by James Blish
"And risk killing you?" Kirk said. "Things are bad enough already."
"Captain, the strain of maintaining my mental barriers is considerable. I do not know how long I can continue. When my guards go down—as inevitably they must—I will go insane. I would rather die by the hand of a friend. Furthermore, if I am insane, I am in a position to do the maximum possible amount of damage to the ship."
"Isn't there another question?" Aurelan said. "Mr. Spock is only half human. Even if the experiment is successful, it won't be conclusive."
"I have to work with what I have," McCoy said.
"You have Kartan," Aurelan said. "My fiancé."
They all looked at her in silence. When McCoy spoke, his voice was very gentle. "The risk," he said, "is extremely great."
"If you don't find a cure, he will die a raging maniac," she replied calmly. "Do you think I want that?"
McCoy glanced at Kirk, who nodded without hesitation.
"All right," McCoy said. "Thank you. I'll do my best."
It worked nicely. The creature emerged from all sides of Kartan's body at once, as though he were being enclosed in a balloon, and then was torn to shreds under the whirling electromagnets. He was still under sedation, but the dolorimeter promptly declined to normal level, and his face was peaceful for the first time since they had seen him.
"Congratulations, Mr. Spock," Kirk said. "And now I want you on that table, as fast as we can get Kartan moved out."
"No, sir."
"Why not? I should think you'd be eager to be rid of it! You volunteered before."
"True, Captain, but since then I have thought of something else. Do you realize that this leaves us just as badly off as we were before?"
Kirk frowned. Given the question, there was no need to explain it. There was absolutely no possibility of enveloping the whole of Deneva in such a field; Deneva's own natural field would fight it, and the Enterprise lacked the power to win such an invisible struggle. Nor was there anything like time to treat a million people individually.
McCoy obviously had also chased the chain of reasoning to its conclusion. "We are going to have to destroy the planet anyhow," he said harshly.
Aurelan straightened beside the sleeping Kartan. "Captain," she said. "They're my people. I grew up with them. I loved them. I've lost my brother. I don't want to lose anyone else. But I beg you, Captain, do what has to be done. Give the order."
"A million people . . ." Kirk said.
"Don't you understand?" Aurelan cried out. "There's no hope for them! Their brains are on fire! They want to die!"
Kirk stood as if frozen to the floor. "Brains on fire," he whispered. "Brains on fire. That's it. That's the answer!"
"Yes, Captain," Mr. Spock said. "That is my conclusion also."
"What is?" McCoy said. "You gentleman have lost me."
"It's like this," Kirk said rapidly. "Spock has already likened this—this composite organism to a gigantic brain. All the evidence we have points in the same direction. The individual cells are mindless, almost lifeless. It's possible, indeed it seems likely, that there is a central concentration of them somewhere. If we could kill that off . . ."
"I don't see that that follows at all," McCoy said. "The aggregate of the scattered cells could well be all there is to the brain, since we know the cells can communicate with each other. Why is it likely that there should be a concentration, too?"
"Because of the behavior of the creatures," Spock said. "They multiply uncontrollably until they overflow a planet. Not leave it—overflow it. The original central concentration is left behind. Ergo, it must still be there—wherever it is."
"And all we know about that is that it's somewhere in the Orion sector," Kirk said. "Mr. Spock, could the computer extrapolate the spread of these creatures backward, so to speak, and at least narrow down the possibilities to an area we'd have some hope of searching in time?"
"Of course," Spock said. "But you have something better, Captain."
"What's that?"
"You have me. That is why I do not want the treatment yet. I am infested; I am aware of the creature—not just the part of it that inhabits me, but the entire creature. As we approach the central concentration, I will know."
"Are you sure?"
For answer, Spock pointed. "It lies that way," he said. "I know that already, even though it must be fifty parsecs away."
"Posts!" Kirk shouted.
As they approached the critical Orion sector, it gradually became evident that not only was Spock aware of the nucleus of the creature—it was aware of him, and in some way realized that it must not allow this particular cell of itself to come closer. The pressure on Spock mounted unbearably. Though he still performed his duties, the sweat ran constantly down his face, which occasionally was twisted by a grimace that seemed to have no connection with anything he was doing or saying.
"Better let us extract that thing now," Kirk said. "We're zeroed in on the planet. There's no sense in your suffering any further."
"Sir, I would prefer to bear it just a little while longer. The final test of the theory is what happens to me—or does not happen—when that nucleus is destroyed. If the pain continues, we will know that we were wrong."
"Without prejudice to your own wishes or your will power, Mr. Spock, are you certain that there's no danger of your running amok again?"
"The danger exists," Spock said levelly. "However, I am fighting it. And I do not see how we can forfeit this test."
"I hate to say so," McCoy said, "but I think he's right, Jim."
"Very well," Kirk said. He looked at the main viewing screen, which was now showing the image of the target planet. It was utterly barren, though occasional faint geometrical patterns showed where there might once have been cities—before the creatures had come with their burden of agony and wiped them out. "It will be a pleasure to get rid of that monster. Arms Control, are those missiles primed?"
"Yes, sir," said a loudspeaker. "Two fully-armed planet-wreckers, programed and ready to go."
"Very well. Fire one."
A streak of light shot away from the Enterprise. For many long minutes nothing seemed to happen. Then the planet on the screen burst into a white blare of atomic fire. The screen backed hastily down the intensity spectrum.
At the same moment, Spock screamed. Two security men promptly grabbed him; Bones had been alert for just such an outcome.
"Stop! Stop!" Spock screamed. "My world—my life—"
"Fire two," Kirk said grimly. The planet was already breaking up, but he was taking no chances. Another colossal fusion explosion spread over the screen. When it had died away, there was nothing left to be seen but an enormous, expanding cloud of gas.
"So we have created a new Orion nebula," Kirk said. He turned to Spock. The first officer was standing quietly in the grip of the security man, while Bones hovered nearby with a hypo.
"Mr. Spock?"
Spock's eyes were glazed, and for a moment he seemed to have no mind at all. His face was blank, his mouth working. Then, gradually, life and sanity seemed to flow back into him.
"I am . . . recovering," he said formally. "The pain was . . . incredible . . . like nothing I had experienced before. For an instant I was that creature. I felt its death. But now . . . nothing."
"Now," McCoy said firmly, "we take you below and extract that thing from you. I will tolerate no further arguments on that score."
"No further arguments are necessary," Spock said. "Its purpose is served."
"Any word from Deneva, Lieutenant?"
"Rapidly getting back to normal, Captain," Uhura reported. "Menen says that the remaining creatures just wander about helplessly and seem to have almost no vitality left. To kill one, you need scarcely do more than stick it with a pin."
"Very good," Kirk said. "Mr. Spock, this may sound grandiose, but it's the truth. I think you have singlehandedly just saved the galaxy."
"No, sir, I think not."
"What could have stoppe
d them if we hadn't?"
"Their own nature, Captain."
"Explain."
"A truly successful parasite," Spock said, "is commensal, living in amity with its host, or even giving it positive advantages—as, for instance, the protozoans who live in the digestive system of your termites and digest for them the wood that they eat. A parasite that regularly and inevitably kills its hosts cannot survive long, in the evolutionary sense, unless it multiplies with tremendous rapidity—much more rapidly than these creatures did. It is not pro-survival."
"In the evolutionary sense, maybe," Kirk said. "But evolution takes a long, long time. In the interim, you have at least saved millions of people from pain, madness and death."
"Believe me, Captain," Spock said, "I find that quite sufficient."
THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER*
(Harlan Ellison)
* * *
* The script for this story differed drastically in some respects from Mr. Ellison's original version, which he was kind enough to send to me. In writing this adaptation I tried to preserve what I thought were the best elements of both scripts; but it was tricky to manage and it is more than possible that I have wound up owing apologies all around. It was a poetic and brilliant piece to begin with; if it is a botch now, the fault is entirely mine.—J. B.
Two drops of cordrazine can save a man's life. Ten drops of that unpredictable drug will sometimes kill. When a defective hypospray went off in McCoy's hand, a hundred times that amount was pumped into his body in a split second.
With a frenzied, incoherent cry, the ship's surgeon fled the bridge. Within minutes the entire ship was alerted. The library tapes on cordrazine said that at such dosages, paranoia was a frequent outcome—but McCoy knew the ship too well. By the time a search was organized, he had reached the transporter room and beamed himself down to the planet the Enterprise was orbiting.
The transporter had been monitoring what appeared to be a curious time disturbance on the surface of the unknown world. The settings had not been changed; whatever was down there, McCoy was now in the heart of it. Kirk would have liked to have had more information about it first, but there was no chance of that now. They had to go after McCoy. Kirk picked Spock, Scott, Uhura, Davis and a Security guard, and, of course, himself.
They materialized in the midst of extensive ancient ruins. Much of it was almost dust, but there were enough scattered sections of broken wall and piled stone to provide hiding places for McCoy.
This planet was cold. A burnt-out sun hung dolorously in the sky, producing a permanent, silvery twilight. It was a dead world, an ash. The ruins extended past the horizon—a city of tremendous size—but there could have been no life in it for ten thousand centuries. It takes a long time for a sun to burn out.
In the midst of the desolation, one object was polished like new, drawing Kirk's eyes instantly. It was a large, octagonal mirror—or was it a mirror? Its framed, cloudy surface was nebulous, shifting. Whatever it was, it gleamed, untarnished, agelessly new. A cube, also untarnished but half-buried in dust and rubble, sat beside it. Spock aimed his tricorder at it.
"Whatever that is," Kirk said crisply, "make it the hub of our search pattern. Fan out."
The group separated quickly—all but Spock, who was drawing closer to the shining object, instead. He said, "Unbelievable!"
"Mr. Spock?"
"Sir, this one, single object is the source of all the time displacement we detected out in space. I do not understand where it gets the power, or how it applies it. It cannot be a machine, not in any sense that we understand the term, but . . ."
Kirk eyed the object. "Then what is it?
At once, the dead air was stirred by a heavy hum; and then a resonant, vibrantly throbbing voice spoke from the object itself.
"A . . . question," the voice said. "A question. Since before your sun burned hot in space, and before your race was born, I have awaited a question."
"What are you?" Kirk said.
"I . . . am the Guardian of Forever."
"Are you a machine," Kirk said, "or a being?"
"I am both, and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending."
Spock said, "I see no reason for answers to be couched in riddles."
"I answer all questions as simply as I can."
"What is your function, then?"
"I am a time portal. Through me the great race which once lived here went to another age."
"Past or future?" Spock said.
"The past," the voice said, like a sigh. "Always and only the past. And to their past, which you cannot share. I can only offer you yours. Behold—the birth of the planet you both share."
In the mirror, there was suddenly the image of a solar system forming out of a changing, cooling fireball . . . and somehow Kirk knew that it was not an image at all, but a distant view of a fact. A moment later, they were looking at a primeval, shoreless sea; and then, suddenly, a jungle of tree ferns.
"Mr. Spock," Kirk said thoughtfully, "if that is a doorway back through time, could we somehow take Bones back a day in time, then relive that accident? Stop that hypo spitting into him?"
"We would have to catch him first," Spock said. "Besides, Captain, look at the speed at which centuries are passing. To step through precisely on the day we wish would appear to be impossible."
"Guardian, can you change the speed at which yesterday passes?"
"I was made to offer the past in this manner," the Guardian said. "I cannot change."
Egypt waxed, waned, passed. Atlantis sank. Skin-clothed barbarians suddenly became Hellenes. Spock was getting it all into the tricorder.
"It's strangely compelling, isn't it?" Kirk said. "To step through there, lose oneself in another world—"
He was interrupted by a shout and a scrambling sound. He spun. McCoy, who evidently had been quite nearby, was headed straight for the time vortex at a dead run. Nobody but Kirk and Spock were anywhere near him.
Spock dropped the tricorder and intercepted, but McCoy, his eyes frighteningly wild, twisted away from him. That left no one but Kirk, who made a flying dive; but McCoy did a little dance step of broken field maneuvering and was free. Kirk landed painfully and rolled over.
"Bones!" he shouted. "No, no!"
But he was in time only to see McCoy disappear into the cloudy octagonal frame, his body popping out of sight as though it had been swallowed. Then the vortex was as blank as it had been when they first saw it.
"Where is he?" Kirk demanded.
"He has passed into what was," said the voice of the Guardian.
"Captain," said Uhura, a little breathlessly. She had arrived on the run. "I've lost contact with the ship. I was talking to them, and it suddenly went dead. No static; just . . . nothing."
"The communicator is all right?"
"Yes, sir. It just seems like there's nothing up there."
The Guardian said, "Your vessel, your beginning, all that you knew is gone."
Kirk felt a fearful sinking of his heart, remembering that episode when he and Spock and an archaic man named John Christopher had fought not to be noticed by the world of the 1970s. He said grayly, "McCoy has somehow changed history."
Scott had joined the party. He said, "This time we're stranded, Captain?"
Kirk did not answer, but Spock nodded. "With no past—no future."
"Captain," Uhura said. "I'm . . . I'm frightened."
Kirk looked slowly up into the black and star-littered sky of the nameless planet, empty now of the Enterprise, without even a sun to give it warmth and joy.
"Earth's not even out there," he said. "Not the one we knew. We are totally alone—without even a history."
"We shall have to remake it," Spock said.
"How, Mr. Spock?"
"We will have to go back in time ourselves—attempt to set right whatever it was that the doctor changed. I was recording images at the time he left. By synchronizing just out of phase with that, I believe I can approximate when to jump. Perh
aps within a month before he arrived. Or a week if we are lucky."
"Guardian!" Kirk said. "If we are successful . . ."
"Then you will be returned. It will be as though none of you had gone."
"Just finding McCoy back there," Scott said, "would be a miracle."
Spock said, "There is no alternative."
"Scotty, when you think you've waited long enough—whatever 'long enough' might mean now—then . . ." Kirk shrugged. "Each of you will have to try it. Even if you fail, you'll be alive in some past world, somewhere."
"Stand ready, Captain," Spock said. "I think the time is coming around again."
They were standing in a seamy, down-at-the-heels city street, with murky glass storefronts and an occasional square four-wheeled vehicle. Over one store was a large sign proclaiming:
CCC CAMPS—SIGN UP HERE
and beside it, another store with a sign that said FREE SOUP and a smaller sign with an arrow, reading FORM A LINE. Queues of shabby men in caps and shapeless coats were moving, very slowly, into both stores.
Spock said, bemused, "Is this the heritage my mother's people brag about?"
"This," Kirk said with disgust, "is what it took us five hundred years to crawl up from. Never mind that now—somebody's going to spot us pretty quickly, and our clothes aren't exactly period costumes. Let's do something about that first."
He drew Spock down the alley in which they had first popped into this world. "There's a line of clothes back there."
"I'm afraid I will draw attention either way, Captain."
"Well, Mr. Spock," Kirk said, "if we can't disguise you, we'll have to find a way to explain you. Here, put these on." He pulled down from a line two shirts, two pairs of pants, an old jacket and a wool stocking-cap.
"You might see if you can locate me a ring for my nose," Spock said. "But Captain, aside from the fact that this is theft, I do not believe we ought to change clothes out in the open. As I remember your history, old Earth was rather stuffy about such matters."