It was part of the way through his duty shift when Terry Clemsen entered the small lounge just off of the security section on the Alexandria. He would not be able to see Chan now, since she was on the bridge doing her turn at the helm of the starship. The Alexandria was now providing escort to a couple of small transport ships through a dangerous section of space. Within a day, the transports would arrive at their destination and then re-enter secure space, and then senior officers would not be needed to main the bridge during routine operations. Chan could go back to being the assistant security chief. Clemsen liked that arrangement.
He got something to drink from the replicator and sat down alone at a vacant table. He coughed again, a slight, nagging type of cough that had started up the night before. It was very occasional, and more irritating than painful. The doors to the lounge snapped open, causing Clemsen to instinctively look up. "Oh no," he groaned. It was Sticklesen and Nogan, his two friends.
"Hey, Terry," Sticklesen said, as he sat down across from the younger man. "Been hanging around with the Odonan again?"
"Never mind," Clemsen said, sounding quite defensive about it.
"Rumours are going around that you're trying to get comfortable with Chan Chi, the next chief of security. No doubt, you're trying to get her to set you up with a comfortable position."
"I am not!" Clemsen retorted, coughing up again as he tried to drink his coffee. Now the coughing was painful. "We're just friends."
"You do seem to go to her quarters a lot, and stay there for a long time too."
Nogan had gone to the replicator for drinks for himself and his companion, and as he joined them at the table, he had overheard the comments. "Hey, John, you know Terry hasn't bedded down Chan. You know Odonan women. You can't make love to them. They electrocute their mates."
"Get real," Clemsen replied, between the hacks.
"Hey, got a cold or some other kind of infection?"
"Yeah, perhaps a touch, it seems." He coughed again, a deep hacking cough that seemed to shoot pain straight through his chest, though he did try to disguise it in front of these two.
"Anyway," the Australian continued, "you must know that when an Odonan woman sleeps with an alien man, and she, ah-"
"This is not a proper conversation."
"We know you're going to make a move on her, Jerry," Sticklesen said. "So we're just telling you these things for your own benefit."
"Forget it," Clemsen said. This was not the first time had been told these things. Security chief Tashur had already told him more obliquely to restrain his interest in Chan. Next, the captain would be telling him the same thing.
"One more thing."
"Oh geez," Clemsen retorted, before being spasmed by a string of hacking coughs.
"Hey," Nogan intruded. "You should go down to sickbay and have Solok give you something for that."
"Yeah, perhaps you're right."
"Anyway," the first newcomer continued, "There's one little piece of info on Chan you probably don't know. I got into the personnel files a bit and pulled the one on Chan. It didn't say much about her, except give her age. Terry, you're going out with an older woman, a much older woman, a one hundred and fourty-nine year old woman."
"Oh, thanks a lot. I was not trying to think about that."
"She looks good for somebody who is one hundred and fourty-nine years old," Nogan pointed out.
"I really don't need to listen to this." As he raised the cup to his lips and sipped some coffee into his mouth, he coughed again, this time accidentally spitting the liquid all over the table and onto his two companions.
"Wonderful," Nogan retorted. "I just hope whatever you got isn't contagious."
Clemsen finished his coffee and quickly left, a bit upset that his so-called friends were making fun of his friendship with Chan. Most men who do befriend aliens tend to be ostracized, especially when it came to certain aliens. Although those in the Federation, with its wide varieties of alien lifeforms, were expected to be more tolerant, it was not always that way. Certain races invoked hostility in Federation members, especially humans. Thus, if any man became friendly with a Romulan woman, than he was likely to be in trouble. On the other hand, the Federation had inferiority complexes with some races, including the Odonans. Everybody in the Federation was aware of one thing, Odonan technology was generally more advanced. Their technology was superior in starship propulsion, and in other areas like the ability to eliminate most diseases and comprehensive regeneration techniques, and in producing the forcefield belt and other bioelectronic devices and new technologies that the Federation was not even aware of yet. Befriending an Odonan was sometimes interpreted as abandoning the Federation, and trying to get in with an even more technologically advanced group. Clemsen never thought much about that. To him, the Odonans were just another race out there and Chan was just another person, but one he really liked.
Instead of following the suggestion and heading to sickbay, Clemsen completed his shift. During that time, the coughing died down somewhat, leading him to think that the discussion in the lounge might have been a factor in the cough intensifying. After his shift on this particular day, Clemsen headed down to the recreation deck, along with a good percentage of the ship's crew. The recreation deck could hold most of the ship's complement, and at one end, it had a large viewscreen. On Earth, a popular recreation was to restore motion pictures from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, digitize them and then make them available for a whole new audience. The films showed humans in a different light and in a different age, when violent behaviour was seen as an acceptable way to flaunt oneself, and when greed was celebrated and excess was an expected lifestyle. Many, with Clemsen among them, was able to laugh at the virtual caricatures that the humans of the period were portrayed as. Also interesting were the films from a genre called "science fiction," which showed mankind's earliest thoughts about space travel, alien societies out there and so much more. What was expected was how wrong they got the details, but it was somewhat surprising what they got right.
"So this was how the people of your planet did this?" Chan said, as she joined the man on the rec deck.
"Yeah, we'd get into this theatre, with all of these seats facing the screen. We'd watch the movie collectively. You've heard about these movies?"
"Actually, some are popular in the Odonan Empire," Chan explained. "Some have appeared, along with viewers to watch them, but they are generally seen in private. This seems a, little strange. You're almost obligated to stay and see the whole thing, but in private, you can stop it if you don't like it."
"Actually, walking out is a statement."
"A statement?"
"Yeah," Clemsen remarked, suppressing a slight hack. He did notice that Chan had heard it. "A statement that the movie is bad."
"So what movie is it?"
"It's called 'When Worlds Collide'."
"What is it about?"
"I don't know. It's one of those science-imagination films, though."
"The best kind."
"Some would say."
On the rec deck, Clemsen went over to one of the counters, where another crewmember had been busy replicating a particular food item. "This is what you eat when you watch a movie."
Chan was handed a cup-like container-more of a bucket-like container, she thought-of something that looked like little white puffs, like something small and puffy had burst inside out, with little bits of harder casing still stuck to them. The aroma was surprisingly good, though. "What's this?"
"Popcorn, hot from the popper-or you can believe that-topped with hot butter, a staple of movie-watching in North America in the late twentieth century."
Chan tried one. The popcorn kernel had some texture to it, but no taste. "Nothing to it," she remarked. Clemsen seemed almost disappointed, since he absolutely loved hot buttered popcorn.
The two took their seats near the back, with Clemsen keeping an eye out for Sticklesen and Nogan, two people he did not want to encounter right now. It was the strange thing about relationships, he said to himself. You can have good friends, but when you start to get involved with a member of the opposite sex, you wanted the friends to disappear.
Despite her opinion of popcorn, Chan did go ahead and eat more of it, and in fact polished off the entire container she had, and when Clemsen decided he had enough, she finished off his too. He also got some replicated beverages, including one that was called "Coca-Cola" and another that was called "7Up." Chan finished both.
The movie was not a long one. The idea was rather simple, a rogue star was entering the Earth's solar system, and it was going to destroy the Earth. However, by fortune of planetary alignments, the planet around the rogue star was inhabitable and one group of people were planning to build a rocket ship to travel from one world to the other. The majority of the movie dealt with the construction of the rocket ship, and the conflicts between the people as it became obvious that a vast majority of those working on the project were not going to go. The movie had some scenes of the destruction when the planet approached Earth closely, with rivers bursting, oil derricks collapsing and burning and water rushing through the streets of various cities. In the end, the builders got their rocket ship off the ground in time, although the obnoxious older man who had financed the whole thing simply to extend his life, was not one of them. The ship made its approach to the new world, and the carefully-selected people on board survived the crash landing-as did the ship-and they emerged to that world. It was a world that looked unbelievably fake.
Through the showing of the hour-and-a-half film, Clemsen found himself sitting close to Chan, and recalling times on Earth when he went to those nostalgia theatres with a female friend. It was almost instinctive the way he leaned towards her, and put an arm around her shoulders while stealing a few of the kernels of popcorn-afterall, that was his container that she was eating from. At first, Clemsen did not realize that he had done it, mostly because Chan did not react. He also noticed that even though she was wearing the forcefield belt, she did not have it on. He could feel her warmth. It was odd. Odonans were supposed to be cold people, but Chan felt... warm. He could describe her in no other terms. He found himself thoroughly enjoying himself, and only the occasional light cough disrupted things.
The closing credits rolled and the lights in the rec room came back up. Now those in attendance once more realized they were on board an early twenty-fourth century starship and not a movie theatre in the middle of the twentieth. Chan and Clemsen were among the last to leave. "Well, what do you think?" he finally asked, as they strolled slowly down the corridor, which was dimmer and a bit cooler than normal to simulate night.
"It was enjoyable," she finally said. "That popcorn fills you. Anyway, what I noticed was the fakeness of the images in the movie. I mean, they never showed the interloper star until the very end, when Earth was destroyed. Even the water going through that city didn't look right. What was surprising was that when I was at the Academy going through the orientation, a group of us saw another movie from around the same time. I forget the title, but it was about an asteroid or a comet or a star crashing into Earth-what was it about your people that made such catastrophic movies?"
"I don't know," Clemsen remarked. "I guess that's just the way that it was. It was what we wanted to see."
"But I remember that the images in that movie were much more realistic. It looked like it was really happening. When I saw that city in this movie get flooded, it reminded me of the scene in that other one. This wave hit this city. It was... New York. Yes, New York. You saw it smash all the identifiable buildings."
"Movies like that often did."
"You know, just before departing for the Alexandria, I was in New York. I remember seeing those big buildings, like the one destroyed, that state building, empire building."
"Empire State Building."
"And that statue of the woman holding up that torch."
"The Statue of Liberty."
"Yeah, that. It just got smashed. Then there were these two really big towers. I think they were the tallest in the city, side by side, and they got hit by the wave and fell into each other. Those buildings weren't there anymore. I wondered what happened to them."
"Oh, that's a long story," Clemsen started, recalling something from history. "Maybe some day, I'll tell you." Then he started coughing again.
Clemsen returned to his quarters. About the last thing that Chan had told him was the same advice that Nogan and Sticklesen had given him. He should see Solok about that. However, once he got to his quarters, the coughing had died down, as had the pain accompanying it. He was pretty sure that a good night's sleep would go a long way in resolving the problem. He actually fell to sleep and slept solidly, at least until a jolting pain in his lungs woke him up. He was on his back, and started to cough so hard that he was jerking about in the bed. The pain in the left lung became more pronounced, and more isolated. He could almost feel... something there, especially when he coughed. Now, as he lie in bed, the pain seemingly got worse and worse, or maybe that was just the effect of focusing on it. Although Clemsen really had no idea what was causing this problem, he was coming up with more gruesome theories by the minute.
Finally, he pulled himself out of bed, and checked the chronograph display. It read just after seven hundred hours, or about an hour from the start of the first shift. Sitting up eased the pain a little, but when he stood up, he felt wobbly, and more spasms of pain echoed through his body. Standing up, he had to fight for balance, and also felt how each breath was causing him more pain. He tried to breathe deeper and harder, but that just made the pain get worse. He gripped the headboard of his bed, trying to concentrate, trying to steady himself and trying to get the pain under control. He knew that now, he could put off the trip to sickbay no longer. He got into uniform, and started for the door. The unsteadiness and the pain was still there, and for a moment, Clemsen thought he could never make it to sickbay on his own. However, once he started to walk, he noticed that he became more steady on his feet and the pain ebbed away. Even taking deeper breaths due to walking, the pain was not as intense as when he woke up. Jolts of pain caused him to cough, though, and at times the hacking almost made him double over.
Somehow, he got to sickbay and through the doors. Solok was in the main ward of sickbay, which was otherwise unoccupied. The Vulcan heard the door open, and turned in that direction. He saw the security officer enter, and could tell just by the expression on his face that he was in some difficulty. Walking over hurriedly, to help the man sit down, Solok asked in his monotone voice, "Is there a problem, lieutenant?"
"There's this awful pain in my chest, in my lungs, my left lung. I cough occasionally, and can... feel it."
Solok was only steps away from a medical tricorder. He turned it on and passed the probe end over the chest area of Clemsen, while studying the small display. Like Vulcans often did, Solok lifted his eyebrows at the readings he was seeing. "There's definitely something in there."
"A growth?"
"Yes, but I'll need a closer look. Come with me into the examination room."
"But what is it?"
"That's what we'll need to find out," replied the Vulcan medical officer. He led the young man through the doorway into the examination room, where some of the most advanced medical technology in the Federation was located. It would take only a couple of minutes to find out what was in the left lung of Lieutenant Clemsen.
Chan was on the bridge during the first shift. The Alexandria was continuing its mission of escorting a couple of smaller ships through unsecured space, and was watching for any signs of danger to the ships. Chan had the sensors primed to locate any potential danger or risk to the Alexandria and the escorted ships. The intercom on the captain's chair beeped. The occupant of that chair tapped it and said, "Parouge here."
"Captain, you are needed down here in sickbay."
"What is the problem, Solok?"
"A further development on the incident on Transcestus IV." Like most subordinate officers, Solok just teased the captain with the information, as he preferred a face-to-face meeting to fully explain what was happening. However, what the doctor said was enough to catch Chan's interests. She wanted to speak up and ask questions. However, she was just a crewmember on this ship, and would be told in short order what Solok had to say-if she had a need to know.
"I'm on my way."
Parouge arrived quickly in sickbay, and found the doctor, science officer al-Calihad and Lieutenant John McInnis, a biology lab technician, gathered around one of the medical beds. Lying on that bed was Lieutenant Clemsen.
"What is going on?" asked the captain as he walked over. He sounded a bit impatient, but still found the time to look up at the vital sign monitor. The readings did not seem quite right.
"This," Solok replied, as he held up a small specimen bottle. Inside was a thing that looked like a very short, stubby plant. It was about a centimetre tall, with the top two thirds bulbous and stem-like, while the bottom third looked like a thick conglomeration of roots. It was mostly green, but covered in blood and other bodily fluids and tissue. "I removed this from Lieutenant Clemsen's left long moments ago, using the medical microtransporter." Clemsen, who was awake, found himself looking at that specimen bottle again, not quite believing that something like that had been growing in his left lung. At least the pain was gone now.
"In addition," al-Calihad continued, "once we had that, we scanned the patient completely, and found several more, much smaller plants similar to this one, in his lungs, and another was found in the esophagus and another in his stomach. The plants looked like they were taking root in his body. They were too small for the microtransporter, so we used phased high-energy phasic radiation to destroy the alien tissue."
"How could these things grow in him?" Parouge asked. "If these are from Transcestus IV, then the biology there is completely alien. How could it possibly grow in him?"
"That's what is worrisome," replied McInnis, as he spoke up. He was the resident expert in alien botany on the Alexandria and the first one called when Solok removed the most developed plant. "What's remarkable about this is that the DNA has shifted to absorb human proteins and amino acids. Basically, it rewrote its genetic code so that it has become similar to the human xenotype. Thus, it can grow in us. In particular, it's Clemsen's DNA that is being incorporated into the alien plant structure."
"That thing was turning my body into itself?" asked the security officer, as he sat up in bed. The weakness is beginning to fade.
"That's a colourful way to put it," al-Calihad replied, "but accurate too."
"I'm turning into a human plant? That's almost like the far-fetched plot from one of those old-time science fiction movies that have been showing on the rec deck."
McInnis continued, "At first, we wondered why Clemsen complained of the pain, and had the coughing fits, but not Nkomo, O'Grotty or Chan. They were the ones in the landing party that survived. Clemsen was, however, the only one who was actually attacked and injured by one of the plants, so we thought that some part of the plant might have gotten into his body or bloodstream. It's possible that they might reproduce by injecting a seedling-for lack of a better term-into the body of the new host."
"You said that growths were also found in his lungs and in his digestive systems," Parouge started, as he leaned against the medical bed by bracing himself with outstretched arms and hands. "That would suggest that he breathed in spores, or something similar that these plants might have emitted."
"I have to agree with that," McInnis replied. He gestured for the group-except Clemsen, who was told to stay in bed-over to one of the computer monitors in sickbay. "As you know," he started. "There was a small segment of the plant brought on board." He touched a button on the control panel, displaying the segment that was recovered. Included in that segment was a leaf with its characteristic fang-like prongs, and portion of the stem. After McInnis touched the button again, the image rotated to the underside of the leaf. "There, along the edges of the leaf are the small, darker-green pods, the spore pods. Most of them are little cysts, with the spores still inside. Only a few were broken."
"Could they have been broken when then plants attacked Clemsen?"
"We don't know, but it is possible," the botanist replied. "Either way, it seems quite likely that the rest of the landing party was exposed to these spores."
"It would also explain the puzzling sensor readings we had when in orbit around the planet," remarked the science officer.
"What?"
"How carnivorous plants could exist on a world in which there were no animals to feed on, presuming that they did not feed on each other. Apparently, some kind of evolutionary advance had occurred, so that the plants could grow inside the animals, becoming parasites that totally absorb the animal as it grows. It was so efficient that the animal population was likely wiped out."
"Then the plants themselves are probably doomed," Parogue remarked, although that really did not concern him right now. Transcestus IV was not on anybody's list as a possible future site for colonization or exploitation. As he heard this news, two things came to his mind, whether or not the rest of the landing party was affected, and whether or not the escape pod might have been infested as well. "Solok," the captain started, "have you examined the rest of the landing party?"
"I am in the process of beginning that now, captain," came the reply from the doctor. "I'll start with Nkomo and O'Grotty, and then recalibrate the equipment for Chan." Solok left the small group to prepare for his task.
Parouge faced the other two, and all had the same thing on their minds. "We assumed," the captain started, "that plants as advanced as these would reproduce sexually with seeds, and not with spores. Chan brought the escape pod back rather suddenly, and our systems are not designed to easily handle such a craft. It could have been filled with those spores too."
"Yes, quite likely," agreed al-Calihad.
"Fortunately, the hanger deck, along with the cargo decks underneath, form one segment in the life support system, with their own air purification systems. Because of what could come onto the ship through the hanger or cargo decks, the air there is more carefully monitored and filtered. Has anybody checked those filters?"
"Etcheberry has one of his people on it, but it is taking a little time since that officer is in full environmental gear as a precaution."
"Well, keep me informed on the medical checks on the remainder of the away team, and any information you get testing the filters and the rest of the air purification system."
"We will," al-Calihad replied. Once the captain had left sickbay, she turned to the botanist and asked, "Is that sample that came back still in stasis?"
"Yes."
"Good. Right now, I want to keep it there."
McInnis asked, "So no ideas of trying to grow one of those plants?"
"Certainly not on the ship..."
(End of Part 7)
