Federation

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “You exist because of me!” Cochrane heard himself shout. He saw blood spray from his mouth in the brilliant blue light of the stadium, a halo of blood around him.

  “You’re delirious, my friend,” Thorsen said. “Let me help you.”

  Cochrane raised the cane, aimed it at Thorsen from the hip.

  Thorsen stopped moving forward. He turned sideways, decreasing the size of the target he offered. He raised the fistgun, keeping the barrel pointed up.

  “There are still secrets to be discovered, Mr. Cochrane. Don’t let your work end here. Don’t let your life mean nothing.”

  Cochrane put his finger on the trigger stud. Suddenly, he realized he didn’t care about his work anymore, he didn’t care about secrets. He only cared about what he had done with his life. And he was certain he had not done enough. Had not shared enough.

  “You hurt Monica,” Cochrane said.

  The capacitor in the cane built up to discharge level.

  “What does the life of one person matter?” Thorsen called back. He began to lower the barrel of the fistgun, taking aim.

  “Everyone matters,” Cochrane said, his voice so weak he knew he could no longer speak loudly enough for Thorsen to hear him.

  “This is your last chance!” Thorsen screamed.

  “I know,” Cochrane said.

  He fired the cane, and even as the red laser hit Thorsen’s fistgun, Cochrane realized that as fast as that beam was, Thorsen had been faster.

  The fistgun fired, then exploded.

  Something burned past Cochrane’s cheek.

  Thorsen’s scream pierced the air.

  Cochrane felt hands grab him from behind. The sudden movement brought such intense pain that he dropped the cane, dropped from his body, became only an observer in his mind.

  He felt himself carried up the gangplank into the disk. Somewhere, Monica’s voice still murmured. That meant she was still alive. That meant she would continue. Even without him. The knowledge made him feel better, somehow.

  Gentle hands strapped him into a reclining chair, a blast couch, a display screen above it. Nearby, he thought he heard Monica call out her grandfather’s name. He thought he heard other people asking about Thorsen. But they had the name wrong, he could see that now.

  “His name is Ozymandias,” Cochrane muttered. He remembered his mother reading that poem to him. It had made him think of history. Micah Brack could recite it as readily as if the industrialist had written it himself. “ ‘Look on my works, ye mighty,’ ” Cochrane said.

  No one heard him.

  An artificial voice ordered everyone to prepare for orbital insertion. Cochrane wished he could say good-bye to Monica. He wanted her to have a happy life. She deserved that. He wished he could give it to her.

  The blast couch shook beneath him. On the screen above, he saw the stadium grow smaller. Then it disappeared in a gout of blue plasma, in waves of explosions.

  In a far-off corner of his still lucid mind, Cochrane understood that was how the disk traveled from the earth to the moon. Inertial gravity generators for landing and surface maneuvers, but an impulse drive for propulsion.

  The fusion flames of the disk’s departure bathed whatever had been below it. He pictured Battersea Stadium melting as if a small sun had ignited within it. Baseball really was dead, he decided. And so was Thorsen … or Ozymandias … whatever his name was. All would soon be incandescent. Back to the stuff of stars.

  Cochrane felt a hand grip his. He looked through blurring, closing eyes to see Monica at his side. He heard the hiss of a spray hypo, but felt nothing.

  “I wanted to do more,” he said to her. He knew she would understand.

  She smiled at him. Her smile was beautiful. She would make someone very happy someday, he decided, and he tried to tell her so. Then he realized that he could not last until they cleared the atmosphere. Darkness rolled up for him like the clouds of Titan, bringing on the night. “The stars,” he said to her. “I wanted to see the stars again.” He could see her lips move as she said something back to him, but he could no longer hear.

  Then Zefram Cochrane slowly closed his eyes and waited peacefully for death and history to claim him.

  But history wasn’t finished with him yet.

  ELEVEN

  U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 GAMMA CANARIS REGION, PLANETOID 527

  Stardate 3853.2

  Earth Standard:≈ November 2267

  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy resolved from the transporter beam and set foot once again on Cochrane’s world. Without question, as sensors had indicated, things had changed.

  The air, once a pleasant and constant 22°C, was cold. Frost covered the ground. Wispy clouds stretched like a web across the sky, dark now, almost as if it were dusk, though the planetoid’s sun was directly above at local high noon.

  Kirk could guess what had happened, but he waited for Spock to confirm it with tricorder readings.

  “Gravity is at eighty-two percent of what it was six months ago,” Spock announced, reading from the device’s tiny screen.

  “Resulting in loss of atmosphere,” Kirk stated, not surprised.

  “And heat,” Spock added. The energy once held by the dense air of the planetoid had evaporated into space with the atmosphere.

  “Any indication of what caused the change?” Kirk asked.

  Spock moved the tricorder in an arc about them, watching it intently. “The tricorder detects no underlying cause.”

  “What about you, Spock? Any theories?”

  Spock looked at McCoy. “Doctor, have you detected any life signs?”

  McCoy studied the screen of his own medical tricorder, which Spock had adjusted so it would pick up life signs from the Companion as well. But the doctor shook his head. “Nothing, Mr. Spock. No sign of Cochrane or the Companion.”

  Mr. Scott had beamed them down to the precise location where the Galileo shuttlecraft had been brought to a landing when the Companion had controlled it. Admiral Kabreigny had remained on the Enterprise, though she had approved the landing site as a reasonable place to begin an investigation. But Kirk knew something the admiral did not, that around the ridge to the west, Cochrane’s small shelter waited. He didn’t want to think what they’d find there. Especially given what Spock had uncovered about Cochrane’s final days on Centauri B II.

  “Could it have been a symbiotic relationship between the Companion and this place?” Kirk asked as he reached for his communicator.

  “Intriguing,” Spock said. “And possible.”

  The Companion had told them she was unable to leave the planetoid for more than a tiny march of days, that she drew her life from this place. Perhaps the planetoid’s unusual gravity and climate had also been the result of the Companion’s presence as well, as if conditions here could no longer exist without her, as if life and habitat were one. So much about that type of energy-based creature was unknown.

  Kirk flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise.”

  “Kabreigny here.”

  Kirk frowned at that response, thankful that Starfleet consistently rejected requests to include standard optical sensors on communicators. He didn’t want to see her sitting in his chair on the bridge, and he certainly didn’t want her to see his expression as he spoke with her. “We’re at the Galileo landing site,” Kirk reported. “No energy readings of any kind.”

  But Kabreigny wasn’t going to give up easily. “What about the wreckage that sensors are showing about a kilometer to the west?” she asked.

  Kirk had known the admiral would see the sensor readings of Cochrane’s shelter, and so had prepared her for them by stating that they had previously discovered the crash site of an antique ship, apparently drawn off course the same way the shuttlecraft had been. For Kabreigny, the presence of the wreck was further indication that Kirk should have noted there was a chance that a permanent navigational hazard existed. But Kirk knew that if he had done so, within a year Starfleet would have dispatched a mapping and survey
expedition to the area to determine the extent of the hazard, and they would inevitably have discovered Cochrane.

  “We’re proceeding to the wreckage now,” Kirk said. “I’ll report when we get there. Kirk out.”

  “She seems to be taking it well,” McCoy said as he switched off his tricorder and let it hang at his side.

  “She has no choice,” Spock reminded him. “She does not yet have all the pieces of the puzzle she is assembling.”

  “Gentlemen.” Kirk waved toward the ridge and began walking in that direction. He heard McCoy and Spock fall into step behind him. Unfortunately, they didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle either. Though they had more than the admiral did.

  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had met earlier that morning, as the Enterprise continued on her way to Cochrane’s planetoid. McCoy’s office in sickbay was deemed to be secure from Admiral Kabreigny’s sudden intrusion. In any case, the admiral was more concerned with remaining on the bridge and observing the sensor sweeps firsthand than she seemed to be with the captain’s activities, or those of his senior crew.

  Just the same, McCoy had instructed the computer to lock the sickbay doors so they could talk in peace, unless any crew member required medical attention.

  As Spock related them, the events of Cochrane’s final days were as Kirk had remembered them—history recorded few details. That paucity of information could be explained by the fact that following his historic accomplishment, Cochrane had developed a reputation for being a private, reclusive individual. Historically, Kirk knew that that had been the response of Neil Armstrong to personal historic achievement—the first human to set foot on another world had virtually disappeared from public view for the remainder of his life, at great cost to history and undeniably affecting public support of the fledgling space exploration programs of the time. Yoshikawa had also behaved in a similar fashion, though by his remaining on the moon, his life of seclusion was more understandable to many. How Daar would have chosen to live following her own unique success would forever be a mystery, since her life had been cut short by the tragedy that had befallen her during her return from Mars.

  But Spock had suggested there was more to the lack of information about Cochrane’s final years than could be explained by mere human eccentricity and a desire for privacy. Spock’s informal communications with the Cochrane Foundation of Alpha Centauri revealed that many of the contemporary accounts of Cochrane’s friends and coworkers, and Cochrane’s own journals, remained sealed, though for what reason, no one at the Foundation seemed able or willing to say. Even the journal of Cochrane’s wife, the granddaughter of celebrated astronomer Sir John Burke, was not available to the public. Most intriguingly, there was apparently no indication as to how long those records would remain sealed. The Foundation had simply reported that any potential release date was subject to ongoing review.

  Spock had concluded that such an arrangement indicated that someone within the Foundation was indeed aware of the contents of the sealed journals and associated files, and was only then waiting until certain conditions were met before allowing them to be released. But what those certain conditions could possibly be after a century and a half, not even Spock would hazard a theory.

  In short, all that was available to be known about Cochrane’s final years was all that had already been known since the date of his disappearance. At the age of forty-eight, he had attended a scientific conference on the moon, during which he had met Monica Burke, the woman who became his wife. They had returned to Alpha Centauri together, shortly before World War III devastated Earth.

  During the reconstruction period, when all Earth colonies had strained themselves to their limits to aid the home planet, Cochrane had devoted himself to further refining his warp drive and had traveled among the many worlds to insure that each colony had the scientific and engineering capability to support its own warp drive industry. Recordings of the talks he gave showed how he stressed again and again that for his invention to truly benefit humanity, no one world or group of worlds should ever be able to develop a monopoly on it.

  Several years before his disappearance, Cochrane’s desire to share the fruits of his labor drove him to take part in one of the first diplomatic missions to a colony world established by a race then known as the Vulcanians, from Vulcanis, a more accurate phonetic version of the Vulcan name for their world. In a daring move vehemently protested by conservative human organizations at the time, Cochrane turned over all his research on warp drive technology, without conditions. The Vulcans, of course, had independently created their own version of the drive, but the explosion of scientific advancement that resulted from Cochrane’s unprecedented gift was quickly reciprocated by the enigmatic Vulcans. Far from weakening Earth, Cochrane’s gift, in fact, had led to a long-term and unshakable alliance between humans and Vulcans in which, many historians said, the first seeds of what would become the Federation were sown.

  Thus did a shy and reclusive scientist live to see his invention forever change the shape and history of humanity. It was even widely accepted that Cochrane had made it possible for the species to survive atomic devastation; had made it possible for war-torn Earth to be rebuilt in decades, not centuries or millennia as had happened on some worlds; and had lived, too, to witness many more first contacts between humans and spacefaring alien cultures.

  When Cochrane was eighty-seven, his wife, Monica, had died, apparently in a vehicle accident near the Cochrane ranch on Centauri B II—Cochrane, ever modest, had objected to any efforts to rename the world after him during his lifetime. The details of her accident were not available, either because no account survived, or because no account had been released. Shortly after, Cochrane had revised his will, leaving his surprisingly small estate to the foundation that bore his name. He then filed a flight plan to Stapledon Center and disappeared.

  The search that followed had been massive by contemporary standards. But the invention of subspace radio and subspace sensors remained several decades in the future, and ships that vanished while in warp were typically never seen again, as no faster-than-light method existed for communicating with or detecting them. A year after his failure to arrive at Stapledon Center, Cochrane was declared dead and the human worlds officially mourned his loss.

  The story Spock told was the same as the one Kirk remembered studying in school as a child. But it was McCoy who detected the anomaly. He tapped his fingers on his desk in a sign of his agitation.

  “Cochrane told us he was dying, Jim,” McCoy said after Spock’s report. “Isn’t that an odd coincidence? His wife dies in an accident just as he’s dying of … of whatever he was dying from.”

  Spock seized on McCoy’s recollection of their conversation with Cochrane. “Contemporary accounts do indicate Cochrane’s health was excellent,” he said. “Moreover, colonists in those days generally lived longer and healthier lives than did their counterparts on Earth, owing to an absence of environmental toxins, though of course they had a higher death rate from accidents involving heavy machinery, as Monica Cochrane’s death would illustrate.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t dying when he left Alpha Centauri,” Kirk countered. “He told us the Companion had brought his disabled ship to the planetoid. Maybe something happened to him on board his ship.”

  “Another accident?” McCoy asked skeptically. “That’s even more of a coincidence.”

  When given a choice, Kirk tended to favor the simplest solution to a problem—a predilection Spock proclaimed eminently logical. So he wasn’t enthralled by McCoy’s suggestions that Cochrane’s disappearance and his wife’s death might not have been accidental.

  But Spock’s second report, concerning Admiral Kabreigny’s intense interest in the Enterprise’s previous visit to the Gamma Canaris region, seemed to go in that direction as well.

  “This is what Starfleet knows,” Spock began. “Six months ago, the Galileo encountered navigational difficulties in the Gamma Canaris region and was delayed in making its rend
ezvous with the Enterprise. As a result of that delay, Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford died of Sakuro’s disease. Within twenty-four hours of his return to the Enterprise, Captain Kirk filed a detailed log describing those events. Those events, while regrettable, are not uncommon occurrences during starship exploration on the Federation’s boundaries.

  “However,” Spock continued, “Starfleet is also aware that within five days of the captain’s return to the Enterprise, he shipped, by message pouch, an item for deposit in Starfleet Archives: a personal log to be sealed for one hundred years. Again, this in itself is not an unusual action for a starship captain to take. The archive review board informally concluded that his personal log contained specific details of the death of Commissioner Hedford, withheld, perhaps, to spare her family any unwarranted grief.”

  Kirk could feel Spock building to a substantial “but.” He wasn’t disappointed.

  “But since then, the archive review board, in conjunction with Starfleet Security and the Lunar Police, have decided that whatever the nature of the information in the captain’s sealed log, it was the reason for the recent break-in.”

  Kirk was shocked. “That’s not possible.”

  Spock’s expression of concern told Kirk it was more than possible. “Captain, what I am about to say is considered classified by Starfleet Command. I regret to inform you that I have obtained this information by other than official channels and it would be best if you did not inquire as to my methods. I would like to point out, however, that given the precariousness of our situation in regard to Admiral Kabreigny, and in light of the admiral’s interest in these events, it is my opinion that I have been justified in pursuing this course of investigation in a nonregulation manner. I am, of course, willing to make that case before any Starfleet board of inquiry and submit myself to its judgment.”

  McCoy had had quite enough. “For heaven’s sake, Spock, just get on with it.”

  “By sharing this information with you, Doctor, I am making both you and Captain Kirk subject to disciplinary proceedings at least, and I want you to be so informed.”