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We may not know how ADF affects humans, but we do know that lack of rest lowers the resistance to any disease."
     
     
"Resistance," she said, almost absently.
     
     
"We're going to beat it, Christine." He said it with a conviction he did not feel. It might have convinced a layman but not a trained professional.
     
     
"Thanks for the bedside manner, Dr. McCoy." She smiled wanly at him. Then she began to process the tissue samples. "Leonard, I want to say something. I've enjoyed working with you all these years; you've been a good friend...."
     
     
Abruptly, she braced herself against the lab table. McCoy caught her elbow. "Christine!"
     
     
She said, very distinctly, as if it were the most important thing in the world, "Don't let me break those samples. You need them."
     
     
He took the single sample from her hand and laid it carefully on the lab bench. She nodded approvingly...then she slumped backward.
     
     
McCoy caught her and eased her to the floor, to check her with his sensors. "Quickfoot! Quickfoot!" The Eeiauoan was beside him with an awkward leap, her eyes round.
     
     
"First-stage coma," McCoy snapped, "help me get her onto that bench. I want a complete workup of her vital signs.... Don't argue with me, you damn fur-brained idiot! This hospital hasn't any facilities to handle a human in a coma- we'll have to send her up to the Flinn."
     
     
"Too ssoon," said Quickfoot; her accent made it sound like a wail. "Too ssoon for first-stage ccoma!"
     
     
"Too damn soon. God only knows how fast ADF works in a human. Pull your claws in, dammit, and help me!"
     
     
Together, they carried Christine Chapel to the bench. McCoy did his work swiftly, then transmitted her coordinates to the medship. As Christine Chapel vanished in the cold twinkling light of the transporter beam, McCoy felt a shudder run through his body- he knew he might never see her again. He reached a hand toward her in parting, but it was an empty gesture. She was gone.
     
     
Quickfoot had her tail in her hands. Bare of fur, almost ratlike, it was the most glaring evidence of the progression of ADF syndrome in Quickfoot's body.
     
     
As McCoy watched, she began to twist it viciously. "I gave her sscarf to cover head fur," said Quickfoot with a hissing wail. "She was asshamed, asshamed to have disease. I am asshamed."
     
     
"It's not your fault, Quickfoot," said McCoy in a weary voice. "We're doing all we can do." He sighed. "I'll have to call the Enterprise and tell Jim. Is there someplace private I can ?"
     
     
"You come," said Quickfoot, "Is my fault. I talk to your captain and transslator, private too. Come, musst hurry."
     
     
Having relieved both Spock and Uhura of their duties on the bridge to search for the location of the Eeiauoan homeworld, Jim Kirk felt it his duty to check their progress from time to time. He thought of it as giving them encouragement but he knew perfectly well that he sought rather than gave it.
     
     
So far, he had been disappointed. Now, however, he sensed that something had changed. Uhura's face was drawn with exhaustion but there was a spark in her eyes that had not been there before. She listened to her tapes with the sharpened concentration of a stalking cat.
     
     
Kirk couldn't put his finger on it, but Spock too seemed to be searching his data for something in particular.
     
     
"Any luck, Mr. Spock?"
     
     
Spock did not look up from his task. "Luck, Captain?"
     
     
"Have you found it?" He knew he shouldn't have mentioned luck to a Vulcan.
     
     
"Captain, making certain assumptions as to the date of the Eeiauoans' arrival on this world, the level of their interstellar technology and its possible range at that time, the direction and duration of their journey, we can place the homeworld of the Eeiauoans somewhere within the quadrant you are now seeing on the display screen."
     
     
"A quadrant, Mr. Spock! It would take years to search a quadrant for a single