Once upon a time, in a faraway quadrant, there sailed a starship called Voyager. She had a bold and stalwart crew, who were ready to face any danger and do anything necessary in their quest to get home. But they had a problem.

The captain of this ship was strong and fair, and her name was Kathryn Janeway. She had called a meeting of her senior officers on this day, and faced them all to discuss their situation.

"We're almost out of shuttlecraft," she said, looking around the table at all their faces. "Out of the forty-seven we began this voyage with, we have only one shuttle remaining, the --"

"Don't say its name, Captain!" cried Tom Paris, the pilot of the magnificent starship. "If you do, it'll surely be destroyed!"

"Remember the Cochrane?" B'Elanna Torres, ship's engineer, muttered. Of course, she was a little biased, since the Cochrane's destruction had resulted in some good things for her personally. She shared a small smile with the pilot.

"Be that as it may," Janeway continued, "We need more shuttles."

"What do you propose?" asked Tuvok, the chief of security. "We are no longer in the Alpha Quadrant where we can simply restock on shuttlecraft and faceless ensigns whenever our supplies become exhausted."

A slight smile came to the captain's lips. "We'll have to make them."

"Make ensigns?" echoed Harry Kim, the young ensign who, though he had died several times along the voyage, enjoyed the special privilege of being a main character, and therefore had returned from week to week.

"No, no," sighed the captain. "Shuttles, Harry, shuttles! There are still almost a hundred surplus people on this ship who haven't been introduced as characters yet, and if too many of them die, we can always send you out to get killed a few more times."

"Aye-aye, Captain," Kim said proudly.

"Chakotay," she said, addressing her first officer, "I'm putting you in charge of the project. I want you to construct a prototype model for a new shuttlecraft. If Torres examines and finds it sound, then we'll begin construction of a new fleet."

"Aye, Captain," he agreed, already pondering his new assignment. Whenever he faced a difficult job, he would usually meditate and contact his spirit guide for help. His spirit guide probably knew a lot about shuttlecraft engineering, so he'd do that right away.

"Is that all?" Janeway asked, glancing at all her officers again. "Dismissed."

When he was finished meditating, Chakotay went to the bridge and announced, "Captain, I'm ready to begin construction of the shuttlecraft."

Janeway nodded. "Excellent. Take whatever personnel you need. I've allotted cargo bay three as a workspace --"

"Captain," he interrupted. "Permission to take our remaining shuttle down to the planet's surface" -- for Voyager was in orbit of a lovely M-class world -- "to gather building materials."

This request puzzled the captain. "Why? Have you detected duranium deposits? Dilithium ore? Fibrous materials with which to make comfy seat cushions?"

"None of the above. But I have to go down there -- trust me on this. My . . . spirit guide told me to."

She thought about it for a while, and finally nodded. "Very well. Permission granted. Assemble an away team."

"Thank you, Captain." Chakotay looked around the bridge for someone to accompany him to the planet.

"Ensign Kim! I'll need your expertise on this away mission."

Kim, feeling another fantastic crash followed by the horrible death of an ensign coming on, paled and stumbled back, flattening himself against the rear wall where his duty station was. "I-I-I . . . S-s-sorry, C-commander, I can't! I, uh, go off duty soon." He swallowed. "In fact, right now!" He turned and bolted for the turbolift.

Chakotay frowned. Funny, he had thought the ensign would be on the bridge for another three hours. He shrugged, and looked for someone else to accompany him to the planet.

"Lieutenant Paris! Your skills will be a great help down there."

Sitting at the helm, Paris' face drained of color. "Uh, I'm so sorry sir, but I, uh . . . ." He trailed off, looking around him for salvation. He glanced at the captain for help, but she just frowned at him.

"Captain needs me up here, sir," he said. "Piloting the ship. This is a, um, very difficult orbit to maintain. Needs my constant hand at the helm." He tried to look apologetic. "You'll need to find someone else, sir."

"All right, then," Chakotay sighed, and looked again for someone else to accompany him to the planet.

"Lieutenant Tuvok! I could use a security officer on the away team."

Tuvok shifted his stance and looked uncomfortable. "Since no one else is willing to go, sir," he began, "it appears that I am obliged to join you." He wrestled mentally for a second and then said, "I will go."

"Great," Chakotay said, and then pointed to an ensign cowering against one of the aft workstations, trying her best not to be noticed.

"Ensign Deathwish! You're with me."

As he and Tuvok strode to the turbolift with Deathwish in tow, she whimpered, "Oh, no, please. Please Commander, I don't want to go . . . I don't want to die!"

Chakotay, Tuvok, and Deathwish prepared to leave the ship in Voyager's last shuttle. Chakotay was at the helm, Tuvok was at the conn, and Deathwish was curled into a small ball at the back of the shuttle, muttering over and over, "I don't want to die. I don't want to die."

"Chakotay," came Janeway's voice over the comm system, "You're cleared for departure. Good luck."

"Thank you, Captain," Chakotay responded. "Shuttle Bluestone out." There was a terrified gasp from the rear of the shuttle, and Tuvok looked displeased. "You should not have called the shuttle by name, Commander," he said. "The chances for the success of this mission have just been considerably diminished."

"Oh, lighten up," Chakotay said as the shuttlebay's doors lifted. He gently keyed the controls to take them out. "This is just a routine supply-gathering mission."

"Yes, routine," Tuvok said. The shuttle passed through the forcefield and slid out into open space. "That is exactly what concerns me."

"We're gonna die," Deathwish whimpered.

Several minutes later, Chakotay struggled out of the wreckage of the shuttle and shook his head. "Whoo," he said. "That was a hell of a crash." He peered back in to find his crewmates. "Tuvok! Are you okay in there?" Tuvok emerged, a medkit slung over his shoulder and a scowl on his face. "Ensign Deathwish is dead," he said. "The injuries she sustained in the crash were severe."

Chakotay leaned against the scorched bulkhead of the shuttle in grief. "I hate to lose people this way. She was a good engineer."

"Science officer," Tuvok corrected.

"Whatever. Send my condolences to her family."

"May I also point out," Tuvok said, "that we have lost our last shuttlecraft."

Chakotay sighed, straightened up, looked around, and then headed off towards a forested area nearby. "Well," he said, "we'll just have to build our shuttle here, won't we?" He set to gathering supplies for his task.

"Sticks, Commander?" Tuvok's tone sounded almost incredulous as Chakotay dropped his bundle on the ground.

"That's right. My father taught me how to construct entire houses out of sticks when I was a kid. I even built a bathtub once. So I thought to myself, self, is a shuttlecraft really any different from a bathtub?" He lifted several of the largest branches and began scoring them to fit together. "Besides, my spirit guide showed me a vision in which I built an entire starship out of wood. This must be what I am meant to do." He gestured with his knife. "Hand me that bough over there, please."

"Commander," Tuvok began sternly, "Wood lacks the durability required to maintain the structural integrity of the shuttle. Nor will it be able to withstand the atmospheric forces of reentry."

"I'm sure that B'Elanna will find it perfectly safe when she comes to perform her inspection," Chakotay said. "Now let's get back to work."

The shuttle was completed at last, and presently B'Elanna beamed down from the ship. When Tuvok asked Chakotay why the away team had not simply beamed down in the first place, Chakotay ignored him and instead greeted the Chief Engineer.

Now, B'Elanna was in a very bad mood. That morning she'd run out of replicator rations, and instead of the waffles and sausage she'd wanted for breakfast, she'd had to settle for Neelix's Jinarian omelet, made from some kind of green-shelled egg with a flaming pink yolk that tasted like bubblegum and seaweed mixed together, topped with some more of his outrageous Talaxian spices. Feeling thoroughly disgusted after her breakfast, she had another argument with Tom about a holodeck program (Switzerland or Fiji?), and while she was arguing with him she ended up late for her shift and for the warp core diagnostic scheduled for that day. She was in a very bad mood.

"Well, what do you think of my shuttlecraft?" Chakotay showed her the wooden structure, a shuttlecraft-shaped bundle of sticks, and grinned.

B'Elanna stared at it, walked in a slow circle around it, and seemed not to know what to say. "You . . . pig!" She finally spat. Chakotay looked startled. "You kill Ensign What's-her-name --"

"Deathtrap," Chakotay supplied.

"Deathwish," Tuvok corrected.

"Whatever," Chakotay said.

"Arrgh!" cried B'Elanna. "You destroy the Bluestone and you drag me down from my warp core diagnostic to show me this? It'll never fly! I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your shuttle down!"

"Wait -- I'll show you. I'll run a test flight, and you can look it over in action!"

"I will beam back to the ship," Tuvok quickly said. "You two continue with the test flight," and he promptly signaled for beamout. Chakotay climbed into the shuttle and B'Elanna growled and followed him.

But as soon as they lifted off the ground, the shuttle immediately came down in a most spectacular crash, and burst into flames.

"Well," Chakotay admitted as he helped B'Elanna crawl out of the flaming wreckage, "maybe it had a few design flaws."

So the first shuttle was destroyed. The captain was not happy. "We still need that shuttle, people," she said at the next staff meeting. "Ensign Kim, I'm putting you in charge of the project. Try to come up with a new shuttle design -- and use something that works a little better than sticks."

"Yes, Captain!" he replied eagerly. He could do this. After all, in an alternate universe he'd already designed a wonderful runabout. Unfortunately it had been given a name, the Yellowstone, and had been destroyed. This time it would work, though. He'd do his best not to name the shuttle on screen, and he wouldn't let Chakotay in it. It would be the best shuttle ever.

"Everybody got it?" asked the captain. "Dismissed."

"Kim to Torres," came the ensign's voice over the conn. B'Elanna happened to have been sleeping, and jolted upright in her bed. With a low growl she groped in the dark for the communications panel and knocked a glass over from her bedside stand. Her hand finally slapped the control.

"What is it, Harry?" Her voice was irritable. When Kim's voice came back over the comm, he didn't seem the least bit daunted by her tone.

"I've completed my prototype shuttle! I'm ready for you to come inspect it."

"Couldn't this have waited until MORNING?"

There was a pause on Kim's end. "I'm sorry," he said hesitantly. "Were you asleep? I had no idea. It's only . . . " there was a pause as he checked the ship's chronometer. "zero-one-hundred hours." His voice became apologetic. "I'm sorry. I just got caught up in my work and didn't notice the time --"

"Stow it, Harry," B'Elanna snapped. "I'll be there in a minute. Torres out."

As she flung the sheets away from her and stepped out of bed, her foot landed on one of the broken shards of her glass on the floor. Yelling, she stumbled into her bathroom for a dermal regenerator. By accident she grabbed the wrong instrument, and when she held it to her foot it stung even more. She found the dermal regenerator but it was out of power, so she had to clean and bandage the wound the old-fashioned way until she could be done with Harry and go see the holodoc.

She finally struggled into her uniform and stomped out of her quarters. But when she got to cargo bay three, it was empty. She signaled Kim again and heard his voice, even more apologetic than before -- "Didn't I tell you? I'm in holodeck two, not the cargo bay." The holodeck? Why would he be there? With a snarl, she left the empty cargo bay. Harry had better have a damned good shuttlecraft, she thought.

"I did my best to make it destruction-proof," Kim said proudly as B'Elanna paced the shuttle's nicely carpeted interior. He pointed to some of the controls and explained its features. "A superior guidance system, advanced shield modulation for maximum protection, stronger gravitational compensators for smoother landings, no name or registration, a long-range transporter, signal beacons, a standing order not to let Chakotay on board, a multi-phasic . . . . " He trailed off when he noticed that she wasn't listening to him.

"It's a hologram, Harry! How are we supposed to fly a holographic shuttle? Go on holographic missions?"

"We have a holographic doctor," Kim bristled. "We could use the mobile emitter -- "

"Have you asked him about this?"

"Well, no, I didn't think he'd like the ide-"

"The captain wanted a real shuttle, not a holographic fantasy. We can't use the doc's emitter! What if it were destroyed?"

"But this is a superior shuttle! Made not to be destroyed! And in time, I might be able to understand the doc's emitter enough to make another one."

"Yeah, but you'd probably make the emitter out of holograms, too." B'Elanna shook her head. "I can't believe you dragged me out of bed for this, you pig! Well, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your shuttle down! Computer, end program!" All of Kim's hard worked vanished to be replaced by the stark metal of the hologrid, and B'Elanna stalked back to bed.

So the second shuttle was deactivated. The captain really wasn't happy. "All right, this is unacceptable." Janeway leaned over the table on her palms and stared each of her officers in the eye, particularly Chakotay and Kim. "We need our prototype shuttle, and we need it now." She pushed herself off the table and began to pace. "I'm disappointed by all of these failures. Doubtless another dangerous mission is coming up for which we'll have to sacrifice several shuttles and ensigns, and I need those surplus shuttles!" She sighed. "Lieutenant Paris, I'm putting you in charge of the project. You have forty-seven hours in which to construct your prototype craft, and if it isn't up to standard, then I'm landing this ship on the next friendly planet we find and canceling the trip home. Understood? Dismissed."

Poor Paris didn't have a clue how to begin. Sticks had failed, and holograms had failed, so what was left? What could he use to construct an indestructible shuttlecraft? He sat in his quarters late that evening, fresh out of ideas, when he heard a chime at the door. "Come in," he called, curious. Perhaps B'Elanna had come to cheer him up?

When the door opened, it wasn't B'Elanna who entered, but Neelix. He was carrying a covered tray, and walked up quickly to where Paris sat. "I hope I'm not disturbing you?" he asked.

"Not at all, come on in." He pointed to Neelix's tray. "What's that?"

"Well, I noticed that you didn't come down to dinner tonight, and I thought you might be hungry, so I brought you a little snack." With a flourish he lifted the cover off the tray, to reveal --

"Leola root pie," he announced proudly. "The finest treat in the quadrant." He offered it to Paris. "Here, try some."

Paris obligingly picked up the fork and poked at the top crust of the pie. It was a tightly-woven mat of root fibers, and he found it almost impossible to break. When he poked his fork at it, it just bent and refused to break. Using the side of the fork as a cutting edge worked even less, and he couldn't bite through it.

"Ahh . . . I may have made the crust a bit too tough," Neelix said apologetically.

"No . . . " Paris said slowly, thinking. "No, Neelix, you made it just right! That's it! Leola root!" He laughed in his joy at having found the answer. He grabbed Neelix's shoulders. "Tell me, Neelix, how much leola root do you have in storage?"

"Oh . . . about fifty . . . no, forty-seven barrels I keep in cargo bay two," he said, "why?"

"Do you mind if I use some of it?"

"My-my leola root?" Neelix asked, sounding uncertain.

"I'm sorry, Neelix, but I really need it. Important ship's business."

"Well . . . if it's that important, then I suppose you can have it."

"Great!" Paris exclaimed. "Thanks, Neelix, you're a real lifesaver." And he jumped up and ran from his quarters, so intent on starting his work.

"But, wait!" Neelix called after him. "You didn't eat your pie . . ." he trailed off, staring at the uneaten pie left sitting on the tray. Then he shrugged, picked up the fork, and began to dig in.

B'Elanna was murderous. While she had been performing a delicate adjustment to the databank memory processors that morning, Joe Carey, one of her engineering staff, had bumped her arm and made her accidentally erase the vacation holodeck program she and Tom had been working on (and arguing about) for the past three months. Holding in all her fury and restraining her urge to rant and scream at Carey and maybe break his nose had given her a headache, and she'd stalked around Engineering the rest of the morning with throbbing temples. She had trouble concentrating on her work because of the headache, and had caused a turbolift malfunction without realizing it, so she'd gotten trapped in a turbolift with Seven of Nine on the way to her quarters when she went off-duty. While Vorik and Carey had tried to track down and fix the problem for an hour and a half, she and Seven had stood at opposite ends of the turbolift and glared at each other, occasionally arguing viciously about engineering principles or the Borg collective until they were rescued and the turbolift started moving again. She'd stalked down to the mess hall for something to eat, again out of replicator credits, and had choked on a piece of Neelix's new leola root pie. Neelix's heartfelt but clumsy attempts at the Heimlich maneuver failed, and B'Elanna was quickly dragged down, gasping, to Sickbay. B'Elanna was glad for once that Paris wasn't there to see her like that.

While she was sitting in Sickbay and seething as Neelix offered profuse apologies for the choking business, Paris called B'Elanna down to inspect his new shuttlecraft. Glad to leave, she excused herself rather sharply and headed for cargo bay three.

B'Elanna stomped into the cargo bay, magnetic coil spanner in hand, ready to pronounce Paris' shuttle unfit and get back to her life. She found him leaning casually against the rough brown side of the shuttle, and frowned at its curious appearance.

"It looks like Chakotay's stick shuttle," B'Elanna spat.

"Not sticks," Paris corrected, "but better. Leola root."

"Leola root? You PIG!" she cried, circling the shuttle with a look on her face that could only be described as awe.

"Absolutely indestructible," Paris said, "watch." He drew a hand phaser and fired it at the side of the shuttle. It just absorbed the energy without so much as glowing. "Here," he offered, "take a look inside."

B'Elanna was even more awed when she had run a complete analysis of the shuttle's systems and seen the interior. "How much leola root did this take?" she asked.

"All forty-seven barrels," Paris told her. "There's no more left on the ship."

"No more leola root?" asked B'Elanna. "Ever?" Her eyes glowed at the prospect. "Why, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll kiss your handsome face!" And she did.

"Want to take the shuttle for a test drive?" Paris asked with a grin. He replicated a bottle of wine and two glasses, and took the shuttle out into deep space. Tom and B'Elanna were never heard from again, and the captain held another staff meeting.

The third shuttle was lost, and the captain was really not very happy at all. "Okay, we've lost our third shuttle," Janeway said. "But we are out of leola root . . . " Everyone burst into loud cheers and applause. "Still, I said that if this third shuttle turned out to be a failure that we'd set down on the next class-M planet, and I meant it. Is that clear? Dismissed!"

So Voyager landed on a quiet little class-M planet, and everyone had to try to make a home there. Janeway and Chakotay retreated to a spot far away from everyone else where it was "Resolutions" all over again, Seven complained that "shuttles are irrelevant," Kim and all the nameless ensigns breathed much easier (before they were all killed in a rockslide), and no one ever had to eat leola root again.