9.
"Sorry I'm late." Scotty put his lunch tray down on the Rec. room table and swung into the seat next to Heather, "I stopped by sickbay to see Stevens. Boy, is he grumpy!"
Heather laughed and reached over to spear a pasta shell on her fork, ignoring Scotty's protests and slapping hand. "He's just cross because you came back from Water World with an all-over tan and a smirk, and all he got was a nasty rash and a 'Kiss-Me-Quick' hat," she said, turning her attention back to the salad on her own plate. "How much longer is he going to be in sickbay anyway?"
Scotty grinned. "At least another 24 hours, Doctor Chandra says. So you can come over to mine again tonight. If ye want to that is?"
"Hmm. I'll have to think about that," she said, her face a picture of concentration as she nibbled on a slice of cucumber. After a couple of seconds, she nodded thoughtfully and added, "Yeah, okay, you talked me into it. Charmer." She smiled, and passed it on with a quick kiss. "I'll have to be up early though. Carter's put my name on the Landing Party roster for Delta-Gamma Five and there's a briefing at oh-eight-hundred."
Her plate was empty and she pushed her tray aside, resting an elbow on the edge of the table as she half-turned toward Scotty. He could see by the shine in her eyes that she was pleased and excited to be on an exploration team, and he ate his pasta silently as she enthused about the possibilities for botanical and medical discoveries. He was half-way through his cheesecake dessert before she said: "You're not really following any of this are you?"
"I'm getting the salient points," he said, spooning in another mouthful and talking around it, "Rainforest canopy that would cover Earth... millions of undiscovered specimens... opportunity to observe a primeval ecology..." He finished the dessert and licked the spoon, then sat back and folded his arms. "Ye also said that preliminary surveys indicated that there's very little animal life down there…."
She gave his arm a gentle punch. "You were listening!"
"Just because I majored in Physics and Warp Engineering doesn't mean I didn't attend the occasional Life Sciences lecture," he said. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice as he added, "And you know how much I love biology homework."
Heather giggled. "Well, you'll have to make the most of tonight's anatomy revision," she said, "Because after that I'll be on Delta-Gamma Five for 72 hours."
Scotty sighed, brushing his fingers against her face for a moment as he tucked a stray lock of blonde hair back behind her ear. It was going to be a long three days. "Good thing I've got plenty to do," he said.
With Heather planet side, Scotty was glad to be able to lose himself in his work. Thanks to Commander Marsh's orders, he had maintenance to carry out for a third time – he'd done the repair (with improvements), the repair (minus improvements) and now he was doing the repair with improvements again. It was annoying but, as Heather had pointed out to him, if he ever made Chief Engineer, he likely wouldn't want anyone messing with his ship without his approval. So, much as he begrudged repeating the work, he was beginning to understand why Marsh had made him do it. And it helped to pass the time. By working through Beta shift as well as Alpha, he was able to make good progress, and tire himself out enough to doze off right away when he got to bed.
He kept tabs on what was happening planet side by monitoring the reports that were being sent up hourly by the landing party. He didn't understand all the jargon, but the summaries were easier to grasp, and they were bursting at the seams with descriptions of exotic flora. The exhilaration of new discoveries colored every phrase, and Scotty was reminded that one of the reasons he had joined Starfleet was their goal of exploring strange new worlds.
He was delighted for Heather that she was getting the chance to participate in something as monumental as stepping where no-one else had, finding plants that no-one else had ever seen, hadn't even known existed until now.
"Don't you think this is amazing?" he said to Stevens, as they manned the transporter console for the third afternoon. They were beaming up specimens of the plants that had been identified as potentially useful for colonization on other planets, and a few that might prove to be medicinal. The large specimen that had just materialized looked like a meter-high purple pineapple, and the landing party had reported that it made good eating and grew all over the place.
Stevens shrugged, and gave his arm a scratch. His rash had cleared up, Scotty knew, but the effects apparently lingered. "Seen one plant, seen 'em all," he said, moving around the console to help the botany lab technician fix a couple anti-gravs to the "pineapple's" waxy flesh.
"But Kevin, no-one in the entire galaxy has ever set eyes on those things before," said Scotty, "Our team is only doing an ancillary survey to check out whether it's worthwhile establishing a permanent science station, but they've identified thousands of new life-forms already. Doesn't that make you feel part of something important?"
Switching on the A-gravs and grabbing one of the handles to help maneuver their cargo, Stevens shook his head and gave Scotty a pitying look. "If I'd wanted to be a glorified gardener I'd have stayed on the farm," he said, steering the plant through the parting transporter room doors. Just before they closed behind him he added, with a knowing wink, "Problem with you is you've been spending too much time in the Heather."
Scotty slid open the end access panel of the Churchill's auxiliary maintenance tunnel, shone his wrist-light into the hatchway, and picked out the circuits that he'd been authorized to upgrade. "Here we go again," he muttered.
Still, it wasn't as though he had anything better to do for the next few hours. Heather had promised to have dinner with him later, but she'd volunteered for double-shifts too since she got back from Delta-Gamma Five.
"Scotty, it was just overwhelming down there," she'd told him as they got dressed that morning, "It'll take years… no, a lifetime… no several lifetimes to get it all identified and analyzed. There aren't just whole new orders and species - we're having to come up with new Classes for the some of the varieties! Do you know how rarely that happens? Last time was when we colonized Rigel. And I can't wait to start studying the Singers..."
"Singers?" He'd been pulling his boots on as she came out with that, and he'd thought she was testing to see if he was listening again. "Singing plants? Ye're having me on!"
"No, really! The tricorders registered these incredible sound waves at hypersonic levels, and when we adjust them to a pitch we can hear, it sounds like A Capela singing. Commander Wu is going to recommend that the permanent Science Team includes linguists as well as plant specialists."
"Ye mean some of those things were... communicating? They might be intelligent?"
She'd waved her hairbrush at him before turning to look in the mirror. "We don't know, yet. They seem to be communicating with each other, but it could be just on an instinctual level. Isn't it fascinating though?"
And Scotty had to admit that it was, though he was happy to leave the in-depth analyses and specifics to the botanists. He didn't share Heather's enthusiasm for the details of photosynthesis or the cellular make-up of seed-pods, but he understood it. Her passion for plants matched his for engineering - they both wanted to know the why and the how, both wanted to discover and innovate. It was why he was falling in love with her, and why he was trying so hard not to, because he knew that one day those differing interests, their different passions, would see them go separate ways. That was why it was better to keep relationships on a strictly recreational level - fun, light, easy to sever when the need arose.
Scotty sighed, and pulled his thoughts back to B Deck's lighting circuits. Peeling off his uniform jersey, and selecting the tools he would need from the tool case he'd brought with him, he laid down and wriggled his arms and shoulders through the hatchway.
He'd been working steadily for a half-hour or so when he felt something - someone - brush his legs. This time it was easy enough to recognize the giggling as Heather's, and he laughed as he felt her pulling off his boots.
"Going to give me another foot rub, lass?"
"Well, I thought I'd start there," she answered, pulling off his socks, "But I haven't forgotten what you told me you imagined. So…"