Galloway asked him on the second day out, in a corridor, on deck five, at 0200, standing in the right place at the right moment with no fuss.
"Sir. May I have a moment."
"Lieutenant."
"In the restored timeline, am I alive?"
Spock stopped.
"Lieutenant..."
"It's a simple question, sir."
"It is not a simple question."
"Yes, sir, it is. It has two answers, and you know which one, because you have spent two years reading the record of a universe I was in, and I am in your list of nine, or I am not."
Spock did not answer.
Galloway nodded slowly. "Right."
"Lieutenant."
"No, sir. It's all right." His voice did not change. "I've known since the mess hall. You said nine crewmen are alive who were not, and that you weren't going to read the list out in a mess hall, and you said it looking at the table. And a man does not avoid looking at somebody's face because of a stranger."
The corridor hummed.
"When," said Galloway.
"I am not going to tell you that. And I want you to understand this is not a kindness. If I tell you when, you will count. And you will not be able to stop, and it will be in your face on every landing party, and Captain Kirk will see it, because he sees everything, and he will ask, and you will lie to him, and you will lie badly, because you are an honest man and you have had no practice. And I am aware that I have just made a decision about your life without your consent, and I have done it once already this week to a better man than either of us, and I am finding that it becomes easier, and that is the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me."
Lieutenant Galloway looked at his science officer for a while.
"Sir. Can I tell you why I gave you the code?"
Spock said nothing.
"You came to my station in the seventh month, and stood there eleven seconds, and didn't ask. And I want you to know what I was thinking, because I've never told anybody. I was thinking: that man is going to spend two years of his life trying to bring back somebody who never once said my name."
Spock's head came up.
"He didn't. Captain Kirk. I was on forty-one landing parties with him and he called me Lieutenant, and he was decent to me, and he'd have taken a phaser bolt for me without breaking stride, and he did not know my name. That's not a complaint. That's what a security officer is, sir. You are the man in the doorway, and the doorway does not have a name.
"But I stood on that plain for nine hours. And I watched a Vulcan come apart trying to get him back. And a doctor bite through his own lip. And a woman sit on a rock listening to nothing. And I thought: whatever that man was, he made those four. And if I can't be one of them, I can hold the door for them. That's why you got the code."
He came to attention.
"So I'd appreciate it if you'd get on with it, and not tell me when, and let me stand at the back and do my job. And, sir. When it happens. I'd take it as a kindness if you'd remember that I knew."
Spock looked at him for a long moment. "Lieutenant. What is your first name?"
Galloway's face did something. "Michael, sir."
"Michael Galloway. I am going to live approximately a hundred and forty years. I am going to remember this conversation, in this corridor, at this hour, in complete detail, on every one of those days. And when it happens, I am going to be there. And I am going to say your name."
* * *
He did.
It was on a planet with a yellow sky, in 2268, and it happened very fast, the way those things always happen, and there was nothing anybody could have done, and there was a phaser and a man in a doorway.
And Spock knelt down beside him on the ground and closed his eyes with two fingers and said, quietly, so that nobody else on that landing party heard it:
"Michael."
And James Kirk, standing four meters away with his hands at his sides and his face perfectly still, said, "What did you say?"
And Spock said, "Nothing, Captain."