Chapter 3

Chuck arrived at the Hangar Deck about fifteen minutes before show time. He was ushered to a side room reserved for the contestants. Spock and Sulu were already there, as were two of the other winners. It transpired that the third winner of the previous night had already recovered his sight, and so was disqualified.

"Gentlemen," Spock addressed them. "I wish to make you aware of Mr. Sulu's condition. He wishes to compete this evening, in spite of the pain he is experiencing. The process has not reached the point at which he would have use of his eyes.

"You have three options. You could report this, get him disqualified, and thereby increase the chances of your being a winner. Secondly, you could let him compete, assuming that because of his pain, he will not do well. The third option is to allow me to take his pain, so that he can perform well. What do you choose?"

They opted to let Spock do his stuff. The girl from Engineering spoke for all.

"We're not doing this to win. At least, I'm not. I don't care who wins. We're doing this to entertain the troops. Besides, it's fun!"

Griggs walked in just moments after Spock was done.

"Good evening, gentlemen. A few instructions before we start the show: Your order for performance will be determined randomly. I will call your name over this communicator. You then have fifteen minutes to complete your act. You leave this room, find your way to the stage, climb the ladder and fall into the vat. Then you exit the vat, climb the ladder and fall a second time. The clock stops when you exit the vat the second time.

"You can embellish your act any way you want to, with one caveat - no displays of fear. We've had enough of that; do something different. Also, I've been instructed to remind you that with the increased height, it's especially important not to land head first. Any questions?"

"What do we do when we're finished? Come back here?"

"No, there are seats reserved for you on the far side of the vat."

The girl from Engineering was called first, then Spock. The other one, whose name Chuck didn't know, was next. Then it was Sulu's turn. He assured Chuck he was fine, thanks to Spock. Chuck began planning his act. It would depend somewhat on how long it took him to find the stage. Suddenly, he had a marvelous idea, and so very simple. The communicator crackled again and spoke his name.

Chuck entered the Hangar Deck mounted on a pretend white horse. He circled, reared his steed, raised an arm in salute, yelled, "Hi-oh Silver, away!" And charged the audience, whistling 'William Tell's Overture'. The audience cracked up and scattered to get out of his way. Several didn't manage to move their seats fast enough. But Chuck heard the clatter of collapsing chairs and managed to avoid tripping over the obstacles.

By some sixth sense, he made straight for the vat, circled twice on his horse, and reined abruptly at the foot of the ladder. Talking to his horse, he dismounted, pretended the ladder was a trail he had to climb, and started up, pulling his horse after him. Mentally counting steps as he went, he pretended the trail was steep and rugged. Arriving at the top, he praised his horse and remounted.

Then he pretended the horse was spooked by a rattlesnake. Repeatedly rearing, the horse attacked the snake, and on the third rear, Chuck fell off. Timing the fall, he rolled onto his back and landed in the vat. He climbed out onto the edge of the vat, stood up and walked all the way around to the ladder, balancing on his bare feet. Pretending he had fallen down a ravine, he climbed up the wrong side of the ladder, as if it were a cliff.

Reaching the top, he looked for his horse, but found only the dead rattlesnake. Concluding the horse must have fallen into the ravine too, he dived off the board. Executing two perfect somersaults, he landed spread-eagled, face down. Perched on the edge of the vat, he made his final comment before swinging onto the floor.

"If Silver landed in this mud puddle, he must be a chestnut by now! No wonder I can't find him!"

Laughter and spontaneous applause was his reward. Someone handed him a towel, and he began wiping the chocolate pudding off his face.

Chuck again won first place. The girl was second; Sulu was third.

xxxx

The next morning, Sullivan did not appear at the breakfast meeting. By unspoken consent, Chuck took charge. He sent Lila to Scotty in Engineering, and Gliff to Tanzer in Recreation. Sam was still tied up being Spock's eyes, though Spock hoped it wouldn't be too much longer before he had a working tactile readout.

Chuck stopped in to check on Sullivan before heading to the Bridge.

"Come in, shut the door, and don't turn on the light. Who is it?"

"It's Chuck, sir. Is there anything you need?"

"Yeah. It woke me out of a sound sleep about 0200. I took the pills, but I could use some more. I can't recall when I've had a headache like this one. Headache is too mild a word for it." Sullivan groaned and rubbed his forehead in misery.

"Right, sir. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Chuck fetched medicine, and helped Sullivan take it. He couldn't raise his head off the pillow without help. And he was shaking badly, even after taking the pills. Chuck promised to check back in a few hours. Leaving Sullivan, he took the lift to the Bridge. It had been shocking to see Sullivan reduced to helplessness. He took several deep breaths to settle himself.

Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu were all on duty that morning. Chuck listened to the banter as they rejoiced together over restored sight. The banter ceased abruptly when Spock arrived. Chuck heard the gasps as they got their first look at Spock's face. They were sobered by a fresh awareness of the permanence of Spock's loss. He was immediately aware of their reaction.

"There were certain advantages to your blindness. I regret that my appearance distresses you. I would be grateful if you can ignore my disability. Also, I remind you that Captain Young's face probably looks very much like mine. I do not yet know him well enough to predict his reaction to your distress."

They took a collective deep breath and tried to do as Spock requested, but the cheerful banter had evaporated. Nonetheless, when Young arrived a few minutes later, there was no reaction to his appearance that Chuck could hear.

Chuck observed the Bridge crew in general that morning, and had lunch with Chekov. His testimony was similar to Uhura's, though he had been more impacted by the change in Spock than in Kirk.

"As you may know, Spock is naturally a wery reserved person, wery self-contained; he rarely expresses emotion. My first clue that things vere different vas the night he shared vith the entire crew how he felt about attacking the Captain. He had never, I mean never, done such a thing before. Then two nights later, he shared how he himself got free of the hate. There vas such a joy on his face as he talked about it.

"I began vatching him closely over the next days. The changes vere subtle. He vas still Spock, but different. Same stamina, but not so driven; same desire for excellence, but more understanding of others; same encyclopedic knowledge, but more interested in relationships. For instance, vhat he said this morning about his face, he vould never have said that before. He vould have simply endured the awkvard moment in silence, hoping ve vould leave him alone. Now, he really cares about us; and he understands. Even more though, he cares about Captain Young, and vas able to spare us all from a repeat performance."

Chekov shared about the baptism and meetings on the Rec Deck. He'd had several lengthy discussions with Tanzer, McCoy, and even Spock. He'd given his life to the Lord just days before the second baptism. He talked about what baptism meant to him, and about his study of the Word. He explained the research of word meanings in the original languages. And he talked about meditating a passage until God showed him how the passage applied to his life.

In the officers' briefing at 1300, Young reintroduced the role-play study of Kirk. Surprisingly, he got willing cooperation from everyone, and no one asked why they were doing this. In fact, it seemed to Chuck that they were actually having a good time. And any awkwardness over Spock's and Young's faces was notably absent.

Chuck had dinner with McCoy. After getting his testimony, McCoy volunteered the fact that Chuck and a dozen engineers were now the only ones left who hadn't recovered their sight. And they'd had such a run on the medicine that afternoon, that they'd run out again. They went together to the praise and worship meeting at 1900. Afterwards, Chuck sought out Spock.

He came right to the point. "Spock, I want you to teach me to do what Jim Kirk does."

"Why?" Spock did not pretend to misunderstand.

"Two reasons: I think it will aid my study of the Christian question. It will help me sort out how much of what I've seen of Kirk is because he's a Christian, and how much is just because of who he is. Secondly, because I want to. I think if he were here, he would honor my request, just as a friend."

"Very well. However, it is a skill; instruction without experience is of little value."

"I have a tailor-made experience coming up. The only question is when."

"Indeed. Call me as soon as you experience any sign of symptoms."

"Thank you, Spock."

xxxx

The next morning Sullivan was back on his feet. Neither of them mentioned the day before. Chuck was assigned to Tanzer that day. After sharing his testimony, Tanzer gave him a thorough run-down on the spread of Christianity aboard the Enterprise. Chuck attended several small group believers' meetings that day. Some resembled Uhura's group; others were much more openly sharing. Some prayed together extensively; some spent most of their time sharing testimonies; some studied the Word together.

McCoy and Spock joined Tanzer and Chuck for dinner.

"Chuck, how are the eyes?" McCoy inquired.

"Just fine, sir. No symptoms yet."

"We're down to just four, including you. Better stop by Sickbay tonight for some pills. It can't be long now."

"Yes, sir. But I don't plan to need them." Chuck lifted his chin in determination.

"Not you too! I told you..."

"I know, but I'm going to have expert help."

"Spock!?" McCoy was mildly irritated.

"His reasons are logical, Doctor."

"No doubt!" McCoy retorted, but subsided nonetheless.

xxxx

Sulu was Chuck's assignment the next day. His testimony was slightly different from the others. They had all become Christians within a month or two, as a result of the changes they saw in Kirk and Spock. Not so with Sulu.

"At first, I was oblivious. I think I figured it was a passing thing, and they would all get over it. Besides, I wasn't at all sure I liked the change. Sure, the transparency was incredible, but not very comfortable. The biggest thing I didn't like though, was the Captain's attitude change. It's kind of hard to explain.

"We had several months in there where it seemed like nothing was going on, mission-wise, that is. I was bored. I expected the Captain to be bored too. Before he became a Christian, he definitely would have been. Instead, he didn't seem to care. It was as if his life no longer revolved around the things that mattered. The Enterprise is out here to make a difference in the galaxy. I thought he had abandoned the values we had always stood for.

"Then all of a sudden, things started popping. I mean, we jumped from crisis to crisis, with hardly enough time to draw a deep breath in between. And this went on for months. I began to wish for some of that boring routine. But not the Captain - he was equally unfazed by all the Red Alerts. Mind you, I would expect him to be competent and functional, even if he's exhausted. But there was no sign of exhaustion, and there should have been. I won't go into details, but some of that was pretty hair-raising." Sulu grinned as if daring Chuck to ask for stuff that was undoubtedly classified.

Chuck threw him a mock salute and refused to be baited.

Sulu shrugged and returned to the story without prompting. "Anyway, I began to see that the Captain was every bit as reckless as he'd always been, possibly more so. But he now had something internal that enabled him to cruise right through stuff that would have been stumbling blocks before.

"Then there was everybody else's attitude. Nobody was pushing me, or non-verbally saying 'get with the program', or anything like that. They just continued to love me where I was at. If I wanted to talk about it, they freely answered questions and debated issues. And if I didn't want to talk, that was fine too. They believed God would get through to me, and they weren't anxious about it.

"Well, He did, but I'm not sure I can point to one specific event that made the difference. It seemed more like an accumulation of influence over months. Though there was one mission that was probably a big part of it. It was towards the end of that long run of crises I mentioned. I was personally getting pretty ragged around the fringes, in terms of my energy and ability to cope.

"It was one of those weird phenomena - natural, as far as we know, but no one understands the physics of it except Spock, and even he's not too sure. Anyway, the thing is ripping holes in our universe, and Spock comes up with a way to stop it. He and Scotty put together what amounted to an enormous bomb. The hair-raising part was what we had to do to place that bomb.

"We drifted without engine power right into the middle of that thing, shoved the bomb out the Hangar Bay by hand, and then drifted back out of there. Took almost 48 hours altogether. And that whole time, I'm the only one on the Bridge that had anything to do. Sensors were blind, communications was out, navigation was blind - all instrumentation was useless. I'm flying the ship as if it's a solar-powered glider." He sat back and shook his head, as if even now uncertain how he'd been able to do it.

"They all sat there calm and relaxed, as if they hadn't a concern in the world. And it was even worse on the way out. We'd had to leave a timer on the bomb. If it exploded before we were clear of the phenomenon, we would've been history. They knew it all hinged on whether I could feel and find the currents that would take us out of there. But they weren't worried.

"And it's not because they knew I could do it. No one knew if it could be done. Only Spock, Scotty, and the Captain really understood how impossible a job it was. Scotty was busy with the bomb; Spock was constantly running calculations in his head, trying to guess our position based on my reports. But the Captain just sat there watching me, with an encouraging smile on his face.

"Now, I've worked with these guys long enough to know the difference between an appearance of calm control, and a genuine lack of concern. It bugged me so much, I asked the Captain about it a few weeks later. His answer really startled me.

"'You're right, Sulu,' he said. 'I was unconcerned, but probably not for the reason you're thinking. You know I'm not afraid of dying, but I was worried about you. That was a lot of stress, and I knew you were exhausted. But the Lord wouldn't let me worry about you. He was very blunt about it: Do you, or do you not, trust Sulu to do the job? When he put it that way, I had to admit that I did. If you couldn't do it, no one could. So He told me to stop worrying, that He would take care of you.'

"What startled me so much was the idea that God would take care of me, even if I didn't believe in Him. Or at least, the Captain believed He would. And I'd have to admit, there was something in the way of supernatural grace at work in that situation. I was too exhausted to be aware of it at the time, but the fact is, I did accomplish the impossible." He spread his arms wide, unwilling to take any credit for the miracle.

"Anyway, after that, I started attending their meetings, at least some of them. Again, I'm not sure I can pinpoint one meeting that made the difference. But I remember one teaching that stood out as helpful in my growing understanding. It was about righteousness. Basically, it's the idea that when we become Christians, we're given a new identity, that of being righteous before God. We can't earn it; all we can do is believe it.

"One night about three months ago, Chekov came to my cabin. We were both working Alpha shift, so it was middle-of-the-night for both of us. I had been unable to sleep, 'cause I was so tied in knots over this Christian question. But he didn't know that, so he was pretty apologetic that the Lord had insisted he come talk to me. He was relieved when I confirmed that I was troubled. So we talked the night away, and I gave my life to the Lord about 0500. There was quite a party on the Bridge that morning, 'cause I had been the last one of the seven of us."