STAR TREK: TOS #7 - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

by Vonda N. McIntyre (Novelization)

  Damn, Peter thought. Grenni heard, and that means even if nobody else did, they all know now. Damn.

  “Enterprise to Regulus I Spacelab, come in, Space-lab. Dr. Marcus, please respond.”

  [101] Uhura’s transmissions met with no reply.

  She glanced up at Spock.

  “It’s no use. There’s just nothing there.”

  “But the transmissions are no longer jammed?”

  “No, there’s no jamming—no nothing.”

  Spock turned to Kirk, back in his old familiar place on the bridge.

  “There are two possibilities, Admiral,” Spock said. “That they are unwilling to respond, or that they are unable to respond.”

  “How long—?”

  “We will reach Spacelab in twelve hours and forty-three minutes at our present speed.”

  Kirk folded his arms and hunched down in the captain’s chair. “ ‘Give up Genesis,’ she said. What in God’s name does that mean? Give it up to whom?”

  “It might help my analysis if I knew what Genesis was,” Spock said.

  Kirk wrestled with conflicting duties, conflicting necessities.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “Something’s happened—something serious. It would be dangerous not to tell you.” He stood up. “Uhura, please ask Dr. McCoy to join us in my quarters. Lieutenant Saavik, you have the conn.”

  The three officers gathered in Jim Kirk’s cabin. Spock and McCoy waited while Kirk proved himself to the highest security safeguards.

  “Computer,” he said. “Security procedure: access to Project Genesis summary.”

  “Identify for retinal scan,” the computer replied.

  “Admiral James T. Kirk, Starfleet General Staff. Security Class One.”

  An instant’s pulse of bright light recorded his eyes’ patterns; then the screen blinked in filtered colors as the computer ran its comparison programs.

  “Security clearance Class One: granted.”

  “Summary, please,” Kirk said.

  [102] The computer flashed messages to itself across its screen for several more seconds, until finally an approval overlay masked the safeguards and encodings.

  The summary tape began. Carol Marcus, in her lab, faced the camera.

  Kirk recognized her son at the next table. David resembled his mother strongly: slender, with high cheekbones, very fair. His curly hair was more gold, while Carol’s was ash blond, but they had the same eyes.

  Jim had met David Marcus once, years ago, by chance. He recalled the encounter with no particular pleasure. Though David Marcus did not seem to have anything personal against Jim Kirk—for which Jim was grateful if only for the sake of his memories of Carol—the young scientist clearly had little use for military personnel.

  Carol faced the camera like an adversary, and began to speak.

  “I’m Dr. Carol Marcus, director of the Project Genesis team at Regulus I Spacelab. Genesis is a procedure by which the molecular structure of matter is broken down, not into subatomic parts as in nuclear fission, or even into elementary particles, but into sub-elementary particle-waves. These can then, by manipulation of the various nuclear forces, be restructured into anything else of similar mass.”

  “Fascinating,” Spock said.

  “Wait,” said Kirk.

  “Stage one of the experiment has been completed here in the lab. We will attempt stage two underground. Stage three involves the process on a planetary scale, as projected by the following computer simulation.”

  The tape switched to the sharp-edged ultrarealistic scenes of computer graphics.

  “We intend to introduce the Genesis device via torpedo into an astronomical body of Earth’s mass or smaller.”

  [103] A gray barren, cratered world appeared on the screen.

  “The planet will be scrupulously researched to preclude the disruption of any life forms or pre-biotics.”

  Jim, who had already seen the tape, watched the reactions of Spock and McCoy. Relaxed and intent, Spock took in the information. McCoy sat on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, scowling as the images progressed before him.

  “When the torpedo impacts the chosen target,” Carol said, “the Genesis effect begins.”

  On the screen, the planet quivered; then, just perceptibly, it expanded. For an instant, it glowed as intensely as a star.

  “The Genesis wave dissociates matter into a homogenous mass of real and virtual sub-elementary particles.”

  The forces of gravity and rotation warred, until it became clear that no structure remained to the planet at all.

  “The sub-elementaries reaggregate instantaneously.”

  An entire world had become a translucent cloud. The mass spread into a disk and almost as quickly coalesced again, reenacting planetary evolution at a billion times the speed.

  “Precisely what they reform into depends on the complexity of the quantum resonances of the original Genesis wave, and on the available mass. If sufficient matter is present, the programming permits an entire star system to be formed. The simulation, however, deals only with the reorganization of a planetary body.”

  The sphere solidified, transformed into a new world of continents, islands, oceans. Clouds misted the globe in pinwheel weather patterns.

  “In other words,” Carol said, “the results are completely under our control. In this simulation, a barren rock becomes a world with water, atmosphere, and a [104] functioning ecosystem capable of sustaining most known forms of carbon-based life.”

  Wherever the clouds thinned, they revealed a tinge of green.

  “It represents only a fraction of the potential that Genesis offers, if these experiments are pursued to their conclusion.”

  An eerily Earth-like world revolved silently before them on the screen.

  “When we consider the problems of population and food supply, the value of the process becomes clear. In addition, it removes the technical difficulties and the ethical problems of interfering with a natural evolutionary system in order to serve the needs of the inhabitants of a separate evolutionary system.”

  Carol Marcus returned to the screen.

  “This concludes the demonstration tape. I and my colleagues, Jedda Adzhin-Dall, Vance Madison, Delwin March, Zinaida Chitirih-Ra-Payjh, and David Marcus, thank you for your attention.”

  The tape ended.

  “It literally is genesis,” Spock said.

  “The power,” Kirk said, “of creation.”

  “Have they proceeded with their experiments?”

  “Carol made the tape a year ago. The team got the Federation grant they were applying for, so I assume they’ve reached phase two by now.”

  “Dear Lord ...” McCoy said. He looked up, stricken. “Are we—can we control this? Suppose it hadn’t been a lifeless satellite? Suppose that thing were used on an inhabited world?”

  “It would,” Spock said, “destroy all life in favor of its new matrix.”

  “Its ‘new matrix’? Spock, have you any idea what you’re saying?”

  “I was not attempting to evaluate its ethical implications, Doctor.”

  “The ethical implications of complete destruction!”

  Spock regarded him quizzically. “You forget, Dr. [105] McCoy, that sentient beings have had, and used, weapons of complete destruction for thousands of years. Historically it has always been easier to destroy than to create.”

  “Not anymore!” McCoy cried. “Now you can do both at once! One of our myths said Earth was created in six days; now, watch out! Here comes Genesis! We’ll do it for you in six minutes!”

  “Any form of power, in the wrong hands—”

  “Whose are the right hands, my cold-blooded friend? Are you in favor of these experiments?”

  “Gentlemen—” Kirk said.

  “Really, Dr. McCoy, you cannot ban knowledge because you distrust its implications. Civilization can be considered an attempt to control new knowledge for the common good. The intent of this experiment is creation,
not destruction. Logic—”

  “Don’t give me logic! My God! A force that destroys, yet leaves what was destroyed still usable? Spock, that’s the most attractive weapon imaginable. We’re talking about Armageddon! Complete, universal, candy-coated Armageddon!”

  “Knock it off!” Kirk said. “Both of you. Genesis is already here, Spock; you don’t need to argue for its existence.”

  McCoy started to speak, but Kirk swung around and silenced him with a look.

  “Bones, you don’t need to argue how dangerous it might be if it falls into the wrong hands. We know that. And it may already have happened. I need you both—and not at each other’s throats.”

  Spock and McCoy looked at each other.

  “Truce, Doctor?” Spock said.

  Grudgingly, McCoy replied, “Truce.” Then he added, “Besides, that was a simulation. The whole idea’s preposterous—it probably won’t even work in real life.”

  “On the contrary, the probability of success appears extremely high.”

  [106] “And how would you know, Spock? You haven’t known about it any longer than I have.”

  “That is true. But Marcus is an excellent scientist, and her research team carries impressive credentials.”

  “Do you know them, Spock?” Kirk asked.

  “Adzhin-Dall is a quantum physicist, and Chitirih-Ra-Payjh is a mathematician. Neither is well known, because their work is not translatable from the original Deltan. But the work itself contains fascinating implications. As for Madison and March, I encountered them some two years ago at a symposium they attended immediately after attaining their doctoral degrees.” He spoke rather dryly, because their presentation had been, to say the least, unique.

  A decade before, Jaine and Nervek had done the theoretical work in “kindergarten physics”—so-called because it dealt with sub-elementary particles. Madison and March experimentally validated the theory. Their first breakthrough was the dissolution of elementary particles into sub-elementary particles.

  Quarks have fractional charge of one-third or two-thirds, and attributes, such as charm and strangeness. The sub-elementary particles had fractional charge as well: four-ninths and one-ninth, the squares of the charges of the quark. According to Madison, they could be sorted further by “five unmistakable marks,” which the team had proposed designating taste, tardiness, humor, cleanliness, and ambition.

  All this had begun to sound peculiarly familiar to Spock. He searched his memory for resonances. Just as he finally came upon the proper reference, March took over to offer terminology for the particles themselves.

  When March recited several stanzas of a poem by a Terran nonsense writer, half the audience had responded with delighted laughter, and the other half with offended silence.

  Spock had maintained his reserve, but in truth he had been very tempted to smile.

  “We’d like to propose that the sub-elementary [106] particles be designated snarks and boojums,” March had said. “When we picked the names, we didn’t realize quite how appropriate they were. But after we worked on the math for a while, we discovered that the two entities are actually images of one another—one real, one virtual.” He displayed on the auditorium screen a set of formulas, a transformation which proved the mathematical equivalence of the two separate particle-waves.

  “Now,” March had said with a completely straight face, “and with apologies to Lewis Carroll:

  “In the midst of the word we were trying to say,

  In the midst of our laughter and glee.

  We will softly and silently vanish away—

  For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”

  He and Madison then left the podium.

  After the presentation, Spock had heard one normally dignified elder scientist say, laughing, “If they get bored with science they can go straight into stand-up comedy,” to which her colleague, who was not quite so amused, replied, “Well, maybe. But the jokes are pretty esoteric, don’t you think?”

  Spock had made a point of attending their question-and-answer session later that day, and during the week-long seminar became fairly well acquainted with them. He had more in common with Madison, whose intellect was firmly based in rationality, than with the high-strung March, whose brilliance balanced on a fine edge of intensity. But Spock had found their company stimulating; he would be pleased to encounter the two young humans again on Space lab.

  “Spock?” Kirk said.

  Spock returned from his reminiscences. “Yes, Admiral?”

  “I said: Were they your students?”

  “Indeed not, Admiral. They are pioneers in the field [108] of sub-elementary particle physics. I am honored to have been a student of theirs.”

  Del March glared at the computer terminal. No way was he going to be able to transfer Boojum Hunt. Every portable byte of memory was already packed full of essential Genesis data, and the team still would have to let some go when they blanked the built-in memory cells.

  He had a hard copy of the program, of course, a printout, but it would take a couple of hours for the optical-scan to read it back in, and it always made mistakes. Boojum was a real pain to debug. Well, no help for it.

  He was glad they would not lose the program entirely. Boojum was the best piece of software he and Vance had ever written. It was an adventure game; yet it paralleled their real-world work of the last few years. Vance referred to it as “the extended metaphor” but agreed that “Boojum Hunt” was a lot more commercial.

  Then Del got an idea. When the storm troopers arrived tomorrow, they would be looking for something. It would be a shame to disappoint them.

  Vance came over and put his hand on Del’s shoulder.

  “Might’s well get it over with, don’t you think?”

  Del grinned. “No, Vance, listen—don’t you think it’s about time Mad Rabbit got going again?”

  Vance gave him a quizzical look, then began to laugh. He had a great laugh. Del did not have to explain his plan; Vance understood it completely.

  Carol returned to the lab. Most of the really sensitive data had already been moved. Only the mechanism of Genesis itself remained. They had another whole day to finish collecting personal gear and to be sure they had erased all clues to their whereabouts.

  “I could use a good joke about now,” Carol said. She sounded both tired and irritable.

  Among other things, she’s probably sick of hassling [109] with Dave about Starfleet, Del thought. He really had it in for them—now he had good reason, but it was hardly his newest theme.

  “Vance and I just decided to leave something for the troops,” Del said. “The latest Mad Rabbit.”

  “What in heaven’s name is a Mad Rabbit?”

  “Do you believe it, Vance? She never heard of us.” Del feigned insult. “Carol, we were famous.”

  “What do you mean, ‘were’? You’re pretty famous now.”

  “We were famous in Port Orchard, Del,” Vance said mildly. “That isn’t exactly big time.”

  “Port Orchard?” Carol said.

  “See?”

  “What’s Mad Rabbit?”

  “I’m Mad,” Vance said, “and he’s Rabbit.”

  “As in March Hare. We started a minor revival of Lewis Carroll all by ourselves.”

  Carol flung up her hands in resignation. “Del, I guess you’ll let me in on the secret when you get good and ready, right?”

  Del started to explain. “We used to have a company when we were kids. It still exists; we just haven’t done anything with it since—before grad school, I guess, huh, Vance?”

  “Reality is a lot more interesting,” Vance said. He pulled a chair around and got Carol to sit down.

  Del grinned. “If you call quark chemistry reality.”

  Vance took heed of Carol’s impatience, and as usual brought Del back on track. “We used to write computer game software,” he said. “Our company was called Mad Rabbit Productions. It did pretty well. In Port Orchard, we were ‘local kids make good’
for a while.” He started to rub the tension-taut muscles of Carol’s neck and shoulders.

  “I had no idea,” Carol said. She flinched as Vance found a particularly sore spot, and then began to relax.

  “The thing is,” Del said, “where the game sold best was to Starbases.”

  [110] “The more isolated the better,” Vance added. “They don’t have much else to do.”

  “Not unlike Spacelab,” Del said.

  But it was true. Spacelab was quite possibly the Federation’s least exciting entertainment spot. There wasn’t much to do but work. After concentrating on the same subject eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, for close to a year, Del had been getting perilously close to burnout. He had begun having bizarre and wistful dreams about going out to sleazy dives, getting stoned to the brainstem on endorphin-rock and beer, and picking a fight with the first person to look at him side wise.

  He thought he had outgrown that kind of thing a couple of years before.

  When he told Vance about one of his nightmares, his friend and partner suggested they revive their old business. It was perfectly possible, on Spacelab, to get drunk or stoned or both, and Vance was not anxious to have to start dragging Del out of brawls again.

  “We wrote Boojum just to play it,” Del said. “But why not leave it for Reliant—”

  Carol giggled. “What a great idea. It seems a shame for them to come all this way for nothing.”

  They all laughed.

  The last couple of days had actually been rather exciting. Everyone had managed to convince each other that the Starfleet orders were some ridiculous, awful mistake, and that as soon as they could get through to somebody in the Federation Assembly or in the Federation Science Network, everything would be straightened out. Some overzealous petty-tyrant Starfleet officer would get called on the carpet, maybe even cashiered out of the service, and that would be that. All they needed to do was keep Genesis and the data out of the hands of Reliant’s captain until he got bored with looking for it and went away, or until they could recruit civilian scientific support and aid.

  [111] Looked at that way, it became a big game of hide-and-seek. It was a change in routine, with a tiny potential for danger, just scary enough to be fun.