At some level of his awareness, Carlton knew that he dreaming–yet the dream, which was a re-enactment of a critical situation in his recent existence, still felt vividly compelling…
{He was on the bridge of his Starfleet medical rescue craft, approaching the isolated mining settlement on the largely-uninhabited continent of Zhukov just inside Vladivost’s north polar zone. The spacecraft was slowing down as he had ordered, while he was in audio subspace contact with Starbase Seventeen.}
{“We haven’t much time,” Carlton informed Commodore Lavinia Treadwell, the starbase’s acting commander at the time. “We’ll have to start treating those Kelvaron-exposed settlers within thirty-two minutes at the latest, or it will be too late.”
“Thirty minutes now, commander,” Ensign Yolanda Lansford stated softly, while standing behind his bridge command chair, “Based on their report of when the Kelvaron deposit was exposed by the landslide.”}