Mutiny on the Enterprise

by Robert E. Vardeman

  Kirk looked around. He had been transported to the surface of the planet.

  "My communicator!" he cried, grabbing for the spot on his belt where it normally hung. It had vanished. "Lorelei exiled me to the planet." Panic rose and fell quickly as he realized how much worse his position might have been. Lorelei might have imprisoned him aboard ship. Escaping from a detention cell was virtually impossible. This way, free on the planet, he had a chance.

  "First find Spock and McCoy, then back to the Enterprise and my command," he vowed aloud. He rose and stood quietly, looking through the copse toward the grassy plain where the others had beamed down. Kirk hesitated and listened when rustling among the fallen leaves warned him of approaching life.

  Small animals, barely larger than Terran house cats, scavenged among the leaves, rooting down and finding grubs and other insects, devouring them, then trotting on to a new location. Curious, Kirk followed and watched. Even though numerous grubs existed in each spot the animals pawed, they ate only a few before moving on. Most animals would feast until nothing remained before seeking out a new food source.

  The silence began to wear on his nerves. No mating cries sounded, no hunting snarls or vigorous arguments. None of the creatures he spied had ears or, apparently, vocal cords. And none paid him the least attention. Frowning, he ventured out of the forest, then stopped. Something bothered him more than the quiet. Kirk stared into the woods, and it finally came to him.

  "There's no undergrowth. No shrubs littering the forest floor. It's as neat there as if a gardener cleared it periodically." Nowhere he looked was there a plant or shrub out of place. And each growth was perfectly formed, no trace of blight or disease. "It's like a garden," he muttered as he walked on.

  A group of humanoids came toward him. He debated facing them now or running for cover, such as it was in the denuded forest. Kirk finally decided that they'd spotted him and no amount of flight would prevail. He waited anxiously. And they walked past him, not even casting him a sidelong glance.

  "Wait!" he called out, puzzled by this lack of reaction on their parts. "Stop!" They walked on, never breaking stride. All marched in perfect unison. Kirk chastised himself for not remembering that they had no hearing organs. All the shouting in the world would produce no effect. He began searching for Lorritson's discarded tricorder. He soon found it and switched off the transmission back to the Enterprise. He had no intention of letting Lorelei see what he planned.

  Sitting cross-legged on the turf, he began studying the tricorder readings, trying to piece together a picture of this peculiar planet. Repeatedly he had seen the humanoids ignore strange things happening about them, only to react strongly when contact was attempted. Spock's mind-fusion attempt had set off one humanoid. Mek Jokkor had been sinking roots into the ground when the snakes attacked; the natives had joined in swiftly and in perfect unison.

  "Perfect unison," he muttered, the phrase turning over and over. He began punching various possibilities into the tricorder, then checking the results as the tiny machine processed and reported findings.

  "Perfect harmony," he finally said. Kirk began digging until he found rootlike tendrils a few centimeters under the surface. The tricorder purred as he ran it the length of the uncovered growths. He jumped to his feet when a small animal with a nose shaped like a spade sauntered toward him. The creature burrowed its nose into the soil and began covering the tendrils. When it had finished its task, it left as quietly as it had arrived. In a few seconds, the grass liquidly flowed back over the naked soil. No evidence of disruption remained.

  "The planet is self-repairing. Everything works together. Disturb one part, and the rest comes to its aid. That's why the scavengers in the forest didn't eat all the grubs. The grubs serve a purpose; but do some sacrifice themselves so that the scavengers can eat? Who decides what's in balance?" He clicked off the tricorder, wishing Spock were with him. Spock and Bones were the experts for an ecological puzzle like this. They'd know the answers he only fumbled at.

  Kirk started for the city, careful to avoid stepping on anything that wiggled or moved. The grass was safe; its role in life was to be walked on. But the spaceman was careful not to disturb any other living being. Finding Spock became more and more important if he wanted to regain control of the Enterprise—and to simply survive on this planet.

  Chapter Eight

  Captain's Log, Stardate 4905.8

  Marooned on the planet, I have few choices left to me. The crew of the Enterprise has mutinied, falling prey to the alien Lorelei's words of pacifism. I must reach Spock and the others, rescue them and, using this small group, regaincontrol of my starship. The outlook for this is not good.

  Jim Kirk walked as if eggshells paved the black ribbon of road leading into the city. He worried that he might disturb the careful balance he had witnessed at work out in the forest. Treading softly, avoiding the humanoid natives, not attempting contact of any sort, he made his way into the city, tricorder working the while. The readings it gave caused him to gasp in wonderment at the marvelous biology of this planet. Not only were the obvious humanoid natives ambulant and alive, so were the buildings. He hesitantly placed his hand next to a wall seemingly constructed of brick. A warm, pulsating surface greeted his touch. The planar wall buckled slightly, retreating just enough to let him know the entire building was a living, breathing entity.

  He pulled back, gazing up at the top of the biologically active four-story building. Humanoids entered and left, treating this edifice as would any dweller on any other planet where it would have been built from steel and granite.

  "Imagine that. They grow their buildings. Animal? Vegetable?" The tricorder did not give him the answer to the question. All he received was a strong reading indicating life. The delicate analysis of the information had to be left to those more expert.

  He went back to the middle of the street and walked directly through the center of the city. On both sides towered the living buildings. Once he saw one of the buildings under "construction." Humanoids and tiny black, darting creatures similar to Altairian spider birds coaxed the building into soaring, into growing straight and true. The bird creatures laid out cobweb lines from the base to the top that the building followed with uncanny ease. Kirk watched as the building visibly grew. At first the growth amounted to only centimeters per minute, but it quickly became meters, huge lurches thrusting the structure toward the cerulean sky. The humanoid natives were neither slaves nor bosses. They labored equally with the bird creatures and, inside the sprouting building, worms gnawing through the pulpy interior to form perfectly shaped hallways and rooms.

  "A symbiosis. All working together, all needing the others to survive. The perfect communism. One part relies on all others, all knowing what to do and to what extent. Fascinating." Kirk stopped and thought about what he had said. He had to laugh. "I'm beginning to sound like Spock. But it is fascinating."

  Sure that the tricorder scanned and recorded the entire building process, he moved on, following a strength signal on the device indicating the direction of the imprisoned humans from the Enterprise.

  The roadway soon turned rough underfoot. Huge black chunks of living pavement thrust up to trip him. He danced back, frowning at the ground. The paving sank back into a quiescent state. Not ten meters away rose a fence of thorns.

  "Spock," he shouted. "Are you there?"

  "There is no other place we can be, Captain," came the Vulcan's measured tones. "I assume you remain free. It surprises me you did not attempt to rescue us using the transporter."

  "The range-finder unit was destroyed by a power surge during switching."

  "And we do not have our communicators to provide accurate location data otherwise. It is as I surmised."

  "Jim, can you get me out of this place? I can't stand much more of Spock. He's acting too damn superior." McCoy's voice came, peevish but not frightened.

  "I wish I could. There's been some trouble aboard the ship."

  A long pause from
the other side of the thorn wall. McCoy said in a choked voice, "Mutiny?"

  "Yes." Kirk didn't try to hide the bitterness in his voice. "None of the officers supported me. All supported Lorelei. Even Scotty and Uhura and Chekov and Sulu. All of them turned pacifist when I tried to use phasers to get you out of that corral."

  "Spock thought it would happen. Damn, he was right again!"

  "How can I get you out?" asked Kirk. "We can discuss getting back aboard the Enterprise afterward. I can't get closer than ten meters without the pavement starting to rise up and trip me."

  "Dr. McCoy has advanced the only possible mode of escape, Captain," said Spock. "Do you have his medical kit with you?"

  "No. If you don't have it, it must be with the communicators. The natives piled them together at the edge of town. All I've got with me is the tricorder Lorritson dropped." Kirk hesitated, then asked, "How are the diplomats?"

  "Mek Jokkor is dead."

  Kirk shivered, in spite of the warm breeze blowing through the city. "I watched as he attempted to put down roots and somehow angered the symbiosis."

  "That is not quite accurate, Captain. A symbiosis is a composite of many smaller individual entities necessarily living together. I think this planet is more, that this entire planet is one giant, living, connected organism."

  "You mean the parts don't even have to communicate? At least as one organism does with another?"

  "That is the only possible explanation, Captain. Telepathy is not encompassing enough to direct the life form that constitutes this entire planet. Mek Jokkor must have been seen by the life form as an intruder little different from a cancer. Humanoids removed him…permanently. They gave no more thought to their actions than T-cells do in your bloodstream."

  "Zarv? Lorritson?"

  "They are withdrawn into a shell over the death. I believe they discuss possible ventures for diplomatic contact, but none of their schemes sounds feasible."

  "What are you going to do with McCoy's medkit?"

  "It contains anesthetic, Jim," came Bones's words trough the thick veil of thorns. "I've examined the corral, and it's got a single root. A shot of metamorphine into the taproot will put it out of commission. While it's 'unconscious,' for want of a better term, we can push through the wall and escape. When it recovers—or if the rest of the planet senses it's gone to sleep—all hell will be out for lunch."

  "It's a long shot," admitted Spock, "but it is the only logical course open to us."

  "I'll get the medkit. Don't go away."

  "Captain Kirk, your attempts at humor leave much to be desired."

  The trip to the town's perimeter and back with the medkit took longer than Kirk had anticipated. He stuffed all the communicators into the kit, as well as Spock's tricorder and other instruments carried by the security force. He lightly touched one of the phasers, then secured it at his belt. Nothing had shown him that the weapon would be effective planetside. Sudden cessation from any portion of the single-entity organism only attracted attention, something he didn't want. There wasn't enough energy in a hand phaser to stun an entire planet. There might not be enough energy in the ship's main phaser bank for that, even if they had full power from the warp engines.

  He approached the corral from a different direction. Turf, rather than the black paving, slipped under the thorn wall. As a result he got closer to the pen before the turf began to rebel and hold him at bay.

  "I've got the medkit. Should I throw the bag over the wall?"

  "Do so carefully. Do not touch the thorns. They are most responsive to touch."

  Kirk looked up, then swallowed hard. A lump formed in his throat. Dangling above him impaled on a thick thorn was the security ensign who had attempted to go over the top. His body had begun decomposing; that didn't bother Kirk as much as the way the thornbush grew about the corpse, as if it devoured the unlucky man.

  "Here it comes." He swung the medkit around his head, then loosed it at the proper instant. It flew up and over the wall. He didn't hear an impact inside. McCoy had fielded it perfectly.

  "There," came the satisfied doctor's voice. "I've got enough metamorphine to put this whole damn place to bed for a week."

  "Do not inject enough to shock the thornbush, Doctor," warned Spock. "Incapacity must overtake the creature too slowly to be noticed."

  "You worry too much, Spock. I'm used to handling farm animals. They never knew what hit 'em when I worked on them."

  "That certainly explains your bedside manner with the crew."

  "Cut the chatter," said Kirk, "and get to work. I'm afraid they'll notice something's wrong and close in on us. The creatures have to be able to hear us talking."

  "Doubtful, Captain. No animal or vegetable creature seen to date has ears or earflaps or other hearing organs. Deafness extends throughout all species. When the entire planet is considered as one highly integrated organism, hearing is no more required than it is necessary for your foot to hear what your arm is doing."

  "The analogy is rotten, Spock," said McCoy. "My application of the tranquilizer is superb, however."

  Even as he spoke, Kirk watched the vicious upthrusting thorns begin to sag slightly. The ensign's body tumbled to the ground not a meter away. By the time he was able to force himself to examine the young crewman, a way had opened in the thorn wall. Spock held rubbery thorns apart for McCoy, the three remaining security men and the two diplomats. Both Zarv and Lorritson came silently, subdued. No braggadocio, no false courage. They'd been stunned by all that had happened to them.

  "They ate Mek Jokkor," muttered Lorritson as he passed through into freedom. "They ate him!"

  "Rather," corrected Spock, "he was assimilated. Given a different circumstance, Mek Jokkor might have been most likely to establish rapport. He unfortunately appeared to menace the highly ordered life form of this world."

  "Let's get out of here and find safe place in the woods," said Kirk. "We've got to do some planning."

  "Captain," said Spock, "one place is identical with another as far as relative safety is concerned. We are free of the corral. I suggest we not waste time. As soon as Dr. McCoy's potion wears off, an alarm will be sounded for us. If we do nothing to create a disturbance until then, we might as well stay here as be in the woods."

  "It's hard believing the entire world can spy on us—or detect us."

  "That is a somewhat paranoid view, but in essence it is true enough. Now tell me what happened aboard the ship."

  Kirk quickly outlined all that had happened, his voice becoming brittle and his bitterness rising to the surface as he talked. He finished by saying, "I thought better of them. Especially Scotty and the bridge crew. But they were as eager as any of the others to mutiny."

  "You blame them wrongly, Captain," said Spock. "Relieved of duty while incarcerated, I had the time and opportunity to consider many facets of Lorelei's presence. I surmised that she has more than histrionic talents."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She must be empathic. Sensing opposition, she changes the tenor of her argument until the listener is more responsive. In this fashion, she tailors the most successful argument for each person. Another aspect of this talent might be the ability to utter subsonic and ultrasonic harmonics."

  "You mean she can adjust the pitch and timbre of her voice so that we don't even know it? That's pretty farfetched," scoffed McCoy.

  "It explains her ease in converting the crew of a Federation starship to her pacifistic philosophy. In a way, she has patterned an individualized hypnotic speech for each crew member. She touches lines of thought we do not even recognize we entertain, then plays on them. Perhaps these touch our deepest fears, prejudices, ideas of honor and self."

  "You're saying Scotty and the others weren't acting on their own?" Kirk clutched at this straw.

  "Lorelei affected them in a manner analogous to a drug in the bloodstream. The recipient is not responsible for the result; the person administering the drug is."

  "You're saying she's a ps
ychologist? That she drugs with words laced with hypnotizing harmonics? That's putting a lot onto that slip of a girl." McCoy squatted down and rummaged through his medkit, taking inventory of what he had with him.

  "It explains much. I also question the idea she is a girl, as you put it. I believe her to be much older than adolescent."

  "Her age isn't a matter of debate, gentlemen," cut in Kirk. "Getting off this planet and regaining command of the Enterprise is."

  "Whatever you do, we must act quickly," spoke up Donald Lorritson. "I . . . I fear that the ambassador has been damaged." He held up his hand as McCoy started for the Tellarite. "No, not in the body. There he is sound. He comes from sturdy stock. It's his mind. Zarv has never suffered a defeat of this magnitude. The loss of a prized assistant has unnerved him, as have subsequent events." Lorritson motioned toward the thorn pen.

  "He's just depressed. He'll snap out of it—if we get off this damn planet."

  "Doctor, the proper term is 'when' and not 'if.' We shall soon have transport away." Spock pointed into the cloudless sky.

  Kirk turned and peered into the sun. A shiny silver speck appeared, grew larger, then roared across the sky.

  "A shuttle craft!"

  "Precisely," said Spock. "Our way off planet. Let's hurry before we are missed."

  The small party picked its way through the middle of the city, observing planetary protocol and never interrupting any creature at its duty. They reached the far side of the city and began a long trek out into the countryside.

  Twice as they marched the shuttle craft left and returned. Kirk said, "Must be loading shielding. Somehow Lorelei has convinced the planetary life form to give her the shielding."