impact of the explosives could play havoc on the shuttle."

"What if we used less powerful explosives? Unless there would be a way to protect the shuttle?" Archer had an image of Reed and him shielding themselves from the Romulan mine. It was true they had been sent tumbling over for a number of miles, but that was because the shields were not attached to anything. "Like a shield of some sorts." he added.

Reed perked up. "We could create some kind of magnetic shield, the dirt and everything else would just bounce off it. But not the size of a shuttle."

"It doesn't have to extend the whole length of the shuttle" Kuruya pointed out, "we could move it around to where the explosion takes place. And still keep the excavator going during that time."

"Yes, I can see that." Reed had a faraway look in his eyes, they were now talking weapons and defenses, stuff he knew a thing or two about.

Archer could see the wheels spinning in his head. "I'll let the two of you at it. How long do you think before we have something we can use?"

"No more than a few hours, Captain" Reed replied. "Once that's in place, we should be able to dig twice as fast."

"You have four hours" Archer told them as he walked away.

xx

Hoshi stepped into the mess hall, feeling as if she were staggering from fatigue. She had been the only contact on Enterprise for all the teams for the last two shifts, now that Shran was overseeing the operations and with Archer putting in practice flights every few hours. Team 2 had reported that the shuttles were successfully tethered, the baffles had been reinforced by Trip and his team, and there was not much happening with the digging except the need to dig more and longer, and she could escape for a quick bite and perhaps five minutes of sitting down without being crunched up over her headphones.

It was late in the daily cycle and the tables were mostly empty, the room half-bathed in darkness. As she was turning to sit down, she noticed a figure seating alone at a corner table in the darker side of the mess hall. Travis! She hurried over to his table, glad to reconnect with her companion in arms.

"Do you mind if I join you?" she had already sat down. The question was purely a polite opening. Uncharacteristically, Travis didn't reply. He just nodded and went back to staring at his now empty tray. Hoshi figured he was exhausted, like everyone else on the ship. Those that were not directly on the teams were pulling double shifts doing the work that their comrades would usually be doing. And Travis had been constantly back and forth to the planet.

"Rough day?" she was asking purely to establish contact. They all were having rough days these days.

"I don't know if I can do it, Hoshi."

"What?" Hoshi was trying to figure what Travis was talking about when he looked squarely at her and she finally realized how very subdued he was.

"I don't know if I can fly the recovery shuttle."

"What do you mean? Did you get hurt? Did anything happen during the practice runs?" and if so, why hadn't anyone told her.

Travis hastened to explain "No, not at all. It's just, I'm not sure I can do it."

Hoshi stared at Travis, at a loss. There was no doubt about his abilities as a pilot, so what was it he was trying to tell her? She decided to wait and let him speak. After a couple of minutes, he leaned over the table towards her "I have to fly upside down at an angle in a stationary position for twenty minutes, with orbital drag and a mountain of dirt way too close to my tail. It's not that I can't do it, but if anything happens, everyone on the shuttle will die. And it will be my fault." He shook his head again. "I don't think I can do it."

"But they all know the risk. Nobody will blame you if something happens" Hoshi needed to find a way to convince Travis to pilot the shuttle. She had complete faith in his abilities and he was the only one who could do it. What if he didn't, what would they do then?

"How would you feel if you were the one who killed Phlox and T'Pol and Ademoutsis and a handful of MACOs? Uh? and the Vulcan healer." Travis shook his head, looking down at his tray again. "I'd rather someone else be the one."

Hoshi could see his point. It was a huge amount of responsibility for a junior officer. At least they had a solution "I guess Captain Archer will have to do it, then" she replied.

"I'm a better pilot than Archer," Travis scoffed.

"Then what you're saying is that if Archer flies, there's a higher chance that they'll all die?"

Travis looked at her for the longest time, then he nodded slightly.

"Then you don't have a choice, do you?" Hoshi was getting emotional. "You're the only one who can fly the recovery shuttle."

It took another long silence, and then Travis nodded again. Suddenly he got up "I need to keep training" and he hurried out of the mess hall. Hoshi looked at him cross the door with a pang in her heart. She had forgotten how dangerous the recovery was, and the stakes that went with it.

xx

Travis saw that the bluff was going down fast on the surface. He flipped the shuttle upside down, and waited, slanted at exactly 31 degrees, feeling the drag and keeping his eye on the bluff. He could see the airlock down on top of the shuttle and he almost had enough clearance from the bluff to reach it easily. He lowered the shuttle a few more meters, feeling the blood rush to his head, but the g-suit maintained his homeostatic balance. He wouldn't black out. He let the minutes go by, adjusting his position as if he was really tethered to the baffles, feeling the infinitesimal movements of the planet below, the drag on the shuttle.

Below him, puffs of dust revealed the explosions going on down on the surface. The forcefield protecting the shuttle flickered as it was hit by dust and debris. Travis saw that a couple of rocks landed beyond the forcefield and hit the shuttle. Phlox must be having a fit in there. But this was as wide as Reed and Kuruya could make the forcefield without weakening it. Not in the time they had.

Travis smiled as he caught sight of the EV suit with antennae on the ground. That was Shran, overseeing the dig. The figure standing next to him must be Trip and the smaller EV suit probably belonged to Hess. As he watched, he saw the two figures step away from the Shran suit, in different directions. Trip was going to where the excavator was being manned by six EV suits. He gestured as he walked, obviously speaking in his mike, and three of the suits started rushing to where the explosive had just detonated.

The Hess suit was already on its way there. She stopped and leaned her head forward then looked up again and gestured at something out of his field of vision. Then he saw it lumbering behind a mountain of dirt, one of the loaders. It was like watching an anthill at work, smooth and efficient, and busy.

His twenty minutes were almost up. Travis took a glance at the flight record, saw that he had not deviated from the angle or the coordinates for the past twenty minutes. He breathed a sigh of relief. All he had to remember was that he could feel the shuttle, he didn't have to focus so hard on the instrumentation panel and everything would be fine.

If only he could keep that in mind when they did the actual recovery… He turned the nose of the shuttle towards the star and took off. As he did, he remembered that he should have checked how close to the bluff his tail was. He had been flying higher than needed, so it was still fine, but if it had been the recovery day it could have been a disaster. He would go back to Enterprise, rest, and come right back down, until he didn't forget any of those details.

xx

"Phlox to Captain Archer." Hoshi turned her seat around, looking at Archer who looked back at her, his hand hovering over the intercom. Was this the call they had both feared? "Archer here."

"We can't wait any longer, Captain!" the Denobulan's voice was strident "T'Pol's metabolic rate is dropping. We need to bring her back to the ship right now."

"Ok, doctor, give us a minute"

"A minute is all we have. We're running out of time!"

Phlox shut off the intercom, turned to look at Telek. The healer still had his hand on T'Pol's face, where he had jumped up as soon as the medical alert sounded. After a few more minutes, he straightened, nodded at Phlox. "I have stabilized her but I do not expect that this will be for more than a couple of hours. When is the recovery happening?"

"I'll reach out to Captain Archer again in twenty minutes if we still haven't heard from him." Phlox couldn't help but reflect the healer had been extremely patient for the past six hours. He himself would not have taken the delay with as much equanimity.

Telek looked at him as if he had heard that last thought "While the need for haste is great, the need for a safe recovery is even greater," the Healer gravely said.

xx

"Captain Archer to Commander Shran."

"Yes, Captain,"

"We need to transport T'Pol right away."

Shran sighed, that was what he had been afraid of. He gestured to Trip, who came trotting by. Shran put his helmet directly against Trip's so he could talk without the entire unit hearing what he had to say. "We have to stop digging. We need to do the recovery now."

He saw the Human blanch, knew exactly why. Only Humans didn't have senses well enough developed to tell who was mating whom. But there was no time for emotional turmoil. Shran went on "It will take an hour for the shuttle to fly down. What can we do in an hour?"

Trip looked at the bluff, it was almost dug out to the dimensions provided by Kuruya. Almost but not quite. "Let's flatten the depression, so the pilot doesn't have to deal with one side being higher than the other. We need to tell Travis it's higher than we wanted. It still gives him a little bit more room."

Shran talked into his mike again "We'll be ready, Captain, but we need to talk to your pilot, let him know what to expect."