The thermal activity around them was as intense as in the Waimangu valley on Earth—noisy and nervous. But the ground underfoot was firm and gave every indication of having been so for some time. So Kirk discarded his first thought—that the survey crews might have set down on some unstable area, despite the safeguards inherent in transporter sensors.
"Everyone all right?"
Spock nodded, then McCoy.
"Ten meters either way, though," the doctor pointed out, "and we'd have been boiled alive."
Spock already had his science tricorder out and was taking preliminary environmental readings. He frowned. "Unusual that such a lake, of such extent, could exist under the planetary conditions prevalent at this latitude. Most unusual."
"Speaking of unusual, Spock . . ." Kirk interjected. He was pointing at the surface of the lake directly before them.
A shape was rising from the steaming water. One could read the writhing steam into fantastical forms, but this rapidly growing outline was composed of something considerably more solid than water vapor.
It had a saucer-shaped body, limbs of still unseen design but obvious power, and a short, snakelike neck. A vision of quite adequate ugliness bobbed atop that swaying extension.
Spock nonchalantly turned toward it and readjusted his tricorder to take a biologically rather than geologically oriented reading. He studied the results with undivided attention as they appeared in the tiny readouts.
"Most intriguing," he finally commented.
"I'm not sure 'intriguing' is the word I'd choose," Kirk said, taking a step backward. "That creature may be able to navigate on land as well as in the water." Certainly the apparition showed no sign of slackening its pace.
"I know it can," an excited McCoy decided nervously, "and I don't need a tricorder to tell me so."
In truth, the alien being appeared to be accelerating as it neared them. Beneath heavily lidded eyes, black pupils stared at them with the single-minded blankness of the primitive carnivore. The interlocking fangs which protruded sicklelike from both jaws parted slightly, revealing an uninviting dark gullet.
"Phasers on stun," Kirk ordered sharply. "Stand ready."
Each man pulled out one of the compact weapons, adjusted the tiny wheel on top, and dropped to one knee. Spock held his phaser in one hand and the still-operating tricorder in the other. Both were aimed with precision.
The monster reached the shoreline, and any question of its ability to navigate a nonaquatic environment was answered as it humped enthusiastically toward them.
"Fire!"
Three bursts traversed the space between the men and the huge monster. The creature halted its seallike advance, faltering. The long neck lowered and swung dazedly from side to side.
A second round stopped the monster as if it had frozen. It sat on the shore, momentarily paralyzed. The nightmarish skull dipped until it scraped the sand.
Then, amazingly, it seemed to shake off the effects of the double phaser blast. Its appetite gave way to a blind desire to escape, however. Turning with surprising agility, it rushed back into the lake and vanished beneath the steaming surface.
"Not a very friendly environment," Kirk observed idly, kicking at the warm earth. "I think the survey crew would have come to a similar conclusion." He turned. "They'd probably try for a friendlier area inland. Let's move."
Picking their way cautiously between pools of bubbling clear water and thick, candylike mud, they started away from the water's edge. Once, Kirk knelt to probe the ground with a finger, and pulled it away speedily. The soil here was painfully hot just beneath the surface, but it was stable.
"What do you think, Mr. Spock?" he asked, referring to their first encounter with a representative of Lactran life.
"An interesting and no doubt dangerous animal, Captain," the first officer replied easily, "but not particularly so, and clearly not invulnerable. Certainly not to the kind of weaponry a survey crew has available as standard equipment.
"Nor is it the sort of beast one would expect to catch experienced personnel off-guard. Such teams regularly expect far more lethal attacks. For it to have surprised and rapidly killed not one but two such teams—no, Captain, I think it extremely unlikely."
"Exactly my opinion, Spock." They topped a modest rise and started down the other side. "In such a situation—"
He cut off in mid-sentence, staring in surprise at the land before them.
No steam rose there. There wasn't a hint of a boiling pool or steaming mud pit. The panorama before them was flat, hot—and dry. Only a few isolated outcroppings of weathered rock broke the gravel-and-sand plain. Here and there an occasional patch of defiant green stood out like a flag. The change was startling.
"Desert," muttered McCoy. "Not a very welcome sight either, gentlemen."
Kirk frowned as he pulled out his communicator. "We're on a hill here. Let's see if we can pick up anything on the emergency ground bands." He flipped open the communicator and made the requisite adjustments, then addressed it slowly and distinctly.
"This is Captain James Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, commanding a Federation rescue party, calling the crew of the survey scout ship Ariel. Come in please, come in."
A faint whisper of wind on tired rock, nothing more.
"Try again, Jim," McCoy prompted.
"Captain James Kirk of the Federation cruiser Enterprise calling Lieutenant Commander Markel or any members of the Federation survey ship Ariel. Are you receiving me? Please acknowledge."
Still silence. Resignedly, he made a slight, standard readjustment on the receiver dial—and was rewarded with a surprise. A slow, steady beep began to sound.
McCoy was startled. "Be damned . . . they're answering!"
The beep continued for several seconds before stopping suddenly. But not before Kirk, who had been frantically adjusting further controls, registered an expression of satisfaction.
"You got a fix on it, Jim."
The captain nodded. "Barely. The signal didn't last very long, and I don't like the way it cut off like that, in the middle of a series." He turned slightly to their left and pointed. "Over that way."
Picking their way down the slight slope, they started off in the indicated direction. "Likely they're close by, staying near the touchdown point like they're supposed to," Kirk murmured tautly. He squinted at the sky. "We'll try this until the heat begins to tell, then have Scotty beam us up for a rest. We can set down and continue on after a break."
"Don't you think it's strange we didn't get a voice reply to your call, Jim?" wondered a puzzled McCoy.
Kirk shrugged. "Could be any number of reasons we didn't. Mechanical trouble with the communicators, as we originally postulated, Bones."
"Never mind counting them, Spock," broke in McCoy dryly, seeing the first officer about to comment. They continued on across the sand in silence, searching for indications of human passage. There were none—no footprints, no trail of shredded tunic, no lost instruments or survival equipment. Nothing but harsh sky, sand, gravel, and heat that stayed just the human side of oppressive.
Nothing moved on that brown-and-yellow landscape. There was no soothing wind to ruffle the compact, squat green growths which leaned possessively to any hint of shade or depression in the ground.
Kirk spent no time studying them. A single casual glance was enough to show there was nothing remarkable about the largest, nothing distinctive about the smallest. It was the fate of six humans that absorbed his thoughts now, not new outposts of alien ecology.
Eventually they reached the other side of the gentle basin they had been crossing and mounted the symmetrical curve of a large dune. Their descent on its opposite side was as fast and awkward as the climb had been slow and controlled. They reached the sandy base and found themselves confronted by another basin, which terminated in a twin of the dune they had just crossed.
"At least it's not thermal springs and hot mud," McCoy observed.
There was a sound like frying fat, and
a sheet of flame interdicted their progress. It missed Kirk, who was in the forefront of the little party, by a few saving meters. He scrambled backward.
Slightly to one side of their intended route the gritty yellow-and-brown soil erupted. Sand streamed from crevices and cracks, and a nightmarish skull fringed with spines, its skin decorated like a Gothic cathedral, burst from the ground and turned warty jaws toward them.
"Left . . . run!" Spock yelled, barely in time.
The rippling mouth opened and belched a second stream of fire. It scorched the sand where they had been standing only seconds before.
Stumbling backward even as they pulled their phasers, they found themselves backed against the steep inward side of the dune. All three weapons fired, aimed to strike the monster in that cavernous mouth. The monster paused, then swung ponderous jaws to face them again.
"The lining inside the mouth of a creature that can spit fire," Spock lectured hurriedly, "would seem to be composed of organic material highly resistant to—"
Without knowing what prompted the thought, Kirk yelled, "Aim for the underside of the neck!"
Once more three beams of intense energy crossed the space between the men and their assailant. All three struck the creature in the area between the lower jaw and forelegs.
Once again the effort seemed futile. Instead of trying to incinerate them this time, the monster lunged forward, jaws agape. It was slow, however, and clumsy. The little group scattered. The primitive machinery of its mind turning slowly, the monster singled out one victim—Kirk. It turned toward him, then rose suddenly on thick hind legs.
Broad spadelike claws on its forelegs reached inward, clawing confusedly at its throat. Then it toppled like a leathery gray iceberg to lie unmoving in the yellow sands.
The impact of the monster's fall had thrown Spock to his knees. Now he glanced around in concern as he slowly got to his feet.
"Captain?"
"Here, Spock," came the reply from nearby. "Are you all right?"
"I am undamaged."
Kirk joined him, brushing the sand from his tunic. "Where's Dr. McCoy?" He looked around, suddenly conscious of the fact that the doctor was nowhere to be seen. "Bones . . . Bones!"
A distant, faintly desperate reply sounded. "I'm . . . mmpggh!"
Kirk and Spock turned, looking for the source of that brief cry. There was no sign of Dr. McCoy. Then it sounded again, muffled to the point of unintelligibility.
Worriedly, Kirk glanced to his left, then gestured. "I'm not sure. I think the sound came from back there."
They moved slowly down the length of the unconscious creature's massive body. Spock was the first to notice the two spinelike forms protruding from beneath the thick tail.
"Hang on, Bones," Kirk shouted, "we'll get you out!" The officers moved alongside the two projections, which proceeded to twitch insistently. They shoved, but to no avail. "Again, Spock!"
A second effort, both men straining and heaving, failed to move that limp, incredibly solid bulk. And the shifting sand provided poor footing.
"It would seem," a panting Spock ventured, "that another solution is called for, Captain. We cannot lift the tail. Therefore, we must move the doctor."
Kirk eyed him uncertainly, then nodded in understanding. They dropped to their knees and began digging sand with the speed and efficiency of a pair of small mechanical shovels. The thrashing of the doctor's legs added desperation to their efforts, growing more and more frantic with each passing second.
Finally a lower torso and then a pair of arms became visible. Pulling and additional digging brought the rest of the ship's chief physician into the open once more.
McCoy drew his knees against his chest and locked his arms around them, taking long breaths and digging sand from his eyes, nose, and ears.
Spock and Kirk waited and watched worriedly, until McCoy acknowledged the concern in their eyes. "I'm okay, thanks, but the air was just about gone under there." He glanced back at the sloping pit now leading under the tail. "The flesh was slightly humped above me. I had a small air pocket. Smelly, but I wouldn't have traded it for a bottle of the Federation's finest perfume."
"You're sure you're not hurt?" Kirk pressed.
"No . . . just surprised. I didn't even see the tail falling. It isn't every day a dinosaur falls on you." He sneezed and rubbed his sand-scoured nostrils. "If the ground hereabouts had been hard, I'd be just a smear now. But the sand was deep enough, and soft enough, and I was hit just right for the impact to bury me instead of smash me. I lost a little wind, that's all."
Kirk helped McCoy to his feet, then brushed sand from his hands as he turned his gaze beyond the motionless tail. "How much additional desert do you think we'll have to cross, Mr. Spock?"
The first officer checked his tricorder and pointed in the direction the terse signal had come from. "I have no way of judging for certain, Captain, but, extrapolating from temperature and atmospheric readings, at least several additional kilometers. It could be hundreds."
"No," Kirk objected. "The signal wasn't that strong. But we'd better pick up our pace, regardless. There's no cover here, either from the sun, or from any of the other hungry locals. I'd like to make a bit more progress along the signal track before Scotty beams us aboard for a rest period."
They resumed their march across the sands, detouring around the still-stunned mountain which had almost trapped McCoy. But as soon as they resumed walking, Spock lapsed into an introspective silence which Kirk recognized immediately. Something was troubling the first officer. If Spock had something on his mind, something not yet sorted out, he would inform them about it in his own good time.
His own good time came several dozen meters farther into the dry basin. "You know, Captain," he suddenly murmured, "it was unusual the way I seemed to know, rather than guess, that our phasers would be ineffectual while aimed down the carnivore's throat. The creature itself . . . did it not seem familiar to you?"
Kirk thought a moment, and found, to his surprise, that he didn't have to search his memory for very long. The familiarity of the monster had bothered him all along, but it took Spock's query to crystallize it.
"Of course . . . I've seen soloids of something just like it on Canopus Three. That's impossible, though. Canopus is many too many parsecs from here." He squinted into the unyielding sunlight.
"True, this desert is very similar to those found on Canopus Three." His voice faded. "Very similar. In fact, those isolated growths, the color of the petrographic outcrops—they're all remarkably alike."
"Are you suggesting, Captain, that a similar environment presupposes identical evolution?"
"My shoes," McCoy broke in, with undisguised distaste, "are full of sand."
Spock's concentration was broken. "Doctor, your lack of scientific interest is a constant astonishment to me."
"I'll be glad to discuss that with you, Spock, the next time you drop into Sick Bay for some medication, or a checkup."
"No need to become belligerent, Doctor. That was merely a simple observation."
"Spock, your simple observations," McCoy rasped as they trudged toward the top of the next dune, "tend to get on my . . ."
He stopped in mid-sentence, mid-thought, to gape at the scene before them. And he was not alone. Spock and Kirk had also come to a momentary mental halt.
Spread out at the base of the dune was a wall of green so lush and colorful in comparison to the dull plain they had just crossed that it was almost painful to look at.
Clusters of thorn-laden trees and broad, thick bushes interwove with taller emergents and exotically contoured growths drooping with strange fruits. Practically at their feet a stream emerged, vanishing in a sharp curve back into the thriving jungle.
There were distant hints of moss and fern forest, of swamp and tropical lowland. They could almost feel the humidity, smell the rankness of rotting vegetation.
For all that, it looked a lot friendlier than the country they had just traversed. "Food and wate
r—anyone would have a better chance of surviving in there than on that frying pan we just crossed" was McCoy's opinion.
Spock wasn't as sure. Turning slowly, he studied the terrain behind them. His gaze lifted to the far dune. Beyond it, he knew, lay a violently active thermal region bordering a vast, steaming lake.
Again he directed his attention to the riotous landscape before them, listened thoughtfully to the soft susurration of small living things picking their cautious way through the undergrowth.
"Does it not strike you as peculiar, Captain, that two—possibly three—radically different ecologies exist literally side by side? Steaming, unstable shoreline, backed by a thin line of desert, and now another extreme change of climate and living things."
"I've seen stranger sights in my travels, Mr. Spock. What are you driving at?"
"Nothing yet, Captain. Simply another observation." His voice trailed off as he glared at the rain forest beneath the dune, taking this perversion of natural law as a personal affront.
Kirk flipped open his communicator again. "I don't plan to do much walking through that—not without extra equipment." He directed his words to the tiny pickup.
"Landing party to Enterprise." There was a brief pause, rife with static and interference. But the special tight-beam broadcast Scott employed penetrated the mysterious distortion layer in the atmosphere. Kirk heard the chief engineer's reply clearly.
"Enterprise, Scott here."
"Any new information, Scotty? We're a little puzzled by what we've found down here."
"We've got plenty of confusing readings here, too, Captain," Scott confessed. "There appears to be a large concentration of life forms slightly less than a hundred kilometers north-northeast of your present position. How large we can't tell—this blasted distortion effect jumbles every sensor reading we get. I'm informed that it could be a city . . . or just a central gathering place for migratory animals. I said our readings were inconclusive.
Star Trek - Log 8 Page 2