Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic Read Online Free PDF Page A

has ordered the Enterprise to divert to Vulcan and then Nisus before proceeding to Coriolanus.”
    Amanda’s blue eyes studied her son. “How late will we be?”
    “Six days.”
    “Not six-point-one-three-seven?”
    “Six-point-two-five-two. Mother, is it not illogical to be annoyed when Father or I give you a precise figure yet ask for such precision when we do not?”
    “No,” she replied with a shrug, “just Human. There.” She stood and put on her shoes, then took one of her usual flowing robes off a bench and wrapped herself in the voluminous folds.
    With that, Amanda was Spock’s mother as he was accustomed to her. With her silver hair piled atop her head, the heels of her shoes giving her added height, and the robe falling in vertical folds, she was once again tall, stately, dignified.
    “Sarek is in the computer lab,” Amanda told Spock, “helping one of the crew prepare for her astrophysicist’s examination.”
    “I know,” Spock said. It was the one thing he understood that his parents had in common. Both were teachers. Give either a willing student, and Sarek or Amanda would work patiently for hours, in perfect contentment.
    As Spock and Amanda left the exercise room, she asked, “I suppose you’ve already checked to see whether there is a way for us to get to Coriolanus on schedule?”
    “There is not.”
    Amanda smiled up at her son. “Then we shall simply enjoy a brief extension of your vacation with us. Why has the Enterprise been rerouted?”
    When Spock explained the medical crisis, she so bered. “Experts in interspecies medicine? Spock, what’s wrong?”
    “An epidemic. Dr. McCoy will brief command personnel in forty-one-point-seven minutes.”
    “Very well,” said Amanda. “I will send the news of our delay to Coriolanus. There is no reason to disturb your father until we know more.”
    Spock’s mother was not a telepath, but living on Vulcan she had had to learn to shield lest she broad cast her emotions to everyone in her vicinity.
    Even so, as Spock felt her mental shields shut him out, he knew exactly what she must be thinking.
    The intermingling of species, people living on plan ets they were not native to, even living in the artificial environments of starships and starbases, was some thing still new in the history of intelligent life in this galaxy. No one could predict the long-term effects; many of them were only now beginning to show themselves.
    Spock’s own mother, today the picture of health, had only a few months ago been dying of degenerative xenosis, a condition associated with leaving her native Earth and living for many years on Vulcan. The precise causes of the disease were not fully under stood, but at last there was a treatment for it. Aman da had been cured—permanently, they hoped—by Sorel and Corrigan, the Science Academy’s brilliant Vulcan/Human medical team.
    Spock had known the Vulcan healer and the Human doctor all his life, for he, the first Vulcan/ Human hybrid, had been the occasion of their first working together. They, like Spock, like his parents, like the Federation and Starfleet itself, were examples of what could be achieved when intelligent species learned to work together and rejoice in their differ ences.
    But only too often it appeared that nature objected. How many times had the Enterprise found empty outposts, like Psi 2000, where the entire research party had gone mad, killing themselves and one another? When the virus that had destroyed the research party was accidentally brought on board the Enterprise, it appeared for a time that they were never meant to go so far from the worlds where nature had first placed them.
    But the ingenuity of the Enterprise crew had saved them that time, and every other time … so far. That crew was assembled from all parts of the Federation.
    The silence between mother and son stretched all the way down the corridor. When they reached the turbolift, however, Amanda paused, saying, “Spock … you