Corona

by Greg Bear

  "Spock. Spock!"

  They stood in the broad equipment storage dome of Station One, clustered around Spock, who lay flat on his back, not moving. Kirk bent over his first officer, while McCoy checked the Vulcan's pulse at his armpit. Spock's eyes fluttered and he turned his head. The first face he saw was that of Radak, watching him with curious interest from behind the larger forms of Grake and T'Prylla.

  "Jim, I want that transporter torn apart top to bottom," McCoy said softly. "I've never liked that thing, and so help me, I'll shut it down—"

  "Done. Spock, are you okay?"

  "I do not seem to be injured," Spock said, getting to his feet with McCoy's help. The dome interior was empty, the flat gray aggregate flooring marked by pressure and skid marks where supplies had once rested.

  Kirk flipped open his communicator and ordered a thorough maintenance check on the transporter.

  "Am I the only one affected?" Spock asked.

  "I'm fine," Chapel said, aiming the diagnostic tricorder at Spock's chest. Chekov agreed that he, too, felt no ill effects. Kirk turned to the group awaiting them.

  "I apologize for a very clumsy arrival," he said. "But it appears to be a minor problem. I'd like to introduce the ship's doctor and his assistant, Dr. Leonard McCoy and Lieutenant Christine Chapel. I'm Captain James Kirk, this is Ensign Chekov, and this … as I'm sure you are aware," he said to T'Prylla, "is my first officer and the science officer of the Enterprise, Commander Spock."

  "Welcome to the Black Box Nebula, Captain," T'Prylla said, extending her hand. Her grip on Kirk's hand was firm and dry, warmer even than Spock's. "If it is possible for the members of such a small team to welcome anyone to such a vast territory. My husband has already extended his appreciation, and I wish to reiterate. I am T'Prylla. This is our assistant astrophysicist, Anauk." The Vulcan male divided the fingers of one hand in the traditional greeting. "This is his clan-mate, T'Kosa. And our son, Radak, whom some of your crew have already met. Our daughter, T'Raus, is involved in a project at this time."

  "Our first priority is to give all of you a thorough medical exam," McCoy said.

  "That will not be necessary," Grake said, nodding graciously at McCoy. "We have an excellent medical center here. I am afraid those who most need your help, are quite beyond it."

  "If you're referring to the sleepers," McCoy said, "we may be able to save them. And as for your health, Starfleet regulations require that I make my own judgment."

  "Dr. McCoy is right," Kirk said. "And while he and Nurse Chapel are doing that, I'd like to begin the de-briefing."

  "Of course," T'Prylla said. "Anything we can do to oblige our rescuers. Though we must warn you, the situation is not nearly as desperate as it seemed when we issued our distress signal."

  McCoy asked to be taken to their medical facilities. Grake led the way, and Kirk turned to Spock and Chekov. "I want you to keep an eye on Radak," he said when the others were out of hearing.

  "Is there anything wrong with the boy?" Chekov asked, puzzled.

  "He isn't a ghost. Just watch him."

  "Yes, sir."

  Kirk took a deep breath and motioned for Spock and Chekov to come along. Spock was interested in Kirk's tone of voice. As usual, Kirk was attuned to the same incongruities as his first officer, though he reacted quite differently—with an irritated, almost angry brusqueness. "Spock," he said. "I seem to recall that this dome was supposed to be full of emergency supplies."

  "It is so described in the inventory of Station One," Spock said.

  "Then where is all of it? Would they have used it all by now?"

  "It is conceivable, Captain, though not if damage was as low as we're being led to believe."

  They walked to the hatch leading out of the storage dome and into the reshek corridor. "What does your tricorder say about Radak?"

  Spock held up the instrument and showed Kirk the readout. "He is a quite normal fifteen-year-old Vulcan boy. His data are very distinct."

  Kirk nodded and increased his walking speed. Chekov broke into a short run to catch up.

  The station medical center had been altered drastically. McCoy looked around in dismay at the barely concealed evidence of tampering, rebuilding of equipment, removal of furniture and diagnostic machines. "This place is a shambles," he said to Chapel. "What in God's name happened here?"

  Grake stepped forward and removed an unfamiliar chromium sphere from a plain black metal box. "T'Kosa has made important advances. This is the only device we use for medical attention now. The rest of the equipment, wherever possible, has been converted to help us with our research."

  He handed McCoy the chromium sphere. It weighed at most a pound, and had no visible surface features. "It is quite easy to use. I highly recommend it."

  "How …" McCoy began.

  "If there is a medical problem, the device diagnoses the problem and cures it upon request. It responds to Vulcan now, but it would only take a moment's effort to have it respond to Federation English."

  "I'm more familiar with my own equipment," McCoy said. "Thanks, but I'll stick with that for the time being." He gestured at the pallet of medical supplies. "I'll examine the children first. Could you bring T'Raus in here? And while we're waiting for her …" He smiled and crooked a finger at Radak. The boy stepped forward and submitted to Chapel's quick pass of the diagnostic tricorder over him. Grake went to a wall-mounted com terminal and spoke a few words of Vulcan into it.

  McCoy dug into the contents of his bag and brought out the subcutane, loading it with a vial of nutrients and vitamins. Radak pulled away from Chapel as McCoy wielded the automatic syringe over the boy's arm. "No!" Radak protested. McCoy put on his most soothing expression.

  "It's quite painless. Just a warm pressure—"

  "My son is saying that supplements or any other medications are unnecessary."

  "And I'm saying that it's my duty—"

  "Never mind, Bones," Kirk said, entering the medical center. A step behind him was a slender young Vulcan girl, perhaps two years junior to Radak, walking hand-in-hand with Spock. Chekov maneuvered through the door around them.

  "Jim, there are regulations I have to follow if we're going to interact with personnel—"

  "I have T'Raus's guarantee that the staff of Station One is healthy."

  McCoy regarded Kirk with pained confusion. The girl, her straight and flawless black hair cut shoulder-length, let go of Spock's hand and stood beside T'Kosa. "We have done remarkable things here," the girl said, "and you may require a little time to get used to them. Until then, please do not force your regulations upon us. You may examine us, as you wish, but we are quite capable of treating ourselves."

  McCoy recovered his decorum almost immediately. "Then, if I'm allowed, I'd better see to the people in cold storage. That is, unless I'm pre-empted there, too …"

  "We do not object to your efforts," T'Kosa said. "For us, they have been dead ten years."

  "That's what I was afraid you'd say," McCoy muttered. As T'Kosa made a move to come with McCoy and Chapel, the doctor stopped her by holding up his hand. "The captain needs you here more than I do. If nothing's been changed, we should do just fine by ourselves."

  "Then we will begin formal debriefing right away," T'Prylla said. "There is so much to tell, and so many records to show …"

  Even as they gather in the room where meals are shared, T'Prylla struggles to find her own memory of the past ten years. She cannot control her speech or her actions but perhaps she can recall all that has happened, as she witnessed it …

  But it is confused. There was the construction of the Transformer, completed without the aid of any of the adults, using equipment in the storage dome … And the memories of that are mixed, not hers alone. Although she does recall the wonder and terror of her realization that her own small children had accomplished something beyond the ability of the most brilliant Vulcan engineers. Will the rescuers be told of the Transformer? Or of the Eye-to-Stars?

  McCoy and Chape
l stood in the cylindrical cold room, wearing environment packs that projected a curtain of warmth around them. The helium atmosphere outside the shimmering curtains was a brisk -260° Celsius; the temperature within the hibernacula suspended around the chamber was only a few degrees above absolute zero.

  McCoy had examined the freezing and revival equipment, and everything seemed to be in order. Chapel went from hibernaculum to hiberna-culum, taking detailed tricorder readings. McCoy checked the last available medical records of the individuals suspended in the cold room and compared them with Chapel's findings. As he expected, the individuals had aged perhaps one hour in ten years … and yet all were clinically dead. The myelin sheathing on virtually all of their nerves had broken down under unprecedented levels of Ybakra radiation.

  McCoy had a bizarre vision of what would happen if they were revived now …

  The hibernacula would open on cue, and the people within would try to move. Each would experience a horrible, agonizing convulsion, but within seconds they would be isolated from their misery … and from life itself.

  "I thought I had them licked, but those damned medical monitors are going to fight us every step of the way," McCoy said. "Or I'm back on the farm playing OB-GYN to the chickens." Chapel suppressed a smile by looking at the cold, frozen face of one of the thirty suspended team-members. "These people are technically dead, and I'm not going to be allowed to play God by bringing them back to life."

  "Yes, but they're not physically dead," Chapel said. "Not yet …"

  "Hell, they've been dead for ten years. Total nerve damage, through and through … that's one of the definitions of irreversible death fed into the monitors. It hardly matters that they're very well-preserved."

  "But … can we save them? I mean, is it possible?"

  McCoy shook his head. "Only if I play Clarence Darrow to a robot with a tin ear for rhetoric."

  According to Grake, the station had been swept for months by intense and intermittent storms of radiation. The planetoid had been propelled a few degrees from its former position by fierce particle bombardment. Fortunately, the station had been in the planetoid's shadow for most of the violent buffeting, and they had spent the first two months in a shelter proofed against all harmful radiation but Ybakra. Sensors on the other side of the planetoid had fed the researchers the data they required to determine the position and spectral type of the new stars. Initially, there had been eighteen possible protostar clouds in their section of the nebula, but at least seven of them—those most likely to begin fusion—had been disrupted and destroyed by their precocious siblings.

  "That was just as well," Grake said, though with some hint of regret in his voice. "We could have used more data on other starbirths, but our time in the shelter was running out, and the particle bombardment would probably have killed us."

  When the situation had stabilized and the stars had settled on their path to the main sequence, the researchers had emerged from the shelter to discover that their comrades in cold storage had been severely injured. "The hibernacula are heavily shielded against most forms of radiation," T'Kosa explained. "We were not prepared for so much Ybakra, and believed that proximity to the planetoid would keep levels down. There is no other way to shield against Ybakra … we could have done nothing more, anyway."

  Spock intercepted Kirk's glance but said nothing, and Kirk likewise kept his counsel.

  "We were able to repair most of the damage to the station, and to resume our work," Grake said. "We realized we could never use sub-space radio to communicate with the Federation, since in the presence of the mass anomalies the Ybakra would totally block all fraction-space transmissions, so I set about creating a very powerful tight-beam radio signal transmitter. I knew the location of a Federation buoy beyond the boundaries of the Black Box, but only approximately, since our position had been changed and our view of other stars was obscured by the expanding nebula gas clouds. Still, I was able to send the signal …"

  Radak looked up from the table at Spock. "We assume the message was only partially intercepted."

  "Yes," Spock said. "We received a fair amount of science data, but very little of Grake's audio-visual transmission."

  "That, too, is for the best. We were pessimistic about our chances, and the message may have caused undue alarm. As it is, we have done quite well. And we have made significant advances in our understanding—not only about stellar processes, but about physics in general. We will soon be able to show you our new research center, perhaps after Dr. McCoy has finished with the sleepers."

  "We may have problems rescuing your people quickly," Kirk said. "We were not prepared to take on such a large job. It could take weeks."

  "There is also some doubt that the nebula has stabilized," Spock said. "We strongly recommend you all come aboard the Enterprise, and return with us to the nearest starbase as soon as we've transported the sleepers."

  Radak shook his head once, firmly, and Grake did likewise. "That is impossible, Spock," T'Prylla said. "There can be no interruptions in our work. We do not require rescuing, as you can plainly see. And if the nebula should be agitated again … we have survived once. We are much more prepared now. You will better comprehend how safe we are when you've seen the research dome."

  "Do not misunderstand," Radak said.

  "We have been here, out of touch with everyone, doing our work," T'Prylla continued, as if on cue from her son. "To have fellow beings with us, to compare our findings with the work of other scientists—with what has been happening in the Federation in the last ten years—is marvelous." She looked at Spock with an expression that on a human face would have been interpreted as stern. Spock lifted an eyebrow and withdrew a data pack from his belt pouch.

  "I anticipated such a need," he said, handing the pack to T'Prylla. "Here you will find all the research results published in your fields of interest. There has been considerable progress in understanding subspacial mass anomalies." He paused. "And there has been much change in the Spyorna on Vulcan."

  T'Prylla did not react to Spock's last bit of information. She took the preferred pack and passed it to Grake. "In return, we have prepared a report on our protostar and Ybakra studies." Severely edited …"How quickly can the sleepers be moved to the Enterprise?"

  "For the moment, we can only beam up six at a time," Kirk said, "and reconstruct two a week. We're investigating rigging the shuttlecraft to ferry the hibernacula, but even that would take time and present some risks." And for that reason, he thought, we could certainly use a little more cooperation …

  Chapter Twelve

  The TEREC analyzer, at McCoy's request, sent its remote probe around the cold storage chamber for a second time before returning a final answer. McCoy and Chapel waited outside the cylindrical cold chamber, watching through the glass port as the probe floated from hibernaculum to hibernaculum, calculating the mass and complexity of each of the thirty frozen researchers. The remote probe acted as a scan-only transporter, with neither the power nor the equipment to actually disintegrate and reintegrate anything. It fed its results to the analyzer, which considered the situation and decided what the TEREC was capable of doing, practically and legally. McCoy had few doubts what the answer would be.

  "Slow as molasses," he grumbled, pulling up a seat and squatting with the back pulled to his chest, legs straddled on either side. Chapel stood by the port, arms crossed, with her hands gripping her shoulders.

  "Just looking in there makes me feel frozen," she said. "Ten years in cold storage …"

  "Yes, and even without Ybakra, I don't think there's been such a prolonged freeze in a century. They were only supposed to be in there two or three years, until the preliminary work had been done by T'Prylla and her people."

  "I wonder what it would be like to work with Vulcans … I mean, almost everybody being Vulcan but you." There were four humans in cold storage; all the rest were Vulcans.

  "They were volunteers. I suppose they knew what they were getting into. From what
Spock says, T'Prylla isn't exactly your straight-forward Vulcan. She's even odder than Spock, not that you'd notice."

  "Analysis completed," said the analyzer.

  "Well, let's have it," McCoy urged impatiently.

  "These individuals have all suffered severe nerve damage in cold storage. They are legally dead. The TEREC unit is forbidden by its monitors from reviving beings who are dead by the definition established for each category of being."

  "Damn," McCoy said.

  "There would be practical difficulties, as well. Since the bodies can only be transported once, without suffering even more severe damage due to the dangers of transporting deep-frozen specimens, and since therefore they must be fed directly into the TEREC, only six may be transported at a time. The TEREC can hold two form-memories for restructuring, and four in auxiliary banks."

  "Yes, yes, we knew all that. If we have to, we can bring them all up on the shuttle … though Scotty alone knows how we'll rig the power supplies and safeguards. Show me a profile on the typical case for Vulcans and humans." The analyzer displayed a multi-dimensional chart in three separations, giving the scanning results for a Vulcan and a human. The doctor stared at the results for a moment, repeated the display, and frowned. "Something isn't right here. The bodies have been tampered with, or I'm greatly mistaken. But that doesn't make sense. Maybe the probe needs adjusting." McCoy shut off the analyzer and rested his chin on his crossed wrists.

  In the station mess, Kirk was not encouraged by McCoy's expression when the doctor and Chapel returned.

  "If the transporters are working properly, we can move up the first six patients now. The rest we may be able to transport in the shuttle. Either way, it'll take us fifteen weeks to reconstruct the people in cold storage. The major problem is whether we can work our way around the monitors."

  "They're going to block it?" Kirk asked.