“All right,” Gillian shouted. “Who are you? Don’t jerk me around anymore! I want to know how you know that!”
Kirk pushed himself back. He looked shaken. “We can’t tell you,” he said.
“You’d better—”
“Please. Just let me finish. I can tell you that we’re not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.” He leaned forward, one hand reaching out, open.
“Then—”
“In fact,” Kirk said, “we may be able to help—in ways that you can’t possibly imagine.”
“Or believe, I’ll bet,” Gillian said.
“Very likely. You’re not exactly catching us at our best.”
“That much is certain,” Spock said.
“That I will believe.” Gillian drove on in silence for a mile or so.
“You know,” Kirk said, his cheer sounding a little forced, “I’ve got a hunch we’d all be a lot happier talking over dinner. What do you say?”
Gillian wondered what she had let herself in for. If they were a danger to the whales, she ought to dump them out on the highway right now—except then she would not be able to keep an eye on them.
“You guys like Italian food?” she said.
They looked at each other as if they had no idea what she was talking about.
“No,” said Spock.
“Yes,” said Kirk.
Gillian sighed.
In the factory reception room, Montgomery Scott paced back and forth with unfeigned agitation. He pretended to be angry, but in truth he had a serious case of nerves.
He glanced at the door leading to the inner office. McCoy had been in there for a very long time.
In the manager’s office, Doctor Nichols peered at the screen of his small computer. He was middle-aged and balding, wearing glasses and a rumpled cardigan sweater. He used a fist-sized mechanical box with a button on top to flip through the plant schedule. Each click of the button put a new page on the screen. When he moved the box across the desktop, a pointer on the computer screen moved on an identical path. Nichols frowned with perplexity.
“I don’t understand why there’s nothing down here about your visit,” he said. “Usually the PR people are all too efficient.”
“But Professor Scott’s come all the way from Edinburgh to study your manufacturing methods. Obviously there’s been a mix-up, but the university said the invitation was all arranged. I should have checked—you know academics.”
“I do know academics,” Nichols said. “Used to be one myself, as a matter of fact.”
“Er…” Gliding over his faux pas, McCoy tried creative hysteria. “Professor Scott is a man of very strong temperament,” he said. “I don’t know if the university got its signals crossed, or he got the date wrong. All I know is that I’m responsible for bringing him here. If he came all this way and goes all the way back for nothing, I get to be responsible for that, too. Doctor Nichols, he’ll make my life a living hell.”
“We can’t have that,” Nichols said with a smile. “I think the office will survive without me for an hour or so. Wouldn’t do to have a visiting dignitary go back to Edinburgh with unpleasant memories of American hospitality, would it?” He rose and headed for the outer office. McCoy followed.
“Professor Scott,” Nichols said, extending his hand. “I’m Doctor Nichols, the plant manager.”
Scott stopped pacing and drew himself up, hands on his hips.
“I’m terribly sorry about the mix-up,” Nichols said, overlooking Scott’s snub. “Would you believe no one told me about your visit?”
Scott glared balefully at McCoy.
“I’ve tried to clear things up, Professor Scott,” McCoy said quickly. “They didn’t have any idea you were coming—”
“Dinna ha’ any idea!” Scott exclaimed. He used an impenetrable Scots burr. “D’ye mean t’ say I ha’ come millions o’ miles—”
Doctor Nichols smiled patiently. “Millions?”
“Now, professor, it’s only thousands,” McCoy said in a soothing tone. “It’s understandable that you’re upset, but let’s not exaggerate.”
“—thousands o’ miles, to go on a tour o’ inspection to which I was invited—and then ye mean to tell me ye never invited me i’ the first place? I demand—”
“Professor Scott, if you’ll just—”
“I demand to see the owners! I demand—”
“Professor, take it easy!” McCoy said. “Doctor Nichols is going to show us around himself.”
Scott stopped in the middle of a demand. “He is?”
“With pleasure,” Doctor Nichols said.
“That’s verra different,” Scott said.
“If you’ll follow me, Professor,” Nichols said.
“Aye,” Scott said. “That I will. And—’twould be all right if my assistant tags along as well?”
“Of course.”
Doctor Nichols led them from the receptionist’s office. Following him, Scott passed McCoy.
“Don’t bury yourself in the part,” McCoy muttered.
Sulu approached the plastics company’s big Huey, entranced. He had seen still photos and battered old film of this helicopter, but none had survived, even in museums, to his time. The Huey was as extinct as the humpback whale. He stroked one hand along its flank.
He climbed up and looked into the cockpit—incredible. Hardly any electronics at all, all the gauges and controls mechanical or hydraulic. Flying it would be like going back to horse-and-buggy days. And he had never driven a horse and buggy.
The craft’s engine cowling closed with a loud clang. Sulu heard footsteps.
“Can I help you?”
Sulu turned. “Hi.” He gestured toward the helicopter. “Huey 205, isn’t it?”
“Right on.” The young pilot wiped his hands on a greasy rag. “You fly?”
“Here and there,” Sulu said. He patted the helicopter’s side. “I flew something similar to this in my Academy days.”
“Then this is old stuff to you.”
“Old, maybe. But interesting.” He jumped to the ground and offered his hand. “I’m Sulu—with the international engineering conference tour?”
The pilot shook his hand. “I didn’t know about a tour. They just tell me fly here, fly there, don’t drop the merchandise. International, huh? Where you from? Japan?”
“Philippines,” Sulu said, just to be safe. He had Japanese in his ancestry, but more of his family came from the Philippines, and he knew far more of its history.
“Hey. You folks really did it. Repossessed your country. What about all the loot, though? Think that will ever make it home again?”
“Oh, I think so, eventually,” Sulu said, trying not to sound too certain. He drew the conversation back to the Huey. “I was hoping I’d find a pilot when I saw this helicopter. Mind if I ask a few questions?”
“Fire away.”
They chatted about the copter for a while. The pilot glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to make a delivery,” he said. “Want to come along?”
“I’d like nothing better.”
The chopper lifted off in an incredible clatter of noise. Sulu watched the pilot work, itching to take over. The young man glanced at him. “If anybody asks,” he said, “you never flew this thing.”
“If anybody asks,” Sulu said, “I’ve never even been in this thing.”
The young pilot grinned and turned over the controls.
All day Javy tried to talk about what he and Ben had seen in Golden Gate Park, and all day Ben tried to act as if they had seen nothing. He froze up every time Javy mentioned the shooting star or the wind or the lights or the ramp.
When they got off that afternoon, Javy still felt hyper. He had been awake since three and working since four. He usually went home, dove into the shower, slept for a couple of hours, got up, and stared at half-finished pages in his typewriter for a while. Today, all that changed.
He got into his battered gold Mustang and turned on the radio
, but it only worked on alternate Fridays and leap days that fell on Wednesday. He tried to pick out news reports through the static and jumps of a traveling short circuit, but heard nothing about the lights.
He needed a shower. This would look different after he got some sleep. Ben was probably right all along.
But instead of going home, he drove down Van Ness, then turned onto Fell, back to the park. He pulled his car up beside the garbage cans, which he had not finished emptying. He tried to smile at the thought of trying to explain why to their supervisor.
The truck had left a patch of rubber on the street where Ben floored it. It was not easy to lay rubber with a garbage truck.
Javy stayed in his car and looked toward the place where he thought he had seen…what? In the mist and the dark, perhaps he had not seen anything. Some people out for a stroll, their flashlights glinting off the fog? In daylight, he could not even be sure where he thought he saw what he thought he saw. Whatever it was, nothing remained of it. He decided to watch for a while anyway, just for interest’s sake. He settled back in the driver’s seat.
Within a few minutes, he had fallen fast asleep.
Scott followed Doctor Nichols through the plant, wondering how on earth the people in this time had ever managed to achieve anything, much less the beginnings of space exploration. With their incredibly primitive methods, he could just see his way to doing what he needed to do with their materials. He wanted to get away to someplace quiet and think for a bit. Twentieth-century factories were unbelievably noisy.
As the tour progressed, Doctor McCoy drew Doctor Nichols out. The engineer’s sharp and ambitious intelligence chafed within the bureaucracy of management.
“I’ve put in for a transfer back to research,” Nichols said. “Upper management never understands when you want to go back to what you’re best at doing.”
“Aye,” Scott said, recalling all the times Starfleet had tried to promote him out of engineering. “ ’Tis true.”
“Especially if you’re working for a plastics company and your first love is metallurgy. I’ve got some ideas about metallic crystalline structure—” He stopped. “But of course you’re interested in acrylic production, Professor Scott.”
“Professor Scott—’tis too formal. Call me Montgomery, if ye would.”
“Certainly,” Nichols said. “If you’ll return the courtesy. My name’s Mark.”
“Verra well, Mark. Not Marcus? Ye are Marcus Nichols?” He grabbed Nichols’s hand and pumped it. “I’m verra glad to meet ye! The work ye’ve done, the inventions—”
Behind Nichols, McCoy waved his hands in warning. Scott realized what he had said. He stopped abruptly.
“My inventions?” Nichols said, startled. “Professor Scott, I only hold two patents, and if you’ve heard of either in Edinburgh, I’m surprised, to say the least.”
“But—er—well—”
“You must have him confused with another Marcus Nichols,” McCoy said quickly. “That’s the only logical—” He stopped as abruptly as Scott.
“But—I mean, aye, that must be it.” Scott subsided, face flaming with embarrassment.
“I see,” Nichols said.
Nichols led Scott and McCoy into a glass-walled observation cubicle. Its door swung shut, cutting the sound to nearly nothing.
“So much for the tour of our humble plant.” Nichols leaned one hip on the back of a leather-covered couch and gave Scott a long, searching appraisal. “I must say, Professor, your memory for names may not be terrific, but your knowledge of engineering is most impressive.”
“Why, back home,” McCoy said, “we call him the miracle worker.”
“Indeed…” Nichols gestured toward the bar at the back of the cubicle. “May I offer you gentlemen anything?”
McCoy and Scott exchanged a glance.
“Doctor Nichols,” Scott said tentatively, “I might have something to offer you.”
Nichols raised an eyebrow at this turn of the conversation. “Yes?”
“I notice ye are still working with polymers,” Scott said.
“Still?” Nichols frowned, mystified. “This is a plastics company. What else would I be working with?”
“Ah, what else indeed? Let me put it another way. How thick would ye need to make a sheet of your acrylic”—Scott hesitated a moment, converting meters to feet, wishing the twentieth century had finished getting around to the change—“sixty feet by ten feet, if ye wished it to withstand the pressure o’ 18,000 cubic feet o’ water?”
“That’s easy,” Nichols said. “Six inches. We carry stuff that big in stock.”
“Aye,” Scott said. “I noticed. Now suppose—just suppose—I could show ye a way to manufacture a wall that would do the same job but was only an inch thick. Would that be worth something to ye?”
“Are you joking?” Nichols folded his arms. His body language revealed skepticism, suspicion—and interest.
“He never jokes,” McCoy said. “Perhaps the professor could use your computer?”
“Please,” Nichols said, gesturing toward it.
Scott sat before the machine. “Computer.”
The computer did not reply. McCoy grabbed the control box he had seen Nichols using earlier and shoved it into Scott’s hand. Scott thanked him with a nod and spoke into it.
“Computer.”
No reply.
“Just use the keyboard,” Nichols said, “if you prefer it to the mouse.”
“The keyboard,” Scott said. “ ’Tis quaint.”
He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. Fast and two-fingered, he started to type.
Information filled the screen. Scott condensed each formula into a few words as he worked. After half an hour, he pressed a final key.
“And if ye treat it by this method, ye change the crystalline structure so ’twill transmit light in the visible range.”
A three-dimensional crystalline structure formed on the computer screen. Scott sat back, satisfied.
“Transparent aluminum?” Nichols said with disbelief.
“That’s the ticket, laddie.”
“But it would take years just to figure out the dynamics of this matrix!”
“And when you do,” McCoy said, “you’ll be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”
Nichols’s attention remained centered on the screen, which fascinated him far more than dreams of avarice.
“So,” Scott said, “is it worth something? Or shall I just punch ‘clear’?” He extended one finger toward the keyboard.
“No!” Nichols exclaimed. “No.” He stared at the screen, frowning, uncomfortable. “What did you have in mind?”
“A moment alone, please,” McCoy said.
Scott started to object.
“Please,” McCoy said again.
Unwillingly, Nichols left them alone.
“Scotty,” McCoy said, “if we give him the formula, we’ll be altering the future!”
“How d’ye know he didn’t invent the process?” Scott said.
“But—”
“Doctor McCoy, do ye no’ understand? He did invent it! Have ye ne’er heard his name?”
“I’m a doctor, not a historian,” McCoy growled. He had gone into this masquerade willingly, but now he found himself possessed with the need to make as few changes in the past as he could. The intensity of Jim Kirk’s argument for their actions warred with another, alien impulse.
“ ’Tisna necessary to be a historian to know o’ Marcus Nichols! Why, ’twould be as if I never heard o’…er…”
“Pasteur?”
“Who?”
“Yalow? Arneghe?”
“Nay, well, ne’er mind, the point is, Nichols did invent transparent aluminum! And that was only the beginnin’ o’ his achievements. ’Tis all right that we gi’ the formula to him—perhaps ’tis essential!”
McCoy looked at him with his head cocked in a familiar and yet very un-McCoyish way.
“Then, Scotty, does that mea
n we succeed? We get the whales and get back to our own time and—”
“Nay, Doctor. It means we gi’ him the formula—or he recalls enough o’ what I’ve already shown him to reproduce the effect. What happens back in our time…’tis up to us.”
McCoy nodded. He squared his shoulders and opened the door, beckoning Nichols into the transparent cubicle again. The scientist had been standing with his back to the windows, nervously giving his uninvited guests their privacy.
“Now, Doctor Nichols—Mark—” Scott said.
“Just a moment.” He paused and took a deep breath. “You know what it is you’re offering me.”
“Aye,” Scott said. “That I do.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why what?”
“Why are you offering it to me?”
“Because we need something ye have.”
“Such as what? My first-born child? My soul?”
Scott chuckled. “Nay. Acrylic sheets, large ones. Acrylic epoxy. The loan o’ transportation.”
“What you’re asking for is worth a couple of thousand dollars at most. What you’re offering in return is worth—if it’s true—a whole lot more. As well as recognition, respect…”
“But, you see, Mark,” McCoy said, “we don’t have a couple of thousand dollars. And we need the acrylic sheets. Desperately.”
“Does the phrase ‘too good to be true’ mean anything to you?”
McCoy clapped his hand over his eyes. “What a time to run into an honest man!”
Nichols glanced at the tantalizing computer screen. “What you’ve shown me looks real,” he said. “It’s just a beginning, but it feels right. It feels like an answer—and I’ve been trying just to ask the question for the last two years. On the other hand, scientists smarter than me have been taken in by perpetual motion machines and heaven knows what—all kinds of absurd devices. How do I know—”
“Ye think we’re tryin’ to trick ye!” Scott exclaimed, astonished.
“The possibility did occur to me,” Nichols said mildly. “You could be snowing me with fake formulae. You could be trying to plant some other company’s research on me in order to embarrass my company with a charge of industrial espionage.”
“I hadna thought o’ that,” Scott said, downcast.
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