The Enterprise surveyed an ore-bearing system for nineteen days.
It was good work, the kind Starfleet did four hundred times a year and never made a documentary about: a survey team, a spectrograph, a set of core samples, a report that would sit in a database until a mining consortium decided whether it was worth the freight.
Christopher Pike ran it beautifully. He ran everything beautifully. He was, Spock was forced to observe over those days, a magnificent commanding officer: better organized than Kirk, more patient, considerably less likely to do something in the last four seconds that would take the science department a week to explain.
And the ship was wrong.
Spock could not have defended the statement in any forum. He tried once, privately, to build a defensible version of it, and abandoned the attempt after ninety minutes because every element dissolved under examination. The bridge was correctly manned. The chain of command functioned. The crew were efficient and well led. Morale, by every metric Starfleet had ever devised, was slightly better than under Kirk, because Pike did not take the kinds of risks that get people killed.
Slightly better. And the ship was wrong, and he could not stop feeling it, and it was the most illogical experience of his life to that point, and he told no one, because there was no one to tell.
* * *
He found Scott in engineering at 0300 on the eleventh night, doing nothing. That was the alarming part. Montgomery Scott was sitting on a crate in front of the warp core with his hands hanging between his knees, not working, not drinking.
"Mister Scott."
"Aye."
"It is 0300."
"Aye."
Spock came and stood beside him. The core ran, making the sound it always made, a vast contained hum a man stopped hearing after a week aboard and heard again the moment it changed.
"She's runnin' perfect," Scotty said.
"Yes."
"Eleven days. Nothin' broken, nothin' out of tolerance. I havenae had to shout at anybody in a week and a half." He rubbed his face with both hands. "D'ye know how long it's been since I had a core that didnae need me?"
Spock said nothing.
"He was hard on her. He'd take her past the redline without askin', and he'd do it knowin' he was doin' it to me personally, and I'd be down here cursin' his name at a coil, and I'll tell ye honest, Mister Spock, I was never happier in my life than at those moments." He looked at the core. "And now she's perfect. And I sit here."
Spock stood beside him and did not say anything, because there was nothing to say, and because he had come down at 0300 for a reason he had not permitted himself to examine, and the reason was that he had not wanted to be alone.
"Mister Scott," he said at last.
"Aye."
"When we return to Starbase I intend to file a request for computer time. A substantial one. For a purpose that has nothing to do with any mission this vessel has flown or is likely to fly."
Scotty looked up. "Ye're goin' after him."
"I do not know. I have no method. I have no theory. I have every reason to believe it is impossible and that I will spend a very long time discovering it."
"Aye. But ye're goin' after him."
Spock did not answer.
"Right." Scotty wiped his hands on a rag he did not need to wipe them on. "Then ye'll route it through the secondary banks, not the main core, because the main core reports usage to Starfleet every ninety days and the secondary doesnae, and I've known that for eleven years and never told a livin' soul."
Spock looked at him. "Mister Scott."
"Dinnae thank me."
"I was not going to thank you. I was going to observe that you have just confessed a serious breach of regulations to a senior officer."
Scotty grinned. It was the first time anybody on that ship had grinned in nineteen days.
"Aye," he said. "I have. What are ye goin' to do about it, sir?"