Star Trek by Glenn Hauman

and the transporter platform filled with six patients and sickbeds—then they disappeared, to be replaced by another six. Here, then not, here, then not, over and over again in a slow motion strobing effect. It was entrancing.
    Lense looked over at Stevens, who was concentrating on the console and muttering under his breath. She got closer to listen, and heard him saying, “Yes, happy to see you here … no waiting, we’ll be right with you … just leave your payments up front … take two of these and call us in the morning …”
    Lense reached over tentatively and touched his arm. Stevens half-glanced down where she touched him, but went on with his tasks and mutterings. “Yes, turn your head and cough … Feeling run down? By what?”
    She hugged him then.
    Stevens didn’t respond, he just kept on working.
    She let go and turned to leave, and saw Captain Gold standing quietly in the back of the room. She missed him entirely—had he been there when she rushed in, or did he come in during all the excitement? She started to speak, but Gold held a finger to his lips, then pointed to the door.
    The two of them walked out together.
    Captain’s Personal Log, Stardate 53670.1.
The worst of it all has passed.
    It’s been two weeks since we released the antiviral regimen. We’ve been able to halt the spread of Sherman’s Plague. No new cases have been reported in the last ten days. We repaired much of the damage to the population. Fatalities have been, all things considered, very few—we couldn’t save about a half a percent of the population, they were too far gone. We also had to destroy a portion of the animal population, much to our regret. Luckily, this is a planet that remembers famines, and has prepared for it. And none of the grains were poisoned, so that’s a help.
    The real problems have been the secondary effects from lack of services, but Gomez, Corsi, and Duffy have been working long and hard to get them back up to snuff.
    Everybody is back on the ship. Gomez has requested that the next time I suggest combining an assignment with a shore leave, I should consider building a hot tub for the Founders’ home-world.
    And then there’s Dr. Lense. I ordered her to bed right after they started the transporter therapy—I told her that right now, the only thing to be doing was waiting, and I could do that as well as she could, but I couldn’t catch up on sleep for her. She slept for twenty hours, then she jumped right back into the fray, checking on reports from the planet, seeing how patients were responding, and commandeering the ship’s sensors to track the spread of the antivirus.
    She took to the authority much better than I thought she would have. We talked about it, in what I believe will be the last conversation with her I will have to record.
    TRANSCRIPT BEGINS
G: Come.
L: Good afternoon, Captain.
G: Good afternoon, Doctor. Water for you? Something to nosh on?
L: Tangerine juice, if you don’t mind.
G: Here you go.
L: Thank you. I have the final report on the crew. We were able to keep all of our crew free of the cure virus. As we suspected, many of them were indeed infected, a few weren’t. I’m still trying to figure out why. I suspect a different regime of childhood vaccinations. But it’ll take a while to figure out.
G: So we’ve seen the last of Sherman’s Plague?
L: Except for two test tubes full of it. One’s down there, in the main medical facility. The other’s up here in sickbay.
G: High-level containment fields?
L: No, a jar on my desk. I’m saving it for the holiday party.
G: Cute. Does that mean we’re ready to release the … what would you call it, a counter-chromosome?
L: Already in the works. I want another forty-eight hours, then we can release it.
G: And there should be no side effects from that?
L: None whatsoever.
G: I’m glad to hear it. Speaking of which,