As the five of them entered the pool room, Trey wondered nervously what she was going to do. Lonnie moved immediately to a locker and began removing her outer clothing. Miguel bent down at the water's edge, splashing in the water, while Ari and Tim went to another locker and opened it, kneeling down to remove some electronic communications equipment. Gazing up over his shoulder, Tim noticed Trey standing near the doorway looking lost. With a few murmured words to the intent Ari, he stood again and approached her.

       "Sorry, Trey, I forgot. Ari told me what you said last night. Can you swim at all, even a bit?"

       Her dark, worried eyes looked up at him with a touch of fear behind them, and the lanky communications officer felt an atavistic urge to put his arms around her like a little girl and reassure her that everything would be all right. Licking her lips, Trey answered, "Well, I can do the doggy paddle, and float in one place well enough to pass the minimum requirements, and I'm sure that I can do the dead man's float," she wise-cracked, "but beyond that no, sorry.' She sighed heavily. "I guess I'll have to check into getting some scuba training while on board," she concluded, looking at him from under her lashes with a hopeless expression.

       Tim looked down at her with a friendly smile. "I don't think that'll be necessary. If you put in a formal request, then I know for a fact that Commander Ford will feel compelled to take a hand in your training, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone." Quickly, he added, "Not that the Commander's a bad guy, mind you. But he's rather intense at times. I bet that between all of us we can teach you. That way it won't end up in your permanent file." He looked around at his fellow suspects. "What do you guys say?"

       Miguel and Ari were together now, kneeling beside the pool doing whatever it was that they were doing with the electronics equipment. Lonnie was sorting through a handful of headphones. At Tim's laughing question, they all looked up towards Trey, even Darwin. Flushing uncomfortably, she looked down, not accustomed to so much scrutiny.

       Glancing around to include them all, Ari answered the question warmly, "Of course we're going to help you learn to swim, Trey. I told you that last night."

       "Darwin help. Darwin always help." Sounding suspiciously as if he were laughing slyly, the dolphin added, nodding toward Ari, "Darwin good and kind and wonderful and helpful, too. Darwin not stupid." When Ari crouched forward, muffling her laughter with one hand, Trey was not the only one to look from her to the animal with a total look of incomprehension. For some reason, the last statement caused the small woman to look at Miguel and burst out into a gale of uncontrolled laughter.

       After regarding her for a few moments with an expression of outraged dignity, he deliberately turned his back on the wildly giggling ensign and addressed Trey. "As the maniac here said, naturally we'll help you,   All of us. And I bet with Darwin helping, you'll be swimming through the tubes with us in only a few days at best."

       Ari turned away, her shoulders still shaking, and splashed water on her face, getting herself under control. Trey shook her head with bewilderment. "But, but you folks have better things than to teach me how to swim." She wasn't in the habit of accepting help from others. Even before her long freeze, she'd been pretty much self-sufficient. Since they'd thawed her out, the need to not only learn but to relearn everything had left her feeling tired and resentful of her shortcomings. She hated feeling reliant on the kindness of others and had hoped that with her assignment on board a Navy vessel, that she'd be able to get by with just being herself. Finding herself thrust into a group situation, and once again out of step of step with everyone around, she felt bristling and angry.

       Tim, standing beside her, took a cue from her body language. Touching her shoulder gently, he turned her around, away from the others, and pressed her toward the line of cubicles, saying, "After I got Ari's message last night, I checked out a locker for you this morning. You'll have to go to Supplies to get a wetsuit fitted to you personally, but," he shot a questioning look toward Ari, standing up and wiping off her hands, "Didn't you say you found one that might fit Trey for now, Ari?"

       Walking toward them with her face wet and dripping, the small woman reached for the door to one of the cubicles, "Yeah. I came down this morning and got one of the visitor's suits." Her face looked a little unsure as she continued, "I think that it will fit you well enough to use today."

       Fiddling with the lock, she opened it, explaining, "These things are programmed so that you can set the on combination yourself, but you should know that the Captain and Cmdr. Ford can over-ride any of the locks, so don't keep anything incriminating in it." Miguel looked up from where he was talking to Darwin.

       "So can Lucas," he said with a laugh. "But that's unofficial." Ari nodded agreement, calling back to him pointedly, "And I suppose that you never asked him to do anything of the sort?"

       Wiping his hands on his pants, he walked over to them. "Well, I won't say yes and I won't say no, but at least I never inveigled him to do something behind the Captain's back that I knew the Captain had been ordered not to do." Ari stuck out her tongue at him, then squealed as he lunged at her and she dodged behind Tim, who was trying to look as if he were absolutely elsewhere.

       "Wait, wait, wait!" she yelled dodging. "Let me get the sweats off, first."

       Laughing, dressed in her wetsuit, Lonnie interposed herself between the rough-housing duo as Tim disappeared to change out of his outer clothes. "She's got a point, Miguel," she said agreeably but with steel underneath. "No tossing until we're all ready. Besides, where would we be if she hadn't spoken to Lucas about that?"

      With a shrug, he desisted and went to another locker, removing his own outer clothes, revealing the form fitting wet suit underneath. Trey noticed that Ari was also skimming out of her loose-fitting outfit, folding it neatly to put into the locker from whence the equipment had come.

       Nobody was paying any attention to Trey now, so she felt able to remove the wet suit from the locker, holding it against herself. It was a full suit, long sleeves and legs, unlike Ari's which left her legs and most of her arms bare, or Miguel's which showed off his muscular shoulders and arms to advantage. Glancing over at the two, Ari now pulling the chief's clothes off the floor of his locker and folding them up, stowing them away, while he stood there watching. Trey wondered how they could stand the temperature of the water with so much skin exposed.

       Tim, folding up his baggy sweats and placing them in the space, looked up just as Trey's eye fell on him. He nodded agreeably, then closed the door. As he walked toward the equipment that Ari and Miguel had so carefully set up, a pleased smile teased it's way on Trey's face. He wore the full suit, like the one hanging from her hand, and the way it clung to his physique demonstrated that he was, for all his apparent thinness, in fact, quite fit.

       Feeling better, knowing that she wouldn't be the odd man out in terms of suiting, Trey began to remove her sweatsuit, rolling it up and thrusting it into the locker. As she started to wriggle her leg into the tight suit, she felt a presence besider her, and looked up, startled, to find Tim once again at her side, holding, of all things, a can of talcum powder.

       "Here," he said, pushing the container toward her. "Sprinkle this inside the suit and it'll be easier to pull on." He sat on the bench as she followed his advice, the proceeded to help her into the unfamiliar, skin-tight outfit. Her skin tingled where he touched and her errant imagination wondered what it would be like to touch him in return. She felt her blood warm and her breathing quicken. But all too soon, he stepped away, as a splash and ring of laughter erupted from the pool.

       Looking over to where the other three had been talking to Darwin, Tim and Trey found Miguel in the water, and Ari looking down with an expression of satisfied guilt. Trey had just enough time to notice a small keyboard attached to her waist on her left side, and the set on her head, when an explosion emerged from the water and pulled her down, squealing like a dolphin herself. With sudden, splashless dive, Lonnie followed the other two in.

       Realizing that her companion was already heading toward the open water, Trey followed reluctantly, a sense of relief filling her when he stopped in front of the equipment.

       Communications equipment really hadn't changed that much in the past thirty years, she thought, as she recognized the set up for sender/receiver. Tim had already put on a set of headphones, and Trey realized that the last ones, on the top of the casing, were for her.   As she knelt down putting the phones on her head, Ari swam over to the edge and leaning over the rim.

       "Here's the drill, Trey," she said, as the other two water babies joined her. "Of the five of us, Tim's the one in the best condition, so he's decided to sit this one out and simply monitor today. We won't be swimming fast or far. Lonnie and I haven't been out of the hospital long, and Miguel still has a bum shoulder. You can either stay with Tim, or come out with us, your choice."

       Darwin chose that moment to poke his head up out of the water, "Trey swim, now?" he squealed happily.

       Taking a deep breath, Trey walked over to the dolphin and kneeled down, trying to think of him, to treat him as human. "Darwin, I wasn't upfront with you last night," she confessed. "I couldn't swim with you, then because I can't swim at all."

       The dolphin looked from Trey to the others with obvious bewilderment, "Why Trey not swim?" he asked plaintively, continuing with what, to him, seemed to be the obvious facts of life. "Not swim, not eat. Not swim, not live." He stopped then, in a different tone of voice asked, "What means upfront?"

       Since he was looking at Ari when he asked the last, she shrugged, answering, "Trey will have to answer that one. I don't know." She continued, "But for the rest of it, not all humans are able to swim. You know that yourself. Most of the people on SeaQuest don't get into the water the way we do. Trey has to learn how to handle herself in here, and we have to help her. You said that you would help her," she reminded him gently. She snaked one hand under the water and Trey heard the computer generated voice she associated with Darwin speak, "Darwin need be most careful with Trey. Not hit, not dive, not splash. Treat Trey like new born baby. Darwin understand?"

       Standing on his tail in the water, the dolphin nodded with his body, adding excitedly, "Darwin understand Ari. Darwin like new baby. Darwin like Trey. When Ari, Miguel have baby?" As the burly sensor chief laughed, putting an arm around the disgruntled ensign.

       "See, cara mia, even Darwin knows that you belong with me." Ari frowned, pushing him away and touching her headphone. Trey looked up at Tim, who appeared even more upset at the remark than did the woman in the water.   She felt a touch of dissatisfaction at that. It wasn't fair for one woman to have the hot blooded, muscular chief and this lithe, fascinating communications officer, both.

      "Tim, I think it's time to turn off the vocoder. I'm getting feedback on this." He shook his head in disagreement.

      "Not yet, Ari," he contradicted. "Trey hasn't decided what she wants to do." Realizing that he was correct, Trey looked into the water. Lonnie wasn't in sight, and her research colleague, looking a little shamed at forgetting, was being distracted by the amorous Hispanic, pushing him away, but not too far away, Trey was amused to notice. Darwin looked up at her anxiously, pleading with his eyes. With a deep sigh, she decided.

       "I'm sorry, Darwin," she said. "But I don't think that I would like to swim right now, with everyone else around like this. I'd just slow you all down and nobody would have any fun. I'll just stay here, with Tim. If you don't mind."

       With a nod of his head, he accepted the idea fatalistically. "OK Trey. You, Tim stay here. Tim help Trey learn 'I say'?" With a flip of his tail, he was gone, following Lonnie, where ever she had gotten to.

       Miguel looked up with laughing eyes, a big smile on his face. "That's a great idea. You stay here, Tim, and bring Trey up to speed on the game, and the techinical side to it, while Lonnie, Ari and I go off with Darwin?"

       From the dirty look that Tim gave his friend, Trey realized that something more than just swimming and playing went on during these sessions. Feeling a little sorry for herself, she spoke up, "That's ok. No one has to stay with me. Tim, why don't you join the others." Ari, who had dived down toward the bottom, surfaced in time to hear this brave offer. Her face stiffened into a mask of patience and, with a few strong strokes, she swam to the side of the pool and pulled herself up.

       "Forget that," she declared flatly. "Tim, get in the water, I'll stay and monitor with Trey. It was selfish of me to put my fun ahead of my duties," she said, dripping over to the other two. Tim stood up, blocking her way.

      "Don't be stupid, Ari. Without you and the dolphin communication board, there's no real reason for this. And today is the first time we've had to test it out. You have to be out there with it. Anyway, you know very well that I'm not as crazy as the rest of you about swimming around freezing valuable extremities off. And, since all this is mostly communications equipment, it makes sense that I should be the one to explain it."

       Ari stood there glaring up at him, looking like a small feisty cat challenging a large friendly dog. "May I remind you, LT. O'Neill, that this is MY project, and I am quite capable of explaining it myself." Tim, to Trey's confusion, smiled smugly and threw a glance of triumph toward Miguel, pulling himself up out of the water, slowly and painfully. As he sat on the rim, the darkly handsome non-comm stifled a groan. Immediately, Ari's mask melted away into an expression of concern.

       Spinning around, she hurried to where he sat, legs in the water, curled up, face hidden. Kneeling down beside him, she asked, worry in her voice, "Miguel, are you ok? Perhaps we should just cancel the swim today altogether."   She put her arms around him to help him up, as he began to lean on her. Trey caught a glimpse of the impish expression on his face as he suddenly pulled her back into the water and swam off, pulling her behind him. Tim moved to sit down beside her again, a self-satisfied expression on his face.

       Flipping a switch, Tim grinned at Trey. "Well, this gives me an opportunity to get to know you," he observed pleasantly, admiration sparking in his eyes. She smiled back, feeling suddenly very young and shy.

       "I'd like that," she confessed. "But could you explain exactly what's going on here first." Tim nodded. Quickly, he pointed out the various parts of the speaker/receiver, essentially explaining what Ari had told her the previous night. The actual game varied according to what ever was decided, but the basic structure was that of the old childhood game, "Simon Says." Except that Darwin was always "Simon".

       "When everyone is in the pink of condition," he concluded, "then we time how long it takes for everyone to understand and obey him, and whoever takes the longest loses." He paused, turning a dial, "Ok, you four, you're being awful quiet out there. What's up?"

       "Lonnie missing, try find." Came the electronic voice of the vocoder. Tim frowned.

       "I didn't think that we were playing 'Hide and Seek', today?" he queried. Miguel responded.

       "We Weren't. But Darwin's missing, too. And Ari's worried." With this last comment, Tim's frown deepened. Spinning a dial, he spoke again, "Lonnie, where are you?"

       Impishly, her voice came back, "Are you trying to give me away?" Tim settled back, a relieved smile spreading across his face.

       "Hey, you know I wouldn't do that. They can't hear you. But I'm going to let them know that you're ok, if you don't mind?"

      "Go ahead," she responded. Tim fiddled with the settings again,

       "Just try to find them, you two," he advised, the smile sounding in his voice. After they answered, he turned the dials again, then looked back at Trey. Trying to find a common ground to start a conversation with the quiet woman sitting beside him, watching every move he made, he asked, "Not to be nosey, but you don't have much of an accent. Where are you from?" Trey grinned self-deprecatingly and shrugged.

           "AHHHH pride," she sighed. "I left a small town with a working class accent to go away to college and got tired of being pigeoned-holed as a stupid lower middle class child in the big University." She laughed at her younger self, "So I took elocution lessons and fought hard to get rid of it." Her smile became bitter, "Another stupid point of contention between my father and me. I guess it's a good thing I'm to learn to swim, I've got a lot of water under that bridge."

       "How does he feel about you being in the UEO?" he asked, fiddling with the dials, carefully not looking at her. She appreciated the delicacy of his courtesy.

       Shaking her head so sharply that her hair spun out, she answered quietly, "He died while I was out."

       Tim gave her a look of sympathy mixed with puzzlement, "I'm sorry," he said sincerely, adding, "Out where?" She returned his gaze with one of disbelief.

      "I guess you guys really are isolated down here, aren't you," she said in tones of wonder. "I thought that, with all the press I'd gotten that everyone knew my whole life story." At his confused and bewildered expresssion, Trey laughed ironically at herself, "I guess I can stop assuming everyone knows everything and keep my trap shut. I can't believe you haven't heard."

      Tim shook his head, leaning toward her, "Knows what? Heard what?"

       A feeling of freedom made Trey promise recklessly, "I'll tell you someday when there's not so much new stuff going on, ok? When I can deal with the old tramas."

       Shrugging good naturedly, Tim answered, obviously having no idea to what he was agreeing, "OK. Whatever you say." Listening to the headphones, he fiddled some more. With a look of apology toward Trey, he asked, "You want to hear this?" She gave him a strange look, even as her hitherto silent headphones burst into confused chatter.

       "Hear what? You mean they weren't been quiet all that time?" Tim grinned shamelessly.

       "Nope, I wanted to talk to you and thought that you'd feel inhibited with their chatter in the background. So I cut the sound to your phones." Her mouth opened in an expression of amused outrage.

       "Of course I want to hear this. That was the whole idea behind getting up this early! What were you thinking of?" But even as she playfully berated him, she felt a small sense of satisfaction, that he had wanted to talk to her.

      Ducking her mock blows, he laughed and defended himself. "They haven't been doing anything important, and I've been recording it all for you anyway," he said, pointing to the recorder.

       A loud exclamation interrupted their horseplay, cutting it short. Sitting up straight, Tim spoke urgently into the attached mike, "What is it? Miguel! What's going on?"

      "Tim, call Dr. Smith. Get her to the pool STAT! Lonnie's fainted. She's out cold. Darwin and Ari are bringing her in now." Immediately, Tim set about alerting the proper authorities, while Trey sat still and small, trying to stay out of the way, wondering how this affected her.

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