Mixed News

Month 5, Day 21

Jane Burke

0825 Hours

Jane turned when the hallway door of her ready room opened. Drake stopped in the doorway. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were busy, captain.”

Takor rose to its feet. “I have finished my preliminary report. I believe we are done, unless you have questions, Capt Burke?”

“Come in, doctor,” Jane invited so the door would close behind him. “Takor just told me there’s no reason for Ms MacDowell not to pass her probational test this month.”

“That’s good news!” Drake stated.

The lizoid added, “However, when I stated that to her, she said she had felt equally prepared the last 3 months. She seems... embarrassed and... miserable at her inability.”

“She is. And confused as all get out.”

“Of course,” Takor agreed. “I will leave you to confer.”

“Stop,” Jane said. “Dr MacGregor was not telling you to leave. ‘As all get out’ is an old phrase that roughly means ‘to the extreme’. He was saying that Ms MacDowell is extremely confused by the situation she is in.”

“Exactly,” Drake agreed. “Sorry, Takor. Sometimes slang slips out without my realizing it.”

Takor lowered its head. “No doubt if we were speaking Scissian, I would be... in the same vehicle?”

“Boat,” Jane corrected with a smile. “A specific type of water vehicle. You are learning some of our human slang.”

“Thank you. Mr MacDowell is good at explaining phrases and intent in human communication.”

“Always good for a communications officer,” Jane stated. “If you don’t mind - this is strictly voluntary - since MacDowell is so uncertain of her readiness, perhaps you could continue to probe her knowledge? If she continually satisfies someone of your rank, perhaps she won’t be so intimidated by questions from Mr Smythe.”

“I am willing, if you do not mind my temporarily changing to A shift?”

“As you like. Will you also move your yeoman to A shift?”

“I will leave Yellow Dog on B shift, to act as intermediary between me and my department heads.”

Intermediary? Can’t see how, she talks so little, but I won’t micro-manage my team. “Fine. You probably want to eat and go to bed, then. Now, why are you here instead of sick bay, doctor?”

“Wait just a moment, Takor. You might want to consult your home world medical people. I couldn’t find anything about this in the information I have about your race.”

Don’t like the sounds of that. Come to think of it, Duck was extremely distracted last night. Now he’s here. Definitely don’t like it. “Sit down, doctor, and don’t keep us in suspense.”

Drake sat down, as directed, but his frown didn’t bode well. “I wish I had answers, captain, but all I’ve really got is a big batch of worry.” She raised her eyebrows, and he went on. “Oberlin, from Laundry, was admitted to Sick Bay yesterday, complaining of..., well, lots of symptoms. As a nurse helped her into pajamas, she noticed spots on the patient’s torso, so that placed some type of measles at the top of our list.”

Measles doesn’t sound so bad. Had them as a kid. “How many types of measles are there?”

“Hundreds. Even more if you count the illnesses that aren’t measles, but mimic some of the symptoms, like skin blotches. So we took samples from the patient and sent them to lab to see what we had.”

“That’s what had you so pre-occupied during supper last night.”

“Right. The possibilities range from a couple days of mild illness for one person to... well, to quarantine. And possibly worse.”

Jane sat up straight. No captain wants to declare quarantine. There are stories- She pushed that thought away. “The lab results are back? What are we dealing with?”

Drake rubbed a hand along his jaw line. “Not sure. Yeah, the tests eliminated 90% of the possibilities, but not all I had hoped it would eliminate. Oberlin got worse, so she’s in isolation. And Udtoha from Sanitation came in with similar complaints. He’s in isolation, too.”

“How do you treat an illness when you don’t know what it is?”

“We’re treating the symptoms. And administering wide-range antibiotics. Maybe they’ll help with the original illness; maybe they’ll just keep secondary illnesses from settling in. Now we wait for the more specialized tests to be run.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Prepare to declare the Fireball quarantined,” Drake replied. “Out of the 4 remaining illnesses it could be, only one won’t require that. Takor, I sent the information on these 4 illnesses to your office computer. You can forward that to your home planet, see how vulnerable you might be.”

“If you have the ill people isolated...” the lizoid began.

Drake shook his head. “By the time they came to sick bay, the illness had been in their body for at least a day, probably longer, with ample opportunity to infect others. We try to mitigate the damage by placing them in isolation, but it’s like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped.”

Takor’s nictating membranes blinked. “Closing the door is intended to keep the... hoorssess inside the barn?”

“Exactly.” Drake studied the Scisson face. “Get some sleep. One thing I did learn about your species is that you are more susceptible to illnesses when you’re tired.”

“I am on my way,” Takor told him. “Captain?”

“You can go. Sweet dreams.”

Takor had risen to his feet and now hesitated. “Sweet?”

“Pleasant. I hope you have pleasant dreams.”

“Having dreams- rather, remembering one’s dreams - usually indicates illness. Therefore, I hope not.”

After Takor left, Jane turned back to her Chief Medical Officer. “How long will we be quarantined, Drake? The holiday celebration is a month away, with furlough scheduled shortly after that. Will we have to cancel the festivities? Orbit that furlough planet without any physical contact? And if so, would we have the manpower to magnetically haul in any supplies that get jettisoned for us?”

“Jane, I’ll have more information after I get the test results this afternoon. One of the 4 diseases is relatively easy to deal with, and won’t require quarantine. How long will be determined by how contagious it is. As will our ability to deal with it. For now, we should probably plan to continue with our normal activities as much as possible. That would help keep morale up as everybody waits to get sick.”

“Everybody? Doctor, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Drake cleared his throat. “One of the diseases we’re testing for could make this a plague ship. Takor is the only one who might live through it - mostly, Sciss and humans don’t share diseases - but he’d live the rest of his life alone on this ship.” Jane closed her eyes briefly as she accepted that possibility. Drake went on. “The next worse possibility is that everybody aboard gets ill in a relatively short time. Try to imagine everybody being ill at the same time, including all the doctors and nurses.”

“At least it wouldn’t last long,” said a soft voice.

“Blossom, this information is not to leave this office until I say so,” Jane stated, finally remembering her yeoman was at the corner desk.

“Of course, captain.”

“I’d better get back to sick bay.” Drake stood. “I’ll get you more information as soon as I can.” He left, worry already beginning to pale his skin.

Jane called up the quarantine declaration from the Space Fleet regulations, and then the plague declaration as well. She minimized them for now; she didn’t know what illness to name, and it wasn’t time for either of them yet. With a deep sigh, she tried to deal with the normal influx of reports.

“Captain?”

She looked up to see an off-duty security officer in her doorway. Oh, great. More problems? I can’t remember the last time he came up to see me. “Come in, Tall Bear. What can I do for you?”

“Could I speak with you?” His eyes veered toward the corner desk. “Alone?”

“Blossom, take a break.”

“Thank you, captain,” the yeoman intoned and left.

“Is there a problem?”

“Captain, because of certain... peculiarities in our chain of command on the Fireball, I’m sometimes not certain what’s expected of me. I’d like to ask a question.”

“Go ahead,” Jane told him, wondering if Winthrop had gotten out of hand. Again.

“Hypothetically,” Bear added.

“Okay. Ask.”

“Let’s suppose a certain entertainment activity had been introduced on the ship. The basic activity is not banned, but this particular... game, when hosted by a particular person, has been modified so that the result is not something fleet regulations - nor the ship’s captain - would approve of.”

Capac’s poker games? Was there a problem last night? Maybe Winthrop- “Does the captain know this game has been modified?”

Bear stared at her a moment, his face stony. “I don’t know.”

“I see. Go on.”

“Most of the crew knows the game’s rules when they agree to play, and being adults, they can make their own decisions. But let’s say one person did not know, and the host did not explain what she was agreeing to.” Jane winced involuntarily, but didn’t interrupt again. “In that instance, supposing I learned about it, what should I do? Normally, I would report the situation to my superior...”

“But that sounds like the kind of thing Winthrop would take advantage of,” she muttered.

“Yes,” he breathed. “So, in such a case, do I report straight to the captain? Deal with it as if I were Head of Security? Unless the game goes past midnight, I wouldn’t be on duty. If that happened, captain, how would you want it handled?”

I wonder how he handled it last night. Capac was on duty this morning, not in the brig. She considered the AmerInd. “Some captains walk a fine line,” she stated. “They stick to the regs when they need to, but as you say, one assumes crew members are adults. So long as nobody is hurt, and efficiency remains high, they might turn a blind eye to... indiscretions. Still, if a person doesn’t know the rules, they haven’t been allowed to make an informed decision, and no captain can turn a blind eye to that. In my case, I hope you would deal with the situation. Eliminate the game, or at least see that everyone who decides to play is aware what’s expected. In other words, since your superior is not doing his job, you have the right and the responsibility to handle such items.”

“Yes, captain.”

“I would hope that after you handled it, you would then inform your captain what had transpired.” Bear nodded slowly, and Jane let silence stretch between them for half a minute. “When did MacDowell discover it was strip poker?”

He looked up. “After she lost the first hand.”

“And then she left?”

He shook his head. “No, she’s too stubborn. Idiotic, even, since she has no interest in... Well, at least we were there to even the odds.”

“Who is ‘we’, and how did you even the odds?”

“Bugalu tried to talk sense into her. When he couldn’t, he sat down to play, so... another guy and I also sat in.”

“You participated?”

If he reddened, she couldn’t see it. “If one of us won, we wouldn’t claim her... we’d just let her leave. And Monroe was trying to lose, so-“

“If MacDowell had lost, she would have been naked!”

“True, but helping her fight her way out seemed a lot easier than dragging her out when she saw leaving during the game to be reneging on a promise to play.”

She stared at him in concern. “Some promises are too stupid to keep!”

“I know that, captain. I agree with you. But Mac doesn’t see it that way.”

“Oh, the idiocies of young women!” she spat. “How any of us make it to age 30 in one piece sometimes eludes me!” She took a calming breath. “I was willing to turn a blind eye to strip poker, as long as everybody knew that’s what they were playing!”

“Mac’s probably the only one who-“

“We can’t assume that,” she returned quickly. “Deal with it. How, I leave to you.”

“I did warn Capac last night.”

“Warning being all you could do, once you decided to participate. Reinforce that warning today. I can’t have the rules of that game posted around the ship, but all players must be aware of those rules before they agree to play!”

“Yes, captain.”

“And keep your eye on it. One more time, the slightest incident, and I want those games shut down! Understood?”

“Yes, captain.” He stood up. “Thank you, captain. That certainly clarifies my thoughts.”

She gave him a lop-sided grin. “You’re a good man, Tall Bear. You’ll make a fine officer, once you learn to think things through. In the meantime, feel free to ask any more ‘hypothetical’ questions you come up with.”

“Thank you, captain.”

He left, and she sank back into her chair. What a morning!