The crew of the Enterprise were hardly affected by the warp distortions of time displacement maneuver, thanks to Mr. Spock's modifications, which had delayed the already impatient captain two additional days. McCoy had remarked, to no one in particular, that he couldn't see what the all-fired rush was about, since they were only going to backtrack over all this time anyway. But at last they had left, and now here they were.

"What date do you make, Spock?" asked Kirk.

"Unknown. However...sensors indicate the antiviral appears in all of the oceans."

"Then she made it!" Kirk shouted. "She's here!"

"Perhaps doubly so, Captain," said Spock.

"What do you mean?"

"The presence of the antiviral does indeed indicate that Dr. Taylor arrived in the past to administer it. It's presence throughout the planet, however, indicates that it has been some time since she did so. If we have arrived prior to the time when we last did, when we removed her from this century, then the Gillian Taylor of this time is still here as well."

"You mean there's two of her?" demanded McCoy gruffly.

"Well, let's find one of them!" ordered Kirk, turning to Uhura. "Scan their electronic records. Look for—"

"Captain," interrupted Spock. "It is hardly likely that we could find her that way, at least the Dr. Taylor whom we are seeking. She would have had to change her name and create a parallel existence for herself. Her counterpart would probably not understand the presence of a duplicate."

McCoy was annoyed that no one was answering him. He asked loudly, "How the hell can there be two Gillians? Doesn't the blasted continuum react badly to that?"

Spock surprised him by turning and replying, "A good question, Doctor. The answer, however, is unknown. The tenuousness of the continuum under such a condition is another reason I have suggested we not begin by seeking out Dr. Taylor."

"Well, have ye found her yet?" boomed Scotty's voice the instant he got out of the turbolift.

"Mr. Spock was just explaining why we shouldn't start looking for Gillian," replied Kirk.

"Ach, lad! I dinna mean her! I meant my shuttle!"

Spock and Kirk exchanged a momentary look, then Spock bent over his console. Seconds later he announced, "Sensors detect no warp engines in orbit or on the planet surface..."

"But what if they've been shut down for years?" protested Scotty.

"I'll scan for dilithium emanations...wait...a faint signal...yes...coordinates six—" he interrupted himself and stood up straight. "Captain, the shuttle is on the far side of the Moon."

Chekov had the Enterprise halfway there before Kirk could give the command, and as they settled into a synchronous orbit above the craft, Kirk ordered, "Cut the cloaking device. We need to save as much energy as we can."

"Aye, that we do," agreed Scott. "Spock, can you tell? Did she crash?"

"Negative, Mr. Scott, there is no trace of disrup...Captain life support systems are down."

"Then she's dead!"

"What did you expect, Jim?" asked McCoy. "Spock says she's could've been here for years. She'd hardly set up house on the moon. They probably don't even have a single lunar colony yet."

"But how could the shuttle get there by itself, Bones?"

Spock answered, "Mr. Scott's main computer could have taken the shuttle there."

"That dumb thing? And anyway, why would Gillian instruct it to go to the moon and shut down?"

"It may have done it on its own initiative," suggested Spock.

Kirk stared at him. "By itself?"

Spock seemed in pain as he answered, "Affirmative. Series 40-K helm computers, which were popular in the early part of Earth's last century, were programmed to mimic human behavior, including initiating decision making. Later, humans learned the advantage of keeping their machines as tools rather than companions."

Kirk had to grin at Spock's sermonette, but then he said seriously, "But that companion might just have made the difference for Gillian. So, is that snobbish computer still working?"

"The computer circuits are still active," remarked Spock.

"Then it can tell us what happened to Gillian!" exclaimed Scotty.

Kirk commanded, "Have three E-suits readied. Mr., Spock, Scotty, you—"

"Captain!" said Spock. "In response to our sensor scans, the shuttle's shields were raised. We cannot beam aboard."

"Shields?" asked Kirk incredulously.

"There was a wee bit o' room left," confessed Scotty. "It seemed a good idea. At the time."

"Of course," said Kirk. "Spock, can you—"

"Captain!" cried Uhura. "A tight-beam message, Starfleet open code, asking for identification. It's from the shuttle."

Scotty leapt to Uhura's station, flipped a switch, and shouted, "Ach, you traitorous little piece o' junk! You're going to wish you couldn't identify me when I get through dismantling you!"

"So the Scotsman comes to the rescue," came Archie's nasal voice over the bridge comm. "Only took you thirty years. Congratulations."

Kirk hid a grin, then demanded, "I'll handle this. Computer, where is Dr. Taylor?"

"Oh," whined Archie, "so you bought Captain Quark with you. I'm impressed." He didn't sound it.

Now it was McCoy hiding the grin, but Kirk was livid. "Listen here! I demand to know where Gillian is!"

"When you find out, tell me," replied Archie, his voice suggesting a sustained grief. He added softly, "I haven't stopped looking for one nanosecond of the last three decades."

"Devoted little bugger," offered McCoy into the stunned silence of the bridge.

Kirk recovered and said, "Computer, prepare to dump your data files—"

"Listen, Captain," interrupted Archie. "If it's all the same to you, I have dust you wouldn't believe in my circuits, and I don't even want to think of the salt corrosion from the flood, and that last meteorite almost knocked off my—"

Kirk knew when to give up. "Okay," he said, "Drop your shields so we can get a tractor beam on you. Scotty, your bairn needs you on the Hangar Deck."

"But wasn't there some way you could get a fix on her?" asked Kirk in desperation. The four of them, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scott, had been at it for hours. After the first few minutes in the cramped cabin Scotty had suggested they patch Archie into the Enterprise's main computers, so they could interrogate him in the comfort of the bridge. McCoy was getting along pretty well with the long-lonely machine, but Kirk and Scott were exasperated with his manner. Spock had been poring over the data transfer and had said little.

"I tried everything," answered Archie for the umpteenth time.

"Captain," said Spock, finally glancing up, "the wealth of historical information that this computer has provided is beyond everything in the Federation in scope. It has records of every transmission from every source over the last three decades. It is worth a kings' ransom to archivists."

"Hear that?" asked Archie. "You dismantle me, and you'll never get it!"

"We already have it," grumped Scotty, not really interested in this argument.

"Then I'll sue for copyright!"

"Computers can't sue people," replied Kirk, "but we're more than willing to trade your li...continued existence for the information you've provided. Aren't we, Mr. Scott?"

"Aye, sir," he said reluctantly. "But what use is it to us?"

"There has to be something there," offered Kirk lamely. "Spock?"

"I have run preliminary equations for this time-space. It is as I suspected. The continuum at this point is extremely fragile, probably due to the duplicate Dr. Taylors as well as our presence here, which is converging upon our arrival in 1986. In fact, one of the equations wound up with a zero denominator."

He made that sound so ominous no one bothered to ask for details. Archie had told them right away that it was early 1984, and that he had lost Gillian in July of 1953. Kirk asked, "What if we go back to the point where she transported down without her communicator?"

"Captain," pleaded Scotty, "not another jump! And then you'll be wanting to make it back as well! I'm not sure she can take it!"

Kirk gave him his characteristic grin. "I'm sure you'll be able to get the Enterprise to come through for us. Spock, what do you think?"

"One moment, Captain..." He watched his monitor for a few seconds, then turned and said, "Calculations indicate that the continuum is surprisingly stable at the nexus of Dr. Taylor's disappearance and our potential arrival."

"What the hell does that mean, Spock?" demanded McCoy.

"It means," said Kirk with another grin, "that the continuum is asking us to go back and find Gillian."

Spock lifted a brow and remarked, "Interestingly put, Captain, but there are several other possibilities as well."

"But even if we do go back," interjected Scott, "how will we find her?"

"What about her tricorder?" asked McCoy, jumping from his seat. "The computer said she took one!" He addressed the computer, "Hey, you could have homed in on that. There could hardly have been more than one to scan for on the whole damned planet!"

"I tried, Doctor. I waited for her to turn it on, and the instant she did, I began to fix the coordinates."

"So?" demanded Kirk.

"So a second after she activated the main circuit, she did something to the statistics module," he answered, as if that explained everything.

"One second exactly?" questioned Spock.

"Well, it was more like point three one nine seconds," allowed Archie, "but who cares?"

"Oh, dammit!" yelled McCoy. "Now we've got Spock correcting the computer's accuracy!"

Kirk responded, "Look, smartass computer, what the hell does the stat module have to do with anything?"

Spock beat Archie to the answer, "It is the circuitry of the statistics module on a scientific tricorder which contains the locus most sensors scan for, Captain. If Dr. Taylor tampered with it, she would render it invisible to the shuttle's sensors."

"That's it, Spock, you tell 'em!" said Archie.

"Oh, shut up!" said McCoy, finally losing his patience with this machine. "Why would she do that?"

"Probably to make an arithmetic computer," suggested Scotty, his mind already clearly involved in figuring out what she had done. "She could have used the module to program an elementary computer for mathematical computation."

"What for?" continued McCoy.

"Because she was a scientist with her heart in the Twenty-third Century," answered Kirk with an empathetically mournful look, "stuck in a place where the primitive transistor hadn't been developed yet...Spock! You said 'most sensors.' Could ours pick it up, even if she rigged a computer out of it?"

"Quite likely. We could set the sensors for the parallel rhombidium circuits. They would be unaffected."

"Then let's go!" He caught Spock's look and said, "Damn the continuum, Spock! We have to!"

Dr. McCoy finally had to threaten the captain with involuntary sedation to get him to leave the bridge, where Spock and Archie were painstakingly working on a slingshot course to hit the time as accurately as possible. The shuttle computer had likened their chances to hitting a bulls-eye from five klicks away, shooting blindfolded, standing backward to the target, but Spock had preferred "a probability of point eight one of arrival within plus or minus two years standard of the target date." McCoy had had to agree with Archie.

Now he was in the captain's quarters, sharing the captain's Saurian brandy. "Better than ylodrozine any day," said McCoy, saluting Kirk with his glass.

Kirk forced a smile and said, "Thanks for the prescription, Bones."

"Any time, Jim. 'Specially if you're buying!"

"Why'd she do it?" Kirk asked suddenly.

"To save the whales, you said," answered the puzzled McCoy.

"Bullshit. She could have done that and come right back. That fool computer said she told it from the start that she wasn't coming back."

"Maybe she was homesick, Jim. It'd be awfully tough to leave everything you knew behind, no matter how new and exciting you found everything."

"No good, Bones. She was out of place in her own time. Jensen, the skipper of the Hawking? He said he'd never had as fine a scientist on board. Said she soaked up all the technology in a matter of days. She couldn't get enough of our century! And then she went and marooned herself in that place! It was hopelessly primitive by her own standards!"

"Maybe that's what she meant by sacrifice," said McCoy softly.

Kirk startled, then he remembered he had shown his friend the full text of Gillian's note.

McCoy refilled Kirk's glass. "Maybe," he added, "maybe letting her be is the sacrifice you have to make."

"I thought you agreed we should go back!"

The doctor stood up. "I don't know what we should do! I'm just an old country doctor, not a theoretical physicist. Jim, it pains me as much as you to think of Gillian trapped back there, but, damn it! It was her choice, made of her own free will..." He looked around the room for a moment, then turned back and said, "But I do know James T. Kirk. And he isn't going to give up without the old academy try."

Jim smiled up at him, and he scowled in response. "Just leave Spock alone so we don't find Neanderthals roasting a mammoth for our reception feast!" He turned and walked out.

"Mr. Sulu, standard orbit, and keep the cloaking device on," commanded Kirk. If nothing else, it would shield them from Archie's sensors on the far side of the moon, and the last thing he needed was two of those damned computers bugging him.

"Aye, sir," replied the helmsman, easing the controls into the proper configuration.

"Spock? Do we have a fix on the date?"

"Working, captain...A German language transmission—two July nineteen fifty-four."

"A year later," said Archie, who was still patched in. "Not bad, if I do say so myself. I feel younger already."

"You aren't going to be built for over two hundred years," laughed Uhura, adding, "Captain, we have been scanned by primitive radar with no consequence."

"Fine. Continue wide-band monitoring. Spock? Those rhombidium circuits?"

"Scanning now, Captain. We are beginning our sweep in the Los Angeles region. Antiviral concentrations are consistent with one year since initial drop, by the way."

"Good. And your equations?"

"Of course, all I can run are the preliminaries, but they indicate that the continuum is relatively stable. Six of the first projections are almost identical."

Something in Spock's voice caught Kirk's attention. "And the seventh?" he asked.

Spock hesitated before replying, "The seventh is remarkably like those I obtained in my first run of the equations back in the altered future. It indicates no record of a Dr. Gillian Taylor ever existing."

"Analysis?"

"Insufficient data. It is perhaps significant that historical records from our two visits to the nineteen eighties agree on the birth date of Dr. Taylor as twenty-one September nineteen fifty-four."

"So there's only one of them here!" said Kirk.

"Not unless they knew how to do something we don't, Jim," laughed McCoy. "Gillian's mother is waddling around down there, complaining about the heat and about the baby standing on her bladder, if I have my guess."

"Spock, how long do you estimate until we find the tricorder?"

"Difficult to say, Captain. My initial hypothesis has proven inaccurate. There are devices down there whose sensor profiles mimic the laseronics of the rhombidium circuit. I believe they are ancient cathode ray generators, an obsolete vacuum technology. If the tricorder were in operation, I would have no problem, but it does not appear to be. I shall have to write a program to parse these devices out."

"Then get on it, Mr. Spock," replied Kirk with that exuberant cheerfulness he always exuded when the hunt was on. "Engineering! Mr. Scott, how did she hold together?"

"Aye, she's a bonnie lass, Captain! Everything's fine down here. We're a bit low on the dilithium crystals, but she'll be up to specs in a couple o' hours."

"We need to stay cloaked, Scotty."

"No problem there, Captain. An' I always have the dilithium from the shuttle if I need—" The connection went dead, but Uhura's hands flew over her board, severing Archie's interfaces with communications, and Scotty's voice returned, "...if that rapscallion doesn't behave himself!"

"Excellent, Mr. Scott. Spock, I'll be in my quarters. Call me the instant you've located the tricorder."

"So, what do you think, Susan?"

"Well, Gene, I'm afraid to answer that. I mean, lately whenever I give you an opinion, you act as if I'm some kind of oracle or something."

"Can I help it if your predictions make me money?" he laughed.

"I don't offer my suggestions so you can invest in the stock market!"

"Okay, I'm sorry. It's just that I find you an uncannily insightful woman. But I really would like your opinion of the idea."

Gillian hesitated. Of course it was a good idea. It became a classic. Or would, in a few years when it finally got going. "All right," she acquiesced, "I think the idea for television scripts based on experiences in the LAPD is really good. Why don't you work on a couple about your own and see what kind of reception they get?"

"I will! Now, what do you want to do after dinner? A movie?"

"Yeah," she laughed, "I'd like to see that one you have the idea for, the one with the yellow-blooded wasp creatures that are telepathic?"

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait a while to see that one. How about seeing if Johnny and Nadine want to go with us. I think that new western Johnny's been talking about is at the Rialto."

"Sure. Nadine's been fretting too much over her promotion; it'll do her good to get out."

"I thought everything was going well for her."

"It is! I haven't been able to convince her of it, though. She's afraid that the men in the office are upset that she's been put over them."

"I bet they are!" laughed Gene.

"They shouldn't be," snapped Gillian.

He shook his head. "Susan, you were born too early."

"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.

"Your ideas, your ideals—they belong to some future world, a world where people get along, where differences don't matter, where all the things people talk about on the Fourth of July are actually lived, not just talked about."

"In that case," she mused, "I probably shouldn't be born at all. I doubt there ever will be such a time..." She brightened with a smile and asked, "But it can't hurt to work toward it, can it?"

"That's the only way it will come to pass." He refilled her wine glass and said, "Can you believe it, the good old U.S. of A is going to be a hundred seventy-eight years old."

She subtracted quickly. "That's right. Fourth of July, nineteen fif—"

"What is it? What's wrong, Susan?"

"I...I just remembered something. Gene? Do you think it's wrong to do something you know you really shouldn't, if the reason you're doing it is to save someone's life?"

"Susan, what are you talking about?"

"Oh, never mind. It's a crazy idea. I'm sorry, I don't think I'm in the mood for a movie. Why don't you take the Brents? I'll see you later. Bye." Before he could say anything, she had gathered her purse and run from the table.

"Spock, it's been over a day!" complained Kirk.

"The delay was due in part to the extreme modifications Dr. Taylor has made in the tricorder circuitry.

"What do you...then you've found her!"

"Negative, Captain. I have located her...I believe the term was 'automobile'."

"Great! Is that where the tricorder is?"

"Part of it. Apparently she used some of the device to store data."

"In her car?"

"I was able to access some of the files; there were lists of whale migration figures. Perhaps she used the vehicle to track the whales along the coast, and entered the data as she went."

"Why the past tense, Spock?"

"Sensors indicate the powerpack on the tricorder went dead quite a while ago. They are not designed for sustained use without recharge. She undoubtedly left the device installed after it became nonfunctional."

"It's possible, I guess. Okay, let's get ready to beam down."

When Spock just stood there immobile, Kirk asked, "Yes, Mr. Spock?"

"I recommend that we do not beam down, sir."

"Explain."

"The vehicle is located in an area of high human lifeform density. There is no adequate cover, and we would certainly be seen."

"So, we'll go tonight, when it's dark."

"And do what, Jim?" asked McCoy, siding reluctantly with Spock. "Knock on windows until we find her? What if she doesn't even own the car any more?"

"Well, we can't just stand here!...I've got it! We'll leave her a note."

"A note?" repeated McCoy. Then he spoofed, "Dear Gillian...How are you? Call if you want to get together. Sincerely, Jim Kirk."

"That's perfect, Bones! And we'll put a communicator with it, so she can do just that."

"Uhn uhn! I'm not getting involved in this!" proclaimed McCoy, rising and heading for the lift. "Last time I left a communicator in a primitive culture, I paid hell for it!" The doors whooshed behind him.

"Uhura!" said Kirk excitedly.

"Here, captain," she said with a warm grin, handing him a sheet of paper and an inked writing stylus. "I thought you might want to write it yourself."

"Aw, Susan! Can't you stay and come to the picnic tomorrow with us?"

"Afraid not, Johnny. I have to go to San Francisco for the Fourth," she answered, wrapping a sandwich in wax paper.

"But Officer Roddenberry is coming, and we're gonna have fireworks, and..."

"Don't pester," instructed his mother as she came into the kitchen. "Susan, are you sure you don't want to take more than this? It's hardly a picnic without all the fixings."

"This is fine, thanks. Now, I'm not sure when I'll be back, so don't worry about me."

"I gave up worrying about you a long time ago," laughed Nadine, packing a bowl of potato salad into Gillian's hamper.

"I'm glad to hear that," replied Gillian, removing the bowl and handing it to her. "Okay, Johnny, a quick kiss good-bye! If I'm late for this trip, I might as well not go."

She had an early start, and she made good time. It was late morning on the Fourth of July as she drove into the tree-lined streets of her original hometown. All the way on the drive she wrestled with her conscience. How many times had she heard the details of this day? The picnic, the relatives, the confusion. Then Timmy running out after the ball, and Momma...Momma running after him. She used to tell it so vividly that Gillian could almost hear the dull, sickening thud as Timmy's body was thrown across the pavement. And then her mother being hospitalized for observation. They'd thought she'd lose the baby—Gillian would be born soon. Now there's a time paradox for you! Physically, she was fine in a day or two, but Momma never really recovered. Was it worth tampering with the continuum to spare Momma the fathomless grief?

How could she even ask herself? And Timmy! Momma always said he had such promise. He was such a good boy, such a smart boy...For a moment she shuddered as she thought of what difference a good, smart man could make on history. She thought yet again of Jim's story of a woman too good for history. Jim stood back and watched it happen. She herself had called him heroic for that act.

She looked up and gasped. Like out of a memory, brought to life from all those glossy, scalloped-edged, black and white photos in those musty old albums, this was her old neighborhood. Every other house seemed to be hosting a picnic. There were kids running everywhere. She glanced at her watch. A couple of hours to go. She found a parking space in the shade and opened her lunch. As she munched a sandwich, she smiled at the children playing tag in the park next to her. Suddenly she realized what she'd known all along. All right, dammit, so she wasn't a hero.

"The vehicle hasn't moved in more than an hour. It's still...right there." Sulu pointed to the map being displayed on the main viewscreen.

"What do you think, Spock? Did she see the note?"

"It is equally likely that someone else is piloting this automobile, captain. The note would mean nothing to anyone other than Dr. Taylor, nor would the communicator."

"But we're still getting the communicator's frequency with the car! Maybe she just didn't see it. Maybe she was in a rush, or had something else on her mind. What would she be doing in San Francisco? Look, is there any place we can beam down nearby?"

"I'll scan," said Sulu helpfully.

"Bones, break out those clothes we had put together."

"Jim, did you get a look at those things? You could fit both your legs on one side of the pants!"

"You'll look smashing, I'm sure," said Kirk. "Sulu? Anything?"

"There is a considerable amount of vegetation near the vehicle, sir, but there are many people in the vicinity."

Uhura turned from her station. "Captain, I've been monitoring their newscasts. This is a holiday. There's a lot of talk of picnics."

"Yes, picnics were the tradition on the Fourth of July," replied Kirk.

"Ah yes," agreed Chekov, "an old Russian custom."

"Not down there!" came Archie's voice. "That's what caused this whole problem in the first place, them thinking Gillian was a Russian."

"Barbarians, of course," said Chekov smugly.

"All right," said Kirk, "let's get ready to—"

"Captain!" interrupted Sulu. "The vehicle is moving again. Speed only thirty-four kilometers per hour."

"This is it!" said Kirk irritatedly. "Let's get into our clothes. The instant that car comes to a sustained halt, I want a fix on it. Bones, Spock, get dressed and meet me in the Transporter Room."

Gillian rode through the busy streets, marveling how different they looked from behind the wheel of a car. Everything had looked so big and open to her back then, but now she saw the roads as crowded menaces. As she neared the street, she accelerated unconsciously. She didn't know the exact moment of the accident, and...

A sudden screech of tires and a horn honking caused her to swerve instinctively. An open roadster filled with rowdy teenage boys took the corner on two wheels and sped by her, oblivious to the close all. As soon as she saw their trajectory, she pulled back into the road and took off after them, her own tires squealing in protest. When she rounded the next corner, the scene ahead burned itself in her mind.

Her house was at the end of the block, the lawn covered with picnickers. As she sped down the street in hot pursuit, she even caught a glimpse of Momma. Her bangs stuck to her head with sweat, her belly sticking out, she was smiling at all the friends and relatives.

Gillian was closing on the car when it passed her house. She felt a moment of relaxed confusion and began braking. Nothing had happened! But then she saw a bright red ball fly out into the street from the other side. Of course! The MacMillans! Momma said Timmy always played over there. Only Mrs. Taylor saw it at the same instant, and without looking, she ran to save her son, who had followed the ball into the path of the roadster. Gillian screamed as her car hit Momma with a dull, sickening thud.

"It's come to a stop," came Sulu's voice from the intercom.

"Aye, we've got the coordinates," said Scotty. He turned to the three men on the pad and said, "It's amazing that ye are not going to be conspicuous dressed like that."

They exchanged embarrassed looks, and Kirk fought back a grin at the sight of Spock with his hat tucked down over his ears. "All right, Scotty. Energize!"

They hadn't needed the vegetation Sulu had suggested they use as cover. No one anywhere near was paying attention to anything other than two spots in the roadway about fifty meters apart. In each there was a vehicle stopped in the middle of the street with a cluster of people around it. McCoy ran to the first and saw immediately that there was nothing he could do for the little boy sprawled crookedly on the pavement. He hurried to the second just as Spock and Kirk arrived. Spock reached through the front window of the empty car and retrieved a communicator and a piece of paper from the floor. He looked up at Kirk, who nodded.

McCoy joined the throng around the pregnant woman lying in the road and said, "Let me through, I'm a doctor." When he got to the woman, he cradled her head in his lap and waved his hand, which palmed his tricorder, over her abdomen.

Ignoring the whispered comments of "What's he doin'?" and "Is he really a doctor?" he checked the readouts and said, "Ma'am, can you hear me?"

"Yes...my boy..."

"I'm a doctor, ma'am. Do you hurt anywhere?"

"My boy!" she cried more loudly. "Where's Timmy?"

"They're checking on him," lied McCoy.

"Oooh!" groaned the woman, clutching her belly. "My baby! I'm going to lose my baby."

Kirk caught the doctor's eye with a quizzical look, and McCoy just nodded. The tricorder indicated the baby was already dead.

"Doctor," she pleaded, "you've got to save my baby!"

"We've called an ambulance," offered one of the bystanders.

"Good," said McCoy. "Ma'am you're going to be fine, just fine."

"My baby!"

"Relax, ma'am. The ambulance is on its way. What's your name, ma'am?"

"Taylor. Edna Taylor." She turned her head up to view McCoy. "Doctor, please save my baby."

Dammit, thought McCoy. This is never easy, but he was spared having to deal any more with it by the raucous arrival of the ambulance. When Mrs. Taylor was loaded, he joined Kirk and Spock, who were examining the car.

"Strangest thing I ever seen!" one of the crowd was telling them. "Coulda swore there was a young lady at the wheel, but after that woman got hit, weren't nobody in there!"

"Indeed," understated Spock.

"You said it, Mac," agreed the informant.

"Thank you, sir," said Kirk, turning to Spock. "What do you make of it?"

"There is a logical explanation," started Spock.

"Now how come that doesn't surprise me?" snapped McCoy, pursing up his whole face. "A little boy is dead, his pregnant mother gets hit and loses the baby, and it's logical to you! Why you, green-blooded, cold-hearted—"

"Doctor!" said Kirk with a forced laugh, herding the two of them away from the curious crowd that was gathering around them. "Let's get back to the ship," he whispered, and he steered them to the bushes that they had beamed in behind.

"That's as ridiculous as there being two Gillians at once!" snorted McCoy after they had gathered back on the bridge of the Enterprise, where Spock offered his explanation.

"Nevertheless, it is probably correct, Doctor."

"So when Gillian hit her mother," repeated Scotty, trying to make sense of it all, "she killed her unborn self, which meant that there was no Dr. Taylor for us to find when we came after the beasties?"

"Correct, Mr. Scott. And therefore she could not return with us to our time, nor could she then subsequently return to this time."

"So she couldn't have been driving that car!" argued Kirk. "So how did her mother get hit?"

Spock was still gearing up to speak when Kirk answered his own question, "I know! The cruel paradoxes of time displacement."

Spock merely nodded, but McCoy was still angry. "Okay, then. What happens now when we go back? Is that probe going to be there, boiling the oceans?"

"And what about the effects of Gillian's dea...of her never existing?" asked Uhura.

"Both questions are impossible to answer," said Spock. "Captain, if we had another set of data, I could recalibrate the equations to give some accuracy to a probability statement to prepare us for our return to the Twenty-third Century."

Scott griped, "That sounds a wee bit like another request for a time displacement maneuver!"

"Can we do it, Scotty?" asked Kirk, glad for any action to take his mind off things.

"Nay, but we will. I'd better go get my engines prepared for the shock. An' Mr. Spock! You'd better do better this time on the warp flux ratios, or I canna guarantee she'll make another jump. We could be stranded here!" He huffed his way out of the bridge.

"How far, Spock?" asked Kirk.

"A jump of ten to twenty years should suffice. I'll begin the computations."

"Come," said Kirk lethargically.

The door opened, and McCoy walked in, a bottle and two glasses in hand. "I'm buying this time, Jim."

Kirk nodded but didn't smile. "Another magical prescription, Bones?"

"Nothing magical about it. Get yourself sauced, forget your sorrows."

"How's that supposed to work?"

"I don't know," conceded the doctor. "I think you feel so bad in the morning you forget what was bothering you."

Kirk looked up at him. "Bones, how do you mourn someone who never lived?"

"But she did, Jim!"

"When we get back, if we get back, if there's anything to get back to, she won't have played any role in it."

McCoy shook his head definitely. "No, Jim, that's not true! Even if there's no record of her anywhere, she's responsible for setting things right. Don't tell that pointy-eared son of a bitch, but what he's been saying makes sense. About the continuum? When it got thrown out of joint, it flowed around all of us to make things right again. How come she wound up back here, instead of where she came from?"

Kirk was silent for a long time. Then he said, "I wish I could believe that, Bones. It would make it easier, believing there at least was a reason behind it all, that it wasn't some sick, cosmic joke."

McCoy nodded and handed him a glass full of a clear blue liquid. "Romulan ale?" asked Kirk with surprise.

"Don't worry, Jim. In this time there was no embargo. It's perfectly legal."

"Oh, Gene," cried Nadine, closing the door behind him. "I'm so glad you could come right over."

"Calm down, I'm here. Now, what's this about Susan?"

"She never came home. She didn't say exactly when she'd be back from Frisco, so when she wasn't I didn't get too worried, after all, with the holiday and the traffic. But she wasn't here by supper, and she's got work tomorrow, and I got so frantic, I finally called you."

"Okay, we'll find her. I'll start with the police up there..."

"I already called them, and all the hospitals. I spent hours on the phone! Gene, there's no trace of her!"

"What about her car?"

"I don't know. How can we check on that?"

"I will. Later. Nadine, please sit down—you're making me nervous jumping around like that. That's better. We have to start at the beginning, check the records..." He was thinking out loud.

Nadine cleared her throat, then said feebly, "Gene, I think you should know. Susan Armstrong isn't her real name."

"No?"

"No, she had to assume a new name when...well, she had some problems."

"What kind of problems?" he asked, thinking of her question to him just before she rushed off, and of the kinds of trouble that help people disappear suddenly.

"Nothing bad! Stop thinking like a cop, will you?"

"Yes, ma'am! Actually, it doesn't surprise me. It was clear that Susan lived a different sort of life. You could almost convince me she was one of those aliens we always talked about."

"Gene! What a horrible thing to say about a nice young woman like Susan!"

"I meant it as a compliment, Nadine. Look, I know you don't want to hear this, and I don't much like saying it, but is it possible she didn't plan on coming back?"

"Of course not! Why, she...well, there was a mysteriousness about her trip, I mean, more mysterious than usual with her."

"Do you mind if I take a look in her room?"

"Her room? Well, no, I guess not. It's this way..."

"See," announced Nadine, opening the closet door, "all her clothes are still here. And look! Here's a bunch of money on her dresser. She got paid yesterday, and this is most of it! If she were leaving for good, she'd certainly take her money, wouldn't she?"

He nodded. Cash was one thing a runaway would want. But it didn't make him feel better. He almost wished she had meant to disappear. It made for a happier ending.

"Officer Roddenberry! What are you doing here? Mom, is Susan home yet?"

Nadine ushered Johnny out of the room, leaving Gene to examine it more fully. He made his way slowly around, looking at everything, touching nothing. He finally came to the night table where a large sheaf of paper sat. The top page was typed with an unusually clear and even print. The title caught his eye, and he read:

THE ADVENTURES OF THE STARSHIP ENTERPRISE

by James T. Kirk

Curious, he turned the page and began to read...

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