Reed stood rigidly still, head cocked at an almost unnatural angle as he ploddingly absorbed the meaning of his situation. No one moved. All was silent. Even the timepiece
within his wrist communicator had ceased to function.
He wended his way through the labyrinth of crewmen, waving a hand before a face here, poking someone in the forehead there, but to no avail.
"This must be one of those...", he muttered, searching for right the term. He was sure he'd heard of anomalies such as this in the academy, but much of that information had long since departed in the
form of dead brain cells.
Schultz would know, he mused, yet the Huckster was under the same spell as the rest of his crew. Concentrating on the science officer's face, Reed could almost hear the dull but incessant drone of his voice
glibly explaining away their current predicament. The words seemed to form on his lips; tentacle? testicle? tamponal? temporal...
"That's it!", he cried. "Temporal stasis."
It came back to him then. Professor Gnowittal, whom they'd so cleverly referred to as Mr. Stupid-Head, had lectured on the topic during Reed's last year at the Academy. He'd described the phenomenon
as a dense pocket of space/time that existed everywhere and nowhere at the same time, randomly affecting matter which drifted through it. Later, Schultz had spent several hours paraphrasing the professor
until Reed finally got the picture.
Reed surveyed the bridge, fairly certain this wasn't just an elaborate practical joke, and realized that, once again, fate had dealt him a dead fish on a moist towelette.
