“Of course, but I fear that may not work,” Myra Coles said. “Curiosity drew you. It will attract others. I don’t know if the Federation Council will agree to such a ban. Even if they do, some individuals will try to violate it, if the word gets out. I wonder how that will affect my people. Tyrtaeus II would be a natural base for anyone who wants to investigate the mobile. And I doubt that only Federation members will be interested. The Romulans might decide that the potential of this alien technology is worth violating a treaty and crossing the Neutral Zone to this system.”
That thought had already crossed Kirk’s mind. “We’re pledged to defend Tyrtaeus II,” he said. “This doesn’t change that—it just gives us another reason to honor that promise.”
She gazed directly at him. “In any case, I will now have to go back and tell Aristocles and my [217] people that we must live with this predicament. Some, perhaps most, will believe that we provoked this situation and that the aliens may show future hostilities toward us as a result. Others will, with some justification, fear a Romulan incursion into our space. They will look for someone to blame.”
“But—” Kirk searched for something to say as he realized that this might be the end of everything for Myra—her position, her career, perhaps her life. Janice Rand gazed at the Tyrtaean woman, sympathy in her eyes. “I’ll do everything I can to help you,” Kirk said, hearing how useless that sounded. “When your people see my full report, they’ll know that, if anything, you were trying to be extremely cautious. We can appeal—”
“Bridge to Captain Kirk,” Sulu’s voice said over the intercom.
Kirk leaned toward the small screen in front of him. “Kirk here.”
Sulu said, “We’re reading some activity in the sun, sir.”
Kirk got to his feet. “I’ll be right there.” His stomach clenched as he imagined that Myra Coles’s fears might be realized, and that the mobile’s presence had indeed affected the star. He glanced across the table as he started toward the door, with Spock just ahead of him. Myra Coles stared after him with her lips pressed tightly together; her expression seemed a mixture of bitter satisfaction at having been right after all and [218] uncertainty and fear about what might happen now.
Spock was out of the lift and hastening toward his station, where Ali Massoud and Cathe Tekakwitha awaited him, as Kirk hurried to his station. McCoy stood near it, his face flushed; he had obviously hurried to the bridge from sick bay.
“Any change?” Kirk asked as he sat down behind Sulu and Riley.
“None, Captain,” Riley replied.
“Something’s moving inside the sun,” Massoud said. “That much we know. Deep scanning of the sun now.”
The turbolift door whispered open again. Janice Rand came toward Kirk’s station, followed by Myra Coles and her aide.
“I believe I know what may be happening,” Spock said.
Kirk turned in his chair to see Spock peering at his instruments. “What?”
Spock looked up for a moment. “The alien mobile is about to emerge from the sun.”
“Put it up on the viewscreen,” Kirk ordered, facing forward.
The sun’s glare suddenly filled the bridge with filtered light. The screen pulled in on a tiny black dot on the sun’s equator. The dot swelled as it fled from the star.
“It’s accelerating,” Spock said. “Deep scan of [219] the sun reveals that the sun-core station is collapsing at this very moment.”
Myra Coles clasped her hands together.
“It’s gone, Captain,” Spock said, “and with scarcely a ripple showing anywhere in the sun.”
“Almost as if it were never there at all,” McCoy murmured at Kirk’s side.
“Incredible,” Myra Coles said, sounding both disappointed and relieved at the same time. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”
“Indeed,” Spock responded. “I now conclude that the sun-core station was merely a temporary structure, opened solely for the replenishing of the mobile’s energy.”
“Amazing,” Wellesley Warren said. “What power they must have!”
Kirk thought of what Spock had said in the briefing room, and knew what he would have to do now to prove to the aliens that they were safe from interference; there were many ways to show one’s friendship and good will. He glanced toward the Vulcan for a moment. Spock was looking back at him with an expression that said: I know what you will do, Captain, and I know why.
McCoy saw the conspiratorial look on Jim Kirk’s face as he looked toward Spock, and wondered what the captain would do now. “Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said, turning around and leaning forward in his command chair, “make speed to pursue.”
[220] “Aye, aye, Captain.”
“I agree,” Spock said from his station. “We must follow them as far as we can.”
Insanity, McCoy thought, and that Vulcan was going along with it. He glanced at the Coles woman, who was clearly sharing his doubts; her eyes were wide with bewilderment.
McCoy moved closer to the captain. “Jim,” he said in a low voice, “are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Kirk looked up at him. “Yes, Bones, I do. Right now, it seems like a good idea to follow the mobile and see where it’s heading.”
“And to finally provoke it into a hostile response? Shouldn’t we leave well enough alone?”
“We have no evidence that the aliens will engage in any hostile action.” Kirk turned toward the viewscreen. “In fact, we never had any such evidence.”
“But Spock admitted—” Myra Coles began, then paused. “He said that your actions were responsible for awakening its defensive systems.”
“Which have been quite benign,” Kirk said, “and have treated our attempts at contact with some consideration. They could have acted against us with devastating force—they clearly have the technology to do so. They haven’t. They don’t have to.”
“They haven’t yet,” the Tyrtaean woman said softly. McCoy waited for her to say more, but she was silent. She would be thinking that Jim Kirk [221] was again playing with the lives of an entire solar system. McCoy could only hope that she was wrong—that they were both mistaken.
“Captain,” Myra Coles said, “are you actually going to try to catch them?”
Kirk was about to answer when Spock said, “We shall keep pace at a discreet distance.”
Kirk heard Spock’s statement with some surprise. His words were directed at the Tyrtaeans and smacked of diplomacy on the Vulcan’s part; or was it simply his usual rational caution? Spock would want to follow the mobile out of his natural curiosity, but his logical mind would also urge him to be prudent.
“Still accelerating,” Sulu said.
“Keep up with it,” Kirk replied.
“They’re going to warp one,” Riley said.
“Keep up,” Kirk said.
“Warp one point one!” Sulu called out, clearly unable to contain the excitement in his voice. “It’s going to go to warp two, Captain.”
Kirk suddenly had an inkling of what was going to happen. “Pursue, Mister Sulu.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. Now at warp two.”
“James,” Myra Coles asked, “why are we in pursuit?”
He glanced up at the Tyrtaean leader and said, “It’s not really pursuit, since we don’t aim to catch them.”
“Then what is it?” Myra demanded.
[222] Kirk shrugged. “We’re ... observing.”
“Warp three,” Sulu said.
On the screen, the alien was fleeing with an ever-increasing velocity, yet it seemed stately and relaxed to Kirk, as if hardly straining.
“Jim, what are you doing?” McCoy muttered.
“Spock,” Kirk said, “are you still thinking what I am?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Warp four,” Sulu announced.
Kirk gazed at the viewscreen, thinking about the alien culture cradled in the mobile. As an old poem said—but he couldn’t quite remember the words—these pe
ople had remade their world nearer to their heart’s desire. But had they truly done so? From what he had seen, the outward safety of their culture was secured, was being even further secured as the mobile fled. But what had they lost, in turning away from an intractable universe? Was the real universe to be preferred to a great, creative, inward life? Spock would have some views about that.
“Warp five!” Sulu shouted.
“And they’re still way out in front of us,” Riley said.
Kirk thought of the alien panel in the domed oval chamber against which he had pressed his palm. It had to be a durable matrix of some kind, to contain a virtual plenum woven of mind designs. Outwardly, the panel wall seemed to be nothing much at all, but in the flow of electrons, [223] deep down among the quanta, minds reveled with power over their desires ...
“Warp six, Captain,” Sulu said.
“Continue, Mister Sulu.” Kirk sat back, watching the universe rush by the Enterprise. How did that poem go?
“Seven!” Sulu said.
“Eight!”
“Continue in pursuit.”
“Nine!” Sulu shouted.
“Engineering to bridge!” Scotty’s voice called out over the communicator.
“Kirk here.”
“What in blazes is going on up there, Captain? We’ll start to break up at just past ten!”
“I know what I’m doing, Scotty.”
“I hope so,” the engineer muttered.
“Ten, Captain!” Sulu’s voice rose. “They’re at warp ten!”
“Take it to ten and hold, Mister Sulu.”
“Holding steady, sir.”
For a long time, there was silence on the bridge. Kirk watched the mobile on the screen. The alien was holding at warp ten, almost as if it was reluctant to insult the Enterprise. The poem that he was trying to recall refused to come back to him.
Then the mobile began to shrink against the blackness of space and stars.
“It’s going to eleven,” Sulu said in a cracking voice. “Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen—Captain, it’s way off our scale!”
[224] And then it was gone—leaving only the usual warp of space rushing by the ship. Warp ten suddenly seemed slow to Kirk.
As he gazed with awe and admiration at the empty screen, he imagined the alien mobile riding a wave of immense non-Einsteinian velocity, doing what his beloved Enterprise could not do and would never be able to do—go anywhere in the universe, touch any star. Yet those who traveled inside it had turned inward, into themselves, and all the vast outwardness of the cosmos was to them only a cloak for their dream-life.
“Plot its course,” Kirk called out.
“Somewhere toward the center of the galaxy,” Riley replied. “Course untraceable.”
“Reduce speed,” Kirk said as he sat back. “Return course to Tyrtaeus II.”
“Captain,” Scotty said from engineering, “it was a marvel! I wouldn’t even call what they have warp engines. They were literally rolling up the universe before them like a carpet!”
“Advanced warp engines,” Kirk said. “We’ll have them one day.”
“Don’t try to console me, Captain,” Scotty said. “I know my betters when I see them, and they were a glory to behold!”
“Yes,” Kirk said. “It’s what you can do with the power of a sun to send you on your way.”
Myra Coles was looking at him wonderingly. “And what, may I ask, did that chase prove?” she asked.
[225] Kirk glanced aft. “Mr. Spock?” he said. “Perhaps you should answer Miss Coles’s question.”
Spock left his post and came to stand at Kirk’s right. Sulu and Riley turned at their forward stations to look at the Vulcan; Uhura turned around at her station. McCoy frowned at Kirk’s left, as if ready to take issue with anything Spock said.
“Gladly, Captain,” Spock said. “The captain suspected, as did I, that the people of the alien mobile wished to make sure of their privacy and safety, and there was only one way for them to do that—by leaving this system in a manner that would preclude our following them. They would have been extremely trusting, even foolish, to rely only on our pledge that they would be left to continue their lives in peace. And the Federation would have had the added burden of forbidding all contact with the mobile and enforcing that injunction, as it did with Talos IV—although I think the two cases are somewhat different. ...”
“But why did the captain pursue them?” Wellesley Warren asked impatiently.
“I’ll answer that myself,” Kirk said. “There were two aims to be accomplished. The first was to see what the mobile could do, to know firsthand what kind of science and technology we were facing. Second, to show the alien mobile that we could not catch them, that they could protect themselves from us by escaping from us completely. Otherwise, they might reasonably have had doubts about their security.”
[226] “You thought of all of that?” the Tyrtaean leader asked, with a hint of newfound respect in her voice. “But what if you had been able to catch them? Were you so sure that you couldn’t?”
Kirk nodded. “I suspected that we couldn’t catch them, but I wasn’t completely certain. Would you have preferred for us to leave a doubt in their minds, to have them always wondering whether we could go out and find them? I was prepared to slow down and show an ‘inability’ to catch them, if it had become necessary.”
Myra Coles sighed and nodded. “You’re right. With that level of science and technology, they could have done whatever they wished with us, if they felt sufficiently threatened. I must admit it—what you’ve done has probably ensured the safety of my people. The aliens have learned that we are willing to let them be, but also that we lack the capacity to go after them. They are safe, too.”
Kirk could not help smiling. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
She tilted her head. “So in effect, their parting message to us is, we have our lives and you have yours. Good-bye.”
“I couldn’t have said it better,” Kirk said, meeting her open gaze and realizing that she was telling him the same thing on behalf of herself and her own world.
“Well, I say good riddance,” McCoy said.
Kirk paid no attention to the comment. He wanted to tell Myra that Federation colonies had to [227] be competitive, suspicious, even for a time inward-looking and isolationist, in order to grow, to develop the cultural and biological individualities that human and humanoid life spreading across the star systems of the galaxy might one day need to keep their cultures vital. In that sense, the Tyrtaean anti-Federationists were right, but they did not need a complete break to achieve their ends; the Federation was willing to leave its member worlds alone. Myra might call his words Federation paternalism, and mock him for his show of generosity, even though she clearly believed the same thing herself. He would say that in the short term it might seem like paternalism, but in the long term it meant survival and growth ... and she would say that words were cheap ... and he would tell her fervently that he believed every word of the Federation’s ideals ... and she would look into his eyes and know it was right and true. ...
But instead of the exchange of words and feelings that might have been in the duet he wished for, Kirk said, “I understand. The future of the Federation depends on its colonies and member worlds, Miss Coles.”
Myra Coles smiled at his formality. “Yes, Captain, of course.”
Chapter Sixteen
ARISTOCLES WAS IN the main square to meet Wellesley and Myra when they beamed down from the Enterprise. Myra had insisted that they arrive by themselves. That was practical, Wellesley supposed, given that James Kirk’s crew had better things to do than accompany them to Callinus, but perhaps Myra had not wanted to provoke Aristocles Marcelli any more than necessary. Tact suggested that she not come home with a group of Starfleet officers.
Aristocles stepped forward to greet them. “Welcome back, Myra and Wellesley,” he said in a calm voice. One corner of his mouth twitched, and his dark eyes were rimmed
with red; he did not look as though he had been sleeping well.
“Greetings, Aristocles,” Myra said, “I’m [229] impatient to get back to work, but there is one matter we have to discuss first. The people aboard the Enterprise could use some rest and relaxation. I thought we might invite them to spend some time here.”
“For relaxation?” Aristocles said, as if uncertain of the word’s meaning.
Myra’s face was composed. “They will perform their duties more efficiently later if they take some time off now.”
“Time off.” Aristocles looked disdainful. “Too much relaxation only makes people soft.”
“That depends on one’s choice of recreation,” Myra said. “A hike in the hills, a mountain climb, a long swim in one of our lakes—I fail to see how such activities weaken a person.”
“We had more than enough contact with Starfleet while Kirk’s people were restoring our data base,” Aristocles said as he led them toward the Callinus Administrative Center. “I fail to see why—”
“Afraid they’ll contaminate us?” Myra asked. For a moment, Wellesley thought she might smile. “I think our developing culture is strong enough to withstand a bit more contact with others. Sometimes too much isolation can produce an unfounded distrust—in the absence of any contact, it’s easy to imagine all kinds of things about people one doesn’t know. I’ve been distrustful of Federation officials and Starfleet officers myself, but—”
“Proud of yourself, aren’t you?” Aristocles stopped and turned to face them; Wellesley halted [230] next to Myra, shocked by the venom in Aristocles’s voice. “You’ll do the Federation’s work for them. You’ve done their work for them all along. You’re nothing better than a Federation agent yourself.”
Wellesley glanced around the square. It was only an hour after dawn, and most of the people in Callinus would already be at work or at school, but a few people were watching them from across the way.
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