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When Captain James Kirk stopped into the officer's lounge, he found Doctor McCoy trying for the nth time that day to get some breakfast between the interruptions of his duties, and there'd been hardly time for more than a greeting when one of McCoy's nurses appeared at his elbow with a test report. McCoy looked it over, frowning, and shook his head. He pointed to an item on the report.
"You can't take short cuts like these with cultures like that, Miss Carter," he sighed, then noted the hurt look on the girl's face. He made himself smile. "Experience is the sum and total of your mistakes, my dear. I have twenty-some years' experience. Go back to the lab."
Kirk waited until the nurse was gone, then gave McCoy some brief humorous applause. The doctor shook his head wearily and gulped down some of his coffee.
"Why all this feverish activity, Bones?" Kirk asked, grinning amiably. "You didn't tell me you were expecting the plague."
McCoy took a bite of his toast and mumbled while he was chewing.
"No plague," he said, washing down his mouthful with more coffee. "It's just that every time I get my lab team trained the way I like 'em, Starfleet transfers half of them out and hands me babes right out of school. Have to break 'em in. You'd think this is a damn’ training ship!"
The captain chuckled and poured another cupful for McCoy and himself. "You have to work 'em pretty hard, eh?"
"Not as hard as they work me," McCoy groaned. "Wish you'd sent me with Scotty instead of sending M'Benga. Patching up the Cutler’s crew would have been a vacation compared to this."
Kirk straightened and set his cup down. "That reminds me," he said, going to the wall intercom. "Kirk to Bridge."
"Spock here," the speaker replied.
"How soon to rendezvous with the shuttlecraft, Mr. Spock? It must be nearing that time."
"Twelve minutes to rendezvous, sir," Spock's voice reported. "We are now stationary at the rendezvous point, and have established contact with the Columbus. All is proceeding on schedule."
"Thank you, Mr. Spock. I'll be up in a few minutes. Kirk out."
The captain banged the "off" switch and stood silently, smiling thoughtfully. McCoy, meanwhile, had managed to finish his meal and took the tray over to the wall disposal. He eyed Kirk darkly.
"What put you in such a sunny mood?" he growled.
"Oh, I don't know…I suppose I just like the idea of having all my crew aboard again."
"You, Captain, are in the wrong profession," McCoy accused. "You should have been a Tassan leca-farmer with six wives and thirty children. You are a born family man."
Kirk laughed. "And you, Doctor, are full of—"
"Bridge to Captain Kirk!" the intercom demanded.
"Kirk here."
"Spock, Captain. A most bewildering event has occurred. As he was sitting at his post, Lieutenant Sulu collapsed as though he had fainted, but before anyone could reach him, he vanished. At the same moment, we lost contact with the Columbus."
"What!"
"We are unable to locate the Columbus anywhere in sensor range."
"Red alert, Mr. Spock. I'm on my—"
He stopped, looking suddenly ill, and began to crumple. McCoy rushed to catch him, but his hands closed on empty air. Kirk had faded away. He was gone!
When they finally found it, the Columbus was tumbling lazily in the solar winds of Beta Alpestris, far from the area of its sudden disappearance. Each flat metal plane of the little craft gleamed alternately in the eerie carnelian glow of the ancient double star. The craft seemed untouched by mishap: sensors revealed no apparent structural damage, no detectable instrumental failure; its life-support systems functioned on battery power; the engines were shut down, the radio silent.
"Tractor beam is engaged, sir," Lieutenant Leslie reported from the helm. "Shall we bring her aboard?"
Spock gazed over Leslie's shoulder from the command chair, scrutinizing the shuttlecraft, frozen upside-down in the tractor beam. He considered the multitude of unknowns.
"Maintain our distance, Mr. Leslie," the Vulcan decided.
"Spock, that's Scotty and Chekov over there, and M'Benga and Christine!" McCoy cried, voicing the tension that had mounted over the hours of searching.
"I am aware of the shuttlecraft’s complement, Doctor," Spock said calmly. He turned to Lt. Uhura, who'd taken over his station at the sensors. "Life readings, Miss Uhura?"
Tight-lipped, stoic, she reported. "Readings are confused and weak, sir, but definitely human. Someone's alive over there, but not very."
The first officer nodded and activated the intercom. "Spock to Security. Ensign Garrovick, report to the trans¬porter room with anti-contamination gear. Transporter room, stand by to beam the boarding party onto the Columbus."
Rising, he nodded to Uhura. "Lieutenant you have the con. Maintain Red Alert and full sensor scans. Doctor, come with me."
They materialized in the dim, silent cabin of the cramped shuttlecraft, and no amount of mental preparation could have cushioned the shock: even Spock blanched. Though the exterior of the little ship belied it, the wrecked interior, the blood¬-spattered bulkheads, the unspeakably shattered bodies, all screamed of a high speed head-on collision. McCoy, numbing with horror, knelt wordlessly beside what had been Pavel Chekov and ran his mediscanner over the corpse, then reached down to close the dead eyes. The body was still warm. The doctor rose, looking beyond Spock, who was making a sweep with his tricorder, to the other casualties. Scotty was cemented onto the co-pilot's panel; there could be no life there. M'Benga was a tangle of clotted blue physician's tunic.
With a little choke of dismay, the only sign of emotion he'd allowed himself, McCoy dropped beside Christine Chapel, who'd been strapped into her seat when the collision had occurred. Her neck was snapped.
"Oh my God!" Garrovick cried from the back of the cabin. He began to scrabble madly at the rearmost seat as though wishing to rip it out. Then Spock was helping him.
"Doctor!" Spock called urgently. "The captain and Sulu are here."
McCoy grabbed his mediscan. Garrovick and Spock gave up on the twisted seat and reached down under it, hauling at the bodies until they slid Sulu into McCoy's reach. He was alive, but barely.
Garrovick clawed at Kirk's arm, managing to pull him to where he could reach the head, then bent low, turning Kirk's bleeding face to him. Bloody froth oozed from the nose and mouth, and the chest heaved desperately for air that it could not reach. Glancing up to see the doctor busy with Sulu, Garrovick cleared Kirk's mouth and throat as best he could and began to force-breathe air into the captain's lungs.
Spock traded places with McCoy, who bent over the captain with his instruments, then administered several hypospray injec¬tions. Kirk convulsed, then retched. Garrovick sat up, panting.
"Don't stop, David," McCoy snapped. "Spock! Get us back to the ship!"
He dropped the hypospray, suddenly, and balled one hand into a tight fist, bringing it down on Kirk's chest with desperate force. He repeated the blow, harder. "Contract, dammit!" he breathed. As he raised his fist for yet another blow, the Columbus sparkled out. He completed the crude emergency heart stimulation on the transporter pads of the Enterprise.
The medical team, summoned by Spock, hurried to scoop Sulu and Kirk onto medicarts.
"Easy does it," McCoy warned. "We've got a fractured skull and cardiac arrest here; Sulu has spinal luxation."
Garrovick surrendered his position to a nurse with a respirator, and Doctor Ch'en went to work with her portable cardio-stimulator. After several long minutes, McCoy was satisfied and waved the carts to Sickbay. He stepped out to accompany them, but someone caught his arm. He looked down at the cold yellow-green fingers wrapped around his forearm, but did not turn to look into the Vulcan's face.
"I can't tell you anything now, Spock," he said remotely. He felt odd, as though he'd become disconnected from what was happening around him, as though none of this were real. "I'm needed in Surgery, Commander. Can I go?"
Spock released him, frowning slightly, and watched him disappear around the curving corridor. After a minute, the Vulcan turned and dismissed the distraught Garrovick, and made arrangements for the Columbus to be brought aboard for a thorough scrutiny.
Spock sat alone in the rearmost section of the Pathology lab; alone, except for the four dead victims of the pseudo¬-collision, who were laid out on tables awaiting deposition in cryogenic storage. He stared at the sheet-draped corpses, viewing them with a curious mental duality: in one aspect, they were data to be evaluated, clues in a baffling chain of events with no apparent architect or motive; in another light, they were the remains of human beings with whom he'd had some considerable interaction: friends—as he understood the relationship—whose violent and inexplicable deaths awoke unusual pangs in him.…As much as regret, there was a sense of personal loss, curiously compatible with logic but definitely antipathetic to sober analysis. A subtle difference.
With practiced facility, Spock put aside the distracting emotional perspective and focused on pragmatics. Some sinister Creature or Force, certainly no natural phenomenon, had snatched away six crewmen. All were vital starship specialists: the command officer, the chief engineer, a helmsman, a navigator, and an experienced medical team. Two of those had been kidnapped directly from the Enterprise while in full view of other crewmen, and by a transportation method that had not registered on any of the ship’s batteries of instruments. The four other crewmen had been taken, shuttlecraft and all, apparently instantaneously, from a position very near the Enterprise to a star system several light-years distant. Then, that sinister Force or Personage had inexplicably smashed the six victims into the bulkheads of the shuttlecraft, affecting a fatal collision, but without vehicular impact. The clues bespoke enormous power…and illogic.
Spock rose and lifted the sheet from the nearest corpse. It had been Nurse Chapel. Rigor mortis had set her features in quiet lines that made her seem younger than he knew she had been. Her hair was disheveled and slightly shorter than he remembered, but he had no doubt of the identity, there could be no mistake. Spock closed his eyes for a few seconds to firmly suppress a flare of remorse, then cleared his mind to consider his other major problem: crew morale. It was, at the moment, on a serious decline. If McCoy's fears proved out and the captain and Sulu expired, it would dip dangerously, profoundly affecting efficiency. And although there had been no more disappearances, Spock knew that they had no defense, should the Force resume its deadly ploy. Answers had to be found. Decisive action must be initiated.
Again, Spock searched the dead face below him, but it was mute as only death can be. Answers were not there. Nor were they to be found on the Columbus, which was devoid of contamination or sabotage. He could think of only two other possibilities, both of them remote. He punched the intercom button and contacted the Bridge, ordering thorough, protracted sensor scans for any anomalies in the Beta Alpestris system. Then he pulled the sheet back over the cadaver and went to Sickbay.
McCoy was dead. He breathed, he functioned, he was rational and efficient, but something had died inside of him when he'd beamed onto the Columbus. He sat in silent, apathetic gloom, keeping a personal vigil over his two charges, but he felt as disconnected from feeling grief as if he'd been dosed with morphine. He watched the tiny fluctuations of the life-monitor indicators over Kirk and Sulu, noting their slow, barely perceptible but inevitable descent toward death. Transplants, transfusions, stimulants, and prayers only served to delay what could not be prevented.
There had been the visitors: Kevin Riley, who didn't believe it, wouldn't until it was finally over; and Kirk's yeoman, whom he'd had to send to bed with a sedative; and Uhura, who'd only watched and watched, and then gone away without a word, but her face awash with quiet tears.
The Sickbay door snapped open, and McCoy, expecting Spock again, rallied himself to make a progress report. Instead, it was Ensign Garrovick, who stood in the doorway as though shy or embarrassed, but McCoy assessed it readily: anxiety. Garrovick and Captain Kirk had had an almost father-son off-duty relationship, the offspring of a similar friendship between Kirk and Garrovick's long-dead father, under whom Jim had served.
"Come on in, David," the doctor said, then manufactured a professional smile. "You look like you need a drink."
Garrovick entered far enough to allow the door to slide it shut behind him. "Thank you, sir, but I’ve already had a few," he muttered.
"Really?" the doctor answered, not surprised. "Well, join me in another anyway, will you?"
McCoy went into his office and poured himself and Garrovick a long drink apiece, carrying the glasses back into Sickbay. He handed one to the ensign, who stood like a granite general, studying his fingers and plucking at an imaginary splinter.
"They're—ah—How are they?" he asked huskily.
McCoy took a healthy swig of the brandy, letting it pour down his throat in one stinging gulp. It didn't seem to help.
"David, they're dying," he said impassively.
Anguish washed across Garrovick's face with the force of a tsunami. He reeled physically, slopping brandy onto his pant-leg. McCoy watched him neutrally. The ensign's pain was real and immediate, but he got it under control, brushing the droplets from his uniform and making proper use of the rest of his drink.
McCoy continued to watch him, wondering, if the whole crew can feel this, why can't I? He glanced across the room to Sulu and Jim, groping for emotion. He realized fear and some anger, but pathos seemed as distant as ever.
He was startled from his reverie by the whoosh of the door parting to reveal Spock. Garrovick made his excuses, thanked McCoy for the drink, and left the room hurriedly. Spock watched him go, then turned back to McCoy.
"The ensign seemed to be made uncomfortable by my presence," he observed. "He never seemed so before. Do you know why?"
McCoy closed his eyes to avoid meeting the first officer’s.
"He's afraid to trust you," the psychologist in him analyzed. "The whole crew is ambivalent towards you. You are the effective command figure, but you've done nothing to solidify that image. They're afraid they'll all be snatched away and dashed to bits before you find any answers."
"Indeed," Spock said solemnly. "I cannot say that I am relieved to find that your analysis agrees with mine. However, I am here to find at least some of those answers."
McCoy sat back down on his' chair, letting his head hang, clasping his hands in front of him. "How?" he asked quietly.
"Have the captain or Mr. Sulu said anything intelligible that you have heard?"
McCoy shook his head glumly. "Not even anything unintel¬ligible."
"Are they mute?" Spock suggested, intrigued.
"No. No, their voices are intact. They cry, Spock. Have you looked at the pain-indicators? Go, look. Glued to the top of the scale, both of them. They cry, like anyone would. But not words, or even fragments of words."
Spock turned and studied the life-monitors. They read low, disturbingly low…with the exception of the channels open to pain.
"Not even fragments of words," the Vulcan echoed. "Is that not unusual, Doctor McCoy?"
"Not necessarily."
"If the pain level is so high, why have you not sedated them?"
"I can't."
"Why is that?"
"It would kill them," McCoy remarked. "They're barely alive now, even a mild sedation could cause irreversible respiratory or cardiac failure."
McCoy's voice was so flat, so devoid of normality, that Spock swung around to scrutinize him, but McCoy looked away. There was something profoundly wrong with the human. Still, he seemed rational, and Spock needed his professional opinion.
"Would mind-contact have such an effect?"
McCoy sat up as if stung, his eyes wide with dismay. "You're crazy!" he cried. “You'd both die!"
Spock noted the emotional outburst with quiet relief. McCoy was perhaps somewhat withdrawn, but he was not unreach¬able.
"Are you certain in that diagnosis?" the Vulcan insisted calmly.
"No, I'm not sure, I admit that," McCoy answered, retreating back into himself. He resumed staring at his hands. "But it would be a stupid risk. You're the senior officer on this ship, and there aren't many others left who could command her. We're one god-awful long way from the nearest starbase."
"Do you suspect a conspiracy to cripple the Enterprise by crippling command?" Spock theorized.
"Can you think of a more economical way to do it? Who's been taken? Run down the list."
"I have done so. There has been a most disturbingly selective attrition."
"And who," McCoy demanded, "will command this ship if you kill yourself mind-linking with a dying man?"
"Lieutenant Uhura," Spock answered, and went suddenly to the wall intercom, a hint of shocked realization on his stern face. He called Security.
"Ensign Marx," the intercom replied.
"Ensign, this is Spock. You will post a constant escort with Lt. Uhura. She is not to be alone at any time, so arrange for her escort to be female. If at any time the Lieutenant gives the slightest evidence of pain or faintness, she is to be removed, bodily, as far from the point where the faintness occurred as is immediately possible, in order to prevent her abduction. You will assign to me any escort of your choice, with the same instructions."
"Understood, sir."
"Very good, I am now in the Sickbay ward. I shall remain here until my escort arrives. Spock out."
The Vulcan turned to find McCoy watching him closely.
"Do you think that will really do any good?" the doctor asked.
"Unknown. But it will reassure the crew, perhaps, and it could render us a slight margin of defense." He returned McCoy's piercing gaze. "If I thought that you would obey me, Doctor, I would order you to rest. Another can keep watch here as well."
McCoy frowned as if pained. "Don't be so damned humane," he said earnestly. "It's very disconcerting."
Spock was puzzled. "You have often stated that if I placed an occasional emphasis on my 'human half', you would find it…gratifying."
McCoy put his hands to his face and shook his head wearily. "I don't know," he breathed. "I don't know…"
He was saved from having to make a more coherent explanation by the arrival of Spock's security escort, who collected the first officer and marched off with him toward the Bridge.
Alone again, McCoy rose, standing over the sweaty, silently suffering form of Jim Kirk. The sensitive face seemed incongruously youthful, as though pain were aging him in reverse. The one eye not swathed beneath the head bandage caught sight of McCoy, and Kirk rolled his head restlessly, as though pleading for release from his torment. But when the doctor instinctively reached out to soothe him, the man whimpered and shrank from the touch. There was no recognition in that terrified face. McCoy withdrew his hand.
Delirious, he decided. He checked the moribund Sulu, then went back to his chair, sipping his brandy.
I'm dead inside, he thought grimly, and it's partly by choice. It's simple emotional trauma. I should know better than to give in to it.
But the numbness was the path of least resistance. Losing so many of the people who'd, over the years, become like his family, was not a pain with which he was ready to grapple.
It'll wear off, he told himself. It's just the shock. Or is this all an illusion?
The sensation of unreality seemed to be pervasive. Spock, in the command chair, gazed slowly around the Bridge at the duty personnel. They were not strangers, precisely; he had worked with all of them before. But the only member left out of Captain Kirk's senior Bridge crew was Uhura, now working the science officer's station with a well-muscled, alert woman security guard constantly at her elbow. The others around Spock were junior officers, people made nervous by the reali¬zation that they were the first-string crew now, they would have to handle all the emergencies. They were keenly aware of their lack of experience. They were equally cognizant of the possibility of their own sudden disappearance and ugly death. When they looked to Spock for orders, they needed more than instructions; they needed mental fortification.
Spock did his best to give it to them, operating on the maxim that idle minds are potential trouble. He kept them occupied with the painstaking surveys of the multitude of planets and asteroids orbiting the double star. He did not expect that the scans would reveal any new clues, though the possibility existed and must be investigated. Rather, it gave him time to contemplate his next move.
McCoy was undoubtedly correct, of course. To link with Kirk's mind could be suicidal. Still, it might be equally dangerous to wait. Should the unknown Force strike again, he himself, and Uhura, were the probable targets. And the longer the delay, the greater was the physical deterioration of the patients in Sickbay. In addition, there was something subtly incorrect about those victims, something which disturbed him, but which he couldn't pin down. Was this what Jim called a hunch?
The mind-meld must be made. But McCoy presented a serious problem. His adamant opposition to the link was a legal obstacle, for the ship’s chief medical officer had final authority over the treatment of all patients. What was worse, the man was in an unstable psychological condition. Spock did not want to add to the trauma. Even as he was considering the problem, the intercom bleeped and McCoy's voice demanded his attention.
"Spock here. What is it, Doctor?"
There was a long moment of silence. When McCoy finally spoke, his voice was the embodiment of desolation.
"Lieutenant Sulu is dead. I'm having his corpse prepared for cryo-storage."
"Doctor, are you well?"
A pause.
"I am functional, Mr. Spock," McCoy answered.
"What is the condition of the captain?"
"He may last through the night."
Spock's mind raced. He preferred to deal honestly, always, but there were times when subterfuge was the only logical choice.
"Doctor, I require your presence in the briefing room. Please assign another physician to your post and meet me in five minutes. Spock out."
Then he called Uhura and the Security duty officer.
"Mister Marx, after Doctor McCoy arrives at the briefing room, you will post at least two guards outside the door. They will detain the doctor there, should he attempt to leave, until either myself or Lt. Uhura countermand the order.
"Miss Uhura, I am about to attempt a Vulcan mind-meld with Captain Kirk. He may know the answers to our mystery, but be physically unable to communicate them to us by any other method. The link is dangerous, and Doctor McCoy opposes it. The doctor is not himself well, and I consider this deception the best course. When I leave, you will advise the doctor that I have been delayed and that he should wait for me in the briefing room. You will maintain the subterfuge for as long as possible.
"Should the worst occur, and I am deceased, you will take the Enterprise at maximum speed to Starbase 19, and report all that has transpired."
"Aye, sir," Uhura responded. She watched the Vulcan as the turbolift swallowed him, and shuddered at her mental imagery. But then her husky security guard moved closer beside her, and Uhura sighed and sat down in the command chair.
Spock arrived at Sickbay, dismissed Dr. Ch'en and his own security guard, and threw the lock-switch on the corridor door. He did not want interruptions; this would be sufficiently difficult as it was.
The ward was dim, with only a floodlight over Kirk's bed and the flowing life-monitor indicators to give illumination. The bed where Sulu had lain was empty, stripped of its blanket, and dark. Except for the sluggish, amplified sound of Kirk's heartbeat, silence reigned.
Spock approached the bed and gazed down stonily at the captain's contorted face. The man's eyes, such as were visible under the bandaging, were the eyes of a lion-pinned gazelle, glazed with raw animal terror. Pain slicked his cheeks with trickling perspiration, the chilled dew of ever-deepening shock. His overloaded nerves sent cramping shudders through his rigid, strapped-down frame, punctuating his respiration with tiny, staccato gasps. He was bitterly, mercilessly conscious.
Spock made a deliberate, concerted effort to be objective, but the terrible incongruity of a hopeless, helpless Jim Kirk, the sudden poignant vulnerability of the man, cut into Spock more than any pain he'd known. He would have preferred the plasma-creatures of Deneva to this anguish. He winced, fighting it, but this time his humanity would not be denied.
Releasing the restraints, Spock slid his hands under Jim's shoulders and sat him up with aching tenderness, cradling him carefully in his arms. He freed his right hand, flexing it for the Touch, and gathered his strength. It was going to be demanding, exhausting: there was extensive pain that must be penetrated. And the certainty that this would be his final contact with the best friend of his life was going to make disengagement doubly difficult.
The Vulcan took several deep breaths, positioned his fingers on Kirk's skull, and let the tendrils of his mind reach out to join.
McCoy sat wearily at the table in the briefing room, waiting with strained patience for the science officer to appear. He began to let his head ease down into his arms, then straightened and reached for the intercom switch.
"McCoy to Bridge. Lt. Uhura, I know I'm making a damn' pest of myself, but it's been a half hour now. Can't Spock postpone this meeting until he's done up there?"
The intercom crackled.
"Mister Spock is still working on the sensor circuits, but he says he's almost finished and then he'll be right down, Doctor," Uhura lied uneasily. "His instructions are for you to wait for him."
McCoy sighed and punched the disconnect switch, then rubbed his eyes, fighting his fatigue. He looked around the bare, uninteresting briefing room, and went to the computer console to fiddle with the tabs.
"Computer-on," announced the tinny voice that served the terminal.
"Literary library," McCoy instructed. "Give me some poetry."
"Any-particular-selection?" the computer intoned.
It didn't matter. It was just to while away the time. And it might be a relief to delve into someone else's mind for a while, forget the shell-shocked wasteland of his own.
"A short random selection," he replied.
The unit clicked quietly, then displayed a page of verse. "Sonnets-of-William-Shakespeare, Old-English, Earth, published-in-A.D.-1609, Sonnet-50," the computer reported. "Shall-I-read-it-aloud?"
McCoy permitted himself a wry smile. "You, read poetry? I'd do better, with my voice, singing the Beatles’ Canticles!”
"Please-reenter-the-data," the machine countered.
McCoy scowled. For once, he almost understood the thing. It was dead inside too. "Negative," he said. "I'll read it myself." He focused the words, adjusting a knob to enlarge the myopic print, then read:
50
How heavy do I journey on the way
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
“Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!”
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide;
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind:
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.
McCoy let out a long shuddering sigh. For a moment, some small part of his internal paralysis had left him; sorrow was a remote pang in the pit of his stomach. He looked down again at the words on the screen and turned the thing off. Random selection!
Yes, his grief lay ahead; eventually he would have to face it. Yet there was security and even a sort of comfort in the numbed stillness that enclosed him. He knew he must cast off the vacuum, come to grips with harsh reality, or lose himself in a fog where he could no longer function sanely. But not yet. He wasn't ready yet.…
Suddenly, he badly wanted another drink. He snapped on the intercom. "Bridge. Lieutenant Uhura, tell Mr. Spock I'll be back in ten minutes."
"Doctor!" the intercom protested. "Mr. Spock said he'd be right down!”
McCoy switched it off and stalked to the door, but as it opened, several men in Security-red blocked it.
"We have orders to keep you here, sir," the bosun told him.
McCoy frowned, puzzled. Then full comprehension came to him, and he backed from the door, flying to the intercom.
"Bridge! Uhura, where's Spock?! Did he go to Sickbay?"!
"Doctor McCoy, we have orders to detail you—"
"Damn the orders, woman! Spock's going to kill himself, he can't survive it! Let me out of here. We have to stop him!"
"I'm sorry, sir, but my orders—"
McCoy punched the button, cutting her off. What could he do? He must do something! Who would help him? And he knew. He switched on the intercom again, forcing his voice to be calm. "Garrovick. David Garrovick's quarters."
The computer put him through.
Garrovick sounded like he'd been asleep. McCoy hoped he wasn't drunk.
"David, Spock's trying a mind-meld with the captain. They'll both die if we can't stop him. I'm being confined in the briefing room; there are Security guards outside the door. David, help me!"
Garrovick switched off without a reply, but within minutes, the briefing room door slid open to reveal the ensign, three stunned Security men at his feet.
They got into the locked Sickbay through McCoy's office, and were greeted with a chilling sight: Kirk and Spock were twined in each other's arms, rigid, drowned in sweat, dying. There was no communication in this mind-meld: Spock had gotten lost in Jim's pain.
McCoy glared at the monitor, then grabbed for a hypo-spray. Garrovick tried to loosen Spock's grip on the Captain's wrist.
"Don't touch them," McCoy warned, setting the hypo. "We'll try a stimulant to Spock first. It could hurt him if we're forced to break the link from outside."
He injected the drug, then stepped back to watch the indicators, bumping into Dr. Ch'en and several nurses who'd come on call. From somewhere, Uhura had appeared with a Security detail, but she moved aside and did not attempt interference. They all stood by, tense, hardly breathing. Then the indicators took a sharp dip.
"That does it," McCoy growled. "We'll have to risk separating them. Stand by with resuscitators for Mr. Spock."
They pried open the clenched, clammy fingers, wringing inarticulate cries from both men. Breaking the physical contact, they lifted Spock onto the next bed, but the Vulcan did not revive, still locked in the rapport. He gasped for air, suffocating in Kirk's death agony.
"Spock!" McCoy cried desperately. "Let him go, Spock. Break it off, man! Save yourself!" He shook the Vulcan with frenzied violence, dragging him off the bed and onto the floor. He was a madman, bouncing Spock, screaming at him, hitting him, pleading for response while the room full of onlookers stood by helplessly, not knowing whether McCoy were performing a professional necessity, or had gone over the edge. But then the Vulcan stopped choking and rolled away, dazed, exhausted, but out of danger. McCoy sat back on his heels, his whole frame trembling with residual adrenalin.
Ensign Garrovick and a nurse hauled Spock back onto the bed, where Dr. Ch'en examined him carefully. She gave him a sedative, and the Vulcan relaxed, letting it take him.
Uhura stooped to offer McCoy an arm up.
"Get another doctor," he gasped, still breathless. "Take care of Jim."
Uhura got him to his feet, but did not release her support. She studied him sympathetically; the man looked thoroughly wrung out, running solely on nervous energy. He swung on her, his eyes angry.
"Get another doctor for the captain!" he raged, then shook himself free of her and stumbled to Kirk's bedside. He leaned on it, winded, propping himself up on one arm, then looked down at the lax face, the sprawled limbs. He saw it. He knew. They all knew; futile even to look up at the monitor. McCoy closed the glassy, sightless eyes and straightened the arms, feeling his anguish damping out as the apathy settled around him again like an anesthetic cloud.
"Dr. Ch'en—How is—Captain Spock?" he finally asked, too exhausted to move.
"He'll be fine," the woman physician assured. "The psychic damage seems minimal. He just needs rest."
McCoy nodded, then slumped. Garrovick caught him.
"Take Dr. McCoy to his quarters," Uhura ordered, assuming command, "and put him to bed."
Leonard McCoy didn't hear the first knock on his cabin's door. He ignored the second, staring fixedly into the depths of the glass he held. The scotch was deceptively cool, harboring hidden flame and hiding a flaming harbour; a place, perhaps where there was no internal glacier, no ice-locked pain where summer never came to thaw.
Not until he heard an intruding cough did he realize he was not alone. He did not look up from his drink. "Who is it?" he sighed.
"It is I, Doctor,” Spock's voice answered.
Spock was recovered and on his feet: McCoy noted it as an item of data that should have some importance, and stored it away in his memory without reply.
"I wish to speak to you," the Vulcan announced.
It was an effort to respond; it required the nudging of an iceberg of indifference.
"I'm not on duty; I don't want company," McCoy mumbled.
"It is a matter of some urgency."
McCoy shook his head slowly and reached for his glass. He missed it, pushing it off the desk with his clumsy motion. Spock caught the hand and turned McCoy to face him.
"Doctor, are you ill?"
McCoy closed his eyes wearily and did not answer, but Spock could read the symptoms.
"You are intoxicated!” The Vulcan accused.
"Not nearly enough," McCoy said tonelessly. "Leave me alone, Spock."
"As a physician and psychiatrist, you surely know there is no genuine solace in alcohol."
"I don't need…solace. Just go away. Please."
"Are you not even interested in what I learned during the mind-meld?"
"Jim is dead," McCoy said dully. "They’re all dead. What good will answers do now?"
Spock chose his next words carefully. He knew enough human psychology to realize what must have happened to McCoy. He knew he must shock the man back to awareness before the creeping paralysis of emotional trauma enveloped him entirely.
"The mind with which I linked was not the mind of James T. Kirk," Spock said earnestly. "There was, in fact, no mind to speak of: no intelligence, not even a subconsciousness. There was less comprehension than in a newborn infant. The only awareness, the only experience, was the eighteen hours of input from physical pain."
McCoy scowled at the Vulcan, then made an effort to collect himself. "You were both out of your heads with the pain. Besides, we don't know what might have happened to him before we found him," he countered. "Whatever it was may have…erased…his brain."
"Possible," the Vulcan granted, "but there were other subtle anomalies. For instance, it seemed to me that each of the victims was more youthful than before his abduction. The difference was slight, but perceptible."
McCoy shrugged. "I noticed that, too, but physical shock can do funny things to people."
"Nevertheless, I wish you to conduct autopsies on the corpses."
To that, the doctor shook his head emphatically, and poured himself a new drink. "We ran routine genetic tests when we set up for organ transplants. That was Jim Kirk. I'm not going to carve up what's left of his corpse for some crazy whim of yours."
Spock saw that McCoy would not be enticed to abandon his limbo without a struggle. He decided to try another tack.
"Doctor, why are you attempting to drink yourself into insensibility?"
McCoy eyed him bitterly. "Get out!" he whispered.
"I can not, until I convince you of what I believe to be the truth," the Vulcan told him.
"You are demented," McCoy spat, color rising in his wan face.
"And you are deluded," Spock replied. "You are injuring yourself with your self-imposed withdrawal. You have frequently told me that human mental health is dependent upon the normal release of emotional stress, yet you continue to deny yourself your natural grief. Do you think that alcohol, or any other drug, can do for you what you will not do for yourself?"
McCoy spun away, staggering across the room to the screen by his bed. He clung to it, not looking at the Vulcan.
"Don't you try to tell me about emotions, you cold Vulcan bastard," he breathed.
Spock straightened. This was going to be much more exacting than he had expected. He approached the doctor slowly.
"I am reasonably acquainted with emotions, Doctor McCoy," he said carefully. "You, personally, have introduced me to a number of them. There are times, I have learned, when, within logical limits, they should not be resisted; we, all of us with human ancestry, must surrender to them or perish."
McCoy did not answer him.
"Give in to it, Doctor," Spock encouraged gently. "It is distressing to me to watch you destroying yourself."
The admission of affection got to McCoy. Spock was right. It was time to come to grips with the thing. He slumped, reaching inside of himself for the grief that must be there, but there was only the inert glacier, the barren, windswept wasteland. The numbness was a narcotic to which he'd become firmly addicted. He opened his eyes to find Spock beside him. "I can't," he mumbled, defeated. "I can't reach it anymore."
Spock raised one slender hand meaningfully. "I can assist you."
McCoy shrank from him. "You nearly died doing that last night. You can’t take on another mind-contact so soon after. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
"I assure you I will not be injured, Doctor. I have adequate knowledge of the mechanisms of emotional exorcism. And, logically, neither you nor I can wait. Your mental health requires my assistance, and I require yours in the Pathology lab." Then he added the final determinant. "Doctor McCoy. Bones. I want to help you."
McCoy shuddered, and a cold sweat broke out over him. He thought, Physician, heal thyself, and conceded the irony. He raised his head until he locked eyes with this alien who professed to be his friend. The set of the mouth was cast iron, but the eyes.…He nodded to those warm eyes, and the periphery of his vision caught the shape of Spock's spreading fingers, and then his senses turned inside himself, and he was no longer alone there.
Of necessity, Spock was merciless. Using a technique he'd seen demonstrated on orphaned children who'd been possessed by a Gorgon, he first conjured warm memories, both McCoy's and his own, of their close relationships with Jim Kirk. McCoy rode the montage with him easily, but then Spock began to intersperse the memories of happiness with ugly details of Kirk's death. The doctor cringed mentally. Spock forced more and more horror upon him, a vivid wind-tunnel of images, sounds, the smell of surgically cauterized flesh, the sickly¬-sweet stench of blood and terrified sweat. McCoy began to fight at him, then to plead. Spock reconstructed Kirk's easy smile, laughing eyes…then abruptly let the face contort in its death agony. He sorted through the dual images of Sulu struggling to breathe, of M'Benga broken and blood-soaked, of Christine quiescent and still warm in the seatbelts, of Chekov's eyes glassy and staring, of Scotty obliterated on the smashed console of the shuttlecraft. He spared neither McCoy nor himself in pressing emotion out of the doctor. Finally, he conjured his memory of pain, Jim's pain, letting it build until McCoy's mind could take no more. Anguish drowned out the last vestiges of emotional narcosis. McCoy's mind became a vortex of overwhelming grief.
Gasping, Spock disentangled himself and eased McCoy onto the bed to let the man cry himself out. As his own share of the ordeal faded, Spock found that the rapport had left him with a mild euphoric afterglow, the side effect of McCoy's emotional catharsis—but the exertion had sapped his energies, and he sat down to recover and to wait out McCoy's tide of grief. Released all at once as it had been, the misery was a torrent where there should have been a gradual, manageable trickle. It shook the man like a rag doll. Eventually, though, the storm abated, and the doctor sat up weakly and wiped his face on the hem of his tunic.
"Are you alright?" Spock asked solicitously.
McCoy nodded unsteadily, and after a bit he ran his fingers through his tousled hair and shrugged into a fresh uniform shirt. He looked like a man newly raised from the grave.
"I hope to God you're right about this thing, Spock," he said huskily, smiling a little. "I'd surely like to think that Jim and Scotty and the others could be alive somewhere."
"That is what we must now determine," the Vulcan said.
Accepting Spock's hand up, McCoy rose and headed for the corridor and the Pathology lab, Spock close on his heels.
"Anomalies," McCoy reported with undisguised triumph. He scattered tape decks of autopsy reports across the briefing room table top. "Scads of them, none of them readily noticeable without careful scrutiny, but definite anomalies. Here are just a few:
"Item. Blood analyses. Typing corresponded correctly to the known types for each victim, but there were no antibodies present in any quantity. No antigens. None of the thousands of natural immunities that are built up in a normal life time. And hardly any microorganisms.
"Item. Gastrointestinal dissection. No stomach contents. No intestinal contents. None of the normal saprotrophic bacteria. No sign of there ever having been any.
"And so on. With the exception of the collision-caused injuries, the bodies were perfect, without dental work, scar¬ tissue, or age deterioration of any kind. In other words, they were brand new; newer, even, than a newborn babe."
Spock nodded thoughtfully.
"Of course. Clones!"
"Yes," McCoy agreed excitedly. "Genetic duplicates, somehow cultured from the originals, incubated, aged nearly perfectly, and left for us to find on the shuttlecraft, all within the four hours it took us to find it! It’s no wonder you couldn't find a mind in Kirk's body: that Jim Kirk was less than a day old."
"By why?" Uhura blurted. "It doesn't make sense. If they, whoever 'they' are, wanted our captain and crewmen to appear dead, why did they go to the trouble of making duplicates?"
"Yes," Garrovick added. "They must know that we'd discover the substitution sooner or later."
"An interesting point. The logic would seem, on first examination, to be erratic," the Vulcan mused. "Consider the possibility, however, that 'they' only wished to borrow our crewmen, not to keep them. It would then be necessary to detain the Enterprise in this area. Providing us with the distraction of mysteriously injured counterfeits has served that purpose eminently. The clones functioned as a ‘red herring,’ buying time."
"That still leaves a lot of unanswered questions," McCoy pointed out. "Just to name two: where are our people now, and why did someone want them in the first place?"
"Unknown, Doctor, but I believe we can safely assume that our missing crewmen are alive…Doctor?"
McCoy shook his head fuzzily and pushed himself back from the table as though ill. Uhura was rising to offer assistance when McCoy faded abruptly into nothing. When she turned to Spock with a shocked cry, he too was staggering, and silently disappeared. She stood still a moment, half expecting some alien sensation to seize her, but a startled Ensign Garrovick grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room. Uhura disentangled herself and went to the nearest wall intercom to call a Red Alert.
They materialized, sick and weak, in a chilly, low¬-ceilinged room cluttered with electronic equipment. The air was dry and thin and had a canned taste and smell to it. The gravity was light, and McCoy made it to his feet without help, then surveyed the circular interior. There was no visible exit. The dim light seemed to emanate directly from the walls, floor, and ceiling, all of which were a milky, opalescent gray. Despite the complete alienness of the equipment, the place seemed curiously familiar: bulkheads, struts, indirect lights, cramped spaces, monitors…it had to be a spaceship!
"Welcome, gentlemen."
They spun to find the source of the cordial, musical voice, and their eyes stopped on a diminutive, mature humanoid woman, wisp-thin, with a halo of fox-grey hair and a sunny smile. She stretched her ebony arms in a gesture of amity, stirring the filmy wings of her saffron raiment. She did not appear to have a weapon.
"Please forgive the discomfort of our transporter, but we were recently damaged and have not completed all of our repairs," she said, smiling.
Spock did not waste time on amenities.
"Why have you brought us here, and what have you done with our other crewmen?" he demanded.
"Ah, Mr. Spock. Direct as always. Your friends are here and will be returned, unharmed, along with you as soon as they are prepared. I have brought you here to make some small explanations and apologies."
"Forget the apologies, we want to see our people right now!" McCoy insisted angrily.
The woman studied him, then nodded, a strangely affectionate temper in her manner, as though she knew a great deal more about him than possibly his name. It made McCoy vaguely uncomfortable, as though the slight, vigorous woman were someone he should know.
She whirled silently, gesturing for them to follow, and they walked—almost gliding in the light gravity—through a previously non-existent portal into a well-lit cubicle remi¬niscent of a turbo-lift. Sure enough, the cubicle's door slid shut and the room moved smoothly downwards. The woman turned to face them, radiating a friendly but commanding presence.
"As you have certainly guessed, this structure is a ship. Six of your days ago, we were damaged in a violent multi¬ dimensional di-electric fluctuation, which manifested itself in this universe as a magnetic storm of considerable potency."
"We experienced that storm," Spock said, his sallow face animating with scientific interest. "The Starfleet patrol vessel Cutler was sufficiently impaired by it to require our dispatching a shuttlecraft with an engineering and medical staff, the very shuttlecraft which you intercepted."
McCoy took an intuitive leap.
"If you needed help, you could have asked us for it instead of kidnapping our crew and preparing that elaborate deception!” he growled.
She gave him that unsettling smile again: intimate and elusively familiar, but tempered now with a little sadness.
"We are sorry to have been the cause of your mental anguish, but the bereavement was brief, and delay was vital—and really, Bones, you could not have rendered us aid as you understand it."
The inflection she put on the "Bones" shook him thunderously. The portal of the alien turbolift whisked open, but McCoy stood staring at the woman incredulously. He had pinned down what was so achingly familiar about her manner. He reached out and gripped her shoulders urgently. She stood calmly.
"Are you telepathically linked to Jim Kirk?" he breathed.
She met his eyes coolly.
"No. We do not possess natural telepathic abilities," she said, then produced that radiant smile. "Let us say, rather, that I have 'met' your captain. I found him a remarkable and appealing being—and a commander of considerable genius."
McCoy could not detect any artifice or deception in her words or voice. If she had, indeed, “met” Jim Kirk, the contact had somehow infused her with some of Kirk's personality and memories. The doctor glanced at Spock to assess his reaction, but the Vulcan's expression was merely thoughtful.
The woman led them down a dim, featureless passageway which opened into another circular room like that in which they'd materialized. Several more petite aliens rose in silent greeting, then left. The woman did something which brightened the luminescence.
Six elaborate cots, each carefully shaped to its occupant, held the six missing Enterprise officers. They were wired to the cots and were unconscious—or dead. McCoy flew to the nearest cot—Doctor M'Benga's—and looked him over quickly. Then he moved on to Chekov and verified his diagnosis.
"They seem to be in a deep, natural sleep," he told Spock. "There are no signs of injuries, just exhaustion. And they're our people, not clones."
Spock acknowledged the report with a grave nod, then confronted the woman, who abided him affably.
"Madame, may I ask what your status on this vessel might be?"
"I am now its commander."
"And before your encounter with the…’multidimensional di-electric fluctuation?’”
"I served as the equivalent of your communications officer," she said, her knowing smile widening.
"Then you suffered casualties as well as vehicular impairment. Interesting," he said, looking around at the cots, his eyes moving from one to another as he spoke. "I surmise that you lost not only your captain, but also your navigator, your chief engineer, your helmsman, and your medical staff."
Her eyes were golden pools of glittering delight.
"You are everything we expected, Mr. Spock, and perhaps more," she told him appreciatively. "We were stranded. In order to rescue ourselves, it became necessary for some of us to assume duties for which we lacked both experience and personal aptitudes. Our science has developed a method by which it is possible to…imprint…one individual with the mind, and hence the mental capacities, of another."
"And you," Spock concluded, "have been 'imprinted' with the mind of Captain Kirk."
"Exactly. All of the technical knowledge required to repair and operate this vessel was available to us in our records. We lacked only the natural aptitudes to comprehend and use it."
"So why," McCoy interrupted, "was it necessary for you to take our people by deception? We probably would have 'lent' ourselves to you willingly."
"To prevent contamination," Spock conjectured.
"Contamination of who with what?" the doctor growled.
"A contamination of knowledge," the Vulcan replied. "Unless I am mistaken, these people must operate under a regulation similar in nature and intent to our own Prime Directive. They could not allow us to be contaminated with the knowledge of their advances."
"But they brought the two of us aboard!" McCoy countered.
"And what, Doctor, have we been permitted to see in the brief time we have been here? Nothing."
The woman nodded to Spock.
"Very astute. Yet, another reason exists," she said. "The process of the imprinting is, under the best of circum¬stances, tedious, disorienting, exhausting, and frankly painful for both participants. It is little-used even among ourselves. To employ it on your alien brains involved even greater discomfort, and no little danger. I hope you can forgive us our desperation. We are inconceivably far from our home. To be stranded in this universe.…" She cut herself short. "In any case, all is now well, and we shall return you to your ship with our thanks."
A short, frail-looking male alien approached the woman and engaged her in an amazing conversation composed of hums and whistles, punctuated by soft clicks. The man unexpectedly approached McCoy and clasped the doctor's hand.
"Ah, 'tis a bonnie pleasure tae meet ye in the flesh, Doctor McCoy," the smiling man insisted, and to Spock, "And tae make your acquaintance, laddie."
"Why—you were imprinted with Scotty!" McCoy exclaimed.
"Aye." The alien beamed, his tiny features crinkling with amusement.
The woman interposed. "It is time for you to depart, gentlemen," she announced. "Doctor McCoy, your patients may experience some mild disorientation upon awakening, and do not expect them to recall anything from the time of their abduction. Mr. Spock, please remove your ship from this solar system immediately upon your return. Our departure from here, in our impaired condition, may cause some space–time turbulence."
She stepped back and nodded to the engineer, who picked up an egg-shaped device and activated it. The eight Enterprise people began to fade in the alien transporter effect. Just before they winked out, the slight but masterful woman who had been infused with James Kirk's command abilities raised her sable hand in a salute.
"Goodbye, dear friends. Our grateful blessings go with you."
Jim Kirk awoke with a hangover that defied him to open his eyes and reclaim himself. He lay still a moment, wishing it away, but it persisted stubbornly. Then something was shaking his shoulder insistently.
"Come on, Jim, snap out of it," a voice encouraged.
Kirk braved his vertigo to see who it was. He blinked painfully at the overhead light. Someone was helping him to sit up, and there was the hiss of a hypospray at his shoulder. He felt better immediately, and managed to focus his eyes on the face that peered into his with concern. It was McCoy's. The arm supporting him was Spock's. Something was wrong. He realized where he was: Sickbay.
"Wha-what am I doing here?" he muttered, pulling himself straight.
McCoy's face flooded with relief and delight. "It's a long story," he said. "How do you feel?"
"I woke up with a hangover, but whatever was in that shot took care of most of it," he said, then added ruefully, "I must have really tied one on."
"You weren't drunk," McCoy said intently.
"Do you remember anything that happened? Spock asked.
Kirk frowned with concentration. "I was going to the Bridge. I felt dizzy. There was something—Sulu! You said Sulu disappeared. What happened to Sulu!?"
"Sulu's okay, Jim, just sit still and let me finish checking you over. Spock will tell you the whole story," McCoy soothed.
Spock managed to condense the events of thirty-six unnerving hours into ten minutes of placid narrative, completely devoid of the concurrent emotional crises. He concluded with, "And you are the last to revive."
"Can't you remember anything?" McCoy prompted.
"Nothing," the captain sighed. "Two days gone out of my life, contact with an incredibly advanced culture from God knows where, and it's all a blank. What a waste!"
The intercom interrupted with Garrovick's voice. "Bridge to Captain."
Spock began to go to answer, but Kirk made it onto his feet and to the intercom without support. "Kirk here."
"Captain Kirk!" the voice rejoiced, then continued professionally. "Sensors have detected a strong time–space oscillation in the vicinity of the third moon of Beta Alpestris V. Mr. Spock ordered us to scan for such a phenomenon.
"Maximum screen magnification, Ensign, and pipe it down to the viewer in Dr. McCoy's office."
"Aye, sir."
They gathered around McCoy's vidscreen. A flickering golden glow was building up around the tiny moon. The carnelian light streaming from the double star refracted visibly around the area of turbulence and ionization. Then the flickering glow widened, brightened—and was gone.
"There they went," McCoy breathed. "I hope they make it home. I wonder who they were."
"And whether they'll ever be back," Kirk added.
"Evidence would indicate the probability," Spock said. "They have been frequent visitors before."
McCoy turned to him in amazement. "What makes you think that?"
"Do you recall the peculiar form of communication used by the aliens in conversation, Doctor?"
"Yes, it was tonal; structured rather like music, I'd say."
"And there are symbols on the equipment. Symbols of an alphabet which we have encountered before," Spock prompted.
"Where?" Kirk demanded.
"On the asteroid-deflecting obelisk in which you were once struck with amnesia, Captain," Spock replied.
"My God," Kirk whispered reverently. "The Preservers!"
An awed silence fell over the three, and they stared through the viewer at the insignificant satellite of Beta Alpestris V. The last ripples of the turbulence were dissipating, fading into an ionized mist, stirring like filmy saffron sleeves on jet-black outstretched, welcoming arms.…