by Gene DeWeese
"Five hundred million kilometers, sir," Sulu called out.
"Hold at that distance," Kirk said. Then, punching the button that would send his voice throughout the ship, he continued, "We are now a half-billion kilometers from the Sagittarius gate and holding. We will resume our sublight approach in another minute."
Kirk paused, his eyes once again darting briefly toward the viewscreen and the flickering gate. "Everyone," he resumed, "remember the drill. From this point on, no one, absolutely no one, is to be left alone at any time. Groups of three or more are to be maintained whenever feasible. All personnel must—repeat, must—carry phasers, set and locked on medium stun. If anyone—and that emphatically includes myself and all senior officers—displays any of the symptoms previously displayed by Captain Chandler or Ensign Stepanovich and appears to be losing control, whoever notes those symptoms is to act immediately."
Turning back to the viewscreen, he watched it another long moment and then said, "Resume approach, Mr. Sulu."
Even more slowly, the Enterprise began again to inch forward. McCoy, looking annoyed at the orderly who had insisted on accompanying him, stepped onto the bridge as Sulu announced the three-hundred million-kilometer mark.
At approximately two hundred fifty million kilometers, Spock looked up sharply from the science station instruments. For a moment, he stood perfectly motionless, expressionless. Then he turned to face Kirk.
"Captain, the manifestation I experienced upon the release of Captain Chandler has returned."
All eyes focused abruptly on Spock. "All stop, Mr. Sulu," Kirk snapped. "Ready to reverse power on my command."
"Aye-aye, sir. Ready."
"Mr. Spock. Evaluation. Is it the same as before?"
For another five seconds, Spock stood motionless, his head cocked slightly, as if trying to listen to something only he could hear. Kirk could not keep a chill from settling on his spine, and he noticed that the others were as motionless as Spock.
"It is similar, Captain," Spock said finally, "but not identical in a number of ways. For one, this manifestation is more powerful. For another, although the sensations that I am experiencing arise from within myself, and within myself alone, there is a sense of another being, totally alien, somehow touching me."
A barely perceptible shiver ran through the Vulcan's body, the first time Kirk could remember seeing such a thing.
"I feel it, too, sir." Uhura spoke from the communications station, and as she did, Kirk realized that he, too, was experiencing something similar.
A mild, very mild, version of Chandler's description fit the feeling to some extent. Kirk had a strong and very distinct feeling that something was hovering in the air around him, something elusive and, as Spock had said, alien. He had the uneasy feeling that if he could turn his head quickly enough, he could catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye.
"Reverse power, Mr. Sulu, slowly. Let's see if this thing has a limit to its range."
For a moment, Sulu didn't move, but then, as if suddenly released from invisible restraints, his hands darted to the control board. "Reverse power, sir," he said, his voice loud in what was now an almost breathless silence.
Once again, Kirk spoke on the shipwide intercom. "Contact has apparently been made," he said. "We have experienced sensations indicating the phenomenon associated with the gates is present. Impulse power has been reversed. We are pulling away from the gate and will continue to—"
Abruptly, Kirk stopped, his mind and body almost literally frozen by a sudden, irresistible wave of sheer terror. In the fraction of a second between one word and the next, unreasoning fear swept out of the darkness of space and closed over him like the icy waters of a lightless, bottomless sea.
Chapter Eight
EVERY MUSCLE IN Kirk's body was piano-wire taut, every nerve raw with a hypersensitivity he had never before experienced. His lungs spasmed, pulling in a chestful of air. His fists clenched, his fingernails digging into his palms, threatening to draw blood.
All eyes on the bridge darted toward him. The two security guards who stood on either side of the turbolift doors, as well as the orderly who had accompanied McCoy, had their phasers in hand, waiting tensely, silently.
Spock, one eyebrow angling slightly upward, was the first to speak. "Captain, from the sudden alteration in your own demeanor, I assume that the phenomenon has attached itself directly to you."
"Jim!" McCoy, suddenly coming unfrozen, started to rush forward, but Spock gripped the doctor's arm.
"It would be better, Doctor," Spock said dispassionately, "if you were to maintain your distance and your objectivity."
"Blast you, Spock!" McCoy snapped, trying to wrench free but finding the Vulcan's grip unbreakable. "Can't you see—"
"I see precisely what has happened, Doctor. I also see that if the captain is to successfully combat this phenomenon, he will have need of all the logic and rationality he can muster. The last thing he needs at this precise moment is to witness another person displaying an unwarranted emotional reaction to his own situation. Total rationality and logic are imperative." Spock turned to the helm. "Mr. Sulu, increase reverse power and—"
"No!"
The single word erupted from Kirk's lips like a bullet. Sweat beaded his face and stained his tunic. He clamped his eyes shut but snapped them open almost instantly, as if the darkness behind them was more terrifying than the bridge and the officers around him.
He pulled in a breath, the air rasping through his constricted throat. The cords in his neck stood out like flesh-covered steel rods.
"Spock is right." Kirk's voice was a harsh whisper, each word an almost superhuman effort. "We have to be logical. This phenomenon, this thing—whatever it is—is here, in me. Where it can be observed."
He stopped, and for a moment his mouth worked silently, as if he were suppressing a scream. "For the moment," he went on, his voice still little above a grating whisper, "I am still in control of my actions. Mr. Sulu, keep on the present course at the present speed. I will … describe my impressions as the distance between ourselves and the gate increases."
He turned toward McCoy, the movement stiff, almost spastic. "Bones, get your tricorder operating. Compare your readings with those you got from Captain Chandler."
"Jim, a sedative—"
"No!" Again, the word was like a bullet. "You saw what happened when you and Nkrumah gave Chandler a sedative. The thing left. It ended up in Ensign Stepanovich."
"A milder one, then, something that—"
"No! Even if you were sure it would work, I want to stay alert. I'm not—I don't think I'm about to go berserk, so let's leave things as they are. Just see what you can learn from the outside with the tricorder. I'll see what I can learn from the inside."
Swallowing audibly, McCoy stepped forward, unsheathing the tricorder scanner.
"It's very much like what Captain Chandler said," Kirk continued, struggling with each word. "Logic—which is what I must listen to!—tells me I have nothing to fear. Yet I fear everything! And nothing! I'm not afraid you're going to stab me with a hypo, Bones, or that you're going to break me in two, Mr. Spock. It's just that—that …"
When Kirk fell silent, breathing heavily, McCoy shook his head at the tricorder readings. "Your heart rate is over a hundred and fifty, Jim! And your blood pressure and adrenaline level—it's the same as with Chandler, only worse. Let me give you something to at least try to bring you down off the ceiling before you—"
"No, Bones! As long as it's in me, we know where it is!" Kirk clenched his teeth, then looked toward the viewscreen. "What's our distance, Mr. Sulu?"
"Seven hundred million kilometers, sir."
Kirk was silent for a long moment. Stiffly, he lifted one clenched fist from the arm of the command chair and watched as, one finger at a time, he forced the hand to open.
"Seven hundred ten million, sir."
"If anything," Kirk grated, "it's getting worse." He grimaced, then swallowed audibly. "All st
op, Mr. Sulu. Hold at present distance."
"Aye-aye, sir."
As Sulu's fingers tapped in the orders, Kirk's terror decreased. His heart still pounded, sweat still oozed from his pores, but the effort required not to scream, not to lash out with deadly violence at everyone and everything on the bridge, was not quite as great as it had been a moment before.
"Mr. Spock, I think that's what it wanted," he said. "It's eased off, just a little."
"If it did, I sure as blazes can't tell it from any of your readings!" McCoy snapped, still scowling at the tricorder screen.
Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the terror was gone. One instant, it seemed that every muscle in Kirk's body was fighting every other muscle. The next instant, all resistance vanished. His body twitched and was suddenly limp, as if every ounce of strength had been drained out of him, leaving him a flaccid shell.
He slumped, his breath whooshing out as if from a punctured balloon, his limbs like those of a marionette whose strings had just been slashed.
McCoy's tricorder readings swooped toward levels indicating near-unconsciousness.
Spock elbowed McCoy aside, punching a button on the arm of the command chair. "This is Commander Spock," he said, his voice unchanged. "The phenomenon has apparently left the captain. Be on the alert for its reappearance elsewhere."
He stepped back, looking down at Kirk and McCoy. "Doctor?"
McCoy studied the tricorder another second. "Almost the same as Chandler when it let him go. Readings normal except for residual effects, which will probably take a while to wear off." He paused, looking more closely at the still-slumping captain. Turning, he motioned to the orderly who had accompanied him to the bridge.
"Give me a hand, Davenport. Jim, you'll be better off in sickbay, in bed, at least for an hour or two."
"Never mind, Bones," Kirk said, forcing his rubbery muscles to obey as he straightened himself in the command chair. "Chandler was fine in five or ten minutes, and so will I be. The question right now is, where did whatever it was go? Spock, I think I heard you putting out an alert."
"Affirmative, Captain. However, I do not believe that another crew member has yet been targeted. I am once again experiencing the same manifestation as before." He looked toward Uhura. "And you, Lieutenant? I believe you experienced the earlier sensation the same as I."
"I experienced something, yes, but now—" She shook her head. "I don't know. I'm frightened, but under the circumstances fear would seem normal." A nervous smile flickered across her lips, touching her eyes. "Even logical."
"Perhaps so, Lieutenant," Spock observed. "For humans."
"For anyone with enough brains not to turn his back on a Klingon, Mr. Spock!" McCoy snapped. "Anyone who isn't afraid just doesn't have the sense to—"
"Bones, Spock, enough," Kirk interrupted. "Let's just say for now that if I hadn't hung on to logic for dear life these last few minutes, someone would've had to turn a phaser on me to keep me from killing someone, maybe even myself."
He paused, pulling in a still-ragged breath, and punched the button that would hook him into the shipwide intercom.
"We will be starting toward the gate again in a moment," he said. "The phenomenon, entity, whatever, is no longer attached to me but appears still to be in the vicinity. All my earlier orders still apply."
Turning off the intercom, he looked up at the viewscreen and the still-flickering gate. "Ahead, Mr. Sulu, minimum impulse power. We'll see what we run into this time."
They crept forward for nearly half a day but ran into nothing. Nothing new, at any rate. The sensors continued to show only the gate, flickering in space before them. Spock indicated that according to his own internal barometer, the phenomenon's strength remained constant, the sensations he felt neither increasing nor decreasing as the Enterprise approached the gate.
Several human crew members reported similar sensations, and dozens who were off-watch were awakened by unusually intense nightmares, usually involving childhood phobias they thought they had long since outgrown. With one, it was spiders and snakes. With another, like Chandler, it was simply darkness. Even McCoy reported a "bad dream," involving his own medical equipment.
"All those blasted machines I have to depend on," he said, "just developed lives of their own." He had awakened when a cluster of medical tricorders led by a laser surgery unit cornered him in what looked like a nightmarish version of the engineering deck.
Finally, the Enterprise hovered barely a thousand kilometers from the gate. On the viewscreen, its constantly shifting colors had become as spectacular as a randomized version of the relativistic starbow of warp drive. At this distance, the Aragos-modified sensors were picking up not just the outlines of the ever-changing gate but what looked like details of structure, also continually changing. Whether they were seeing the energies that made up the gate or were glimpsing what lay beyond it, no one could tell.
To many, Kirk included, the display was almost hypnotic. Dozens of secondary screens all over the Enterprise were continually carrying the images to fascinated crew members.
Virtually everyone aboard had a theory, of course, some as nightmarish as the fear itself. Others ranged from misperceived natural phenomena to well-meaning but "careless" higher life-forms. Regardless of their fears and nightmares, however, Kirk knew he had no choice but to go ahead with the investigation, and quickly. Already they had received word from Starfleet Headquarters that two more gates had appeared in Federation space, including one within a half-parsec of Starbase 2.
Spock attempted to establish mental contact, with no apparent results.
"I still have the sense of another being of some kind hovering about me," he said after abandoning the attempt. "But that is all. There are no images, no thoughts that I can detect."
Kirk then ordered a probe, modified to reverse course instantly and return through the gates, launched during one of the gate's so-called quiescent periods. It failed to return.
Spock suggested that the experiment be repeated, this time using a shuttlecraft equipped with remote controls and full sensors.
"Explain," Kirk said. "I assume you have a logical reason for suggesting a shuttle rather than another probe."
"I have a theory that I wish to test, Captain."
"And that theory is?" Kirk prompted when Spock fell silent.
"I would prefer not to go into detail at this time, Captain."
Kirk frowned. "Can I assume, therefore, that you have no logical underpinnings for this theory? That it is simply a 'hunch'?"
"It is a possibility to which certain information points, but it is impossible to determine whether I have interpreted that information correctly."
"You can certainly tell me something." Kirk rose from his chair and stood by the railing next to Spock's science station. "I would like to at least keep up a pretext of commanding my ship and making informed decisions."
"There has never been any doubt, Captain, that you—"
Kirk threw up his hands. "Then talk to me, Mr. Spock, talk to me."
"As you wish, Captain. At this time I can only say that, in reanalyzing the computer records made at the times we passed through the gate, I have been led to believe that the gate consists of more than a simple 'opening' between two widely separated points in the universe. It appears at least possible that its entry and exit points are separated internally by a physical space of some kind, a space of considerable dimension and quite unknown properties. This space may be the source of the phenomenon we are attempting to deal with."
Chapter Nine
KIRK FROWNED. "You're saying we have to pass through some kind of—of connecting tunnel to get through the gate? That it has, in effect, a front door and a back door?"
"I have no knowledge of its shape or nature, Captain. I only know that something—possibly a physical space, possibly something else—appears to separate the entry and exit points of the gate."
"And what led you to this conclusion, Mr. Spock? If it's not violating
your ethics to reveal this information," Kirk added, a touch of sarcasm edging his words.
"It has nothing to do with ethics, Captain, only with a reluctance to advance theories that are not logically supportable."
"Then explain the basis for your hunch, Mr. Spock. I won't hold it against you if you make an occasional intuitive leap." Kirk sat down again.
"As you wish, Captain. As you will recall, for the brief periods of our passage through the gate, the sensors registered nothing. It was as if not only the external universe but the Enterprise itself ceased to exist for those moments. Time, however, apparently continued for us at its normal rate. Our chronometers registered the time we entered the gate and the time we left it. The transit time determined from these readings was markedly different for our two passages. In the first instance, it was on the order of microseconds, whereas during our return, it was well over a millisecond. It was only when I thought to compare the speeds we were traveling during the transits that I discovered that they bore an inverse linear relationship to the transit times. One reason for this relationship could be the presence of a physical space through which the Enterprise passed during those transits. If that is indeed the case, my calculations indicate that the distance traveled during each transit would be approximately one hundred thirty-seven kilometers. With the shuttlecraft, I hope to confirm—or disprove—the existence of that space."
"Why not with another probe?"
"As I'm sure you're aware, Captain, the speed of a probe, once launched, is fixed, and its maneuverability is severely limited. During the ninety-seven milliseconds it would take for a probe to execute a hundred-and-eighty-degree course change, it would exit the far side of the gate. A shuttlecraft, on the other hand, can travel at virtually any speed. It can be guided to the gate and be sent through it as slowly as if it were coming in for a landing on the hangar deck. The advantages for our purposes are obvious. Ideally, of course, I would prefer to pilot the shuttlecraft and observe the phenomenon directly myself, but at this point, such action could be considered premature."