by James Blish
SIX ASSIGNMENTS
IN SPACE AND TIME
In the name of the Federation Council and the Starfleet Command, Spock and the Enterprise crew grapple with: * A Silicon-Based Monster * An Interplanetary Spy * An Amorous Amazon * A Misguided Mobster "Boss" * A Time-Jumping Technician * And the Mind-Enslaving Elders of Talos IV, in the "Hugo" Award-Winning Episode "Menagerie."
BASED ON THE EXCITING
NEW NBC-TV SERIES CREATED
BY GENE RODDENBERRY
A NATIONAL GENERAL COMPANY
STAR TREK 4
A Bantam Book / published July 1971
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1971 by Bantam Books, Inc.
Copyright © 1971 by Paramount Pictues Corporation.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means,
without permission in writing.
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
ISBN-13: 978-0553108125
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a subsidiary of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 271 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
DONNA WOODMAN
and the other new English STAR TREK fans
CONTENTS
* * *
PREFACE:
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
THE DEVIL IN THE DARK
JOURNEY TO BABEL
THE MENAGERIE*
AFTERWORD
THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT
A PIECE OF THE ACTION
PREFACE:
* * *
As I mentioned in the Preface to STAR TREK THREE, I get a staggering amount of fan mail from the readers of the STAR TREK books—far more than I can possibly answer. I'm still getting more and more. I also get letters asking me to adapt particular stories. I keep a running tally of them, to help me make up the table of contents for the next book.
This time, "The Menagerie," an episode by Gene Roddenberry himself, was high on the list. It won the Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation of 1967 at the 25th World Science Fiction Convention in New York. A STAR TREK episode won the year after that, too—Harlan Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Tomorrow," which appeared in STAR TREK TWO. Now, alas, no new episodes of STAR TREK are being produced, so it wasn't in competition for the 1970 awards.
Even though STAR TREK is no longer a network television show, it is as popular as ever. As a syndicated show, it is presently being exhibited on over a hundred stations throughout the United States, and in England, too.
And I'm going on with the books, as almost all your letters have asked me to do. As matters stand now, there will be at least four more of them, all within the next year or so.
JAMES BLISH
Harpsden (Henley)
Oxon, England
ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
(Jean Lisette Aroeste)
* * *
The star Beta Niobe, the computer reported, was going to go nova in approximately three and a half hours from now. Its only satellite, Sarpeidon, was a Class M world which at last report had been inhabited by a humanoid species, civilized, but incapable of space flight. Nevertheless, the sensors of the Enterprise showed that no intelligent life remained on the planet.
But they did show that a large power generator was still functioning down there. That meant, possibly, that there were still some few survivors after all, in which case they had to be located and taken off before the planet was destroyed.
Homing the Transporter on the power signal, Kirk, Spock and McCoy materialized in the center of a fairly large room, subdivided by shelving and storage cabinets into several areas. One alcove contained a consultation desk, with shelves of books behind it. Another held several elaborate machines which were obviously in operation, humming and spinning and blinking. Kirk stared at these with bafflement, and then turned to Spock, who scanned them with his tricorder and raised his hands in a slight gesture.
"The power pulse source, obviously," the First Officer said. "But what it all does is another question."
Along one side was a less puzzling installation: an audiovisual facility containing several carrels (individual study desks) with headsets, projectors and small screens. The nearby wall was pierced by a door and a window. A tape storage area at the end of the room had been caged in, but its door stood ajar.
"May I help you?"
The three officers spun around. Facing them was a dignified, almost imposing man of early middle age. "I am the librarian," he added cordially.
Spock said, "Perhaps you can, Mr . . .?"
"Mr. Atoz. I confess that I am a little surprised to see you; I had thought that everyone had long since gone. But the surprise is a pleasant one. After all, a library serves no purpose unless someone is using it."
"You say that everyone has gone," Kirk said. "Where?"
"It depended upon the individual, of course. If you wish to trace a specific person, I'm sorry, but that information is confidential."
"No, no particular person," McCoy said. "Just—in general—where did they go?"
"Ah, you find it difficult to choose, is that it? Yes, a wide range of alternatives is a mixed blessing, but perhaps I can help. Would you come this way, please?" With a little bow, Atoz invited them to precede him to the audiovisual area. Apparently, Kirk thought, Atoz thought the three officers were natives, and that they wanted to go where the others had gone. Well, what better way to find out?
It was impossible not to be surprised, however, when Atoz, whom he would have sworn had been behind them, emerged smiling from the tape storage cage.
"How the devil did he get over there?" McCoy said in a penetrating stage whisper.
"Each viewing station in this facility is independently operated," Atoz said, as if that explained everything. "You may select from more than twenty thousand Verisim tapes, several hundred of which have only recently been added to the collection. I'm sure that you will find something here that pleases you." He turned toward Kirk. "You, sir, what is your particular field of interest?"
"How about recent history?" Kirk suggested.
"Really? That is too bad. We have so little on recent history; there was no demand for it."
"It doesn't have to be extensive," Kirk said. "Just the answers to a few questions."
"Ah, of course. In that case, Reference Service is available in the second alcove to your right."
It was not quite so surprising, this time, to find the incredible Mr. Atoz already waiting for them at the reference desk. But there was something else: Kirk had the instant impression that Atoz had somehow never seen them before; a guess which was promptly confirmed by the man's first words.
"You're very late," he said angrily. "Where have you been?"
"We came as soon as we knew what was happening."
"It is my fault, sir," Spock said. "I must have miscalculated. Remember, the ship's sensors indicated there was no one here at all."
"In a very few hours, you would have been absolutely correct," Atoz said. "You three would have perished—vaporized. You arrived just in time."
"Then you know what's going to happen?" McCoy queried.
"You idiot! Of course I know. Everyone was warned of the coming nova long ago. They followed instructions and are now safe. And you had better do the same."
"Did you say they were safe?" asked Kirk.
"Absolutely," Atoz said with pride. "Every single one."
"Safe where? Where did they go?"
"Wherever they wanted to go, of cour
se. It is strictly up to the individual's choice."
"And did you alone send all the people of this planet to safety?"
"Yes," Atoz said. "I am proud to say I did. Of course, I had to delegate the simple tasks to my replicas; but the responsibility was mine alone."
"I believe we've met two of them," Kirk said, a little grimly. "You're the real thing, I take it."
"Of course."
McCoy was already scanning Atoz with his tricorder. "As a matter of fact, he is quite real, Jim. And that may explain the report of the ship's sensors; just one remaining man is a difficult object for detection. Sir, are you aware that you will die if you remain here?"
"Of course, but I plan to join my wife and family when the time comes. Do not be concerned about me. Think of yourselves."
Kirk sighed. The man was single-minded almost to the point of mania. But then, that was just the kind of man who'd be given a job like this. Or the kind of man such a job would soon make him. "All right," he said resignedly. "How? What shall we do?"
"The history of the planet is available in every detail," Atoz said, rising and leading them toward the tape carrels. "Just choose what interests you the most—the century, the date, the moment. But, remember, you are very late."
Kirk and McCoy donned headsets, and Atoz selected tapes from the shelves, inserting one in each viewer.
"Thank you, sir," Kirk said. "We will be as quick as we can." He offered a headset to Spock, but the First Officer shook his head and walked off toward the big machine that had mystified him earlier, and which Atoz now appeared to be activating. At the same time, Kirk's screen lighted and he found himself looking at an empty street—it was little more than an alley—which on Earth he would have guessed to be seventeenth-century English. A quick glance to his left revealed that McCoy's screen showed something even less interesting: an Arctic waste. Atoz certainly had peculiar ideas of . . .
A woman screamed, piercingly.
Kirk jumped to his feet, tearing off the headset. The scream came again—not from the headset, obviously, but from the entrance to the observatory-library.
"Help! They're murdering me!"
"Spock! Bones!" Kirk shouted, charging for the door. "Over here, quick!"
Behind him, Atoz' voice cried out: "Stop! I have not prepared you! Wait, you must be . . ."
As Kirk shot out the door, the voice was cut off as if someone had thrown a switch . . .
. . . and he skidded to a halt in the alley he had seen on the screen!
There was no time for puzzlement. The alley was chill and misty, but real enough and the screams came from around the next corner, followed this time by a man's voice.
"Be sweet, love, and I might have a mind to be generous."
Kirk rounded the corner cautiously. A young man wearing velvet, lace and a sword was struggling with a woman dressed like a gypsy. She seemed to be giving him little trouble; though she was kicking and scratching, his handling was as much amorous as it was brutal. A second, even more foppish young man was lounging against the nearby wall, watching with amusement. Then the woman managed to bite the first one on the hand.
"Ow! Vixen!" He aimed a savage cuff at her cheek. The blow never fell; Kirk's hand closed around his upraised arm.
"Let her go," Kirk said.
The woman wiggled free, and the fop's face hardened. "Come when you are bidden, slave," he said, and aimed a roundhouse blow at Kirk's head. Kirk checked the swing and followed through, and a moment later his opponent was sprawling in the dirt.
The second fop shoved the woman aside and moved threateningly toward Kirk, his hand hovering over his rapier hilt. "You need a lesson in how to use your betters," he said. "Who's your master, fellow?"
"I am a freeman."
This seemed to put the fop almost into good humor again. He smiled nastily and drew his rapier.
"Freedom dresses you in poor livery, like a mountebank—and you want better manners, too, freeman." The rapier point slashed Kirk's sleeve.
"The other's behind you, friend!" the woman's voice called, but too late; Kirk was seized from behind. He elbowed his captor in the midriff and, when he broke away, he had the man's sword in his left hand. These creatures really seemed to know nothing at all about unarmed combat, but it would be as well to put an end to this right now. He drew his phaser and fired point-blank.
It didn't go off.
Dropping it, Kirk shifted sword hands and closed on the second fop. He was only fair as a swordsman, too; his lunges were clumsy enough to allow Kirk plenty of freedom to keep the weaponless first fop on the ropes with left-handed karate chops. The swordsman's eyes bulged when his companion went down for the third time and began to back away.
"Sladykins! He's a devil! I'll have no more of this."
He disengaged and ran, his friend not far behind. Kirk picked up and holstered the ineffective phaser and turned to the woman, who was patting her hair and checking her clothes for damage. The clothes were none too clean, and neither was she, although she was pretty enough.
"Thankee, man," she said. "I thought to be limbered sure when the gull caught me drawing his boung."
"I don't follow you. Are you all right?"
The woman looked him over calculatingly. "Ah, I took you for an angler, but you're none of us. Well, you're a bully fine cope for all that. What a handsome dish you served them, the coxcombs!"
She seemed to be becoming more incomprehensible by the minute. "I'm afraid you may be hurt," Kirk said. "You'd better come back into the library with me. You'll be safe there, and Dr. McCoy can see to those bruises."
"I'm game, luv. Lead and I'll follow. Where's library?"
"Just back there . . ."
But when they got to the alley wall, it was blank. The door through which Kirk had come had vanished.
He prowled back and forth, then turned to the woman, who said, puzzled, "What's wi' you, man? Let's make off before coxcombs come wi' shoulder-clappers."
"Do you happen to remember when you first saw me? Do you remember whether I came through some kind of door?"
"I think that rum gull knocked you in the head. Come, luv. I know a leech who'll ask no questions."
"Wait. It must be here somewhere. Bones! Spock!"
"Here, Captain," the First Officer's voice said at once, to the woman's obvious alarm. "We hear you, but we cannot see you. Are you all right?"
"We followed you," McCoy's voice added, "but you'd disappeared."
"We must have missed each other in the fog."
"Fog, Captain?" Spock's voice said. "We have encountered no fog."
"Mercy on us," said the woman. "It's a spirit!"
"No, don't be frightened," Kirk said hastily. "These are friends of mine. They're—on the other side of the wall. Spock! Are you still in the library?"
"Indeed not," Spock's voice said. "We are in a wilderness of arctic characteristics . . ."
"He means that it's cold," McCoy's voice broke in drily.
"Approximately minus twenty-five centigrade. There is no library that we can see. We are at the foot of an ice cliff, and apparently we came through the cliff, since there is no visible aperture."
"There's no sign of a door here either," Kirk said. "Only the wall. It's foggy here, and I can smell the ocean."
"Yes. That is the period you were looking at in the viewer. Dr. McCoy, on the other hand, was watching a
tape of Sarpeidon's last ice age—and here he is, and I with him because we left the library at the same instant."
"Which explains the disappearance of the inhabitants," Kirk concluded. "We certainly underestimated Mr. Atoz."
The woman, clearly terrified by the disembodied voices, was edging away from him. Well, that wasn't important now.
"Yes," Spock was saying. "Apparently they have all escaped from the destruction of their world by retreating into the past."
"Well, we know how we got here. Can we get back? The portal's invisible, but we can still hear each other. There must be a po
rtion of this wall that only looks solid . . ."
He was interrupted by still another scream from the woman, with whom he was beginning to feel definitely annoyed. He turned to find that her attempt to run out of the alley had been blocked by the two fops, who had returned with a pair of obvious constables.
"My friends are back—a couple of, uh, coxcombs I had a run-in with a little earlier. And they've brought reinforcements."
"Keep looking, Jim," McCoy's voice urged. "You must be close to the portal. We're looking too."
"There's the mort's accomplice," one of the fops said, pointing at Kirk. "Arrest him."
"We are the law," one of the constables told Kirk, "and do require that you yield to us."
"On what charge?"
"Thievery and purse-cutting."
"Nonsense. I'm no thief."
"Jim," McCoy's voice said. "What's happening?"
"Lord help us, what's that?" exclaimed the other constable.
"It's spirits!" the woman cried.
The second constable crossed his sword and dagger and held them before him gingerly. He looked frightened, but he resumed advancing. "Depart, spirits, and let honest men approach."
Kirk seized his advantage. "Keep talking, Bones," he said, edging away.
"They speak at his bidding," one of the fops said excitedly. "Stop his mouth and they'll quiet!"
"You must be close to the portal now," Spock's voice said.
"Just keep talk . . ."
But the other constable had crept around to the other side. A heavy blow exploded against Kirk's head, and that was the end of that.
The landscape was barren, consisting entirely of ice and rocks, over which the wind howled mercilessly. The ruined buildings surrounding the library had vanished, and so had the library itself. There was nothing but the ice cliff and, on the other side, the rocky glacial plain stretching endlessly into the distance.