Star Trek: The Original Series: The More Things Change Read Online Free PDF Page B

The higher resolution of the tricorder made it clear the secondary brainwaves weren’t echoes; they didn’t always mimic the primary waves but sometimes went off on their own. That triggered a memory, and Chapel realized that the overlapping brainwave patterns resembled scans taken of a Vulcan and another person during a mind-meld.
    But that created more questions than answers. Is this normal for a Trill? Or is this a symptom of some sort of neurological disorder in Audrid? If so, why is she presenting with abdominal pain? Chapel frowned as she leaned over Dax. “In for a penny, in for a pound?” she said aloud, trying to convince herself to go further in order to properly treat the woman.
    With a resigned sigh, she held the tricorder over Dax’s abdomen and ran a cursory scan. The results bordered on nonsensical. She reset the tricorder and scanned again. The results were the same. Similar to the dual brainwave patterns, she was actually getting dual life signs. Chapel resisted the urge to bang the tricorder on its side a few times to knock some sense into it. But maybe there was a reasonable explanation for this. Perhaps the Trill nervous system was different from most humanoids’. Maybe their spinal column housed more complex neural structures. If there were some sort of significant neural cluster in their lower spine, that could explain all of Dax’s symptoms as well as the aberrant scans.
    Chapel decided to run a more detailed scan that she hoped would confirm or refute her theory. After that, she would decide how far she could pursue diagnosis and treatment. She had to keep Dax alive until they reached the Troyval —and if she had to compromise the Trills’ tradition of medical privacy, it was always easier to ask forgiveness than permission, especially when faced with an unconscious and failing patient.
    “Here we go.” Chapel ran the scan and watched wide eyed as the results indicated a large, wormlike life-form inhabiting Dax’s abdomen.

Chapter 4
    Chapel let the tricorder slip from her hand and fall to the bed. It rolled off the edge and clattered to the deck. She left it where it landed and went to sit in the jump seat, staring across the cabin at Dax still strapped into the bed. The fact that Dax hadn’t simply admitted to having some sort of parasite infesting her body implied that this was, if not normal, at least not unheard of among the Trill. So is that thing causing her symptoms? Or —and this was an unnerving idea— are Audrid’s health problems unrelated to the creature living inside her, because all Trill have these things? If they’re hiding that from the rest of the Federation, it would certainly explain their taboo about non-Trill doctors.
    Chapel laughed nervously, then clamped a hand over her mouth. She couldn’t let Spock suspect anything. His scientific curiosity wouldn’t let up. It was bad enough she had made the decision to do the scans; after what she had discovered, maintaining doctor-patient privilege was more important than ever.
    She got out of the jump seat and picked up the tricorder. She erased the scans from the screen, then tapped in an additional code to overwrite the device’s memory with random data, further ensuring patient confidentiality, especially if the instrument fell into the hands of their attackers. If Spock was right, and he usually was, they could still end up being boarded or worse. Chapel followed the same procedure with the hand scanner, then stowed both items. Then she turned back to her patient, who appeared to be resting comfortably. She put her hands to her cheeks and rubbed her face as she looked down at Dax’s abdomen. Again she noted how flat it was, though the parasite was at least the size of Chapel’s two fists put together. The lack of external indications of its presence implied the mysterious creature was inhabiting a natural body cavity, which in turn raised the possibility of coevolution. If the Trill had evolved a perfect space in