Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek.  I suppose I own the types of mutant tribbles (except the swimming ones, my friend Krystine suggested them), but I don't own tribbles in general (except one, his name is Trevor and he sits on my bureau; so far, no multiplying).  Do I not own anything else?  Oh yes.  The title.  I stole that from David Gerrold.  Kudos to you if you know who he is.

You no doubt have noticed our new name.  Many thanks to Silverfang for the chicken soup suggestion, and Alania for suggesting that I make it chicken noodle soup.  The different soup does mean something entirely different.  Chicken soup is heartwarming.  Chicken noodle soup causes insanity.

Sorry this chapter took a couple weeks.  But now that it's here it's rather long.  I suppose that's only what one would expect.  I think the words were multiplying as fast as the tribbles.  I'll stop rambling now.

Chapter Forty:

You Think You've Got Tribbles—?

Now, where were we…?  Oh yes.

"And so we're left with a lot of mutant tribbles," McCoy concluded.  "Delightful."

"That is not the word I would use," Kirk snapped.

"So now what?" McCoy asked.

"We'll scour the entire ship.  We'll round up every tribble one by one, and put them all in the cargo bay.  And then," Kirk continued a little wildly, "we'll fly to Quo'nos, and we'll beam down every tribble, and I don't care who we offend!"

"I like it," McCoy decided.

"How do you plan to penetrate that far into Klingon territory?"  Spock, of course, had to ask.

"With great difficulty," Kirk said straight-faced.

Spock considered.  "That answer does not address the question."

Kirk waved his hand at that.  "Okay, forget the Quo'nos part.  For now we'll just stuff them all into the cargo bay.  We can find some Klingons to beam them onto later."

"Yes, Captain," Spock said dubiously.

*  *  *

Kirk studied the tribble in his hand.  It was pink.  Vivid, bright, almost shining pink.  "I have never seen a tribble this color before."

"That's nothin'," Scotty said from behind him.  "It's too bright in here to see prop'rly, but they glow in the dark too."

"Figures," Kirk sighed, staring at the mound of fluorescent tribbles Scotty and his engineers had unearthed in Engineering.  Kirk was making the rounds of the ship, checking the progress of the scouring for tribbles.

"On the plus side, they're easy to find," Kyle put in, walking past with an armful of tribbles.

"Well, that's something," Kirk said.  "Maybe we'll get out of this all right after all.  Anyway," he added in a mutter, "things can't get any worse."

The comm unit buzzed, requesting Captain Kirk.

"Why did I say that?" Kirk asked the tribble, who didn't know either.  Heaving a sigh, quite sure he'd somehow jinxed something, Kirk flipped the comm switch.  "Kirk here, what is it?"

"Lt. Cmdr. Gray here, sir.  I've got some trouble in my department."

Kirk sighed.  Of course there was trouble.  When was there not?  "I see.  Specifically?"

"We're having trouble with the tribbles, Captain.  I don't think they like the color red."

Kirk blinked.  "You…don't think they like…red?"  Funny, he'd always considered Gray one of their more steady security guards; he was department head…

"There's something they don't like about the security department anyway," Gray said.  "They don't seem to have a problem with anyone else, but as soon as a guy in a red shirt comes in…wham.  They can be surprisingly vicious."

"Vicious tribbles…they're little balls of fluff, how can they be…?"

"They're the fanged ones, remember?  And I'm pretty sure they're carnivorous."

Kirk gave up trying to make sense of it.  "I'll be right down.  Kirk out."

*  *  *

Kirk never actually got down to the security department that day.  First he was waylaid near the arboretum. He was walking past just as a botanist came rushing out, stopping short just before bumping into Kirk.

            "Oh!  Captain Kirk!"

Kirk nodded to him, taking a discreet step backwards.  "Ensign."  He studied the man's expression.  It was somewhere between harried and mournful.  Kirk waited for the inevitable.

            "Say, Captain, have you seen Dr. McCoy lately?"

That was definitely not the inevitable.  Kirk mentally shrugged.  "No, not lately.  He's probably in Sickbay."

The ensign nodded.  "Yeah, that's what I was guessing anyway, sir."  He started to walk down the hallway.

Kirk knew that he should just let it go.  His curiosity got the better of him.  "So…why do you need Dr. McCoy anyway?"

The ensign sighed dolefully.  "Well, sir, we have some trouble."

There was the inevitable.  And now Kirk really knew that he should just let it go.  But…he was the Captain, it was his ship…  "What sort of trouble?"

The ensign sighed again.  "We're having trouble with the tribbles."  He brightened suddenly.  "Say, if you've got a minute…"

He really, really, really knew that he should just let it go.  But if the tribbles got out of hand up here, it wouldn't matter if he solved security's problem.  Gray could surely wait a few minutes.  Besides, how hard could it be to solve a botanist's problem?  The tribbles were probably walking on the grass or something.  "I've got about one.  Which way?"

"Over here, sir," the ensign said, much more cheerfully than before.

They walked into the arboretum, a remarkably garden-like place for a starship.  But that was the whole point.

"That's a, ah, interesting breed of tribble you have there, sir," the ensign said by way of small talk en route to his personal trouble with the tribbles.

Kirk blinked, surprised.  He glanced at his hand and realized that he was still carrying the pink tribble.  He'd forgotten about it.  "Oh.  Yeah.  A fluorescent one.  Got it from engineering.  Remind me, what type of tribble have you got in here?"

"The swimming ones.  They're in the pond."

Oh yeah.  The ones with fins.  "Wouldn't think it would be hard to round those up.  Can't you just scoop them out?"

"Yeah, we did at first.  Worked pretty well, they were very complacent.  But then…well, it's right through these trees here, sir, you can see for yourself."

Kirk did see.  And he privately vowed to have a stern talk with McCoy at the nearest opportunity.  The tribbles were anything but complacent now, thrashing around wildly.  The cause of their distress was obvious.  The small black cat who was sitting next to the pond fishing, despite every effort by the crew to get rid of him.

"If we could just get rid of the cat we'd be fine, but I've never seen a more stubborn animal," the ensign said thoughtfully.  "We keep picking him up and moving him and he keeps coming back.  So I was going to go get Dr. McCoy and have him do something."

"Why don't you just take the cat to Sickbay?" Kirk asked.

            The ensign blinked.  "Say, that's a good idea!"

Kirk didn't groan, but it was an effort.  "You know what, I'll take him.  Sickbay's almost on the way to security anyway."  And it would give him a good opportunity to lecture McCoy on why starships, specifically his, weren't good places for cats to go wandering around in.

            The ensign beamed.  "Gee thanks, sir!"

"Don't mention it," Kirk muttered, scooping up the cat.  "You are a problem, you know that?" he told Surak as he walked towards the door.

He almost made it out the door, but was waylaid again two steps from the exit.  A lieutenant in a very wet science-blue shirt came rushing up.  "Captain Kirk!  I'm glad you're here, we've got trouble."

The man looked so relieved to see him that Kirk didn't have the heart to sidestep the issue.  He sighed.  "The tribbles?"

He nodded.  "Yes, sir, this way."

Kirk was led over to a large sink, presumably used for any non-automated gardening the botanists felt the necessity of doing.  "Watch," the lieutenant instructed, and turned on the faucet.

Kirk watched.  "Well.  Water."

"Wait."

It wasn't a long wait.  Two seconds later, mingled with the gushing water, out plopped a tribble.

"I think they're in the plumbing," the lieutenant said unhappily.

Kirk took a moment to absorb this.  "I think you should call Mr. Spock.  Or Mr. Scott," Kirk said slowly.  Either one could probably handle it, and just as important, they would forgive him for handing it to them in the first place.  "I need to go to Sickbay.  And security.  So…call Mr. Spock."

"Yes, sir."

Kirk left as fast as he could, and successfully made it to a turbolift without being stopped by anyone else who was having trouble with the tribbles.  The turbolift was empty.  Even so, he refused to set down the squirming black cat.

"No, I am not putting you down.  You'll hightail it out of here the second the door opens, and I'm not taking the chance," Kirk said sternly.  "I don't have time to chase a silly cat around the ship."

"Merow," Surak said indignantly.

"Don't get offended, you're the one in trouble here," Kirk snapped.  "I bet you thought it was all fun and games to go fish tribbles."

"Meow," Surak agreed.

"Well it's not, it's a problem, interfering with the efficient running of my…"  He stopped.  Moaned.  "Why am I talking to a cat?"

Surak didn't answer.  He knew when he was being insulted.

Kirk made it to Sickbay with good speed, no further delays.  He found Sickbay virtually deserted.  He ignored the mystery for the moment, more interested in dealing with McCoy, who he found in the back room.  McCoy was engaged in running a scanner over a large brown tribble, with his back to the doorway.

"Mind if I have a word with you, Bones?"

"Oh hi, Jim, what do you need?" McCoy asked without turning around.

"I have a question.  Have you seen your cat lately?"

A puzzled expression crossed McCoy's face.  "No…not recently.  He's probably asleep somepla…oh."  McCoy turned around in mid-sentence.  He sighed.  "What'd he do?"

Kirk handed Surak to McCoy and glared at both of them.  "He thought it would be clever to go fishing for tribbles."

"Did he catch any?"

Kirk continued glaring.

McCoy coughed.  "I mean…bad Surak!"

"Meow," Surak protested.

"He doesn't see the problem," McCoy explained.  "Actually, neither do I," he added thoughtfully.  "Why do you care if he catches a couple of tribbles?"

"I don't care if he catches tribbles!  I care when he's sending a hundred tribbles into a panic and preventing their capture entirely!"

"Well, that is a little different," McCoy admitted.

"I told you when he came aboard that that cat would be trouble!" Kirk snapped.

"Now wait a minute, that's not fair, Jim," McCoy protested.

"I told you he would be trouble.  He was trouble today."

"You told me that in August.  It's June.  Eleven months, and no complaints!  Causing one problem in almost a year is better than most of our crewmembers do."

Kirk had to admit there was a certain reasonableness in that.  To himself, he had to admit it.  Not to McCoy he didn't.  "Fine.  Whatever you say.  We'll argue about it later, I have to get to security."

"Do I want to know why?" McCoy asked cautiously.

"Apparently tribbles don't like red."

"No, I don't want to know why," McCoy decided.

"Right."  Kirk started to leave, but paused midway across the room, puzzled.  Forget virtually deserted, the place was deserted.  "Where is everyone?"

"Hunting tribbles, I expect," McCoy said with a shrug.  "We don't seem to have any in here, tribbles really aren't complex enough to require multiple people studying them, and no one's been coming in with tribble-related injuries, so I figured we might as well do something useful.  I stayed here in case anyone does come in, and sent everyone else off to help round up tribbles."

Kirk forgave him for the business with the cat on the spot.  "That was a brilliant move.  And I better get to security."  Kirk rolled his eyes.  "How many times have I thought that in the last fifteen minutes."

"It's taking you fifteen minutes to get from engineering to security?"

"You'd be surprised how many people are having trouble with tribbles on this ship."

"No, I wouldn't," McCoy laughed.  "For little balls of fluff, they always have had a knack for causing trouble."

"Except that they're not little balls of fluff anymore.  Now they're big.  And they've got fins, and glowing lights, and fangs, and…"

"And you're stalling," McCoy said shrewdly.

"No, I'm not."  Kirk sighed.  "Yes, I am.  Swimming tribbles are strange enough, who needs fanged ones?"

"Who don't like the color red," McCoy put in.  "Well, if you're going to procrastinate, you could at least stall to good purpose."

Kirk looked at him quizzically.

"You should call Gray and explain why it's taking fifteen minutes to get to security."

"Good idea," Kirk decided.  "Besides, maybe he's solved the problem himself."  They looked at each other.  "Maybe not," Kirk amended.  "Anyway…"  Kirk flipped the comm unit on.  "Kirk to security."

The reply was slow in coming, but it did arrive eventually.  "Lt. Simmons here."

"Sorry I'm late," Kirk said briskly, "you're not the only ones having trouble with the tribbles.  However, I'm on my way now—"

"I, ah, wouldn't bother, sir," Simmons interrupted.  "No real point to it."

"You…solved the problem?" Kirk said hopefully.

"Uh…no, not exactly," Simmons said unhappily.

Kirk knew he didn't want to know.  Not that he was paying attention to things like that today.  "You want to elaborate?"

"Well…you could come down, sir, but you wouldn't get in.  We're barricaded in."

"Oh.  You're barrica—you're barricaded?"

"Yes, sir, the tribbles got a little out of hand."

Kirk was not pleased.  "Wait a minute, if you're barricaded into the security base, where are the tribbles?"

"They left."

"They left?  Where did they go?"

"Well, last I saw, they were chasing five of our security guards.  You might want to warn engineering that they're at large; they definitely don't like red."

Kirk was silent for a long moment, trying to grasp the idea.  "I'm going to…call you back," he said finally.

McCoy was staring at him.  "Was I hearing that right?"

"Did you hear something completely preposterous?  Too insane to be even close to the truth?"

"Yes."

Kirk nodded.  "You heard right."

"I was afraid of that."

"I better go…do…something," Kirk said vaguely.  What exactly do you do when fanged tribbles are chasing security around your ship?

"Good luck," McCoy said as Kirk started for the door.  "One other thing," McCoy added with a grin.  "You have a very nice tribble there, Jim."

Kirk was reminded once again that he was still carrying a fluorescent tribble.  He gave McCoy a withering look.

"What?  You didn't really expect to come in, have a conversation with me, and leave without a comment about the pink tribble?"

"Wishful thinking."

"Why are you carrying a pink tribble?"

Kirk grimaced.  "I picked it up in engineering.  I should just stick it in a corner, but if it gets forgotten…"

"Wouldn't do to have the ship overrun by pink tribbles," McCoy agreed.

"No.  Especially not when we're already overrun by fanged tribbles.  Which is why I should not be having this conversation right now.  Good-bye, Bones."

Kirk headed for the door.  He had every intention of leaving.  Fate, blind chance, or fanfiction writer's whim had other ideas.  The doors swished open.  And in came some noise.  A lot of it.  Pounding footsteps and several shrieks.

Kirk frowned.  "What is that?"

The answer was all too obvious all too fast.  Running blindly and going for the nearest open door simply because it was open, that came into Sickbay.  That was four men in red shirts, who resembled nothing so much as a frantically fleeing stampede.  It was plainly obvious to anyone looking at them that they were not watching where they were going, or taking into consideration who might be in the way.

McCoy, backing up quickly, fell over a biobed, looking admittedly foolish.  But sprawling across a biobed did get him out of the way of the herd.  Unlike Kirk.  Kirk was directly in their path.  He managed to get four steps away from the door.  He was still directly in their path.

The red-shirts bowled over Kirk and kept going.  At least one of them distinctly shrieked "Carnivorous tribbles!" as they went by.  In four seconds they'd been through Sickbay, fled out the back door, back into the corridor, and off to who knows where.

Kirk sat up gingerly.  "What was that?"  He seemed uninjured, though his shirt had somehow ripped.

"That was either a red and black tornado, or a herd of security guards running amok," McCoy answered, staring in the direction they'd taken.

Kirk slowly got to his feet.

He needn't have bothered.

The doors swooshed open again.  Only one person this time, but he was running just as madly, though seven seconds behind his fellows.

"The fanged tribbles are after me!" Jones shrieked hysterically.

Jones being Jones, running through a fairly empty room with only two people in it, one of whom was sitting on a biobed and the other of whom tried his best to get out of the way, Jones still managed to crash into Kirk.

Terror got Jones back to his feet in half a second.  He had just enough presence of mind to shout a "Sorry, Captain!" behind him as he kept running.

"I really must look in his psych file," McCoy said.

"I doubt it will explain why he's running from tribbles," Kirk said grimly, getting up again.

He needn't have bothered.

The explanation, in the psych file or not, was also coming through the door.  Tribbles.  Hundreds of them.  The size of cats.  And with the fangs to match.  McCoy retreated back to the biobed.  Kirk was not so lucky.  He avoided the first three, tripped on the fourth, and was run over by the fifth.  And the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth…  Fortunately, at least, Gray had been right about the tribbles' objection to red.  None detoured towards McCoy and none stopped to bite Kirk.  They just swarmed past and over him.  Several hundred of them.  Maybe a thousand.  They took half a minute to all go by, and for a while there it looked like they'd never stop.  But eventually the last one went out the door, none too soon for McCoy.  And definitely not too soon for Kirk.

"Jim?"  McCoy looked over the edge of the biobed.  Kirk was sprawled on the floor, looking at the ceiling.  "Jim?"

Kirk didn't move, didn't even look, but he did answer.  "Yeah?"

"You all right?"

"I don't know.  You're the doctor.  You tell me."

"You look all right."

"Yeah."

"You feel all right?"

"Yeah."

"You're probably all right."

"Okay."

A pause.  "You gonna get up?"

"I don't think I'll bother."

"Why not?"

Kirk shrugged.  "I'll just get knocked down again."

"That's pessimistic."

"I think of it as practical."

"It's pessimistic."

"You gonna get off the biobed?"

Another pause.  "Not immediately."

"Exactly."

"Point taken."

Kirk continued contemplating the ceiling.  McCoy contemplated the far wall, which was what happened to be in view when sprawled with your head at the foot of a biobed.  Silence reigned for a few minutes.

"You know, I have the strangest feeling," Kirk said conversationally, "that this is all Jones' fault."

"Not all of it.  He only knocked you over for a third of it."

"That's not why."

"How do you figure then?"

"Have you looked at your calendar?"

"Not lately.  Why, is it 'Blame a Jones' Day?"

"No.  It's Friday."

"Don't tell me."

Kirk nodded.  "The thirteenth."

Any answer from McCoy was cut off by the comm unit.  It buzzed loudly, demanding Captain Kirk.

"It figures," Kirk said, resigned, and heaved back to his feet.  He went to answer the comm unit, while McCoy went to drag Surak out from under a cabinet.

"Kirk here."

"This is the Mess Hall.  We have—"

"—trouble with the tribbles," Kirk interrupted.  "I'll be right there."

The man was a little taken aback.  "Er, all right, thanks, Captain."

"Don't mention it," Kirk muttered, flipping off the comm.  He turned around, straightening his torn shirt.  Fortunately for the ship, unfortunately for the tribbles, Kirk had already moved through his brief bout of apathy and into his more natural state of anger.  "All right, the tribbles will probably kill us all, but there's no reason we can't take a few of them down with us."

"That's one way to put it."

"I'm going down to the Mess Hall, there's probably tribbles in the soup.  Could you call Spock, he's on the bridge.  Tell him to send some gold-shirts after the carnivorous tribbles."

"Got it."

"Thanks."

Kirk left for the Mess Hall.  He got there much faster than he'd gotten (or not gotten) to security.  "What's the problem?" he demanded, striding into the Mess Hall.

A man in a red shirt, (who we can safely assume was an engineer and less prone to panic) presumably the same one who'd been on the comm, indicated the replicators.  "Well, the tribbles?  They're in the food processors, sir."

"Of course they are," Kirk agreed.  "Where else would they be?  They were in there last time too."

"This, ah, isn't exactly like last time."

"What is it like?" Kirk wanted to know.

He hesitated.  "Well, sir, um…"

Kirk's patience levels were just about at zero.  He didn't wait for an answer, but went directly to the replicators himself.  "Chicken sandwich," he ordered.

There was probably a chicken sandwich in there somewhere.  In among the mounds of tribbles that came out, swamping Kirk.  There may have been a few more in the corridor, or in the grain compartment, but it was a close thing.

Kirk looked around him, at the pile of tribbles.  "It never fails," he said quietly.  A dangerous sort of quiet.

The rest of the room gawked.  They'd been expecting a lot of tribbles, but who would be expecting that the Captain would end up buried in them?  After all, what are the odds of that happening?

The wall comm unit buzzed demandingly.  On reflex Kirk reached a hand out.  He missed by about a foot.

"Someone hit that for me," Kirk ordered.

A blue-shirt obligingly whacked the comm unit.

"What?" Kirk demanded.  It was decidedly not the proper etiquette for answering comm units, but Kirk really didn't care at the moment.

"Captain?"  A voice that expressionless could only belong to Spock.

"What do you want, Spock?"

"We seem to have a slight problem."

"You have a slight problem?  You wouldn't believe the slight problem I've got.  I only happen to be chest-deep in tribbles."

"Do you think you will be able to get out unaided this time?" Spock asked gravely.

Kirk didn't answer.

"Captain?"

"I am going to kill Bones," Kirk said slowly.  "Sometime very soon.  Just as soon as someone gets me out of these blasted tribbles!"

"I believe we have another matter to take care of first."

"Oh, right.  Did you actually call about something?"

"Yes, Captain.  We have a slight problem.  Specifically, the Romulan Bird-of-Prey decloaking off the port bow."

~~~~~

Whatshername:  You changed your name too soon.  Just before you proved yourself to be psychic  (I know it's not quite the same as Psyche, but y'know.)  I swear I was already planning to have red-shirts trample Kirk before you suggested panicking.  Either I'm predictable or we think similarly, lol.

Saurons Twin Sister: Thanks.  And so far Jones is alive, so you're okay in my book.  Not my literal book, my…oh forget it.

Shameeka: Was I late again?  Probably.  Oh well, as long as it's also hopefully great again. : )

PearlGirl: I actually found a web site.  Those are all real holidays Kirk's mentioning.  Giggle, risks speech.  Yes, you can use it, and what book were you reading?

Alania: hopefully your suspense has been allayed.  And renewed.  And thank you further for the name suggestion.  I don't know if people really sacrifice goats.  My source of information on that is Garfield comics.

EmpressLeia: Thanks, role switching is always amusing.

A.M.: What will I think of next?  Polka-dotted tribbles, but they never made it into the chapter unfortunately.

Wedge Antilles: Did I sound annoyed?  Because I wasn't, multiple reviews are always nice.  No, he can't maim Jones!  What would that do to his image?

Taskemus: Yeah, but it really was national turtle day.  And if you think there were too many tribbles in chapter thirty-nine…

BlesstheMoon:  Wow.  I reduced someone to tears?  I didn't know I was quite that funny.

Beedrill: You should be happy then, if you liked the fanged ones.  : )  And you really don't have to read Xanth first…

Onward to forty-one!  Y'know, I think I literally thought, back around chapter two or three, that this could keep going for forty chapters.  Than I told myself that was crazy.  Thanks for the literal hundreds of reviews!  I love you guys!