Daedalus Aloft
by Lyrastar

Feedback: watergal at liquidfic dot net
Website: Liquidfic.Net
Pairing: S/m, K/S
Rating: NC-17
Summary and note: This is a sequel to Brueghel's Icarus wherein Spock's shuttle crashes backwards through time into the Roswell New Mexico desert of 1947, and some stuff happens. I think that's all you really need to know from the first story to follow this.
Betas: K'Chaps, Cait N, and Veronica. The remaining glitches are doubtless where I didn't listen carefully enough to any them.
Disclaimer: Sic transit gloria Paramount

Dawn broke over the New Mexico expanse, splattering the rocks and desert floor in a spray of orange hues. His meditation as complete as it was going to be, Spock rose stiffly from his stone perch on the mesa top. The chill of the October night had settled into the improperly knit bones of his legs--still mending where they had been crushed in the spacewreck--and he suppressed pain as he picked his way down the rocky path. It may have seemed illogical to some to expend the effort and energy to climb just to sit when he had scores of square miles of solitude all around, but there was a certain peace in setting himself as close as he could manage to the stars.

The short tramp back down to the homestead was easily accomplished--much more so than it had been in at least a week; Spock took that as a good sign, not only for his hip, but for the full return of his sanity as well. It had been three months since his shuttle crash through down not only the Earth's atmosphere, but back through centuries also. Now it was time to leave.

He made for the Navajo hut--or hogan--that he had shared with his rescuer, Chiz Yazzie, where last night he had laid out his provisions in preparation for the morning light.

As Chiz Yazzie's habit was to wake with the sun, Spock was not surprised to find him already stirring about. That he was still naked from their night's activities was a bit unexpected, but as well secreted amongst the mesas as the hogan was, and as far as they were removed from any kind of settlement, it didn't matter much.

Except, perhaps, to Spock for whom it was a rude reminder of the further complications that the weakness of his physiology had driven him to. Yesterday, the exigency of mating drive had blinded him to everything but his own survival. Now as reason returned, Spock saw the additional mistake he had made--particularly as a Vulcan himself--in allowing himself to touch the mind of a pre-contact Human.

With luck, Chiz Yazzie would not recognize the mind touch or the knowledge imparted by it for what it was. There had been confusion and peyote, not to mention the high emotion and passion of the sacred songs and spirits the medicine man had invoked. With luck, any alien influence and memories would be dismissed as an allegorical vision of as much interest as any other dream.

But if circumstances were not fortunate, much damage may have been done to the timeline by one man's premature exposure to things alien, Vulcan and of the future: damage that may itself have changed events so dramatically that Spock's timeline would no longer exist.

There may be no Starfleet. Jim may never be born. Nonetheless, Spock would assume the best, and he would use the full remainder of his days, if that was what it took, to get back to the life he used to have.

Chiz Yazzie looked up from his morning tasks. "You are well?" The critical gaze of a healer probed Spock from head to toe.

"I am," said Spock, removing his thoughts from that which he could not change. "The fever is gone."

Reaching under the woven jerkin that Spock wore, Chiz Yazzie plastered a leathery palm against Spock's heart. It was an intimate touch, but not a tenth so much as ones shared a few hours before. Seeming satisfied, he dropped his hand. "Yes, it is gone. But it seems that you also plan to go." He nodded his head towards the bedroll Spock had laid out along with a canteen and a traveling bag. "I had thought yesterday we established that there was no need."

"As each bird and beast turns eventually back from the field to its own kind, I still must return to my people. My original plan is back in place. I will go to California and from there, hopefully, make my way back to my land." In Muroc, California, an X1 supersonic jet was in test flights. If Spock could appropriate it, he could leave the scatter of the atmosphere and rig a transponder to attract the attention of a Vulcan ship. From there he would be only 3.274 centuries and a few thousand light-years away from the Enterprise and home.

But first things first: first, he must reach Muroc and the jet.

"That is few provisions for such a long journey." Skepticism clouded Chiz Yazzie's face. To be fair, it was not undeserved. As of this time yesterday Spock's best plan had been to walk into the desert to die.

"It is all that I need. My people are of the desert. If all goes well, I should 'hitch a lift,' I believe the expression is at the highway. You need not be concerned. If you would ride me to the highway I would be appreciative; if not, I will walk." "On that leg? It is seventy miles. Your trust in my skills as a medicine is heartwarming; your trust in the forbearance of nature for the injured is naive. "Trust has nothing to do with it. Necessity is the operative term. I will walk all the way to California, if necessary."

"It is 1000 miles," Chiz Yazzie scoffed.

It was 1194 miles to Muroc Army Airfield as the crow flies, and a good bit more by the only reasonable route across the Colorado River canyon. "I am going home," said Spock. He ducked inside the hogan to retrieve his tricorder and a few other items. "I continue to be grateful for the assistance you have rendered. If it is at an end, so be it."

"Mm." Chiz Yazzie grunted. "In frankness, your chances may be just as bad one way as the other. I rode by the place where you vehicle fell. There are planes and trucks and helicopters all around. The White Man seems to be searching hard for something; I wonder what it could be." He stared pointedly at Spock's ears.

"I wonder what they will do if they find it. I wonder if there is a reward as there used to be for our skins. If you think your path to safety lies in the roads of White Man's civilization, it may be as you say about needing few provisions, but not for the reasons that you hope."

Spock wondered if it was a facet of medicine that afflicted so many Terran healers with this peculiar brand of black humor. He paused. "You may be correct. This is a paranoid and xenophobic culture--present company excepted, of course. I thank you for the advice. Still, I must take my chances."

"I have not worked so hard to bring you through the summer just to lose you to the fall. I would be hard pressed to decide which I trust less: the reliability of your legs or the White Man's generosity I think together we can reduce our dependence on either."

From a pile in a basket, Chiz Yazzie drew a leather thing and at the nape of Spock's neck wrapped the three months growth of his hair within it. With a strip of cloth, he covered up the worst of the ears. "The best place to hide one distasteful anomaly is among other distasteful anomalies. Riding with me, they shall not look twice at you. I'll accompany you until we are content that you have safe passage."

"It will be slow with two on one horse," said Spock. "Not much faster than one on two legs."

"You credit yourself two full legs, do you? I am a good medicine man, but I would grant you at best one and three quarters, I think. You could use the company. And I could as well."

Again, the implied offer. They were not the sort of words one who had lived so long in loneliness could ignore. "Chiz Yazzie, regardless of your kindnesses, my ultimate goal must be to leave."

"Umph." Chiz Yazzie grunted and waved a dismissive hand. "I saw the vision in the sandpainting." He gestured to the blur of colored sand below the blankets of their coupling where yesterday Kirk's face had appeared to them through the Dine ritual. "I would not ask you to. I will ride with you for the days that are to be ours, and then I will trust that hozho will be restored at the place where we are designed to part."

He waved his hand again. "Perhaps we will ride together beyond the western sacred mountain. If one alien can arrive and make his way so easily in this nation, perhaps one old Dine man can as well. I should have more faith in that which is. However different hozho looks from year to year and place to place it is still the same; who am I to condemn the world for having changed around me?"

Spock picked up his bedroll. "I accept your offer."

"Take these as well and pack the horse," said Chiz Yazzie passing him several blankets more than one man could use himself. "I will dress and make a few preparations for the trip."

Utilizing some makeshift ropes as saddlery, Spock secured their gear to the gray mare--Neol--whose name meant thunderstorm in the Dine language of the desert.

They roasted strips of cactus. Chiz Yazzie had shot three ground squirrels as well. As usual he offered the first servings to Spock. As usual, Spock passed, but this time without the irritation or the nausea of the past few days. It was good to be back in his own mind and rhythms again.

"Have I told you the legend of the newt and the bear?" asked Chiz Yazzie, as they lay on their backs, aching muscles stretched out by the fire. "The newt and the bear met in the stream one spring and fell very much in love. But the newt could not leave the water, and the bear could not live within it for all seasons. Still they could not abide to be parted, so they stayed there together until the spring rains dried up. The newt died of thirst and the bear, too weak to find his way back to the mountain, died of hunger soon after. The spirits took pity upon them and put them together in the stars where they could live happily together as they never could on earth." Chiz Yazzie pointed up to the sky to where a point of light twinkled. "See, there and there. The two so close even a young man would have to peer hard to find so much as a pinch of sky come between them."

Spock followed along the line of Chiz Yazzie's finger: Delta Herculis and Alpha Ceti. He shook his head. "That is an optical double only. Despite the superimposed apparent alignment from this perspective, in actuality they are 82.39 thousand light years apart."

"That's a long way?" Chiz Yazzie asked as he lit a pipe.

"If you could ride across the sky, you could ride full time for one hundred thousand lifetimes and not span half the distance between them."

Chiz Yazzie blew smoke into the air. "That is a long way. They must be very sad, to think they would be together and find they were tricked."

"It's only a legend," said Spock. "Surely you do not believe the story literally."

"No, but in honor of a young boy who once did, I should like to. Otherwise, it is all too sad." Chiz Yazzie tamped out his pipe. He hunkered down in the bedding and pulled Spock toward him.

Spock stiffened abruptly. He checked the hand with a gentle but impassible touch. "Chiz Yazzie, I am unfamiliar with the sexual mores of your culture; if recent events have created any misunderstanding, you have my regrets. I cannot stay with you."

Chizz Yazzie grunted with what may have been a laugh. "Unless you plan on leaving in the next twenty minutes, I see neither problem nor misunderstanding."

It was not such a large request from friend to friend. Spock relaxed his hand, and Chiz Yazzie pulled on top of him.

Spock closed his eyes and focused on sensation. Their frenzied coupling of the night before was largely a chaotic, red blur. Given his preference, this time he would retain and remember and this time, given his preference, he would consider his friend as he was unable to before.

Spock writhed as a hand stroked his shaft to full thickness. Mentally, he followed the path of the warm palm as it cupped and fondled his groin and balls. He concentrated on the tickle of his hair as it rubbed the sensitive skin of his sac and the musky-sweet scent of tobacco that exuded from the pores around him to linger in the still evening air.

The kissed at first questioningly, then soon, bodies grinding together with the fervor of healthy men. Chiz Yazzie's hands explored everywhere, and Spock let them go. In the dark, he could imagine about anything--any one--in those caresses. He jerked his mind back to the real and the sensate. He would have a lifetime ahead of him to hypothesize on what might have been or could be; for now he would experience the moment. He owed his friend at least that much respect. Spock loosened the top mantle of his mind just a tad--just enough to read the synch of his friend's desires and needs.

But it was Chiz Yazzie who stopped and rolled on to his side. His penis lay hot and turgid upon Spock's thigh. "Where is the wild man I knew last night?"

"Yesterday was an aberration beyond my control. I would not under ordinary circumstances treat another in that way."

Chiz Yazzie stroked Spock's dick in pensive little motions. "I have lived my live among the wilds. Your company is welcome, my friend, but should you see the wild man somewhere in there," he tapped Spock's chest. "Kindly let him know that his would be celebrated."

Sometimes logic dictated the oddest things. Spock made a conscious decision, and rolled back his eyes. He reached to places and things he would rather not, but was it really so large a thing to give to the man who had saved his life at least twice over? With deliberation Spock let go of decades of carefully reinforced constructs. When again Chiz Yazzie took hold of his shaft, Spock responded not as a Vulcan but as a man.

As a man, Spock allowed his body to respond as it wished. He allowed every groan, every thrust, every unspeakable touch that blazed into his mind.

With Spock fully inflamed, Chiz Yazzie crawled onto his stomach. He raised his ass, and within moments, Spock had stuffed himself fully inside. Spock tried to concentrate on the sensations, on oneness and unity in together in this act, but the problem with elective dispassion is that one never has opportunity to learn to channel the deluge when it comes. And so Spock was swept away in the crush--never stopping or thinking--until Chiz Yazzie groaned and collapsed beneath him, the bitter scent of human semen filling the air.

Spock pulled out and rallied his thoughts.

Chiz Yazzie put a hand to Spock's phallus. "Now you."

His penis still hard, Spock pulled away. "I am content." He concentrated and watched his penis deflate.

With sticky fingers, Chiz Yazzie gathered his hair back into a knot where it had come loose to cling to the sweat of his neck and shoulders. He threw his head back in frustration. "I may have preferred it when you were injured; at least I knew how to please and tend to you then."

How often had Spock heard this complaint in one form or another? It seemed to go back as far as his mother's lap.

"The crops, the lands and the animals do not express pleasure as humans do, but do you doubt that they are grateful for your care? I am not human. My drives are...different. As you already know. This is not one of them at this time."

"Perhaps you would not be faced with such burning if you did not store up your urges. It destroys your hozho. Life is meant to be spent, not hoarded."

"Perhaps." Spock answered into the night air. "Much is unknown."

"Yes," agreed Chiz Yazzie. In companionable silence, they lay side by side and watched the stars drift their slow course around the horizon.

"Where are you going?" Chizz Yazzie asked as Spock tugged his blankets to the side.

"I prefer to sleep alone."

"Mmm. I understand. I once I preferred it that way too."

Spock paused and pained over the unvoiced plea. "If you wish, I wait until after you fall asleep to move."

"No. Go now. I don't like to wake to surprises. I'm even less used to that." Chiz Yazzie rolled over onto his side.

Spock picked up his bedroll and moved to the other side of the fire.

The low tones of Chiz Yazzie's voice rolled into his ears all the same. "Intimacy is a nervous deer. It is difficult to trust someone so much. With your life is one thing of modest consequence, but with your ulnehi--your soul, as the White Men say--that is another entirely of far more import. You don't desire intimacy. I understand. I could not do it myself if I did not know you were leaving.

"I wonder if the bear felt that way about the newt as the waters began to recede?"

Spock had no response for that aside from a sneaking suspicion that it was true for him as well.

"I will ride to California with you." Chiz Yazzie yawned into a blanket. "I think I would like to see the ocean before I die."

It was a generous offer: not only the horse, but the guiding. With Spock's injuries the journey would have been difficult and dangerous alone. "But what of your homestead?" Spock asked.

"My home is my jish." Chiz Yazzie patted his medicine bundle. "If another wander wants the hogan and that within it, he is welcome. May it serve him is good health as it has me.

"My wife--Quiniani--was my tie to my home and people. With her passing, although I still breathed among the Dine, I could no longer be one of them. It is time--it is past time to move along. I will go as far as I can with you. Somewhere along the way I will find a place to lay my medicine bundle down. I wonder what that place will be like? I have gone too long shunning change; now I seek it instead."

Spock clung to Chiz Yazzie's chest and waist, leaning in against his back as Neol loped over the hard terrain.

"Tell me of your Monster Slayer," Chiz Yazzie said, by way of conversation. "The man who appeared in the sand."

"He is my chief."

"But he is not of your tribe." Even in the sand image, the dissimilarities were obvious.

"Yes, he is. Some tribes are created, not born."

"Like the bear and the newt."

"Something like."

"Then he should be searching for you."

"He is," said Spock. It was a curious statement and likely not technically true as Kirk would not be born for almost three hundred years, but it seemed right to put it that way, and not any other.

"Is he taken?"

"No."

"He is a fine man, or the spirits would not have cast him in the healing painting. You are a fine man. Take it from an old and lonely man, when you reunite, you should alter that fact."

"I cannot claim him, per se." Spock spoke to the back of Chiz Yazzie's neck. "He is not like me; I cannot return his feelings."

"Phaw! What man wants his feelings returned when he may have new ones that compliment his own? Take a lesson from the bear and the newt; do not wait. Seasons are opportunities, not promises, and before we know it, they are gone.

"I waited six month to marry -- because I believed it proper. I would sacrifice much more than a lost notion of propriety to have had those days extra days with her. What good is proper if it pleases others but not you? Perhaps those others should turn to a cold bed and an imprisoned heart if they believe it is such a fine and noble thing. As for me, I would rather have had the extra six months with my wife."

The speech took passion, but also much of his attention, and Chiz Yazzie failed to watch exactly where the mare stepped. Suddenly an enormous rattler appeared right in her path, rose up and whipped its tail. The mare bucked up frantically and whinnied.

Grasping tightly onto her mane and clenching his thighs, Chiz Yazzie held his seat. At first Spock did too, clutching tightly to Chiz Yazzie's back as the horse reared straight up. But then she bucked wildly to the side and between his poorly mended hips, the worse mechanical position and the surprise, Spock had no chance. He was thrown violently sideways and to the ground. His head struck a rock with a sickening smack. There was no blood, only an ominously dark goose egg filling as fast as an arroyo floods in the spring.

Men had died from blood pooled on the brain after a blow. Chiz Yazzie had seen it many times. If a wound could swell this fast outside the skull, how would it be inside?

The state of inner hozho was often reflected without.

Chiz Yazzie swung down and knelt at Spock's side: no heartbeat, no respirations, no pupil change between light and dark. With a prayer to the gods, he pulled his medicine bundle down off of the horse's back, but what kind of medicine did he have to resurrect the dead?

"What?" McCoy looked up from his fitness reports. Even through the bulkhead, whoops and cheers sifted in to his ears; Chapel looked as puzzled as he did.

"Didn't you feel it?" Kirk asked, already at the door. "We just dropped out of warp; we're home."

"Whoo-whee!" The boson's whistle sounded with Sulu's voice following. "Captain Kirk to the bridge."

"Come on, Bones. There's no sight in the galaxy like home on the forward viewer."

Grumbling, McCoy left his reports behind and followed his captain out of sickbay and up to the bridge. "You could share a few of those Starfleet secrets with the masses, you know. I'm a doctor, not a sextant." The usual repartee was lost however, as Kirk was more than five full strides ahead of him with his mind already set on Mother Earth.

"Magnify, Mr. Sulu. We may not be able to stop, but we can at least take a good, long look at her."

The viewer shivered, and Earth resolved in the smack center, rotating placidly in her cloak of pale blue and white.

"Beautiful." Kirk settled into his chair and just watched as the clouds swirled on the screen. "It's true; there is no place like home."

"Tennyson?" Sulu asked.

"Garland," said McCoy. He bounced on his toes. "But don't tell Spock I knew that. He'll only turn it around on me somehow."

Kirk chuckled. "Yes: Spock. Mr. Sulu, what's the update on Mr. Spock?"

Sulu turned in his seat. "That's why I called you, Captain. We haven't been able to locate the Newton or Mr. Spock."

"Still nothing, Lieutenant?" Kirk asked Uhura. That made Spock three hours overdue.

Kirk rose and starting at Uhura's station, began to pace along the upper level of the bridge. Taking a breath, he calmed himself. The mood of the captain was contagious; he could already feel the anxiety level rising in his people, and that was no good for anyone. At least, not without knowing for sure that anything was amiss.

"No sir. I have the Newton on continuous monitor, but apparently communications are shut down; there is nothing at all on that channel, not even her identification beacon is coming up."

"It's not like Spock to be late, and certainly without letting us know why." Something must be wrong. Again, mindful of the attitude he presented, Kirk forced himself back down in his command chair. "Perhaps there's been an extension of the session."

"No sir." Uhura replied. "The Federation council reports that the conference ended yesterday. Not only that, but I enquired: there is no record of him attending the sessions at all. "

"Are you sure?" Kirk puzzled.

"Yes, sir." Sulu piped in. "Earth orbital control reports him requesting permission to dock two hours before the conference was scheduled to begin, but that was the last anyone knows."

Kirk snapped into command mode. "Uhura: get that controller on speaker. Sulu: Earth parking orbit. We're not going anywhere until I find out what happened to my first officer."

"Controller Perry, Captain." Uhura toggled a switch, and the speakers crackled to life.

"Mister Perry, this is Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise. Eight days ago Lt. Commander Spock arrived here in the Shuttle Newton. I want to know what happened to him."

"All I know, Captain, is that he flew in eight days ago with clearance for the Romulan talks and requested to dock. I gave him the security procedure, the next thing I knew, he was gone."

"Gone? What do you mean gone?" Kirk's bark could have cut frozen duranium.

"Just that, Captain. I gave him twenty minutes to complete the plasma venting procedure and continued with my other traffic. When I opened a channel back, there was no one there anymore. "

"Mr. Perry, so far you have not been helpful. I need to know, where did he go?"

"I only have a G4 security rating, Captain. I don't ask Starfleet line officers their intentions as long as they follow prescribed docking procedures. I assumed his mission was classified."

"I see. And if I were to tell you that now he is classified as missing and that you are the last person to be in contact with him..."

There was a pause. "Captain, Kirk---I didn't know--"

"But you do now. What can you tell me that will help me locate my officer?"

"Pulling up that data now." A series of beeps and whirrs was heard over the comm. "No warp signature. If he took his shuttle out, it wasn't on warp drive. I'm sorry, but there's too much traffic to isolate and track a single vessel impulse emission. The conference you know--"

"I'm not interested in what you can't tell me," Kirk clipped.

"Yes, sir. Now this is something: a collection of kemacite in his docking vicinity. I wonder where that came from."

"Kemacite is inert," said Kirk.

"Unless mixed with a transimatter emission, like the venting of warp engines," mused Sulu.

"...when it becomes unstable between temporal planes." Chekov finished the thought that Kirk was already nursing,

"I don't know what else I can tell you, sir. He didn't warp out, he didn't leave the Sol system in normal space and he didn't come to Earth. I would have seen him in any of those situations."

"Thank you, Mr. Perry." Kirk's words came slowly with planned precision in a way that put his senior officers immediately on red alert. Kirk closed the channel.

"Chekov, compute maximum range for the Newton in eight days, and sweep for any evidence of her."

"Already in progwess. Full scan of that area will take 7.3 hours longer."

Kirk gave a terse nod. "Good. And Mr. Chekov," Kirk paused, "Make your scan for physical components only. Consider that she may be disabled...or debris."

"Yes, sir." Chekov reset two controls. "That will take a little longer. Nine point six hours."

"Uhura, have that historian--what's her name? Finley?'

"Finchley," Uhura corrected.

"Have her meet me in briefing room one. Then inform the crew to make shore leave preparations. They will have liberty on Earth while we undergo shipwide decontam. "

"Everyone, sir?" Uhura asked. "And should I put in the request?"

"Yes, everyone. It will be a twelve hour level one sweep with bot control. And no, I'll make the decontam arrangements myself. Off duty personnel may disembark now; I'll notify you about the timing for having everyone off."

"Yes, sir!" Uhura's hands flew over the console.

"Mr. Sulu, you have the conn." Churning the plan over in his mind, Kirk strode off the bridge to the briefing room.

Having known him too long to be fooled, McCoy tagged along at his heels.

"Decontam, what's that about, Jim? My weekly enviorscans have all been clean. And where the hell is Spock? He'd sooner sit through a Klingon opera revival weekend than skip a Starfleet duty without permission. Is this something you two have cooked up?"

Kirk gave a sharp twist of his head. "No. And Spock wouldn't miss a rendezvous without informing me. Where ever he is, it was unplanned, and he is unable to report."

"You heard Perry: he was there, and then he wasn't. I know he's always pulling some new Vulcan trick out of his ears, but even Vulcans can't just disappear," McCoy groused.

"Yes, they can. Anyone can. All disappearing is, is being somewhere that we can't see. Another place, another plane, or another time. The places Chekov is scanning. The planes..." Kirk shook his head. "The planes we will have to wait and see. But the times we can search. Or Finchley can."

"You can't see the future, and it's at least as big as the past. How do you know he's not there?"

"With as much as we know about time travel now, if Spock were in the future," and free and alive, but Kirk did not voice that thought aloud, "he would have made his way back. Or will. If he's in the past he may not have the technology to do so. We start there."

"You wanted to see me, Captain?" The doors swooshed open, and Finchley stopped in front of the conference table. Her stance was correct, yet she looked distinctly uncomfortable. Persons enlisting as history mission specialists were generally not the type to enjoy being summoned urgently in front of the captain.

"Lieutenant: I need you to search the past."

"All right, that is my job. What am I looking for?"

"Signs of a Vulcan presence on Earth before first contact. Also...especially...anything that wasn't there before."

"Pardon?" She blinked.

"I have reason to believe that Mr. Spock may have been sent to Earth's past. I want you to search for evidence of Vulcans down there, and also today's historical records for anything that you don't remember as being correct...anything he may have changed. If he could, Spock would leave us a sign."

"Temporal investigations could..."

"No!" Kirk cut her off. "This is not to leave the ship. You will conduct your research here with the Enterprise databanks without alerting anyone elsewhere."

"All time travel has to be pre-approved by the committee--"

"Thank you, lieutenant. If I want a refresher course on the manual, you will be the first one I call. I've asked you to do research; I've not said anything about planning time travel. You have nine hours to bring me a report."

"I could use some help," she stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Take whoever you need from the crew. You have priority on all computer usage. Report directly to me in nine hours. Get busy."

"Yes, Captain." And she was gone.

"She's right. Temporal investigations could answer this without breaking a sweat." McCoy was one of the few people who could challenge Kirk with impunity once he had made a decision.

"And forbid any further interference. No." Kirk's stance was resolute.

"You're going after him? They'll have your head!"

"What do think he would do if it were me?" There was no need to wait for a response. The incidents with the asteroid deflector and the Tholians were the only two blemishes on Spock's otherwise exemplary record. "I'm going to get him back." Kirk stormed out of the briefing room and down the passage.

He perched on the edge of Kirk's desk table. "So? What'd you find?"

"1947: Roswell, New Mexico, USA." Kirk pointed at the screen where images played from the tape Finchley had made.

"Are you sure it's him?" McCoy squinted at vague grey shadows in the dust.

Kirk shook his head. "The incident was hidden from the public record--buried. Much of what she found stemming from it was contradictory or manufactured. But there's nothing to match any other known race that could have visited here, and the timing speaks for itself. Spock disappears--not in this space time continuum--and the only thing different is a spacewreck on the planet below him. I'm willing to take the chance." Kirk tried to maintain his sense of purpose as a clip of an autopsy played.

McCoy had already given up on the screen. With James T. Kirk, mostly one rode on faith. "What the hell. If nothing else, I can pick up a bottle or two of 250 year old bourbon for a steal. When do we leave?"

"Me: as soon as the rest of the crew has disembarked. You aren't." With a blip Kirk clicked off the viewer and removed the tape. "You aren't coming."

"Like hell I'm not." McCoy's eyes blazed sparks. "For one thing, you can't run a starship by yourself."

"The less people roaming around in the past, the less chance of changing anything else. It's just a short shot to the sun. I can program the trajectory in and essentially auto pilot the time jump. I can work the breaking and the beam-up from the bridge--keep her in orbit as long as I need to."

"And if you have to beam down--or take evasive action--what then? You'll need at least one other person to run her if anything goes even a little wrong."

"And you can't help me there, doctor." Kirk drove home the last word with brutal force. "What do you know about flying a starship, firing phasers, working a transporter?"

The old friend fell away and the look of a doctor determined not to lose this one patient appeared. "There may be a good reason he never got back, Jim. He might need me. If the ship was in pieces then every second after the crash could be critical. You need me to save him." His voice was steady. And it was correct.

"I know that, Bones. I always need you, but I need you more here. I need you as an anchor. You know where I'm going. You know what the things are supposed to look like now, and you'll know if anything has changed."

"Finchley--"

"Is no doubt a fine historian. Work with her if there is a question--but what I need is judgment. I need someone who knows me, knows if he has waited long enough to alert temporal investigations. Knows what to tell the world--or even if it is worth a second try. I need someone I trust as much as myself, because I can't be here and there too."

Kirk watched the dilemma brew behind McCoy's frown. He grabbed his shoulders and timed it just right. "Bones, you've made it clear you will follow me anywhere--into anything--just because I ask you to. I'm asking you now: will you stay behind for the same reason? Will you stay just because I ask you to?"

"Damn it, Jim, I don't like it." McCoy spat out the words. He pulled his bag off from over his shoulder, banging it down on the table with a dull thud. "You're risking the future of the Earth--hell, with the role Earth played in space exploration, maybe much more than that--for one man."

Kirk nodded somberly. "I know. And that's why I need you here. If something goes wrong, I need you to be here to get it fixed no matter what. I'll risk myself--anything I have for this--but I can't jeopardize lives that aren't mine. I'm trusting you, Bones." Kirk stuck out his hand.

McCoy rummaged through his bag instead. He pulled out one hypospray and set it. He double checked it, locked it and held it out. "It's a short term stasis agent. If you find him and he is in bad shape, give him the whole thing. With that cock-eyed metabolism of his, it'll buy you about fifty minutes to get him back to help."

Jim took it in his left hand. "Thanks." The right hand he still held out. McCoy shook it grudgingly. Kirk's face changed again. "Thanks. There is one more thing you should know."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Now you tell me?"

"The time travel formula needs precision chronometry. The jump back will upset the ship's chronometers. When it's happened before, we've been able to reset using Federation standards or the cesium atomic clock when we've gone far back in Earth's past. But the atomic clock won't be invented until 1955. Once I get to 1947, I won't be able to compute any more jumps for eight years, and the Enterprise orbit won't last that long. If I don't find Spock alive, I won't be able to get back. And even if I do, I don't know if he can make the time jump without the clock...."

"...and you'd both be stuck in the past." McCoy's voice changed echoing the gravity of the realization. "You're risking a hell of a lot, Jim."

"Can you imagine him doing any less for me?"

The lines of McCoy's face acquiesced. "You'd better take this." He passed over the rest of the medical bag. Medical care for Vulcans won't be available. If you're going to be down there, you could use it."

"I wouldn't know what to do with it."

"No, but Spock will know enough." He paused. "But don't tell him I said so. And tell him to take good care of it; I expect him to return it in perfect condition when you get back."

"I will. See you soon, Bones."

"Three hundred twenty seven years?"

"Six hundred fifty four. Don't forget, it's a round trip."

McCoy grabbed him and pulled him into a quick embrace. "You make dammed sure it is."

The corridors echoed strangely hollow to the click of Kirk's boots on the deck. The turbolift stopped just for him, and the same soft hum that followed his single command, "bridge," seemed deafening with the knowledge that it would be the only sound on his ship which usually was never still. As the lift slowed, he prepared himself for the sight of his empty bridge.

Much to his surprise, it was in full swing.

"Captain on the bridge," Uhura spoke into the comm.

"On my way," Scotty's voice sounded distant and mingled with assorted clanks and clatter.

"I take it we won't be filing a flight plan," said Sulu, "but if you would give me the general course and distance, it would help Mr. Scott set the autolinks to the most efficient engine usage."

"We've stalled them on the decontam," said Uhura. "I told them there's an inoperative impulse vent we need to repair before the fumigation. That should buy us at least a half hour if you need it."

"The only time I need is to get you people off the ship. What do you think you're doing?" Kirk stared around with an uncomfortable mix of pride, affection and irritation.

"We were waiting for you to tell us," said Uhura. "I was able to monitor some of your communications with Finchley. You think Mr. Spock is in Earth's past?" She spun in her chair and met his eyes.

"You were spying on me?"

"Monitoring, Captain. It is my job." She gave him a smile so ingenuously beguiling it could only be a fraud.

"Since when did intraship channels require so much attention?"

"Since ya told command that there are vermin on my vessel." Scotty blustered out of the lift. "Decontam, my aunt Susan. Ya might fool those stuffed kilts at Starfleet command, but ya cannae fool me with that blather."

All three of them had their eyes trained on the captain. Kirk squared his shoulders and launched into his speech making mode. "Gentlemen, as you appear to have deduced, I am going back in time to find and, hopefully, bring back Mr. Spock. This has not been and certainly would not be approved by temporal investigations or SF command. Even if I am successful, it will be a court-martial offense. "

"We all know the rule book; what I don't know is time warp parameters," said Sulu.

Without further comment, Kirk passed the tape to him.

"Feeding the specifics over now." Sulu's fingers flew over the board as he plotted the indicated trajectory.

"Arck!" Scotty reviewed the data on the engineering console. "You can't do it alone, Jim. See here: you'll have to flux the warp engines with a change in vectors. Unless you can be at both consoles at once, you'll need another person for the jump.

"I'll stay." Scotty took a seat at engineering.

Sulu shook his head. "It's a tricky set of changes, and with all due respect, Captain, you never could fly her properly."

"He's right, Captain. It's a sticky-wicket, and with the sun's interference with sensors it'll be mostly flying blind. I'm not sure I could do it myself," Scotty piped in again.

"Gentlemen, as much as I appreciate the offers, there is something you should know. This may be a one way ticket. There is no guarantee we'll be able to compute the correct jump to get home. Does that change anything?"

"Yes." This from Uhura. "Then I'm coming too. If you think I'm about to send Scotty to roam around a planet full of younger women, you're crazy." She moved to his side and squeezed his waist in a surprisingly intimate gesture.

Scotty flushed more happy than embarrassed, causing Kirk to wonder what else of importance he had been missing out on on his ship while buried in official data and reports.

"I see," said Kirk. Part of him knew he should order them all off; they would go if he did. They would do anything for him. And they might never forgive him for taking their chance to do the right thing by a friend.

"Aren't we missing someone?" He nodded at navigation then directed himself to Sulu. "Little guy, looks like you but with a Russian accent."

Scotty cleared his throat. "Chekov went down with one of the first parties," said Uhura. "He started his...recreation early, before we had a chance to let him know. He still doesn't."

Kirk raised his brow. "Mr. Sulu, I wouldn't want to be the one to break the news to him when we get back."

"You said a mouthful there, sir. But I warned him that vodka would get him in trouble one day; what else could I do?"

Kirk chuckled and settled back in his chair. "In that case: stations everyone. Mr. Sulu, set course for 1947. Everyone hang on to your hats. It's likely to be a bumpy ride."

No matter how many he went through, Kirk never managed to remember the full impact of time warps on his system. The headache and nausea he could tolerate, but what he detested was the period when he absolutely could not act or think.

Head spinning, he battled back to full consciousness. "Uhura?" He staggered up the steps to the communications station and pulled her from the deck back to her seat.

"I'm all right," said Uhura, looking more than a little gray. She tried a smile that almost stuck and reached down for her ear piece. Kirk retrieved it for her and paid the price in his stomach.

"Really, I'm all right, sir." She stuck the receiver back in her ear and smoothed her skirt. She swung back to her station and tested the controls. They seemed to have made the jump a good bit more easily than their operator. "Mr. Scott reports he and the engines are both ready, willing and able."

"I'm sure, but I don't need all the details," Kirk mumbled. He let her go and turned to the helm, already steadier on his feet than moments before. "Sulu?"

"In high polar orbit, Captain: perigee 45,000 kilometers. No artificial satellites at all. That puts us before 1957 at least."

Kirk shot him a queer glance.

"I've always had a thing for history," Sulu continued. "And judging from the amount of electric light down there," he nodded to Europe sailing rapidly under them on the view screen, "we can't be more than fifty years before that.

"Forty two years is a long time to sit around twiddling our thumbs. Can you be more specific?"

"Working, Captain." It was Uhura now. "I'm tied into radio signals predominantly. It's 1947 all right. October 17th on the old calendar."

"Three months late," Kirk rubbed his chin. Anything could have happened between the landing and then. Finchley had mentioned an autopsy... He thumbed the controls on his chair. "Scotty, if we had to make a second jump back a few more months...?"

"Are ye daft? Without the cesium clock to reset by, we'd be jumping blindfolded in a three-legged sack race."

"I'll take that as a 'no.' All right then, we start out on the assumption that Spock is down there and alive.

"Mr. Sulu: move us into geosynchronous orbit over the area Finchley indicated."

"Moving to geosynchronous orbit. We will be observable on radar and by any telescopes. Hanging over the same area like this..."

"Raise deflector shields. That will give us some protection."

"Shields up. Orbit achieved."

"Uhura, what can you tell me?"

"Crazy communication, sir. Much of it contradictory and speculative. The military messages are coded and scrambled."

"Can you decode it?"

She shot him a disgusted look. "With what they're using? My six year old niece could decode it between eating breakfast and brushing her teeth."

Kirk cleared his throat and looked properly chastened. "Just concentrate on the American military ones, then. What do they say?"

"Roswell Army Air Force Base is running tests. They've called in metallurgical and zoological experts. It sounds like they have the Newton, or at least the majority of it."

"Spock?"

Uhura shook her head. "Nothing I could say for sure. Nothing about having him."

Or about having him alive. "Try the scans," Kirk ordered.

"Scanning for Newton's subspace transponder signal. Nothing," Uhura announced. She moved to the science station and punched a button. She turned back slowly to the room. "No Vulcan matches."

Kirk leapt up to the science station. "Run it again." He'd snapped harder than he had intended, but she just replayed the scan.

"Nothing on this side of the Earth," she said.

Scotty strolled onto the bridge and over to the engineering console as she worked.

"Maybe we should move back to polar orbit," said Sulu. "The Russian aerospace program was ahead of the American one back then--or so I've been told. They should already be working on Sputnik. If Spock is alive and trying to get back, he might have gone there."

Kirk shook his head in a tight gesture. "No. If he were free to act, he never would have let the wreckage be discovered and history to be changed, Spock would never take a chance like that on us." On me. "He's still in the hot zone, one way or another and if he isn't alive now, we'll go back and back and back again until we catch him when he is."

"But the scans? Wouldn't they pick up a body too?" Sulu asked,

Kirk looked to Uhura. Uhura shook her head. "I don't know."

Kirk snapped. "That's not good enough! I need answers, and I need them now!"

"I'm trying, Captain, but science readings are not my area. I plugged in the preset. I'm doing the best I can." Her tone was more peeved than frustrated.

"Sorry." Kirk stepped over to her and put a hand on her back. "Can I help?"

"Get out of my light." She elbowed at him.

Kirk stepped back.

Uhura straightened. "I could plug in cupraglobin. There shouldn't be any of that down there and alive or dead..."

Kirk drew in his breath.

"I'm sorry."

"No. No, it's a good idea. Try it." Kirk tried to keep himself from pacing along the upper deck, but it didn't work.

The biocomp tie-in bleeped, and Uhura flipped another switch. "Got it! One concentration of cupraglobin here!" She moved the visual up to a small view screen above their heads. One location pulsed with a yellow indicator.

"Can you tell me where it is?" Kirk was instantly back leaning over her shoulder.

Uhura turned a dial. The image on the view screen zoomed out. She turned it the other way and it zoomed back in this time. She hit a switch, and the biocomp bleeped off. The image in the viewer resolved. She flipped and toggled and turned controls until a structure appeared around the flashing yellow blip.

"That's it. Roswell Army Air Force Base. The cupraglobin is definitely inside."

"Good work." Kirk squeezed her shoulders.

Uhura returned to her station and inserted her ear piece. "Captain! They've spotted us!"

"Sulu, I said deflectors up!" Kirk shot back to his command chair.

"They are up, Captain, but it's not the same as cloaking. They could have found us any number of ways. Heat, refraction...."

"Yes," Uhura interrupted, still listening intently to her receiver. "They've triangulated on us from several locations. With the...the crash," she stumbled over the word, "the base--all the American military bases--have been monitoring space much more closely than usual. Four US facilities have us on their monitors, and they are coordinating data. They can't see us except as a light and heat wave distortion, but they have that pin-pointed and are targeting us with nuclear weapons."

"Sulu, move!" Kirk ordered.

"Increasing to 100,000 kilometers, and moving orbital path to avoid the USA."

"Uhura?"

She touched her earpiece. "They've lost us. They don't seem to have any communication with other areas of the world."

"No, they wouldn't," said Kirk. "The American culture at that time was elitist and paranoid to the point of discounting any outside help."

Kirk turned to the engineering station. "Scotty, you and Sulu stay onboard. Keep out of sight--warp out if you have to; we can't risk being seen and confounding history more--or shot up and damaged so badly that we can't get home.

"Uhura, you're with me. See what Finchley programmed for period clothing. Pull up uniforms for us; nothing showy--low commissioned ranks maybe." Kirk swung around and headed for the lift.

Scotty cleared his throat. Uhura's eyes darted between him and her captain. Kirk stopped at the doors.

"Something I should know about?"

Uhura stepped back to the communications station and toggled some switches. Static rained over the comm. She turned sideways in her chair, facing Kirk, and turned a dial. An old-style news announcement came over the speakers.

"...and on the national front, the Supreme Court has once more declined to pass a federal anti-lynching law. This announcement of this decision was met with outrage from all the major Negro groups, especially in Easley, South Carolina where the case of Willie Earle is still fresh in the minds. In March of this year, Earle--a Negro accused of beating a White taxi driver to death -- was taken from police custody and summarily shot by thirty-one other white taxi drivers with the cooperation of the police who held him. Senator Strom Thurmond denounced the act as a heinous barbarousity, but declined to sign the bill as presented.

"Negros in the armed services..."

Uhura switched the noise off. Kirk kept his eyes trained directly on hers. He strode back to her station and stood in front of her. He grabbed her by the shoulders. "If there were never any problems to overcome, we couldn't be proud of how far we have made it."

Her face was calm. "I know that, Captain, but accompanying you may not be the easiest way to avoid attention."

Kirk dropped his grip. "Where men live and breathe, you will never avoid attracting attention, but I see your point. I'll go alone. You monitor communications for anything that smacks of Spock or us. Notify me immediately."

"Yes, sir."

"Let's see if Finchley came through with the costumes database she promised. I always wanted to meet the founders of the Earth space program. It looks like I'll be getting my chance."

Dressed in a freshly replicated USAF captain's uniform, Kirk beamed into a janitorial closet in the base. He switched on his tricorder and followed the blip through an unlocked door.

"May I help you, Captain?"

Quickly, he stashed the tricorder behind his back. The voice came from a blond in a white lab coat, and she was a beauty. "Captain James T. Kirk, Ph.D., natural biology, on long term assignment to the National Zoo. I was called back to study and report on the recovered...specimen."

"Nobody told me you were coming," the woman said. Kirk placed her at no more than thirty, but the heavy consternation on her face made her appear much older at the moment. Kirk snuck a good hard glance at her ID badge while she flipped pages on a clipboard.

"And no one told me that D. L. Mathis would be such a stunner. What does the 'L' stand for anyway?" It was Linda. He'd already read it on her badge.

"Linda. James, you said?"

"Hi, Linda. My friends call me Jim." He turned on all the watts.

"Jim it is then." She volleyed back a dazzling smile. "Um, may I see an ID? I'm supposed to..." She gestured almost ruefully at her clipboard.

He produced the badge the computer had spat out. "But tell me what you know about the specimen. They say his blood was green. Copper based?"

"Yes," she said. "A tetra-cupraglobin. Our biologists here have never seen anything like it."

"That's why they called me. The longsnout speckled salamander of southeast Nepal has copper based blood, as does the poisonous Antarctic arrowheadfish. I brought specimens to compare." He patted Bones's medikit. "I'm not sure how it might be related, but at least it's a start." It wasn't quite as good as his fizzbin bamboozle, but he was proud of it nonetheless.

Apparently his charm remained in style in this century as her posture relaxed. She rambled on enthusiastically as she led him to the door. "We haven't been able to identify even a tenth of the antigens or proteins. Some of the chromosomal complement looks human, they say, but then the rest..." She slid her passkey into the lock and the pushed the door open.

Kirk stepped past her into a room at least the size of main engineering. What he saw inside made his heart drop into his stomach. The wreckage--there could be no better word--of the Newton lay strewn around in at least five hundred different pieces with men with instruments and clipboards climbing over and inspecting each one.

Lieutenant Mathis was already leading the way across to the cabin section, still talking on about DNA and cellular structure. Surely Spock wouldn't be held in here...at least not alive, his mind finished involuntarily. But perhaps if they wanted to preserve a UFO crash scene as completely as possible for study...

The hatch had been removed or torn off in the wreck, so they stepped inside through open space. It felt like a violation to enter one of his ships this way, but there wasn't time to be concerned with that now. There were burnt instruments and twisted equipment everywhere. -There was the subspace auto beacon unit they had been seeking from Enterprise. Having been disassembled into a dozen or so of its component parts, it was clear why they hadn't been able to locate a signal.

Everywhere as well, generous spatters of sickly green oxidized Vulcan blood stained the wreckage.

"Where is..." the body. He would not permit his mind to consider that possibility. Not yet. "The specimen," Kirk asked.

She looked at him queerly. "This is the largest one."

"I mean, the whole alien."

"I need to see your ID again," she said. Her eyes narrowed and her body language signaled alert.

He produced it, and this time she studied it with great intensity. "What exactly did they tell you to expect here?" she asked as she tilted it to and fro under the light.

Kirk took his cues from her. "Not much. That you had an uncataloged...specimen with copper based blood with a human chromosomal pattern and other human elements. I guess I just assumed there would be more than this. A live alien..."

"No." She tucked the ID into her pocket. "There isn't. I'll need to verify this," she said as she tapped her pocket. "Step outside into the main room, please." Not very surreptitiously, her right hand gravitated to her sidearm.

"Of course," Kirk forced his face to ease. "I understand. You must have reporters lined up from here to Denver. I imagine they would do anything to get a peek at something like this."

"I imagine you're right."

"Take your time; call the Zoo." Kirk stretched and yawned. "I had a long flight. To be honest, I could do with a little nap." He stretched again. "Ladies first," he said, gesturing to the hatchway.

"You first, please, Doctor." She stressed the last word slightly, keeping her right hand near her hip.

"Of course," Kirk repeated. "I understand, Lieutenant." He took a step forward and yawned again, raising the back of his hand to cover his mouth. Then as he reached her, he brought it crashing down upon her neck and shoulder.

Her right arm flew out. Kirk grabbed the gun with one hand and covered her mouth with his other. He tossed the gun across the shuttlecraft cabin and wrestled her in against his body, her mouth still firmly covered.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he whispered as he fumbled for his communicator. Her struggles grew more intense and focused, hurting him significantly in the abdomen and ribs. "Stop it. Just hold still and close your eyes. Don't fight me," he said, but she only aimed her strength more precisely. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She kicked him hard in the knee and bit his hand at the same time. He nearly lost his grip. He let go with his right and slugged her squarely in the side of the face. She crumpled to the ground.

"Not much," he added ruefully as he flipped open his communicator. "Kirk to bridge," he whispered. "Beam me up now." He rubbed his unhappy knee with his one good hand before the device took him. At least, he reflected, we're about even.

"Captain, I've run out of places to look. The only readings are inside that structure." Uhura sounded as frustrated as Kirk felt.

"They've already told me he isn't there--at least not alive--and he isn't dead. I know he isn't. I'd feel it somehow. So find new places to look. Maybe some of the ore deposits interfere with our sensors."

"No sir," said Scotty. "Nothing here we can't peep through easy as pie."

"Underground caverns. Carlsbad. Places too deep for a standard sensor scan then."

Scotty looked dubious. "I'll see what I can find out."

"Captain!" Uhura looked up in alarm. "I'm picking up something you may want to hear."

He beckoned her with his eyes.

She waited an uncharacteristically long time.

"Well."

"Captain...I'm listening to chatter from the base. They're talking about an autopsy on the alien cadaver." Uhura made as if to put it on speaker, but Kirk nixed it with jerk of his hand as the fuzzy footage from the history tape played in his mind. Some things he did not need to hear for himself.

The bridge sat in shocked silence with only the beeping of the instruments moving on.

Kirk took a breath, then sat up straighter in his chair. "Scotty, Sulu. Calculate trajectory for a time jump back four months. We'll go back before he gets here and wait."

"Are ye daft? A time jump that tight is risky enough as is, but without the cesium chronometer even we don't have a chance! If we make it, we're as like to end up back forty years as four months, and that's a terrible long wait."

"Worse than that; Captain, it's much too tight a slingshot vector," Sulu interjected. "With the disorientation and without the chronometer to preset the braking, there's a good chance of flying right into the sun. I don't think I can do it. I'm sorry, sir. I'd try anything, for you or for Mr. Spock--I think you know that--but this is close to out and out suicide."

They all looked to Kirk.

"I see. In that case, ladies and gentlemen, this is your stop. I thank you all very much; don't ever believe I mean that with less than full sincerity. Scotty, Sulu: program as much as you can in for me. Collect whatever you think you'll need and a transponder and beam down to whatever location you'd like. With luck I'll collect you in about four months. Without luck, well, better pack carefully. You have thirty minutes."

"Captain...you can't be serious!" Sulu whipped around in his seat.

His face said that he was very much so.

Sulu turned back to his helm. Shaking his head, he started in on plotting the tightest solar shot he'd ever conceived of. "And they say pilots are crazy. You've got me beat. I guess I'd better stay, or I'll never live it down being called only half as crazy as my own captain."

"I don't want you here if you don't think you can do it," Kirk warned.

"I didn't say that exactly." Despite the odds, Sulu's voice sounded chipper again. "Besides, Chekov'll be green with envy at this maneuver." If we make it, Kirk could have sworn he heard in his mind's ear.

Behind their backs, Scotty touched Uhura's shoulder. His gaze told a story of rue. "Lassie, you said you always wanted to see Kenya as she was before the war. Who'd've thought it, but you're going to get your chance. Take lots of picture for me. I'll meet up with you soon."

"Scotty? You're coming with me." It was between a question and a demand.

Scotty shook his head. "The man's a raving lunatic! I cannae trust him with my ship!" He pulled her into his arms and whispered into her ear. "He loves him; I know what that's like. I'd do the same if it were you. How can I not believe in that? I have to stay." And then he kissed her very hard.

"Damn, you, Scotty," she said when they broke apart. "I did want to see Kenya."

"Aye, and you're going." Scotty tried to sound stern, but it was a predetermined loss. There was good reason he didn't take the command track. And with women he was doubly lost.

Uhura brushed his forehead. "You said it, Scotty. Sometimes you just have to believe. You know in your blood what's right." Her face clouded over. "Blood...? Captain! Wait!" Her fingers flew over the console. "I think I know the problem!"

She pulled the model of standard cupraglobin back up on an information screen, then pulled a second chemical up beside it. The first was a complex ball of a convoluted string type structure. The second was a fairly straightforward chain.

"This is a cupraglobin molecule in its natural circulating state. This is also cupraglobin, but dried out and denatured." She pointed to the first, then the second. "The specimen we--I chose use for the scan was dried. Dead blood. Maybe the sensors are sensitive to the difference. Maybe we haven't been scanning for a live Vulcan."

"Scotty?" Kirk's glance was full of hope.

Scotty shook his head. "I'm not Chekov. I can fix these things with me eyes closed and one hand tied to a warp reactor, but as for the specifics of what they're scanning, that's another thing entirely. The easiest thing would be to input in a reading of Spock's blood fresh and have it scan for that."

"Blood bank?"

"On my way!" Uhura dashed to the lift.

"I think there's some preservatives in banked blood," Sulu commented.

"The library computer can factor those out." Scotty plugged Uhura's receiver into to his ear and began talking to the computer.

"Here!" Uhura returned, breathless, with a bag of green blood and plopped it into Scotty's hand. Scotty ran a probe over it and turned back to the computer again while Uhura watched over his shoulder. He hit a button, and a scan of the Western Hemisphere came up on the main viewer.

There was patently nothing blinking.

"Scotty--"

"Hold on. May still have other factors in there. Scotty ran the probe again and did something else on the computer panel. A blip of blue popped up on the view screen.

"Same spot as before?" asked Kirk.

"No," said Sulu. "That's sixty-two point seven miles from the base."

"Only two things it can be," said Scotty. "Mr. Spock, or a bag of this here blood. Uhura, you're a genius!" Scotty rubbed her backside and sat back in satisfaction at the science console.

"Uhura--" Kirk grabbed her and kissed her hard on the forehead.

"Hey now!" Scotty grabbed her back and pulled her down onto his lap.

"Sorry, Scotty." Kirk tried his best to look sorry, but he was too damned happy to come anywhere close to it.

"Not objecting; I'd worry about a man who could control himself around a lady as lovely as this. Just a little sad; it looks like I won't be stocking up on any vintage Scotch after all."

"Sailors' luck," said Kirk, with an enormous grin. "Sulu pull us into transporter range. Transporter room, Scotty, if you can bear to leave her that long. Let's beam him up."

"What's a few minutes compared to 320 years?" Scotty asked as he and Kirk took to the turbolift.

"Problem?" asked Kirk.

"No, he's still there. Very still, in fact. And it's outdoors. It'd be an easy beam; but he's not alone. I don't know if you want to just--"

"Quite right. Find me a discreet beam down spot. I'll take care of it. You stay out of view and check back with me in thirty minutes." Kirk hopped onto the transporter pad and shimmered away.

Scotty hadn't given him direction or distance. Correction; he had been too impatient to wait to be told. He was aside a large rock outcropping and walked around it to see a makeshift bivouac. Ahaha! Kirk scrambled over a few rocks and down to the desert floor. The mare whinnied as he approached and he stopped long enough to pet her nose.

"Who's there?" a voice demanded.

"A friend," said Kirk.

"Jim!" Spock sat up from a bedroll. Another man's arms were around his chest.

"Am I...interrupting?" asked Kirk, having decided he was too suave to die of shock at having caught his first officer in a lovers' embrace.

"Not at all, Captain. I am well past ready for your arrival." Formally, though with some difficulty Kirk noted, Spock clambered to his feet. It was quite a sight. He was dressed in Native American garb. Shoulder length hair hung raggedly around his ears. On one temple, a knot the size of fist darkened an unsettling color.

Kirk couldn't remember the last time a sight had looked as good.

"You could try to sound surprised," said Kirk, trying his best not to do the same.

"That would not be logical. Probability was exceedingly high that if I did return to your location first, you would seek me out here. Do we have transportation back?"

"We will in just a few minutes."

"I see." Spock began stripping of his native garments. His jerkin, his undershirt, hair sash, a silver band he wore at his wrist leaving only the leggings. He piled them neatly and handed them all over to Chiz Yazzie. "Then, I believe this is where you and I part ways."

Chiz Yazzie passed the hair thong back. "Keep it. I have only one head. The balance is better if this one stays with you."

Spock nodded. With a gracefulness of touch that seemed out of place for such gnarled hands, Chizz Yazzie retied it in Spock's hair. Then he put arms around Spock's neck and kissed him deeply on the mouth. "Go with the gods," he said when they had pulled away. "I wish you well, but I shall miss you."

"Because of what we have shared, a part of me will always remain with you. It is not an easy concept to explain," said Spock.

"There is no need. The Dine know that all life is a continuum. We all are each other. The plants are our fathers and grandfathers, the birds and animals our sons. I will be with you too."

"You will," said Spock. "For as long as both of us live." Spock reached out and brushed his face. Chiz Yazzie took the hand and kissed the fingers. With a rough cough, he turned he turned away to pack up Neol.

Kirk stood nearby and watched, telling himself that this was no big deal; he was a galactic explorer; he saw stranger things than this all the time.

He just couldn't think of one right now.

"Captain? About our transport." As Chiz Yazzie rode off, Spock returned to Kirk's side.

"I meant it about a few minutes. Sulu is playing hide and seek with military radar. Pick -up in about twenty minutes."

"Ah."

Kirk led the way back around the rock out cropping. Darkness was deepening now, and they picked their way carefully over the terrain.

"Temperature's dropping. You're going to get cold like that." Kirk shrugged off his outer jacket and tossed it over Spock's back. Even in the twilight he didn't like what he saw of Spock's body. He's lost a great deal of weight, there were scars everywhere, and there was that painful limp. Bones would like it even less no doubt, but Kirk had seen the wreck and gave thanks Bones had a patient to grouse over at all.

When they rounded the rock, Kirk cleared a space. He sat, leaning back against a stone. Spock perched on top; where they hung down, his legs brushed against Kirk's arms.

Kirk opened his communicator and checked the time. "Fourteen minutes to go. You okay. Your head?"

"Affirmative."

Kirk wanted to ask more, but friends don't push until they have to. Besides, he had never seen his stars quite like this and likely never would again. Fourteen minutes was very little time to imprint it on his mind.

So he leaned back and tilted his face straight up at the sky.

It was quiet, too quiet: no aircraft, no generators, not even any insects in the dry desert air. The quiet grew until it uneased him in his sixth sense way. Kirk turned to look. "Spock?"

Spock was staring down at him with an expression Jim had faced countless times before, but never from his staid first officer.

He never thought he would.

"Spock?"

Still, Spock just stared.

"What's wrong? Is it him?" Kirk nodded his head in the direction Chiz Yazzie had gone.

Spock shook his head. "No. I owe him my life. I am grateful to him, and he is a good man, but I am most gratified the ordeal is over."

"I'm sorry; I have no right to intrude on your private concerns."

Spock's voice was very low. "I think, Jim, perhaps you do." He laid a hand on Jim's shoulder and purposefully slid it downward over his chest.

Jim shivered and shifted his seat as the sudden swelling took him by surprise. "What changed?" he asked, as the touch of the fingers began to open doors inside of him that he had so carefully locked up painted over.

Spock shook his head. "No. Nothing per se. Merely my own sense of...propriety. "

"That's a big merely," said Kirk, acutely aware of the rapidly progressing impropriety of his mood.

"Indeed. It is a big universe. Wanting may be more pleasant than having, but only when the having is still possible. Should a possibility be rendered null, the potential that is lost becomes a sadness beyond compare." "That would be a shame." Kirk put his hand on Spock's knee.

"Yes, it was." Their gazes held.

"I didn't know," said Kirk, when the tension had to break some way.

Spock raised an eyebrow.

It worked. Kirk laughed even though his crotch still pinched. "I mean I didn't know--" He made and uneasy gesture. "When you said every seven years, I thought--"

The eyebrow went higher.

"You're enjoying this."

"Of course. Should I not be?"

Kirk slid his hand up further. "Of course. I just feel a little foolish. I don't know how people from your planet go about such things."

"I was born on Vulcan, but I must concede that it is no longer 'mine'--if it ever was." Spock looked down to the hand which lay high upon his leg. He took it and placed it dead center on the bulge of his cock.

"I love you," Spock whispered. "If nothing else changes, please know that I--" but the words were lost to the crush of Jim Kirk's tongue that moved in the same swirling rhythm as Jim's hand did between Spock's legs, as Jim had moved up and beside him on the rock.

A warp core buildup couldn't travel any faster than the reaction in Jim's body. Too much had been crammed away inside of him for too long. He was insane with desire. He was on fire. He was in heat.

No, more than that; he was in love.

When he realized how absurdly close he was to staining his own pants, it was Jim who regretfully wrenched their bodies apart. "I've explained a number of things to the crew today. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not explain this." He moved his hands to a more chaste location on Spock's back, but continued the rhythmic caress. "Do you think you can stand to wait three hundred years or so?"

"It can be no worse than what I have already waited through."

Stains be damned, Jim leaned in a kissed him before his heart broke.

Spock's fingers went to Jim's chest, circling, exploring, tweaking the nipples through the shirt. Jim had never come from nipple stimulation alone, but he was so hot and so ready for this, that he didn't trust himself tonight. Feeling a telltale leak already, he pulled away again.

But not very far. It wasn't that big a rock.

"The entire time I thought I would die here, I had only one regret: that was never having told you what you mean to me," Spock confessed as Jim swirled yearning fingers through his hair.

"Then you are a very foolish man, Mr. Spock, to dwell on such regret. I know. You have told me--maybe not in words, but you have, loud and clear. But if that was a round about way of making a declaration, I think we can both agree that we'll die with no regrets." Kirk rubbed Spock's thigh and forcibly restrained himself from doing more.

Two minutes left. That was not enough time.

Well, maybe he had one regret. Kirk took his hand back and tried to collect himself for the rendezvous. He tried to arrange the shirt to cover any evidence. No one would think anything of him beaming back from an adventure with a hard-on--that was par for the course--but he did hope the little stain wouldn't show.

He did the best he could and turned to see if Spock had fared any better. Of course he had. And no one would be paying any attention to his trousers when they got a look at Spock's head.

An uneasy thought struck. "If tomorrow I find out this is all from that bump on the head, I'm going to be very disappointed."

"As will I," said Spock deadpan.

Kirk did a double-take.

"It is not," said Spock and kissed him.

Stains on no stain, they kept at it until Kirk's communicator beeped.

"Two to beam up," Kirk announced.

"Two it is," Scotty repeated with satisfaction.

The transporter room rocked as they completed materialization. "I've got them! Let's go!" Scotty spoke into the comm.

"What was that?" Kirk leapt to the console.

"The natives are a wee bit restless, Captain. Shields are up and their rockets can't do us any real harm, unless they sneak an atomic warhead in on us...Ó

Kirk dashed for the passageway to the bridge. Spock limped behind at what looked like an unsafe speed.

"We're already moving out of their sights, Captain!" Scotty yelled after them.

"Status?" Kirk demanded as he took his center seat.

"Mr. Spock! Uhura rose to greet him.

"I've pulled out of USA radar range. We're at 30,000 K perigee in a synchronous polar orbit over the Atlantic Ocean. I've hidden us in the South Atlantic Anomaly. The instruments of the time can't read through it; we should be safe here for as long as you need.

"It's good to see you, Mr. Spock," Sulu added with a sincerity that more than compensated for the afterthought.

"Likewise, helmsman. Excellent thinking to use the anomaly. Please release the data from your time jump flight to the science and engineering consoles."

"Yes sir." Sulu hit a button, and Spock's fingers flew over the panel.

"Spock?" Kirk asked.

"Working, Captain. A moment please. Without the cesium chronometer synchronization, the computation is significantly more involved."

"Can you do it?"

"Yes, sir." Spock sounded properly annoyed.

Uhura laughed. Apparently all was well again. Aside from the being shot at business, but that was a temporary detail.

"How long do you need?"

"A few minutes only to consolidate mass and time shift since the last jump. The calculation is not difficult, merely the precision of the computation. More time will not change that. It will either be correct or not. Beginning feed to engineering now." His limp noticeable to the entire bridge, Spock moved to the engineering console.

"Then let's not hang around. Time jump when ready."

Kirk called down to the lower decks. "Bridge to engineering: begin engine cycle for slingshot."

"Engineering ready," Scotty replied.

"Mr. Sulu, please release helm control to me," Spock ordered.

"Helm released to science."

Spock moved back to his usual spot. "Time warp in five...four...three...two...one." Spock pressed a button, and the Enterprise began moving toward the sun. Time slowed down, twisted, flipped around crazily and then sped up.

Suddenly Spock screamed and collapsed on the deck.

"Spock!" Through the quagmire of sticky time, Kirk fought his way from the command chair to Spock's side. He grabbed him and put arms around him. Spock's eyes were rolled back; he barely seemed to breathe. "What's wrong?" Kirk screamed out through the time flux. His voice sounded impossibly distorted to his own ears.

Spock's palm pressed against his own head. He threw his temple into it as if he could squeeze some agony out with the pressure.

"Spock!" Kirk squeezed his chest and yelled again.

"I am...uninjured. I was...linked to the man you met. In this time he has...expired. The severance is somewhat...disequilbrating." Spock forced the words out through clenched teeth, each one a struggle. Heedless of the chaos swirling in his own head and belly, Kirk reach down and clamped onto Spock's other hand. Spock squeezed back with a strength almost, but not quite, hard enough to snap human bones. Someone cried out, then it all went black.

When Kirk came to, the chaos was gone and the viewscreen was filled with stars.

"Sulu where are we? Spock?" Fighting for consciousness, Kirk pulled himself to a stiff sit, Spock still limp within his grip.

"Six parsecs outside of Sol system. And my chronometer is still scrolling, but I think we're off a bit."

"Spock?" Kirk jostled the man within his arms.

"I am functional, Captain, if a bit disoriented."

"I think we all are." Kirk pulled Spock to his feet and settled him back in his chair.

"It was necessary, Jim." Kirk's hand still on his arm, Spock spoke directly to Kirk's eyes. "The initial time warp of the crash disrupted...certain...cycles. The drive is not only physical, but cerebral as well. "

Kirk stilled him with a touch. "You don't owe me an explanation for any personal choices you may make."

"It was barely a choice, Jim. I was down to essentially only two. Perhaps I do not owe you an explanation, but I had hoped that in this instance, you might want one."

Mindless of the rest of the bridge crew, Kirk rubbed his arm. "I would be lying if I were to say I wasn't...intrigued. But I may not know much in this universe, but I do know my ship and her crew. There is nothing you could do...nothing...that would make me doubt your allegiance to me. Nothing. If you want to tell me later, fine. If not, that's fine as well. But I take you at your word, and I know what I know regardless of any other situations, you may have landed within." Kirk gave him a nod with his eyes as if the matter were settled, "No regrets, my friend," he whispered very softly.

Spock squeezed him had back, not so hard this time, but hard enough to make the point.

"Captain!" Uhura blurted, breaking the spell. "I'm picking up chatter on Starfleet channels."

"Yes!" Sulu whispered under his breath.

"They're talking about us, sir." Uhura sounded distinctly less happy now. "Apparently we're AWOL and have been for three days. We're under investigation and, pending an appropriate explanation, arrest warrants have been issued." Her console began beeping frantically. Uhura put a hand to her ear receiver.

"That's it. They've found our beacon, sir. Gilgamesh is on her way here."

"ETA: seventeen minutes," said Sulu. He turned to where Kirk looked at him and added, "my chronometer is functioning normally again."

"Scotty!" Kirk leapt to the command chair and toggled engineering. "We need to jump back three days."

"Too tight Capitan," said Spock, Sulu and engineering simultaneously. Spock completed the thought. "We would have to be two thousand miles within the sun's corona to make a gravity loop that tight; we would burn up before even reaching breakaway speed."

"We went three days back after PSI 2000," Sulu volunteered.

"Scotty?" Kirk asked into the intercom.

"A cold restart? It's verra risky Captain; I'd need several hours to recompute the formula from our present mass."

"You have sixteen minutes."

"I can do it, Jim," said Spock, already working at the science console.

"Spock, a cold restart is a precarious thing. You've been through a lot. The injuries, the bump, the...death. If you aren't sure, I'll take the court martial. The crew were just following orders. Better alive to appeal than incinerated."

"I can do it, Jim." Thin, grey, woozy and with a bruise on his head not the size of a Ktarian egg, Spock turned eyes up to Jim's. "I know my job; of course, the choice is yours."

Kirk nodded. "Kirk to engineering: shut off warp engines now. Flush to space. When temperature approaches zero Kelvin, notify bridge and prepare for cold restart. Formula to be fed to engineering by Mr. Spock."

There was a pause. "Aye, Captain. Shutting engines in five...four...three...two...one." The ship went eerily still. "Opening space vents. Temperature dropping. Should hit zero K in four minutes."

From Uhura again. "Gilgamesh orders us to stand down and be escorted back to Earth."

Spock moved to the engineering console. "Beginning formula feed. I should be able to compute spatial vectors to put us nearer to Earth orbit.

"Nothing fancy, Mr. Spock. Just get us back three days and in one piece, and I won't care if you put us in the Beta quadrant."

"Gilgamesh approaching with shields raised and torpedoes armed. She'll be in firing range in seven point five minutes." Sulu tracked something on his monitors.

Let's hoped that's three days plus seven point five minutes," mumbled Kirk. "Spock, our restart won't put the Gilgamesh at any risk?"

"Unknown, Captain. It is a little studied phenomenon. While I should expect the time warp to be confined to the warp ship itself, I cannot be certain there will not be echoes or ripples. "

"Well, here's one more chance for you to study it. We ready?"

"Fifty three seconds," said Sulu. "Fifty -two, fifty one--"

"Sulu," Kirk waved him silent. "Put the Gilgamesh on forward viewer."

"T minus five," said Spock." He signaled engineering. "Four. Three. Two. One." Then again, everything went black.

When they came to, they were outside Uranus's rings.

"Time, Sulu?" Kirk asked as he battled his way back from the haze.

"Moment, Captain." Sulu sounded pretty shaky as well. "Stardate 4932.02. Decontam scheduled in twenty-one minutes. You did it, Mr. Spock!"

"Naturally." Was it Kirk's time-twisted ears, or did Spock sound just a little smug?

"Sulu: Earth parking orbit. Spock, I think you and I can take a couple minutes to change clothes. Everyone else to the transporter room and off my ship within twenty minutes. I don't need that kind off paper work to explain why someone was left in decontam. You know my motto: leave no man behind." He collected Spock with his body language, and together they left the bridge.

Twenty minutes later found Kirk and Spock in standard uniform inside Dr. McCoy's annexed room in Starfleet Visiting Officers' Quarters with the doctor looking an interesting mix of pleased as punch and disgruntled at the same time.

"May I go?" asked Spock with a polished courtesy that sounded distinctly discordant to his battered looks. Undressed, the scars and damage were infinitely more alarming. "I have managed these one hundred seven days without your scintillating knowledge; I doubt that ten hours more will be a catastrophe."

"You've barely made it," McCoy grumbled. "You want to see these readings?"

Spock raised an eyebrow and looked somewhere the medicorder wasn't. Kirk suspected he knew.

"You owe me at least two days in sickbay, Spock, for me to set those hips properly--among other things. I won't even discuss the malnutrition and the anemia, but you're going to love my prescription diet." He bounced maliciously on his toes.

"So the overall verdict?" Jim asked from the bedside.

"In a hell of a lot better shape than he deserves to be after a crash like that. Your first officer is an amazing man."

"Don't I know it," said Jim.

"All right, you can go," McCoy grumbled, not looking at all happy about it. "There's not much else I can do here. But as soon as we're underway, I want you in my bed."

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"My sickbay bed." McCoy stressed with very badly faked annoyance. Jim chuckled. It was nice to have things back to normal. His communicator beeped. Scotty. Something about the decontam.

"Spock." McCoy pushed Spock back to the mattress. "There is a hormonal imbalance. A sex hormone imbalance," he clarified whispering so that Kirk couldn't hear. "It's higher than it should be for you. Much higher. But only you--or a reassessment in a few hours--can tell me if it is on the way up or down."

"Down," said Spock. "The situation is...resolving. It has been resolved by me. Thank you for your concern."

"Can I help?" McCoy's hand did not leave Spock's bare arm, and his blue eyes did not leave Spock's black ones.

Spock shook his head. "No. You have my word as a fellow officer...and as a friend that I am in no difficulty in that respect whatsoever. "

Spock made to get up, but McCoy held him pinned. "I have to tell Jim," McCoy said.

"Jim knows. If you do not have sufficient regard for me as an individual, take my word as an officer who would not put his captain in jeopardy a second time though lack of information."

"I like you just fine, you arrogant, hardheaded elf," McCoy grumbled as he let him up. "I was just checking."

"Changed your mind about staying here and getting poked at?" Kirk asked as he closed his communicator.

"Not in the slightest," said Spock maneuvering to rise up on bad hips.

Jim lent Spock a hand. "In that case, Bones, we'll see you back on board."

"Nine hours and no responsibility. What would you like to do?" asked Kirk as they made their way down the hallway.

"Nine point two four hours, and if you don't know my wishes, you are a good bit less intuitive than I had thought." Spock scrutinized him and withdrew perceptibly behind a mask. "Or...perhaps the disorientation of your time jump affected....other things as well. Perhaps my perspicuity is off in other ways. If so, I understand."

Jim could not remember the last time he had had a more gentile offer of a way out. Or the last time he had met a worse liar. It isn't that Vulcans are incapable of lying, just that most of them shouldn't try.

At least not to him. If it indeed takes a thief to catch a thief, no bluffer was safe around James T. Kirk, least of all a poorly prepared one.

Jim shook his head. "No. No, your perceptions--at least of me--are just fine. But I admit to being...worried. My professional relationships go well; my personal ones...that's another matter. I can't say the same for them. You are very important to me. I can't help the kind of man I am, but to be great, a man must recognize his weaknesses. If in my greed I ruin what we have, I'm not sure I could look myself in the eye again."

"I fail to follow the reasoning--"

Jim grabbed his shoulders. "Spock, you've had a nasty bump. You're exhausted and according to Bones, generally unwell to boot. If it turns out that this is some stress hormonally mediated slip--" Jim paused. "If there is any question whatsoever about what we would do in normal circumstances, I would rather wait. I don't want to be a morning after regret from a whimsical illusion grown out of a blow on the head."

Then Spock did something so startling Jim hardly knew whether to take it for bad or good. He laughed, a small laugh, but an unmistakable one all the same. "A whimsy. Hardly. Jim, if you knew how long I have wanted this, it would alarm you." Spock made this declaration right there, in the middle of the hallway, uncaring of whomsoever might hear.

Jim melted. "I don't think so." He stopped at the door of a vacant Officers' Private Lounge, unlocked it with his command code and pulled Spock inside.

He had meant to be gentle and considerate; he hadn't meant to get swept away. But then again, unlike his science officer, he hadn't realized how badly he had yearned for this.

For over four years he had told himself that the mere physical didn't matter--that what they shared was complete enough. But with the first incautious touch under the velvet, ancestral skies, it became clear that that was untrue.

Or perhaps it wasn't entirely untrue. Perhaps it was more that the physical was not merely sexual release, but a channel for emotions and connections for which there can be no words in Vulcan--or in English either. Emotions that Jim had long ago given up upon and connections too strong for the biology of even a half-Vulcan to discount.

In any event, in an instant, Jim was back where they had left off, his body was on fire and his hands roamed everywhere. His groin strained the fabric of his trousers and his heart--far too long ignored--was full enough to burst.

Spock stumbled backwards toward the sofa as Jim pushed them across the room. "Take this off," Jim rasped as he pushed upwards on Spock's shirt. "All of it. Take it off."

Bunched up and wadded, both shirts came off in one sharp yank. Alarms went off in Jim's brain at the sight of the multitude of new scars and burns across Spock's torso. Jim ran his hands and his mouth over each and every one. "You'll have to tell me about these," he mumbled.

"Later," said Spock, pressing Jim's face down against his skin.

After four years of telling himself that the physical was only a meaningless amusement for those who hadn't known love, all Jim could think about was Spock naked under his hands and as eager for this as he was.

More so, for Spock had known the finality of loss--had lived with a grief so strong there could be no denying the reality of the emotion--his emotion--even as his body burned, he thought, for what would be the last time. Spock had seen all the might-have-beens and the illogic of disregarding that which is there solely because he had been told it should not be. Spock had tallied out the cost of love ignored in the name of a tenet that had become a farce and had looked back upon a life so proper, but to what avail?

Amidst the sands and rock of his mother's home world, Spock had found out that "in seven years" was too long a deferment for the private resolution he had made. With the path that they had chosen they were promised nothing--not seven years, not one year, perhaps not even one hour. And so the time for anything yet undone was now.

Spock lay back as Jim's body laved his trunk. He let go of all of Vulcan's creeds; those were things he known and done. This was time for making remediation and new experiences. With deliberation he pushed all the dross that he had been filled with aside to one corner of his mind. He gave Jim only that which was his pure, raw, unadulterated self.

Spock thrashed his head; long hair flew in and out of his eyes. He made noises in a jumble of the languages of two worlds as Jim's tongue played havoc with his navel and Jim's hand stoked him though his slacks. He stared down in hungry anticipation as Jim unsealed the waist fastenings with his mouth, and groaned aloud at the first warm suckle on his penis that sprang free and unrestrained into the air.

Fingers twisted in the sandy hair, he pushed Jim's head down to swallow him to the hilt.

The movement was neither gentle nor measured, and Jim gagged, but recovered and regained his stride. He wouldn't pull away for all the tea on Mareuvia; he remembered all too well the first time--so many years and disappointments ago--that he himself had craved something--someone--that much. He loved the dick; he lapped at the swollen balls, pinging them with his tongue, then swirled them between his lips one at a time. He made his mouth say in action everything it had never yet managed to in words.

More because he had to than because he wanted to, Jim undid his pants and stroked himself until he could think about something beside the pressure inside himself again. He sucked and licked, but wanted more. He let loose his shaft and eased Spock out of his slacks.

Then he saw the damage to Spock's legs: the bones had healed crooked; muscles were torn. On the right there was more burn than skin.

"Dear God," said Jim and sat back on his knees. The pressure inside turned to another kind. How many had survived a shuttle crash of that magnitude? Reality struck home. He was so used to winning that the alternative often seemed unreal. Now it was beneath his hands in all its ugly surety. How close he had come to losing everything that mattered, even things he had never had? Maybe it was for the first time; even on the bridge had he ever considered that death was anything more than another hurdle for his clever mind to overcome?

But it wasn't. It was real, and it dangled over all of them. That wasn't so terrible; that was life. It was only bad if you let it take you by surprise before you're done.

"We shouldn't be doing this," said Jim. "Your legs must hurt."

"They ache," Spock conceded, "but not nearly as acutely as other things."

Jim gave a soft laugh and rose to his feet, managing somehow to squeeze himself back in his slacks. "I know the feeling, but this can wait. We've made it 327 years; we can manage a few more days until Bones has his way with you in sickbay.

"Perhaps you can, but I cannot. Jim, you don't know what loneliness is. I need you too badly. If you want me to beg I will, but if you are my friend, please do not leave me alone again."

Then Jim couldn't have waited if he wanted to. His clothes were off in one pulse of a quasar, and he had them pressed flesh to flesh, cock to cock, balls to balls. He slurped greedily at Spock's face, pushing long hair aside and drank deeply.

His grandmother's doctor had told him death by dehydration was pleasant--that the person didn't know that they were thirsty, but just sort of floated along in a detached state until whatever it was that came next. This, thought Jim, must be what it is like to be almost there, then find cool, clear water pouring down your throat. He sucked and kissed and swallowed as if to drink in four years of drought--or was that thirty-four?--in these few minutes.

Jim reached one hand down between Spock's legs. He massaged the balls; he could swear they had grown bigger since he had had them in his mouth. They were heavy and pendulous; they overflowed his hand. To his delight, Spock writhed beneath him, so he increased the pressure and the speed.

Jim thrust his own cock against Spock's thigh and belly, ever cognizant of keeping his weight off of Spock's battered frame. "Climb over me," Jim murmured in between frenzied kisses, "you take the top."

Spock shook his head, no. He splayed his hips farther apart and rocked his pelvis back, the offer clear as a Spician flame gem.

"No," said Jim, shaking the most delicious of images and ideas from his mind. There would be other times. "Your legs. We'll just--" One last time he thrust his dick into a fold of Spock's body, then attempted to roll them over on the couch.

It was like trying to move an Elasian Millennium Ironroot tree. Spock just looked up at him from atop the chaos of jet black hair and raised his legs in the air.

"Do you think of me as the type to make cavalier decisions?" Spock asked. "Or as the type who is easily dissuaded?"

Spock clenched his ass; Jim saw the anal muscles wink, and all he could think of how it would feel to wallow deep inside. He wanted slick, but they had none, so he fell forward with his mouth and gave until it was slick as spit. He wanted to do more, but from behind Spock's hands pressed his ass and forced him upwards again.

Jim slid his finger over the slick as he would a woman's slit and felt the muscle tension ease to his caress. He played and toyed until Spock grabbed at his dick and aimed it for him. "I love you," Jim breathed and jammed it inside.

Spock cried out, but it wasn't protest or pain. It wasn't anything he could have put into words. It was something dying and something miraculous being resurrected in its place. Of course there was a pang; there would have to be, but it was a moment he would treasure until all the stars burned out.

Eyes on his face, Jim knew it was good. Kneeling one leg on the couch, one off, he brought them both to a climax of supernova proportions.

The physical mattered very much, thought Jim as he drifted in and out of his daze, but only with the one you love.

Jim sprawled on his stomach on the sofa between Spock's legs, keeping as much weight on the cushions as possible and as many fingers on Spock's skin. He played with the fall of shiny, black hair. The length was against regulation, unfortunately, but in deep space who was to know? He tossed around the idea of changing Enterprise regulations on this, but a captain can't play favorites, can he?

He traced each scar with a finger and imagined how it came to be. "Are you going to tell me about it?" Jim asked.

"It will be in my report," said Spock, palms moving idly over Jim's back.

"Report. Right. I want to hear about him."

"Are you jealous?" Spock raised his head, and to Jim's delight, laughed a logical, restrained, carefully punctuated laugh.

"No," Jim chuckled. "No, not at all. I just want to know more about you."

"There are easier ways," said Spock, and slid his hands up to Jim's temple.

With a sharp gasp, Jim fell forward, head against Spock's sticky belly. His eyes rolled back as he learned everything he needed to know.

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