'Attention, all personnel,' the PA blared.

Leila looked up from her embroidery pattern. 'What's going on?' she asked Dianne, who was sitting on the end of her bed.

Di shrugged. 'Beats me. You've been on this ship longer than I have.'

'What are you talking about? You built the damn thing.'

'I said attention, all personnel. This is the Captain speaking.'

Ratbat stared at her closet. 'Iff ungh iff oo ont?' she asked indistinctly.

Rachael took the coathanger out of Ratbat's mouth and threw it on to the bed. 'Shall we try that one more time, but in English? I don't think the universal translator can cope with gibberish.'

'I said, which one did you want? It sounded perfectly clear to me.'

'The green satin one. Callum and I have a date tonight, and I want to wear something ultra special.'

'Eh, why are you kids dating? I thought married people weren't supposed to go on dates. Aren't you supposed to sit around disagreeing over decorating and whose turn it is to leave the toilet seat up?'

Rally smiled at her. 'One day, Ratti, you might just manage to keep that smart-arse mouth of yours shut.'

'Don't bet on it.'

Rachael took the dress Ratbat had unearthed. 'Thanks. I'll have it back tomorrow.'

As Ratbat watched the tall brunette leave, she wondered briefly what Euan was doing fiddling with the PA system.

'As of today, people, our shakedown time is officially finished, and we now have a mission. So, to celebrate, tonight we will have a special screening of that movie classic, Godzilla Eats the Bronx, in 10-Foreplay at twenty-one hundred hours.'

'Cool! I love that movie!' Suzy said, clapping her hands in glee.

'Movie? What movie?' Graham said, his head partially obscured in a large cupboard with 'Garham's keep out' written on it. 'Damn. I think Leila's still got some of my underwear.'

Suzy winced. 'Out of respect for my sanity, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that.'

Graham sat on one of the benches. 'It's all perfectly innocent, really.'

'Sure, Gra. I believe you.' Suzy smiled. 'I'm glad Starfleet let us keep this ship. I like it.'

Graham nodded. 'And the new crew is pretty cool, too. Nice to have a few new faces around the place.'

'Oh, really?' Suzy raised her eyebrows suggestively. 'Any new face in particular, Gra?'

Graham shut the cupboard. 'Now, Suzy, you know perfectly well that faces are the last thing I look at. When there are important things like breasts and backsides to be ogled, do you think I ever get as far as looking at faces?'

'Right, I get your point. So have any of the new breasts and buttocks on the ship caught your attention?'

'The new conn officer isn't bad.'

Suzy was, for once, shocked. 'Sam? I didn't know you had a thing for him, Gra!'

Graham waved hasty hands in Suzy's direction. 'No, no. I've known Sam for years, and he really isn't my type. I mean, I'm a Scorpio, he's a Cancer – it's just bad news.[1] No, I'm talking about that Welles girl Euan got transferred to us.'

'Oh, right.' Suzy nodded. 'She's the one who was flying the Kournikova before. She was kind of nice... a bit quiet, sort of, but very pretty.'

'Exactly.' Graham stood up. 'Let's go get my underwear back off Leila. And if we happen to run into any cute conn officers, well, who knows?'

'Captain Bowen, Lieutenant Welles was meant to take up a position on the Saratoga-B at the end of this week. May I ask exactly why you decided to have her transferred to the Compromise?'

Euan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 'Well, you know, sir, she's quite pretty. And when we were working together on the Excalibur we got on quite well, you know.'

'I see. And did it occur to you that wanting to ask people out for dates is not sufficient grounds to grant a transfer?'

Euan's eyebrows shot up. 'Is this the same Commander Riker who had Lieutenant Flaherty's promotion cancelled so you could get her in bed?'

On the screen, Commander Riker looked very uncomfortable. 'Just get her back to the Saratoga where she belongs, are we clear? And let's not go into Lieutenant Flaherty, now or ever.'[2]

'Of course, sir.[3] I was just wondering... you know, if you succeeded.'

'I am Commander William T Riker of the starship Enterprise, and I do not kiss and tell!'

'Since when?'

'This is ridiculous. I expect Lieutenant Welles to be back on the Saratoga by the end of the week. Riker out.' The portly commander adjusted his uniform and tried not to look guilty as he deactivated the comm system.

Euan chuckled to himself, then tapped his badge. 'Bowen to Welles.'

'Welles here, sir,' her voice replied.

'Could you please join me in my ready room?'

'Certainly. Sam, take over.'

As the door slid open to reveal Wade Welles's petite frame, Euan watched Lieutenant Ogborn settle comfortably into the conn console and slot a tape into the bridge stereo system. Sam, the last of the great stereo nazis, always maintained that if he was driving, he was in charge of the music.

'Ah, Lieutenant Welles,' Euan said, trying to maintain his commanderial air as the melodious sounds of Blur at full volume tried to come through the door after her.

'You wanted to see me, sir?' Wade was still slightly hesitant in the captain's presence after the incident where she'd run into him wandering around with no pants on.

'Yes, indeed. I'm afraid, Lieutenant, that your transfer to this ship has been rescinded, and you must report to the Saratoga-B by the end of the week.'

Wade shrugged. 'I thought there was something funny about those orders.'

'Funny, Lieutenant? What was wrong with them?'

'Well, when Admiral Bowen signs something, he doesn't usually sign himself as "Dad".'

'Uh... yes he does,' Euan covered badly. 'He thinks it's a good way of developing a family atmosphere with the lower ranks.'

'Right. I'm sure.' Wade nodded reassuringly. 'So, where's the Saratoga at the moment?'

'Doing routine survey work along the border of the Neutral Zone. God knows why. Anyway, Admiral Crosby has just closed a new mining arrangement with the Romulans, so she wants us to check out the diotonium mining possibilities on some pissweak asteroid in the region, so we can drop you off.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'And... uh... we have quite a nice bar on the ship, you know. Would you like to...'

'No thanks, Captain. I'm planning a quiet night in.'

As the lieutenant exited his ready room, Euan sighed. There just didn't seem to be anyone who wanted to date him when he wanted to date them. Maybe he should go back to accidental assignations.

Graham was pleased with himself. He'd embarrassed Leila no end when he'd asked for his underwear back in front of Dianne – and then she'd actually dug it out for him. It was a double success as far as he was concerned.

He plonked the bag down on the scanner table. Thus far the Angels had spent most of their time removing the more sophisticated medical equipment which the previous occupant of this sickbay had used, and so had taken the afternoon off. He had the entire medical bay to himself. This called, in his book, for loud music and suggestive dancing on the bio-beds.

'Computer, play Graham twenty six, track seven,' he requested.

'Unable to comply.'

'Huh?' He looked puzzled. 'What's wrong with it?'

'Due to an unforseen practical joke, that track is no longer the same one it used to be,' the computer answered politely.

'Right... OK, well, if I ask you to play it anyway, what track would I hear?'

'Greg Champion, I Made A Hundred in the Backyard at Mum's.'

Graham sighed. 'OK, so what's selection forty one, track six?'

'Greg Champion, You Can Get Arrested for That.'

'And what about selection nineteen, track five?'

'Greg Champion, Santa Claus Has Got a New Truck.'

'Computer, would I be right in thinking that the perpetrator of this practical joke was Commander Sigma?'

'Affirmative.'

'Right. She's dead.' Graham viciously punched the bag of underwear across the medical bay. 'Where's that laxative gas...?'

Fully intending to pump a large portion of the gas into Commander Sigma's bedroom, Graham paused in the act of loading it into the environmental systems. 'Computer, would attacking a fellow officer with a potentially embarrassing but ultimately harmless laxative gas be considered a petty, immature act?'

'Affirmative,' the computer responded, somehow managing to sound disapproving.

'Good,' said Graham, and continued to do it.

Humming to himself,[4] he slotted the housing over the canister and activated the dispersal system. 'Right, Sigma,' he muttered to himself. 'Let's see you laugh this one off.'

'Stop! Stop it!' a voice shrieked behind him.

Graham spun around. 'Listen, Ratti, I was just...'

There was nobody there.

'Hum. Oh well.' He turned back to the empty canister of laxative gas, and promptly knocked it over.

'Shit,' he muttered, and knelt down to pick it up from under the scanner table.

'No! Stop! Stop it, please!' an unearthly voice screamed.

He jumped up.

'What the fuck...?'

Lieutenant Prideaux stood before him, her face distorted in a howl of pure anguish. She reached out a hand toward him.

And vanished.

Graham dashed along the corridor toward section twelve, where he knew Eliane's quarters were. He just had to find out if she was OK. The look on her face was stuck in his memory like a splinter, and he needed to know that there was nothing wrong.

'Eliane!' he shouted, banging on her door. It was locked.

'Computer, emergency medical override. Henstock, Graham Charles, clearance code Gonzo 3687 rubber chicken eggflip.'

'Access granted,' the computer replied.

'Eliane!' he yelled again, bursting into her room...

...and wishing that he hadn't.

'Get out of here, Henstock!' she snapped, pulling the sheet around her and trying to look dignified. Ensign Clarke looked alarmed, and promptly fell out of the bed.

'Sorry.' Graham was momentarily nonplussed, but rallied magnificently. 'You weren't just in sickbay in an atrocious amount of pain, were you?'

'Graham, I am going to say this once, and it's going to be very clear and precise.'

'Yes?'

'Get out!'

'OK. Sorry.'

Outside in the corridor, Graham considered the situation. He knew he hadn't imagined the screaming woman in sickbay. But he also knew (from copious experience) that it was extremely unlikely that Eliane had managed to be in sickbay and then not five minutes later in her quarters doing the horizontal watusi.

'Mm. Odd.'

He wandered back to the medical bay, deep in thought.

'Computer, access scanner reports. Is there a record of any physical presence in sickbay, apart from mine, in the last ten minutes?' he asked.

'Negative,' the computer replied.

'What about any energy readings?'

'Please specify.'

'Umm... well, holograms? Um, transporters? That sort of thing, you know.'

'Negative,' the computer answered.

'Scan the area around the scanner table for any strange readings.'

'Working.'

'Good.'

Graham drummed his fingers nervously on the scanner table while the computer finished its search. The image of Eliane's terrified face wouldn't leave his mind, and he had an acute desire to find out exactly what was wrong.

'Scan complete,' said the computer. 'Residual psionic energy signature located.'

'What does that mean? No, don't bother.'

Graham frowned pensively, because he had a pretty damn good idea exactly what it meant.

'Graham to Captain Bowen,' he said, tapping his comm badge.

'Euan here.'

'Euie, I think we've got a little problem down here in sickbay.'

'A ghost?'

'Sort of, yeah.' Graham shrugged. 'It's not the first one I've encountered. Remember that weird woman who used to wander round the Erindale Theatre whenever we did a 5 o'clock matinee? And then there's Fuck Knows. You remember him, don't you?'

Euan nodded. 'I guess.'

'Excuse me,' Ruth interrupted. 'Some of us are listening from the cheap seats. What the hell is Fucknose?'

'When we were techs in Canberra, we had to rig the Bogong theatre a lot. There was a ghost in there who used to throw lights, unset the ladders, dismantle the scaffolding while I was standing on it... that sort of thing,' Graham explained.

'And the unusual name?'

'That's easy, isn't it Ruthie? The spanner's gone missing. Who took it? Fuck knows. The ceiling fell down. Why was that? Fuck knows.'

'He actually set fire to the theatre at one point as well,' Carmen added. 'Luckily Euan fell through the roof and put it out.'

'Yeah,' said Euan sarcastically. 'Lucky.'

'Right. I get the idea.' Ruth stood up. 'Is there any reason for me to be here at all?'

Euan looked at her, open-mouthed. 'You threatened to cut off personal parts of my body if I didn't let you come to this briefing!'

'I've changed my mind. You're boring.'

'If we need advice on how to blow up an insubstantial being, I'll be sure to let you know,' Euan called after her departing figure.

'Don't piss her off. Remember what happened last time?' Carmen cautioned.

Euan frowned. 'The concussion, or the traction?'

'Both.'

'No.'

'Whatever.'

Ratbat spoke up for the first time at the meeting. 'Listen, Gracie, your sickbay is definitely part of the mirror Compromise. When we made that - this - ship our new home, we knew that we had a few unknown quantities on our hands. Whatever upgrades we make, this thing still hasnae had the happiest of pedigrees, so there's bound to be some skeletons in the closet.'

'Skeletons don't bother me so long as they stay in the closet,' Graham said. 'I can't have Eliane popping up screaming in my sickbay every ten minutes. It'd distract me from other activities with the nurses.'

'Like you'd notice her,' Ratbat muttered.

'Fuck off,' suggested Graham.

'Why don't you start by figuring out what kind of ghost she is?' Euan suggested.

'And how do you propose I do that?' Graham retorted. 'It's not as if there's a "What Ghost is That?" book just lying around the place.'

'Actually, I think there's one in the data file somewhere. By Stanley Crombunkle, I think,' Ratbat interrupted.

'There would be,' Graham sighed. 'OK, I'll get on it. But I'm gonna be very busy so if anyone needs medically looking at, they're going to have to ask Lieutenant Wylie.'

'Do I detect a degree of bitterness?' Ratbat asked, amused.

'No, of course not,' Graham shot back.

'And defensiveness?'

'Fuck off,' he reminded her.

'You're mad because she and the other Angels got promoted, aren't you?'

'Not in the slightest!' he said, leaping on to his chair dramatically. 'It's just that in my world, people wouldn't get promoted to be almost as good as their superiors just because they happen to go off and get extra training!' He jumped on to the table and marched up and down it, much to the annoyance of the others. 'In my world, there would just be an endless stream of exceptionally highly qualified and babelicious people there to serve my every whim, and they wouldn't go off getting promoted just to spite me!'

'Graham,' Carmen interjected as politely as possible, 'what off Earth makes you think Nicole got promoted to spite you?'

'She said so!'

Ratbat sighed. 'Why do I get the feeling that this meeting is over?'

A cruel thought occurred to Graham as he got down off the table. 'Why don't you go back to your quarters, Ratti? I left you a lovely surprise.'

Ratbat eyed him suspiciously. She knew there was a trick in there somewhere, but wasn't quite sure what was going on. 'Yeah, I might.'

As the four exited the conference room, Graham hung behind Ratbat slightly. '...and when the day was done, I'd made a hundred in the backyard at Mum's,' he sang softly.

'What?' Ratbat asked.

'Nothing.'

Graham was poring over Stanley Crombunkle's definitive work on spectral identification, when there was a chime at the sickbay door. This was rather strange – nobody normally bothered knocking at all on the Compromise. 'What?' he asked without looking up.

The door slid open. 'Sorry to bother you, Commander, I was looking for Nurse Stephens,' a voice asked.

'Try 10-Foreplay,' Graham said. 'She was going to chug fifteen pints and have a target-practice urinating competition with Nick.'

'Um. Maybe I'll just catch up with her later.'

Graham looked up from his study to see Wade Welles about to leave sickbay. 'Wait! Don't leave. D'you want a drink?'

'What?' she asked.

'I mean... well, you're new here. Why don't I give you the grand tour? Get you used to the place, that sort of thing.'

'What the hell is it with this ship?' she asked. 'It's worse than the Excalibur! There are a total of about seven people on this ship that haven't asked me out so far!'

Graham's face fell. 'So that's a no, then?'

Wade paused for a moment, and then smiled at him. 'Not necessarily,' she said. 'But I'm not staying here for long. I've got to report to the Saratoga by the end of the week.'

'That's a shame.'

'What are you reading?'

Graham handed her the padd. 'Stanley Crombunkle. Ghosts, Spirits and Poltergeists: A Spotter's Guide.'

Wade grinned. 'He's the world authority on just about everything except giving sensible names to books.'

'You're not wrong,' Graham replied. 'So, how about that tour?'

'Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!'

Wade dropped the padd. 'What the fuck is that?'

Graham sighed and turned around. Eliane stood in the same spot as before, holding out a hand defensively.

'Stop!' she screamed. 'Go away!'

And, as before, she vanished.

Wade stood in shock, shaking slightly. Graham, on the other hand, had seen it enough to become nonchalant.

'That,' Graham said. 'Would be our resident ghost. Hence the research.'

'How awful!' said Wade. 'Do you know her?'

'It's Eliane. Lieutenant Prideaux from security. But it's not her her, because, in this universe at least, she's not dead.'

'Interesting.' Welles sat down in front of the computer. 'Shall we see if we can't figure it out?'

Graham stood uncertainly for a moment. 'You want to help me?' he asked.

Wade nodded. 'I'm actually a science officer. I was only acting at conn because apparently your last conn officer resigned quite suddenly.'

'Yeah, Terri got the shits big time and stormed off.' He shrugged. 'Terrible, but that happens.'

'So...' Wade looked expectant. 'What have you got so far?'

10-Foreplay was quite crowded that evening. The assembled punters had gathered to consume large amounts of alcohol, watch a film, and heckle.

On the whole, there was nothing really wrong with Godzilla Eats the Bronx. Indeed, there was something refreshing about the classically bad stop-motion animation. There was a strangely honest aspect to the fact that the string holding the monster up was quite clearly visible. But for all that, Graham didn't find it particularly amusing. It could have had something to do with Suzy explaining why this film was in fact not accurate in its representation of the famous Japanese monster rather loudly in his ear, but he had a feeling it was more to do with the screaming woman who periodically popped up in sickbay.

He sighed as a toy bus was greedily devoured by a plastic dinosaur, and tried to think about the problem in a rational and scientific manner.

There were a lot of different types of ghosts, according to Crombunkle's research. They turned up for a host of different reasons, and were notoriously hard to deal with once they had installed themselves in a particular place. Fuck Knows fell pretty neatly into Crombunkle's category of malevolent poltergeist, a spirit that tried to disrupt activities in a place which it had once inhabited, for no obvious reason other than discorporeal boredom. This was, Graham knew all too well, one of the more irritating types of ghost. But Fuck Knows, for all the stress he had caused, had never actually physically manifested himself in the way that Eliane was doing. This defined her as another, more tricky type of spirit. Graham had no real idea why she should be showing up in sickbay, and Crombunkle maintained that the best way to deal with spirits of this kind was to get to know them. And given that the ghost which inhabited his sickbay was from a parallel universe, Graham had a feeling that this was not going to be an easy task.

'Welles to Commander Henstock,' his comm badge beeped.

Graham looked around, surprised. For the first time, he registered that the young conn officer wasn't in the bar with them.

'Henstock here,' he said, tapping the badge.

'I think I might have some clues as to what your ghost is doing in sickbay. Could you join me down here, please?'

Graham gave Suzy a suggestive wink. 'Duty calls, I'm afraid,' he said. 'A cute chick has just called me to go to her aid.'

Suzy slid her arm around her wife's waist. 'Get that all the time, Gra,' she replied.

Graham found Wade on her hands and knees with a medical tricorder, scanning, for some reason, along the wall, near where the bulkhead joined the floor.

'Lieutenant,' Graham said. 'Do you mind if I ask what the hell you're up to?'

Wade looked around. 'Thanks for coming down, Commander,' she said. 'Come have a look at this.'

He knelt down beside her. 'What am I looking at? And call me Graham.'

'This,' she pointed to the tricorder. 'There's quite a big plasma conduit under the floor here, probably to power all the medical equipment. All that plasma makes it hard to get an accurate reading, but if I filter out some of the delta band radiation... there.'

'An organic compound?' Graham's forehead wrinkled. 'Why would that be in the plasma conduit?'

'I have a theory, but I can't get to it to see. I need your authorisation to deactivate the plasma conduit to find out what it is.'

'Yeah... yeah,' Graham said, lost in thought.

'Commander?'

'What?'

'Could you deactivate the plasma conduit please?'

'Oh. Sure.'

Graham tapped his badge. 'Sickbay to the bridge.'

'Ensign Boyd here,'

Graham sighed. 'Belinda, would I be right in thinking that you're the only person on the bridge at the moment?'

'Yes, you would.'

'So in theory, if I was to ask for command level authorisation to shut off one of the plasma conduits in section 36 alpha, you would actually have to ask me if you were allowed to do it.'

'I suppose so.'

'OK. Well, just letting you know that I'll be deactivating the plasma conduit down here. Any problems with that?'

'Go right ahead, sir.'

'Thanks.' Graham deactivated the comm channel and winked at Lieutenant Welles. 'You've got to do things by the book around here,' he said.

'Right,' she replied sarcastically. The week she'd spent on a runabout with a portion of the Compromise crew had given her definite ideas about which book they did things by.

With the plasma conduit deactivated, Graham opened a panel in the wall which accessed one of the myriad jeffries tubes that ran through the ship like arteries. Wade crawled inside and opened the protective housing on the now-defunct plasma conduit.

'Do you see anything?' asked Graham from where he was holding a torch for her.

'There's quite a bit of organic material here stuck behind one of the supports,' Wade's muffled voice came out. 'Pass me a dish of some sort, will you?'

It was a sorry blackened mess which Wade eventually extracted from the conduit. 'I'm going to have to run a few tests on this to find out exactly what it is, but I'm afraid there's a high probability that it's all that remains of our extra-dimensional Miss Prideaux.'

'Unggh...' Graham swayed for a second, then sat down hard on one of the bio beds.

Wade put down the dish. 'Are you all right, Graham?'

'I'm fine. Just a bit... euw. I don't believe I was going to move into a sickbay that had body bits in it.'

Somewhat to Graham's surprise, she put an arm around his shoulders. 'It's probably a bit of a jolt,' she said sympathetically.

He leaned against her. 'Well, having a ghost popping up in sickbay is a bit disturbing, and now... well, I've got her mortal remains on the bench over there... it's a little bit gross, that's all.'

Wade gave him a friendly pat. 'Now that we've got them, we should figure out what to do with them.'

'Probably giving them some form of last rites wouldn't go astray. I'll get Val down here. She's meant to be able to do all that stuff.'

Val was fairly sanguine about being disturbed on a Saturday night, although the same could not be said for Suzy, who had been dragged away from an interesting discussion with Niki.[5]

'So, you want me to lay this soul to rest by giving the remains a decent send off, yes?' Val asked.

Graham nodded. 'Get her out of my sickbay is all I ask.'

Suzy, who already had the appropriate paperwork filled out, presented Val with a padd. 'All the necessary speeches, plus your inhumation in space authorisation, death certificate to be signed by the presiding medical officer - that's you, Graham... it's all here. Should take about ten minutes, then we can get back to our evening.'

'Right,' said Val brightly.

After the ceremony, which was a little hurried but no less effective, Graham took a look around his sickbay and smiled in satisfaction.

'I feel better about this place already,' he said.

Wade smiled at him. 'Good. Now, how about that drink?'

The next morning Graham's new sickbay had its first customer. Or customers, to be completely accurate, because there were fifteen of them, all in various stages of alcohol poisoning from the extra-strong Klingon-style margaritas Emma had been mixing in the bar the previous night.[6]

As the Angels moved systematically through the casualties, Lieutenant Ogborn sighed, and tried to ignore the pain in his skull. He'd just persuaded the pink elephants to go and tread on the head of Ruth, who had herself only just got rid of the tweeting bluebirds, when they were all disturbed by a rather odd apparition. It was Graham, dancing.

'Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? Just like me, they long to be close to you,' he warbled, twirling on one toe.

'Graham, shut up or I will hurt you,' Ruth muttered.

Graham, not to be dissuaded, picked up the lab skeleton and started to waltz with it. 'On the day that you were born the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true...' he crooned.

So intent was he on the dance, in fact, that when his partner disappeared in a blast of phaser fire he was quite nonplussed for a moment, till he noticed the expression on Ruth's face.

'Got a bit of a hangover, Ruthie?'

'I think one of us is going to die very soon, so if I were in your shoes I'd make damn sure it wasn't the woman with the gun,' she retorted.

'You're not going to die. A quick shot of B12 and you'll be right as rain.' Graham filled a hypospray with berocca and soft-shoed over to where Ruth was sitting. 'Now tell me, Ruth, on a day like today don't you just want to rip off your clothes and run naked through the bridge shouting "I'm glad to be alive!"?'

'No. No I don't.'

'Must just be me, then,' Graham said, mentally cancelling what would have been his next activity.

'I take it you and Welles have been getting along quite nicely,' Ruth remarked as Graham sashayed over to Sam.

'I tell you, Ruth, there is nothing like meeting a cute chick to stimulate the old "life is good" response,' he said, giving Sam a liberal dose of B vitamins. 'And as an added bonus, she helped me track down the reason I've had a screaming woman in here recently.'

'Ah, I see. She taught you to not take your clothes off,' Sam remarked.

'Normally I'd come back with a scathing retort to that, Mister Four, but this morning I just can't be bothered.' Graham packed the hypos into their case and started to do a slow samba with it, then suddenly dropped it.

'Stop it! I said stop it! Keep away from me!' Eliane stood for a moment, hands held defensively in front of her, then vanished again.

'Shit!' Graham exclaimed. 'I thought I'd got rid of her.'

'You'd better call the Flick people and have the place fumigated,' Ruth suggested, hopping off the bio bed and wandering to the door.'

'Maybe I did something wrong,' he mused. He tapped his comm badge. 'Graham to Counsellor Fetter.'

'I'm here already,' she said, walking in to the sickbay holding her head.

'Oh. So you are. What's wrong?'

'I fell over my floor and hit my head. Have you got an aspirin?'

He sat her down and ran a tricorder over her. 'What the hell did you hit your head on?'

'The wall. It's been a weird morning.'

'I'll give you something to take the swelling down a bit. Meantime, stay off the floor.'

As Leila gingerly rubbed her bruised scalp, she asked, 'What did you want me for?'

'I've got a problem with a ghost. I thought maybe a psychologist might be able to help out a bit.'

'I'm sorry, Gra,' said Leila. 'I'd really like to help you out, but I've got to break in my new assistant this morning.'

'Fair enough.' Graham shrugged. 'I'll try to work it out myself. And good luck with the assistant.'

She lay back on the couch. 'I mean, I'm feeling very conflicted at this point. Part of me wants it to work, and the other part just wants things to stay the way they were. I've got a lot of issues with the relationship we have. I suppose the thing I'm really looking for is recognition. I want her to notice me and see me in a certain light, but I've got absolutely no way of controlling that. What should I do?'

Fi, who was folding her laundry, looked remarkably unsympathetic. 'She's your assistant, you figure it out.'

Leila pouted. 'I thought you'd be more understanding than that.'

'If you don't want an assistant, why did you get Euan to have her transferred here?'

'Well I can't be expected to do everything myself! But she's sitting in on Niki's counselling session with me this morning, and that one is always an absolute corker.'

'What does Niki need a counsellor for? I always thought she seemed quite a stable kind of woman,' Fi said.

'Oh, she is. Her sessions are usually a detailed diary of her love life. One session with her can go on for hours and hours sometimes.'

'So...' Fi summed it up. 'In other words, she takes up your official time with her by bragging about who she's had in the last week.'

'Yeah, pretty much.'

'Well,' said Fi with a shrug. 'God help your new assistant.'

Ksenia was one of the only crewmembers who had been completely in favour of adopting the new ship. Her special hobby was the strange phenomenon of parallel universes, having visited more than one of them in her time, and she liked the idea that she'd be living in what was basically a permanent subject for study.

She was happily sitting in the lab examining the resonance harmonics created by running a reverse polaron beam through two congruent singularities, when the chirrup of her comm badge broke her concentration.

'Graham to Ksenia.'

'Forde here. What's the matter?' she asked, slightly irritable.

'I've drawn a blank with this ghost thing, can you come and help me please?'

'Right.'

Ksenia tended to occasionally be a little out of the loop with ship gossip and news, especially when she got engrossed in one of her pet projects, so she wasn't entirely sure what kind of ghost to expect when she wandered into sickbay.

'Right,' she said, tricorder at the ready. 'Is this it?'

'What?' Graham, who'd been reading some data from the scanner table, turned around to see what Ksenia was examining. 'Uh, sorry, Ksenia--'

'Graham, this woman isn't a ghost, she's perfectly human and alive.' Ksenia snapped her tricorder shut. 'I wish you wouldn't keep calling me down here for perfectly normal things.'

'But I--'

'I mean, I've just spent the morning with a really interesting singularity. I could still be down there making discoveries that make Edison look like a kid playing in the sandpit, except that you seem completely incapable of determining whether or not someone who's obviously alive is actually a ghost. Now I'm here to tell you--'

'Ksenia, this is Lieutenant Welles, who is a perfectly normal alive human being conn officer. She's not the ghost I'm worried about.'

'Oh.' Ksenia felt a bit silly. 'Right.' She offered a hand to the young woman in red. 'I'm Commander Forde. Ksenia. Nice to meet you.'

'Wade,' she replied, shaking it. 'Glad to hear that I'm not dead.'

'Uh. Yes. Right.' Ksenia mentally shook herself. 'So where is the ghost you were after me to fix?'

'She pops up now and then,' Graham said. 'Usually when it's most inconvenient.'

There was a brief silence.

'I don't suppose you could give me a demonstration?' Ksenia prompted.

There was another, longer silence.

'I think she knows it'd be convenient for her to show up now, so she hasn't,' Wade remarked. She felt curiously like she'd taken her car to the mechanic and it had stopped making that strange noise. 'We've got quite a bit of data here, but we're still missing a piece of the puzzle.'

'OK, take me through this from the beginning,' Ksenia said. 'You're not making any sense so far.'

She listened intently as Graham and Wade described the history of their association with the ghost in sickbay. When they detailed the way they'd given the remains the last rites, she threw up her hands in exasperation.

'You're useless!'

'What?' Graham was somewhat offended.

'This could have been our one big clue, and you went and flushed it into space! Now that's very helpful, really it is.'

'Um. Well, actually...' Wade began.

'Did you want to say something, Lieutenant?' said Ksenia.

'We kinda... didn't flush it into space.'

Ksenia made a distasteful face. 'You kept a bit? That's disgusting!'

'Well, scientific curiosity.' Wade shrugged. 'Can you use it to help us out?'

'Probably,' Ksenia said with some confidence. 'I wasn't exactly in the best position to do research while you lot were all in the other universe, but I got some data on it when you all came back.' She seated herself in front of the computer. 'I'm going to need to run some scans on it, and probably consult my notes on the last time we had contact with this universe... well, let's just say I'm going to be busy here for a few hours, so why don't the two of you piss off and leave me to it?'

Graham and Wade exchanged glances. Graham shrugged. 'I'm sure we can find a way to occupy ourselves.'

To his complete astonishment, Wade took his arm. 'I think so too.'

'Right,' Ksenia said, cracking her knuckles. 'Get lost and leave me to work.'

'...so after that we ended up back at his place, and, get this, he's got the most bizarre sheet set I've ever seen in my life! I mean, it's made of shag pile, white with green trim. And I mentioned that it didn't look very comfortable and he said that he didn't actually sleep on it at all, he normally hangs by his feet from the ceiling! I mean, did you ever hear anything so strange?'

Assistant Counsellor Daria Morgendorffer sighed. 'Remind me again why I'm supposed to care?'

Leila prodded her. 'That's not what you're meant to say!'

Daria stared impassively at Niki. 'I don't think normal counselling sessions are supposed to run like this.'

'Oh, they're not, but seriously, where else in the universe am I going to be able to brag about my sex life to someone and be able to call it work-related?' She grinned.

'Besides,' Leila added. 'There could be a lot of interesting information gleaned from accurate documentation of the first encounter between Human and Mugato.'

'A lot of information, yes. It just won't be interesting,' said Daria. 'Are we nearly finished yet?'

Niki bounced off the couch. 'Guess so. You doing anything after the counselling session?'

'I've got a bit of work to catch up on—' Leila began.

'Was I talking to you?' Niki interrupted.

Daria rolled her eyes. 'I think this session is more than over, Lieutenant.'

'Well, never let it be said I didn't offer.' She swanned out of the counsellor's office.

'Is it too late to request a transfer to another ship?' asked Lieutenant Morgendorffer.

'...and there you have it,' Ksenia said proudly.

Graham looked. 'Yep. You definitely have it. No doubt about its havingness factor. The it is definitely being had.'

'You've got no idea what the hell I'm talking about, do you?'

'Not a fucking clue.'

'I think I understand, Commander,' Wade said. 'Are you trying to compensate for the radical resonance differences to identify the DNA in the piece of tissue?'

'Yes. That's exactly it.' Ksenia beamed at Wade. 'Well done, Lieutenant.'

'Right. I think I get it now,' Graham said, lying with consummate skill. 'The question I still have is, why are you trying to identify the remains? We know that they're Eliane's.'

'Well, to be honest, Graham, you don't know any such thing. You've assumed that they're Eliane's remains because she's popping up around all the time, but realistically they could belong to anyone – or anything for that matter.'

'I suppose you're right,' he agreed reluctantly. 'So what will that tell us, though? That we've got possibly the leftovers from someone's lunch under sickbay and that it doesn't necessarily have any relation whatsoever to the ghost?'

'Possibly,' Ksenia conceded. 'But I think once we run the scan on it, we'll have a few more answers. Computer, start the sequence.'

'Working,' the computer responded.

'Subject sample: Human. Female. Caucasian.'

'Cross-match the sample with Lieutenant Prideaux's DNA and see if it matches.'

'Negative. The sample does not match.'

'See? I told you it could be anyone,' Ksenia said. Graham said nothing but shrugged.

'Computer,' he said. 'Access Starfleet medical records and cross-match the sample.'

'Working,'

'What, you think it could still be one of us? Erm. Them. Them us. You know,' Ksenia said.

'Gotta be worth a shot.'

'Search complete. Match found.' A data-file flashed up on the screen.

Ksenia raised her eyebrows. 'Good call, Henstock. Looks like you were right.'

'So, let's see who it is,' Graham said.

Wade was staring at the readout on the computer screen. 'And here is our lucky winner,' she said.

'I'm taking the rest of the afternoon off,' Leila announced proudly.

Carmen looked up over the top of the book she was reading. 'Am I supposed to be surprised or give you a medal?' she asked.

'Neither,' Leila answered, sitting down at the table opposite Carmen. 'I'm just happy that I have a new assistant. My schedule was really getting me down.'

'You mean the schedule where you actually had to do your job occasionally?'

'I did do a good job, didn't I?' Leila said proudly, blissfully missing Carmen's point. 'Mark, I'll have a coffee with coffee in it.'

The catering officer sighed. 'And this is so surprising,' he remarked.

Carmen put down her book. 'I still don't quite understand why Euan let you get an assistant. You never do any work even when you are on duty.'

Leila cracked her knuckles. 'It's really very hard to keep up a schedule like mine,' she said, reaching out and grabbing the coffee cup without looking.

'You're telling Second Officer King that?'

'Well Counselloring is a very difficult job. It can take hours and hours!'

'Yes, which leaves you only forty hours a week for the rest of your stuff.'

'Exactly!' Leila beamed. 'I'm so glad you understand.'

Carmen sighed and decided to give up using sarcasm on Leila. 'So the new assistant is working out well then?'

'Very much so. I've managed to free up my entire afternoon.'

'Really?' Carmen asked. 'Daria can handle the whole afternoon already?'

Daria had finished the tidying of the main Counsellor's office, and looked around for more inspiration. Finding nothing else to clean, she went to the desk and opened the appointment book.

'1645-1900. Watch re-runs of Bargearse,' she read.

When it came to knowledge of the alternative universe Compromise, Ksenia smugly admitted that she was a pretty damn good authority. However, there was one person who had an infinitely more detailed working knowledge of that ship, and the resultant jealousy had Ksenia looking daggers at the most recent arrival in sickbay.

'So how did she get there?'

Lady Colleen shrugged, the gesture reminiscent of a snake shedding the last bit of skin. she was the favourite of the first officer and graham was jealous

'What? You mean that weird-arse Ratbat clone was boffing this chick and I wasn't?' Graham exploded. 'Now that's just not fair!'

see what i mean

'Yeah, but... well look, I didn't kill anyone!'

maybe not here and now but in my world you did

'Colleen, Graham's ego aside we'd really like to know what happened on your ship. Could you fill us in?'

Colleen closed her eyes. as you know we didn't have the most pleasant ship in the fleet... you fell on the wrong side of us on more than one occasion

'Yes, I read the briefings. What happened in here?'

the first officer had a particular interest in this woman and was aiming to have her promoted when graham found out he killed her and hid her remains in the plasma conduits

'How do you know?' Wade asked.

i saw him

Ksenia whistled. 'Man. Must have been a bit rough.'

not as rough as for the nurse

'Nurse?' asked Ksenia.

nurse prideaux was there as well when she saw graham murdering her friend she was horrified

'Oh dear. I think I can see where this is going,' Graham remarked, putting a hand over his eyes.

so he killed her as well it makes sense really she would have told the first officer

'Colleen, you lived on one seriously fucked up vessel,' Graham said.

i am quite aware of this commander why do you think im here

'So I think the problem here is that Eliane's ghost is still reliving the moment of the murder. She keeps seeing Graham stuffing the body into the plasma conduit and then coming after her,' Ksenia summarised.

'Sounds like a fair assumption to me,' Wade agreed.

'I'd say so as well,' Graham agreed. 'But the thing is, what do we do about it?'

Crew Senior Dianne Fortune tapped the console a couple of times, looked up at the results on the monitor, and smiled. 'Yeah, it's running right now,' she said to Nick.

'Brilliant. How long till it's ready?'

'Give it...' she tapped the panel some more. 'About three days, give or take a few hours.'

'Perfect.' He grinned.

'Just remember – you have to leave it in the bottles for a week before you're allowed to drink it.'

'Bullshit. I'll have to test it a few time to make sure it's working OK, won't I?'

'Nup.' Di waved her finger at him. 'No tasting before time. That way we can be sure it's a good brew. OK?'

Nick scowled, then shrugged. 'Well, if it's as good as Guinness, I'll be happy.'

He and Di wandered away from their home-made brewery and back toward the main part of engineering.

'Did Euan actually give you permission to set this up down here?' Di asked.

Nick waved a hand airily. 'Absolutely.'

'And how pissed was he at the time?'

Nick looked hurt. 'Now Di, you know I'd never take advantage of a man when he was inebriated.'

'Totally shitfaced?'

'Ooh yeah.'

They laughed. Di's comm badge gave a beep.

'Fortune here,' she said, tapping it.

'Di, it's Ksenia down in sickbay. Um, we have a rather strange problem down here. Would you be able to come and see us about it?'

'Will Graham promise to put away his special equipment this time?' Di asked warily.

'I'm sure we can arrange that.'

'I'll be there in a minute. Fortune out.'

The Dark Lady had been politely asked to leave sickbay before the young engineer was ushered in. The solemn faces around her twigged Di to the possibility that something might not be quite going as normal.

'Hi guys,' she said guardedly. 'What's up?'

There was an embarrassed silence for a moment.

'Look, if this is something important then get on with it. I've got a lot of work down in engineering to get to.'

Ksenia cleared her throat. 'Look, Di, there's no easy way to say this. You're dead.'

Dianne paused. There didn't really seem to be a lot she could say to that. 'No I'm not,' she ventured.

'Sorry, that came out wrong. You you isn't dead, but you parallel universe you is,' Ksenia corrected herself.

'Oh. OK. I see.' Di waited for further information. 'Is that a good or bad thing?'

'Look, perhaps I can explain this a bit better,' Wade broke in. 'We've discovered your remains underneath sickbay and we think that they're what's causing this ghost business.'

'Ghost?' Di asked, having been closely closeted with a homebrew kit rather than indulging in ship gossip. 'You mean I'm haunting sickbay? Cool!'

'Well, not exactly you, Di. More like because of you.'

A drawn out wail from behind Dianne made her spin around.

'Stop! Stop it!' Eliane's spirit screamed, then stopped. For the first time since she'd appeared, she took notice of her surroundings. The spectral eyes widened.

'Eliane?' Di whispered.

'Dianne!'

Di stared, eyes locked on those of the spirit before her. For a long moment nobody dared move or even breathe as a mass of communication seemed to pass between them.

The ghost slowly held out her hand. 'I missed you,' she said quietly.

Di reached out and watched as her hand passed right through Eliane's.

'Goodbye,' she said softly as the spirit, smiling wistfully, faded to nothingness.

'Nope. Not doing it,' Leila declared adamantly.

'But look, this is important!' Euan said.

'More important than drinking coffee and reading comics? I think not!'

'Don't you care the least little bit about your work?' he asked.

'I have a great deal of professional pride, Euan, which is why I don't want to risk burning myself out through overwork,' she declared smugly. 'I have an assistant now, and it is her role to assist me. If there's any counselloring that needs doing while I'm off duty – which is now – then it's Daria's job.'

Euan threw up his hands in resignation. 'Oh, for fuck's... OK, I'll get Di to go see Daria.'

'Excellent. Now you're getting the idea.' Leila picked up her comic, Botty-Burp Squad, and snuggled down further into her comfy chair.

She was disturbed again approximately two hours later by a beep at her comm badge.

'Fetter here, this had better be good,' she answered.

'Hi, Leila, it's Di.'

'Oh, hi. How's things?'

'Not bad. I just wanted to say thanks for getting Daria in.'

'Huh?'

'She's an absolute wonder, Leila, you've got no idea. I mean, after that business with the ghost in sickbay, I was feeling so down. It's not every day you discover that not only is one of your best friends dead, but you're dead as well. But Daria's been just great. I'm really impressed. Give her a good progress report for me, will you?'

'Yeah.' Leila threw down the comic. 'I'll give her a great one.'

Daria found her superior pacing up and down the office. 'Hello,'

'Daria, hi. Come in and make yourself comfortable,' Leila said. 'I've just heard a very good report from you from Dianne, and I wanted to say how pleased I am with your progress.'

Daria waited. This was definitely going somewhere.

'So I've decided to give you a special project.' She pulled out a padd and handed it to her assistant.

'Dark Lady Colleen,' Daria read. 'Special assignment: figure her out.'

'I know you'll do a great job of this,' Leila beamed. 'Now you trundle along and get started, I'll finish up here.'

Daria nodded and wandered out.

'Right. Not letting any myopic short-arse steal my credit,' Leila muttered, going through her appointment book. 'Let's see now...'

Reading through the appointments, he heart sank.

'How the hell am I going to do all this work?' she lamented. 'Computer, cancel all appointments.'

'All counselling appointments cancelled,' the computer responded.

'Good. Now, more of Botty-Burp Squad.'

Ratbat eventually emerged from her quarters two days later, somewhat pale and looking rather wild around the eyes. She located Graham sitting by himself at a table in 10-Foreplay.

'Hello, you bastard,' she said amicably.

He shook himself out of his reverie. 'What? Oh, yeah. The laxative gas.'

'Yes the laxative gas, you prick. You wouldn't believe how long I was... anyway, it's not important. What is important is this – I will get you back for this.'

Graham grinned, but it was obvious even to the somewhat distracted Ratbat that his heart wasn't in it. 'What's up? What happened to your chicky?'

He shrugged. 'She said she liked me but didn't want to get into anything when she was going to another ship so soon. So we didn't.' He sighed.

'Bugger, eh?' said Ratbat. 'Ye--' She was interrupted by a distinctly unpleasant sound-bite from her digestive system. 'Glendamn,' she said, before turning and heading away once more.

Her quick retreat took her across the path of Euan and Dianne as they entered the room. 'What's up, Ratti?' Di asked the scurrying figure.

'Ach, Graham's giving me the shits,' she said, and disappeared into the washroom.

The new arrivals wandered over to Graham's table. 'How are you,' he said, not looking up, 'you well?'

'I'm still kinda freaked out, to be honest,' admitted Di. 'Never really got close to a ghost before...certainly not one who looks just like one of my best friends...' She shivered.

'And you looked like one of hers,' Euan reminded her. 'Without that chance for mirror-Eliane to say goodbye to mirror-Di, she could have been stuck popping in and out of sickbay forever.'

Di nodded. 'I guess it can be pretty important to say goodbye.'

'Yeah,' nodded Graham. 'But sometimes it sucks.'

Euan nodded wistfully. 'Saying goodbye to a chance you were going to take, someone you were hoping on...'

'...someone you almost had something with,' added Graham, 'someone who was nearly yours...'

Di looked up, puzzled for a moment. Then she saw Graham staring into his drink, and Euan staring into space.[7]

'Ah.'

She quietly got up from the table, and crossed to Emma the Klingon at the bar. 'I think something quite dark and very strong for the guys at table seven.' She looked back at the forlorn commiserating each other. 'And keep it coming,' she said, and left the lounge.

Commander Daria 'Ratbat' Sigma

Ensign Niki O'brien

Lieutenant Rachael 'Rally' Vincent