Star Trek
Thin Coat
by Robert J. Roberts
(rroberts@cityofhornell.com)

Thin Coat

BOBBY STARES AT the wall in Main Engineering.

For what seems like the millionth time.

Bobby is supposed to be performing his Security officer duty, which entails patrolling his section of the Enterprise with eyes open for trouble, but he always stops here in Main Engineering and stares. Sometimes after a stare-session, if no one is watching him, Bobby glides his fingertips gently over the wall as he makes his rounds.

He knows the room well. Before switching to Security, Bobby worked as a maintenance technician. He knows almost every inch of the Enterprise and he is terrified of the ship.

* * * * *

"SON, I CAN'T find a thing wrong with you," Dr. Leonard McCoy says as he slips the medical tricorder back in its sheath.

Bobby nods.

"Which is not what I expected," McCoy says, "because you came in direct contact with Lieutenant Sulu while he was infected with polywater intoxication."

Bobby nods again.

It was horrifying, what they had endured with Psi 2000. It began with a personality-altering infection and ended in a time-warp detonated by a highly dangerous blend of matter and anti-matter. Now, everything was back to normal, with a newly created antidote from McCoy thrown into the mix.

"The intoxication is spread through perspiration - you did know that, didn't you?" McCoy says. His honeydripping voice is gentle but his stare is relentless.

Bobby nods a third time.

"And Sulu had to be perspiring like crazy," McCoy says. "He was hopping around like a damn swashbuckler. But you're clean. And I can't treat you for something you don't have."

McCoy waits for Bobby to say something, but after a few moments, the doctor decides to break the ice. "Well, Bobby, you're just as quiet as you ever were. If you are indeed infected, your inhibitions are holding back the dullest fantasies of any man in Starfleet."

"Yes, sir."

"I was trying to lighten the mood just then, Bobby."

"Yes, sir."

McCoy sighs. "Back to your station. Grab the release from Nurse Chapel on your way out."

Bobby slides off the examining table and slips into his red tunic. McCoy notices that, as Bobby departs the office, the fingertips of his outstretched hand seem to stroke the wall. On a hunch, McCoy decides to order a follow-up psychological examination.

It's always the quiet ones, McCoy thinks.

* * * * *

I AM NOT infected, Bobby thinks.

He sits on his bed. There is no one else in the room. There never is. Bobby is relatively popular on the Enterprise, but he appreciates his privacy, too. Hence, his small room is his sanctuary. It is the place where he can honestly confront the fear that stalks and gnaws and devours.

It was disappointing for Bobby to hear McCoy say he was not suffering the ill effects of polywater intoxication. That would have been a good justification for his fear - even though almost everybody else who had been exposed suffered a delirious decline in inhibitions, not a crippling phobia. Now the polywater intoxication excuse is shot and Bobby realizes it is his mind, and his mind alone, that created his fear.

It began shortly after an intoxicated Lieutenant Kevin Riley went berserk and disabled the ship's engines while in orbit around crumbling Psi 2000. A cold restart saved the day, but it just as well could have disintegrated the Enterprise. The others were relieved; Bobby, however, began to lose his mind ... quietly and unnoticed, in the shadows. It is so typically low-key of Bobby.

A maddening little thought it was, at first: What if the Enterprise one day could no longer bear the strain of enemy assaults and time-warps and godlike visitations, and shuddered violently and then ripped open? What if the force fields that protected within and without failed or were disabled? What if Bobby and the other 429 officers and crew aboard were propelled into the cold vacuum of space?

What a way to die.

Bobby repeatedly runs the image through his mind: The hull yawns open and the structural integrity field fails, and great numbers of the Enterprise crew are sucked through the breach, without spacesuits.

The image haunts Bobby.

Catastrophic failure of a life-support system is not a remote possibility, as the former maintenance technician is well aware. Things break all the time on a starship. In addition, the relatively brief history of Starfleet is replete with dreadful tales of ships lost in deep space: among them, the Essex, lost in an electromagnetic storm a hundred years earlier; the Archon, similarly plucked from the sky; the Valiant, also gone.

Every man, woman and alien in Starfleet knows the risks of interstellar flight. No one discusses them. It is the worst taboo to show your fear.

Once upon a time, experts thought being in the vacuum of space would cause a human's blood to boil, eyeballs to burst, lungs to turn into slush, bodies to freeze - all in the split-second of instant death. The experts were wrong.

Sadly, there have been enough space-travel failures to show what really happened in a vacuum. Eardrums burst and soft tissue swell, but there is no heat loss. There are no blown-up eyes and lungs, no vaporized blood. In fact, humans are conscious for up to twenty seconds in a vacuum. Death can take several minutes to occur. As long as the body is not forced through a tiny opening and shredded, an unprotected human actually can survive the vacuum of space if rescue occurs quickly.

Bobby would rather be blown apart instantly. He is terrorized by the prospect of bobbing around in space, conscious and aware of what happened, until his oxygen-starved brain blinks and darkness swallows him.

The fear never leaves Bobby. It follows him like a shadow.

To dispel it, Bobby lightly drags his fingers across the interior walls of the starship. He can feel the slightly warm pressure of the functioning force field underneath his fingertips.

To dispel it, Bobby reads and re-reads the manuals that describe how the hull is made of virtually impregnable osmium and diburnium-osmium alloy.

To dispel it, Bobby chats with his pals in the engineering crew, ever so casually, to absorb their cocky reassurance that nothing in the universe could unpeel Captain Kirk's Enterprise.

None of it works.

Bobby believes he is the only one aboard ship who recognizes the potential for - hell, the likelihood of - disaster, and it is suffocating. On a starship, you can't reveal your fears. Bobby has to do something ... he does not know what.

* * * * *

DOCTOR McCOY IS in his private office with Doctor Helen Noel, discussing her report. At McCoy's request, Noel analyzed Bobby. As she reviews her findings, McCoy notes the beauty and professionalism of Noel, who recently was thrust into the role of chief psychologist after Doctor Elizabeth Dehner sacrificed herself to stop Gary Mitchell in the hills of Delta Vega.

"The psychotricorder and my own intuition tell me something is wrong with Bobby," Noel says in her soothing voice. "I just can't get him to open up about it."

McCoy nods. "Sometimes it's like the mind has its own force field."

"We don't know what is eating at him," Noel continues, "but I am not comfortable with letting him wander around untreated."

"You can't confine him for no reason at all," says McCoy. "We wouldn't know what we were trying to observe."

Noel purses her lips. "Any suggestions, Doctor?"

McCoy studies his boots for a moment, then looks up at Noel with a slight smile. "There is another resource, but I sure hate like hell to resort to it."

Noel stares at the chief physician, somewhat perplexed.

"Spock," McCoy grunts. "And his mind meld."

Noel breaks into a smile. She is delighted.

* * * * *

MISTER SPOCK'S FINGERS splay across Bobby's face until they find their niches on his temples and above and below the jaw. Spock squeezes those points while he bends his large head close to Bobby's and whispers a formula. Bobby's eyes flutter shut.

Observing are Noel and McCoy. Noel is fascinated by the Vulcan ability to create synaptic pattern displacement and she respects their extreme reluctance to use the mind meld on anyone other than Vulcans. McCoy, meanwhile, appears discomfited.

"You read about this, of course," Noel enthuses, "but until you actually see it happening ... "

"Of all the living creatures to receive this gift," McCoy mutters, "it had to be the coldest fish in the universe."

Noel ignores his derision. "A lot of people think Vulcans are telepaths. Not so. They don't 'read' minds; they merge their mind with the subject's. Two bodies, one consciousness. Incredible."

McCoy merely grunts.

"Imagine the leaps that psychiatric counseling could make if humans could do this," Noel says.

"That's the ticket," McCoy snaps. "Let's all be like the Vulcans. My God."

No one speaks again until Spock slowly raises his head. He appears fogged, as if just awoken from deep slumber. After a moment, he turns to the two physicians and his eyes are clear; Bobby remains in a trance.

"I'm afraid Bobby is gripped by a most unreasoning fear," Spock says. "It is immensely powerful. It is, in fact, far stronger than Bobby's normal personality."

"What's he afraid of?" asks McCoy.

"He is petrified by the prospect of explosive decompression aboard the Enterprise. In other words, he is afraid ... " "I know what explosive decompression means, for God's sake," snaps McCoy. "I've come across astraphobia and spacephobia, but this is something else altogether."

"Indeed, and like all phobias, utterly lacking in perspective," Spock says. "The Enterprise and all other Constitution-class ships are the strongest objects ever constructed. Their failure rate is statistically non-existent when risk exposure and the plethora of possible malfunction points are factored in. So many systems would have to fail in the precise sequence to allow a breach, that the odds verge on the impossible."

"None of which means anything to Bobby," Noel says. "He's a true phobic."

Bobby stirs as he emerges from the mind meld. His eyes remain shut and he is wincing.

"Well, we know how to treat this," McCoy sighs. "Let's blow it by the captain."

* * * * *

CAPTAIN JAMES KIRK was adamant: He was not going to abandon a good crewman like Bobby in a strange hospital on a distant planet or space station. Physicians in the Enterprise infirmary will treat Bobby, Kirk insists in an impromptu conference on the bridge.

"Then we need a neural neutralizer, Jim," says McCoy. "The only way to save Bobby is a memory wipe and for that, you need a neural neutralizer. As it so happens, Doctor Noel is highly trained on the beam neutralization technology that was the neural neutralizer's predecessor."

"I see," Kirk replies. "Where's the nearest place to get this neural neutralizer?"

Spock answers before McCoy: "Tantalus." "The penal colony?" Kirk is incredulous.

"I'm afraid so," McCoy says. "Tristan Adams uses memory wipes to rehabilitate hardened criminals."

Kirk waves a hand. "Helmsman, set a course for Tantalus."

* * * * *

DOCTOR TRISTAN ADAMS is nervous and reluctant to provide the requested equipment, but he relents suddenly after Kirk suggests an Enterprise landing party will scour Tantalus as part of an impromptu Starfleet inspection. So abrupt is Doctor Adams's change of heart that a suspicious Kirk makes a mental note to re-visit Tantalus.

The neural neutralizer is installed in a room off the infirmary. Bobby sits in a chair underneath the orange lens of the beam-emitter. Doctor Noel is at the control panel in a connecting windowed alcove. McCoy and Spock look on. Noel flips a lever to energize the beam, and twists a dial to select its intensity. Bobby stares at the beam that drains thoughts and anxieties. Doctor Noel's soft voice purrs through a speaker. She gently suggests, over and over, that the Enterprise is impregnable, that its force field is unbreakable, that explosive decompression will never occur.

Repeatedly, the instructions are given. Slack-jawed Bobby, motionless in the orange glow, soaks them up.

* * * * *

'THE ADJUSTMENT IS remarkable, Doctor Noel," says McCoy. She beams in response. Bobby is sitting up, alert, and smiling. Since awakening from his treatment, he has been visibly changed: relaxed, garrulous ... almost rapturous.

"I can't tell you how happy I am, docs," Bobby says. "I don't know what worried me so much before, but it can't be important if I can't remember it, right?"

"That's right," Noel says.

"You know what?" Bobby adds. "This makes me so interested that I want to transfer to the Science wing."

"Hold on," McCoy says. "One thing at a time. You just transferred into Security."

"I know," says Bobby, "but I really want to be a medical technician. I want to help people, too."

"In due time," says McCoy. "As for right now, let's take a walk around the ship and back to your room."

Bobby chats about anything that crosses his mind as he and the two physicians leisurely stroll along the corridors, zip in elevators, cross Engineering and other sectors, along the decks and galleys and special-use rooms, until they approach his compartment. McCoy and Noel watch closely for any telltale betrayal of an inner anxiety; there is none. In fact, Bobby is the happiest crewman they've seen in a long time.

Finally, they arrive at his room. "I can't thank you enough for what you've done," Bobby says again. McCoy and Noel assure him that they are glad the neural neutralizer session was so productive, and they make him promise to contact them immediately if anything goes wrong. Bobby gives them his enthusiastic assurance. He waves farewell with brio as the physicians depart.

Bobby enters the room and the door closes behind him with sibilant finality. Everything is as it should be, everything is as he left it. Nothing is ajar. It is a relief to know this. It means no one has been in his room to place a recording device. Bobby has set enough hidden devices to reveal an intrusion.

He is safe here. If there is one thing he learned from being under the hellish orange glow of the neutralizer, it is that safety counts. Safety, like a force field, is a thin coat of nothing, but it beats the alternative. Acting as though he is carefree is difficult, but Bobby knows it is imperative. Otherwise, McCoy and Noel will drag him under another machine and try again to pry open his mind. Having Spock in there was bad enough.

You can't show them your fears, Bobby thinks.

The voice in his head endlessly tells him that. The voice in his head repeated this advice throughout the neural neutralizer treatment, to the point of drowning out Doctor Noel's suggestions.

You see, you can't trust machines to function properly, Bobby thinks. The neutralizer sure didn't.

We'll just keep our fears to ourselves from now on, the voice tells Bobby.

Bobby agrees.

One hand snakes out. His fingers lightly skim the surface of the wall and, for only the briefest of moments, Bobby is reassured.