Here is another juicy chapter. Enjoy!

§ 14 §

Just as he was coming perilously close to the fatal threshold, to that artefact, Malcolm suddenly had a flashback of what had happened to him ten days before when Archer had passed the invisible line; how he – Malcolm – had been thrown by that displacement field and ended up in Sickbay with a concussion. Now, in the fraction of second that it took him to cross the boundary between known and unknown, he had the time to hope that Trip would be okay. That's all he needed, to risk a friend's life in order to try and save another one's. At least Trip was much further from the artefact than he himself had been.

A blinding light, however, erased that worry from the blackboard of his mind; and for what could have been mere seconds or even hours – for he lost any notion of time and space – Malcolm was weightless, bodiless; and blind. He wondered if that was what it felt like to die. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps Trip had been right and he had done something stupid. Perhaps some evil alien force had conjured up those images in his brain, and the Captain was really beyond saving; then so, now, was he. Perhaps...

As abruptly as they had left him, his senses returned, and with them the knowledge that he had limbs again, and that they were out of control. He flailed about and staggered across the ground. With a bit of luck he regained his balance.

The environment around him – now that he was stable enough again to actually look at it – was completely different from the one he had left. No more red dust; no more rocks: he was surrounded by vegetation, and only the oxygen-poor air which made him pant for breath suggested that he was likely to be still on the same planet; indeed, if his out-of-breathness was anything to go by, mere seconds must have passed since his mad run past that obelisk.

T'Pol's voice echoed in his mind, and Malcolm slowly pivoted on his feet for a cautious survey of the place. And there, on the ground, lying limply in the shade of a tree, was Captain Archer.

"Captain," he choked out, heart leaping in his chest. He had been right. Bloody hell, but he had been right!

Archer was laying on one side, curled up in foetal position, his face hidden from view. Malcolm knelt by him and reached with two fingers under the man's jaw. A heartbeat was there, steady if not strong. Gently, he put a hand on the Captain's shoulder and rolled him on his back. Archer came without resistance, without a sound. If Malcolm hadn't just felt for a pulse and found one, he might as well have believed him lifeless.

"Captain," he heard himself repeat; he wasn't quite sure if in an effort to rouse the man or in dismay.

Under the ten-day-long beard, Archer's face was ashen; he looked wasted, even more than in those visions. But a faint, very faint smile was on the man's lips. Malcolm might have missed it, had he not seen it on the Captain's face just moments before, from the other side.

And now? How was he supposed to bring them both back home? Malcolm bit his lip. Indeed, where was home?

"I did my test of faith and courage," he said in frustration, looking about for some form of intelligence – surely this couldn't all be casual? "Isn't that enough?" he called out, more loudly. "Send us back!"

Silence, and that slightly plastic-looking vegetation, surrounded them. Not even a bird call could be heard.

Clenching his jaw, Malcolm reached for his arm pocket.

"Reed to Enterprise..." Static came back to him. "Reed to Tucker..."

Brilliant.

He should try to explore a bit – but in which direction? And what if something happened and he couldn't retrace his steps? Or the Captain disappeared again? He shouldn't leave the man behind.

Looking up at the sky, Malcolm tried to orient himself by the sun; provided it was the same sun and the same planet, of course. At least the vegetation wasn't particularly thick. Reaching for Archer's arm, he heaved him on his shoulder in a fireman's carry. The man was tall but felt less heavy than anticipated – courtesy of his forced diet, perhaps.

Malcolm turned to go and... Desert was suddenly before him, where none had been before.

No, not exactly desert: a stretch of bare, dusty land. Quite a few kilometres beyond it, far yet tantalisingly close, was a much rougher terrain, and the safety of a small dot of silver, reflecting the sun. He knew instinctively what it was: their Shuttlepod. He turned about: the vegetation was no longer there. More barren land opened up before his eyes. But he couldn't give a damn, as long as that silver reflection stayed put. He'd get them to it.

A smile crept over Malcolm's face.

"Don't worry, Captain. We're going home."

Under Malcolm's blow Trip had tottered and fallen to his knees. Hand on his battered jaw, he'd been looking numbly at the man's backside as he ran past that obelisk – trying to come to terms with what had just happened – when he'd been hit by the shockwave of that displacement field, which had thrust him backwards and sent him rolling across the ground. One of those big boulders had finally stopped his course, leaving him breathless.

When he had opened his eyes again, Malcolm had no longer been there.

Mere seconds later his communicator had chirped, and he had reached for it with a hand that had left a smear of blood on the sleeve of his uniform.

Enterprise's sensors had registered the event, and T'Pol had sounded uncharacteristically upset in learning what had happened.

"Ouch," Trip complained, refocusing on the present.

He was sitting on one of the pod's rear benches, and Phlox was cleaning and dressing all the scrapes he had collected on the exposed parts of his body, namely his hands and face.

"Be still, Commander, please," the Doctor said gently, dabbing, with practised movements, disinfectant on his forehead.

It burned, but that wasn't what made Trip fidgety.

"That no good son of a –" Trip cursed under his breath. "What the hell was he thinking, knocking me out and running right at that stupid thing? That stubborn… When I get my hands on him, he's not going to know his ass from his elbows."

The truth was he was worried sick. Blue Denobulan eyes gave him a sympathetic look that told him the Doctor knew where his anger came from, and shared his feelings.

"A most unusual reaction, for the Lieutenant, I must agree," Phlox said in a darker-than-usual tone.

It took the physician a good twenty minutes to clean him up. The scanner had showed that Trip had broken no bones, though he'd probably be sore for a few days. Finally the Doctor pronounced him free to go.

Yes, but where?

Trip heaved a pensive sigh and went to lean with one shoulder near the open hatch, arms crossed over his chest. He had no idea what to do.

His eyes went to the cursed cause of all their troubles; then strayed further. Was something...? Yes, something was in the stretch of barren land between the obelisk and that distant vegetation. It was far away, and the heat in the air distorted the image, but his heart missed a beat.

"Son of a bitch, he made it," he breathed out, pushing off his support.

T'Pol had told him the exact distance between the artefact and the vegetation: twelve point three kilometres. Malcolm was somewhere in the middle. She was not able to tell exactly where, because as far as sensors were concerned the Lieutenant and Captain did not exist. As a result, using the transporter was not an option.

Trip grimaced. You could almost always be sure the transporter was out of the picture when you most needed it.

He had wanted to take the Shuttlepod out to the men; but T'Pol had stopped him, using the powerful weapon of her strict logic. Now that they were so close to getting the two officers back – she had reasoned – it was irrational to risk disappearing with an entire Shuttlepod. It was quite clear that the area beyond that artefact was dangerous terrain. Trip had had to admit that she was right.

So he'd been standing as close to the artefact as he dared, watching Malcolm's slow progress, unable to take his eyes off the staggering blue uniform. Every now and then the Lieutenant would stop and lower his burden to the ground, but Trip had no doubt that the stubborn man would not let them down. Three and a half hours later, he was some twenty metres away from safety.

"Come on, Malcolm, you're almost there," Trip egged him on.

Malcolm raised his head, and a smile cracked his mask of tiredness.

As soon as he crossed into the rocky ground, Trip and Phlox were over him, helping lower the Captain to the ground.

Phlox went immediately to work, scanning Archer's body.

With a trembling hand Malcolm accepted a canteen, and Trip had to steady him as he threw his head back and drank thirstily, stopping just to take in a few gulps of air.

Finally he passed the back of his hand over his mouth, his grey eyes growing rueful as they ran over the bruise on Trip's jaw, and his injuries.

"Trip… look," he blurted out, still a bit breathlessly. "I'm sorry…" He shook his head, sending a rivulet of perspiration running down his face, and dabbed it dry with a sleeve. "I am prepared to face any consequence you see fitting, Commander," he concluded tautly.

Trip narrowed his eyes. "I swore to myself that if I laid eyes on you again I'd make you pay for it, Lieutenant," he said dangerously.

"The Captain is dehydrated and malnourished," Phlox butted in. "But he suffered no internal or external injury."

Trip watched his own relief dawn on Malcolm's face. What the hell, he was too happy to stay mad. "But I guess for this time I'll let you off the hook," he relented, trying in vain to restrain a grin.

"We'd better get the Captain back to the Shuttlepod," Phlox urged. "The sooner we get him to sickbay the better."

"May I be exempted from giving you a hand?" Malcolm croaked out wearily.

It had been a completely illogical set of events, and that had her at a disadvantage. However, it couldn't be argued that Lieutenant Reed's reckless behaviour, entirely founded on another one of those alleged visions, had been successful. The evidence was here in front of her eyes, sleeping on a biobed.

Taking advantage of the fact that Phlox had moved off to input some data in his computer, T'Pol allowed her gaze to linger over the Captain. He had lost considerable weight. How could the man still be alive? Humans were not like Vulcans. They could not go for many days without food, and especially without water. Archer had been away from Enterprise for ten days, and… Her thoughts were interrupted by a high-pitched sound.

"Ahhh," Phlox said. "There are traces of alien substances in the Captain's blood. It suggests that he had some nourishment, at least in the beginning. And obviously some fluids or he wouldn't still be alive."

T'Pol looked in the Denobulan's direction, but the Doctor remained bent over his screen.

Well, that was one answer. But many another mysteries remained.

Turning back to Archer, T'Pol let her eyes wander over his bearded jaw-line. A strange fluttering upset her stomach, and she wondered what food might have caused that. She couldn't remember eating anything out of the ordinary.

But back to her reasonings.

For example, why hadn't sensors picked up any biosigns in that barren land or in that oasis? Indeed she had suspected that their readings had not been reliable, but up until the moment the Lieutenant had walked back to the Shuttlepod with Archer, visible to Trip's eyes but invisible to their instruments, she had had no proof of it. It was undesirable to find out that one could not trust one's technology; eighty-three lives depended on it.

The thought that all the time Archer had been just a few kilometres away from from where he'd disappeared was suddenly enough to threaten breaking T'Pol's control. Heaving a steadying breath against an emotion the Humans would surely label "irritation", she closed her eyes and pictured a Vulcan desert, a simple exercise that allowed her to find her inner calm again.

"Hmm," Phlox mumbled thoughtfully. "The Captain's brain scan seems normal."

T'Pol cast another unreturned glance at the engrossed physician.

She should try and make a mental list of the facts at her disposal. First: it appeared that walking past the obelisk from the rocky ground into the barren land triggered an explosion of energy that could make people disappear, whereas walking past the artefact in the opposite direction caused nothing of the kind. Second: sensors, already impaired by the red dust, were in fact blind to biosigns in certain areas of the planet. Third: it seemed that somehow Archer had indeed communicated with Reed. Vulcans were slightly telepathic, and, for lack of a better explanation, she was inclined to think that was how it had been done.

"Doc?" Commander Tucker's voice suddenly called through the comm. link, from the decon chamber. "Sorry to bother you, but are we done, here?"

He sounded both loathe to disturb, and eager to leave his confinement.

Phlox straightened up abruptly, hitting his forehead with one hand. He hurried to press the link open. "Yes, yes, Commander. I apologise, I got distracted. Both you and the Lieutenant are free to go."

A moment later the two officers were coming through the Sickbay doors. T'Pol took in Tucker's bruised jaw and her eyebrows lifted of their own accord; but she chose not to comment. Lieutenant Reed's debatable methods, after all, had produced results.

Oblivious to that, the Commander immediately darted a look at their inert Commanding Officer. "How's the Capt'n?" he enquired.

The Doctor produced one of his famous smiles.

"Stable. I am restoring water and nourishment to his system."

Indeed IV tubes were snaking out of Archer's arm.

"I don't expect him to wake up before a few hours have passed," the Denobulan continued. Jovially, he went on to suggest, "Therefore you can return to your duties. I will let you know the moment he opens his eyes."

It was a subtle way of telling them that their presence was not needed. T'Pol acknowledged the message with a gentle tip of the head, and led the party out of the infirmary.

"Lieutenant, I am… interested in hearing your report," she said, as they walked down the corridor. She debated for a second whether to allow Reed the time to take a shower – the Officer did look in need of a change of uniform; and her numbing agent was only partially effective at counteracting the odour of a person who had perspired heavily – but in the end her interest was too strong. "If you would follow me to the ready room," she ordered.

Reed nodded dutifully; though she could tell that he had indeed been looking forward to a stop in his quarters.

"Did you order Travis to break orbit?" Tucker enquired.

"Not yet."

The Engineer frowned. "I thought you'd want to put some distance between us and that thing."

"I have asked Ensign Sato to prepare a warning in all known languages. As soon as the buoy is launched, we shall leave."

"Andorians could have thought of that," Lieutenant Reed commented, with a sarcastic huff. "It would have saved us a lot of trouble."

"Indeed," T'Pol agreed. "However, in my experience Andorians do not take the fate of other people very much to heart."

The three of them walked in silence to the turbo lift.

"Well, I think I'm gonna pop into Engineerin'," the Commander said. "See if everything is runnin' smooth down there. See ya later."

T'Pol watched him walk away; then preceded Reed into the turbo lift.

"Lieutenant Reed."

After speaking with T'Pol, Malcolm was dying to drown under a shower; so when he heard the voice calling he swore a silent blue streak. All the more so because the person who was going to delay his longed-for ablutions was someone he truly disliked.

He stopped and paused for a moment, trying to find the calm he needed to face this man; then slowly turned.

Blake's nose was still taped. Malcolm hadn't seen the Admiral since that silent Shuttlepod trip back to Enterprise, but frankly speaking he hadn't missed him one bit. In fact he'd rather hoped he'd manage to avoid the man till the blessed day when they could drop him off somewhere; preferably on an uninhabited planet; or one where the wildlife had tough enough stomachs to digest even him.

"I'd like to have a word with you," Blake said, bridging the gap between them.

As usual, his were the terse ways of someone who gave orders and expected them to be obeyed. Malcolm felt like telling him that now was not a good time; but unfortunately an Admiral was still a superior officer. Hell, wasn't it clear enough that 'a word with him' wasn't what he needed just now? He was dishevelled and he knew he smelled awful. He had already been obliged to go through the discomfort of standing in close quarters with T'Pol and her sensitive nose; he didn't fancy a repeat of that experience with someone else – though, come to think of it, Blake's sense of smell probably wasn't very sharp at the moment.

Malcolm stiffened. "Very well," he said coldly, tilting is head in compliance.

Blake looked around, as if suggesting that the middle of a corridor wasn't the best place for a conversation, but Malcolm ignored him. The shorter this ended up being, the better. He wished he could cross his arms over his chest, instead of having to stand virtually at attention; it was a show of respect this man did not deserve.

"I suppose I owe you a thank you," Blake said without grace. "For that blow you deflected."

There was no real feeling in the words; it sounded like a mere obligation. Something Blake had to do to clear his conscience, so he could return to treating him like dirt.

Malcolm felt a surge of anger; actually, it was more like loathing. But he wasn't going to give this bastard the satisfaction of seeing him lose control.

"You don't owe me anything, Admiral," he said, grey eyes steely. "Especially a thank you. I simply carried out my duty, to the best of my ability." With a sharp nod, he turned to go.

"I haven't dismissed you yet, Lieutenant," Blake said imperiously.

Malcolm pivoted on his feet, jaw clenched. This man had obviously decided to poke him until he ended up reacting and doing something stupid.

"Perhaps you want to add that you're sorry for insinuating that I am an inadequate Security Officer and a coward, Admiral. Because if you ever did owe me anything, it would be an apology."

Right. Something bloody, sickeningly, utterly stupid.

At least he hadn't shouted, but spoken, rather, with icy impassiveness.

A couple of crewmen hurried past them, looking eager to disappear around the next bend; and Malcolm used the time to straighten his stance even more and prepare for a well-deserved dressing-down. He stood at proper attention now, fixing his gaze to a nondescript spot on the bulkhead; but refused to humiliate himself by uttering the formal 'that was out of line' apology.

Seconds ticked by. Blake undoubtedly knew how to make someone nervous, damn him.

"I never could stand cowardice."

Malcolm blinked. The tone was not what he had expected. He dared a look at the towering man.

Blake nodded sharply. "Apparently, I was too fast in judging you, Lieutenant. I do apologise."

Sharp and direct. Military fashion. Malcolm blinked again, unsure of what to say. "Apology accepted," he finally said, his voice deep. He couldn't bring himself to say more – as far as he was concerned the man was still an idiot; and returned his gaze straight ahead.

"Dismissed," Blake said, after a pause.

Malcolm nodded, and turned. As he hurried off towards his shower, he hoped it would wash away more than sweat and red dust.

TBC

Was I too kind on Blake?... Looking forward to your comments!