Star Trek The Original Series From History's Shadow by Dayton Ward Page B

all right?”
    Wainwright cleared his throat, looking across to where Airman First Class Allison Marshall sat behind her desk, staring at him over stacks of files, books, and other papers. The piles of paperwork, along with still more material crammed into desk drawers, filing cabinets, and even the adjacent office, had all but come to define her existence—and his. She was dressed in the female variant of the Air Force enlisted member’s service uniform, with a dark blue skirt and jacket over a light blue dress shirt, and a dark blue neck tab rather than the tie worn by her male counterparts. Her darkbrown hair was pulled back and secured in a small bun at the base of her neck.
    Drawing a deep breath, he shook his head. “It’s . . . nothing. Just some personal business.”
    “It’s Deborah, isn’t it, sir?” Marshall asked without batting an eye.
    You don’t talk to me, about anything. Is it because you can’t, or you just don’t want to?
    In most other circumstances, Marshall’s question would have been inappropriate, given their professional working relationship and Wainwright’s position as her superior officer. Still, the nature of their duty assignment and the conditions under which they often were forced to operate—long hours, traveling, and maintaining secrecy from family and friends—had seen to it that they had become close friends and even confidants. Until Marshall was assigned as his clerical assistant early the previous year, Wainwright had not had anyone with whom he could discuss his work except for other case officers, and they all had their own assignments and security directives to follow. Though his wife, Deborah, at first was put off by the notion of her husband traveling across the country with another woman, she never once raised any questions or suspicions that anything untoward might be occurring between him and Marshall.
    Please know that I love you, Jim, and I always will .
    Wainwright nodded. “I suppose I knew it was coming.” He folded the letter and returned it to the matching envelope he had found the previous evening on the kitchen table. Deborah and their son, Michael, had not been there when he came home after yet another trip to some other city for still another in a seemingly unending series of investigations. Earlier in the week, Deborah had broached the idea for herand Michael to go back to California to visit her parents for a while. Given Jim’s workload and the schedule he had been keeping in recent months—along with wishing to avoid an argument—he had raised no objections. Time apart would do them good, she had told him, which Wainwright had almost found humorous considering the long periods of time he was forced to be away from home, and Deborah’s letter had confirmed the California trip.
    The rest of her message, on the other hand, had hit him like a hammer.
    And it’s your own damned fault , he reminded himself.
    “If you don’t mind my saying so, sir,” Marshall offered, “I don’t think you’re being very fair to yourself.”
    Wainwright slid the envelope into his top desk drawer. “Military life’s hard on families, Marshall, and that’s before the military adds on a lot of extra baggage to carry around.” His wife, both before and after Michael’s birth, had endured her share of service-induced separations, beginning with the war. She had married him in a quiet, rushed ceremony just two nights before he shipped out for England in early 1944, and he had communicated with her only via letters for nearly a year afterward. Deborah had weathered his time away in superb fashion, occupying her days working in a factory near her family’s home in Sacramento. They enjoyed a delayed, extended honeymoon after his return before he settled into his postwar duties. In the fall of 1946, Michael entered their lives, and Wainwright now brought along his family to new assignments. Life continued in routine, even boring fashion as he worked at the base in