Oh my. Thank you, so very much. =) I like "people do good" stories, I have to admit - it's a weakness of mine. And I'm glad to know I didn't fall into overly sappy, even with a baby Horta demanding to be fed before he takes a stab at tasting a sleeve or boot tip again. (I just had to have him call M'Benga "mama" if only for the tip of the hat at what I recall being Ensign Naraht's amusing propensity for finding human gender confusing. Which I now need to double check, of course. XD)

~*~

PS: As a note, I added the !newtags tag to my post on the community as technically, Sam isn't an OC - he's actually the miner who is relieved of guard duty at the start of the episode Devil in the Dark. It was a randomly chosen name for miner X at first - since it turned out to be exactly the same as the one used in the episode, I figured I might as well make it really him. =) And M'Benga is M'BENGA! :D Who rocks, even if he isn't a doctor in this continuity for the series. XD