Tucker came at Reed like a charging bull. Fortunately, he did so with roughly the same degree of finesse, and Reed easily ducked and side stepped the engineer. It was simple reflex to grab Tucker's arm on his way by and swing him around by his own momentum. With Tucker off course and off balance, it was equally minor to step in and twist his arm behind his back, at the same time giving him a kick at the back of the leg that would bring him down.

At least, that should have been the maneuver Reed used. Instead, he hesitated partway through, as the thought that he was assaulting a superior officer crossed his mind. The plain fact that this was an action of self-defense was enough that he didn't stop, but he slowed down for a bare moment as the impulses, not yet thought out, came into rough conflict. And that moment was all Commander Tucker needed.

Swiftly turning, Tucker used his free hand to make a fist and swing around to hit Reed in the side. Reed reacted instantly, releasing Tucker, springing to his right away from Tucker and turning to protect his soft side all at once. Even so, Tucker's fist found brief contact with the floating ribs, hard enough that Reed staggered as pain exploded at the point of contact and radiated swiftly outward.

Tucker didn't let him recover, leaping on Reed and taking them both to the ground. It dawned on Reed that his own reluctance and lack of commitment to the fight was about to get him killed. Tucker was twice his size, but more importantly he had intention on his side. Specifically, intention to kill.

Now on top of Reed, Tucker's hands found the tactical officer's throat and closed around it. Thrashing around, still half-blind from the pain in his ribs, Reed made several attempts at dislodging Tucker, to break the hold. To get air. But Tucker was bigger, stronger, and murderously raging. In his current position, everything Reed knew about combat tactics wasn't helping him.

Frantic, unable to reach Tucker's face or throat, or to get enough of an angle on the inner elbow to hit it and make it bend so he could get loose, Reed's oxygen deprived brain scrambled for something to do. His hands looked for a stick or rock or something he could hit Tucker with, his legs kicked and shoved, trying to work their way under Tucker's body so Reed could push the man off with his knee.

Maybe with enough time and coordination, but both of those required air, and Reed was quickly running out of what little of that he had left. It crossed his mind that he was going to die. Tucker had no intention of letting him go just because he lost consciousness, the evidence of that was plain in the crazed eyes staring down. Tucker was going to kill him. He was going to die.

Enterprise.

His body convulsed, seeking air that wasn't there to be found, and he knew that he had to do something, had to do it now. Someone had to keep trying to save Enterprise. Someone had to know what was happening. Someone had to try and stop it. There was only one thing for it.

Frantically, Reed clawed at his pocket and the zipper. He could barely feel his hand, and it didn't do the things he told it to, making the task a thousand times harder than it had any right to be. But, at last, he got his fingers into the pocket and touched the hypospray. It felt like an eternity before he managed to finagle it out of the pocket and into his hand. And then he hit Tucker with it, literally.

Startled by the hissing and the strike, Tucker was snapped suddenly out of the fugue. His hold loosened and he started to sit up. It was pure reflex for Reed to draw in a leg and put a boot in the engineer's midsection, launching him like a torpedo. Tucker landed on his back a short distance away with an unimpressive 'whump.' He didn't try to get up and resume the fight.

"Are you two done?"

Travis had taken no sides in the scuffle, only moved out of the way and leaned against a rock to watch. It was the only evidence that the old Travis was still in there somewhere. Reed was quite certain that, were he as fully changed as the others, Travis would have immediately moved to back Commander Tucker, rather than merely staying out of things.

Reed and Tucker had certainly done something of a number on each other, though inevitably the security officer had bested the engineer. But it meant that now he had a new problem.

While Tucker lay gasping on the ground, trying to regain his breath, Reed sat up, one hand against the bruised ribs in a decidedly futile attempt to quiet them, and pondered what he'd done. He'd wasted his one sure shot on an engineer. Reed might not even be breathing by the end of this little jaunt into the jungle without that hypo. He'd had no intention of using it here and now, yet he'd done just that. Instead of using it wisely, he'd lost his temper with Tucker and now set off a chain of events he had no means of predicting.

How soon would the injection work? Would it work at all? What would Tucker do to him in the meantime? Reed had just brawled with a superior officer. Not only that, he'd won, embarrassing said superior. A good way to get your career ended rather abruptly under the best of circumstances.

Touching his finger tips to his lip and flinching at the split while wondering when and how it got there, Reed thought that pure swamp rage might have something to it. Tucker didn't have a great deal of hand-to-hand combat training, but he had spirit and he was athletic enough to pull off most maneuvers that occurred to him. And something told Reed this was not Tucker's first fight, nor even his third or fourth. The man wasn't as prone to violence as all the yelling when he got upset might suggest, but he could hold his own better than he had any right to, given his background.

At least it didn't feel like anything was broken, despite the hit his ribs had taken. He also decided that Tucker probably hadn't really planned to kill him, but had only acted out of sudden rage. The throttling had occurred simply because the opportunity was presented and the anger had reached a peak. The startled look Tucker had when Reed hit him with the hypo had seemed almost as much to do with the recognition of his own actions as the spray itself.

Not that it would do either of them any good now. Say Tucker's brain did clear. Chances were, everyone would turn on him too, and he was a volatile enough personality not to take it quietly for a minute. Anyway, what good was an engineer under the circumstances? Reed needed to take a scientist or the ship's captain to solve this problem. He'd just screwed himself, and possibly Tucker too while he was at it. Bloody well done.

"You're gonna get court martialed when we get back to Enterprise," Tucker muttered when he finally regained sufficient air to speak, "You just killed your career, Mister."

"Yes, well," Reed sighed, "At least I'm not the one killing Enterprise."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tucker demanded, bristling as if for another fight.

"Never mind. Nothing," Reed answered wearily.

The last thing he wanted was another fight. Anyway, his barbed remark wasn't true. By his own actions, and inaction, Reed was dooming Enterprise as much as anyone.

"Can we go look for mushrooms now?" Travis asked hopefully.

"I don't know," Reed replied, glancing sidelong at Tucker, "Can we?"

Tucker pushed himself to a sitting position, glaring at Reed as he did so. Still furious then. Not a good sign. But, recently beaten, Tucker wasn't looking for a second round, merely to reclaim what remained of his dignity and resume his authority of the situation. Reed was more than happy to let him. Their little scuffle hadn't been a power struggle, and Reed's quarrel wasn't really with Tucker anyway, but whatever it was that kept staring back at him through the Commander's clear blue eyes.

"Fine," Tucker hissed through his teeth, "Let's go."

"I'm gonna kill him, Cap'n," Trip's voice crackled harshly through the communicator, "I'm gonna skin him alive and hang him upside down by his boots over the warp core as a warning to others."

"You don't mean that," Jonathan said passively.

"Oh like hell I don't. That limey bastard tried to kill me," Trip retorted.

Well that was new. Jonathan didn't recall Trip having resorted to calling Malcolm names before. Especially not outdated names that implied a certain bigotry on Trip's part. Suddenly, for just an instant, Jonathan found himself reliving the moment where Malcolm had declared that he wasn't the one who'd changed, implying without subtlety that the rest of them, Jonathan included, had.

Then he shook it off, returning his focus to the more important task at hand.

"How's the search coming?" Jonathan asked, changing the subject.

"Travis found the bridge the Dolizet told us about. It's old and rickety as hell. I sent Malcolm to check it out, and you should've heard him whine about it. You'd think he was scared of heights or something, the way he carried on about how unsafe the thing looked to him."

"Did you tell him you're the engineer and you'd know better than he would whether or not the bridge was safe?" Jonathan asked.

"Yeah, and he gave me some lip about how a warp core is nothing at all like a wooden bridge. Like he'd know," Trip scoffed.

But Malcolm would know, wouldn't he? Malcolm wasn't just about shooting things. He could strip, repair and build weapons from scratch. Integrate them with Enterprise's power systems as well or better than the engineers back on Earth who specialized in that kind of thing. He knew how to build, use and diffuse explosives of more types than Jonathan cared to count. And he had as much survival training, if not more, than Trip and Jonathan put together. Malcolm would know a bad bridge when he saw one, as well or better than Trip would.

Yet Jonathan didn't say that. And the thoughts passed out of mind rapidly, replaced with the annoyed awareness that Malcolm's tendency to complain and backpedal and otherwise make life difficult was slowing them down. He was trying to block them from completing their mission at every turn. And he was getting damned petty and childish about it too.

"You did get him to cross the bridge though," Jonathan said.

"Yeah, once he got finished whining about it. The cave the Dolizet told us about should be about two kilometers farther on. Since they said they harvested that spot dry and haven't been there in decades because of it, I sent Malcolm ahead on his own. No point in us all goin' if there's nothin' to find."

"Agreed," Jonathan heard himself say, though his mind was elsewhere.

He supposed it was possible this variety of the mushroom really was extinct like the Dolizet said, but they had to look for it, didn't they? Of all the Dolizet mushrooms, the endangered or thought to be extinct ones were the most important to try and preserve, find ways to grow more of.

Besides, Trip had to be down there anyway, to look at some of the equipment the Dolizet used in farming the mushrooms, as well as to check in with the landing parties working down there and make sure everything was going smoothly. As for Travis, he was coming off an ornery streak of his own, and Jonathan figured the fresh air might help keep things on a more even keel. Travis was young and energetic, and he hadn't had much to do the last few weeks.

"How's Travis doing?" Jonathan asked.

"Fine. I haven't had any trouble with him at all," Trip said, adding sourly, "Unlike some people-"

"You'll get your chance to tell me all about what happened when you're back on board," Jonathan interrupted, "For now, keep your mind on the mission."

"Sure thing," Trip said, "But I tell ya, if Malcolm steps out of line again… well it may just be he finds himself a permanent reassignment on this lovely little planet."

"I don't like what you're implying, Trip," Jonathan said guardedly, "I want my tactical officer back in one piece. And then we can think about court martialing him."

Trip sighed in a put-upon manner, "Understood. Tucker out."

Jonathan pushed the button to sever the comm connection at his end and glanced up at T'Pol, who had stood silently but judgmentally by during the entire conversation.

"You really think Malcolm tried to kill Trip?" Jonathan asked.

"Commander Tucker can be… temperamental," T'Pol said rather diplomatically, "And he is prone to using colorful language and hyperbole," she paused before concluding, "But he is not in the habit of lying about such matters as attempts on his life."

Jonathan nodded, more to himself than T'Pol, and looked at the floor in front of him without really seeing it for a few seconds, thinking. Wondering just where the hell he'd gone wrong with Malcolm. Maybe it was his fault the Lieutenant had finally snapped. Malcolm hadn't wanted to fraternize with other members of the crew, least of all his superiors. But Jonathan had pushed it, and kept on pushing it, because that was the kind of crew he wanted, the way he thought his ship should run. But maybe some people just weren't built for it. Maybe they were antisocial for a reason, and when you tried to make them what they weren't… it just broke them.

Or maybe the problem was deeper than that. Maybe Malcolm had been a mutinous killer all along, but Jonathan had been too busy thinking about his grand adventure and how much fun exploring space and meeting new people was going to be to see that one member of his crew had a darkly murderous streak.

But he couldn't believe that. Surely he would have noticed well before now if Malcolm had been a bad egg all along. Malcolm would have hurt somebody before now. Well… somebody besides himself anyway. So it must have been something that happened to him along the way.

Could it have been Jonathan's way of handling him? Or was it something less innocent and more sinister? The repair station may have done more than fix Malcolm's leg. And hadn't Travis been acting off recently too? Maybe it had done something to them. Something that Travis seemed to be shaking off. But maybe Malcolm couldn't. Maybe the repair station had started some sort of process that was rewriting his personality somehow, making him someone he wasn't.

Jonathan mentally shook his head at that. No, that was just outrageous. It didn't make sense. It was just Jonathan trying to evade the growing sense of guilt, the feeling that he was somehow to blame for what Malcolm had become, the helpless feeling of not knowing how to fix it, or if it could be fixed and the knowledge that he might have to abandon trying in order to complete their mission.

The mission had to come first. Even if it meant giving up on a valued member of his crew. The old Malcolm would understand that, even if the new one couldn't.

Reed knew nothing of Tucker's check in with Archer, but he didn't have to.

He had experience being on the wrong side of someone with the boss's favor. Tucker was not only Reed's superior, he was Archer's best friend. Even under normal circumstances, Reed's having picked a fight with Tucker, no matter how provoked, would not end well for him. Under the present conditions, there was no way Reed's career survived. He suspected he'd be lucky to get away with his life.

Yet it didn't even cross his mind to try disappearing into the Dolizet jungle.

Crossing the recklessly maintained wood bridge they'd found seemed about as safe as playing Toss the Phase Pistol, but Reed did it anyway. Then came the hard part, which was getting off the thing through the thick forest growth that had taken control of it. The flora rapidly proved to offer up a variety of hazards, from biting insects to concealed thorns.

Reed's uniform provided some protection, but he found himself wishing for a good pair of gloves and some hedge trimmers. But it seemed Commander Tucker wasn't interested in shopping for gardening tools, so Reed did what he could to get through. The result of this endeavor was for a recurved thorn to catch the pull of the zipper on the pocket of his right sleeve, and when next he moved, it refused to release its prize. The upshot of this was that the pocket unzipped, and the pull detached altogether. Fortunately the pocket was empty, but Reed still paused to survey the damage with some displeasure.

Uniform repairs were a nuisance to get done on Enterprise, and it was one problem he absolutely didn't need. More and more often, Reed had noticed that pockets went unzipped when they were empty, not through carelessness, but simply because the mechanism had worn out and was too much of a hassle to get repaired. Most of the department heads let the infraction pass without a second look, even though an open pocket technically put one 'out of uniform.' Reed had actually been among the first to cave to the inevitability of the open pocket, simply out of practicality.

After all, which was worse? An open pocket or a crewman late for his shift because he had to find a clean uniform with perfect pockets, and also stop to get his worn out pocket zippers repaired? Or, worse, a crewman turning up in the clothing he wore when off duty because he'd put off getting the minor repair done too many times? And who had time to repair zippers anyway, what with all the other routine maintenance that a star ship like Enterprise required? The reality of being the first deep space exploration vessel meant that sometimes ship and crew had to do without, or to make do with substitutes… or to let go certain attitudes regarding spit and polish.

It felt a little absurd to be thinking about zippers of all things, but it was easier that way. Anything to avoid thinking about the reality of his situation, which was deteriorating with each increasingly difficult breath he took and to which there seemed no solution. It was easier just to stop looking for answers that didn't exist. Accept the inevitability of the situation as he accepted the unzipped pocket. You could only throw yourself against a brick wall so many times before accepting that it wasn't going to give way.

Following the directions Tucker had said the Dolizet gave him, Reed went on through the impossibly thick brush for a couple of kilometers before finally coming to a rock formation that was half invisible beneath a thick layer of moss-like flora. A brief scan revealed that there were passageways artificially carved into the rock, passageways which time and the jungle had done what they could to conceal.

Reed hesitated for a bare instant. Last time he'd gone exploring in tunnels, he'd ended up shot. He hadn't enjoyed that experience very much at all, nor did he care to repeat it. Of course, there was no sign of any people being in this particular tunnel, so there wasn't much reason to worry about it. Unfortunately, the triggered memory that caused him to feel a twinge in his leg didn't care about reason. But he didn't get the sense that he had a choice. Not any more.

Taking a deep breath, or as deep as he could manage all things considered, he stepped into the darkness of the tunnel.