by Gene DeWeese
And finally it dawned on him.
A language lesson!
Hope flooded through him. His captors, whoever they were, wanted to talk, not kill! In the same way he had wanted to communicate with the Hoshan and Zeator brought aboard the Enterprise, these people wanted to communicate with him! And that screen with its graphics and flickering lights must be a crude form of translator. Obviously, it did not have the ability, as did the universal translators, to read and map the corresponding neuronic activity of the speakers' minds, so the process would be long and tedious. Far too long to save the Enterprise from the combined Hoshan and Zeator fleet that was at this moment probably less than twenty standard hours distant.
If only he could get his hands on a translator!
On the screen, the image was flashing, as if to get his attention, and the woman was looking at him, obviously urging him to speak.
"Medical tricorder," he said, stimulating another set of graphics and flickering lights.
Ironically, the next item that appeared in the air above the transporter and on the screen was a translator, but, other than naming it, there was nothing Kirk could do.
* * *
An hour after he had been snatched away, Captain Kirk reappeared in the cavernous room, at almost the precise point from which he had originally been taken. Alerted by the billowing precursors of the transport beam, Spock and McCoy and a half-dozen others were hurrying toward him the instant he was completely materialized.
"They want to talk," Kirk snapped out while they were still approaching him. "They have a crude computer translator, and they appear to be simply trying to learn the language."
Before he could say more, Dr. McCoy and Lieutenant Commander Scott vanished in twin pillars of swirling transporter smoke.
"Captain," Spock said, barely missing a beat as his two companions disappeared, "you saw our captors?"
"I saw them," he said and went on to briefly describe the scene he had been snatched into. "Either they call themselves Aragos, or that's the name of the one who was trying to communicate with me."
"Aragos, Captain?" Spock said. "I am sure I have heard that word before."
"I know," Kirk said. "It sounds familiar to me, too, now that I have the time to think about it." He grimaced. "If we could just get in touch with the computer, or get our hands on a translator! Spock, no one's come up with a substitute for Bones's fly rod idea?"
"Negative, Captain. We have literally nothing but the clothing we wear. However, it was observed during your absence that several of the objects from the Enterprise were apparently transported somewhere and returned, one at a time."
Kirk nodded. "I'm not surprised. They were using them as part of the language lesson. In fact, that might be the main reason they brought them all down here. They transported them to the room I was in, showed them to me, and had me name them. They ran through one of everything, I think, and then started showing me pictures of the Enterprise's controls."
Turning to look out through the barrier, he saw one of the objects from the Enterprise turn momentarily to smoke and then vanish as he watched. "They seem to be running Bones and Scotty through the same routine," he said with a frown. "Apparently they didn't believe what I told them."
"Perhaps it is just as well, Captain."
"You sound as if you have an idea, Mr. Spock."
"I do, but it cannot be implemented unless they repeat their procedures again with me. If they do, I can attempt to influence them mentally."
"A mind touch? Without physical contact?"
"I can guarantee nothing, Captain. If I am given the chance, I can only try. If, as you say, they are anxious to communicate with us, they may be more receptive than they would be under other circumstances."
"Let's hope so. If we don't establish some kind of communication before the Hoshan and the Zeator get here, it probably means the end of the Enterprise. And the end of any chance to return to the Federation."
He broke off, shaking his head. "Even if these people have the technology to defend it, I don't think they're in control enough to use it effectively," he said and went on to describe the seemingly jury-rigged auxiliary controls for the transporter and the tricorderlike device the woman had used. "Whoever they are," he finished, "I don't think they're the ones who built this place originally. Their ancestors, perhaps, but not them."
For nearly an hour, then, the two of them talked, with Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov alternately listening and volunteering comments. Kirk described the transporter room and its controls in as much detail as he could remember, and even as he did, the items beyond the barrier continued to appear and disappear. Finally, as they were discussing the earlier, lower-level life form readings the Enterprise had detected, Spock suggested they might have been generated not by organic computers but by the same humanoids the later sensor readings detected.
"Suspended animation?" Kirk asked. "You're saying these people may have built this place as a sort of ultimate bomb shelter? A place to survive until whatever destroyed their world went away and it was safe to come out again?"
"Possible, Captain, even though the readings were not entirely consistent with suspended animation. Both the Hoshan and the Zeator told us they themselves constructed massive defenses for their own worlds, which apparently are outside this zone where all worlds have been destroyed. Here, directly in the path of whatever was destroying the worlds, this subsurface vault and the possibility of outliving their enemies may well have been their only hope for survival."
"But why would they awaken now, just in time to snatch us off the Enterprise?"
"Pure chance, perhaps. Or our earlier approach could have triggered some revival mechanism. There was, you will remember, an operating power source. I detected no sensor probes at the time, but that does not mean none was present. Or our own sensor probes might have been the triggering mechanism, reviving the people in order that they could defend themselves."
"Or find out if the war was over. Unlike everyone else we've run into here, this bunch at least wants to talk, so—"
Kirk broke off sharply as, a few feet away, the smoky forms of Scott and McCoy began to materialize.
Hurrying toward them, Kirk wondered who, if anyone, would be next.
"Bones! Scotty!" he said quickly. "A transporter room? Language lesson?"
"Aye," Scott said, "I think so."
But before he could say more or McCoy could do more than nod, Spock broke in.
"I am next, I believe, Captain," he said, and as Kirk turned sharply toward him, the swirling smoke of the alien transport system began to form.
"Spock!" Kirk shouted, as if raising his voice could penetrate the clouds and reach the Vulcan's now transparent ears. "Get that translator!"
Maybe, he thought, we have a chance after all, and he wondered if they were being watched, if even the fact that it was Spock he had conferred with after his return was what had prompted the aliens to take the Vulcan next.
"Captain!"
Lieutenant Tomson's shout jerked Kirk's attention away from the fading column of smoke that had been Spock. Turning abruptly, Kirk saw why she had yelled.
Someone else was disappearing in a swirl of smoke, the last someone Kirk had hoped would be taken.
If anyone could throw a monkey wrench into Spock's attempt to communicate with the aliens, it was Dr. Jason Crandall.
Chapter Nineteen
SPOCK'S VULCAN EYES, more accustomed to sudden or extreme variations in light than most humans, took in the dimly lit transporter room at a glance and then centered his gaze on the controls. The auxiliary controls, as the captain had said, looked jury-rigged, but to Spock's analytical eyes, the setup was more indicative of ingenuity than imperfection or any lack of understanding or skill. In some ways it reminded him of devices he and Chief Engineer Scott had improvised to work around failed equipment on the Enterprise or to make a piece of equipment perform an emergency service that its original designers had never intended it to do.
&nb
sp; As he studied the controls, still relegating the humanoid forms in the room to the background of his thoughts, one of the other transport units was activated. Looking around, he saw that Dr. Crandall was materializing, and for a moment he wondered what logical reason the aliens could have had to select Crandall. If they had been observing the Enterprise crew where they were being held, they could well have determined, as had the first Hoshan brought aboard the Enterprise, that Captain Kirk was the leader and was therefore the first individual with whom to attempt contact. Knowledge of the language was obviously not required for such deductions to be made. Similarly, because McCoy and Scott and Spock himself were among those the captain had first gathered around him, the aliens could have selected from that group for their subsequent attempts at contact. However, he quickly realized, they would also have seen Crandall being rescued by Kirk, and that alone could have caused them to assume he was an individual of importance.
Satisfied with the logic of the situation, Spock turned his attention to the two dark-skinned humanoids. They were as the captain had described: a female and a bearded male, both dressed in simple, dark outfits with no indication of rank or authority. As his eyes took in their shadowy features, however, he detected something else, something in the way they stood, tensely waiting.
But it was more than that, he realized a moment later. Already, even before attempting any form of mental contact, he could detect something beyond the physical tension. Behind it, he could feel the mental tension and a trace of the fear that generated it. These humanoids, as the captain had hoped, were not enemies. They were not the ones who had destroyed these worlds tens of thousands of years ago. In emptying the Enterprise, they had not acted out of hostility. Nor had they acted solely out of fear of the Enterprise, although fear—fear not only of the Enterprise but of something ill defined and deliberately forced out of their conscious minds—had undoubtedly been a part of their motivation.
As it still was.
From Crandall, now fully materialized and looking about with frantic eyes, Spock felt nothing, but that was not surprising. During Crandall's time on the Enterprise, Spock had observed that Crandall, even more so than most humans, had the ability to conceal his true emotions and generate the illusion of other, totally false ones. Unlike Vulcans, whose emotions were rigorously controlled by logic, Crandall and others of his type were able only to repress and disguise their emotions. Behind the ever-changing and deceptive facades that they maintained, they were in truth controlled by their constant and illogical inner turmoil. Where Vulcans were masters of their emotions, Crandall was a slave to his, no matter how it could sometimes appear to other humans.
As Spock considered what effect Crandall's presence might have on his efforts to obtain a translator, the first image appeared on the screen in the far wall. As it had been for the captain, it was an image of the woman who stood next to the transporter platform, controlling the screen through the device she held.
"Aragos," Spock said before she could speak, and as he spoke the name, the same frustrating sense of familiarity that had troubled him before flickered through his thoughts. Turning his eyes on the bearded male at the transporter controls, he repeated the word, this time with a questioning intonation, though he doubted that the tone would have any meaning to them.
The woman's features, however, did undergo a change, and she hastily keyed something into the device she held. A moment later, the man's image appeared on the screen, and the woman repeated the word slowly.
Next, the captain's image appeared.
"Human," Spock said.
"The noble captain," Crandall said with obvious sarcasm.
Spock's own image replaced the captain's.
"Vulcan," he said.
"The captain's loyal and logical first toady," Crandall said.
McCoy and Scott appeared in rapid succession, remaining on the screen only long enough for Spock to pronounce them human and Crandall to provide derisive comments. Then Crandall's image took shape, and Crandall laughed sharply.
"The prisoner!" he said, his words overlapping Spock's repeated, "Human."
Meanwhile, even as the series of images and Crandall's illogical remarks had occupied one small segment of Spock's consciousness, the greater part of the Vulcan's mind had been reaching out in an attempt to strengthen the ephemeral bridge that had seemed to exist between himself and the Aragos woman from the moment their eyes had met. Even with that initial link, however, he knew that anything deep enough to be meaningful would be difficult without physical contact.
He had occasionally achieved such contact in the past, as when he and the captain and several others had been taken prisoner on Eminiar VII. At that time he had been able to influence the guard outside the room in which they were being held, but the actions he had induced the guard to take had been simple and not far removed from his assigned duties. A touch of initial mental confusion, an impression that all was not as it should have been within the room he was guarding, a slight damping of the wariness that went with the guard's natural curiosity were all that had been required. His disruptor drawn but his watchfulness and caution blunted, the man had entered the room and had been instantly subdued.
Here, however, it would take much more. It would not be a matter of simply making one of the Aragos step closer to him. Unless he could also force them to release him from the restraining field, he could take no physical action himself. When and if the translator again appeared in the transporter, the woman would have to be prompted to take it from the transporter and turn it on.
And leave it on, not just for a few moments but possibly for hours.
But even then, the plan might fail. Turning the translator on would automatically link it to the Enterprise's computer, provided the Enterprise was within range. If it were not, the limited capacity of the translator itself, even with its ability to detect and map the Aragos's neuronic activity as they spoke, would not allow it to build up a usable vocabulary in a totally unknown language for hours, perhaps days.
The plan did, however, offer the best chance for success of any he had been able to devise, so it was only logical to make an attempt. If it did not work, he would try whatever then appeared to have the next best chance of being successful.
While that same small corner of his mind continued to attend to naming the objects as they appeared on the screen, another portion observed and recorded in detail every move the two aliens made, every control they touched, both on the transporter and on the device the woman held. At the same time, Spock continued to reach out mentally. In an attempt to compensate for the lack of actual physical contact, he visualized his hands reaching toward her, their immaterial fingers splayed out and bent as they would be if he were actually touching her. At his sides, his own hands assumed the same position, their raised tendons the only visible sign of the strain he was undergoing.
Slowly, the visualization became more real, until it was almost as if his hands were physically there, coming together to cup the woman's head between them. He could not only see them but feel them, feel the physical texture of her dark, smooth skin, the whispering touch of her hair where the tips of his fingers reached beyond the hairline above her temples and pressed against the warmth of her scalp.
And the link itself became stronger, as if she, too, were reaching out, unconsciously grasping for his mind, pulling it toward her own.
For a moment, her eyes flickered toward him, and he felt fear surge through her, as if she suspected what was happening and distrusted it.
Instead of withdrawing, he tightened the link, forcing his own inner calmness and rationality on her mind like a warm, comforting blanket on a shivering child.
And as he did, as the link solidified even more, he felt something else.
Distant and faint at first, it was touching not Spock's mind but the woman's, but through her, he experienced it. She herself, he realized, was not aware of it, but it was there, and as he probed, ne began to understand her lack of awareness.
Unlike his own mind, this other was not an independent, questing intelligence, reaching out to touch and grip her mind. Instead, it was something that had been there for a long period of time. It was virtually a part of her, so intimate was its link to her mind. But it was also somehow lifeless, artificial, similar in a way to a computer but more nearly alive. Perhaps, Spock thought, it was similar to Nomad, a freak cross between machine and organic intelligence, or perhaps even the organic computer that he had first suspected of being the source of the anomalous life form readings detected on this planet.
And with the thought came confirmation.
Not the confirmation of an actual reply, but a confirmation born of his own logical analysis of the seemingly countless inputs he was receiving and had received. The pattern of the original sensor readings suddenly made sense. They had reflected, he now realized, both the organic heart of the computer and the hundreds of living beings over whose sleeping minds and frozen bodies it watched. Both had been linked so closely together—even more closely than they were now—that the readings had been inseparable and hence impossible to analyze individually.
But that in itself was only logical. In order to care for hundreds of living beings whose life processes had been slowed so drastically that they could survive not just hundreds but thousands, even tens of thousands of years, the system that monitored them and cared for them would have to be intimately linked to them, not only to their physical bodies but to their minds, for the minds would require as much care as the bodies. The caretaker would have to be, in effect, virtually an extension of those individual minds.
And so it had been.
And now, through the woman, Spock suddenly found himself in contact, not only with the organic heart of the computer but with the hundreds of others of her race. In the instant that he fully comprehended its nature, the barriers fell and he found himself face to face with a thousand-headed Hydra, each head with its own memories and dreams and hates and terrors.