Title: Doctor's Logs 36 Author: Istannor Series: TOS Part: 1/1 Rating: [PG 13] Codes: Summary: Jim Kirk and the Enterprise are surveying a watery paradise when all hell breaks loose and the Captain and his shuttle disappear. The shuttlecraft is recovered intact with all the crew. . .except James Kirk. McCoy sits on the Ship and fumes, while the search continues for Kirk. The previous Logs are on my webpage. Disclaimer: These are the characters of Paramount and Viacom, they own them I only check 'em out from the library. I promise to bring 'em back. Doctor's Logs 36 It's been 18 hours and 36 minutes since we recovered the other members of the shuttle crew. That means Jim has 22 minutes of air left. Needless to say, I ain't happy. Spock and the security team have done everything except swim every square inch of the area around the shuttle. There should be a tracer on the EVA suit, but we can't find the signal. Uhura has boosted all of our receivers far past Federation specifications. Still nothing. The sensors are not picking up any human presence, nor ion traces from a powered suit. Spock hasn't returned to the ship at all. I'm not sure he's eaten or slept since well before Jim disappeared. I have talked to M'Benga a few times and he says the atmosphere down there is beyond tense. Giotto is driving Security, Spock is driving Giotto and Jim is still missing. M'Benga says the interference to subspace communication is getting worse, too, and they have no damn idea why. Spock sure as hell isn't going to listen to me now, especially after our last argument. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help. Maybe I need to look at those signals again. They're definitely biological in nature and maybe they have something to do with where Jim is. Jim has 7 minutes of air left, maybe less. It depends on how far down he is in the water and what the water temp is and how fast he's swimming, or how hard he's struggling. I've got to think. I reviewed all of our reports we generated on the recovered crewmembers. Let me talk this through and see how it sounds. 1. We lost seven crewmembers over an area with a strange biologic pattern that is wide, strong and resembles nothing more than living coral. 2. There is no coral anywhere near the signal or the place where we lost the shuttle. 3. The folks we recovered were in a deep REM State that required drugs to arouse them. 4. There are no ill affects of that state, at least none I can find. 5. Jim is missing. 6. One EVA suit is missing. 7. I just finished reviewing the Bioscans of all the returned crew, and the only other thing I found was a slightly slowed heart rate, a slightly lower than normal body temperature, and a 10% decrease in their metabolic rates. 8. Spock has found no trace of the EVA suit at any level up to 2500 meters. 9. If Jim were dead, the suit would turn off, float to the surface and emit a tiny signal. 10. This is starting to itch. I feel something, something . . .. Yes! If Jim is alive, he has to be lower than 2500 meters below the surface and his metabolism, body temperature, and heart rate must have slowed even more than the folks we recovered. The suit would say he's alive, but the readings would confuse its programming. The suit would maintain its position until all life signs were absent. Maybe the deeper he goes, the more his signals and life signs would resemble whatever it is we are getting from that area. Suppose it's something biologic, a hive mind or a conscious plant, or . . .I don't know, something big. So, where the hell is he? Think, McCoy, dammit! Let's assume he's so deep and his readings are so close to the ones we were investigating, that we aren't picking him up. If he merged his readings with the ones we were getting, there would be no way to separate him out from the other noise. If he's even deeper in REM, almost suspended, but with their bio readings, he would look like them, or it, on the monitors? I bet he'd be indistinguishable from the rest of the readings. So, if that's the case, he'd be even slower, colder, and more deeply unconscious than the crew I've already seen. What other attribute could we use to separate him out as a human from the background noise? Who's that?