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4

T'Pol watched Captain Archer pace about the bridge, and allowed a small, curious part of her mind to wonder why humans tended to perform pointless and repetitive movements when under stress.

"Stress" was not a word her people used. It was not logical. If there was a problem that demanded a Vulcan's undivided attention, the individual in question would cease all activities except for the ones necessary for finding a solution. Humans, on the other hand, bounced their knees, tapped their feet on the floor or cracked their knuckles, until another human snapped at them to "cut it out". In Captain Archer's case, of course, this wasn't likely to happen; Commander Tucker wasn't here, and there was no other human on the ship whose relationship with the Captain allowed such familiarities.

T'Pol wondered if she should point out to him that he was wasting his energy, but decided not to. More likely than not, her logic would only serve to annoy him.

She decided on a different approach. "Captain. You could not have anticipated this."

He whirled around, and she wondered if it had been the wrong thing to say, after all. "That's what I find hard to believe. Why didn't we detect it when we first scanned the planet?"

A human in her situation would have sighed. "As I said, Captain, the anomaly wasn't there when I performed the first scan."

Ensign Sato turned around at her station. "So you're saying it just popped up and swallowed the shuttle, then disappeared again?"

Sato's tone and expression implied that she found the suggestion ridiculous. T'Pol noticed that Ensign Mayweather and Müller at Tactical were regarding her with the same hard, almost hostile stare, and found herself experiencing a twinge of annoyance which she immediately suppressed. This was nothing new. She had often been the target of her human colleagues' emotional outbursts when the situation became tense.

"It is a fact that the anomaly appeared for approximately 9.45 minutes, then disappeared again," she stated, looking at the Captain again. "And since the shuttlepod was in close vicinity when this happened, it is the logical conclusion that it was absorbed."

"Absorbed as in destroyed?" the Captain asked. T'Pol didn't miss the change in his intonation and paused briefly before she answered, to indicate that she wasn't indifferent to the emotional implications of her reply.

"Unknown, sir. I assume, however, that an explosion within the anomaly would have shown up on the scans. There is no sign of a disturbance. It is more likely that the shuttlepod was still intact after entering the anomaly."

"Then where are they?" Müller asked. "I scanned the area at least a dozen times. There's no trace of the shuttle, or any... wreckage."

T'Pol did not point out that it was illogical to perform the same scan twelve times in succession, assuming that the scanning equipment wasn't malfunctioning.

"As I said, Ensign, I do not believe that there is any wreckage to be found. It is my theory that the shuttlepod left the anomaly in one piece, yet it didn't exit into the same spatial continuum."

The Captain was standing in front of the science station now, leaning onto the handrail. "What makes you think so?"

"If the anomaly had destroyed the shuttlepod, the sensors should have detected its remains after the phenomenon had disappeared again. Even if it was vaporized there would be microparticles left in the atmosphere." T'Pol saw Archer's mouth harden and realized that he was thinking about Lieutenant Reed and Commander Tucker being vaporized within the anomaly. She continued. "As Ensign Müller pointed out, there were no such traces, which leads to the conclusion that the shuttlepod is still there, yet in a place where out scanners cannot detect it."

Archer nodded. "A doorway," he said.

T'Pol raised an eyebrow. "Metaphorically speaking, yes."

He frowned. "Did you get any data on what's on the other side?"

T'Pol opened her mouth to tell him that the scanners hadn't been able to pick up anything except the anomaly itself when Müller interrupted her, sounding quite agitated.

"Captain, I think it's coming back!"

"T'Pol!" Archer said, but she had already turned around to her console.

"Ensign Müller is correct, Captain. The anomaly seems to be re-establishing itself."

She watched on her monitor as the lines formed, assuming the same shape as they had the first time. A human would have compared it to a broken snail shell; to a Vulcan, the anomaly was helical with serrated edges.

"Like before, it appears to be helical with serrated edges," she said, and, anticipating his next question: "The scanners are not picking up any trace of the shuttlepod."

Archer had climbed the steps to her station and was now standing next to her. She could smell his excitement and anxiety, and routinely blocked out the assault on her nostrils.

"Can we send a probe in there?" he asked.

T'Pol turned to look at him. "We would only be able to maintain contact with the probe as long as it is inside the phenomenon. After it has passed the anomaly, it is unlikely that we would still be able to receive any transmitted data."

Captain Archer nodded slowly, his eyes on the monitor, and T'Pol was sure that Lieutenant Reed would not have liked the expression on his face, had he been here to see it.

"Captain, I strongly advise against flying another shuttlepod into the anomaly," she said, preparing herself for an unnecessarily emotional discussion. "It would be highly illogical to do so as we do not know what is on the other side."

Archer nodded curtly, and T'Pol saw Müller's face slacken with relief. She assumed that he had not been looking forward to "channelling Reed's spirit", as the human expression went, and arguing with his Captain about the dangers of his plan.

"Is there any way we could modify a probe to stay in contact even after it has crossed the anomaly?" the Captain wanted to know.

"It may be possible, sir," she said, wondering how to best address what she wanted to say next. "There is, however, another option."

Archer seemed to have noticed her reluctance and frowned. "Yes?"

T'Pol stood. She knew that she was about to broach a "touchy subject", and that humans were more comfortable – and less prone to hasty, emotional responses – if there was no audience watching. "Captain, may I have a word with you in your ready room?"

Archer's frown deepened, but he said nothing and only nodded. "Sure. Keep an eye on the anomaly, Müller, and call us if anything changes."

"Aye, sir," the young Ensign replied, already on his way to the science station.

As she followed Archer to the ready room, T'Pol wondered how he would react to her suggestion, and whether he would reject it right away as he had done before.

Human pride. It could be difficult to deal with.

"How bad is it?"

Malcolm laid aside the boot he had removed from Trip's foot and began to take off the sock. He had lifted Trip's leg onto the backpack as a makeshift support, trying to position himself so that his back would block Trip's view of what he was doing.

"Malcolm. How bad?" Trip's voice sounded a little unsteady after the double dose of painkiller Malcolm had given him.

"Your ankle's broken," Malcolm replied. He didn't say that the ankle was swollen to almost twice its normal size and resembled an overripe plum both in color and in shape. He rolled the sock all the way down and tried to pull it off, but it didn't budge. The blood had soaked through the bandage Malcolm had hastily applied on the shuttlepod, and the gauze was glued to the sock with clotting blood. Malcolm gently tugged at the sock again. He would have unstick it carefully. One centimeter at a time, he began to peel it off with his fingertips, frowning at the state of the bandage that was revealed underneath. It was dirty and almost entirely soaked with blood, both dried and fresh. When he had finally removed the sock and laid it aside, the bandaged toes looked as if someone had crumpled up a blood-stained handkerchief and tossed it into the general direction of Trip's foot.

"Malcolm..."

Malcolm turned around. Trip was trying to prop himself up on his elbows, straining his neck to get a better look. "What happened to my foot?"

Malcolm laid a hand on Trip's shoulder. "Don't. Your toes..." He sighed. "I believe something heavy must have collided with your foot during the crash. Your toes are broken."

"They're bleedin'," Trip said.

Ignoring the unspoken question, Malcolm nodded. "Yes. I'll have to change the bandage."

Which wasn't going to be easy. Malcolm wasn't even sure if it was a good idea to replace the bandage; he might do irreparable damage if he moved the broken toes around too much. Then again, it wasn't as if he could make things much worse.

Malcolm gave the bandage an experimental tug to see if it stuck to the wound, and was relieved to find that it didn't. Very carefully, he began to unwrap the soaked gauze. Trip hissed a little when the last of the bandage was pulled off, and Malcolm made sure that he blocked Trip's view of the foot. It looked horrible. The deformed ankle was bad enough, but unlike the toes, it still resembled something like a human body part. Malcolm stared at the two lumps of raw hamburger that had once been the second and the third toes, and willed himself not to be sick again.

"I'm... I'm going to try and stabilize them," he said. It, he amended silently. He might be able to do something about the great toe, which was crooked and broken but at least still there. As for the other two, there wasn't anything left to stabilize. "Do you want another dose of painkiller before I start?"

"Malcolm."

Trip's tone of voice made him turn around.

"Yes?"

Trip swallowed. "Let me see my foot, okay?"

"Trip..."

"Let me see it."

Malcolm could see that Trip was not going to let it go, and silently moved aside. Trip raised his head as far as he could.

"Son of a bitch." He took a sharp breath, then let his head fall back down. "I didn't..."

He hadn't expected it to be quite that bad. Malcolm couldn't think of anything to say in reply. He took a fresh roll of bandage out of the medkit and eyed the swollen, purple ankle. It looked as if it would burst when he touched it.

"You sure you don't want another dose of painkiller?"

Trip shook his head. "I'll be okay."

Silently, Malcolm began to apply the bandage. He knew he wasn't doing a great job; he had stabilized broken limbs before, but none of them had been bruised and swollen out of shape.

Trip hadn't made a sound, but his breathing had become harsher, and Malcolm could feel the muscles in his propped-up leg tremble.

"I wonder what's keeping the Captain," Malcolm said as he wrapped the last of the bandage around Trip's calf. "They must have seen the crash on their sensors."

"Maybe... somethin' came up," Trip said. "Maybe there's some kinda interference..."

Malcolm tied the ends of the bandage into a knot. "I couldn't call them, back on the shuttle. Communication was dead, although the console seemed to function."

"I'm sure they're workin' on it."

Malcolm said nothing. Even if something in the atmosphere had made them crash and had killed communication, Enterprise should have tried to get in touch by now. T'Pol's sensors should be able to locate their bio signs on the surface; she had scanned the local flora and fauna just fine.

Something was not right.

Shaking his head, he returned his mind to the task at hand: Trip's toes. The broken bone of the great toe had pierced the skin, and he didn't know how to set it without ripping an even larger gash into Trip's flesh. Better to leave it alone and let Phlox deal with it when they were back on Enterprise. All he could do was to keep the wound covered and hope for the best.

Malcolm picked up the last roll of bandage. He tried to be very careful as he applied it, but it was obvious from Trip's barely suppressed gasp that he was causing the engineer a lot of pain.

"Sorry," he said quietly, wishing he could have come up with something more reassuring to say. If their positions were reversed, Trip would no doubt keep up a constant flow of conversation to distract him from the pain. "I'm almost done."

"S'okay."

Trip's voice was little more than a whisper, and he was beginning to tremble all over. Malcolm finished the job as quickly as he could and tied the ends of the bandage into a knot to keep the whole thing in place.

"All done."

Trip exhaled. "Thanks."

Malcolm carefully lifted Trip's foot off the backpack and laid it onto the discarded boot instead to keep it off the ground.

"You should try and get some rest." He took the thermoblanket out of the backpack, shook it out and spread it over Trip. "I'll try to get a fire started in the meantime, then we can have something to eat."

Trip frowned. "Are you... planning to shoot one of the seagulls, or try and see if those red berries are edible?"

"Neither, actually." Malcolm grinned and held up one of the ration packs. "Would you prefer chicken curry, or the classic meatloaf and mashed potatoes?"

Trip smiled weakly, and Malcolm was relieved to see it. "Well prepared, huh?"

Malcolm didn't mention that it was Lieutenant Reed, rather than his own, cowardly self, who had thought of bringing the ration packs. It would have meant explaining about the journey to the shore, about coward Malcolm and about his fear, and he wasn't ready to do that. "So, what would you like? We also have Chinese noodles with bamboo sprouts and vegetable casserole."

"I think I'll stick with the meatloaf," Trip's said, and Malcolm nodded. He wasn't sure whether he would be able to warm up the ration packs over an open fire, but it didn't really matter. There were worse things than having cold meatloaf for dinner.

Being marooned, for example.

He pushed the thought away. Coward Malcolm wanted to dwell on it, wanted to tell Trip that his interference theory was as brittle as the driftwood on the beach, but Malcolm clamped down on him before he could say a word.

Thought I'd left the bloody bastard in the sea to drown.

Malcolm looked around for rocks to build a wall around his fire. There were none except for a few small pebbles, and he shrugged, beginning to clear the sand in front of him. He wasn't going to leave Trip alone just to go looking for rocks; he would have to leave soon enough to search for drinking water. The one-liter bag they had wasn't nearly enough, not if they were going to stay here for more than a few hours.

He made a shallow indention in the sand and placed some of the dry fruit stalks in the middle as kindling, then built a teepee structure out of the driftwood he had gathered. When he was done, he took out the phase pistol and aimed a short-range beam at the fruit stalks. They caught fire immediately. Malcolm added a little more kindling to be sure, satisfied when he saw that the driftwood teepee was starting to burn as well. Soon it would fall inward and feed the small fire he had built.

Trip was watching the fire as well. "Nice," he said. "I used to love sittin' round the campfire when I was a kid."

Malcolm smiled. "That was one thing I liked about being an Eagle Scout; they let us build fires on every survival training."

"Marshmallows?" Trip asked, and it took Malcolm a moment before he caught on.

"No, I'm afraid marshmallows weren't on our menu."

He wondered what his patrol leader would have said if Malcolm had suggested roasting marshmallows during field training. Probably assigned him to work detail for the rest of the trip.

"A campfire isn't a campfire without marshmallows," Trip said sleepily, and Malcolm grinned a little in response.

"Maybe not."

He added more driftwood to the fire, and the flames flickered higher. They were little more than transparent silhouettes, the air around them shimmering like a mirage.

Malcolm raised his head and looked out at the sea. The pale, rose-tinted sky was darkening at the horizon, and the sun, formerly high in the sky, seemed to have drifted southwards. He recalled T'Pol's report about the planet; one turn around its axis took approximately twenty Earth hours. He couldn't tell how much time had passed since they had crawled ashore; all time-measuring devices had sunk together with the shuttle. It seemed reasonable to assume, though, that the ten-hour day was drawing to an end.

Malcolm tossed another handful of stalks onto the fire and watched the sparks fly. If for some reason T'Pol's scanners couldn't pick them up and the Captain believed them to be dead, he'd still want to salvage the shuttle, wouldn't he? And he'd search until he found the bodies. Malcolm knew Jonathan Archer well enough to be sure of that.

Maybe something had happened to Enterprise. Maybe they had been attacked and forced to leave, or...

He didn't want to think the thought to its end. Chances were that the situation would resolve itself during the next few hours; in his experience, that was what usually happened. He pushed the meatloaf and the chicken curry close to the fire. The cooking would work better if he had a frying pan, he thought, and smirked at the idea. All of this would work considerably better if he had a frying pan, a tent, enough medication for Trip and maybe a communicator to call Enterprise.

Malcolm began to pull off his damp boots, intending to dry them as well, when his eyes fell on Trip again. The engineer's face was taut with pain, his eyes closed, and he was trembling worse than before. Malcolm dropped his boots and knelt next to Trip in the sand, resting a hand on the pale forehead. Trip's skin felt hot to the touch.

"Trip," Malcolm said, and, when Trip didn't react, "Commander!"

Trip opened his eyes. "C'n you move me closer to th' fire, Mal? I'm freezin'."

Malcolm bit down on his lips. It wasn't cold at all, and with the thermoblanket and the fire close by, Trip should be sweating rather than freezing. His uniform was almost dry again, so that couldn't be it.

Malcolm took out the bioscanner again and switched it on. Trip's body temperature had reached 38, 5 degrees and his pulse was up as a result of the blood loss. At least, Malcolm noticed with relief, he wasn't showing any signs of going into shock.

"You've got a fever. That's where the chills are coming from." Malcolm moved over to tuck the thermoblanket under Trip's sides, taking care not to bump into the propped-up leg. He picked up the water bag. "Here, drink some more."

Trip allowed Malcolm to hold the water bag to his lips, but after two mouthfuls he turned his head away. "You have some, too," he said hoarsely.

Malcolm shook his head. "I don't need the fluid replacement, remember? I'll find us more water in the morning, so don't worry about saving it."

Trip only looked at him, and Malcolm could have kicked himself. "If Enterprise hasn't picked us up by then," he added, but it sounded lame even to his own ears.

He expected Trip to make a caustic comment, but the engineer only turned his head away and stared into the flames. After a while he spoke again, quietly.

"They'll have to be amputated, right?"

Malcolm had been afraid of that question. He had great faith in Phlox' abilities as a surgeon, but even Phlox couldn't work miracles.

"Maybe,"he said quietly. "I'm sure Phlox will do all he can, though."

Trip only nodded and closed his eyes.

TBC...

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