Ensign Adams was dead to begin with. He was lying in state in a gleaming black torpedo casing. His mates from Engineering solemnly folded a brightly colored, striped beach towel into a triangle. Lt. Ford gently placed it under Adam’s head and said “Doug Adams was a hoopy frood. He always knew where his towel was.”
Visiting Ambassador Pharris huffed angrily; “That’s out of line! It‘s down right insulting.”
James T. Kirk fixed the VIP with a piercing glare; “You, sir, are out of line. You didn’t know that young man… you…don’t know his crewmates… or their traditions.”
Kirk tugged his shift down, mentally preparing himself and stepping forward addressed the assembly; “A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
Captain Kirk’s hazel eyes swept the crowd of mourners. “Some here today, may question why a towel and that quote are significant enough, important enough, and solemn enough, to honor a fallen member of Star Fleet. The answer is simple enough -- Ensign Adams was an engineer. He could find multitude of uses for the most mundane of objects. And now as we send our comrade ahead to explore ‘the undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn no traveller returns’ he must make his own way, hitch hiking the low road and so his friends give him a towel to aid and to comfort him on his journey.”
Kirk stepped back and nodded his head. Two Weapons personnel came forward and sealed the casing.
Commander Scott said “Order Arms.” The security detail brought their long phasers to their shoulders with a snap. Scotty brought the stem of his bagpipe to his mouth and began to play a slow and somber version of “Loch Lomond” as the torpedo rode it way down the track and was launched into space.
The security detail grounded their weapons and the mourners were dismissed.
At the wake, Lt. Riley asked Lt. Ford. “Was all that true? What the Captain said about towels and engineers?”
Ford took a sip of his single malt scotch and paused to collect his thoughts. “Yeah, I guess you could say it’s true. It was the original Douglas Adams said it first, though. But every year at the Mars Institute of Technology there’s a contest to come up with different uses for a towel.” He took another sip. “Also that was Dougie’s favorite towel, a souvenir from a wild weekend he couldn’t quite remember on Risa.”
Lt. Ford raised his glass and made the toast: “To absent friends.”
FIN
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