When McCoy entered the sickbay to find yet another humanoid figure awaiting his attention, he groaned out loud. It was the third time that week, and three was too many for coincidence.

"How may I serve your leadership?" the blue-skinned alien recited with a dull, unthinking stare.

"Three is too many for coincidence," Spock intoned, right on cue, and McCoy scowled. "And the intervals between are shrinking," Spock continued blithely. "I predict we will soon reach the source of these attacks."

"Spare me the analysis, Mr. Spock, please. That sounds like the captain's problem," McCoy said, his voice curt. "My only job is to fix this guy up." He began a diagnostic scan, turning his back firmly to Spock, and ignored the raised eyebrow.

It was a bit harsher than he'd meant it. McCoy himself couldn't remember when he'd become so short-tempered. He'd found the mission energizing, once: To boldly go where no man has gone before. It was grand. Romantic. Now it all felt stale in his mouth.

Some days, all he wanted in the world was to lie down and let his thoughts drain out of him. He was good at his job, better than Spock even, but these days his brain felt like the Enterprise's engine. Sometimes, it just wouldn't start.

Such as today, with the Enterprise pursuing a chemical enslaver in a faster-than-light ship, leaving a trail of brainwashed civilizations in its wake. McCoy sighed and took a blood sample from the alien. He'd distilled the strain of virus from the first victim within the day, but each species' biology necessitated its own unique cure. It would be another late night in the lab. He settled in for a long night, one eye on his patient and the other on his blood tests.

The next morning, he was ready. "Captain, the newest cure," he said unfeelingly. "Place three drops on the tongue, and the virus will be eradicated within the hour. The three-pronged shape of the puncture is reminiscent of the tip of a spear, and the virus resembles a species found on Solaria's third moon," he continued, a bland, rehearsed recitation.

Captain Kirk blinked. "Bones, are you sure?" he asked, his brow furrowed.

"Only two moons orbit the planet Solaria. Their names are Orcus and Vanth, and neither one has been known to harbor viruses," Spock explained. His voice was as level as ever, but a hint of concern crossed his face.

McCoy froze, confused. Everything Spock had said was true, and he knew that, so why had he thought—

"The spear is a valuable clue," Kirk was saying, examining an enlarged photograph of the triple puncture.

He could have sworn it looked familiar, only, if it wasn't the Solarians, whose was it? In vain, McCoy tried to remember which alien races used spears. "Well, what do you want me to say?" he finally snapped.

And there it was again, the quick sideways glance passing between Kirk and Spock and every other crew member. Conversations exchanged without a word—about him, as if he wasn't even there. "Come off it, Jim," McCoy grumbled. "Whatever you're thinking, you can say to my face."

"I was thinking," Kirk said slowly, thoughtfully.

"Yes?"

"I was thinking that you need a break."


Paradoxically, the break made everything worse, except the sickbay which ran as smoothly under Spock as it had under McCoy. That was what made it worse, McCoy thought morosely: He was disposable. He couldn't say why he was still on the ship, smothering a sigh when a patient arrived and counting the minutes until they'd be well and out of his sight. On the first day of his break, he'd planned to stretch and read, and then to take stock of the medical supplies. Instead, he spent the morning lying on his cot, staring at his ceiling and inventing tighter and tighter timelines for himself. Perhaps he'd skip the stretch and halve his reading, and then still have time to sort his equipment. But as morning turned to afternoon, which crept into evening, he was forced to concede that the day was a loss.

The second day followed much the same way, an interminable daze. As the hours and days blurred together, the ship and its mission drifted further and further from his thoughts, and the mind-control virus seemed a distant dream.

Until Spock crashed into his room, with Scotty and Sulu on his tail. "We lost contact with Jim," he said abruptly. "The last we heard was at 0800, when he made contact with the Aldebarans on the planet Alden-7 at twelve degrees latitude, twenty longitude."

Aldebaran. Triple-pointed spears, each prong representing one of their three moons. "That's the name I was looking for," McCoy muttered absently.

"McCoy, are you listening?"

"What are we waiting for?" McCoy replied, standing at attention. As one, they headed for the transporter, where Scotty beamed them to the surface below.


They found Kirk easily enough, standing obediently behind an Aldebaran chancellor, his head bowed, eyes blank and unfocused. "Jim, snap out of it!" McCoy roared.

"It's no use," Spock pronounced. "He's in the virus's grasp. He can't hear us."

"There must be something we can do!" McCoy protested.

"What you can do," the Chancellor sneered, "is call an end to your pursuit of us. Simply for the next ten days, while we spread the virus to this quadrant of the galaxy. And after that," the Chancellor shrugged, "you can have him back. By then we'll be an undefeatable force."

"And why would we sit back and allow that," McCoy retorted.

"Why, to guarantee your captain's safety, of course."

"And if we don't?"

"Then I'll ask my servant here to enforce my request, shall we say."

The moment the words were spoken, Kirk's head snapped up, and his eyes gleamed brightly. He stepped forward, fists raised in challenge.

"Wait," Spock said, clearly stalling. "We need to. . . ." he trailed off, wracking his mind for an excuse.

"To give the captain a tri-ox compound," McCoy chimed in. "He won't survive ten days in this atmosphere. I will need time to prepare it."

The Chancellor smiled, an oily, complacent smirk. "Tri-ox, or the cure? No, that's impossible. No one could replicate it without the most precise measurements, and the side effects of an imprecise concoction are dire. No, you wouldn't risk it. Alright," he decided. "Five minutes, and no more."

The aforementioned side effects were likely paralysis and death. "Doctor, it's all up to you," Spock whispered.

McCoy nodded, his mind narrowing in to the challenge before him. Each step fell into place before him in a neat sequence, and his hands knew the patterns: the diagnostics, the blood draw that Kirk accepted unflinchingly, and then the suspension that would kill the virus and cure the captain. Here on Alden-7, with no his precision measurements far out of reach, he worked on instinct alone.

He was almost done, down to the last two ingredients, when he froze. He frowned at his belt with its various pouches, thinking. Was it the calendula or the hyssop, or possibly neither one? He couldn't remember—

"Twenty-two grams of hawthorn," Spock said.

Too on edge for words, McCoy nodded. Last of all went the drop of Kirk's blood. He swirled it gently and drew it into a needle.

His heart jumped furiously as he took held it up to Kirk's arm in a trembling hand. In a few moments, Jim would be either cured or dead. This was the most energized he'd felt in months, and he hoped fervently to never face this terror again.


The entire crew was waiting by the transporter when the search party beamed back up to the Enterprise, a cured and healthy Captain Kirk in tow. Drained and exhausted, McCoy slipped away during the debrief and returned to the sickbay. Quietly, he ran a scan on himself. He was reading the results by the time Kirk came to find him.

"It's been a long few years, hasn't it?" Kirk said softly. "All those planets with all those life forms. Marvelous women. I imagine the excitement has worn off quite a bit."

McCoy nodded. "Can't say when it happened," he mumbled, the words tumbling out. "Used to get excited about a non-reconstituted meal and a beautiful companion. It's all the same these days."

They sat silently, McCoy still scanning the results on his screen.

"What's it say?" Kirk prompted.

McCoy considered keeping silent. Would Kirk command him to answer? He didn't want to find out. "A. . . chemical imbalance," he admitted.

"I see." Kirk's voice held no horror or distaste, or even surprise, only acknowledgement. "Well, whatever the balance of your chemicals, you're our doctor," he said firmly. He stood to leave. "And I'll be here to lend a hand, and Spock will be here to lend a hundred extra details, should you need it." The words remained in McCoy's head long after the captain's departure, along with twenty-two grams of hawthorn, their meaning unmistakable.

Foot by foot, inch by inch, McCoy went through the sickbay, preparing his equipment and his supplies. Tomorrow was waiting, and he was determined to try.