Star Trek - Log 4

by Alan Dean Foster

  This was not the way the men in his family had died! His ancestors would be ashamed to see one of their blood go down without fighting, without striking back. There had to be some way, any way . . .

  "Bypass that analysis, Mr. Spock," Kirk instructed his first officer. He turned, looked over at the huge clock balanced carefully against the base of the command chair. The clock had recently rested on his wrist, but like all other inorganic material except the dilithium, his watch had remained normal size.

  Hours—they didn't even have hours if the rate of shrinkage continued to accelerate. They had twenty-nine minutes. Twenty-nine minutes before they were too small to control the Enterprise.

  Cupping his hands, he shouted to the busy cluster of crewmen moving around on the deck.

  "Everyone continue to jury-rig control systems. There's nothing more we can do."

  "But there is, Captain."

  As the rest of the crew continued with their tasks, Kirk and Spock turned in the direction of the voice, staring up at the overhanging edge of the helm console. Sulu stood there, looking down at them. His tone was one of desperation.

  "Sir, request permission to direct phaser fire at the surface immediately below," he implored, and then turned back to his own task at hand before the captain could reply.

  Sulu shoved against a waist high needle set in a timing dial, pushing it back several notches. With his concentrated body weight he had no trouble manipulating the huge lever. But his mind was on something else.

  When no reply from below was forthcoming, he turned and moved to the edge of the console again. "Ten seconds, sir, just let me set it for ten seconds and we'll destroy . . ."

  "Destroy what, Mr. Sulu? Sensor studies have shown that the unknown waves originate from an area kilometers in diameter. We could assault that region for hours without disrupting whatever is generating the bombardment of the ship. We haven't got hours worth of power to divert to the phaser banks. We haven't even got minutes."

  Sulu stood at the bottom of the circular timer, now clicking back along its present path, and continued to argue with the captain.

  "What good does it do to wait like this, sir. Wait for a death reductio ad absurdum in the truest sense? Just one quick blast, Captain, to see what will happen."

  In his concentration on winning Kirk over, Sulu had forgotten the timer completely. It clicked through the final notch . . . to club Sulu behind the knees. Both legs were taken out from under him.

  Falling forward, he rolled once, took a wild, desperate grab at the edge of the console and fell floorward. There was a disproportionately loud thump as he hit. It sounded convincingly fatal, but wasn't.

  "Sulu!" Kirk and Arex rushed to the injured helmsman's side. The same gestures that showed them he was still alive indicated he was far from uninjured. He was clutching his right leg and grimacing with the pain.

  "Damn . . . mmphh!"

  "Easy, Lieutenant." Kirk forced Sulu's hands away from the damaged area. He felt the leg gently, winced himself when he put miniscule pressure on a particular spot and saw the helmsman's face contort in pain.

  "Leg's broken," he murmured to the watching Arex.

  "Call Sick Bay for a bed?"

  "No . . . the sooner we get him down there the better. Besides, Bones doubtlessly has his hands full already. Let's make a temporary splint." Arex made an expression of understanding, moved off to located the requisite material.

  "Try not to move it, Sulu. We'll have you down to Sick Bay as soon as possible." The helmsman tried to smile back up at him, managed a slight grimace.

  "Good thing I fell on my head, Captain. Beyond fracturing, I think."

  "Something about you is." Kirk was studying the deck nearby. Sulu's heavy, compacted form had put a noticeable dent in the smooth metal.

  "These should serve, Captain." Arex showed him a couple of small metal strips of the kind being used to make miniaturized holders and grips. He had also appropriated a couple of organically based belts from several crewmen.

  Kirk straightened the leg slowly, while Sulu fought to stifle the pain. It couldn't be helped, they had to get the leg straight. He set one metal strip behind the leg, the other in front, and proceeded to tie them tight with the belts. The thick straps were awkward to work with.

  "Couldn't you find anything better in the way of binding material, Lieutenant?" he grumbled.

  "I'm sorry, Captain," Arex replied. "None of the cordage in the bridge storage lockers would work. It is all inorganically based and therefore has remained normal size."

  "Of course." Kirk pulled harder on the bottom belt. Interesting how certain small items had suddenly become indispensable—and unavailable. While others, like these belts, were proving invaluable. He found himself fervently wishing that, of all things, starship's stores had included a couple of horses.

  He finished the improvised splint. With the help of the captain and the navigator, Sulu managed to struggle to his feet. Arex slipped a pair of arms under him—one across his shoulders, the other across his front—and finally put the third around his waist. Kirk added an arm to the other side.

  "Let's get him to Sick Bay." He glanced around. A small crowd had gathered. "Everyone, back to your stations."

  Moving as quickly as they dared, they half dragged, half carried the injured helmsman toward the bridge doors. They seemed kilometers away.

  "How are you doing, Sulu?" Kirk asked awkwardly as they struggled toward the elevator. He was at his best giving orders, not comfort. For all his sometime brusqueness, that was Dr. McCoy's specialty.

  "Lousy, sir," Sulu replied, grinning. "I'll make it." His expression twisted as he accidentally put pressure on the injured member.

  "It would have been nicer, sir, if our ability to feel pain had diminished along with our size."

  They reached the elevator doors—and came to a grinding halt. Nothing happened, even when they moved to stand right up against the metal. The now Brobdingnagian portal refused to open. Arex looked frankly puzzled. It took Kirk long seconds to recognize the reason.

  "The body sensor. We've grown too small to activate it—beam's over our heads now." He left Sulu to Arex's support while he hunted around for something long enough. Everything seemed too big or too small, until he nearly tripped over a strangely shaped piece of metal.

  It was barbed, thin, and bent in the shape of an elongated U . . . one of Uhura's fallen hairpins.

  Hauling it back to the doorway, he hefted it carefully, then made a sweeping motion forward, overhead. Nothing. Another sweep, coupled with a little jump—and this time the colossal doors slid apart.

  Slipping the hairpin over his right shoulder, ready for use at the next doorway, he resumed his support of Sulu. Together, he and Arex helped the injured helmsman through the door.

  Even more depressing than the situation on the bridge was the situation in Sick Bay. Kirk was shocked by the number of injured there, many lying on the deck on makeshift pallets of bits of cloth and sponge. The fact that many of the blankets and sheets were woven from natural-based substances alleviated the problems somewhat. They'd remained in proportion to the growing number of patients, all of whom now averaged about eighteen centimeters in height.

  McCoy and Nurse Chapel were doing their best to care for the injured. When the number of cases began to grow alarmingly, he had distributed the rest of the medical personnel to the various sections of the ship. That, he had decided, would be more practical in the long run than trying to bring all the injured to Sick Bay and would insure medical care throughout the ship no matter how small they shrank.

  And though some areas of the Enterprise were more injury-prone than others, a large number still made their way to Sick Bay for treatment.

  Chapel spotted the new arrivals immediately, nudged McCoy. The doctor bestowed a reassuring smile on a communications tech with a shattered collarbone and went with Chapel to meet the others.

  He directed them to lay Sulu on an empty bed and knelt to examine the helms
man. "What happened? No, let me guess . . . another falling incident—people aren't taking heights seriously, Jim."

  "Broken leg," Kirk informed him. "He fell all right—from the helm console." Turning slowly and surveying the room, he counted the number of injured. "I might ask you the same question."

  McCoy was bent over Sulu, moving an improvised miniature medical scanner over the leg.

  "A lot more of the same, as I said. More and more fall injuries being reported all the time." He clipped the scanner on his belt, started to undo the makeshift splint. "Compound fracture—how did you straighten it?"

  "Pulled," Kirk said curtly.

  "Bedside-manner-wise you leave something to be desired, Jim, But it was the right thing to do."

  "If we could only use a bone-knitting laser," Chapel was muttering. At Kirk's questioning glance, she explained, "We miniaturized all the medical instrumentation we could, Captain, but we just didn't have time for everything. We've been so busy." Her expression brightened.

  "Wait a minute, Dr. McCoy, what about the tiny laser set in the auralite? The one designed to work on the inner ear? Could it be used for bone work?"

  McCoy looked away from his examination of the leg, considering. "It ought to be easy enough to detach from the 'lite—it's a self-contained, replaceable unit. But bone work—I don't . . . no, it's better than splinting. At this stage anything's worth a try." He looked back down at Sulu.

  "I haven't mixed a plaster cast since first year Med School. I'd sure hate to start relearning now—even if the supplies are still manageable." He was getting excited. "Sure, let's try it. The 'lite's up on the shelf with the semi-surgical supplies."

  "I'll get it," Chapel told them. She left while the others turned their attention back to Sulu. McCoy started to explain what would happen if the badly broken femur were allowed to heal by itself.

  The lab room had taken on the appearance of a metallic replica of Zion Canyon on Earth, with sheer cliffs of white and gray closing in on narrowing channels. Chapel didn't need a map to find the shelf.

  Up one of the movable stools to the table-top, from there up the angled base of the aquarium, and then an easy hike to the open shelf. Miscellaneous supplies were scattered about, hastily removed from containers as the people had begun to shrink. Spools of thread, small surgical devices now the size of shuttlecraft, all were strewn haphazardly about.

  Several minutes of fruitless searching made the nurse think McCoy had been wrong about the location of the auralite. Then the long polished tube came into view near the far edge of the shelf. The laser module was in the front of the device. A couple of simple twists on a pair of screw clamps, a click, and it was free. She held it easily in one hand—an extraordinary piece of medical engineering about the size of a small button.

  It had its own self-contained meters. She stepped back to check the reserve power gauge in better light and stumbled. Her feet slipped onto a couple of large plastic skin-patches, now the size of folded tents, and the laser began to shift in her grasp. Clutching at it anxiously, she went over backward into the glass-sided lake of the aquarium.

  The fall knocked the breath out of her and she had to fight for air as she swam back to the surface, still holding the laser. At first the incident seemed only embarrassing. The laser was well sealed and the water wouldn't bother it. She would climb out . . .

  Only after regaining control of herself and her breathing did the first touches of panic set in. The towering glass sides of the aquarium proved unclimbable. And she was far from being the best swimmer on board the ship. She had to struggle to keep from thrashing about in the water and screaming in panic. Instead, she treaded water steadily and screamed at regular, controlled intervals.

  Many of the patients in the main room were under sedation, so it was relatively quiet. Otherwise Kirk and the others might never have heard her.

  Arex had returned to the bridge, but Kirk and McCoy heard the screams clearly enough. Kirk left the exhausted doctor attending to Sulu and ran toward the adjoining lab.

  Chapel was already growing tired—she had no place to rest her legs and one arm had the double task of helping to keep her afloat while holding onto the laser—when Kirk finally located her. Following the same path upward he was soon standing on the shelf above the aquarium, looking over and down into the water.

  He could hardly go in after her—that would leave two of them in need of rescue. Nor was there any miniature climbing gear in evidence. There had to be something on the shelf . . .

  A now-enormous spool of metallic surgical thread caught his attention. Unwinding a sufficient number of loops—the thread looked and felt like electrical cable in his hands—he made a strong ring at one end and dropped it to Chapel.

  She half swam, half flailed her way over to it. Maneuvering carefully, she put her head and arms through the loop. Using the spool cylinder as a brace he slowly hauled her up. A minute later she was standing next to him, gasping and coughing. Kirk found a shrunken lab smock that had somehow found its way onto the shelf, slipped it over her. Her shivering abated somewhat. The halo fish was a cold-water denizen.

  "No more mountain climbing for you, Nurse. Understand?" Chapel ignored the warning. She was hunting through her pockets. Holding onto the laser and treading water had proven too difficult, so . . .

  "Agreed, Captain," she panted as she produced the instrument, "but I've got it."

  She insisted on carrying it herself as they made their way first to the floor and then back to the main room. McCoy studied it without speaking. Kirk watched him worriedly, waiting.

  Finally, "What's the matter, Bones? Don't you think it'll work?"

  "If you mean by work, will it still operate effectively, the answer is yes," McCoy responded. "That's not what concerns me. Normally this device locks into a much larger mechanism which in turn has standard size switches to operate it. I've never handled it directly—the contacts, of course, are far too small for our hands. I'm worried about getting the settings right" He looked at the deck, over at Sulu.

  "No way to know without trying it, though. Nurse Chapel, shift the lieutenant's other leg to one side, please." Chapel did so. Then, while she and Kirk watched, McCoy improvised a stable stand for the laser. Hesitantly at first, then with growing assurance, he manipulated the tiny control contacts.

  Eventually he sat back on his haunches and looked up at Kirk.

  "That ought to be right, Jim, though I still cant be sure. I've replaced this component with tiny handlers often enough. It feels awfully strange working it directly." He directed his next words to the helmsman.

  "Sulu, if there's any pain—anything that doesn't feel right to you—you tell me immediately, understand? Don't go overboard on stoicism—anything twangs out of tune, yell good and loud!"

  Sulu responded with a quick, nervous shake of his head. No jokes, now. McCoy took a deep breath, exchanged an infinite glance with Kirk, then touched a tiny recess in the side of the circular instrument. A beam of bright blue abruptly took up the space between lens and leg. It touched the injured limb on black and blue skin, where McCoy had cut away the tunic.

  "Nothing so far," Sulu reported without being asked.

  McCoy bent over the laser, squinted at the screen set in the back of it and made a couple of adjustments. An infinitesimal shift in the beam was the only noticeable result. Thirty seconds, forty—McCoy touched another hidden switch and the beam vanished.

  "All right, Lieutenant, move your leg." Sulu looked at him uncertainly. He gritted his teeth and started to pull his leg up. The grimace disappeared as it moved easily. Now he flexed it slowly, then with increasing confidence, moving it from side to side.

  "It still aches a little, Doctor." McCoy moved over and started feeling the treated area.

  "Here?"

  "No . . . no . . . yes, there . . . that's the spot."

  McCoy made sure of it, had Sulu straighten his leg again, then returned to the laser. Readjusting the device he activated the beam again,
played it on the helmsman's leg for a couple of seconds.

  "Try it again, Sulu."

  The helmsman did, moving his leg at the hip, then at the knee, and finally raising it completely off the deck in a high arch.

  "No pain now, Doctor. Only a kind of dull throb and a warm feeling."

  "That's natural. No," he warned, as Sulu showed signs of getting up, "just stay there and rest for awhile Sulu."

  "I'm going to need him, Doctor," Kirk said softly. "How soon before he can come forward."

  "You mean you'll need him at the helm?" McCoy gave Kirk a look of admonition. "Isn't there a bit of wishful thinking there, Jim?"

  "I try to think positive, Bones. If we have a second's opportunity to blast free of here, I'll want my best people at the controls."

  "Sorry, you can't have Sulu for a while yet. I'm not worried about the bone—it has fully knit. But sometimes rapid repairs have their own effect on the body. Severe injury isn't the only thing that can initiate shock. It will take time for the nerves and blood vessels in that area to readjust to the fact that they're suddenly not on a crisis footing. After that he'll be as good as new. But he needs to rest for a little while, at least." He lifted the laser carefully off its improvised platform.

  "Christine, move the base, will you? Let's try Solinski's hip next." He looked at Kirk. "Excuse us, Jim, there are a lot of other casualties here I'd like to try this on."

  "Of course, Bones." Kirk turned his attention back to Sulu. "I'm tempted to call Chapel's thinking of the ear laser a lucky break, Lieutenant, but . . ."

  "Comments like that could result in a breakdown of command." Sulu smiled broadly up at him. "I understand, sir. Right now I'm too pleased with the results to care."

  Kirk started to reply but was interrupted by a new voice. He turned to see Spock moving toward him.