by Judith
“Secondary-target acquisition in forty seconds,” Sulu said. “Altitude seventy-five kilometers. Passing through the meso-pause.”
Kirk felt all eyes on him.
“This is it, Captain Kirk,” Wilforth said. “Do we go or not?”
Kirk ignored McCoy shaking his head. “Mr. Kyle, lock on to secondary target. Do not energize without my signal.”
Kyle set the controls to standby.
“Mr. Spock, I want a complete retrieval after one orbit.”
Spock nodded in agreement.
“But that gives us less than an hour,” Wilforth protested.
“If everything works out, we can return,” Kirk said.
“Altitude sixty-eight kilometers,” Sulu said. “Secondary-target acquisition in ten seconds.”
Kirk held his hand up by his shoulder. “How are those boards, Mr. Chekov?” he called out.
“All clear, Keptin.”
“Five seconds to target. Altitude sixty-four kilometers.”
Kirk made his decision. He pointed at Kyle. “Energize.”
The shuddering of the ship was instantly muffled by the sudden wash of the transporter effect. Kirk watched as Kyle and Richter and Spock and McCoy dissolved into the random sparkles of a quantum mist. And then the movement of the ship was gone along with the bright lights of the transporter room. Kirk felt a solid floor materialize beneath his feet, felt the [182] sudden heat of the desert and the sensory shock of air that carried a hundred unknown scents. He was on another world. For a moment, he felt a brief thrill of triumph. Then the transporter effect was gone completely and he heard the others of the landing party shift around him, altering their stance in the slightly higher gravity of Talin IV.
Kirk looked around. They were in a long, high-ceilinged room, dimly lit by wall-mounted panels.
Good work, Kyle, he thought. A perfect touchdown.
A sudden swath of light cut through the room and Kirk heard Cardinali swear. He turned to the communications expert wondering what had gone wrong. And then he saw what Cardinali saw and knew exactly what had gone wrong.
Everything.
Two Talin stood in an open doorway, mouths open. And they screamed.
SEVEN
Kirk felt himself slip into a state of intensely accelerated consciousness. Even as his hand instinctively reached for his communicator to request a beam out, he knew that the Enterprise had already moved beyond the range of her stepped-down transporter system.
Those Talin are not supposed to be here, he thought simply. The only reason he had agreed to even consider the possibility of an intrusive-collection landing party was because Director Wilforth had assured him that each selected site would be deserted. Or did Wilforth know? Did he bring us down here on purpose, knowing what would happen?
Suddenly, the two Talin in the open doorway were engulfed in a shimmering blue aurora and collapsed to the roughly textured floor. The technicians whom Kirk had yet to meet rushed forward to pull the motionless bodies forward. Kirk turned to Wilforth. The FCO director held a small weapon in an unsteady hand—an egg-shaped area disruptor with a gleaming diamond emitter cone. Kirk’s hand lashed out and knocked the weapon from Wilforth’s grip.
“What did you hit them with?” Kirk demanded. He kept his voice to a harsh whisper. How far did those screams carry? How many others are nearby?
[184] “A mild electrical charge,” Wilforth stammered, terrified by the rage in Kirk’s eyes. “We ... we couldn’t risk phasers because we don’t know how the Talin metabolism would react to them. But a neural stun causes no long-term damage.”
Kirk froze. “ ‘No long-term damage’? You know that? You’ve done this before?”
Wilforth couldn’t speak, but he jerked his head up and down.
Then Kirk felt Cardinali’s hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t a fighting grip but Kirk still twisted away.
“It’s all right,” the communications manager said, trying to calm Kirk. “Inadvertent contact happens all the time in these conditions.”
“The Prime Directive expressly forbids it!”
“But we’re not interfering here, Captain Kirk,” Wilforth said, his voice still trembling. “No harm is done. No information has been passed. Our existence is still a secret.”
Kirk pointed to the unconscious Talin. The technicians attended to them with what appeared to be modified medical tricorders. “Except to them. What happens to them when they wake up? Or do you take them back with you to the moon?”
“Captain Kirk, slow down,” Cardinali said. “What did they see? They opened a door, saw a few strange shapes in the shadows, then, as far as they know, they fainted. To the Talin, the effect of getting a neural shock is a bit like what happens when a human gets a violent blow to the head. There are a few seconds’ worth of short-term memory that don’t get laid down in the neural pathways. They’ll remember nothing of us.”
Kirk fought to control his anger. He had jeopardized the mission—and a planet—by trusting everything that Wilforth had told him. But as was so painfully obvious from the weapon Wilforth had carried, and the modified medical tricorders his technicians used, and even Cardinali’s knowledge of Talin neurochemistry, he had not told Kirk all that he knew. And unfortunately, now was not the time to find out just how far the deception had gone.
“Who else has weapons?” Kirk asked.
Cardinali knew what the question meant. He unhooked a [185] disruptor from his belt and handed it to Kirk. “We each have one. There’s only one setting. Nonfatal. And by holding the green stud while twisting the emitter cone, you can fuse the interior circuitry so it can’t be studied.”
Kirk held the disruptor in his hand. “You, too,” he said to the technicians who had finished with the Talin.
Wilforth nodded his head. “Do as he says,” he told them. “We don’t have much time.”
Kirk took the technicians’ disrupters and slapped them to his belt. “How long will they be out?”
“No less than twenty minutes, no more than an hour,” Cardinali answered.
Kirk held out his hand. “Give me your tricorder.”
The instrument was standard issue and Kirk quickly swept a half-kilometer circle for lifeform readings. “Are these signals Talin normal?” he asked as the display showed five individual readings three hundred meters distant.
Cardinali checked the readings and nodded. “But they’re at rest,” he said. “Or sleeping.”
“That’s why we expected this facility to be safe, Captain,” Wilforth added. “It’s late at night here. And this is just a records storage warehouse.”
Kirk held the tricorder in one hand, the weapon in the other. The Enterprise was still more than half an hour away from returning overhead to beam them up. “How many Talin have seen a member of the FCO?” How badly had this world been disrupted?
Wilforth sighed. “As far as we know, nine.” He looked at the floor. “Not counting those who might have seen one of the Wraiths on a sampling run.”
“Nine,” Kirk repeated. Out of two and a half billion. Perhaps the situation wasn’t as bad as it might have been.
“Though according to their public broadcasts,” Cardinali volunteered, “there are at least four or five thousand more who claim to have seen us.”
“What?”
“The Talin are on the brink of leaving their planet, Captain [186] Kirk. They want to believe that other lifeforms exist. The same wish-fulfillment phenomena of spacecraft sighting and alien contact has occurred in the past on virtually every other spacefaring planet, including Earth.”
“Earth was being observed by the Vulcans,” Kirk said grimly.
“But until official contact was made, those few brief sightings and encounters did not interfere with the development of Earth,” Cardinali argued. “Just as the inevitable sightings of us by the Talin will have no appreciable effect on them. The Prime Directive is safe, Captain Kirk. We have done nothing here to circumvent it.”
Kirk decided not t
o pursue the discussion. His problem wasn’t with Cardinali. It was with Wilforth, who had a convenient way of withholding information, and with Richter, who had no love for the Directive. There was nothing more he could do until they had all safely returned to the Enterprise.
“All right, Director Wilforth, have your people go to work. I’ll watch the Talin. And the door.”
Wilforth, Cardinali, and the two technicians moved quickly to the equipment cylinders which had been beamed down with them. At their touch, the storage tubes split open like metal blossoms, displaying a complex range of miniaturized sensing devices. One technician took a large, white wand which reminded Kirk of Richter’s cane and began to slowly walk along a wall covered with rows of thick tubes, each the size of a human forearm.
“Those are Talin datadisks,” Cardinali explained as he set up another piece of equipment on the floor. It looked like a type of primitive data terminal, almost as large as a chair. “The technician is taking micromass readings so we’ll be able to reconstruct the written words and pictures stored in them.”
“From only one pass?” Kirk asked.
“We’re not miracle workers,” Cardinali said with a smile. “It’ll take three passes at least.”
Kirk kept his eyes on the Talin. They breathed more rapidly than humans, but both breathed evenly, gently fluttering the [187] membranes at the sides of their heads. He took that to be a good sign. “What equipment are you setting up?” he asked Cardinali.
“We’ve constructed a model of a Talin computer interface. The facility we’re in maintains historical records for some of the nation states associated with the Greens. Much of the information is what we would call classified, so it is never transmitted outside the computer network that’s in use here—which means we have never been able to tap into it.” Cardinali patted the top of the device as a display screen came to life with Talin script, resembling rows of paint splatters. “Until now.”
Beside him, Cardinali had several boxes of thick round objects, about five centimeters wide. “These are our own Talin-style datadisks. We made them at the outpost according to Talin specs to make downloading easier.” He began slipping the disks into various slots on the side of the terminal.
Kirk did not interrupt any of the FCO personnel again and they worked swiftly and with a minimum of talking. Obviously they had rehearsed their routines many times. The readings on the five sleeping Talin three hundred meters away never varied and the stunned Talin on the warehouse floor didn’t stir. Ten minutes before the Enterprise was due back, Kirk found himself thinking that there was a chance the landing party would be successful after all.
Then he heard a far-off explosive sound, followed by a drawnout rumble. He went immediately to Cardinali. “Where exactly are we in this facility?”
“A basement storage area, Captain. Five meters underground. Three or four levels built above us.”
“Then that was definitely a loud noise out there,” Kirk said. “Thunderstorm?”
“Not here. Not in this season.”
There was a second noise, louder than the first. Kirk watched as the lifeform readings of the sleeping Talin began to change: temperatures rising, increased respiration, minor movement. “The ones that were sleeping heard that. They’re starting to wake up.”
[188] Wilforth came over from an equipment cylinder he had been packing up. “It wasn’t a weapons detonation, was it?” He sounded nervous.
Kirk flipped the tricorder from lifeforms to energy settings. “There are a couple of generating sources nearby ... electrical ... but everything’s controlled. Nonexplosive.” A sudden flurry of peak numbers rushed across the tricorder’s screen. A third explosion echoed around the storeroom.
“That was something flying above us,” Kirk said, fine tuning the controls. “Too small for the Enterprise ... an aircraft of some sort ...” Then he realized what they had heard. “Those were sonic booms.”
Cardinali took his tricorder back from Kirk. “Zalan, pack up my terminal while I check this out.”
“What is it?” Kirk asked, reading the screen upside down. He couldn’t tell what Cardinali was scanning for.
“I’m trying to see if those are missiles or airplanes. Could be bombers ... could be fighters.”
“An attack?” Kirk asked, feeling shock. The negotiators he had listened to had seemed to be so reasonable, so eager for peace.
More rumbles.
“That’s it,” Cardinali announced tensely. “Lifeforms on board. They’re piloted aircraft. And with so many of them at that speed ... they have to be military.”
Kirk felt sick. The Enterprise was still five minutes away. But what did the landing party matter compared with a world that was going to destroy itself? “Is this facility a target?” he asked, already suspecting the answer—it held classified information.
Cardinali nodded slowly. “As far as we know, yes. An important one.”
Kirk stepped over to the cylinders. “Then, let’s stand ready.” Wilforth, Cardinali, and the technicians moved to join him.
They waited.
They heard footsteps in the hallway outside the door. Kirk gestured rapidly to everyone to move the equipment cylinders [190] to the edge of a bookshelf and then crouch down behind them. The Enterprise was less than two minutes away. If she’s still there, Kirk thought. He knew Spock wouldn’t risk coming in over a squadron of attacking warplanes.
“Give us the disrupters, Captain,” Wilforth whispered urgently.
But Kirk shook his head. “If the Talin here are under attack and we stun any of them ... they won’t have a chance to go to a shelter. I won’t let that happen to them.”
The door to the hallway opened and bright light fell in again. Kirk peered through the crack between the two cylinders. Two Talin stood backlit in the doorway, a male and female, delicate saurians, two and a half meters tall, and impressive. Their large yellow eyes moved quickly across the storeroom as their cranial crests rippled like seaweed. The larger Talin’s gaze came to rest on the cylinders and Kirk saw the quick flicker of blue inner eyelids. The creature’s wide and lipless mouth opened to reveal a serrated ridge of fine, sharp teeth. His exposed skin flushed deep red.
Then the other Talin called out with a high-pitched whistle. She had found the two Talin Wilforth had stunned.
Kirk was amazed at how quickly and gracefully the creatures moved as they knelt down to examine the unconscious pair.
The Enterprise was one minute away.
Be there, Kirk thought. It was an order.
Then one of the stunned Talin began to make a sound that sounded like coughing and the male beside him helped him sit up. Kirk watched as the awakening Talin shook his head, stared up at his benefactor, then turned to look farther into the storeroom, at the cylinders.
The creature’s taloned hand shot out toward them and he began to shriek again.
“The disrupters!” Wilforth begged.
The floor shook with another cluster of sonic booms.
Kirk clutched the cylinders. Enterprise! he called out in his mind. Come to me now.
[190] The male Talin stood. His hand went to a long pouch strapped to his bibcloth covering his chest and withdrew what could only be a chemical projectile weapon.
The ground shook again.
The Talin raised his weapon.
And the storeroom filled with the light of the ship who had come to claim her master.
EIGHT
The transporter room formed around Kirk and he felt the familiar transition back to the Enterprise’s gravity. The faces of Spock and McCoy as they waited by Kyle’s console were also welcome.
Kirk jumped down from the platform. He saw Spock’s eyes drop to the cluster of disrupters he had strung around him.
“Who’s attacking the university? What’s the situation below?” Kirk asked. He was puzzled by the way McCoy suddenly burst into a brilliant smile. “Good to see you, too, Bones.”
“The university’s not under attack,�
� McCoy said.
“The situation is quite remarkable,” Spock added.
Kirk looked from one to the other. Behind him, the FCO personnel broke open their equipment to retrieve the Talin datadisks. “We heard warplanes,” Kirk said, still confused.
“Yes,” Spock agreed. “There are hundreds in flight even now.”
Kirk didn’t understand. A world was at war and yet no one seemed to care.
“They are being recalled,” Spock said simply.
“What happened?” Kirk asked.
McCoy’s grin was blinding. “Peace, Jim. The Greens and [192] Browns are withdrawing their forward troops. All over the planet.”
“Wh-what?” Wilforth stuttered. Beside him, Cardinali and the technicians stopped their work.
As Kirk paused, wondering if he was going to have to ask more questions or whether some member of his crew might decide to fill him in, the transporter room doors slipped open and Carole Mallett ran in. Her smile was as broad as McCoy’s and she went straight to Cardinali to hug him.
“They’re going to make it!” she told them all. “They’re really going to make it.”
Before the doors closed again, Kirk had time to hear what sounded like a party in the corridor. He actually heard a noisemaker blow.
“Spock ... ?”
“It has been a most fascinating sequence of events, Captain. The Talin had brought themselves to the brink of complete disaster.”
“But that’s what saved them!” McCoy’s voice broke in. “They went straight to the brink—right to the edge, Jim, and they stepped back.” The doctor spoke so quickly, so excitedly, that his Georgia drawl surfaced and his words ran together. “We were all listening to it on the bridge. Hell, we were all listening to it through the whole ship. Carolyn put it on the intercom.
“They knew they were minutes from destroying themselves, and they chose not to.” McCoy shook his head at the wonder of it. “They chose not to.”
Kirk was elated. It was the last thing he had expected to hear. “Bones, that’s wonderful. It’s more than wonderful.”
“It’s unbelievable,” Wilforth said quietly.