CHAPTER 3

T'Pol led the staff meeting of senior officers in the captain's mess. She always kept to the business at hand, and she never let any disagreements escalate.

That was becoming more and more difficult to do, she reflected, as Malcolm's borderline mental stability appeared to be further undermined lately whenever he was around Trip.

As long as Hoshi could keep Malcolm in check, the situation with the senior staff should remain stable. T'Pol did not wish to lose Malcolm. He and Hoshi had an ability -- a knack, Hoshi called it -- of being able to go into dangerous areas of the ship and return with needed items. That was getting harder and harder to accomplish as time passed and their supplies dwindled.

But neither did T'Pol wish any harm to come to Trip, which was what would surely happen if Malcolm was not restrained.

Of all the people on board, Trip had the knowledge and expertise that might eventually enable them to escape. The engineer had spent the last two years studying and experimenting, trying to find a way to modify the engines to operate in this area of space. Everything he had tried so far had failed.

He was currently in the middle of another project that might set them free. The trilithium strips Hoshi and Malcolm had scavenged the day before were for that project.

As Trip reported on what he would do with the strips, T'Pol glanced covertly at Hoshi. T'Pol knew Trip had visited her last night. From his downcast demeanor, she also gathered that Hoshi had denied him again.

She quickly squashed the un-Vulcanlike feeling of satisfaction at that thought. Just as Hoshi shared Malcolm's bed, T'Pol shared Trip's. She provided Trip with physical release, but was unable to give him anything beyond that. He, however, wanted a more emotional involvement. Hence his frequent visits to Hoshi's door.

As long as Hoshi didn't take Trip up on his request, the status quo could be maintained. If Trip somehow convinced Hoshi to acquiesce to his desires, however, things would change. T'Pol hurriedly tamped down the feather-soft touch of hysteria she felt trying to worm its way into her rationality when she contemplated such a possibility.

One thing T'Pol had come to understand about the madness -- it tapped into a person's weaknesses, picking the one that could derange a person the most.

So she allowed Trip into her bed almost every evening, knowing that not to do so would be her downfall, no matter how much she would like to deny it. She wanted him despite being unable to respond to him. To lose him to another would cause her own sanity to come apart, and no logic would be able to save her.

T'Pol shifted her gaze to Malcolm. His weakness was easy for her to see, now that the madness was apparent in him. He had long believed himself to be overshadowed by Trip. The difference in the two men's ranks was the most obvious reason, with Malcolm required to follow Trip's orders.

No doubt Trip's easy-going manner grated on Malcolm. Of all the humans she'd met, Malcolm was the most like her in manner and disposition, and she knew there were times when Trip's casual attitude irritated Malcolm.

Unlike Trip, Malcolm was reserved and controlled, not given to overt displays of emotion. At least he hadn't been until they'd become trapped here.

If T'Pol believed in luck, she would think it was lucky that the antidote to Malcolm's madness seemed to be Hoshi. Perhaps the knowledge that Hoshi had chosen him over Trip had kept Malcolm from sliding over the edge to total madness. Hoshi was the one area where Malcolm had bested Trip, and that salve to his ego was helping him to keep a grip on his sanity.

Bringing her full attention back to the meeting, T'Pol saw Hoshi and Malcolm trade a knowing glance as Trip made a request for another foray for materials.

Malcolm cleared his throat. "Hoshi and I can do it," he said with confidence.

T'Pol could see that Trip was torn. He needed the supplies, but he didn't want to put his friends at risk. Still, someone had to go after the items, and Hoshi and Malcolm were the best suited for the task.

Malcolm, whose paranoid tendencies were becoming more and more pronounced, was the best qualified from a tactical viewpoint. Hoshi, with her almost supernatural hearing, served as a biological scanner, able to detect even the minutest sounds from would-be attackers below decks. In addition, Malcolm's desire to keep Hoshi safe would help prevent him from doing anything rash.

Everything considered, T'Pol thought, Hoshi and Malcolm were the perfect team, keeping each other balanced.

"What do you want?" Hoshi asked Trip.

T'Pol watched as Trip's face turned an interesting shade of red at Hoshi's unintended innuendo. Oh, yes, Hoshi had definitely turned him down last night.

"Solder," Trip said.

"Solder?" Malcolm repeated incredulously. "You're asking us to risk our lives for solder?"

"Malcolm," Hoshi said quietly, putting a hand on his arm.

"It's got to be pure," Trip said defensively. "What we've got left in engineering is contaminated."

Hoshi gave Malcolm's arm a squeeze, and he placed his hand over hers.

"Is there anything else we could pick up while we're at it?" Hoshi asked.

"Yes," T'Pol put in. "Ensign Mayweather said there are some ration packs in the emergency locker on the same deck. They would go a long way toward stretching our food supplies. The hydroponic garden is still recovering from the fungal infestation and has not reached its maximum output."

"I'm afraid to find out what he's gonna whip up with ration packs this time," Trip said with a ghost of a smile. "Travis' daddy sure didn't pass on the cookin' gene to him."

As the meeting broke up, Hoshi asked, "Where's Travis today?"

T'Pol paused before replying. "He is in sickbay."

Trip, Malcolm and Hoshi all looked at her in concern.

"Is something wrong with him?" Malcolm asked.

"No," T'Pol said. "But I believe Crewman Cutler has finally convinced him that, without therapy, his leg will never get any better. They are beginning exercises to strengthen his muscles."

T'Pol maintained her stoic expression as the other three reacted happily to this news. Travis, their eternal optimist, had become severely depressed after his leg was hurt during an excursion to the lower decks for supplies. It hadn't helped that it was one of their former crewmates, albeit one of the crazy ones, who'd rammed a sharpened steel rod through his calf.

Travis had been one of the last ones to accept that they were trapped. It had taken being hurt to finally convince him. When reality had sunk in, he hadn't liked it very well, and he'd become surly and distant.

Even now, however, Travis wanted to believe that nothing was wrong with the captain.

T'Pol had had a hard time accepting it herself. Jonathan Archer had the most strength of will of any human she had ever met. He was the last person she'd thought would fall prey to the madness.

So when it did happen, it had surprised her. One day, Jonathan was fine; the next, he had ordered all the animals in sickbay to be killed and used for food. When his order had been refused, he'd stormed to sickbay. She and Trip had followed, not sure what the captain would do.

When Jonathan had tried to implement his own order, Doctor Phlox had intervened. The captain had severely injured the Denobulan before the shocked onlookers could react.

T'Pol wouldn't admit it, but what happened next was an emotionally painful episode for her.

They'd developed a method of dealing with crewmembers who had become deranged. As the number of crewmen becoming mentally unstable grew, they'd cordoned off sections of the ship, welding bulkhead doors shut. Only a few hatches could be opened to allow access. It was an efficient way to separate the sane from the insane, each having their own parts of the ship.

When a crewmember went mad, he or she would be taken into the section of the ship reserved for those who no longer had full use of their mental faculties. They had the run of the decks below engineering, but nothing above that.

T'Pol remembered the look on Jonathan's face, the slightest remnant of sanity apparent in his eyes when he realized where he was being taken. He'd turned and rushed them then, and Malcolm had had to stun him. They'd carried the unconscious captain the rest of the way, laid him gently on the deck, and left, locking the hatch behind them.

They didn't have the resources to take care of all those afflicted with the madness. As it was, they had to have two people at each of the access hatches to stand guard not only against those banished to other side but against each other as well, in case the madness struck one of them.

At first they had used the transporter to beam food to the others, but it was an incredible power drain, and inefficient. On one of their trips to the lower decks, Hoshi and Malcolm had seen food that had materialized partially inside a bulkhead.

So now food was sent to the lower decks by means of an improvised dumb waiter. It had taken three days, with guards watching out as Trip and his crew did the work, to build the shaft.

T'Pol doubted all the residents of the lower decks were getting their fair shares of the food. The only alternative was to send able-bodied crew down to distribute the food, but she considered that a waste of manpower. There was also the possibility of those crewmembers being harmed by the unpredictable lower-deck inhabitants.

At last count, a third of the crew was afflicted. While there were no recent cases, there were a few like Malcolm who, for whatever reason, maintained a tenuous grasp on their sanity.

T'Pol didn't want to contemplate what would happen if the ill crewmembers had unrestricted access to the entire ship. Whatever infinitesimal chance they had of getting out of this area of space would be negated. There would be no order, only chaos, and the rest of them most likely would succumb to the madness.

Death did not scare T'Pol. As she would point out to Trip on occasion, Vulcans were not capable of being frightened, and death was a natural progression from life, not something to be feared. But when it came to the loss of logic, any Vulcan would be acutely concerned.

When she thought about the possibility of losing her rationality, T'Pol could feel the madness nibble at the edges of her awareness, allowing her a faint understanding of what it would be like to experience terror.

So she would continue to lead what was left of the crew, trying to find some way to break free from whatever it was that was holding the ship in place. That was the immediate goal.

If they did break free and were able to leave this area of space behind, perhaps whatever it was affecting the crew would be left behind as well.

As humans would say, one could only hope.