STAR TREK: TOS #23 - Ishmael Read online

  Kirk expelled his breath in a faint sound that could have been a laugh, and sipped at the murky brew in the cup. “It should take that long for me to figure out what I’m going to report to the base commander,” he said. Then, as the doctor turned to leave, he added, “Thank you, Bones.”

  McCoy paused in the doorway, studying him for a moment without speaking. All that he could have said had been said, by his own presence in the captain’s quarters at a time when, by his own advice, he, too, should have been sleeping. So he turned and left, and Kirk prowled restlessly back to sit on the edge of the bunk, his mind worrying again at the problem of Spock’s transmissions from the Klingon ore transport.

  It was there that the half a grain of phylozine that McCoy had slipped into his coffee while his back was turned took hold, and he slid almost without knowing it back into a heavy sleep tortured by too-familiar dreams.

  Spock’s first transmission had come as the last of the Enterprise crew members were beaming aboard.

  Kirk had returned early to the visiting officers’ quarters on the base, and had paced the oddly shaped rooms like a tiger caged by time. Fourteen hundred hours had come and gone—fifteen hundred. Driven by restlessness, he had had the image of the ore transport piped into his quarters’ viewscreen: an unwieldy black giant of a ship, a floating mountain. In the distance behind it Kirk could glimpse the deadly silver angularity of the Klingon battle cruiser Rapache, which had arrived at the base inexplicably early and was now in orbit, hanging like a hawk upon the winds of night.

  Still Spock had not come.

  At 1540 Kirk had tapped back into Base Control, to learn that the ore transport had just lumbered out of orbit, and was headed in the direction of the Tau Eridani Cloud.

  At 1730 Kirk began canceling shore leaves, calling all personnel unobtrusively back to the Enterprise. After a final, cautious communicator scan of the base he returned to the ship himself and took his post on the bridge, preparing the ship to leave orbit, watching the gleaming shape of the Rapache still riding in its orbit, mentally weighing possibilities against inevitable consequences.

  The Rapache was a heavily armed fighting ship, capable of mauling the Enterprise badly in a pitched battle. He had put himself and the Federation in the wrong by sending Spock aboard the transport to begin with. The Klingons didn’t know that, of course, but if they found it out ... what was their secret worth to them?

  He did not want to think about how they might find it out.

  “Mr. Sulu,” he said quietly. “Lay in a course for Alpha Eridani III.”

  “Aye, sir.” The helmsman’s voice was impassive, but Kirk felt the flicker of those dark eyes. The tension that crackled under the bridge crew’s usual calm efficiency was almost strong enough to pick up on a voltmeter. Instinct—or, as Spock would have insisted, subliminal clues—told them that there was something behind this sudden change of course other than new orders from the Fleet.

  Kirk studied the wide-range readouts on the small screen on the arm of his chair. A course for Alpha Eridani III would parallel the transport’s along the fringes of the disruptive field of the cloud, but was a perfectly legitimate bearing for a Federation ship. The Klingons might have their suspicions, but could hardly prove that the Enterprise had some reason to follow the transport. If the transport changed course, Kirk knew, and headed deeper into the cloud, he would have the choice of abandoning the pursuit or playing tag with some unknown weapon through that mazelike welter of shifting navigation points with the Rapache very likely on his back—neither of which course of action would help Spock any.

  With a sudden harsh crack of static the Enterprise communicator came to life. Even through the distortion, Spock’s voice was recognizable. The message was short.

  “White dwarf, Khlaru, Tillman’s Factor, Guardian.” A flash of static, and silence. The whole had taken less than two seconds of transmit time.

  “What—” Kirk began, and Uhura said, “It’s a generalized subspace broadcast from the direction of the Tau Eridani Cloud, Captain.” The dark wings of her brows pulled together. “Was that—”

  “That was Mr. Spock, Lieutenant. He’s aboard that Klingon ore transport. He had only a hand communicator. ...”

  “He could have wired it through their communications system via a centralized computer,” said the communications officer thoughtfully. “Only—transports don’t carry that type of sophisticated equipment.”

  “No,” said Kirk grimly, “they don’t. Did you get a tape?”

  She touched a button, rose from her station to hand him a tiny spool.

  “Yeoman Donnelly—take this down to Shock’s pet whiz kids in Science. Get them to play it backwards, forwards, sideways if they have to: find out what he means and get it back to me. Lieutenant Uhura—was that message traceable to the Enterprise?”

  “No, sir. It was a wide-band frequency. It could have been for anyone on the base.”

  “Could they have traced Spock’s position on the transport from it?”

  She was silent a moment, thinking, her long hands resting lightly on the complex patterns of her console. Then she said, “I don’t think so, Captain. He could have wired through the computer at any point on the ship. But now they know that he’s aboard, and they’ll be watching. If he makes another transmission they’ll be able to fix his position.”

  That had been the beginning of the nightmare. As Starbase Twelve dwindled on the rear viewscreens Kirk could see the Rapache peel out of orbit behind them, dogging them on the farthest limits of their scanners but lying between them and any Federation outpost. Kirk kept to the bridge through three consecutive watches, bullying McCoy for stimulants, checking and rechecking the position of the transport as its image flickered and shifted through the random variations of the cloud’s ion fields. Through his skin he could feel the tension of the bridge crew as they moved with unwonted quiet about their duties, keeping the Enterprise on her noncommittal course for Alpha Eridani III, and waiting. ...

  Kirk knew—they all knew—that Spock’s capture would only be a matter of time. The science section reported back that the transmission Spock had made was, as far as they could tell, totally ambiguous. Kirk suspected that Spock, wherever he was hiding in the mazes of air ducts and holding bays on that gigantic transport, knew it too. He would have to clarify with a second transmission.

  And then—what?

  Kirk wondered how important that weapon aboard the transport was to the Klingons. Important enough to risk breaking the Organian Peace Treaty by attempting to prevent the Enterprise from reporting back to base? Powerful enough to let them break the treaty with impunity? There was a disturbing thought. Or did they think they would be able to justify their action on the grounds of the Enterprise’s having started the trouble by sending a spy aboard in the first place?

  If Spock did make another transmission he would be caught. If he was caught, the Klingons would use the Mind-Sifter, and then it would only be a matter of time before they knew who had sent him.

  Spock’s last transmission was less than a second long. Again on the generalized beam, wide-flung enough to be intended for anyone from here to Starbase Twelve. Short—no more than a quick burst of words and static. He gave three numbers, and signed off.

  That was the last they heard of him.

  An hour crawled by. Two. Kirk stared down at the dark glassy surface of the readout screen at the captain’s station, watching the colored dots that swam there: the luminous green that marked the mass of the Enterprise, the blue-green fleck of the slightly smaller Rapache at the far edge, the yellow square of the transport, its color and shape shifting uneasily in the interference of the cloud.

  Why the cloud? Kirk wondered. Had they suspected they would be followed, and taken refuge there for concealment? Or was there some other reason? Was what they had on board a weapon at all, or something else?

  At the dark edge of the readout screen, the blue-green dot began to move.

  At the same moment Sulu
said, “Klingon battle cruiser accelerating to maximum sublight, Captain. Moving in.”

  Kirk touched a button on the arm of his chair. “Battle stations. Yellow alert.”

  Lights began to flash. Kirk felt the tautening of the atmosphere on the bridge like a subsonic note. Through his fingertips on the chair arms, through the deck below his feet, he could almost feel the controlled speed with which the crew readied the ship for battle. A battle, he thought, that could end in any fashion, from destruction to Organian intervention to ... anything.

  “Klingons decelerating, still coming on medium slow,” reported Sulu. “Klingon shields raised.”

  “Raise shields,” ordered Kirk. “Lieutenant Uhura, attempt to hail the Klingon bridge as soon as they’re in range.”

  “Captain,” said Chekov, glancing up from his post at Sulu’s side. “The ore transport is moving into warp speeds. I think—I cannot get a clear reading—I think they are up to warp five, and accelerating.”

  “Track them,” snapped Kirk. “Keep an eye on them, Chekov, cloud or no cloud. Mr. Sulu, hold course for Alpha Eridani III. Mr. Chekov, keep me informed if they change speed or direction.”

  “They are changing speed, Captain. I think it’s warp seven but—but ore transports cannot make that kind of speed. And the reading is changing. ...”

  Kirk strode down to look over the navigator’s shoulder, the deadly blinking of the battle-alert lights flickering over him as he moved. Not only was the transport—impossibly—still accelerating, but it seemed to be shifting its absolute mass.

  “Recompute that,” Kirk ordered, and glanced up at the rear screens where the angular shape of the Rapache was visible now, growing against the darkness. Above him Uhura, impassive as a bronze idol, was calmly readying an ejection pod with tapes and readouts of every ship function, standard procedure in the event of a battle. Automatically his glance shifted to the science console, and he was startled, almost shocked, to see a stranger there.

  “Captain!”

  His eyes snapped back to the sensor screens. The transport had vanished.

  “Run a wide-band scan. Recalibrate the whole board if you have to.”

  The Russian’s hands played across the console like a pianist’s, rapid and sure. “Nothing, Captain. No debris, no antimatter residue, no disruption in the field—and no transport.”

  The intermittent scarlet glare of the alert lights played across the small screen like bloody dawn. Chekov ran the sensor beams over that part of the cloud backwards, sideways, inside-out. But there was nothing—no sign of the ore transport, nor any indication of what had become of it. It had simply vanished, into the thinnest air in creation.

  “A cloaking device?” He glanced up at Spock’s replacement at the science console.

  She shook her head. “Difficult to say, sir. In theory even a cloaked ship would leave an antimatter residue. Besides, a cloak would suck off so much power that they shouldn’t even have been able to break light-speed, let alone make warp seven. But then, with the distortion effects from that thing ...” She waved a rather bitten tentacle-end in the direction of the cloud. “... anything might have happened.”

  Kirk stood still for a moment, looking down past Chekov’s shoulder at the increasingly confused readings within the cloud as they approached the outer fringes of the dwarf-star’s wide-flung gravitational influence. Then he turned away, and stepped back to his chair, followed by every eye on the bridge. “Mr. Sulu,” he said quietly, “hold course for Alpha Eridani III, at present speed.”

  The Enterprise had remained on battle alert all the way to Alpha Eridani III. The Rapache had followed them, never coming into hailing range, to the edge of that star system, then with a showy roll had fallen abruptly away and headed back in the general direction of the distant Klingon Empire.

  And after that ... nothing.

  No sign of the ore transport, though the Enterprise had gone into the outer edge of the cloud at several points on its way back to Starbase Twelve and had taken readings as accurate as any could be there. No hint of what had been aboard. All clue to its nature gone—the transport itself gone—Spock gone.

  Dead, Kirk hoped, lying in the gray lassitude that is the aftermath of heavy sleep. He glanced at the chronometer. It was a few minutes short of 1100. McCoy had doubtless not only slipped him a Mickey Finn, but had arranged for his replacement on the bridge as well.

  But if Spock was dead, he thought, it would not be an easy death.

  It was typical of Spock, he thought, that he had died alone, stubbornly following the logic of his duty to its bitter conclusion. Typical that he had simply gone, without saying good-bye.

  Typical that his last words to them had been numbers, the obscure key to some unguessable riddle.

  But whatever that riddle was, Spock had considered the answer well worth his own life. And the Klingons had considered it worth the risk of the wrath of the Organians to protect.

  And whatever had been aboard that transport, it was still at large, somewhere, in the galaxy.

  Kirk rolled stiffly from his bunk, and began preparing to go ashore.

  Chapter 2

  FAINT AND CLEAR, the tapping of a horse’s hooves on the damp clay of the roadbed sounded through the misty opal colors of the morning. Aaron Stemple, returning from the settlement of Olympia to Seattle, rode wrapped in his own thoughts; almost, but not quite, oblivious to the wan white beauty of the foggy morning. He was aware of the salt-sweet sea smell of Puget Sound, and the headier tang of the pines that stood like a silent cathedral—clay red or black with damp—above and below the road that tacked its way along the steep hem of the sound; was aware of the sharp cold of the morning and the familiar taste of coming rain. But he was aware of them primarily as distractions. Not being an imaginative man, he pushed the awareness aside from long habit. As owner of the only sawmill in the backwoods lumber boomtown of Seattle, Stemple had enough to think about between his investments in land and shipping deals with the San Francisco companies without worrying over his own personal impulses to sloth.

  Thus he was unprepared when his horse suddenly shied. Catching up the reins with a jerk, he wondered if he had even seen the light, or heard the sound, away between the trees downslope to his left. He turned the horse’s head as he felt its muscles bunch for a bolting run, cursing alike the equine race and his own momentary distraction of mind. Stemple fought grimly for a moment as the horse backed and shifted and pulled wildly at the bit; then as it quieted again he sat still in the saddle, listening.

  Around him, the woods were silent.

  Too silent, thought Stemple, as he heard the distant sough of the waters of the sound. Birds were starting a minute ago.

  He scanned the woods, but found no answer to the riddle in their columned depths. Nothing that would account for that uncanny silence, nor for the sound that he was almost certain he had heard, and the brief shimmer of silver light he could have sworn he’d seen between the trees.

  Indians? Surely not.

  The horse had stopped shivering. Experimentally, Stemple slacked the rein, and though the animal pulled a little on the bit it showed no further signs of bolting. Somewhere in the distance, a tentative lark began to sing.

  The mist flattened the shapes of the trees, and blurred the three-foot-deep carpet of fern that blanketed the steep hillside above and below the road. The light could, Stemple supposed, have been the sun reflecting on standing water—for the sun was beginning to break the fog—and that was what had spooked his horse. If it was Indians—though what tribe would be this close to the settlement?

  Outlaws, then? Stemple was uneasily aware of the emptiness of the road, and the evident wealth announced by his dark broadcloth suit and gold watch chain.

  He clicked his tongue, urging his mount forward.

  Down the hill to the left, the brush rustled once. The horse started, nostrils wide, but this time Stemple was ready and pulled the dithering animal in a tight circle. When they came to a halt, the
woods were again filled with that listening silence.

  There was definitely something down there.

  Like all men in Washington Territory, Stemple didn’t travel unarmed. But he’d never had call to use the carbine bolstered before him on the saddletree and he wasn’t sure he could hit anything with it if he tried. Though he was aware he’d put on flesh from the sedentary life of running the sawmill, he knew himself to be in good shape for a man of forty, broad-shouldered and strong, an ironic legacy of heaving bales on the Boston docks from the age of fifteen. But outrunning wild beasts or wilder men wasn’t much in his line, and neither was taking them on hand-to-hand.

  But, it could be that someone was hurt down there. Some earlier traveler on this road? He discarded the idea at once. The ferns that covered the ground all down the mountainside were netted over in a gauze of dew, unbroken by the passage of any body. A glance at the road told him that he was the first man to take this way in days.

  Cautiously, he reined around, and urged the horse toward the slope. It took a few hesitant steps in that direction and balked, ears flattening and eyes showing white with fear.

  Stemple sighed, annoyed and at the same time perversely curious. What the hell, he thought. If it’s an ambush they’ve had God’s own sweet time to spring it.

  Common sense told him to ride on. But he knew that if he did, the itch of his own curiosity would only drive him back.

  He stepped down from the saddle, tied the reins to a stout sapling close by the path, unshipped the carbine and began picking his precarious way on foot down the fern-covered slope. The dew soaked his dark coat and squished wetly underfoot, but nothing in all that great silence threatened him.

  When he found the man, his first thought was: Indians. And then, “Oh, my God.” In the split second of unreasoning panic that followed, he considered shooting him—it—as he lay unconscious in the ferns.