Where No Witch Has Gone Before

Chapter Three

Edmundsson crouched in the Jefferies tube for a minute, trying to make sense of what he saw. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before making a show of climbing the last few feet again.

"What's going on here?" he said as soon as he hit the deck.

Hendricks looked at him with a blank look on his face.

Llewellyn looked at Hendricks, then turned to Edmundsson. "We're not sure, sir. We heard a hissing noise. It got louder, then we heard some pops and the console fell onto Randell. Hendricks and I managed to left it off of him.

Edmundsson looked at where the console lay on the deck and the gap it left in the monitoring station when it fell, and swore softly. When the medical team arrived with a gurney, he stepped out of the way so they could work on Randell.

The chief engineer looked at Llewellyn, who was watching the medics attend to Randell. His brows were drawn together. "Okay. Let's go back to Engineering, and we can get out of the medics' way. Once you turn in your incident reports, go ahead and take the rest of the shift off."

---

Edmundsson took a different route than Hendricks and Llewellyn, one that took him to Sick Bay. Dr. Hu was already preparing for Randell's arrival, but Dr. Ayer was able to see him after a short wait.

"I would say good afternoon, Commander, but I heard about Ensign Randell. Are you here to wait for him? If so, it could be quite a while, from what I've heard."

"No, I'm afraid I'd just be in the way. I'm actually here about something else. I think I might be seeing things."

"What kind of things?"

"When I got to the Emergency Engineering Control Room, before I climbed out of the Jefferies tube, I saw the console that had fallen on Randell moving. It was off the floor, and moving. Not very fast, and just far enough to get it off of him, but definitely moving. And I think that Ensign Llewellyn was using a wand to move it."

"Let's run a few tests, then, see what we can find out." Ayer patted the biobed.

Edmundsson hopped onto the biobed and lay back as Ayer turned on the monitors. The doctor drew a vial of blood with the hypospray and placed it in the analyzer.

Ayer watched the lights on the monitor for a minute before he slid the cranial monitor over Edmundsson's head. "Just relax, Commander. This won't take but a couple of minutes." He worked in silence as the monitors and scanners beeped, blinked, and whined. Finally, he turned the cranial scanner off and slid it back into its housing.

"Well, I don't see anything unusual, nothing that would indicate that you hallucinated. Nothing neurological, no traces of any known drugs or toxins. As near as I can tell, you saw what you saw."

"Well, thank you for humoring me, anyway."

"Any time. I think you should put it in your report anyway, or at least your log. Even though we're deep in Federation territory now, we will be in unknown space soon enough. Anthing unusual could be important, no matter how curious it may seem."

---

Several hours later, Edmundsson sat in his office, re-reading both Llewellyn's and Hendricks's reports yet again. The two reports were practically identical, up until the point where the console fell onto Randell. Both Hendricks and Llewellyn described how they were able to shift the console off of Randell, although Llewellyn's was clearer.

Neither one mentioned what Edmundsson saw.

"Sick Bay to Edmundsson." Dr. Hu sounded exhausted.

"Edmundsson. How did it go, Doctor?"