by James Blish
"But that's not possible!" Scott cried. "Nothing could do that!"
"It is not logical to assume that the force of an explosion—even of a small star going supernova—could have hurled us a distance of one thousand light years."
Scott had joined him. "The point is, it shouldn't have hurled us anywhere. It should have immediately vaporized us."
"Correct, Mr. Scott. By any laws we know. There was no period of unconsciousness; and the ship's chronometers registered only a matter of seconds. We were displaced through space in some manner I am unable to fathom."
Scott beamed. "You're saying the planet didn't blow up! Then the Captain and the others—they're still alive!"
"Mr. Scott, please restrain your leaps of illogic. I have not said anything. I was merely speculating."
The intercom beeped. "Sickbay to Mr. Spock."
"Spock here."
"Dr. M'Benga, sir. You asked for the autopsy report. The cause of death seems to have been cellular disruption."
"Explain."
"It's as though each cell of the Ensign's body had been individually blasted from inside."
"Would any known disease organism do that?"
"Dr. Sanchez has ruled out that possibility."
"Someone," Spock said, "might have entered the Transporter Room after—or as—the Captain and his party left. Keep me advised, please. Spock out." He looked up at Scott. "Since the Enterprise still appears to be in good condition, I suggest we return to our starting point at top warp speed."
"Aye, sir—but even at that, it'll take a good while to get there."
"Then, Mr. Scott, we should start at once. Can you give me warp eight?"
"Aye, sir. And perhaps a bit more. I'll sit on those warp engines myself and nurse them."
"Such a position would not only be unfitting but also unavailing, Mr. Scott." He spoke to Radha. "Lieutenant, plot a course for—"
"Already plotted and laid in, sir."
"Good. Prepare to come to warp eight."
Kirk was frankly worried. "You're sure your report covers all vegetation, Mr. Sulu?"
"Yes, Captain. None of it is edible. It is poison to us."
It was the turn of McCoy's brow to furrow. "Jim, if it's true the ship has been destroyed, you know how long we can survive?"
"Yes." Kirk spoke to Sulu. There must be water to grow vegetation, however poisonous. A source of water would at least stretch our survival. Lieutenant D'Amato, is there any evidence of rainfall on this planet?"
"No, sir. I can find no evidence that it has ever experienced rainfall."
"And yet there is Earth-type vegetation here." He looked around him at the poppylike red flowers. "Lieutenant D'Amato, is it possible that there is underground water?"
"Yes, sir."
McCoy broke in. "Sulu has picked up an organism that is almost a virus—some sort of plant parasite. That's the closest to a mobile life form that's turned up."
Kirk nodded. "If this is to be our home as long as we last, we'd better find out as much about it as we can. D'Amato, see if you can find any sub-surface water. Sulu, run an atmospheric analysis."
As the two men moved off in opposite directions, Kirk turned to McCoy. "Bones, discover what you can about the vegetation and your parasites. How do they get their moisture? If you can find out how they survive, maybe we can. I'll see if I can locate some natural shelter for us."
"Are you sure we want to survive as a bunch of Robinson Crusoes? If we had some wood to make a fire and some animals to hunt, we could chew their bones sitting around our caveman fire and—"
"Bones, go catch us a parasite, will you?"
McCoy grinned; adjusting his medical tricorder, he knelt to study the yellow grass. Kirk got a fix on a landmark and made off around the angle of a cliff. It wasn't too distant from the large rock formation where Sulu was taking his readings. Setting the dials on his tricorder, he halted abruptly, staring at them. Puzzled, he examined them again—and grabbed for his communicator.
"Sulu to Captain!"
"Kirk here."
"Sir, I was making a standard magnetic sweep. From zero I suddenly got a reading that was off the scale . . . then a reverse of polarity. Now again I get nothing."
"Have you checked your tricorder for damage? The shaking it took was pretty rough."
"I've checked it, Captain. I'll break it down again. But I've never seen anything like this reading. Like a door opened and then closed again."
Meanwhile, D'Amato had come upon a vein of the red igneous rock in the cliff face. Its elaborate convolutions seemed too complex to be natural. Intrigued, he aimed his tricorder at it. At once its dials spun wildly—and the ground under his feet quaked, pitching him to his knees. As he scrambled up, there came a flash of blinding light. When it subsided, he saw the woman. She was dark and lovely; but the misty, dreamlike expression of her face was lost in the shadow of the cliff.
"Don't be afraid," she said.
"I'm not. Geological disturbances do not frighten me. They're my business. I came here to study them."
"I know. You are Lieutenant D'Amato, Senior Geologist."
"How do you know that?"
"And from the Starship Enterprise."
"You've been talking to my friends?"
She had come slowly forward, her hand outstretched. He stepped back and she said, "I am for you, D'Amato."
Recognition had suddenly flooded him. "You are the woman on the Enterprise," he said slowly.
"Not I. I am only for D'Amato."
In the full light her dark beauty shone with a luster of its own. It disconcerted him. "Lucky D'Amato," he said—and reached for his communicator. "First, let's all have a little conference about sharing your food and water."
She stepped closer to him. "Do not call the others . . . please . . ."
The voice was music. The grace of her movement held him as spellbound as her loveliness. The last thing he remembered was the look of ineffable sadness on her face as her delicate fingers moved up his arm . . .
"McCoy to Kirk!"
"Kirk here, Bones."
"Jim! I've just got a life form reading of tremendous intensity! It was suddenly just there!"
"What do you mean—just there?"
"That. All tricorder levels were normal when this surge of biological life suddenly registered! Wait a minute! No, it's gone . . ."
Kirk's jaw hardened. "As though a door had opened and closed again?"
"Yes."
"What direction?"
"Zero eight three."
"D'Amato's section!" Tensely, Kirk moved a dial on his communicator. "Kirk to D'Amato!" He paused, intent. "Come in, D'Amato!"
When he spoke again, his voice was toneless. "Bones, Sulu—D'Amato doesn't answer."
"On my way!" McCoy shouted. Kirk broke into a run along the cliff base. In the distance, he saw McCoy and Sulu racing toward him. As they converged upon him, he halted abruptly, staring down into a crevice between the cliff and a huge red rock. "Bones—here!"
The body was wedged in the crevice. McCoy, tricorder in hand, stooped over it. Then he looked up, his eyes appalled. "Jim, every cell in D'Amato's body has been—disrupted!"
Time limped by as they struggled to comprehend the horror's meaning. Finally, Kirk pulled his phaser. Very carefully he paced out the rectangular measurements of a grave. Then he fired the phaser. Six inches of soil vaporized, exposing a substratum of red rock. He fired the phaser again—but the rock resisted its beam. He aimed it once more at another spot; and once more its top soil disappeared but the rock beneath it remained—untouched, unscarred. He spoke grimly. "Better than eight thousand degrees centigrade. It just looks like igneous rock, but it's infinitely denser."
McCoy said, "Jim, is the whole planet composed of this substance covered over by top soil?"
Kirk snapped off his phaser. "Lieutenant Sulu, it might help explain this place if we knew exactly what this rock is. I know it is Lieutenant D'Amato's field—but see what you can find o
ut."
Sulu unslung his tricorder. As they watched him stoop over the first excavation, McCoy said, "I guess a tomb of rocks is the best we can provide for D'Amato." They were collecting stones for the cairn when Kirk straightened up. "I wonder if the Transporter officer on the Enterprise is dead, Bones."
"You mean that woman we saw may have killed him?"
Kirk looked around him. "Someone killed D'Amato." He bent again to the work of assembling stones. Then, silently, they dislodged D'Amato's body from the crevice. When it had been hidden under the heaped stones, they all stood for a moment, heads bowed. Sulu shivered slightly. "It looks so lonely there."
"It would be worse if he had company," McCoy said.
Sulu flushed. "Doctor, how can you joke about it? Poor D'Amato, what a terrible way to die."
"There aren't really any good ways, Lieutenant Sulu. Nor am, I joking. Until we know what killed him, none of us is safe."
"Right, Bones," Kirk said. "We'd better stick together, figure this out, and devise a defense against it. Is it possible the rock itself has life?"
Sulu said, "You remember on Janus Six the silicon creatures that—"
McCoy cut in. "But our instruments recorded them. They registered as life forms."
"We could be dealing with intelligent beings who are able to shield their presence."
Sulu stared at Kirk's thoughtful face. "Beings intelligent enough to have destroyed the Enterprise?"
"That's our trouble, Lieutenant. All we've got is questions. Questions—and no answers."
In his apparent safety on the Enterprise, Scott, too, was wrestling with a question to which there seemed to be no sane answer. His sense of suspense grew until he finally pushed the intercom button in his Engineering section.
"Spock here, Mr. Scott."
"Mr. Spock, the ship feels wrong."
"Feels, Mr. Scott?"
Both troubled and embarrassed, Scott fumbled for words. "I—I know it doesn't . . . make sense, sir. Instrumentation reads correct—but the feel is wrong. It's something I . . . don't know how to say . . ."
"Obviously, Mr. Scott. I suggest you avoid emotionalism and simply keep your readings 'correct'. Spock out."
But he hesitated just the same. Finally, he crossed over to his sensor board.
Down in Engineering, Scott, frowning, studied his control panel before turning to an assistant. "Watkins, check the bypass valves for the matter-anti-matter reaction chamber. Be sure there's no overheating."
"But, Mr. Scott, the board shows—"
"I didn't ask you to check the board, lad!"
"Yes, sir." Watkins wiped smudge off his hands. Then, crossing the engine room, he entered the small alcove that housed the matter-anti-matter reaction-control unit. He was nearing its display panel when he saw the woman standing in the corner. Startled, he said, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She smiled a little sadly. "My name is not important. Yours is Watkins, John B. Engineer, grade four."
He eyed her. "You seem to know all about me. Very flattering. What department are you? I've never seen that uniform."
"Show me this unit, please. I wish to learn."
Suspicion tightened in him. He covered it quickly. "This is the matter-anti-matter integrator control. That's the cutoff switch."
"Incorrect," she said. "On the contrary, that is the emergency overload bypass valve which engages almost instantaneously. A wise precaution."
Frightened now, Watkins backed away from her until he was stopped by the mass of the machine. She was smiling lie sad little smile again. "Wise," she said, "considering the fact it takes the anti-matter nacelles little longer to explode once the magnetic valves fail." She paused. "I'm for you, Mr. Watkins."
"Watkins! What's taking you so long?" Scott shouted.
The woman extended a hand as though to repress his reply. But Watkins yelled, "Sir, there's a strange woman here who knows the entire plan of the ship!"
Scott had raced across the Engine Room to the reaction chamber. "Watkins, what the de'il—?" As he rushed in, the woman, backed against a wall, suddenly seemed to flip sideways, her image a thin, two-dimensional line. Then she vanished.
Scott looked down at the alcove's floor. His look of annoyance changed to one of shock. "Poor, poor laddie," he whispered. Then he was stumbling to the nearest intercom button. "Scott to bridge," he said, his voice shaking.
"Spock here, Mr. Scott."
"My engineering assistant is dead, sir."
There was a pause before Spock said, "Do you know how he died, Mr. Scott?"
The quiet voice steadied Scott. "I didn't see it happen. His last words . . . warned about some strange woman . . ."
Spock reached for his loud speaker. "Security alert! All decks! Woman intruder! Extremely dangerous!"
Sulu had finally managed to identify the basic material of the planet. Looking up from his tricorder, he said, "It's an alloy, Captain. Diburnium and osmium. It could not have evolved naturally."
Kirk nodded. "Aside from momentary fluctuations on our instruments, this planet has no magnetic field. And the age of this rock adds up to only a few million years. In that time no known process could have evolved its kind of plant life."
"Jim, are you suggesting that this is an artificial planet?"
"If it's artificial," Sulu said, "where are the people who made it? Why don't we see them?"
"It could be hollow," Kirk told him. "Or they could be shielded against our sensor probes." He looked around him at the somber landscape. "It's getting dark; get some rest. In the morning we'll have to find water and food quickly—or we're in for a very unpleasant stay."
"While the stay lasts," McCoy said grimly.
"Sir, I'll take the first watch."
"Right, Mr. Sulu. Set D'Amato's tricorder for automatic distress on the chance that a spaceship might come by." He stretched out on the ground and McCoy crouched down beside him.
"Jim, if the creators of this planet were going to live inside it, why would they bother to make an atmosphere and evolve plant life on its surface?"
"Bones, get some rest."
McCoy nodded glumly.
Spock wasn't feeling so cheerful, either. Though Sickbay had reported the cellular disruption of Watkins's body to be the same that had killed the Transporter Ensign, its doctors could not account for its cause. "My guess is as good as yours," M'Benga had told him.
Guesses, Spock thought, when what is needed are facts. He spoke sharply to M'Benga. "The power of this intruder to disrupt every cell in a body . . . combined with the the almost inconceivable power to hurl the Enterprise such a distance, speak of a very high culture—and a very great danger."
Scott spoke. "You mean one of the people who threw us a thousand light years away from that planet is on board this ship, killing our crew?"
"That would be the reasonable assumption, Mr. Scott."
Scott pondered. "Yes. Watkins must have been murdered." He paused. "I'd sent him to check the matter-anti-matter reactor. There are no exposed circuits there. It can't have been anything he touched."
"If there are more of those beings on that planet, Mr. Scott, the Captain and the others are in very grave danger."
Danger. Kirk stirred restlessly in his sleep. Near him the tricorder beeped its steady distress signal. Sulu, on guard, shoulders hunched against the cold, felt the ground under him begin to tremble. The strange light flared through the dark. Kirk and McCoy sat up.
"Lieutenant Sulu?"
"It's all right, Captain. Just another one of those quakes."
"What was that light?" McCoy said.
"Lightning, probably. Get some rest, sir."
They lay back. Sulu got up to peer into the darkness around him, patrolling a wider circle. He approached the beeping tricorder, looked down at it, and was moving on when the signal stopped. Sulu whirled—and saw the woman. He went for his phaser, pulling it in one swift movement.
"I am unarmed, Mr. Sulu," she said.
Hand on phaser, he advanced toward her cautiously. She stood perfectly still, her face blurred by the darkness.
"Who are you?" he said.
That is not important. You are Lieutenant Sulu; you were born on the planet Earth—and you are helmsman of the Enterprise."
"Where did you get that information?" he demanded. "Do you live on this planet?"
"I am from here."
Then the planet was hollow. Rage suddenly shook him. "Who killed Lieutenant D'Amato?"
She didn't speak, and Sulu snapped, "All right! My Captain will want to talk to you!" He gestured with his phaser. "That way. Move!"
The melodious voice said, "You do not understand. I have come to you."
"What do you want?"
"To—touch you . . ."
He was in no mood for her touching. "One of our men has been killed! We are marooned here—and our ship has disappeared!" Her features were growing clearer. "You—I recognize you! You were in the Enterprise!"
"Not I. Another." She started toward him.
"Keep back!"
But she continued her move to him. He lifted his phaser. "Stop! Or I'll fire!"
She maintained her approach. "Stop!" he cried. "I don't want to kill a woman!"
She was close to him now. He fired, vaporizing the ground before her. She still came on. Sulu turned his phaser to full charge—and fired again. The beam struck her, but made no more impression on her than it had made on the rock. He backed away, but stumbled over a stone behind him. The phaser skittered across the hard surface of the planet. He scrambled up—but she was on top of him, her hand on his shoulder. He leaped clear, screaming in agony. Then he fell to the ground, his face contorted, screams tearing from his throat. The woman reached for him, her arms outstretched.
"Hold it!"
Kirk, phaser aimed, had interposed himself between them. The woman hesitated, startled.
"Who are you?" Kirk snapped.
"I am for Lieutenant Sulu."
Sulu was clutching his shoulder, groaning. "Phasers won't stop her, Captain . . . don't let her touch you . . . it's how D'Amato died. It's . . . like being blown apart . . ."