On the bridge Kirk was greeted by anxious inquiries from his officers. He shook his head. "We've got someone back, but I'm not sure it's Chekov and Hartley. They're behaving - oddly."

Sulu glanced at Uhura.

"We heard you ask for security, Captain," Uhura prompted, noting the Captain's swollen lip.

Kirk fought down the urge to tell them it was none of their business. For some reason, over and above the worry about his people, the encounter with Chekov had unsettled him. Whoever the person masquerading as his navigator was, he sensed someone who didn't accept his authority. He squashed the instinct to re-impose that authority over his bridge crew with a display of short temper. "When Doctor McCoy attempted to treat Ensign Hartley, Chekov hit him. I ordered him to the brig. I'm not sure it was Chekov. Any sign of the raiders?"

"Most unusual, Captain," Spock commented from his station. "The destruction we saw previously on the planet's surface is no longer in evidence. Neither is the subspace transmitter."

"What?" Kirk blinked disbelievingly at the peaceful globe on the screen in front of him. "This doesn't make any sense. If Chekov and Hartley somehow crashed there, then they could have been on the planet for three days at the most. The raids have been going on for over ten years. How can the removal of our two officers have any effect...?"

"Unknown, Captain."

"Have we been moved three days into the past?"

"No, sir. As was predicted, our recording and time measuring devices were not affected by..." Even Spock was at a lost to label the strange events of the past hour. "... whatever measures were taken to correct the rift caused by the shuttle accident."

"What the hell could Chekov and Hartley have done in three days that was causing the destruction of that planet?" Kirk asked himself out loud.

"And what would to be gained by sending entities other than our officers to us?" Spock added.

"Captain," Sulu asked hesitantly. "I could go talk to Chekov, sir? I'm sure he was only disorientated when he took a swing at the doctor. Now that he's had a chance to cool off, he may be able to answer more questions."

"All right, Lieutenant," Kirk consented. "But be careful."

Ensign Reeves allowed Sulu into the security area with a mixture of professional reluctance and gratitude on behalf of his friend.

Chekov was lying on his back on the narrow bunk, staring silently at the ceiling. He looked over to see what was happening when Sulu came in. A sudden smile lit up his face. "Hikaru!"

Sulu immediately noted the oddness Kirk had complained of. For one thing, Chekov never called him by his first name. The lieutenant stood right up against the force field, feeling the slight static tingle of it against his uniform. "Pavel, talk to me. What happened?"

"I lost my temper," Chekov explained. "I couldn't stand to see Dora pushed around. She's been through enough."

He sounded as if he was picking his words very carefully. His accent was markedly different from what it had been three days ago.

"I didn't mean just now. Tell me everything, from the beginning." He made a cutting gesture to Reeves. The security officer switched off the force field, but positioned himself where he could cover the prisoner with his phaser. Sulu sat down on the bunk by Chekov's feet.

"What happened to the shuttle?" he prompted.

"I don't know. We were working in it and there was something like an explosion, or a loud noise, or maybe bright lights... the effect was like that of a wormhole."

Sulu nodded. "You wound up on the planet."

"Yes, we sank the shuttle and made for the shore in a life raft. It was a cold day, with rain in the air. We looked around for signs of other people, then we looked for shelter. We came to a big meadow, where the river runs very shallow and the boys..." Chekov's accent had returned full strength and his voice had taken on a rhythmic cadence, as if this was a story he had told over and over again. That thought had obviously struck him as well, because he stopped and went back. "A big open space, beside a river. In the dark we couldn't make out much, but we found some trees and made the most of the shelter. When it got light we walked down stream until we spotted buildings. The people were humanoid. We didn't understand their language, of course, but we could see that their technology was fairly advanced - computers, telecommunications, sophisticated distribution systems for food and so on. Ground transport. In the end we stole some clothes and buried our uniforms and just attempted to blend in. There didn't seem to be any alternative."

"You couldn't hide out for three days?" Sulu protested, thinking that his understanding of the Prime Directive would have kept him undercover for considerably longer. "Were you hurt or something?"

Chekov smiled at him, sadly and indulgently, as one might smile at a child when one had to explain something that was difficult and not entirely pleasant. "We have been gone longer than you think."

"Oh." Sulu nodded. "It's possible that everything you experienced was just an illusion, then. Maybe a test to see how you'd react to the situation."

This idea obviously hadn't occurred to Chekov. He stared at the wall for a long moment. "No, it happened. I don't know how, but it happened."

"What happened to you on the planet?"

"The last thing I remember seeing was..." Chekov stopped, aware that whatever he said would be reported to the Captain, and then risk getting back to Dora. That he couldn't bear. She could either believe, as Sulu suggested, that the whole experience was a fraud, or more likely, that it was in some sense continuing without them. How could he ever let her know what had been about to happen to their family the last time he ever saw them? He clamped down on the desire to talk, to tell someone. There was, anyway, a vast gulf of age between himself and Sulu that he wasn't sure he wanted to bridge. "Perhaps I was just confused."

Sulu was well aware that Chekov was holding something back, something painful. "You were hurt?"

"No, we were never hurt - Apart from being exiled on some unknown planet and having to accept that we were never going to get home, and then..."

"Yes?"

"Having it happen all over again, now." There was a moment of bitter silence. "How did you find us?"

Sulu gave a hollow-sounding half-laugh. "You almost sound like you didn't want to be found."

Chekov looked at the young man, with his disbelieving expression. How could he not have wanted to be found? Wasn't Star Fleet the best place in the whole universe to be? And Enterprise the best ship in it? He thought of his own Hikaru and how unlike his namesake the boy had always been - with both his mother's and father's tempers and his hard-headed, technical dreaming. He at least had been away from home tonight. Or had he? What was real and what wasn't? Was his firstborn a figment of his imagination too?

Karu... Katya... Alyosha... and Teegan. He mentally laid them to rest along with their spouses and laughing children. With his eyes tightly closed, he visualized the quiet cemetery among the trees where they had already said good bye to a few friends over the years. It was a very Terran place, about the least alien place on the whole planet. In his mind's eye he saw the graves and made his farewells. It was a technique McCoy had suggested to him when a close friend had been lost and there had been no body to commit to the vacuum of space or the kindly soil of a planet. And now, he thought, that's an end of it. When he looked again, Hikaru Sulu was still watching him, with his dark, serious eyes.

"Pavel," his friend asked, "How long do you believe you were there?"

Chekov closed his eyes tightly against the tears as his children came rushing back into his mind - refusing as always to be banished so easily. Karu frowning over a new gadget. Alyosha plotting how to use it to his advantage. Teegan solemnly recording it all in one of her memory books - what he wouldn't give for one of those little volumes now... And Katya... beautiful Katya... A thousand kisses. Papa, don't leave me. Never ever ever.

Chekov wiped the moisture from his eyes with a traitorously young hand.

"A lifetime," he replied. "A lifetime."

McCoy's call to the bridge was intercepted by Uhura who explained that the Enterprise was ordered to respond to a Federation mayday. Kirk was therefore occupied at present, but would return the Doctor's call at the earliest opportunity. Kirk was not surprised when McCoy promptly appeared on the bridge. Patience had never been Bones' strong suit.

"Jim, Ensign Hartley's asleep at the moment, but I'm as certain as I am that you're you, that she's her, I mean..."

"I'm glad to hear that, Bones, but can't this wait, if she's asleep..."

"I want Chekov out of the brig and in sickbay. I've got some idea of what they've been up against, and she's going to need him there when she wakes up - Leaving aside what he needs, which I'm sure doesn't include being locked up."

"Doctor, I've sent Mr Sulu to talk to Chekov. I'm prepared to accept that I'm wrong, but not now. We have another emergency on our hands. We're receiving a mayday from an uncharted system and I have to smooth over the feathers of a pack of dignitaries who thought we were just here to be a taxi service."

"Jim, Chekov and Hartley have, as far as they knew, been stranded on some Godforsaken planet for forty years plus. You might have forgotten the finer points of Star Fleet etiquette in that time. As far as Hartley is concerned, we didn't rescue her, we kidnapped her. After all, she's only been on this ship for a couple of weeks. Chekov's more likely to adjust better, having been here longer..."

Kirk thought for a moment. "I'll tell security to release Chekov to you. But consider this, you don't want every crewman who objects to taking a medical to think he can get away with landing one on you, do you? And there'll be a guard in sickbay at all times. I'm not one hundred percent happy yet that it really is Chekov."

McCoy heaved a sigh of relief and went to have a look at Dora. She was beginning to stir, her face becoming animated. Chapel turned off the file she'd been half working on and came over to join the Doctor. "She's been talking in her sleep, just odd words. I couldn't make sense of them. But you said she mentioned the names Alyosha, and Katya earlier. There's no record of those names on her file, but there is in Ensign Chekov's file. Maybe whatever they experienced while they were missing was something drawn from their memories."

"Thank you, Christine. I'll bear that in mind. I've persuaded the Captain that Chekov should be here, I hope before Dora wakes up." He felt his chin nervously. "I hope he's in a better mood, too."

Ensign Reeves escorted his prisoner to sickbay, feeling awkward. Chekov seemed resigned to his loss of liberty and showed no sign of ill-will towards Reeves, but it was an uncomfortably situation for the young security man nonetheless. He wished Tomson would come and handle it. Now he had to hang around in sickbay for the rest of the shift and put up with McCoy's barbed comments.

"Doctor McCoy," he reported. "I've brought Ensign Chekov, as per the Captain's instructions."

"Aah, thank you, Reeves. Could you make yourself inconspicuous, d'you think? And please bear in mind that anything you hear or see in sickbay is confidential."

Reeves thought that was a bit strong, coming from one of the most productive sources of gossip on the ship. Nevertheless, he positioned himself by the door out of the treatment room, and checked that his phaser was to hand, then did his best to blend into the decor.

Chekov stood patiently waiting throughout this exchange, trying not to look at the bruise on McCoy's chin. The slight sheen of plastiderm obviously covered a cut. McCoy had decided to do his best to ignore it as well.

"Right, Ensign Hartley is still asleep. Perhaps I can take this opportunity to check you over."

He gestured apologetically toward a biobed. Chekov lay down on it resignedly. As the scanners whirred through their standard examination routine, McCoy talked quietly. "I gather from what Ensign Hartley said that as far as you were aware, you were absent from the Enterprise for much longer than three days."

"Yes, sir."

McCoy waited for an elaboration. The ensign merely continued to stare at the ceiling. "And that you had more or less resigned yourselves to remaining wherever you were."

"Yes, sir."

"She mentioned some names, in the transporter room. Do you know what she meant?"

"Yes, sir."

"My God, Ensign, is this a game of twenty questions, or have you been taking lessons from Spock? You're perfectly healthy, and so is she, apart from marginal dehydration and the fact that neither of you appears to have eaten since you went missing. Does that make sense to you?"

Chekov released a long breath. "I don't know if what we thought we experienced bore any relation to what actually happened."

"Dora said as far as she was aware, you'd been missing for about forty years." A thought suddenly struck him. "Were you together throughout?"

"I thought so." Chekov was obviously unsettled by the idea that they might have different recollections of their unexplained absence. "And it was about that long, as far as I could tell. But we haven't had a chance to talk. Perhaps she remembers something completely different."

McCoy could tell that this idea was deeply disturbing to the young man. Whatever had happened, it was clearly important to him that Dora should have experienced it too. "But the names she mentioned, you said they meant something to you?"

"Yes, they did." He hesitated. "They were part of what happened to me."

McCoy paused. Perhaps the ensign's experiences were embarrassing or so unpleasant that he preferred not to recall them. Why then would he seem to wish that Dora Hartley, hardly a good friend, had shared them?

Hartley suddenly yawned. McCoy beckoned the ensign over to the other biobed. "She might be a little disorientated."

Chekov opened his eyes wide at this massive understatement as he crossed to the waking woman. He found himself suddenly at a loss for words. The last time he had been with her when she woke, he had known exactly what to say to make sure she opened her eyes with a smile. The circumstances were very different now. She might not want to be reminded. After all, they were back aboard the Enterprise where they had hardly spoken outside the narrow requirements of work. "Dora, you are quite safe. Everything is back to normal."

"Mmmm, Pavel?" She reached out to embrace him.

He quickly grabbed her wrists to cover the movement. "We're on board the Enterprise, in sickbay," he said rather hastily.

She opened her eyes abruptly. "I thought we were back..."

"No. It was all an illusion. It couldn't have happened. The doctor isn't even sure that we both remember the same things."

At that suggestion, she tensed. "What phase of the moons was it last night?"

"First quarter and full. The nineteenth day of spring." He repeated the date in the language of their adopted home. "It was a very detailed illusion," he added, apologetically, "but it already seems a little unreal."

He watched her carefully, willing her to accept that none of it had ever happened.

"Yes," she said slowly, "it does seem remote somehow." A flicker of anguish passed over her face. "It was just a dream then, is that what you're saying, Doctor? And I am supposed to just get on with forgetting about it?"

McCoy looked doubtful. "There may be clues within whatever you experienced that would help us to work out what happened to you. That could be important."

"I can't think of anything. Can you, Chekov?"

Chekov felt a flash of anger. While he didn't want her to dwell on her losses, he hadn't expected her to toss it off quite this abruptly. But then, three days ago she had been cheerfully running him down to anyone who would listen. Perhaps it had simply occurred to her that it would be acutely embarrassing to have to report what had appeared to happen. "No, I cannot think of anything that happened that might be of any interest to anyone."

"Is it just me, Pavel Andreivich," she asked him in Russian, as she would have done if she had something to say that she didn't want the children to overhear, "or are you making a special effort to be a bastard right now?"

He took in a deep breath. "Hartley, I don't..."

"Hartley?" she repeated. "Hartley? You haven't called me Hartley in forty years..."

"Dorshka, my soul, I don't want to fight..."

"No, you don't want to fight," she agreed coldly. "You're back on the Enterprise - exactly where you've wanted to be for forty years. You must be very happy."

Chekov had to agree that there was truth in what she said. Happiness would have been a reasonable reaction. Unfortunately that emotion couldn't have been further from what he had been feeling since their arrival.

"That language the two of you are speaking," McCoy said into the heavy silence, "it sounds like Russian."

"It is," Chekov answered shortly.

"Funny, but your record doesn't mention that you speak Russian, Ensign Hartley."

"I didn't," she answered, unfortunately choosing to imitate Chekov's brevity.

McCoy crossed his arms. "You mean to tell me you picked up Russian in three days?"

"Ensign Hartley has an aptitude for languages," Chekov explained unhelpfully.

"What are we going to do?" Hartley asked, switching back to Russian.

Chekov shrugged. "Live in the present."

"Together?"

There was something odd about her now, something cold and unfamiliar - although she was behaving exactly the way she always had. It was almost as if his own feelings for her were changing, dimming somehow. "I cannot imagine living without you, doushka," he replied, despite the strange chill between them.

"Yes, you can," she accused. "Yesterday you couldn't, but today you can. You're prepared to forget - eager to forget -about everything that happened to us and get on with your life as you had it planned before I blundered my way into it."

"Dorshka," he protested. "Don't say such things. Of course I want to be with you. Always."

She looked up into his eyes. "Do you? Face it, Pavel Andreivich, I made you everything that you were - miserable."

"I was not miserable," he contradicted automatically, then had to add honestly, "most of the time."

McCoy cleared his throat. Even though he couldn't understand the language, he got the distinct impression he was witnessing the end of a relationship that had lasted much longer than three days. "You should have something to eat, Dora. It'll probably make you feel better. And you should get some rest, Chekov. The Captain is going to want a full report of what happened to you both - although I think that can probably wait until later."

"It's all becoming very vague, Doctor." Hartley rubbed her eyes violently as if she were preventing herself from crying by brute force. "I'm really not sure I could tell him anything useful. It's like a dream, really vivid when you first wake up, but after breakfast it's all gone."

McCoy grimaced, foreseeing trouble with the captain. "How about you, Chekov? Memory fading for you too? I'd be careful. You've got a serious disciplinary charge hanging over you and your best defense is going to be whatever happened while you were missing."

"I'm quite prepared to answer the Captain's questions as far as I am able," Chekov replied with an icy dignity that startled the doctor. "If I feel that doing so will serve any useful purpose. And I am prepared to face the consequences of my actions. There's no need to resort to blackmail, Doctor."

McCoy suddenly realized what the captain had meant about this not being the Chekov they had lost three days earlier. If, as far as the ensigns had been aware, forty or more years had passed - difficult years, coping with exile and uncertainty –an older, more self-confident, less biddable Chekov might be expected. McCoy tailored what he said accordingly, "Of course. I'm sorry. Beyond what your medical treatment requires I have no intention of prying into whatever happened to you over the last three days. Nothing you tell me need go any further, unless you want it to. But I strongly advise you to talk to someone about it - and not just each other. Whatever you experienced was clearly real to you. You have to adjust to a sudden change in your circumstances. If people know what happened, they can help you to make that adjustment. It might seem easier to pretend that it never occurred, but it doesn't work like that. You know that." He paused. "You say you were living among strangers. How often did you wish you had someone to tell about who you really were?"

The two ensigns were silent, thoughtful.

"Well, who you are now includes everything that has happened. It's changed you. That's obvious to me just talking to you." He looked at their bleached, tired faces and sought for something to soften their situation. "From what Dora said, it wasn't entirely an unhappy experience. Isn't there any of it that you want to share?"

Dora suddenly sat up in bed. "Pavel, the children..." she said, switching to the language of their adopted home. "Al's wedding... The last thing I remember..."

He tried to keep his expression blank.

Hartley wasn't fooled. She grabbed his arm. "What is it, Pavel? You remember. What happened to them all?"

"I don't know, doushka," he replied - but he knew she'd never let him get away with leaving things at that. "Just before we... left, I saw the lights of the fighters... That's all."

"Oh, God." Hartley crumpled against him. "Oh, God... My babies..."

He took her into his arms without pausing to consider not doing so. "Maybe they were just an illusion," he said as soothingly as possible. "Maybe they were never real. That must be it. After all, we've only been missing for three days."

She rested her head against his chest as the sobs shook her. He held her until the worst of them passed.

"I want to go home, Pavel," she said, her voice only a choked whisper. "I just want to go home."

"I know." He smoothed her shining hair. "I know."

"I'm forgetting them already," she said, her voice breaking. "Oh, God, please don't let me forget them."

He looked down. The hair under his fingers was Teegan's, just as the face he'd seen in the mirror in his cell had been Aloysha's. "I don't think we'll ever forget them, doushka... Even if we wish we could."

Ensign Hartley experienced a sudden pang of uncertainty as she stepped out of sick bay. What if she couldn't remember the way to her cabin? Still, having fought so hard to persuade McCoy that she was ready to leave his protection, she could hardly go back and ask. She set off, relying on her feet to remember the way. After all, they had only been gone for three days.

"Dora!" Yeoman Ada Kline and Ensign Barbara Stone careered out of their cabin and caught her up in a triumphant circle dance. "You're OK! We were hearing all sorts of awful rumors. What happened?"

Dora hugged her friends in return and let them lead her off towards the rec room. "Barbara! Ada! I'd almost forgotten you..."

"Come on, now," Barbara coaxed. "Spill it. We want to hear everything. First we hear you're dead and now that you were marooned..."

"With the last man you'd chose to be alone with in the dark on an unknown planet," Ada interrupted archly.

"Oh, I don't know," Barbara objected. "He'd be about number, oh, three hundred and seventy on my desert asteroid list."

"Then you need to rewrite your list," Dora snapped.

"Oh, Dora! You didn't, did you?" Barbara demanded, her eyes alight with the prospect of scandal.

Ada rolled her eyes. "Any port in a storm, I suppose. But I would have waited a bit longer than three days. Unless it had been a certain Captain or First Officer, of course. Go on, we won't tell anyone. What really happened?"

Dora looked at them. "Is that all you girls really care about? The sex?"

"Yes!" they screamed in unison.

"Was he awful or what?" Barbara demanded.

"No," she replied without really pausing to consider whether she should or not. "No, he was..."

She stopped only because no words immediately came to mind to describe the considerate, kind, honorable, and altogether too perfect man who had been her husband for the past forty years.

"Details," Ada commanded. "We want details."

Dora noticed a familiar cabin number and stopped dead. "Look, I really need to change and sort myself out. I'll meet you in the rec room in half an hour, and in the meantime, if you want to gossip, you can tell everyone that..." To her intense irritation, she found her throat seized up with tears.

Her two tormentors, promptly overcome with remorse, opened the door to her cabin and took her inside. When she vanished into the minute bathroom, they sat on the bed and looked at one another in astonishment.

"So," Yeoman Kline asked her companion. "Can we interpret this as meaning the sex was good?"

While most people sooner or later have the experience of waking up in the morning and realizing they feel old, Chekov was struggling with the less common sensation of opening his eyes and feeling quite distinctly young. It sharply contrasted with the way he had felt last time he woke without his being able to pinpoint the difference either physically or mentally. Age had simply fallen away along with its burden of cares and responsibilities.

He twisted to read the chronometer on the biobed readouts and discovered that he had slept for nearly twelve hours.

He lay for a moment and soaked up the sights and sounds of the sickbay, appreciating the feeling of being at home. His memories of the house at VeGal, the sleeping veranda, the early morning breezes, had paled into something near to forgetfulness.

"Oh, you're awake. The Captain wants to see you." McCoy ran a quick review of his medical status and switched the biobed off. "How's the memory this morning?"

"Doctor McCoy." Chekov said his name as if he were surprised he remembered that much. "I can't remember anything - except the things we talked about since we got back."

McCoy scowled. He didn't like being manipulated, but what Chekov and Hartley both reported was perfectly possible, whether or not it also happened to be true.

Chekov paused uncertainly at the door. "Can I go back to my cabin to change?"

"I don't see why not. Don't forget your shadow." McCoy gestured at the security guard who still hovered watchfully. Kirk had given him a hard time over releasing Hartley without a minder and he wasn't about to make the same mistake again. Chekov shrugged and departed with his escort on his heels.

"Come!" Kirk snapped in response to the buzz at his office door. The security man stood at attention outside, as Chekov entered nervously.

"All right, Manners, I'll call if I need you."

"Sir!"

Chekov relaxed as the door shut. Presumably he was going to be leaving on his own. He fixed his eyes on Kirk's desk and waited to see what the captain intended.

"Ensign Chekov, we seem to have an unsolved mystery on our hands. Doctor McCoy reports that both you and Ensign Hartley have very little memory of what happened to you - other than that you appeared to be away from the ship for much longer than the three days which elapsed as far as we were concerned. When I spoke to Ensign Hartley earlier she reported that your conduct had been exemplary, although I couldn't persuade her to remember anything that you had actually done. Have you anything further to say to help me to flesh out my report on this enigmatic occurrence?"

"No, sir," Chekov replied.

"Not even that Ensign Hartley acted in the best traditions of Star Fleet at all times?"

"Yes, sir." Chekov paused, seeming to search for either words or memory that did not come to him. "She did, sir."

"I see. As far as you remember, of course."

"Yes, sir."

"Coming on to the events in the transporter room, I realize of course that you must have been disorientated, but I'd be delinquent in my duty if I allowed that to be used as an excuse for your behavior. In fact, it's precisely at times when the natural social conventions break down, that formal discipline is most necessary." He paused to let the Ensign consider his words. "You'd better apologize to Doctor McCoy."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Dismissed."

Kirk watched the departing Chekov and concluded with a sigh of relief that the ensign seemed in every respect back to normal. Chekov was once more the same intense and over-awed junior officer that he had always been. When Kirk had spoken to Hartley earlier, she too had been her normal breezy self, apart from her commendation of Chekov which had left Kirk sincerely doubting her reported memory loss.

"He was brilliant, sir," she had said. "He kept his head, thought of every eventuality and coped with everything that came up. The fact that I've decided to resign doesn't have anything to do with him."

"Are you sure you want to make a final decision on your resignation so soon, Ensign?" he'd asked. "Don't you want to let a little time pass to make sure you're not just making this decision because of what happened to you?"

"No, sir," had been her unhesitating answer. "I want to do this now before I completely forget what happened. I know now that Star Fleet just isn't what I really want to do. You have to give up too much."

Kirk put away the file on the incident, but left unchanged his standing instruction to security to know where the two Ensigns were at all times just for a while longer.

Another buzz of his doorchime announced the arrival of Lt. Sulu with his tactical report on the dreadnought.

The helmsman laid the recording disks on the Captain's desk. "Mr. Spock and I weren't able to come to any firm conclusions about it in the end, sir. All we can do is leave recommendations on file for anyone who comes across another one like it."

"It's been a bad few days for unsolved mysteries," Kirk said.

"Some things have improved," Sulu, ever the optimist, pointed out.

"I suppose you're right. Chekov and Hartley seem determined to remain a mystery, though. How are they getting along together this morning? I've seen them separately, but not..."

"I passed them a moment ago having a..." A pained look crossed the lieutenant's face. "An animated discussion in the corridor."

Kirk sighed. "I had hoped the truce would last a little longer. On another topic, there was something President Karu said to me that I'm not sure I remember accurately..."

He flicked the file open. A picture of the man filled the screen. He looked at it absently, waiting while the computer searched for the reference he wanted. Then he hit the pause. "Sulu, who does he remind you of? Just from that angle, ignoring the hair..."

Sulu picked up one of the disks and handed it to him. "It's even more noticeable on this one, when he was talking to me about the ground strike tactics they used."

Kirk paused with the disk half into the reader. "And the way he knew the ship inside out..."

"And knew all of us."

"I guess we'll never know for certain now," Kirk said, half-dismissively.

"I know, but..."

"Yes, lieutenant?"

Sulu smiled. "I just like the idea that someone would name a child after me."

***** END *****