by Judith
“Kirk to Exeter.” His voice sounded odd in the closed-in space of the helmet he wore. “The coordinates are perfect.”
He heard the Exeter’s transporter technician reply. “Energizing.”
Three more columns of sparkling light appeared. They coalesced into Spock, McCoy, and Uhura.
Kirk heard Uhura gasp in astonishment.
Spock immediately held up a vacuum-armored tricorder. “Fascinating.”
McCoy checked his own scanners and grunted in disbelief. Then his voice crackled over the helmet speaker. “Forget ‘fascinating,’ Spock. How about downright impossible?”
On the barren rocks and soil of Talin’s moon, beneath the blazing radiation of unfiltered sunlight and completely exposed to the hard vacuum of space, there was life.
Kirk moved forward with long, low-gravity strides to meet it.
What he approached was obviously a base of sorts. Parts of it were alien. Parts of it were understandable. Kirk could see about twenty of the sleek, pinch-waisted shuttles hidden in the shadows of a rocky overhang. Each shuttle was about ten meters long—though no two were exactly the same, and while some were parked neatly side by side, others were stacked on top of each other like a pile of kindling. The overhang had protected them from direct overhead observation by the Talin and the FCO, though Kirk couldn’t understand why the rest of the base had not been detected by the FCO’s long-range scans—especially the aliens. There were hundreds of them.
The aliens’ bodies reminded Kirk of wasps, but with only two segments, mottled with black and glistening silver. Their basic shapes were also similar to the shuttles’, though the creatures were only between one and two meters in length. They were supported and moved across the lunar soil by two sets of four spindly silver legs each. One set sprang from their forward segment, the other set from their hind segment, and their bodies were slung beneath their highest leg joints like a spider’s.
The aliens’ legs ended in wide flattened pads which kept them from sinking into the loose lunar soil. Kirk noticed that some of the creatures moved slowly around their base, while others scuttled back and forth faster than a human could run, sometimes springing ten meters in a single jump.
Cautiously, Kirk edged closer to the creatures as they swarmed around their shuttles and the large silver and black domes that were scattered nearby. So far, they had not acted as if they had detected him or the others, but he kept his vacuum phaser drawn and ready. He reminded himself that these creatures had destroyed a world.
Kirk stopped ten meters from the nearest dome—it looked as if metallic lava had bubbled out of the ground and frozen solid. The creatures crawled over it and around it, their forward legs tapping soundlessly all over its surface while their hind legs propelled them. From the corner of his faceplate, Kirk saw the rest of his landing party draw nearer to his position.
“They’re not in any sort of pressure suits, are they, Spock?” Kirk asked.
“Indeed not,” Spock answered. “Their exterior carapaces seem impervious to the vacuum and the radiation of space.”
“Are they machines?” Uhura asked. Kirk saw her working with a large, flat computer board with enlarged controls for use by personnel in protective gear.
“That’s the incredible part,” McCoy answered, checking his medical scanners. “They’ve got organic parts inside. There are pressurized pockets in them but don’t ask me how. And free water. A high metabolism rate. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re living off the radiation from the sun somehow.”
Kirk was fascinated by the aliens’ thin legs. They seemed to be made of solid metal. “Are they some kind of artificial construct, Spock? Organics built into a mechanical shell?”
“I see no indication of anything artificial in their structure, Captain. I believe that these are living creatures, either genetically engineered or independently evolved to live in hard vacuum.”
“Sir,” Uhura interrupted. “I am picking up a great deal of low-level radio static. And it seems to be coming from these…things.”
“Try to localize it, Uhura.” Kirk watched as one of the creatures scurried only two meters from him without slowing. It carried a chunk of lunar rock. “Any idea what kind of sensory organs they might have, Spock?”
“None whatsoever, Captain. I am continuing with my readings.”
A second alien followed the path made by the first, also carrying lunar material. Then a third carrier went by. Kirk stepped forward into the pockmarked trail left by their footpads. A fourth came along and bumped into Kirk, almost knocking him over. Kirk was shaken by the unexpected force of the creature’s impact, but he stayed upright.
“Be careful, Captain. Their legs obviously have great strength,” Spock warned.
Kirk remained motionless as the alien that had collided with him dropped the rock it carried and raised itself on its hind legs until its segments were at Kirk’s waist level. Its forward segment angled upward and its second set of legs waved out like insect feelers until they made contact with him.
Kirk heard Spock’s urgent message. “Spock to Exeter. Lock transporter on the captain and prepare for emergency beam-out on my signal.”
“It’s all right, Spock,” Kirk said. He kept completely still as the creature’s legs tapped lightly all over him, following the contours of his silver environmental suit and the paths of the red and blue life-support tubes. “Their forward legs are their sensory organs. It’s including me in its interior map of its surroundings.”
The creature finished tracing Kirk, then dropped back down to its original stance, picked up its rock, and diverted around him. Relieved, Kirk placed his phaser on its adhesion patch at the side of his suit.
“How are your pressure readings, Captain? Did the creature create any punctures?” Spock asked.
Kirk glanced down at the indicator lights built into his helmet. “All readings are green, Spock. You can cancel the transpor—”
Another creature came charging toward him. Kirk braced himself for impact. But the creature smoothly swerved just as the first one had done after its examination of Kirk.
“Fascinating,” Spock said. “Apparently they can communicate through the vacuum.”
Kirk’s next idea was impossible, but then so were the creatures. “Uhura, is there any chance that the creatures are communicating by radio transmissions?”
“I—uh, why not? I’ll try to link up with one.” Uhura bounded over to where two of the creatures were stroking a small silverish bubble that appeared to have sprouted from the ground. One was exuding a dull black paste from an opening in its forward segment and then rubbing the substance against the bubble. Nearby, another creature appeared to be actually consuming rocks which had been deliberately stacked near it. Kirk wondered if he were watching the creatures process building materials.
Kirk hopped back to Spock and McCoy. “Any idea what those bubbles are?” he asked. “Or what they’re made from?”
“They are composed of the same substance as the creatures’ carapaces, and the coverings of the shuttles,” Spock added. “Their composition is also virtually identical to that of the surrounding rocks and soils.” Spock glanced down at his tricorder. “Captain, I believe that we must be looking at different versions of the same life-form. Or at the very least, different species who share the same evolutionary past.”
“Are you saying the shuttles are alive?”
Spock pointed his tricorder in the direction of the shuttles. “They appear to be dormant in the shadow of the overhang, but their shape and coloration are suggestive of the smaller creatures.”
“Jim, I’m picking up something odd from one of the bubbles,” McCoy suddenly said. “That one over there.”
McCoy took two long strides to land beside a bubble almost five meters in circumference. Its surface was like the creatures’, mottled silver and black, shining in some areas, dull in others.
“Bones, do you think they could be egg casings?” Kirk asked. “Like a horta’s?”
“That’s what I thought at first, too,” McCoy said. His gloved fingers worked clumsily at the scanner he held to the bubble. “I am getting life readings from it, but they’re different from the ones I took from the creatures themselves.”
“Odd,” Spock confirmed, reading from his own tricorder. “There appears to be a pressurized atmosphere inside. Well insulated, and with a quantity of liquid water.”
“But what kind of life-form’s in there?” Kirk asked.
“Low-level plant analogue, Captain.”
“Plant life?” Kirk repeated. “You’re sure there’s nothing higher?”
“Most certain,” Spock confirmed.
Kirk pulled his phaser from the side of his suit, twisted the intensity setting on it, and fired at the bubble before either Spock or McCoy could say anything to change his mind.
A long stream of white vapor sprayed up from the small hole the phaser beam made. The vapor instantly changed to solid crystals and for a few moments it appeared to snow around the bubble. As the crystals sublimated in the vacuum, the area around the bubble slowly cleared again. The only difference now was that a thick sludge oozed from the hole, freezing as it fell to the ground in fist-size chunks. It glittered with a white gloss of fine frost, but the color of the sludge was apparent: purple.
“It’s algae, isn’t it?” Kirk said. “The same organism that’s taken over the oceans of Talin IV.”
Spock held his tricorder to the mass of thick, freezing material that pushed through the bubble’s skin. “You are correct, Captain. But how did you decide this? It is not an obvious conclusion.”
McCoy didn’t agree. “Why not, Spock? The creatures are probably growing their food down there.”
“Doctor McCoy, as both our readings show, these creatures do not require food. They thrive on hard radiation. The algae cannot sustain them.”
Kirk saw a flurry of movement to the side. A herd of twenty creatures was leaping directly toward the leaking bubble. “Stand back, gentlemen. Looks like the repair crew has arrived.”
The three men jumped away from the bubble just as the creatures swarmed around and over it. They quickly found the hole and cleaned the frozen algae away. Then Kirk saw several creatures, smaller and shinier than the others, who appeared at the edge of the repair team. The larger creatures formed a chain and passed the smaller ones over their bodies until they were deposited at the side of the bubble. The smaller creatures’ footpads were twice the size of the larger creatures’ pads and when they rubbed them over the hole, the pads began to glow white hot, melting the skin of the bubble to heal the opening.
“I hope you’re recording that, Spock,” McCoy said. “Because even seeing it myself I don’t believe it.”
“Captain!” It was Uhura calling. Kirk tried to find her silverclad form.
“State your location, Uhura,” he said.
“Near the east side of the overhang, Captain. And you were right, sir—they are talking over radio frequencies!”
Uhura had found a large boulder on which to place her computer panel. Nearby, one creature methodically ripped apart a second. The second creature did not try to escape. A small pile of other disassembled creatures was nearby.
Uhura laboriously punched in commands on the panel. “I’m patching through their main channel to our helmet speakers, sir. They seem to be able to generate low-frequency radio waves through an organ in their forward segment. They don’t have much range, but the ability is definitely there.”
McCoy stepped over to examine the creature, casting his shadow across it. “How can a being evolve an organ to take advantage of radio?”
Spock answered. “Life constantly adapts to use the features of the environment in which it finds itself, Doctor. Our eyes have evolved to sense electromagnetic radiation of certain frequencies. Radio waves are also electromagnetic waves at other frequencies. It is a predictable development, however unlikely.”
Suddenly Kirk’s helmet speaker crackled with a confused flurry of static.
“That’s their language?” McCoy asked.
“That’s a raw signal,” Uhura explained. “I’m going to tie it through the universal translator.”
“Captain,” Spock began, “since this language is completely alien, it will take the translator several hours to supply equivalent cognates. I suggest we return to the Exeter to replenish our consumables.”
“Good idea, Spock. Then we can—”
“Strange life block food.” It was the clipped, mechanical voice of the universal translator circuitry. “Strange life block food over here over here.”
McCoy smirked. “Several hours? I guess you missed reading about a few upgrades to the translator, Mr. Spock.”
“No, Doctor,” Uhura said. “The universal translator shouldn’t have been able to even start decoding this kind of language for hours.” She held the computer board at an angle to clumsily punch in more commands. “I hate these gloves,” she complained.
At the same time, the translator’s voice kept repeating, “Strange life block food over here over here. Strange life—”
“Any idea what it means, Spock?”
“I’ll let you know in a moment, Captain.”
Suddenly, McCoy shouted in surprise, and Kirk awkwardly turned to see four creatures grab the doctor’s legs. “Kirk to Exeter!” he transmitted. His hand went to his phaser. The creatures dragged McCoy through the lunar dirt by his feet, sending up a cloud of billion-year-old dust.
Then they let him go.
Kirk leapt over to him. “Are you all right, Bones?”
“Just fine,” McCoy grumbled. He pushed himself up from the ground. His suit was streaked with black lunar soil. “And thank you for your help, Mr. Spock. From where you were standing, you must have seen them coming.”
“I did, Doctor.”
“Then why didn’t you do something about it?” Kirk asked.
“The creatures were simply responding to their fellow being’s call for assistance. Dr. McCoy’s shadow covered the creature we were observing, thus cutting off its supply of food—the sun’s radiation. As you will notice, the creature’s transmission has now ceased.”
McCoy hopped back to join Uhura and Spock. “You might have warned me anyway.”
“Yes,” Spock said. “I suppose I might have. Next time, Dr. McCoy.”
Kirk went to Uhura. “Good work, Uhura. How’d you get such a quick translation?”
“The creatures are speaking in a language already known to the translator, sir.” Uhura turned to look questioningly at Kirk through her faceplate. “They are speaking in the primary language of Talin.”
“Spock, analysis.” Kirk was at a loss for an explanation. The creatures could not possibly be indigenous to Talin. Neither did the planet have the genetic engineering technology to create them.
“Sir, if my preliminary conclusions are correct, then what we see here are not intelligent life-forms. They are little more than worker insects, a group hive mentality which has worked to make Talin IV a suitable environment for growing the algaelike organism. In the absence of any language of their own, and given that they are able to transmit and receive radio messages, it seems likely that they have absorbed the Talin language by listening to the planet’s radio transmissions over the years.”
“Years, Spock?” McCoy asked.
“In the time that this system has been under FCO jurisdiction, no alien vessels have been sighted entering it. Therefore, the creatures have been here since before the FCO arrived.”
“Sharing the same moon,” Kirk mused. “And no one ever detected them.”
“Since their carapaces are composed of the same material which covers this moon, it seems probable that the creatures reproduce by constructing duplicates of themselves from the raw materials at hand. The FCO’s general scans would not have been able to distinguish the drones from their surroundings. I shall recommend to Starfleet that, in the future, airless planetoids should be scanned for small pocke
ts of organic surface life contained within apparently nonliving shells.”
Kirk watched as the nearby creatures finished ripping apart their victim. No, not victim, Kirk corrected himself. Obviously what he was watching was a part of their life cycle. No sooner were the pieces of the first creature dragged away, than another creature hurried up, also to be disassembled. One of its legs appeared to be damaged. How efficient, Kirk thought uneasily.
McCoy was still caught by Spock’s explanation of the creatures’ language. “So what you’re saying, Spock, is that these things are like mindless parrots, just mimicking what they’ve heard?”
“Not at all, Doctor. The fact that one of them was able to complain about the shadow you cast indicates that they have also absorbed some of the language’s context and meaning, just as some Earth primates have learned to use symbolic languages, though they cannot develop such languages on their own.”
Kirk checked his suit’s oxygen level. They would have to beam up in less than twenty minutes, and Spock and McCoy would have ample time to continue their discussion then. “Forget the details, Spock. The bottom line is that if these creatures have a language that they use, then we can use it, too.”
“To do what?” McCoy asked.
“Why, Bones,” Kirk said. “To talk to them.”
Kirk hopped over to the creature that had complained about McCoy’s shadow. It used its forward legs to grip onto a section of the creature being taken apart, then kept twisting the section around in the same direction, almost in an unscrewing motion, until it fell off. The creature being dismantled did not appear to experience any discomfort.
“Uhura,” Kirk said, “can you link my helmet communicator to this one right here?”
Uhura brought her board over. “Aye, sir. Setting the frequencies now. Go ahead.”
Kirk moved to cast his shadow on the creature.
The translator circuits came to life instantly. “Strange life block food over here over here. Strange life block food.”
Kirk spoke. “Would you like the food to continue?”