by Gene DeWeese
Kirk nodded. "Very well, Mr. Spock. Make the necessary preparations."
It took Spock, Commander Scott, and a half-dozen Engineering personnel two hours to install one of the Aragos-modified sensors in the shuttlecraft and to jury-rig a link that allowed Spock to control the shuttlecraft through the Enterprise helm. During that time, whatever it was that hovered invisibly over everyone in the Enterprise grew weaker, despite their proximity to the gate, and by the time the shuttlecraft was ready for launch, there was little more than what could be considered "normal" tension anywhere among the crew. Only Spock insisted that he could still sense the to-him-unmistakable signature of its alien presence, but it had no discernible effect on him as he maneuvered the shuttlecraft out of the hangar deck and brought it to a stop less than a kilometer from the gate.
At that distance, the view of the gate through the shuttlecraft sensors was even more spectacular than it was from the thousand-kilometer-distant Enterprise. Kirk and dozens of others were reminded of the tapes of the first ship to not just orbit Jupiter but to descend directly into the center of that massive, millennia-spanning storm still known as the Great Red Spot. The vibrant colors shifted wildly and continuously, sometimes vanishing into momentary blackness or a blinding flash of white. Shapes like kaleidoscopic Rorschach tests appeared and disappeared seemingly at random, sometimes bursting out from a single point, sometimes snapping into view, appearing fully formed in an instant, sometimes emerging slowly, like an approaching dawn.
"Quiescent phase due to begin in three minutes," Spock announced as he slowly and meticulously began to move the modified shuttlecraft forward. Chekov, at the navigator's station next to him, alternately watched the viewscreen and his own controls, while at the science station, Sulu's intensity as he watched its readouts almost matched Spock's.
On the main screen, the ever-shifting fabric of the gate continued to expand until, only yards short of its goal, the shuttlecraft halted. For a moment, then, Spock switched to the visible image being transmitted from a camera mounted near the rear of the shuttle. Instantly, the pyrotechnics of the gate vanished, leaving only the stars and the distant Shapley center and, in the foreground, the forward ninety percent of the exterior of the shuttlecraft. Satisfied, he switched back to the view from the sensors and waited.
Abruptly, the image on the viewscreen changed as the gate entered its supposedly quiescent state. The vibrant, computer-generated colors, representing whatever unknown energies the Aragos-modified sensors detected, vanished in an instant, replaced by a uniform gray. Even at this distance, no more than a dozen yards, no detail was visible. Through the eyes of the sensors and the computer, the gate looked like nothing more than an impossibly massive fogbank.
"Moving forward to contact," Spock announced impassively.
On the screen, nothing seemed to change. The only motion was the clock display in one corner of the screen, flickering as it counted down the seconds that remained in the quiescent cycle.
"One meter to contact," Spock said, observing not the screen but one of the jury-rigged readouts. Chekov only nodded. His readings indicated that the Enterprise remained motionless with respect to the gate.
"Contact … now," Spock said.
The clock display brightened as it passed the nine minute mark, but that was all that happened. The "fog" on the viewscreen remained unchanged.
"According to the instruments," Spock said, "the forward one point five meters of the shuttlecraft are within the gate. I am holding at that point."
For a good fifteen seconds, there was only silence and motionlessness, both on the screen and on the bridge, as Spock waited and watched.
Finally, he tapped a switch, once more bringing up the camera image from the rear of the shuttlecraft. As before, the bulk of the craft itself filled the bottom of the screen, while the rest of the screen held only the star field and the distant, deadly glow of the Shapley center. To visible light, even at this distance, the gate did not exist. The forward meter and a half of the shuttlecraft, supposedly within the boundary of the gate, appeared unaffected.
Glancing at the clock display, Spock nudged the shuttlecraft forward another meter, then two.
Still there was no change, either in the visible image or in the one provided by the sensors, although the sensors, mounted in the front bulkhead of the shuttlecraft, were theoretically within the gate.
"Fascinating," Spock murmured, and he nudged the shuttlecraft forward again.
Abruptly, approximately as the midpoint of the shuttlecraft crossed the theoretical boundary, everything changed.
The shuttlecraft vanished instantaneously from the Enterprise sensors, including the Aragos-modified ones.
Simultaneously, all signals from the shuttlecraft were cut off, as if the shuttlecraft itself had ceased to exist.
The gate itself, still visible through the Enterprise sensors, shimmered for a fraction of a second.
Then, without warning, the signals from the shuttlecraft returned. The visible image the signals brought, however, showed nothing, only total blackness without even the faintest star in the background. The sensors showed little more, only a dull, all enveloping grayness, not unlike what they had shown from just outside the gate.
Suddenly, the gate shrank. Still visible on an auxiliary screen through the Enterprise sensors, the chaos of colors and shapes resumed their mad dance. Despite the clock display's insistence that there were another seven point eight minutes left in the quiescent state, the gate had resumed its cycle.
From the shuttlecraft signals, however, there was no indication of any change. It still hung in a featureless limbo.
Experimentally, Spock operated the control that would turn the shuttlecraft and bring it back out.
On his instruments, there was no feedback, no indication whether the shuttlecraft had responded or not.
And the shuttlecraft did not emerge from the gate.
"It appears," Spock said slowly, "that it would have been advantageous for me to have piloted the shuttlecraft personally after all."
Kirk shook his head. "I'd sooner lose a dozen shuttlecraft than one first officer, Mr. Spock. Besides, it could still—"
Suddenly, without warning, the Enterprise shuddered violently, as if caught in the grip of a massive tractor beam, and, an instant later, began to plunge helplessly forward toward the heart of the gate.
Chapter Ten
"REVERSE POWER, Mr. Spock!" Kirk snapped.
"It has already been done by the computer, Captain," Spock said, but even as he spoke, his fingers were stabbing at the controls, overriding the computer. As he had assumed, it did no good. Maximum impulse power was already being applied.
"Mr. Spock! What's happening?"
"Unknown, Captain. It appears that we are being drawn toward the gate by gravitational turbulence of unprecedented magnitude. Only a neutron star or a black hole—"
Abruptly, Spock stopped speaking, his eyes on the visible image on the auxiliary viewscreen. Directly in the path of their headlong flight, the shuttlecraft had reappeared, emerging from the gate. His attempt to reverse its course had apparently been effective after all.
Silently, his fingers darted across the controls, and two things happened virtually simultaneously. The shuttlecraft vanished, once again swallowed up by the gate, presumably drawn back in by the same wave of gravitational turbulence that gripped the Enterprise. A split second later, the impulse engines shifted out of full reverse and instead directed all their power at ninety degrees to the ship's path in a desperate attempt to change that path, to steer the Enterprise not directly away from the gate but away from that point in the gate where, in all likelihood, the shuttlecraft lay waiting for collision.
Kirk and Chekov and the others on the bridge, realizing what Spock was attempting, could only brace themselves.
For a moment, the visible image of the star field on the auxiliary screen shifted, telling Spock that some minuscule course change had been accomplished. But was it en
ough?
Even as the question formed in the Vulcan's mind, the Enterprise slewed into the gate.
And the universe vanished.
The Enterprise bridge was gone.
The stars beyond it were gone.
Spock's own body and all the associated physical sensations were gone.
Only his mind, fully functional and fully rational, remained.
This was the "nothingness" that the Enterprise sensors had registered—or, more accurately, had been unable to register—during its two previous passages through the gate. There had been no time—less than a millisecond—for this limbo to register on human or Vulcan senses.
But now—
How fast had the gravitational turbulence been dragging them? How much had the impulse engines been able to slow them? Were the impulse engines still operating, as the shuttlecraft engines apparently had continued to operate? Were they having any effect if they were? Did this "space" inside the gate have the same dimensions at all times, or did it vary as the gate went through its cycle?
Spock had no way of knowing the answers to any of these questions. He could not even be positive that, here, anything physical existed.
He thought.
Obviously, he still existed. He could not feel his body, nor could he see anything around him, but he—the thinking, reasoning entity that was Spock—obviously still existed.
Twice before, he, and everyone else on the Enterprise, had passed through this gate and returned to normal space, physically whole and mentally unimpaired. Admittedly, those previous exposures to this environment had been much briefer, but there was no reason to believe they would not be whole when they returned from this longer stay.
If they returned.
If they were not trapped here forever.
But even if they were trapped here—
Suddenly, an eagerness gripped Spock, an anticipation he could not remember having felt—could not remember having allowed himself to feel—in the whole of his rigidly controlled adult life. He was, literally, in a whole new world, a whole new universe perhaps, all aspects of which were unknown to him.
He had a whole new universe to learn about. He had only to determine how that learning could be accomplished.
Perhaps he would someday return to normal space, to the body whose sometimes illogical requirements had made it a burden far more often than it had been a help. Perhaps he would bring with him the knowledge he had gained here. That, he suspected, would be preferable, but it was far from essential.
To gain knowledge, that was the one essential. And now, with no body to weigh him down, with no external responsibilities to fulfill, he could devote himself to that purpose and that purpose alone.
For what could have been a minute, or an hour, or an eternity, he simply existed, anticipating the beginning of that leisurely pursuit, reveling in the pleasures he knew it would bring, pleasures he had until now denied himself.
Finally, he stirred.
He reached out with his mind and found—nothing.
The first stirrings of uneasiness brushed at the edges of his thoughts.
He reached out again.
Still there was nothing, and the uneasiness edged higher.
Surely—
Abruptly, Spock's thoughts turned inside out. The anticipation he had allowed himself to feel turned to a dread he could not control. To have an eternity of time before him, to have nothing to fill that time, to have nothing to learn—
Desperately, he reached out yet again, bringing to bear all the mental discipline at his command. Surely there must be something besides himself in this limbo. The others aboard the Enterprise—their minds must certainly have survived the same as his.
And as their remembered images formed in his mind, he felt their presence.
Somewhere in this seeming nothingness around him, they still existed, each as alone as he himself.
More alone, for they did not have the mental training and discipline he had been subjected to. Nor did they have the inherent ability to voluntarily touch the mind of another directly, without the need for physical contact.
And with that thought came another: he did have responsibilities here.
He had allowed himself to forget, but his responsibilities were, in fact, even greater than they had been in that other, physical universe. In this seemingly nonphysical environment, he was better suited to survive with his sanity intact than were any of the others; therefore, it was his responsibility to help them if he could. His first thoughts—illusions, really—of total freedom from all things physical had been mere rationalizations, reactions to a lifetime of discipline and responsibility. Somewhere deep within him, no matter how sternly repressed, no matter how illogical, a desire for release—for escape from reality—existed, must have always existed. That had been the source of those feelings.
But now that he was consciously aware of its existence, this desire could be dealt with, as had all the other, shallower emotions that his human half had threatened him with over the decades.
Once again, he reached out, searching for the minds of the captain, Dr. McCoy, and the others.
But even as he did, even as he felt the first glimmerings of contact, he felt something else.
Fear. The same fear he had observed so dispassionately on the bridge of the Enterprise.
But here there was more.
There was another being hovering about him.
A sapient being, as capable of thought as Spock himself.
It was not attacking or even threatening him, but it was, without doubt, associated with the fear.
He did not know how he knew, yet he accepted this illogical knowledge and treated it as real.
Whatever had touched his mind on the bridge of the Enterprise, in normal space, was here, in this limbo within the gate.
But there was a difference. Though the fear was present, it was a fine, chilling mist, not the heavy, waterlogged dread it had been in that other, now-distant world.
And the contact that Spock sensed was unlike any he had ever experienced. Paradoxically, fascinatingly, it was both delicate and powerful, like a moonlit spider web held rigidly in place by an invisible force field.
Did it somehow reflect the mind behind it? he found himself wondering. A powerful mind capable of the most intricate patterns of thought? Or was it simply the effect of this place that he found himself in?
Before he could attempt to speculate further, a new thought appeared in his mind. The being, whatever it was, wanted something.
There were no words, no images, only an impression so strong that it amounted to a firm conviction.
It wanted something.
And it was not leaving—could not leave—until it obtained that something.
Suddenly, with shocking unexpectedness, a sense of motion gripped Spock, a swirling, dizzying motion.
Still there was no sense of his own physical body, and yet there was an overwhelming sensation of spinning wildly, as if his very mind were being drawn into a deadly, silent whirlpool.
For an instant, he tried to resist, but his efforts were as useless as the raging outputs of the impulse engines had been against the impossible spurt of gravity that had dragged the Enterprise here.
Then, as quickly as it had vanished, the universe returned.
As if a light had suddenly been turned on, Spock found himself once again on the bridge of the Enterprise.
His fingers still hovered over the controls he had pressed to divert the Enterprise from the path that would have sent it smashing into the shuttlecraft, though it surely must have been hours since that action. In an act that was as much instinct as logic, he killed the impulse engines.
According to the chronometer, less than five seconds had passed.
Chekov, his hands reaching for the same controls they had been reaching for before, was still next to him at the navigator's station. The captain, still seated in the command chair, was still turning toward Sulu at the science station.
/> Chekov's hands faltered and stopped. His eyes were wide with surprise. The captain brought the chair to a lurching stop and swung it back to face the viewscreen.
"Spock, what the devil have you—" McCoy began angrily.
Kirk cut him off with a terse, "Later, Bones!"
All eyes were on the viewscreen. The universe, Spock and the others saw instantly, had not fully returned after all. There were no stars, no blackness of space. There was only an indistinct grayness, like the surface of the gate during its supposedly quiescent period.
And, in the foreground, the shuttlecraft.
"Can I assume, Mr. Spock," Kirk said quietly, "that this is the space you wanted to explore?"
"At least a portion of it, Captain." He nodded.
"And the reason for the gravity wave that dragged us in?"
"I can only speculate, Captain, but it is logical to assume that it was triggered in some way by the shuttlecraft's activities, perhaps its reemergence, which was virtually simultaneous with the start of the gravity wave."
"But the complete Enterprise emerged from it before, and nothing similar happened."
"Possibly the effect is related to the velocity with which the entrance or exit is made, Captain. Doubtless, the gate was designed for ships to pass through rapidly. The extreme slowness with which the shuttlecraft entered and exited may have strained the system in some way or caused a malfunction. Remember that massive gravitational turbulence has been associated with most of the other gates we have encountered."
"All of which is academic," Kirk said abruptly, "if we can't find our way back out of here. For a start, let's see if we still have any control over the shuttlecraft."
Experimentally, Spock sent a command.