"More light, Lieutenant," Spock urged Uhura who was cramped in next to him under the communications console, holding a PADD in one hand, and a hyperspanner in the other. She sighed and shifted the PADD so that the miserable light of its display fell onto Spock's hands from a slightly different angle. She wanted to be more useful than this, and under normal circumstances she could have done what Spock was attempting to do. She was absolutely capable of connecting the energy cell of a phaser to the comm system in order to get it to working again, but she was not capable of doing that blindly. At least not as swiftly as Spock wanted her to. He could see much better in this grey, nearly non-existent light. Anyway, it was a fiddly task, even with enough light.
"Got it?" she asked, realizing the same moment that it was a superfluous question to ask.
"If by that you meant to inquire if I now have got enough light to fulfill my task efficiently, I must say: No. However, the circumstances dictate that it has to be sufficient, since we do not have another light source at our disposal," Spock answered, as calm as ever, though Uhura suspected the unnecessary length of his answer indicated that he, too, was annoyed with the whole situation.
She found herself pulling a face at the back of Spock's head, but managed to keep the groan from escaping her mouth.
"It is a trap," Chekov commented their situation from somewhere beside Sulu. The power failure had surprised them all, every single system on the Enterprise, except for artificial gravity, had died from one moment to the next, without any apparent reason. Although their situation should be quite alarming, they were drifting helplessly in space, with no lifesupport, or shields, Sulu was more puzzled than worried. There hadn't been anything unusual on the scanners.
"But by whom?" he asked Chekov whom he could hear slowly turning his seat. Left. Right. Left again. He seemed to be bored, Sulu realised, and found that funny. Chekov was bored while sitting at the helm of Starfleet's flagship during a crisis.
"Commander Tamulok. That's not so hard to figure out, is it?" Chekov answered, now facing Sulu's right ear.
"From which facts did you deduce your theory, Mr Chekov?" Spock's voice intervened from under the console.
Sulu smiled. Spock often took up the role of Chekov's mentor, trying to show his young, sometimes overhasty protégé the inconsistencies in his thinking, by making him reflect on his assumptions, giving him the chance to revise them.
Chekov, of course, had no facts. Spock knew that, Sulu knew that, Uhura knew it, Lewis and Daniels who were working on getting the emergency storage compartment open to get to the emergency equipment in it knew it, and so did Chekov. Still, everyone, except maybe for Spock, believed Chekov was right. Call it human instinct. And although Spock denied having a human instinct, Sulu wasn't completely sure that Spock didn't secretly share Chakov's rash and illogical theory, as well.
"A gut feeling," Chekov answered neutrally, already accepting the fact that he had once again not impressed his Vulcan CO with deductive reasoning.
There was a lengthy pause in which everyone waited for Spock's razor-sharp wit to give a reply that would slightly embarrass Chekov and everybody, who had been inlcined to agree with him, but it didn't come.
Now, that's disconcerting, Sulu thought, and now turned his own seat into the direction of Lewis and Daniels who were making frustrated noises.
"It's impossible!" one of them said.
"This is stupid!" the other agreed. "What did the designers think is the purpose of an emergency storage compartment?" He kicked at it again in frustration. "To lock in any useful equipment during an emergency?"
"Gentlemen, if you want to make a suggestion to Starfleet Engineering about the design of the storage compartment for emergency equipment on the bridge of Constitution Class ships, you may do so, after this crisis has passed," Spock, still submerged under the console, cut in calmly, but decisively. "I will sign it, also," he added, as an afterthought.
Uhura frowned and handed Spock the hyperspanner. Spock never had afterthoughts. And although she heard someone chuckle at the comment which lightened the mood a bit, she still sensed a tenseness among her crewmembers, a tenseness that was understandable of course, considering the circumstances. Still, the exhaustion from the past weeks was still hanging in the air and getting to them all. It was also affecting Spock, she thought, and wondered if she was the only one present who noticed it.
Probably. Being the only female here, as usual, I'm the only one who can sense this whole "invisible-to-male-eyes" dimension. She sighed. It was a stereotype, she knew, but it was also a fact, that over the last five years she had found that most men tended to be completely oblivious to the fine (and sometimes not so fine) emotional vibes coming from the others around them, if not, they at least completely ignored them. Men were often so … dense. Or indifferent. Social analphabets.
She shook her head. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Captain Kirk's ability to motivate people, to assess their intentions, even to deceive and manipulate them according to his own needs was somewhat legendary. Then again, he was oblivious to the flirtatious looks and the ridiculously provocative eye batting of all of his female (and some male) yeomen. Poor man, he had no idea!
Spock, being a good observer, could probably sense, idiosyncratic behaviour, but he had no idea how to interpret it, or he believed it to be a merely unimportant minor disturbance that was normal where humans were involved, and dismissed it.
McCoy was an expert on psychology, but that didn't necessarily mean, he'd do anything to lighten up a tense or awkward amtosphere. Uhura had seen him closely observing Yeoman Mears' behaviour for example, even when she'd deliberately let her PADD fall into the captain's lap. It had just amused him and he hadn't commented at all. He'd even encouraged her by innocently asking her in front of the captain, if she had changed her hairstyle. He was also famous for finding every single sore spot to poke in his finger where Kirk, and certainly where Spock was concerned. That man had is own secret, and slightly vicious way of entertaining himself.
Her female instinct helped her not only to identify precarious situations, but whenever she sensed them, she immediately wanted to smooth out any tension or embarrassment. Maybe it had something to do with being a communications officer, rather than with being a woman.
She quietly cleared her throat. "This reminds me of a course I took at the Academy, Operating principles of the universal translator. The instructor was a Vulcan linguist who never spoke Earth Standard, only Vulcan."
"T'Len," Spock provided.
"Right. You know her?" Uhura asked, but wasn't really surprised. There were not many Vulcan lecturers at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. Most Vulcan scientists chose to work and teach at the Vulcan Science Academy. But T'Len, being a xenolinguist, found an environment where many foreign languages were spoken much more inspiring, as she had told her students at one time. Why she had refused to ever speak any of the many language she supposedly had mastered, was a mystery, though. She probably would have taken every chance to meet any Vulcan, who made it to the Academy, and that, of course, included their first officer.
"She is an acquaintance," Spock said, without turning, or stopping in what he was doing.
"Oh. Well, usually, the language wasn't a problem, since we all had our universal translators with us," Uhura continued, "But one day, she set up a disturbing signal that rendered all our translators inoperative. And suddenly we couldn't understand anything she said, at all," she continued.
"But you speak Vulcan," Chekov interjected, now interested. Even though he was convinced this whole power failure was a trap, there was nothing they could do at the moment, so why not pass the time with a bit of socialising?
"I didn't then. At least not much more than the 50 words or so you learn at highschool," she said, remembering. "Anyway, we complained of course, and T'Len said something in Vulcan that together we translated as: If you can't understand the language of your instructor, use your universal translator."
"Great."
"Right. So we said: It's broken. And we had no idea what was wrong with it, or how to fix it. But she just answered: Repair it! And we asked: How?"
"And she said: Ask your instructor!" Sulu finished for her, smiling.
"That's right," Uhura laughed. "That day I became convinced that it was necessary to actually learn languages, and not rely on the universal translator."
"Great! So we should leave communicators, crowbars, blankets, flashlights, nutrition packs, water and oxygen masks lying around on the bridge, instead of relying on ..." Daniels started to rant, but was interrupted by the ventilation system coming to life again.
"Okay, at least now we know that someone is still alive down there!" Sulu said, cheerily.
"And we won't suffocate," Chekov agreed.
Just seconds later the comm system also sprang to life with a familiar chirpy sound, and Uhura started to hug Spock when he turned around to crawl out from under the console. Luckily, they were cramped in so narrowly that Spock must have interpreted her move as an attempt to get out from under there, or he simply chose not to comment yet another human idiosyncracy.