Iris sighed, a look of pain in her eyes but not on her face. She had learned to hide her emotions behind a mask especially after Rafe's death. She could not hide the emotion in her eyes though, and it showed through tears, "I'm...running low on the pills..."

"What?" Stark came closer to her desk as Iris took a seat.

"My hospital will get more, but it won't be for an another month now."

"He can't wait that long!" Stark unexpectedly boomed. He shook his head and lowered his voice, "He needs it now..."

Iris opened her desk drawer. "Here. These are all I have left..."

She tossed the bottle to David, who hastily opened it and swallowed the pills. Immediately he began to stop shaking, and went back to normal. David breathed out, “Jesus. What do you mean these are the last one’s left?”

“Isn’t there another hospital that supplies them?” Stark asked her.

“Yes.” Iris opened the file in front of her and looked over the other hospital's records. “I am going to contact them, but it will be hard seeing that they will want to see David's medical records and they might even want to take blood....” Iris continued talking to Stark.

David leaned closer to her desk to see the file in front of Iris. The hospital's name and location were printed close together on the top of the folder. No problem... He thought, All I have to do is get the pills out of that hospital without anyone seeing me...

“It might take awhile...” Iris went on, “but I should be able to get the prescription from the other hospital...”

“Good. How much time will that take?”

“Shorter then for us waiting for this hospital to get the medicine in. I would say about two weeks.”

Stark sighed, “Damn, I wish there were some kind of treatment David could get.”

“The only treatment lies with the Tyrusians and I doubt if they would help us.” Iris said, “So, David, you think you could wait two weeks for more?” Iris turned around to David's empty seat, “David?”

----

Dragit's meticulous patience had been wavered. Days had passed and no contact from Gordon. Quite irritating considering the current situation. To add on to the misery, he had a tired crew and a ship running at 50% capacity.

He sat in the cockpit and gazed through the misty Venetian (a.k.a. Venus) clouds. The crew below aimlessly worked at the control panels. No end to this madness was in sight. Dragit curled his fingers slowly to a clenched fist. He slammed his newly formed fist down upon his chair. The rage and anger filled the room. Everyone grew silent.

Dragit peered at every single pair of eyes, starring at him. He scowled and took in a deep breath before speaking (in Tyrusian, translated to English for us). "Back to work...otherwise you call all forget about eating for the rest of the trip."

Each crewmember turned around and proceeded back to their tasks. Dragit slouched into his chair. "I grow tired of this waiting," he mumbled to himself. He reached over with his left hand and tapped a small blue button. A light flickered upon his personal view screen. Just for a moment, and then it vanished.

----

"Arg.. This traffic is making me wild..." Angie drummed impatiently with her fingers onto the steering wheel and glared at the masses of cars before them. "It’ll take an eternity‚ 'till we get to the hospital..."

"Calm yourself, Angie." Doc chuckled, while Jim was skidding nervously back and forth on the backseat of the car; obviously fearing that Angie might just decide to "work" her way through the street by stepping on the gas pedal. Sonia was sitting next to Jim, looking silently out of the window.

"Ahh- finally." As the traffic lights turned to green, Angie turned the wheel around and drove into one of the smaller streets with full speed. "That's a short cut!" She exclaimed cheerfully, glad that things were going forward.

With squeaking brakes the car stopped before the hospital. "What are you waiting for? Let’s look for David and Phil!" Angie jumped out of the car and entered the building, the others following just behind, Jim a bit pale in the face.

"They will probably be at Iris‘ office..." Angie assumed. As they entered the elevator, she relaxed a bit, glad that nothing unusual had happened till now. Stark will probably scold me for worrying so much and coming here... She had to smile- although she and her partner had often quite different opinions of life, they held great respect for each other and above all trusted each other completely.

As they reached the next floor, Phil was just about to leave Iris's office, a worried look on his face.

"What’s the matter?" Angie asked, feeling her heart beating a bit faster. Something seems to be wrong...

Her partner looked at her, slightly irritated "Angie. What are you and the others doing here?"

"Uhh...we...we were worried..." Angie said as casual as possible.

Stark frowned at her.

She sighed "Yeah- okay... David was in a bad state as he left and then, suddenly, I had some kind of premonition as if something terrible was to happen... So I... convinced the others to follow you..." Though the part with convincing was not really true... she had to smile a bit.

"A premonition?" Stark couldn't hide a small grin, a sign for Angie that he was about to tease her, but to her surprise the smile faded and he was looking quite seriously at her all of a sudden:

"It seems Angie, that your intuition was right this time... We are quite worried because David is gone..."

***

Doc sat in the lobby along with Jim and Sonia. Blue was in the car for obvious reasons. Angie wet out in search for David and Stark. Their car was still around in the back, so they couldn't have gone far. Angie had only been gone for a few minutes...yet it seemed as though an eternity had passed.

'Let's just hope that everything is alright. Angie maybe worked herself up over nothing.' Doc rested his head back upon the pale chair. It was not until just now that he started to think about David's sake.

Jim was giving his usual pale face. His hands near his head at all times in case there was a need to put it between his knees. Sonia was next to him. Very quiet and still. Doc glanced over towards their direction. 'Wonder what that girl is thinking? Hasn't spoken a word to us since David left.' Of course the obvious was always roaming around in Doc's mind, but he had a feeling that David wanted to take another course in life...

The elevator doors opened. Stark and Angie walked out. No expression carried upon their face. Doc stood up and walked towards the two. "So, what's up?"

"Bad news..." Stark started and then paused, trying to grasp the reality for himself. "Iris doesn't have anymore pills to give to David."

Jim lifted his wavered head up and shot a glance at Stark. "What?"

"This is the real kicker though...he's gone."

"You've got to be kidding." Doc slapped his forehead and shook his head. Jim was still sitting unable to move. And Sonia...well she just didn't even respond.

"He may have gone to the other hospital that can supply these pills for us...but I'm not about ready to break into a hospital for any reason. If anything, David could have waited for two weeks to get the next set of pills..." Stark was 'loosing his cool'. He paused in mid-sentence and clenched his fists. Angie walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Well then let's not stand around here for nuthin'. We got to go find him." Doc grabbed Jim and helped Sonia up. "We'll take the car out front and head to the hospital. Why don't the two of you go in Stark's car and search out a new location that David may have gone too. It's night time, so he could not stay in too many places." Angie tossed Doc the keys to the car, and the trio headed out the door.