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Space was not a good place to be if you were claustrophobic. Being thrown about space at warp five in a complicated tin
can was not for everyone. Normally, McCoy didn’t mind, he was more worried about the thrice-damned transporter spreading
him across the galaxy. Right now, however, the enclosed nature of his career was getting to him.
He should never have
followed Spock on this fool’s errand.
There had been anomalous readings from this section of the ship and Spock
wanted to check them out. Spock had wanted someone from Medicine with him, in case it was space hitchhikers or something similar.
McCoy could have sent one of the nurses, or one of the other doctors on duty, but no, he’d been stupid enough to volunteer
for this. He’d been bored of sickbay, where the most interesting case for weeks had been Crewman Collister’s compound
fracture of the ankle, and wanted a change of scene.
They found the cause of the anomaly easily enough. It was the
Arcadian equivalent of a rat, or rather it had been, and they must have picked it up the last time they docked. Those things
were a menace.
Unfortunately either the rat itself, the chemicals it produced while it was decomposing, or Spock removing
it from the circuitry had triggered the closing of the Jefferies tube they were in, and the damned thing couldn’t be
convinced to open, not from their side at least.
They’d communicated their predicament, and a far too amused
sounding James Kirk had told Scotty to fix it and get them out. That had been about half an hour ago.
McCoy had been
called out to deal with emergencies in the tubes before, and he knew they weren’t all this small. He wanted to know
why he had to be stuck in one that barely allowed him to sit upright, rather than one of the more spacious ones, where he
could at least have sat properly.
His temper wasn’t being helped by the presence of a very smug looking Vulcan
who, despite his greater height, seemed to be coping fine, and even doing something that looked suspiciously like Vulcan yoga.
“I
think you would be more comfortable if you relaxed, Doctor.”
“I am relaxed.”
“I think
your fidgeting would disagree with that.”
McCoy didn’t feel like sitting still. He wanted to be out of
this tube where every single bit of metal seemed to be trying to dig into him. “I’ll wait to see if you’re
so relaxed in a couple of hours. The only way through the bulkheads if there’s no electronic over-ride is to cut through
them with a laser, so not only will we be tinned, we’ll be boiled as well, and I don’t feel like becoming a pilchard.”
“It
is highly unlikely that you will turn into a fish in the coming hours.”
“That’s the other thing;
you do know that it will be a couple of hours, because Scotty will be doing everything he can to avoid damaging his ship.
That means he will be combing through every subroutine while we’re stuck here.” If getting them out took more
than two hours, McCoy was going to tell Scotty exactly what kind of flea-bitten, rat infested hellhole his ship really was.
“I
would expect nothing less.”
“How can you be so calm?”
“Doctor, we are going to be here
whether I am calm or not. There is nothing I can do to alter the situation; therefore I see no reason to expend energy that
is not required.”
McCoy twisted again trying to get comfortable, and avoid putting his hands into rat innards.
“I
don’t think this would be so bad if I’d thought of bringing something to read.” He had thought that this
would be an interesting expedition, with something more exotic at the end of it than the ship’s rat. “I don’t
suppose there’s anything on your tricorder.” McCoy’s own had nothing more interesting that the sickbay stock
take that he was sure was in order because Chapel had done it, and he only really needed to glance at it, and that wouldn’t
take more than five minutes.
“All the data I have is on the energy fluctuations in this compartment. I fear there
is nothing we can do, unless you wish to dissect the rat.”
McCoy thought this over. It had been years since he’d
last performed a non-human dissection, and it wasn’t like he had a scalpel to hand. “Unless you can fix the phasers
so that they don’t blow a hole through the wall, I’m not sure how we’ll do that.”
“I’m
sure that can be arranged.” Spock unfolded himself from the near lotus position he’d been in, and started to change
the settings on his phaser.
It was soon ready.
They’d taken basic tricorder readings to establish that
the rat had died of an electric shock, probably through biting the wires, but beyond that they knew nothing.
When Scotty’s
engineering team did break through – only an hour and a half later, so he would have been spared Dr. McCoy’s tirade
even if the doctor hadn’t been occupied – they found Spock and McCoy busily arranging the corpse, and talking
about interesting evolutionary features designed to cope with Arcadia’s heavy gas atmosphere.
Dr. McCoy declared
it to have been a useful day, Spock that the third lung sack of the rat had been an intriguing item that he had never considered,
and Scotty was happy too because, in the last subroutine he’d tried before breaking out the lasers, he’d found
a way to open the Jeffries tube without damaging the ship or its bulkheads.
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