by 02(lit)
"But how could she know that?" Stone asked.
"She had been reading her father's papers. Perhaps she didn't know the facts, but the general tone of what he had written must have gotten through to her. A man suffering delusions of persecution wants to set down his com plaints. She read them; she knew from childhood the kind of man the captain is; and she's fundamentally fair and decent."
He paused and looked soberly over toward Kirk.
"Or maybe," he said, "it was just instinct. Thank God, there's that much of the animal left in us. Whatever it was, the result is that she now has back both her father and her childhood friend."
"Her father," Stone said, "will also have to stand trial."
"I know that," Cogley said quietly. "I ask the court to appoint me his defense counsel. And off the record, your honor, I have the feeling I'll win."
"Off the record," Stone said, "I wouldn't be a bit sur-prised."
OPERATION-ANNIHILATE!
(Steven W. Carabatsos)
The spread of the insanity was slow, and apparently pat-ternless, but it was also quite inexorable. The first mod-ern instance in the record was Aldebaran Magnus Five. Then, Cygni Theta 12. Most recently, Ingraham B-re-cently enough so that the Enterprise had been able to get there within a year of the disaster.
Nothing had been learned from the mission. There were no apparent connections among the three planets- except that on each one, the colonists had gone totally, irrevocably mad, all at the same time, and had killed each other. It hadn't been warfare; the people had simply fallen upon each other in the streets, in their homes, every-where, until there were none left.
It was Spock who had suggested that there would nev-ertheless be a pattern, if one assumed that the long-dead civilizations of the Orion complex had fallen to the same cause. The archeological evidence was ambiguous, and besides, the peoples of the cluster had not been human. There was no a priori reason why they should have been subject to the afflictions of human beings.
Nevertheless, given the assumption, the computer was able to plot a definite localization and rate of spread- like an amoeboid blotch upon the stars, thrusting out a pseudopod to another world at gradually shortening inter-vals. If the radioactive dating of the deaths of the Orion civilizations was correct, as it almost surely was-and if the assumption was correct, which was sheer speculation -then the madness had taken two hundred years to ap-pear on its second victim-world, less than a century to crop up a third tune, and the next outbreak was due with-in the next month.
"On Deneva, I would say," Spock added. "An Earth-type planet, colonized about a century ago. Pleasant climate, no hazardous life-forms. Of course, I could well be completely wrong about this, since my basic premise is completely ad hoc."
"Never mind the logical holes," Kirk said. "Mr. Sulu, lay in a course for Deneva. Warp factor four. Lieutenant Uhura, tell Starship Command where we're going and why. When we break into the Denevan system, raise the planet."
But there was no time for that. The first thing the sen-sors showed when the Enterprise emerged in that system was a Denevan ship apparently on its way toward throw-ing itself into the Denevan sun.
"Status!" Kirk said tensely.
"He's got a huge jump on us, Captain," Sulu said. "A one-man vessel-sub-light velocity but under heavy acceleration."
"Contact, Captain," Uhura said.
"Denevan ship, this is the USS Enterprise! Break your heading! You're on a collision course with your sun! Fire your retros!"
From the speaker came a faint and agonized voice. "Help me... please... help me..."
"We're trying to! Spock, can we reach him with a trac-tor beam?"
"No, sir," Spock said. "Too much solar magnetism."
"Sulu, intercept. Denevan, pull back! Fire your retros!"
"Help me, please... take it out... take it out... please..."
"Skin temperature four hundred degrees," Spock said. "Rising fast."
"He's too close, Captain," Sulu said. "He'll burn-and so will we if we keep this up."
"Keep closing."
"Skin temperature now eight hundred degrees," Spock said.
Suddenly the Denevan's voice came through again, much stronger, and much changed. It seemed almost jubilant. "I did it! It's gone! I'm free. I'm free! I won-oh great God, the sun, the sun..."
The words ended in a terrible scream.
"He's gone, Captain," Sulu reported.
"Vector!" Kirk shouted. Then, as the great ship shud-dered into its emergency turn, he stared blindly at the now-silent speaker.
"What did he do that for?" he said. "Even if his instru-ments weren't working, we warned him."
"Obviously suicide," Spock said.
"But why? And Spock, I don't think he wanted to die. You heard him. He asked us to help him."
"Suicides are not rational," Spock said. "By defini-tion."
"Mr. Spock, that may be perfectly good logic, but I'm afraid it doesn't satisfy me. And I hate puzzles. They don't look good on the log."
"Captain," Uhura said. "I've gotten through to Deneva itself."
"Good, let's hear it. Hello, Deneva, USS Enterprise calling."
"Enterprise, please hurry!" a strong voice cried prompt-ly. There was a blast of static. "Help us! I don't have much time! They'll know!"
"Another madman?" Kirk said to nobody in particular. "Lieutenant, can't you clean up some of that static?"
"It's solar static, sir. Should clear gradually as we pull away."
"Hello, Deneva, Enterprise here. Please repeat."
"Hurry! Hurry! They'll know in a minute! We need help!"
There was more static. Kirk said: "We're on our way, Deneva. What's wrong? Please explain."
But there was no answer, only still more static. Uhura turned in her chair. "Contact broken, Captain. I'm trying to reestablish, but I think they've switched out."
"All right, Sulu. Course for Deneva-on the double."
The landing party-Kirk, Spock, McCoy, two security guards, and Yeoman Zahara-materialized in an empty city street. There were supposed to be more than a million colonists and their descendants on this planet, nearly a hundred thousand in this city alone; yet the place looked deserted.
"Where is everybody?" Kirk said.
Spock scanned in a circle with his tricorder. "They are here. But they are all indoors. Apparently just sitting there. There is a signal center in that building across the street. It is inoperative, but the power is up."
"All right, let's..."
"Party approaching," Spock interrupted. "Four people -make it five. Coming fast."
He had hardly spoken when five men came around the corner at top speed. They seemed to be ordinary civilians, but Kirk had the instant impression that their faces were warped with agony. All carried clubs. The instant they saw the group from the Enterprise, they burst into a bes-tial shrieking. It was impossible to tell which of them was screaming what.
"Run! Get away! We don't want to hurt you! Go back! Look out!"
"Fire to stun!" Kirk shouted. The Denevans charged, swinging their clubs.
"Go away! Please! They'll get you! No! Get away from here! We'll have to kill you..."
Kirk fired, followed by the others. The charging Denevans fell in a clatter of clubs. Kirk approached them cautiously. Despite the fact that they had just taken the heavy stun force of a phaser blast at close range, they seemed to be twitching slightly.
"Could you make out all that shouting, Mr. Spock?"
"Indeed. They seemed greatly concerned for our safety -so concerned that they wanted to brain, us. This may not be the insanity, but..."
"But it'll do for now," Kirk said. "Bones, check them over."
McCoy checked the unconscious bodies quickly, then rose, shaking his head puzzledly. "Something decidedly odd," he said. "These people should be pretty close to being vegetables for the next few hours. But I'm getting high readings, as though their nervous systems were being violently stimulated even while they're..."
&
nbsp; He was interrupted by a woman's scream. Kirk whirled. "Fan out!" he said. "That came from that signal center. Come on!"
The scream came again. Inside the building there was a dark lobby of some sort, and a closed door, which turned out to be locked. Kirk lunged against it.
"Open up!" he shouted. "We're from the Enterprise."
"They're here!" the woman screamed. "They're here! Keep them away!" Over her voice there was a heavy buzzing sound, which seemed to be rising in pitch.
Kirk and the two guards hit the door together. It burst inward. Here was the signal center, all right, but it looked shoddy, unused. An elderly man lay unconscious on the floor; across the room, a girl was desperately holding a panel of some sort over a ventilation outlet, fighting with all her strength. As the party broke in she staggered backward, dropping the panel, covering her face with her hands and sobbing wildly.
Kirk pointed to the old man while he took the girl in his arms. "It's all right. You're safe."
She screamed again and began to struggle.
"Bones, a hypo! I can't hold her."
McCoy already had his sprayjet out, and a moment later the girl too had collapsed. "The man's alive," he reported. "Some sort of seizure, or maybe just exhaustion. I'd better get them both up to the ship."
"Right. Mr. Spock, you heard her. She called out that they were here. Your guess?"
"Notice, Captain," Spock said. "Rags stuffed under the door. Pieces of board jammed across the windows. As if they were in a state of siege."
"But by what? There are no harmful life-forms on this planet. And our sensors didn't pick up anything that didn't belong here."
"I am baffled, Captain."
"Bones, beam up with those two people and bring them around. I'm going to have to ask some questions. Mr. Spock, we'll go outside and resume looking around. Zahara, are you recording all of this?"
"Of course, Captain."
As they emerged from the communications center, Kirk saw one of the security men standing near a sheltered, shadowy alleyway. He moved toward the party as it appeared.
"Anything, Abrams?"
"Yes sir, but don't ask me what. Something moving back in there. Making a buzzing sound."
Kirk looked around, and then up. All the windows above him seemed to be empty, but in one there was the face of a man. His expression was a terrible combination of agony, fear and desperate hope.
"You!" Kirk shouted at him. "I want to talk to you!"
The face contorted and vanished. Kirk grunted with annoyance. "All right, Spock, Abrams, let's go see what's back in there."
Phasers ready, they moved cautiously into the dark-ened alley. Almost at once the buzzing noise got louder, and something about the size of a football flew through the air over their heads. Then another.
"Phasers on kill!" Kirk shouted. But for a moment there were no more. Then suddenly Spock pointed. Another such object clung to a wall. Kirk fired.
The beam hit the thing squarely. But it refused to van-ish. It simply clung to the wall for a long moment, even under the full force of the beam, and finally slipped off and fell to the earth.
They closed in warily, but there seemed to be no more of the creatures back here. Spock took tricorder readings on the downed object, which seemed to be no more than a gelatinous mass, amorphous, colorless, as though some-body had dumped a jellyfish out of a bucket. Kirk stared at it incredulously.
"What is that?"
"It isn't anything," Spock said promptly. "Not only should it have been destroyed by the phaser blast, but it does not register on the tricorder."
"It's real enough all the same," Kirk said. "And it acted alive. Can we take it along, Spock?"
"I advise against it. We have no proper equipment, and it may well be toxic, corrosive-there are a dozen possi-bilities."
"Whatever they are, they seem to like these shadows," Kirk said. "Let's get out back into the light. We know where we can find them if we want them, anyhow."
As they retreated, the buzzing noise began again. The next instant, one of the objects shot past Kirk and hit Spock squarely in the back, knocking him off his feet The thing clung to him. His hands tore uselessly at his back. Then, somehow, it was gone, and Spock was lying face down in the alley.
Kirk knelt beside him. "Spock! Are you all right? The thing's gone. Can you stand?"
Spock's hands were still clutching his back. As Kirk spoke, he rolled over, his entire face working with the effort to control himself. He got slowly to his knees. Then his mouth opened, and pitching forward, he began to scream.
Spock was in sick bay under heavy sedation; thus far, McCoy had been unable to think of anything else to do for him. In the interim, however, he had managed to re-vive the elderly man and the girl the landing party had found in the signal room on Deneva. The girl's name was Aurelan, the man's Menen. They did their best to answer Kirk's questions, but he found their answers difficult to comprehend.
"I know it must sound insane, Captain," Aurelan said, "but it's quite true."
Kirk shot a look at Zahara, who was recording. "You mean these things, whatever they are, have taken over the entire planet?"
"Except for ourselves," Menen said.
"There are over a million inhabitants of Deneva."
"There are millions of them," Menen said.
"When did they get to Deneva? How?"
"About four months ago," Menen said with some diffi-culty, "in a spaceship. We don't know any more than that. They didn't give us the time."
"It's a nightmare, Captain," Aurelan said. "Worse than a nightmare."
"The things don't communicate with you?"
"Oh, they communicate all right," Aurelan said bit-terly. "Through pain. Once they attack you, something happens inside. We're not doctors, we don't know the de-tails. But life is agony from then on."
Menen added, "My son told me-before he died-that they need bodies the way we need tools. Arms and legs -human beings. And once they take over, they can't be resisted. The people who tried to kill you in the street didn't want to hurt you. They wanted your help. But the things ordered them to attack you, and they had no choice."
"But why didn't they take you two over too?"
"We think they spared us so that we could maintain normal contacts with other planets and ships. They want ships, Captain. They need them. They're forcing our peo-ple to build ships right now."
"My brother, Noban..." Aurelan began.
"He's the man who flew his ship into the sun?"
Aurelan nodded sadly. "The creatures had him. He al-most went mad from the pain. But he told us that Deneva is just a way-station for them. They mean to spread out. You see..." She paused and swallowed. "Their hosts become useless after a while. They go mad. And then the things need new hosts. More people. Planet after planet. They come, and they leave madness, and they go to the next..."
"In the name of God, Captain," Menen said, "you've got to do something!"
"I'll do what I can," Kirk said. "What about my first officer, Mr. Spock?"
"Is he important to your ship?" Aurelan said.
"Extremely," Kirk said. "And to me personally. He's one of my closest friends."
"In that case," Menen said, "kill him."
"What!"
"Kill him. Now. Quickly. Because only endless agony lies ahead for him, agony that will end in madness. If you are his friend, be merciful."
"Security calling Captain Kirk," said the bridge speak-er.
"Kirk here."
"Captain, this is Ames. Mr. Spock has attacked his nurse and fled. He seems deranged."
"All decks security alert. He may be dangerous. Aure-lan, Menen, you'd better get to your quarters and stay there."
They went quietly. Only seconds later, it seemed, the el-evator door opened again and Spock charged out.
"Get away from the controls!" he screamed. "I have to take her down!"
Before anyone could move, he bad reached the helm and had knocked Sulu down and away with one
sweeping blow. The navigator and Scott leapt on him, but Spock was a powerful man; he sent them reeling.
"Security to the bridge!" Uhura was calling into her mike. "Alert! General alert to the bridge!"
Kirk joined in the melee, but they were all handi-capped by the desire not to hurt Spock; the first officer had no such compunctions. They only barely managed to keep him away from the controls.