STAR TRAKS: THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY

ONE MAN AND HIS DOG
by RPS

Disclaimer: Lets get this over and done with, Paramount owns Star Trek (created by Gene Roddenberry), 
Alan Decker owns Star Traks, I own the Rediscovered Country.


 The USS Secondprize, NX-02, cruised harmlessly through space. Or so it thought.
“Captain, I’ve detected a subspace anomaly several light-years off our port bow.” Ensign Brodeur 
reported from the science station.
“What type of anomaly is it?” 
“I’m not sure sir, I’m not reading much on the scanners.” Captain Cornelius McAllister approached 
the science console, where Ensign Brodeur was leaning over the sensor readings. “I’m not detecting 
any form of radiation being emitted.” 
“What about tachyons, maybe photons of some sort?” Brodeur keyed a few buttons on his console. 
“Nothing sir, its empty.” 
“Time distortion? Some type of Interstellar gateway?” 
“We could launch a probe, but I doubt it.” 
“So are you telling me,” the human captain was starting to get worried. “you’re telling me, that 
there’s this thing sitting there doing absolutely nothing.” 
“That’s about it.” Brodeur gulped.
Now any normal person would just leave it there. You detected a funny thing, a quick investigation, 
nothing of interest and that’s it. Move along. But then these aren’t exactly normal people. 
“Helm, take us to Warp 3, head for the subspace anomaly. Go to yellow alert, and get T’Pal up here.” 
The Vulcan wasn’t happy to be woken up. She’d just gone to bed 3 hours earlier, and certainly wasn’t 
in the mood for a subspace anomaly. 
“So there’s a weird thing out there, get over it.” 
“But it does absolutely nothing. Look, our mission is to explore space isn’t it? Well this anomaly 
is in space.” 
“Your mission is to explore interesting space that will be useful to you, not that thing.” T’Pal 
waved on front of here in every direction, indicating the anomaly. But if there was one thing T’Pal 
should of learned by now it was not to try and change the human Captains mind, it only made him more 
determined to do it. “You’ve said it yourself, it does nothing. You might as well go watch paint dry.” 
“Look, we’re going there whether you like it or not. I’m telling you out of courtesy.”
“In that case I’m off to Ensign Dulux’s quarters on Deck 9.”
“Why?”
“He just painted them green.” T’Pal nodded as to give her point more weight. “Green is a very 
interesting colour.” She walked out, but McAllister had only been distracted for a few moments. Soon 
enough the full wrath or his ire was back on Brodeur.
“You better get me something by 2000 tonight. I don’t care if you have to wake up the entire ship, 
just find out what that thing does. Hasselfree, you have the bridge.” The human Captain got out of 
the big chair and exited the bridge through the turbo lift and headed down to Engineering. There he 
found Commander John La Force and the rest of the Engineering Alpha shift basically sleeping. 
McAllister shook La Force, who when he woke up suddenly stood to attention and shouted out:
“Captain on deck!” Slowly the rest of the men and women got up, and acknowledging the presence of 
the Captain began to make an effort to make it at least look like they were doing something.
“La Force, don’t you like have a ship to keep running?”
“Not really. The ships stationary so the Warp core isn’t in use, all we need to do is make sure power 
reaches every part of the ship, which the computer makes sure of. Most of this stuff is automated you 
know, we’re really just here for emergencies.”
“Wow, you learn something new everyday. Feel like eating lunch then?”
“Sure, got nothing better to do.” Just as the two were about to leave an Ensign called out to them.
“Sir, I’m detecting a weird power drain.”
“How big?”
“10% of current power.” That made the two men turn right around.
“Source?” La Force jumped up the steps leading to the Warp core, closely followed by McAllister who 
gave a suggestion as to the power drain.
“I think its that subspace anomaly. Guess we’ve found out something about it at last.” But just when 
McAllister had finished his statement he was contradicted.
“Traced the power drain to the ship. Deck 4, corridor 15C. Quarters 12A.” McAllister went to the 
nearest comm panel.
“McAllister to Hasselfree, have a security detail meet me outside Deck 4, quarters 12A.” Turning off 
the communication link to the bridge McAllister also said. “La Force, have an Engineering team meet 
me there as well.”


 When McAllister arrived outside the quarters Hasselfree and three other security officers were 
waiting for him, and La Force and two other Engineering officers came jogging up behind him.
“What do your sensors tell you?” McAllister asked La Force. “I want to know what’s waiting for us 
behind Door number one.”
“Well I can tell you Captain, that behind Door One is the wonderful Rekcednala dishwasher with 12 
different types of wash and with an extended 5 year warranty.”
“What?”
“Captain, quarters 12A on Deck 4 was just converted into a giant washing machine following our old 
one being destroyed in that fight against the Gaeals. They must of just forgotten to tell us it was 
going online today, it was meant to be up and running a couple days ago but there was some problem 
with the water influx.”
“A washing machine taking up 10% of current power?”
“When you consider we haven’t had any clothes washing for a few weeks its understandable.”
“Okay.” McAllister seemed disappointed. “You’re dismissed, nothing to see here.”
Murmuring something about a waste of time the security and Engineering teams walked off to their 
previous stations. Bored, McAllister decided to go to his quarters and walk Richelieu, who had been 
scraping on the door for some days now waiting to be let out.


 “There is no way that’s a real word!” Fawqin shouted, banging his fist on the table sending the 
gameboard and various letters airborne before crashing back to the table.
“Is so! Captain?” Hasselfree implored, looking to McAllister. The Captain, Doctor, Security Officer 
and Ensign Sophie Halbarad, the beta shift helmsman, were playing Scrabble in the mess hall, while 
Richelieu, the Captain’s dog, lay bored next to his masters feet.
“I’m afraid it is Doctor.” McAllister confirmed while passing a bit of food to Richelieu under the 
table.
“Captain, I am perfectly fluent in English and I can assure you that I have never come across this 
word…this ‘abdomen’.” Fawqin spat this last word out, obviously having problems with the pronunciation 
as if to appear he had never come across the word before.
“But it’s a medical word! It’s a part of the body!” Hasselfree squeaked, his voice reaching new highs 
as his disbelief increased. Halbarad smiled at Fawqin, attempting to reassure him.
“You mean you imply you can do my job better, human?” Fawqin stood up brusquely, nearly knocking over 
the table and sending Hasselfree flying backwards. The momentum was too much and the security officer, 
complete with chair ended up on the floor, lying on his back. “You insult me with your stupid games!” 
And with this the Nausicaan took his remaining letters in his hands and threw them at the prone 
Hasselfree, as an expert knife thrower might throw their blades.
“Scrabble fight!” Halbarad managed to shout, before taking a fistful of letters and ducking under 
the table. She took the first letter, the Q, and aimed at her first victim.


 Brodeur had been on duty for the past 13 hours, trying to figure out what the subspace anomaly was 
doing. His eyes were starting to give up on him, and he’d already fallen asleep once to be waken by 
Deer shaking him. And what was even worse there were only a few minutes left until 2000 hours, when 
he would get a proper bollocking off McAllister. Randomly his eyes came to rest on a screen on his 
console showing the quantum signature of the anomaly, which had remained constant for the full 13 
hours he’d been working on it. Suddenly, it spiked. He rubbed his eyes, not believing it. Then, again. 
And a third time. It seemed to be changing at specific time periods. He turned to T’Pal who was 
sitting in the Captains chair.
“Hey, I think I’m getting something here.” The Vulcan Captain got up form the chair and looked at 
Brodeur’s results.
“Interesting. Though the change is extremely minimal, wouldn’t even show up on normal scans. I doubt 
that’s it.” T’Pal had turned away to walk back to the chair when there was a bright flash, temporarily 
blinding the entire crew. It only lasted for a few seconds, and after that the crew managed to regain 
their wits.
“Red alert! Polarise the hull plating and charge weapons. Helm, plan an escape route. Brodeur, what 
the hell was that?”
“No idea, but it definitely came from that anomaly.”  Admitting defeat that the anomaly had actually 
turned out to do something interesting T’Pal opened a channel from her chair.
“Captain McAllister to the bridge.” There was a pause that seemed to string out for a minute. 
“Captain McAllister?”


 “What the…” McAllister stood, well, in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t any visible floor, no 
gravity and around him were swirling psychedelic shapes made out of reds, yellows and greens. Near 
him Richelieu also floated, just as confused as McAllister. “Hello?” McAllister cried out to nowhere 
in particular. But he got an answer, in the form of a disfigured voice.
“Hello.” The Secondprize Captain looked around to see where that had come from but he couldn’t see 
anything.
“Err....My name is Captain McAllister.”
“I am Pshyne.”
“Is that you’re first name, surname, race name?”
“I am Pshyne. We are Pshyne. I/We are the Pshyne. The Pshyne does not exist. The Pshyne lives.”
“Cool.” After this the conversation paused for a while. McAllister tried to think back to his 
training, he was sure he’d done a course on this sometime. When a weird God-like subspace anomaly 
abducts you, the first thing to do is... “Okay, before we start I’d like to inform you that Humanity 
says sorry for all its done, we deserve a chance to evolve, I am not going to become a sex slave or 
fight for my existence, and I am most certainly not going to have your child or offspring.”
“I/We/The Pshyne doesn’t want that.”
“Hey, great. That’s a good start. So what exactly do you want?”
“I have a quest. A quest to ask a question.”
“Ask away.”
“If the candle is lit, but a tree falls down on it, but there is no one in the forest who can hear 
the tree and the candle was lit on by lighting therefore no one saw the candle being lit, does the 
tree make a sound and does the candle give out light?”
“Right...”


 “Where is Captain McAllister?” Captain T’Pal asked. “I mean, he can’t have gone far, can he?” To be 
honest T’Pal preferred the ship without him, cleared up the chain of command, but losing him would 
probably look bad on her record so the only logical thing to do was attempt to retrieve McAllister 
from his state of lost-ness.
“No ma’am. We’ve searched the entire ship. He isn’t here. Dog’s gone missing too.” For the past three 
hours Hasselfree and his security teams had dismantled and looked absolutely everywhere on the ship. 
They’d even taken the Warp core offline for 30 minutes so they could look in there.
“What about sensors?”
“I’ve been scanning the ship continuously, no sign of him. Hell, the only place we haven’t looked has 
been in the anomaly.”
“He’s gotta be here somewhere.” T’Pal slapped Hasselfree and Brodeur on the back of their heads. 
“Keep on looking.” The Vulcan had just gone and sat down in the Captains chair when Banks shouted 
out from the helm.
“Captain! The subspace anomaly is moving!” And it was. First it had started off slowly, then building 
up speed until it went to Warp 1.
“Quick! Match speed and course.” The Secondprize also went to Warp, in pursuit of the anomaly.
“Warp one, one point five, Warp two, warp three, I don’t think we’re going to be able to catch up to 
this thing!” T’Pal touched a button on the Captains chair, opening up a comm channel to Engineering.
“Commander La Force, you’re the Engineer and you’re Scottish so do something.”
“Scottish? My Dads a milkman from Quebec. What the hell do you want me to do?” At his station Banks 
kept calling out speeds.
“Warp four, warp five, they’re opening a gap between us, warp six, warp seven, warp eight...and we’ve 
lost them. This piece of junk can only reach Warp 5.”


 “There is no point in a debate, but there is one on a spear.”
“Now I have no idea what you’re on about.”
“Woof” Richelieu barked his agreement.
“Do not ask the wise for an answer, ask the dumb and through his answer they shall become wise.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“Do not close your mind, it should be as an IBM call centre, open from Mondays to Sundays, 24 hours, 
all 365 days a year.”
“You know I hope all other god-like sentient beings we come across actually make sense when they 
say something.”
“Sense is an imperfection of the mind. To know is to become ones life force.”
“Grrrrr.” I/We/The Pshyne wasn’t sure if that comment came from McAllister, Richelieu, or both of 
them.


 The Secondprize followed the subspace anomaly at Warp 4.8, every second loosing more and more ground 
to it. And they were all out of ideas, they’d even tried dressing up Ensign MacMuffin, who happened 
to be Scottish, as an Engineer and hope he’d come up with something, but he hadn’t.
“Well, I’m fresh out of ideas.” T’Pal glanced up at the rest of the senior officers that had crowded 
onto the bridge. “Anyone else?”
“I could always try the Jukla-Kan Finding Ritual Dance.” Fawqin volunteered. When he saw several 
people looking quizzically at him he explained further. “Its a traditional Nausicaan dance for the 
searching of lost souls on the battlefield.”
“I guess we could always try that. Though it is highly illogical of course. Any other options?” No 
more ideas were forthcoming, so the Vulcan Captain dismissed the meeting and sent Fawqin to get ready 
for his ritual.


 “Do not search for the soul within your body, search for your body within your soul.” McAllister 
closed his eyes and concentrated. He bit his lip, he changed position, he even tried doing it upside 
down, but he wasn’t successful.
“I’m sorry Pshyne, I’m searching but I ain’t finding.”
“Maybe this will help.” Out of nowhere some music started, a bit of brass, drums and other instruments 
McAllister couldn’t identify, but the vocals came through loud and clear.
“Play that funky music...”


 “So this is it?” La Force looked around Sickbay, which Fawqin had filled with candles. As well as 
that all the lights were off, loads of candles around the room were lit, there was a weird rug on 
the floor and several Regulan vampires flew over head. When the Doctor had asked him to help in his 
attempt to retrieve the Captain he hadn’t exactly been expecting this.
“Yes. Now I’ve got a very specific role I need you for. Basically every time I shout out ‘Ygalala!’ 
you need to answer me with ‘Gugupa!’. You got that?”
“Sure.” La Force nodded. With the amount of time he’d spent on the ship he’d seen a hell of a lot 
weirder. I mean, one time he’d been in command he’d actually ordered the ship to be disguised as a 
giant Mexican sombrero. You’d have to work pretty hard to beat that. “Go ahead.” Fawqin went to the 
middle of the room, took a breath and started jumping up and down, first to the right and then to the 
left, looking as if he was trying to hit a ball with his head.
“Hau jfw fouwpa kah! Ygalala!” Fawqin stopped momentarily as he waited for La Force to say his line, 
and started lifting his legs trying to get his knees to touch his head.
“Errr...Gugupa!” Fawqin nodded and once again started dancing, putting his hands on his waist and 
pushing outwards, then inwards while he put his hands over his head.
“H’Sipor dhow oupw jdklaw, ndiwa
dnal oupoweq ljfwn hh iwpq ygalala!”
“Gugupa!”
“Hiryow no jdwiq fhwla ba kjw ygalala!”
“GUGUPA!” Now La Force had got into it and was throwing himself around the room, in the process 
bouncing off several consoles and beds and nearly running into one of the Regulan vampires.
“Yjfklq wjfkq fwklo jfkaw jfiwoal ygaalala!”
“GUGUPA!!!!” The last bit was shouted by both Fawqin and La Force, who then stopped dancing and 
began breathing heavily. Fawqin started putting away all the stuff they had got out for the ritual.
“Is that it?” La Force asked as he jumped up and down trying to catch the Regulan vampires before 
someone actually entered Sickbay, opening the doors, and letting the blood sucking bats into the 
ship.
“That’s it. Now all we have to do is wait.”


 “Ask me a question about maths, I know about that.”
“Very well.” I/We/The Pshyne paused for second to think up a question. “A train leaves Tellar IV 
at Warp 2 at 0800 hours, and another train leaves Andor at 0930 hours at Warp 3.2. Considering the 
distance from Tellar IV to Andor is 3 and a half sectors, which train is carrying the tribbles?”
“Can I have some pen and paper?” In McAllister’s hands a notepad and a pencil appeared, and the 
Captain started scribbling frantically. “Okay, you put the variables into Hosseman’s quadratic 
equation, you divide both sides by three, carry the one, square root it and the answer I get 
is…Potatoes. For some reason my answer is Potatoes.” The movement of the psychedelic swirls rapidly 
increased and I/We/The Pshyne started laughing.
“Well done. You have found the answer to the question I have posed. Now go, I foretell a great future 
for you.”
“Oh, cheers mate. See ya around.” Just as McAllister finished his sentence he found himself back in 
the Sickbay of the Secondprize, Richelieu lying beside him on a weird red rug surrounded by candles. 
Apparently being all-powerful didn’t mean that you could transport someone and have them stay on their 
feet. He looked up and found T’Pal staring down at him, a weird bat-like creature trying to bite her 
neck. She waved it away.
“By all the custard creams on Vulcan where have you been?”
“I think Fawqins dance actually worked.” Hasselfree quipped from behind the Vulcan, before retreating 
after a glare from T’Pal.
“You see this alien god-like being that was in the subspace anomaly and it abducted me and it asked 
questions, and there were trains at Andor, and it had tribbles and I worked it out.” McAllister 
grinned manically. T’Pal just looked more confused than ever.
“I give up. If you need me I’ll be in my quarters. Surak forbid I get angry and chop your head off.” 
And with that T’Pal headed off into the turbo lift and started reciting all three thousand two 
hundred and ninety six verses of Kolinahr, a Vulcan mental exercise designed to give comfort 
following experiences of great emotion. McAllister got up, pushing the dust off his uniform and 
opened a comm. channel to the bridge. Ensign Banks answered at the helm.
“Get us back on our normal course Ensign.”
“Yes sir.” Banks entered the co-ordinates and asked McAllister. “Sir, what really happened?”
“I think I made a friend. Engage.”