Spock on the Rock: fan fiction #2

Darlene Hickey has turned out to be one hell of an ambassador. She got them set up with warm clothes, she got them set up with transportation, and she found a buddy with a great basement where they could " crash". If there's a down side, Kirk mused, it's that Darlene is the transportation, so the crew have to be talking in code all the time. Darlene is a quick study, though, and it's only a matter of time before she figures out that Spock and company are even stranger than she already knows for sure.
Kirk still can't get over how Spock and Darlene hit it off. Spock's been quite the space cadet since he re-integrated.... at least McCoy is much more settled since he got Spock out of his head... still, Spock seems too damn comfortable here in Newfoundland, even with the awful wind and cold, the strange language and not one piece of flat land. Spock claims that it is so much like Vulcan it is uncanny, actually nurturing his re-integration, feeding his soul. That comment raised everyone's eyebrows and, according to Uhura, " just warmed their hearts". Right.
Kirk looks out the window of Darlene's van. She's taking them to the Marine Lab in Middle Cove, apparently the site for ocean research on the east coast. Darlene insists that it's the best place to talk to people about whales and any other marine life ya might have a hankerin' to investigate. Not bad for a girl from Torbay, Kirk smiles to himself, whatever the hell that means.
Whales....all the sound analyses point to whales as the solution to the horrible situation they left back in the future. With vibrations from an unknown alien species creating turmoil and disaster in all the oceans of earth, Kirk and his crew defied the odds and travelled back in time to find the earlier forms of the species in earth's late 20th century oceans. Newfoundland was as far from San Francisco as they could get ... how they could have overshot the mark by a whole continent remains a mystery.... and, Kirk thought ruefully, it looks like a moonscape.
Yes, my son, Darlene assures him. Kirk startles; he hadn't realized he had said it out loud. 'Round 'ere we dig our basements with dynamite... Darlene continues, we don't call it The Rock fer nothing!! She deftly pulls into the parking space outside the Lab, a round, squat structure with porthole windows and water all around, crashing madly. Darlene gazes out over the wildness with pride; she gives a little lift and turn gesture with her head and chin that Kirk has seen frequently among many of the natives since he and his crew set down a few days earlier. Quite the culture. He glances at his crew and they all pile out and follow Darlene into the steel bubble.
All hands seem to know her. Pardon me for sayin', lass, Scotty speaks softly, but you're not exactly a stranger here....
I should say not, roars a tall, shaggy man in jeans and a plaid shirt. Darlene's our youngest PhD in marine biology in two decades. He beams, clearly delighted at Darlene's embarrassment. Ah, jaysus, dad, she says, and does the introductions. Dr. Aloysius Hickey, Captain James T. Kirk, here on ... research, so he says.
Atcher service, says Dr. Al. I'm the chief cook and bottle washer around here. I've got the one associate, Noel, here, and Darlene, of course, and four graduate students...
Scotty, Sulu and McCoy share a moment. Not bad, says Sulu, for a girl from Torbay.
The group follows Drs. Al and Darlene to the viewing tank, gawking, then murmuring about the noise of the waves and the silvery motion of the swimming creatures that surround them. Then a cry of shock from Chekov: Kepten!!
Kirk follows the pointing finger. There on the other side of the tank, in the damn freezing waters of the north Atlantic ocean, is Spock, stripped down to his gitch, cavorting with the seals and the fish, seemingly oblivious to the cold. Everyone is pounding on the glass wall. Spock is impervoius, melding with his new found fishy friends. Finally, his reverie is broken, and Al sends his grad students to help him in. To his other colleague, a man as bald as Al is hairy, Al hollers, Noel... get the rum and put on the kettle. Noel tears himself away and heads for the back office. Darlene leans against the tank with arms crossed, shaking her head, and declares ..... much longer out there, Spock, and anything stiff and pointy woulda been falling off, and I don't only mean yer ears, if ye get my drift....
... the ears comment stops everyone is his tracks; Uhura is helping Spock towel off and she, too, pauses. This is an important moment.
Did somebody say rum ? Scotty asks.

to be continued....