He was handling their counterparts remarkably well for someone they'd kidnapped and used as the central processing unit of a starship without being given any say in the matter. At least, that's what Spock had told him after the Praxidian ship appeared on the viewscreen and he refrained from opening fire on it. He was pretty sure that was Spock's way of trying to get him to talk about the last few weeks and the various sequelae which were piling up: nightmares and lost time and the way he knew things he shouldn't. Jim had given him a sullen glare for his efforts.

In contrast, Gaila was tight-lipped and spoke in the briefest possible sentences, and avoided the bridge at all costs. When Spock put her on the list of crew for the planetary survey, she'd requested a re-assignment. Once or twice he thought about talking to her about that-Gaila loved planetary surveys and readily traded shifts with anyone who didn't want to go-but decided it could wait until they were on to their next objective.

It helped that the Praxidians were being the very essence of polite, and had even (Jim thought) warmed to them some when Uhura offered them a Praxidian-Standard translation program she'd been working on. Not that he wanted to be on friendly terms with them, but he knew what their ships were capable of, and what he wanted had to take a back seat to keeping the Enterprise and her crew safe. He would have to settle for thinking nasty thoughts about them and giving them dirty looks whenever he had to interact with them, and let the rest go.

He did get one small sliver of satisfaction: when they tried to tease out of Uhura where she'd seen and heard enough of their language to build a translation algorithm, she'd given them a saccharine smile and taken the subject two times around the dance floor without letting anything slip. That had been a fine thing to watch.

He explained the current situation to Uhura and McCoy ("It was Spock, wasn't it," McCoy said, and Jim ignored him), then had Uhura contact the Praxidian shuttle. They agreed to meet in a neutral spot they'd designated ahead of time for such things: a sheltered vale a few hundred miles from the Enterprise survey team's initial landfall. The surrounding mountains kept out most of the wind, so it was only chilly rather than downright freezing.

The General (or so the translation filter had dubbed him) arrived with two other Praxidians: one Jim knew was the General's assistant without knowing why he did, and another he'd seen on the Enterprise's viewscreen when the two crews had first made visual contact. The three of them were brilliant spots of color in the otherwise cool landscape of blue and white and gray: the General's chitin was mustard yellow and flecked with gray; the Assistant was solid rust-purple; and the third was dark red with bold black stripes. He knew this third Praxidian was a systems engineer, because the last time he'd seen her was through a console camera lens, standing next to Captain Yzzorthil in the hallway of a dying survey vessel.

I am sorry, Pilot.

She was staring at him with recognition plain in her posture; he returned the favor and tried not to think about the cold sweat that had broken out along his back.

"Captain. I hope your examination of the planet has been fruitful."

Jim blinked and refocused on the General. It took him a second to put his thoughts together. "Oh, you have no idea. We've found all sorts of interesting new plants, some great geological formations, even a few crater sites. How often do you get to look at a place like this?"

"Not often. It is truly a unique and informative place."

"Yeah." He rubbed at his forehead and let his feigned enthusiasm drop. "But as informative as it is, none of that's what you're here for."

"Captain," Uhura whispered under her breath. They traded glances (hers said 'reign it in' and his said 'make me' with a dash of 'oh, fine'), and he cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry?"

Jim had an intense moment of cognitive dissonance as the translation software made the General sound politely confused, while to Jim's eyes (no, someone else's he was borrowing) he appeared shrewd and cautious. He plastered his best 'I don't like you' smile into place.

"You wouldn't happen to be here looking for something, would you?"

The General's wariness increased. Jim was sure he saw one of the Assistant's nerve bundles flick. "We are always in search of knowledge, Captain Kirk. It is the greatest wealth in all the universe."

"Right, knowledge. Like, say, the whereabouts of a ship."

The General froze. Jim pulled out the tiny memory fob he'd saved the map and coordinates on and held it up. "Something in the planet's magnetosphere is preventing it from showing up on scans from orbit. We only found it because we were using geophysical scanners."

The General stared at him for several unsettling seconds, then said, "We would be most indebted to you, Captain Kirk."

He couldn't keep all of the anger out of his voice. "You already are, and this just makes the tab bigger, so here's how this works-we're leaving, and then you do whatever it is you're going to do with it. Until the Enterprise warps out, I don't want to see so much as a peep from that thing."

Uhura widened her eyes at him in a warning. He counted his breathes.

"The path out of the nebula will only be open for another half a subcycle, if that, and is unlikely to open again for another Maxima."

"Don't worry, we're not sticking around. You'll have plenty of time to do whatever you're going to do."

"We intend to do nothing more than to place the ship back into service."

Something inside of him flinched, and he swallowed against it. "I don't want my crew anywhere near one of your warships, in service or not, so don't launch it until we're gone."

He saw Uhura and McCoy give him looks that were just as surprised as the General's and his assistant's. Only the Engineer was unfazed, and it was to her that he lobbed the memory stick. She caught it without missing a beat.

He turned to go, and McCoy and Uhura fell in next to him.

"A warship?" McCoy asked through clenched teeth. Jim cast a sharp glance at him, and McCoy fell silent in response.

"Can we get out of here before they get it up and running?" Uhura murmured. Jim nodded.

"It'll take them a while to get it squared away-it's probably been sitting there for a couple hundred years. And they'll need to fix whatever stranded it."

They walked back to the shuttle in silence, though McCoy's looks spoke volumes about how much Jim wasn't going to like the conversation they would be having on the way back to the Enterprise.

He looked back over his shoulder once before they rounded a curve that would take them out of sight of the Praxidians; they were just disappearing into their own shuttle.

"Kirk to Enterprise."

"Captain. I take it the meeting did not go poorly?"

"It went as good as it could have. We'll be back in a half-hour."

Uhura began powering up the shuttle while Jim went over the recent readings from the nebula's halo. The path through it was still open and clear, which was a relief, though he wasn't sure why he'd been worried.

McCoy settled into a chair next to him. "So. I'm guessing I just got an eyeful of why Spock wanted me around."

Jim only glanced up from the readings on the halo for a moment. "What?"

"You looked like you were reacting to way more than I was hearing. And you kept staring at the red one."

"Engineer."

"What?"

"She's an engineer."

Uhura had looked over at them from her station. "How could you tell?" she asked, her tone cautious.

He didn't want to tell them because he didn't want to think about it, but he made himself. "She was on the...other ship."

Uhura gave him a sympathetic look. McCoy sighed and looked away, folding his arms. "Well hopefully that's the last we see of them."

Jim just nodded.

One of the shuttle's panels chirped for their attention, and Uhura got up and moved to it. She stiffened as soon as she read the display.

"Captain," she said, glancing over her shoulder. "You should have a look at this."

The long range sensors filled half the display, scrolling data pertaining to the white dwarf star he'd had his eye on. It was almost too fast to read and comprehend; or, it was for one part of him, but that other, unsleeping part told him what the readings meant. Actually, it shouted them in a panic.

Jim lunged for the communications panel so fast Uhura jumped back in surprise.

"Spock get out of here now!"

No sooner had he spoken than the shuttle's computers flashed numerous warnings in red, and the signal of the white dwarf brightened over a millionfold.

The Praxidi survey vessel's signal winked out. The Enterprise's lingered, and Jim wondered if it was hesitation to leave the three of them behind that caused the delay rather than any technical issue. Then it too vanished, and the nova's shockwave rolled through.

He had a brief, nauseating thought that they were all about to die, and this other part of him that knew so much insisted that was complete nonsense. It was the later which turned out to be correct: the outer halo and inner rings of the nebula protected the planetary system like breakwaters, and the three of them watched in mingled horror and awe as ripples of light filled the sky on the shuttle viewscreen. In the silence that followed, none of them spoke; the fear that the Enterprise hadn't made it hung heavy in the air.

Eventually McCoy looked down at one of the panels. "Jim."

He followed McCoy's gaze, and his stomach went cold. The path out of the halo had all but collapsed.