Spock had been thinking exactly that, seeing the wooden figures nested inside one another.
[172] Magnificent, he replied. I am most impressed.
Calm flowed through Spock. Do not be concerned, the aliens whispered to him. It is the common weakness of those who give themselves to subduing infinity.
What do you mean? Spock asked.
The infinite, given universe cannot be subdued, or finally understood. It is an insult to the very reason that you so prize, and with which you attempt an endless task. It is better to seek within, and remake what can be remade.
But the outside remains, Spock objected. It stands off, implacable and other.
That may not always be so. ...
“There’s no choice,” Kirk said. “We must send in a manned shuttlecraft. If Spock’s hurt, he may need help getting aboard.”
“I’m willing to go,” Wellesley Warren said.
Myra Coles glanced at her aide. “I won’t try to stop you, Wellesley,” she said, “but I’m certain that the captain will.”
“You’re right,” Kirk admitted. “This is work for Starfleet personnel.”
“I volunteer, sir,” Sulu said.
“And I’ll go, too,” Uhura called out from her station. “You might need a communications officer aboard if—”
“No,” Kirk replied. “One person in the shuttle is enough.” He longed to go himself, but his place was on the Enterprise. He had violated standard [173] procedures too often, as Spock had tirelessly pointed out.
“The shuttlecraft is ready, Captain,” Scotty said from engineering, “and I’m willing to take her in myself.”
McCoy moved closer to Kirk’s command station. “May I remind you,” the medical officer said, “that the buddy system is always a wise idea. Whoever you send as pilot, someone ought to go with him. Spock may be badly injured and need emergency medical treatment—so I’m the logical choice.”
“Christine Chapel would do just as well,” Kirk said, “or anyone else on your medical staff. I don’t need to send you, Bones.”
McCoy leaned over Kirk. “I know what you’re thinking, Jim,” the physician said in a low voice. “But you and I both know that you’d rest easier if you had me there. Right?” His voice fell to a whisper. “For God’s sake, Jim—he’s our friend.”
Kirk glanced back at Uhura and saw that she had heard. She nodded, and Kirk said, “Very well, Bones. It’s you and ...” He paused. Not Sulu. He knew then what his choice had to be, and caution be damned. “It’s you and me.”
Myra Coles seemed about to object, but everyone else on the bridge was silent.
As he looked around at their faces, Kirk realized that they all knew it had to be this way. Only those who were closest would risk everything and do their utmost. For a moment Kirk was reminded of [174] trial by combat, the medieval practice according to which the victor was presumed to be innocent because he had the most to lose. Strength flowed from the purest motives, by the gift of divine grace. Yes, we understand, the faces of his crew said. You must go. You have no choice.
“Take care, James,” the Tyrtaean woman said at last.
“Sulu, you’ll be in command until we get back,” Kirk said.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Sulu said, and Kirk heard the tone of inevitability in his voice.
“And if McCoy and I don’t come back, Scotty will take command of the Enterprise.”
“Yes, Captain,” Sulu managed to say with a semblance of discipline.
Chapter Twelve
THE SHUTTLECRAFT shot out from the Enterprise and came around in a wide turn to run at the Tyrtaean sun. Kirk glanced at McCoy and said, “Let’s hope that window opens up to let us in without any trouble.”
“I should have known that cursed Vulcan would drag me into something as bizarre as this,” McCoy mumbled, less to Kirk than to himself.
Kirk shook his head, trying to smile. “I was the one who decided someone had to go in with the shuttlecraft. If you thought I was out of my mind for suggesting it, you could have relieved me of duty.”
“I volunteered for this,” McCoy said. “So that has to mean I’m as crazy as you are, and not competent enough to relieve anyone of duty.”
[176] Kirk watched the sun grow on the viewscreen, filtered and made safe for human eyes. What was it that a classic science fiction writer of the twentieth century—a man named Campbell—had called suns? He tried to recall the phrase: the mightiest machines, cooking up the periodic table of the elements, making all life possible. Yes, a sun was the mightiest machine, an open hearth furnace at the center of its solar system, formed as the stellar cloud collapsed into the density and pressure needed to trigger nuclear fusion. Kirk never tired of its wonder.
And now here he was with McCoy, running a shuttlecraft directly into a sun. If anyone had told him that he would choose to do so, he would have laughed in disbelief.
Spock was alive inside that sun. He had to keep reminding himself of that as the sun grew ever larger on the screen. If all went as he hoped it would—as he had reason to believe that it should—the window would open at about a million kilometers, according to the data that had been recorded when the alien mobile had disappeared.
“We’re coming up on the window,” Kirk said.
McCoy nodded. “One moth leading another into the flame.”
“Not the most consoling metaphor, Bones.”
“Let’s just hope it’s not overly appropriate. I’ll just keep telling myself that Spock went in this way, and so did the probe, and so will we.”
[177] The sun was swelling ever larger on the screen. Kirk’s muscles tensed. He glanced down at one of the gauges on the console in front of him. The window would have to open any second now.
“Jim!” McCoy shouted. “We’ve gone past the window coordinates!”
“A little,” Kirk replied, his voice catching in his throat. “Maybe it’s not precisely situated. We’ll go a bit farther.”
But as the distance began to increase into thousands of kilometers sunward, he had the feeling that it was a hopeless effort. The window had opened once, to receive the mobile. Perhaps it would not open for another kind of object, a craft that the sun-core station’s sensors—if it had sensors—would perceive as alien, and possibly hostile.
“Damn,” McCoy said softly.
As Kirk turned the shuttlecraft away in a wide circle, he was imagining that Spock might remain to live out the rest of his life in the core of the Tyrtaean sun ...
Spock looked up at the virtual sky and saw a deep purple shadow sweep across it. This shadow was even darker than the one he had seen earlier, and he sensed what it had to be. Someone from the Enterprise would be coming after him, trying to enter the sun-core station as he had, most likely in one of the starship’s shuttlecraft.
Someone is coming for me, he said to the alien [178] gathering. You must let this vessel in. It will be the only way I shall be able to get out.
He waited a while for a response:
We must guard against the danger to ourselves. We are not yet ready to leave this station.
I assure you, Spock said, that there will be no danger to you.
We must consider further ...
No one will harm you, Spock insisted. I promise you that. You can sense that what I tell you is true.
The aliens did not respond.
Those outside will be persistent, Spock continued. They will not leave me here without trying to ascertain exactly what has happened to me. Holding me will only provoke them into making more efforts to rescue me. You would be safer if you allowed me to depart.
There was a long pause. Spock quieted his thoughts, waiting for an answer.
We will risk it, came the long-delayed reply. There seem to be only two of your kind inside the incoming craft. We will allow it to enter.
I am grateful, Spock responded, then realized that they had said nothing about letting the shuttlecraft leave.
As Kirk ran the shuttlecraft at the sun for the
second time, the brilliant sphere seemed to fall inward, almost as if something were trying to turn it inside out. A deep depression was forming at the sun’s equator. The star swelled and took up the [179] whole screen. But there was no heat, and all of the sensors and controls showed normal readings.
The depression began to look like a tunnel opening into the center of the star—
—and suddenly the shuttle was rushing through a fiery passage.
“It’s opening for us,” McCoy said. “This has to be the window—I wonder why it didn’t open before.”
Kirk watched the control panel and the screen warily, but the sensor readings remained normal before the awesome abnormality of the entrance into the star.
McCoy let out his breath, obviously stunned by the sight.
On and on the shuttlecraft plunged. The passage seemed endless, but a glance at the chronometer on his console told Kirk that only thirty seconds had elapsed. Suddenly it seemed to him that they were rushing straight down, and would emerge at any moment into a “basement” subspace underlaying the entire cosmos.
McCoy suddenly leaned forward. “Will you look at that!”
A blue space was opening up ahead. At first, its edges seemed amorphous, but then it snapped into sharp focus, as if he were gazing at a deep blue sky through a prismatic lens. Kirk glanced at the instrument panel again.
“Impossible,” he said. “According to our instruments, we’re no longer moving. We’re disappearing [180] from one point and then appearing in the next, with no distance being recorded, no velocity ...”
“Spock would have a term for it,” McCoy said.
“Quantum motion. I once heard it discussed in a lecture. Very different from warp motion.”
McCoy cleared his throat. “You took the words right out of Spock’s mouth.”
The shuttlecraft was suddenly in the vast blue space. On the screen, just ahead, Kirk could see the rocky planetoid that was the alien mobile; the tiny cylinder that was the probe from the Enterprise hung near it in the shadowless blue space. The flat, indented metal surface of what looked like the previously discovered entrance to the mobile was clearly visible. The shuttlecraft began to slow and finally came to a stop against the mobile, as if settling into an invisible dock.
“We’re up against the lock,” Kirk said.
“It wouldn’t open before, for Spock,” McCoy reminded him. “It may not open now.”
Kirk took out his communicator and flipped it open.
“Kirk to Spock.”
There was no response.
He pressed the subspace communicator panel on the shuttle console.
“Kirk to Spock, do you read me?”
He heard nothing on either the shuttlecraft’s communicator or his portable one.
“Maybe he’s unable to use his communicator,” McCoy said.
[181] “The window opened for us,” Kirk said. “Clearly something—some intelligence—is controlling it. That could be why we weren’t allowed in at first. But we were permitted to enter this time.”
“I hope it’s not so we could be eliminated. Jim, we might already have learned more than the beings who built that mobile, or who created this space inside this sun, want us to know.”
“We’re still right against the lock,” Kirk said, looking at his instrument panel. He glanced up at the screen again; to his surprise, the lock was now open. “Did you see it open, Bones?”
“No, I didn’t. One second it was closed, and the next it was wide open.”
“At least we won’t have to cut our way in,” Kirk said.
“Kinda makes me wonder.” McCoy shook his head. “It’s so damned convenient. They lure us in, and when we don’t come back, maybe they lure the Enterprise itself in and get us all.”
Kirk studied the physician’s lined face. Leonard McCoy might be an emotional man, and inclined to expect the worst, but he wasn’t given to delusions. There was a wary, fearful look in his eyes that Kirk had not seen before.
“Tell me exactly how you feel now, Bones,” Kirk said.
“It’s odd. I feel this overwhelming sense of danger now, but it seems to be coming from outside me. I feel fear and uneasiness, but not in my innards. So maybe it’s up to you to use me [182] as ... a sensor, a damned canary in the mine shaft!”
Spock might already be lost, Kirk thought. If some alien intelligence was trying to trap them, then the wisest course would be to leave immediately. If the shuttlecraft was not allowed to leave, he might still be able to send Sulu and the personnel on his ship a message not to follow him. No, Kirk decided; he would not leave before he knew what had happened to Spock.
“We have to go inside the mobile,” Kirk said, “find Spock, and leave. There’s nothing else we can do.”
“I agree,” McCoy said, “but if we get out of this, I’m never going to let that Vulcan forget the trouble his curiosity caused us.”
“We’ll wear protective suits,” Kirk continued, “and take what precautions we can.” He gazed at the screen, on which the vast blue space that surrounded the mobile glowed. “Hard to believe that we’re inside a sun.”
“It’s a first,” McCoy said.
Chapter Thirteen
KIRK CAME OUT as the shuttlecraft’s lock opened, but halted in front of the mobile’s open lock. The prospect of again entering the alien black and green interior suddenly repelled him; he recalled how disoriented he had been during his first trip inside. He closed his eyes for a moment.
“Jim,” McCoy’s voice said from the communicator inside Kirk’s protective suit, “what is it?”
“Nothing.” The eerie feeling faded. Kirk moved through the lock into the black corridor, with McCoy behind him.
“This open lock,” McCoy said. “Still don’t like it. Like an engraved invitation—feels as if they’re just waiting for us.”
“I expect they are,” Kirk replied. “Maybe Spock has something to do with it.” Maybe Spock was the [184] bait. He pushed that thought aside, reached for his tricorder, and connected it to his suit’s belt input.
He led the way through the jagged black corridor, pausing every few moments to check his tricorder readings. “He’s here,” he said, turning toward McCoy. “He’s somewhere in this section of the mobile.”
The physician’s head bent forward as he peered at his own tricorder display inside his helmet. “Yes, but those life-sign readings look weaker than they should. Normal, but too weak.”
Kirk moved forward; the readings were getting stronger. His first officer was somewhere ahead, but McCoy was right; Spock’s life-sign readings still seemed low for a Vulcan, as if he were sedated or unconscious. “What do you make of those readings, Bones?”
“I don’t like them. He’s unconscious, possibly comatose.”
“Hurry.” Kirk picked up his pace, making one turn to his left, then another. Spock’s tricorder life-sign readings grew fainter; he was going in the wrong direction. He retraced his steps, forcing himself to slow down, so as not to get lost. Occasionally he paused to close his eyes and shake off the feelings of disorientation.
“How do you feel?” he asked McCoy.
“Kinda dizzy—and I still have that odd feeling of dread coming from outside myself.”
“Permission granted to return to the [185] shuttlecraft,” Kirk said, knowing that McCoy would stick with him.
“Not on your life.”
Kirk made another turn, then stopped. Spock’s protective suit—it had to be his suit—lay on the floor in front of him. He hurried toward it, swallowing his dismay, almost expecting to find the Vulcan still inside the suit.
He knelt and quickly examined the suit and helmet. Spock’s backpack, with his portable sub-space communicator, sat less than one meter away, against the wall.
“No damage,” Kirk said. “Spock took it off and left it here.”
“That, or someone forced him to take it off,” McCoy murmured as Kirk stood up and continued forward.
The passageway grew m
ore constricted. Kirk’s tricorder readings indicated that he was getting closer to Spock, but the Vulcan’s life-sign readings were still too low. The corridor would soon be too narrow for him to pass through. He went on until his broad, suited shoulders were caught between the walls, forcing him to stop.
“What now?” McCoy’s voice said in his ear.
“Spock came through here. The tricorder readings tell me that he’s up ahead.”
“Then he took off his suit to get through that narrow space.”
Kirk took a couple of steps backward, then turned to face McCoy. “We’ll do the same.”
[186] McCoy was scanning with his tricorder. “The air’s breathable.”
“It was breathable when my team and I first came inside.”
“But Spock was also thinner than you or me.” Kirk heard the word was as a small explosion in his brain, and knew that Bones had instantly regretted saying it, but made no comment. “We might not be able to squeeze through that passage,” McCoy said more softly.
Kirk removed his helmet, then began to take off his suit. McCoy had already removed his own helmet.
“You’re always telling me that I could stand to lose a little weight,” Kirk went on. “I should have listened to you.”
“And I should have followed my own advice.”
The two men removed their portable equipment, placed their suits near one wall, then turned toward the narrow passageway. Kirk hesitated, fearing suddenly that they might find Spock’s body just beyond the constriction, collapsed like his empty suit.
He stepped forward without looking back at McCoy, almost afraid to see the doctor’s expression—one of resignation, perhaps. At the narrowing he turned sideways, trying to squeeze through the tight, black passageway. The surface of the walls was as polished as obsidian, but almost seemed wet, pressing in on him as if it might suddenly become soft and give way.
[187] “Can you make it, Jim?” McCoy asked.
“I’m trying.” He managed to slip forward and was suddenly free. The corridor bent to the right. He turned to wait for McCoy.
STAR TREK: TOS #83 - Heart of the Sun Page 13