by Gene DeWeese
More importantly, he had had a career that was, finally, getting back on track. He had been in charge of Technipower Labs for over a year, and don't think he hadn't had to scramble and bluff and grovel to get that post. After the Tajarhi fiasco, even though it had been entirely the fault of those grasping, never-give-an-inch negotiators on both sides, he had begun to fear he would never get another responsible post anywhere in the Federation. But finally, with a slight assist from a skeleton-filled closet or two, he had gotten a halfway decent post. He would have been on his way back up the ladder if it had paid off the way it should have.
If it had paid off…
Crandall pulled in a deep breath and shook his head. If he hadn't been so worried that this might be his last chance, if he hadn't been so greedy for one more boost up the ladder, he would still be back on earth, only now beginning to wonder what might have happened to the ship that had been fitted with Technipower's new gravity turbulence sensors. The loss, which his enemies would doubtless blame on the inadequacy of those sensors, would have been bad, but at least he would have had a chance to recover. More work on the sensors, possibly another mission with another ship—a ship with a more capable, more cautious crew—and he might have been on his way up again. Maybe not all the way to the Council, not at sixty-plus, but on his way up nonetheless.
But he had insisted on going along, accompanying the sensors. "Observing." He had called in a few favors, rattled a couple more skeletons, and he had gotten on board the Enterprise, knowing that if the mission were a success the publicity would open new doors to him, perhaps even boost him over the heads of those same functionaries he had had to beg favors of in order to get on the Enterprise in the first place.
He had insisted on going along, and now it was all over. His whole life was over, to all intents and purposes.
And to make matters worse, these people—this Kirk and the rest—they enjoyed what was happening! He had seen it in their faces, heard it in their voices as the orders and responses darted around the bridge. There had been no fear there, only eagerness and anticipation. To them it was nothing more than a game! Another "adventure!" What did they care if they never got back to the Federation? Their lives were here, wherever this blasted ship took them, and the farther it took them, the better they liked it! It had been plain from the moment he had stepped on board that they had little liking or sympathy for Jason Crandall or anyone else outside their own insular ranks. Their looks and their tones, alternately hostile and condescending, had demonstrated that beyond any doubt.
And that obvious dislike had fed upon itself. Crandall's own impatience and anger had grown ever stronger as it became ever more clear that the mission itself was a failure. From the very start, the data had obviously been worthless, but when he had finally pointed it out and tried to get them to cut the mission short, he had been ignored. The military mind was simply not flexible enough to appreciate the situation. They had been ordered to investigate fifteen anomalies, and they would by God investigate fifteen anomalies even though it was obvious after only a few days that it was pointless to continue.
But even that blind obedience was preferable to what was happening now, now that they had their freedom from those orders, freedom from Starfleet Command and the Council. They were like children being let out of school. They were ready to play their dangerous games, heedless of the consequences. The fact that they were playing, in effect, on a totally unknown playing field, where no one knew the rules of the game or even the nature of the other players, didn't seem to phase them. They could all be killed—he could be killed—in an instant, and it didn't concern them in the slightest!
Crandall shuddered, remembering the barely suppressed glee he had sensed beneath the chief engineer's seemingly matter-of-fact tone as he had explained their situation over the intercom.
And suddenly he wondered—could the disappearance of the gate be a sham? Could it still be there? Could it be that they—Kirk and the rest of his wildeyed adventurers on the bridge—simply didn't want to return to the Federation yet? Could they have cooked up this terrifying story to justify themselves in his eyes? And in the eyes of the crew, at least some of whom must have more sense?
Or could the gate itself be a hoax? All he had seen for himself was the viewscreen with its mass of stars, and that could certainly have been faked by anyone on the bridge, particularly that treacherous Vulcan. Beyond that, he had only Kirk's word for what had happened. The fact that the officers backed up their captain meant nothing.
For a moment, hope surged through Crandall, but it faded almost as quickly as it had come. He could not bring himself to believe that even they could be so totally irresponsible.
Pulling in a deep breath, he slowly pushed himself to his feet. His legs were again steady, he found, at least steady enough to get him around without falling. He moved deliberately to the door, wondering if he would be allowed back on the bridge yet.
And wondering what good it would do him if he were.
Once it was confirmed that the Enterprise had indeed suffered no damage as a result of the cylinder's destruction, detailed observations of the sector of space in which the Enterprise found itself quickly got underway. First, the visual impression of the extreme density of the stellar population was confirmed. With stars generally separated by less than one light-year, the entire Federation would have fit into less than fifty cubic parsecs. There was also a certain uniformity that had not been encountered in any previously known sector of space. There were virtually no extremely old or extremely young stars. The majority were also class G, not vastly different from Sol, and all were prime candidates, statistically speaking, for having families of planets.
There were no solidly based theories about how such a cluster, which appeared to extend several hundred parsecs in all directions, could have come about. What generated the most discussion during those first hours, however, was Ensign Chekov's suggestion that there might be a link between the cluster and the gates, or at least between the cluster and the gravitational turbulence associated with many of the gates. Assuming even a moderately dense mass of primordial nebular material, the gravitational turbulence of the gates would be more than enough to trigger the formation of far more stars than would come into existence otherwise.
Chekov's idea, however, raised more questions than it answered. For one thing, the gates would have to have been in existence billions of years ago, when these stars were formed, which meant that if they were indeed artificial as Spock had suggested, their creators were almost certainly long gone and hence would be of little help to the Enterprise. For another thing, despite the fact that the Enterprise had been deposited here by a gate, there was no evidence now either of that gate or of any of the lesser, "malfunctioning" gates. All of those apparently were back in the Milky Way galaxy, in a sector where star population was, if anything, sparser than average. There was also the rather obvious paradox that if the gravitational turbulence had indeed triggered the formation of the stars, the stars would have formed around the gates, which, if still functioning, would have bled off the infalling matter, thereby preventing the formation of the stars the turbulence had triggered in the first place.
Still, the idea was intriguing, and, because of the discussions it generated, it kept a lot of minds occupied that might otherwise have tended to brood about their seemingly hopeless situation. The only person it affected badly was Dr. Crandall, who saw it only as making his situation all the worse. But, then, from the moment Crandall had returned to the bridge, it had been apparent that anything unexpected or unfamiliar affected Crandall badly—and that included virtually everything in this unknown sector of space.
Despite everyone's best efforts to be understanding and sympathetic and even optimistic about finding a way back to Federation space, Crandall's despair and anger only seemed to grow greater. And when he learned that the Enterprise was not going to continue to hold its position near where the gate had originally existed but was going to "go explor
ing," he exploded.
"My God, Kirk!" he shouted, his face paling. "If that gate is going to reappear, it's going to reappear here, not fifty parsecs away! Can't you at least wait a few more days before taking off on this wild goose chase?"
"In the first place," Kirk pointed out with deliberate calm, "there is no evidence suggesting that the gate is going to reappear here as opposed to anywhere else. For all we know, it hasn't disappeared at all. It may have simply moved, or possibly it's flickering on and off, the way some of the ones we were originally investigating apparently did. In the second place, none of the systems we will be visiting in this first foray is more than a standard day away at even moderate warp speeds. And if we don't find anything on this first leg of our 'wild goose chase,' we'll return here to check. As we will continue to do if future legs become necessary. With the density of stars in this sector, we could visit a new system every day for months and still not be more than a standard week away."
But Crandall would not be pacified. "And what happens when you run into another of those—those booby traps?" he almost screamed. "One that's a little more advanced? We could all be vaporized and never even know what hit us!"
And so it had gone. In the end, Crandall had stormed off the bridge, red-faced and trembling. McCoy had followed, offering Crandall first a sedative and then some of the well-aged Scotch he had been saving since his last birthday, but Crandall stiffly and angrily refused everything. He was still in his stateroom the next day when the Enterprise dropped to sublight velocity twenty A.U. out from the first star on the list.
It was virtually a twin to Sol, its diameter a few thousand kilometers greater, its surface temperature a few hundred degrees higher. It even had a scattering of sunspots, a phenomenon that had turned out to be relatively rare among suns with habitable planets, though no one had yet advanced an acceptable theory to account for that rarity.
One planet, roughly earth-sized, was well within the zone in which terrestrial life could exist. It was one of seven planets, including the almost inevitable gas giants and a tiny ball of frozen methane at eighteen A.U.
Their first discovery, as they held their position on the fringe of the system, was the hulk of what had once been an observation satellite thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, still orbiting the outermost planet. That, however, was the only indication of life they found. As far as they could tell from that distance, there were no other artificial satellites anywhere in the system, no ships of any kind, and no detectable communications activity in either the electromagnetic or subspace spectra. It appeared to be, despite the remains of the observation satellite, a dead system, and as Kirk ordered the Enterprise forward, the feeling began to take hold that they were slowly easing their way across the threshold of a mausoleum. Chief Engineer Scott seemed the most affected despite his protests that he was "no' a superstitious mon," but there was no one on the bridge who didn't share the feeling to some small degree. Even Spock admitted that he expected the worst, though he insisted his expectation was only a logical deduction based on the observations they had already made.
Finally, after a four-hour sublight approach, the Enterprise was in standard orbit about the earthlike planet. As expected—or feared—the sensors still showed no evidence of life.
There was, however, ample evidence of death.
What remained of an atmosphere was a veritable sea of radioactivity, and the surface was like the surface of earth's moon or Mercury, pitted by thousands of craters. But these craters were not caused by meteorites or volcanos but by an almost inconceivable bombardment of fusion bombs. Even the oceans had been sterilized of life, boiled away by the heat of destruction and turned into a radioactive soup as they recondensed and settled into the old seabeds and the countless craters.
For several seconds no one on the bridge made a sound. They could only watch as the ghastly images flowed silently across the viewscreen. McCoy's teeth were clenched as he gripped one of the padded rails, and when he finally spoke, his voice was hushed with a kind of terrible awe.
"My God, Jim! What kind of creatures could be capable of something like that? Even the Klingons…" His voice trailed away as he shook his head and wiped briefly at his eyes.
"How long ago, Spock?" Kirk asked after another protracted silence.
Spock, whose eyes, like everyone else's, had been riveted on the screen, turned abruptly back to his instruments, his Vulcan training clamping down on the emotion that struggled to emerge from the human half of his heritage.
"Impossible to say precisely, Captain, without detailed information on the number and nature of the weapons used. Assuming the use of devices similar to those on board the object the Enterprise encountered earlier, I would estimate approximately eleven thousand standard years has passed since this bombardment took place, with a possible error of plus or minus three thousand."
Spock's numbers and his carefully maintained matter-of-fact tone seemed to restore some measure of objectivity to the others, though McCoy still looked as grim-faced as before.
"Is there any chance the planet's inhabitants could have done this to themselves, Spock?" Kirk asked softly. "Two factions fighting each other for control of the planet?"
"Possible but extremely unlikely, Captain. Both combatants would have to have been totally irrational and suicidal. Less than one percent of the weapons used here would have been sufficient to effectively destroy all life outside the oceans, and anyone capable of launching such weapons would certainly have been aware of that fact. No, Captain, this amount of destruction and this amount of residual radiation are almost certainly the result of an attack by a fleet of spacecraft, an attack that was designed to do precisely what it did—destroy all life on the planet and ensure that the planet itself would be uninhabitable by any life forms for hundreds of thousands of years. Based on an analysis of the elements that are producing most of the radioactivity, it would, in fact, appear that most of the radioactivity is not the direct result of the fusion explosions themselves but the result of the materials in which the weapons were housed. 'Clean' fusion weapons, as I believe your ancestors called them, Captain, can destroy a world but allow life forms to return safely in a relatively short time. These weapons, however, would appear to have been deliberately designed to be as 'dirty' as it is possible to make them."
McCoy shuddered. "What kind of madhouse have we fallen into, Jim?"
"I don't know, Bones. But at least all this happened a long time ago. There's nothing to indicate that the ones responsible for this are still around."
"And nothing to indicate they aren't, either," McCoy said, his eyes flickering apprehensively at the sheer savagery of the destruction still visible on the viewscreen. "And if they were capable of this thousands of years ago, what kind of weapons do you imagine they've developed by now?"
Chapter Four
ON THE COURSE the Enterprise followed to the next system, two more of the "booby traps" were found, both still partially functional. Once the nature of the objects was determined, both were destroyed by phaser fire, thereby preventing the fusion weapons aboard from detonating and flooding nearby space with the kind of radioactivity the first had left behind when its antimatter fuel had exploded.
In the system itself, two once habitable worlds had been destroyed just as thoroughly as the world in the first system. Whether the worlds in both systems had been destroyed by the same enemy or they had destroyed each other was impossible to say. Spock's sensors could only indicate that the destruction in the second system had occurred somewhere during roughly the same six-thousand-year period they had indicated for the first system.
In the third system, there were no habitable worlds and hence no destruction.
In the fourth, there was one habitable world. It, too, had had life scoured from its surface, but in a different, less permanent way. Here, it appeared that spaceborne lasers had been used. There was no radioactivity, and life survived in the oceans. On the land, some plant life survived as well, and,
except for the lack of any animal life larger than insects and except for deserts that had been turned to glass, certain areas looked pleasantly pastoral. The time of the destruction, Spock estimated, was also different—in the twenty-to-thirty-thousand-year range.
In two more systems, no habitable worlds were found. In another, antimatter missiles had apparently been used less than five thousand years ago. In another, there was two-thousand-year-old evidence that massive phasers had been the agent of destruction, along with weapons similar to the photon torpedoes the Enterprise carried. In yet another, there was the residue of a deadly, corrosive chemical gas that had blanketed an entire planet, still present after at least thirty-five thousand years. And in still another, a world destroyed by the same hellish radioactive weapons that had obliterated the first two was still hideously barren after more than forty thousand years. Between systems, more than a dozen of the spacegoing booby traps were found and destroyed.
On only one planet in all the systems they visited on that first leg of exploration was there anything that didn't fit the pattern of total destruction.
The planet itself, dead for at least thirty-five thousand years, was no different from a half-dozen others. All plant and animal life was gone from the land, devoured by enough antimatter missiles to do the job a hundred times over. Deep beneath the surface, however, apparently beyond even the reach of the radiation that still poisoned space for a thousand kilometers around, Spock's sensors detected an operating antimatter power source. More than five kilometers below the surface, small amounts of power were being produced and used, and at the same point there were peculiar and extremely low-level life readings.