STAR TREK: TOS - Enterprise, The First Adventure

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “Hi, Gnash. Hi, Hazard,” Lindy said. The equiraptor stood still when Lindy petted her.

  “Athene will be glad of the dirt,” Tzesnashstennaj said. “This is not a good place for her.” He ducked his head beneath Hazarstennaj’s chin. Their fur stroked together with a static crackle, and Hazarstennaj purred.

  “I know,” Lindy said. “Soon.”

  Jim crossed the deck to the docking module and opened the observation ports.

  Lindy joined him. “What’s a gravity shelf?” she asked.

  [164] “It’s the discontinuity between two gravity fields that aren’t connected through a gradient,” Jim said. “When you go from, say, one g to two g’s, it feels like you’re walking up a step. Only the floor’s still flat.”

  Stephen’s ship had not yet come into sight. It would probably take half the day for the old ship to dock. I should have put a tractor on Dionysus in the first place, Jim thought, and dragged it in by main force.

  “Can you change the gravity any way you want?”

  “We create it—otherwise we’d be in freefall, or crushed by acceleration. We can change it. It’s a lot of trouble, getting everything balanced.” Jim opened a channel to the bridge. “Lieutenant Uhura, Where’s our guest?”

  “He says he’s on his way, sir.”

  Jim looked around again, but the port gave a field of view too limited to show him Dionysus.

  “Anyway,” Jim said, continuing his explanation, “the Enterprise has several different independent fields that interact. Almost every starship has a couple of zero-g nodes. I suppose that’s true of the Enterprise.” Back in the Academy, he thought, when we went into space, the null-grav points were the first things we looked for.

  “Hmm.”

  His thoughts brushing past the null-grav points that might exist within the Enterprise, Jim glanced at Lindy.

  She stared into space, her eyes focused on something more distant than any ship or star, some fantasy. Her iridescent hair swung forward, shadowing her face.

  Jim felt himself caught in a sudden trap of envy: he envied the shadow, touching Lindy’s cheek, he envied the flying horse, who could nuzzle the curve of her neck and shoulder, he envied the members of her company, who could unselfconsciously hug her. He wondered if any of them were special to her, or if she had decided, as he had when he accepted his first command, that she must never think of anyone under her authority as special.

  “Captain!”

  Uhura’s exclamation startled Lindy. She raised her head. For a split second, her gaze and Jim’s locked.

  Then the urgent tone of Uhura’s voice got through to Jim. Motion outside the ship drew Lindy’s attention.

  [165] “Look!” She pressed close to the port and cupped her hands around her face to shield the glass from reflections.

  Eerily silent in the vacuum of space, Dionysus drove directly at the Enterprise.

  Jim shouted a curse. He clenched his fists against cold glass, infuriated. The shields had already begun to form, but too late—it had been like this at Ghioghe: a sudden plunge, a crash—

  Dionysus blasted its forward rockets and decelerated hard. Though the viewport darkened to protect the interior of the ship from the light and energy, the dazzling flame half-blinded Jim.

  But the port cleared, the shields faded, and Dionysus hovered beside the Enterprise. Starlight shone off jets of steering plasma before they dispersed into space. Dionysus docked with the barest hint of vibration, the barest whisper of sound.

  “Wow,” Lindy said. “I thought you said he didn’t want to use any of his own fuel.”

  His fury barely attenuated by a grudging admiration for the pilot’s flash and style, Jim flung open the hatch as soon as the sensors approved the seal between Enterprise and Dionysus. The pilot of Dionysus boarded the Enterprise.

  “What do you mean by hotshotting at my ship like that?” Jim yelled.

  “I thought you were in a hurry.” Stephen smiled at him. A large tabby cat perched on his shoulder. “Glad to meet you, Captain Kirk.” Stephen extended his hand.

  Jim automatically reached to shake hands, the social convention so ingrained that it overcame his real wish, which was to sock Stephen in the jaw.

  The cat launched itself at him and clawed its way up his arm. Jim yelped in surprise.

  “How do you do, Ms. Lukarian,” Stephen said.

  “Call me Lindy, please.”

  As they greeted each other, oblivious to Jim, Jim found himself in his second face-off of the day. The vicious animal hissed, snarled, buried its talons in his arm and shoulder, and poised to rip out his eyes. Jim grabbed the monster with his free hand and tried to shake it off.

  “Ilya!” Stephen said. “Quit it, come here.”

  [166] The creature dug its claws into Jim’s arm and launched itself at Stephen, rending the sleeve of Jim’s velour shirt. The cat landed on Stephen’s shoulder and twined its lithe body behind his neck. Its unnaturally long tail wrapped around Stephen’s arm.

  Jim clenched his fist, half in angry reaction and half to see if it still worked. His forearm and the back of his hand stung with deep scratches.

  “He likes you, captain,” Stephen said. “I don’t think I ever saw him take to anybody so quickly.”

  “Likes me! What does it do to people it doesn’t like?”

  Stephen shook his head. “There are some things human beings aren’t meant to know.”

  “Is he what I think he is?” Lindy asked.

  As far as Jim was concerned, it was nothing but a cat. He felt embarrassed to have come off second in the altercation. He looked at it more closely. It was half again as large as the largest cat he had ever seen. It had puffed out its cinnamon-striped black fur till it looked even bigger, and it glared at him with bright green eyes. Its fur-tufted ears flicked forward, then flattened back against its head. Its paws, enormous relative to its size, had a fringe of fur between the toes. Its tail was probably half again the length of the cat’s body, and it was prehensile.

  “Just an ordinary little tabby cat.” Stephen grinned. “No, you’re right. He’s a Siberian forest cat.”

  “I’ve never seen one. Can he do anything?” She offered her hand gingerly to the big cat, and it sniffed her fingertips and rubbed its forehead against her palm.

  “Such as juggle?”

  Lindy laughed. “Are you guys a team?”

  Stephen shook his head. “He can do lots of things. But only when he wants to. He really is an ordinary tabby cat in that respect.”

  “That’s too bad.” Lindy gazed thoughtfully at the cat, as if considering ways to get him into the performance even if he would not perform.

  Immediately noticeable differences separated Ilya from average cats. Far more subtle differences separated Stephen from average Vulcans. Perhaps four or five centimeters taller [167] than Spock, he was built along the same slender lines. Blond and blue-eyed Vulcans, while uncommon, came within the normal range of types.

  But Vulcans always kept their bodies as tautly under control as they kept their emotions. Stephen moved with freedom and ease. His expression revealed him in a way quite foreign to other Vulcans.

  And no Vulcan Jim had ever seen permitted his hair to grow as long and shaggy as Stephen’s.

  “Thanks for your hospitality, captain,” Stephen said. “I’m not sure old Dionysus could have made it out to the Phalanx and back under its own steam.”

  “It had plenty of steam just now,” Jim said angrily. “Your docking was dangerous and foolhardy—don’t ever fly like that around the Enterprise again.”

  “Jim, come on,” Lindy said. “It was a beautiful landing!”

  “He didn’t land, he docked,” Jim growled, aggravated at Lindy for telling him something he already knew but which his responsibility to his own ship prevented his acknowledging or appreciating; irritated even more to be told it by a grounder who got the terms wrong.

  “You did say you were in a hurry,” Stephen said rather plaintively. />
  “Not in such a hurry I want my ship rammed.”

  “I didn’t intend to scare you,” Stephen said. “But don’t worry, I won’t do it again.”

  Jim’s temper flared; he kept it in check only with difficulty. “See that you don’t,” he said.

  Stephen watched the young captain stalk away. Human beings knew how to take offense. They did it with style.

  “Welcome to the company,” Amelinda Lukarian said. “I was impressed with your act—I hope you decide to join us permanently.”

  “I do, too.” The moment’s exhilaration of the dangerous docking maneuver faded and slipped away, leaving Stephen empty of feeling.

  “I want to introduce you to everybody.”

  Stephen followed Lindy to the corral. He had already taken note of Athene, his well-trained mind judging the complexities of her design, the difficulties inherent in her [168] creation. He would have done several things differently. It was only when Lindy stroked her neck and called her “pretty thing” that Stephen noticed that she was, indeed, beautiful. And so was Lindy.

  “Tzesnashstennaj, Hazarstennaj,” Lindy said, “this is Stephen. He’s a juggler.”

  The two felinoids rose and circled Stephen suspiciously. Ilya began to bristle; he sat on Stephen’s shoulder and watched them like an owl.

  “And who is that?” Tzesnashstennaj said.

  “That is Ilya.”

  “What is his relationship to you?”

  “He’s my pet,” Stephen said.

  “You keep a fellow creature in servitude?”

  “I’d hardly call it servitude,” Stephen said. “Though I will admit he’s got me pretty well trained.”

  The two felinoids looked at each other. “Anthropoid humor,” Hazarstennaj said.

  “Carnivores require freedom,” said Tzesnashstennaj.

  “He has the same freedom I do. Without the responsibility.”

  “Typical. All anthropoids think other species exist for their amusement. Come here, little brother.”

  Ilya hissed and spat.

  Tzesnashstennaj growled softly. “He no longer understands his need for liberty.”

  “Wait a minute,” Stephen said. “Ilya’s pretty intelligent for an animal, but he’s not a sentient being. What are you so upset about?”

  “Tzesnashstennaj,” Lindy said, “you’re still angry about that ignorant rube in Boise who called the hunt performance an animal act, aren’t you? Outrage is bad for the system. Why don’t you give it up?”

  “That ‘rube’ gave me a lesson in the fragility of interspecies contact,” Tzesnashstennaj said. “The keeping of pets is ... provocative.”

  “You’re welcome to try to talk Ilya around to your point of view,” Stephen said. “But I don’t think he’ll be very interested.”

  “Please don’t get into an argument over this,” Lindy said. “You know what that would mean.”

  [169] Tzesnashstennaj sneezed in disgust.

  “No,” Stephen said. “What would it mean?”

  “A company meeting,” Lindy said, her tone implying dire threats.

  “Hours of tedium,” Tzesnashstennaj said grimly. “Lectures by Mr. Cockspur.”

  “Maybe you’d better declare a truce,” Stephen said.

  Tzesnashstennaj growled.

  Jim returned to the bridge. At the threshold of the lift, he took note almost unconsciously of the status of the bridge: Commander Spock in intense communication with his computer, Uhura and Rand completing the registrations and agreements, Sulu planning the weapons strategy, Cheung plotting a course. McCoy leaned nonchalantly against the captain’s chair.

  “I hear we’re expecting some excitement,” McCoy said.

  “That’s what I hear, too,” Jim said. He slid into his place.

  A few minutes later, Lindy and Stephen arrived, chatting and laughing. They sure took to each other fast, Jim thought.

  Spock raised his head.

  This time he permitted himself no reaction beyond looking Stephen over coldly. He would have turned his back, but Stephen strode toward him.

  “How are you—”

  Spock rose. His expression hardened. Stephen thought better of whatever he had been going to say.

  “How are you ... Spock?”

  “I am well.”

  Everyone on the bridge pretended not to notice the interchange, except for McCoy. The doctor watched curiously.

  “I cannot speak with you,” Spock said. “I have duties to attend to.” This time he did turn his back.

  “Let’s see what we’re working on,” Jim said.

  Uhura tracked and magnified an irregular chunk of dirty ice. It tumbled across the screen.

  “It will pass us eighty-nine seconds from ... now,” Commander Spock said. “If Mr. Sulu’s touch on the photon torpedo is sufficiently delicate, he should be able to reduce a corner of it into water vapor and rock particles.”

  [170] “Understood, Mr. Spock.” Sulu grinned. “Two hundred metric tons of dirt, coming up.”

  Sulu tracked the only bit of matter on the short-range scope. The Enterprise lay within the system’s Oort cloud, the band of debris left over from the formation of the star and its planets. The debris orbited far beyond the outermost world; at intervals some random chunk of primordial detritus would follow a long, elliptical path near enough to the star to blaze into a comet.

  The concentration of matter was measurably greater here than in space between the system’s planets, but “measurably greater” and “visually perceptible” were two very different things. The cloud contained a large amount of debris, but it contained more nothingness by high orders of magnitude.

  The scope caught the chunk of rock and ice. Sulu waited. It tumbled. He studied its motion. He sought out a place that would shatter properly. He waited for a usable orientation.

  He fired.

  Photons lased against an irregular projection, blasting it away. Ice vaporized into a great cloud of steam, then froze instantly into a storm of ice crystals that glittered, expanded, dispersed. The proto-comet tumbled on in its orbit. Bits and fragments streamed from the crater, spiraling in a pinwheel pattern.

  A cloud of rocky remains roiled and slowly expanded.

  Lindy whooped in excitement, bounded down between Sulu and Cheung, and kissed each on the cheek.

  “Hikaru, Marietta, thank you!” She hugged Jim. “Jim, Athene will be so happy!” She ran up the stairs, her hair flying, and grasped one of Uhura’s hands, one of Janice’s. “Janice, that was such a good idea! You’ll have to come watch her when she’s running—you all will. She’s so pretty!” She stopped before Spock. “Mr. Spock, thank you.”

  “Thanks are unnecessary,” Spock said. “You posed an intellectual problem, I helped to solve it.”

  “You’d better get Athene into the repair bay,” Jim said. “We’ll have to evacuate the dock before we can get the dirt [171] inside, and it’ll be noisy. The deck will transmit vibrations—shouldn’t you tranquilize her so she won’t panic?”

  “No,” Lindy said. “But I’ll stay with her while the work’s going on.” She spread her arms, taking in the whole bridge. “Everybody—thanks!”

  She vanished into the lift. Stephen, Jim noticed, left with her.

  Jim felt as if he had been in the midst of a small but powerful whirlwind. The bridge, despite ambient sounds returning to normal, seemed terribly quiet.

  “Put out a tractor beam, Mr. Sulu,” Jim said. “You did a good job.”

  “Thanks, captain.”

  Jim felt strange, complimenting one of his officers for completing a task that Jim would have preferred not to do at all. Back in the Academy, he and Gary used to daydream about what they would be doing in ten years, what ships they would fly on, what missions they would command. The worst, the most boring assignment they could imagine was running an ore carrier, dragging rough-smelted slag from mine to refinery.

  And the stuff I’m pulling on board isn’t even ore, Jim thought. I hope this
all turns out to be funny sometime in the future, because it isn’t very funny now.

  He absently rubbed his arm, which stung and itched from Ilya’s claws.

  “What happened to you?” McCoy said.

  “What?”

  McCoy indicated the scratches on Jim’s hand. Jim realized that Ilya had completely shredded the sleeve of his shirt, Fifi had torn the hem of his right pants leg, and he was sprinkled all over with pink glitter.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Want to tell it to me here? Or in sick bay, while I fix up those cuts?”

  After what had just happened with his knee, Jim was not about to let McCoy get him into sick bay.

  “Bones, to tell the truth, I don’t want to tell it to you at all.”

  He left the bridge.

  [172] Jim paced through the ship, restless and irritable.

  When did I lose control? he thought. When Stephen came on board? When Newland Rift’s “puppies” jumped all over me? The first time that flightless horse reared and screamed, and Amelinda Lukarian ran past me with her hair flying? Or was it before I ever came on board, when Admiral Noguchi decided to honor me with his pet assignment?

  To his surprise he found himself heading for the shuttlecraft deck. The routine operation of moving the comet debris into the ship made even more noise than he had expected. The tractor beams set up a nearly subsonic hum, the heavily filtered ventilators moaned, the mashed rock crashed onto the deck, and the rattling carried through the deck plates.

  By the time Jim reached the observation window, the tractors had drawn in a layer of dirt half a meter deep. Of course it was not really “dirt.” It contained no humus, no organic matter except perhaps a few random micrograms of amino acids. It was sterile and dead. Jim wondered how long it took to turn vacuum- and photon-sterilized detritus into fertile living topsoil.

  He found himself wondering if the bio lab of the Enterprise had any earthworms.

  Shaking off the fantasies, he descended a companion way that led to the repair bays.

  “Lindy?”

  “We’re down here—number six.” Eerie sounds reverberated along the walls and deck plates.