This was one time Scotty almost wished he dared pull rank and excuse himself to go shut himself in his office. Give him a pile of paperwork over a pile of Tribbles any day of the week. But the wee buggers were getting into everything, and there was no way Scotty was going to stand by and watch his engines get overrun. Or rather, there was no way he was going to not help, because they were already overrun.
Worse, he had no idea where they'd come from. He'd checked Hey You's cage, and the beastie was still there, and Scotty knew he hadn't overfed him. It. Whatever. The trouble with Tribbles was you fed one too much and then you had too many Tribbles and then they fed themselves, and had more Tribbles, until... this.
And worse still - if that was even possible by this point - all the ones he was trying to get seemed intent on crawling just out of reach the minute he went to grab them. "C'mon, y'wee terror," he said, craning his neck upward to stare at a Tribble that had somehow managed to wedge itself between a pair of support beams. "That's no' funny, y'know." The Tribbles he'd already collected in his arms cooed, and he shot them a glance too. "You're no' helpin'."