Captain's Log, Stardate 3920.1. A misunderstanding has lead to a conflict with a strange alien vessel resembling a DY-type earth ship. We each took damage, but thanks to Lt. Uhura's hard work we have corrected the misunderstanding. I have invited the alien captain aboard the Enterprise to discuss the matter face to face.
---
Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Rand watched as the patterns materialized. Having only had subspace radio contact, there was no visual until now. The two colorful glistening figures stepped off the transporter pad. They wore dull blue jumpsuits with colored pin-striping. The taller one had glossy cyan skin which almost looked transluscent, with a hair style which looked to be moulded of the same material as the rest of their face. The shorter one looked similar, but was green.

The two men were somewhat androgynous in figure and facial characteristic. "Which one of you is Captain Kirk?" said the cyan-colored one.

Kirk raised his hands and smiled gently at the visitors. "I am Kirk. Welcome aboard the Enterprise. You are?"

"I am First Officer Mesma. This is my chief engineer Eaurp. We are in need of spare parts in order to repair our nuclear pile."

Eaurp glanced back nervously between Rand and the others. Rand picked up on the attention and looked away from the alien. *Not again,* she thought, trying to stay calm.

Eaurp spoke fast. "I am hereby requesting political asylum under Federation law--"

"Traitor!" Mesma shouted, and pulled a weapon from their holster. Eaurp emitted a high pitched yelp.

Before they could fire, Kirk had a phaser trained on Mesma's chest. "Put down the weapon, Mesma. Let's talk."

Spock had maneuvered himself behind Mesma. He reached to grab Mesma's shoulder, but when he pressed down, nothing happened. Mesma swung around and fired their weapon into Spock. Like a bolt of lightning, Spock was shocked, and fell to the ground, eyes open wide.

Kirk fired his phaser.

Mesma's uniform collapsed in a puddle of teal slime. Rand screamed. Kirk pressed the comm panel button. "Sickbay, medical emergency, transporter room."

"It was set to stun. That shouldn't have happened," Kirk said, and he inspected the phaser.

Eaurp was on the floor, shivering and shaking and covering their head with their hands.

McCoy came through the door and, without paying any attention to the puddle, took their tricorder out and scanned Spock. He stirred and moved slightly.

"Mr. Spock are you alright?" Kirk said, kneeling down next to him and McCoy.

"Electric shock. It'd be enough to kill a man dead in an instant. Trust that Vulcan anatomy to have a few more tricks up its sleeve," McCoy said.

Some other medical officers came in to carry Spock to sickbay. McCoy nearly went along, but Kirk grabbed his elbow to hold him back. "What do you make of that?" Kirk said, gesturing to the puddle.

"I'm a Doctor, not a janitor," McCoy said.

"That's no joke Bones. A minute ago there was a man standing there," Kirk said.

McCoy considered this, and knelt down at the puddle. "It's alive, Jim. Weak electrical activity, cellular metabolism. What happened here?"

"I just shot him with my phaser," Kirk said. "It's on stun, I checked and double checked."

McCoy turned around, still kneeling on the floor, to scan the other alien, still silently sobbing and rocking back and forth. "Aside from elevated stress and greater electrical activity, this one reads the same."

"Take it to sickbay. Yeoman, take, eh, Eaurp, to sickbay as well."

"Yes sir," Rand said.

Kirk turned to leave.

"Exactly how am I meant to move this mess to a bio-bed?" McCoy said.

"I'm leaving that in your capable hands, doctor."

McCoy shook his head.

---------

Rand pulled Eaurp out of the transporter room. "This is... not how I imagined this would go," Eaurp said, still sniffling.

Eaurp's face softened and warped, like it was being seen underwater. Rand blinked. Standing before her now was a woman--still the same glittering and glossy green as before, and with a similar face, but unmistakably feminine. She even had longer hair.

"I'm sorry, about the, um, panic, back there."

Rand blinked.

"Right. Well. We'd better get you to sickbay anyway, miss, er, Eaurp."

"N--nooo I'm really fine I don't need to go to sickbay!"

"I have my orders," Rand said. "This way," she said.

"I know. I had a phase where all I did was study the Starship class drawings over and over for a month."

"Well, um, me too, I think everyone does, but where would you have gotten them?" Rand said.

"Oh! Haha. Uh. I meant I studied the drawings of our own star ships," Eaurp said.

Rand looked back and Eaurp in mild confusion.

------

Kirk came back into sickbay. "How's your patient, Doctor?"

"Which one?" McCoy said.

Spock was sitting on the bio bed, with his shirt off. Lichtenberg figures scarred his chest, but Nurse Chapel was waving a dermal regenerator over them. "I am quite fine, Captain," Spock said.

"Figures," McCoy said, "Computers run on electricity after all."

"What about Mesma? Eaurp?"

"He's re-congealed into a human form, but he's still unconscious."

"They," Eaurp said, sliding down from her bio-bed. Kirk was immediately struck by the change in appearance. She wore a gold Starfleet uniform dress now.

"'Lieutenant Junior Grade' Guz is as healthy as I can determine with what little we can figure out about her species," Nurse Chapel said. "Her reaction is consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

"Captain Kirk, I have to talk to you."

"Yes, your asylum request," Kirk said, smiling.

"I have to speak with you in private. I mean, away from Mesma."

"Of course. I'll show you to the briefing room. Spock?"

Kirk lead Eaurp out of the sickbay, gently pushing her forward by her back. She stopped in her tracks. "Sorry, but uh, please don't touch me."

-----

"Captain Kirk. This is going to sound hard to believe, but I'm not the chief engineer of that alien ship out there. I'm a starfleet officer. Lieutenant Junior Grade Eaurp Guz, USS Cerritos."

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not aware of a USS Cerritos."

"That's because it doesn't exist yet."

"Are you invoking time warp, Miss Guz?"

"One moment," Spock said. He stood and walked over to the computer in front of where Eaurp was sitting. "Computer. Recall all references to Starships Cerritos in memory banks."

The computer clicked away. Eaurp suppressed an amused smile.

"Something funny?" Kirk said.

"N-no sir. It's just. Well. The old duotronics in these ships make a really nice clacking sound."

COMPUTED, the computer announced.

"Play index," Spock said.

"CERRITOS ONE: MANNED SUBORBITAL ROCKET, LAUNCHED 2018. S.S. CERRITOS: DY-420 CLASS COLONY SHIP TO OMICRON CANCRI. USS CERRITOS: ANTARES CLASS GRAIN DRONE. USS CERRITOS: PLANNED MEMBER OF LEIF ERICSON CLASS VESSEL DUE FOR CONSTRUCTION 2275. ONE FURTHER CLASSIFIED ENTRY."

"Captain. Your authorization please," Spock said.

Kirk looked skeptically between Spock, Eaurp, and the Computer, and then stood up, went to the computer, and pressed a key. "Authorize that last entry be read out, voice authorization Captain James T. Kirk."

"USS CERRITOS. CALIFORNIA CLASS SUPPORT VESSEL LAUNCHED IN LATE TWENTY FOURTH CENTURY. CREW INVOLVED IN TIME TRAVEL INCIDENT ON CRULMUTH b."

"Wait, what?" Eaurp said. "But Crulmuth b was a routine survey. There was an old portal there discovered by the Orions, but it didn't like, DO anything!"

"It is as I recalled. Captain, several years before you took command, the Enterprise under Captain Pike visited Crulmuth b. Two ensigns from the USS Cerritos appeared in our time, but we were able to send them back through the portal."

"Wait really? Who were the ensigns, maybe I know them."

"Ensigns Bradward Boimler and Beckett Mariner."

"Agh! I should have known it'd be them! I mean it would have had to have been either them or Tendi and Rutherford, since they were the only ones who beamed down that day."

"Lieutenant. Explain your presence in this century."

"I'm not sure I can. I woke up aboard the mellanoid ship. But Captain, mellanoids shouldn't even HAVE interstellar travel right now. In this century we can't go faster than light, heck, we can barely even get a steam train to go faster than 100 glips per second on a downhill with a headwind--and a lot of historians contest even those records since they didn't have dynomometer cars or anything. The history of my people is wrong. I tried to figure out as much as I could before I left the ship, but I realized the only chance I'd have of fixing things was to go to Starfleet--and then when I realized that the nearest Starship was the ENTERPRISE I finally started feeling hopeful about everything!"

"Your story is a little hard to believe--"

"I did warn you Captain"

"--but