You may go.
[201] McCoy was startled. He glanced at Kirk and Spock, and saw that they had also heard the words.
You may go, the aliens repeated, and McCoy felt a great tiredness and heaviness in his right arm. As he relaxed it, the world dissolved around him, the red grass and black trees became ghostly, and he thought he saw the aliens move away from him in discontinuous motions, disappearing and then reappearing before they faded completely from view, and he was suddenly standing again in front of the alien panel.
Needles of pain pricked his right arm; he swung it back and forth as he flexed his fingers. Next to him, Kirk was massaging his own arm, but Spock’s hand was still against the panel. He was as motionless as he had been when they first found him.
McCoy stepped toward Spock and clutched at his right arm; his muscles were still rigid. “Jim, he’s still there. He won’t let go.”
Kirk took the Vulcan by the shoulders. “Spock, come out!”
McCoy grabbed Spock’s right wrist tightly with one hand while holding his shoulder with the other. Kirk was pulling at Spock’s left shoulder and arm. The Vulcan’s body was stiff and unyielding, but they managed to drag him back from the panel on his feet. The Vulcan muscles under McCoy’s hand loosened, and the figure became unsteady. Then Spock shook himself and found his footing, flexed his right arm, and his familiar contemplative but distant expression returned to his face.
[202] “Doctor McCoy,” Spock said, “there was no danger and no need to move me. I would have been with you and the captain in a few moments.”
“Spock,” McCoy growled, “this is no time to stop and smell the roses. Or the virtual vegetation. Or whatever the heck they call ...”
“Doctor, I was merely attempting to ascertain ...”
Kirk rolled his eyes. “Gentlemen, you are welcome to continue this discussion—aboard the Enterprise. For now, however, I suggest that we get the hell out of here while we can.”
Chapter Fourteen
THEIR SUITS AND BACKPACKS were where they had left them, just beyond the extreme narrowing of the corridor. Kirk was suddenly apprehensive, imagining that the walls might close in and prevent exiting.
He pushed through the tight passage, then found his suit.
Spock squeezed through the passage after him, then reached back to pull McCoy through. “We’ll put those suits back on,” Kirk said. “I don’t want to take any more chances than necessary.”
McCoy picked up one of the suits. “ ‘You may go,’ they told us. Maybe they just wanted us out of their virtual reality, but have decided they’re going to keep us inside this thing.”
“Doctor,” Spock said, “we have no reason to [204] assume that, or even that the inhabitants of the mobile ever meant to harm us. Given that we were the intruders, it can be argued that they have shown some forbearance.”
Here we go again, Kirk thought. Nice to know things are getting back to normal. “Mr. Spock,” he interrupted, a bit more forcefully than he had intended. “I’m assuming that Vulcan senses are more trustworthy in this terrain. You lead the way.”
Spock went ahead, occasionally reaching out to press a gloved hand against the walls. Kirk followed, with McCoy just behind him. If the aliens were planning to move against them, or to imprison them here, they would soon know. His hand reflexively moved toward the phaser at his waist, and then he remembered that his weapon was useless here.
Spock paused to scan the area ahead. “The aliens are not attempting to mislead us,” he said. “The tricorder readings are quite clear and steady.”
The Vulcan moved on. One bend in the corridor, then another, Kirk would have found his way back without Spock, but it would have taken him longer, even with the tricorder readings. The uneasiness and dizziness that had troubled him on his first trip inside the mobile was gone, but he still felt disoriented by the twisting, irregular passageways.
Spock slowed his pace slightly, then reached for his tricorder again. “We are going in the right direction, Captain,” he said as he scanned. “The shuttlecraft is not far away.”
[205] The aliens had created a virtual world indistinguishable from reality; they were certainly capable of sending spurious, genuine-seeming signals to a tricorder. Kirk shook off the thought, keeping his gaze on Spock’s booted feet as he followed the Vulcan along the passageway.
“The exit is open,” Spock announced.
Startled, Kirk looked up and saw that they had come to the lock.
Spock led the way through the open lock and into the shuttlecraft. Kirk took his position at the controls and saw that the instrument readings were unchanged.
“Everything’s fine,” Kirk said as Spock sat down at his right. “Our lock is closed. Almost makes you wonder.”
“Yeah,” McCoy said from behind him. “We’re back in that chamber, still pressing our palms against that panel. Maybe our air lock is open, and we don’t know it. Simple way to kill us as we leave.”
“It is unlikely that this is all an illusion,” Spock said. “It would be pointless to give us all this if they wished to harm us.”
McCoy sighed. “Unless they’re toying with us, or have a very strange sense of humor.”
“That would not be humor, Doctor—it would be malice, and malice rarely manifests itself as an unalloyed motive, even in human beings. All that I can see here, until proven wrong, is that we have simply been allowed to leave—encouraged to [206] leave, in fact. Suspicions require some evidence in order to be taken seriously.”
“Bones, Spock—get ready for our departure,” Kirk said. He waited, trying to convince himself that Spock had to be right. They had no evidence that the aliens meant to harm their visitors, even though they had the means to do so. The mobile was clearly capable of more decisive, even overwhelming action against the Enterprise. He considered how much the inhabitants of the mobile now knew about the starship’s capacities, and concluded that they were aware that his ship was not the equal of their mobile. Given what they might have done, the aliens had responded minimally to the Enterprise’s actions.
“You have a point, Spock,” McCoy said, sounding as though he hated to admit it. “They probably could have finished us off as soon as we fired our first phaser at them.”
Kirk set the course control program to reverse the shuttlecraft’s entrance into the sun-core, and waited as he gazed at the viewscreen to see whether they would be allowed to leave after all.
Then the alien mobile suddenly fell away on the screen, shrinking rapidly, and in a few moments hung in the deep blue field of the otherspace interior. Kirk pictured the reality of the star’s inferno, heat born of gravitational pressure, waiting to break into this haven.
As the shuttlecraft obeyed its return program, the deep blue began to fade on the viewscreen. Kirk [207] glanced at the controls and noted that the velocity reading had again stopped on the control display. Quantum motion returned as the shuttlecraft blinked from point to point, appearing and disappearing across the distance to the invisible exit.
“Fascinating,” Spock murmured. “We are being projected outward by a very sophisticated tractor beam, whose origin must be in the mobile.”
“In the same way as we were brought in,” Kirk added.
A starry space was opening up ahead. Its edges were amorphous, but suddenly the circular patch came into sharp focus, and grew to cover the whole screen. Standard velocity readings appeared on the control panel as the shuttlecraft shot out of the sun.
“Apparently quite routine—for our hosts,” Spock said.
Behind Kirk, McCoy let out a sigh. “Amazing,” he said, “so amazing that I wonder if we can keep the promise Spock made to the aliens. Starfleet’s going to want to find out how this technology works.”
Spock glanced back at the physician. “Somehow, Doctor, I do not think the aliens would be allowing us to leave if they had only our word with which to protect themselves.”
Kirk felt apprehension stir inside him again. “Shuttlecraft to E
nterprise,” he said. “Kirk here.”
“Enterprise here,” Sulu’s voice replied. “Captain, we just sighted you coming directly out of the sun.”
[208] Kirk said, “We’re coming in. Spock’s alive and well, and Dr. McCoy is with us. I’ve got one hell of a report to make, Mister Sulu.”
“Spock is safe!” Uhura’s voice cried out. “Captain, there are a lot of smiling faces on this bridge.”
Kirk grinned, happy to hear his ship’s welcome, but he was unable to believe that it was all over. If anything, the people of the mobile had to be more uncertain than before. It remained for them to deal with that uncertainty.
How they would do that was still to come. He was certain of that.
Chapter Fifteen
“SOMETHING’S INSIDE OUR SUN,” Myra Coles said, “and not just that mobile, but an entire alien facility apparently designed to service it, with a technology far more sophisticated than ours. Yet you say that we’re in no danger.”
“None that we can discern.” Kirk rested his hands on the table. “They assured us of this.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Can we believe them?”
The Tyrtaean leader had seemed almost as eager as his crew to welcome Kirk and his two fellow officers back to the Enterprise. He had given everyone on the bridge a brief summary of what they had discovered inside the sun, and described their encounter with the aliens. Myra had not objected when he ordered everyone who had been on duty [210] to get some rest; she had even smiled at him before leaving the bridge with her aide.
Then she had requested a meeting with him after he had been awake less than an hour, before he could even begin entering a full report of the incident in his captain’s log. She had been waiting for him here in the briefing room with Wellesley Warren, when he and Spock arrived.
Well, he told himself, he should have known that her momentary warmth and friendliness wouldn’t last. Her obligations to her people were pressing in on her again.
Spock said, “We accepted the assurances we were given, Miss Coles, but we did not do so blindly. A deep scan of your sun reveals no evidence of any danger. In fact, after comparing this scan with our other records of this sun’s activity, even solar flares seem to have declined in frequency and duration. In fact, your sun seems more stable than ever.”
“But what about the long term?” Myra Coles looked from Spock to Yeoman Rand, who was sitting at Kirk’s left, then focused her gray eyes on Kirk.
“There may be problems with any star over the long run,” Kirk said.
“Based on what we have seen,” Spock added, “it would be a mistake to ascribe any future increase in solar activity to the presence of the alien mobile. Since the station may have been there for some time without altering your sun’s activity, we can [211] infer that it is not likely to do so in the foreseeable future. In fact, it may have been beneficial, and may continue to be so.”
The woman let out her breath. “So what now, James—Captain? Are we to share our system with this alien artifact, embedded in our sun?”
Kirk glanced at Spock.
“The question is academic,” the Vulcan said, “since we are unlikely to be able to do anything about it. Our fears about the alien mobile appear to have been groundless.”
Myra Coles shook her head. “They may not be hostile now. What’s to stop them from turning on us especially if they feel threatened again? I don’t know if this is going to draw our malcontents closer to the Federation, or drive them even further from it. On the one hand, we could argue that if there is a possible threat, we may need Starfleet and the Federation to defend us later. On the other hand, this may bring even more people to join with the anti-Federationists in demanding an independent colony in another system, since they will surely believe we’d be safer somewhere else. We certainly won’t have any political stability on Tyrtaeus II for a while. Aristocles made that very clear in his latest subspace message.” She looked down for a moment. “And all I can do is keep insisting that there’s little reason for the aliens to be hostile, and every reason to assume that all they want is to be left to themselves. Maybe that message will get [212] through if I insist on it long enough and the aliens don’t do anything to cast doubt on it. They’re not so different from us that way, wanting to be left alone.”
Spock nodded. “Indeed. That is an observation that should carry some force with your people.”
“Still, we can’t be certain that there will never be any danger to our world.”
Spock leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table top. “Certainty is not to be had about anything, Miss Coles. But I am as certain as is possible under these circumstances. What happened may be easily summarized.” He paused.
“Please continue, Mr. Spock,” Wellesley Warren said. “For the record.”
“By attempting to explore the mobile, we stimulated its defensive programs, which are run by a very advanced artificial intelligence that has given up on changing the given universe. Instead, it has achieved the experience of omnipotence, by linking the output of its minds to the AI input. This culture does not crave the secrets of a transcendent universe, which can never be unraveled because one cannot reach the end of a standing infinity—that is what they believe our universe to be. But do not misunderstand—they know enough about the physical universe to attain what they wish.”
“Mr. Spock—” Myra Coles began.
Spock glanced briefly in her direction, but continued: “A culture that has withdrawn into virtual [213] worlds must, by its very nature, be shy and secretive, and protective of its security. It was apparently time for this one to renew its energy resources when we came along, so it began its journey toward the Tyrtaean sun, which alerted us that it was not a natural object. It became clear to them when we tried to contact them that they might become an object of study, so their defensive systems went into action.”
“Then we can’t make any overtures of friendship to them?” Wellesley Warren asked.
“I think not,” Spock replied. “They would be rejected. There will be no exchange of embassies.”
Myra Coles fidgeted, tapping her fingers against the table top; her face betrayed her agitation.
“Then from what you say,” Wellesley Warren went on, “we must tolerate them here, in our home system, and never learn anything more about them. Live and let live. Well, we Tyrtaeans, of all people, have to respect that.”
Spock nodded. “To repeat, nothing can be done about it.”
The Tyrtaean man sighed. “And we can’t protest to them, obviously.”
“Perhaps they also originated in this system,” Spock said. Kirk thought that extremely doubtful, but kept his doubts to himself. “If so, they have as much right to live in it as you do—perhaps more of a right. It seems clear, however, that they are willing to share it with you.”
[214] “As long as they keep to themselves,” Myra Coles murmured, “and allow us to do the same, we can hardly object to that. But I’d feel a lot better if we could know for sure that they would never become a threat.”
“Miss Coles,” Spock said, “I have more reasons than I have given thus far for assuming that the aliens of the mobile are no threat to any of us now.” He cast a sidelong glance at Kirk. There was something in the Vulcan’s eyes that Kirk had not seen before. Anger? Concern? Chagrin? But Spock would not have such feelings; he certainly would never acknowledge them.
“These reasons are as follows,” Spock continued. “Had the aliens spoken only to me, they might still have felt threatened, and might still have considered taking some sort of strong action against us—not because they suspected any violent intent on my part, but because they had learned that my curiosity had motivated me to take a great risk. They had seen earlier that a team from the Enterprise entered their habitat for the sole purpose of exploring the unknown. To protect themselves, they might then have decided to destroy anyone else who could have led others to them. They might have believed that our curiosity outweighed ev
erything else, and therefore that it posed a great danger to their safety. But they did nothing.”
Kirk sat back in his chair. He had known from the beginning that there were risks in exploring the [215] mobile; he had not wanted to dwell on how high the stakes might be.
“I believe,” Spock went on, “that it was the arrival of Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy that caused the aliens to revise their judgment of us. The captain and the doctor came there, not out of curiosity, or because they were following orders, but to find their friend. The aliens learned that, for us, other things could outweigh curiosity, and in a much more effective way than if I had simply insisted on that fact. I think that may be one reason they decided to let us go.”
Kirk was struck by Spock’s words. It probably irritated him, Kirk thought, to admit openly that both logic and human feeling, and not reason alone, might have been required to free him from the mobile.
“Still,” Wellesley Warren said, “there’s a lot to be curious about, and much the aliens could show us. Yes, we do have to leave them be, but there’s so much we could learn from them.”
“Perhaps they can teach us something anyway,” Myra Coles said, a pensive look on her face. “Here is a race that has turned so far inward that they haven’t just cut themselves off from other intelligences, they’ve also retreated from the universe around them. Their kind of isolation is a prison, in a way. All that power, and what have they used it for? To shut themselves up, to be even more fearful of the outside whenever it intrudes on them. Maybe we should see their example as a warning.”
[216] “I wouldn’t mind asking them some questions,” Wellesley Warren said, “before they retreat into their isolation completely.”
“Nor would I,” Spock said, “but at the moment, we have no direct communications with the mobile.”
“And we must abide by the promise we made to them,” Kirk added, “to recommend to Starfleet and the Federation Council that all contact with these aliens be prohibited, at least for now, while leaving us open to contact with them later, if they choose.”
STAR TREK: TOS #83 - Heart of the Sun Page 15