STAR TREK: The Original Series - Garth of Izar

by Pamela Sargent

  “The sensors say four. There are three hanging on top, and two on the Galileo.” Garth paused. “They’re brave. Insanely brave. They have more strength than I thought possible, but they’ll never make it to the shore.”

  * * *

  [214] Sulu stayed ahead of the flock, flying only slightly faster. “Columbus to Galileo,” Kirk’s voice said over the comm.

  “Sulu here.”

  “Mr. Scott has the data he needed. You can let the flock catch up with you now.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Sulu said, and Spock soon saw from the sensor readings that the fliers in the lead had caught up with their shuttlecraft and were now above them.

  “Remain at this altitude, Mr. Sulu,” Spock said. “We are just enough of a distance below them for some of them to be able to land on top of our craft safely when they lose their strength.”

  “But there isn’t room for more than a few of them,” Sulu said.

  “I am aware of that.” Spock was silent for a moment. “Exactly how much are you able to slow down the speed of this craft while still keeping us aloft?”

  “Almost to a hover, Mr. Spock.”

  “At such a speed, can we open our side exit and still fly safely?”

  “Of course,” Sulu replied.

  “Galileo to Columbus,” Spock said into his comm. “Captain Kirk, Mr. Sulu is slowing our speed so that I can open our side exit. If we are moving slowly enough, it may be possible for more exhausted flyers to land safely on our craft and remain there. It may even be possible to—”

  “I’m ahead of you,” Kirk interrupted. “We’re [215] slowing down, too, and we’ll do what we can to get at least a few of the Antosians inside.”

  Spock quickly rose from his seat and moved aft toward the side exit.

  McCoy was pressing the panel that would open the Columbus’s side exit when Garth got up from his station next to Kirk. Garth was holding himself together, doing what had to be done, but McCoy saw that it was costing the man every bit of psychological strength he possessed.

  The side door slid open slowly. McCoy heard the air rushing past the opening. He looked east and saw transporter beams capture several of the large birds. “Scotty’s doing it, Jim!” he called out. “I see fliers disappearing behind us.”

  A hand caught his arm. “Be careful, Doctor,” Garth said.

  McCoy took a step back from the opening. Gray feathered fliers were working furiously to stay in the air. Heads turned toward him and Garth, then stretched on long necks toward the setting sun once more; he glimpsed fear and panic in the black eyes of the birds. One bird glided closer to the shuttlecraft; fatigue showed in the slow flapping of its wide wings, and McCoy knew that this Antosian was suddenly desperate to reach the haven of the Columbus.

  He motioned with his arms. “Over here!” McCoy shouted. At first, the Antosian seemed to drift closer, but then pulled away.

  [216] To the rear of the flock, other fliers disappeared, caught by the Enterprise’s transporter beams. Scotty was doing his job, but the interval between each capture of fliers was long, and over three hundred remained to be plucked from the air. He would do it safely or not at all, McCoy knew; Scotty was a careful engineer. He would save as many as he could, but even the chief engineer and all of the Enterprise’s technology could not save them all.

  A thump sounded from above. Another flier had found safety, but perhaps only a temporary haven, on top of the Columbus.

  The sun had set. Spock watched from the open side of the Galileo as shimmering transporter beams cut through the darkness.

  “We’ve got six Antosians on top of our craft,” Sulu called out from the pilot’s station. They had, Spock knew, been there for some time now. Holding on tightly to one side of the exit with his hands, he leaned out of the opening into the wind as another beam caught a few of the birds.

  “Come inside!” Spock shouted to the flock. But the Antosians flew on, clinging to their irrational pride, ignoring him. He saw two shadowy shapes fall toward the black waters of the sea.

  At the controls of the Columbus, the sensor readings showed Kirk that there were seven Antosians on top of his craft. A small screen on his pilot’s [217] console gave him a view aft, capturing the gray-winged images of fliers. Scotty and the transporter crews still picked off the tired fliers behind them. As Kirk watched each blip disappear on his sensor readout, each gray form vanish from the small viewscreen, he felt a fleeting moment of relief. One more Antosian saved. One more who would not fall into the sea.

  “Another one just dropped into the ocean,” Garth called out from the shuttlecraft opening. “And the ones still flying refuse to enter our craft.”

  “Kirk to Enterprise.”

  “Scott here.”

  “Can you save any of the ones in the water?”

  “We just picked up two from the rear of the flock as they fell,” Scotty replied, “but to try for the ones in the ocean—”

  “Try, Scotty.”

  “We’re trying, Captain, but they’re hard to get a fix on, and we canna risk losing more of the ones who are still aloft.”

  Kirk watched the blips on his small screen disappearing slowly, and knew that time would run out, that the task of moving objects with transporter scanners and beams was laborious and fraught with danger. Again he thought of Garth’s transporter accident.

  “Scotty,” Kirk said, “I’m almost afraid to ask, but how is it going?”

  “It’s going well, but it’s slow work. We have only forty-six so far.”

  “Any damaged people?” Kirk asked.

  [218] “Not yet, Captain, but we canna pick them up at a faster rate, and then it’s a statistical certainty that we’ll have a damaged one sooner or later. Chaotic indeterminacies haven’t yet kicked in.”

  The Antosians on the beach had made a fire for themselves, using deadwood brought down from the hillside and some dry driftwood farther up the beach. Uhura sat with Chekov and Wodehouse several paces away from the Antosians, finishing a meal of rations. The Antosians had gathered their wood listlessly and had been sitting by their fire ever since night had fallen, staring into the flames.

  Uhura had spoken through her communicator to the other band of Antosians on Acra, telling Trialla that most of Hala-Jyusa’s group had transformed themselves into birds to make their escape to the west. Trialla was so silent after hearing the news that Uhura had begun to wonder if the Antosian had accidentally closed the channel.

  “They’ve flown away?” Trialla had said at last. “But they won’t make it to land.”

  “I know,” Uhura replied. “Captain Kirk is out there now, with our shuttlecraft, trying to rescue as many of them as he can. A few stayed behind, on the beach.”

  Trialla had sighed after that, and then signed off.

  The Antosians around the fire had said nothing to one another since sitting down; not one of them had gone up to their tents to fetch food. Suddenly Uhura [219] heard a strange sound from overhead, a long low note that reminded her of the honk of a goose.

  A flock of large birds landed on the beach, only a few paces from the Antosians. Uhura jumped to her feet and watched their wings become arms and their feathers disappear.

  Trialla stood there in the light of the fire, the other members of her band around her, having flown the short distance from their own encampment on Acra. They gazed at the other group for a few moments, then went to them. A few sat down by the fire; others embraced their fellow Antosians, as if trying to console them. Uhura thought of what Wodehouse had told her about the landing party’s experiences. Trialla and her comrades had been captured and threatened by those whom they were now trying to comfort, yet they were reaching out to them. Maybe there was still some hope for the Antosians.

  The birds flying alongside the Galileo emitted high-pitched cries and shrieks. Observing the fliers closest to the shuttlecraft, Spock saw that they were tiring. They had lost altitude; if they dropped any lower, the Galileo would have to skim along the top of th
e ocean to stay below them.

  One bird swooped near the opening, fluttering one wing. Still hanging on to the side of the opening with his right hand, Spock grabbed the flyer by the wing with his left and pulled the Antosian into the shuttle-craft. The bird quickly flowed into the shape of a [220] brown-skinned woman with blond hair. “Save them,” she gasped. “Save the others.”

  “I am endeavoring to do just that,” Spock said. Another bird flew near; Spock managed to pull that flier into the craft. The flier morphed into the form of young Kellin.

  “Mr. Spock,” the young Antosian gasped, “I ... I ...” The effort he had made showed in his drawn, agonized face. He lay on the floor, obviously unable to move, looking as though he had aged several years.

  If Kellin, who had possessed the strength to hold Garth’s form for days, was so drained of energy, Spock was certain that most of the other fliers would soon fail.

  He extended his arm and pulled another flier into the craft.

  McCoy and Garth stayed at the Columbus’s exit for most of the night, rescuing those who flew near enough for them to reach out and pull them inside. They took turns leaving the opening, in order to help those who could still walk to seats and to carry those who were still too exhausted to get themselves well away from the open exit. McCoy had managed to give each of the fifteen Antosians they had so far rescued a cursory scan with his medical tricorder, and had not liked what the readings showed: severe muscular strain, muscle atrophy, hearts damaged by the strain, dehydration, mineral levels so low that it was [221] clear the fliers had used up all of their caloric reserves to stay aloft.

  Fifteen, McCoy thought, and six on top of their shuttlecraft. Sulu had spoken to Kirk only a few minutes ago, saying that there were eleven Antosians inside the Galileo and five hanging on top. Even as the transporter beams searched through the sky to save a few more fliers, others were falling into the sea.

  McCoy clung to the side of the opening, then beckoned to another flier. The salty sea air rushing past his face felt a bit warmer. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep; he squinted against the wind and caught the soft glow of light in the east. Dawn was coming, he realized, and then watched helplessly as yet another flier fell, spiraling into the sea.

  A bird suddenly fell toward him, keening a high-pitched whine. McCoy reached for a wing and pulled the flier inside; it fell, slapping its wings against the floor, still keening. The bird’s cry did not sound like one of agony to McCoy, but of despair. In another moment, the shape-changer lost control of the bird form. An Antosian woman with long black hair lay prone on the deck of the Columbus.

  McCoy knelt at her side and gently eased her onto her back. The yellowish eyes of Hala-Jyusa stared sightlessly up at him; her eyes were red from broken blood vessels, and she was barely breathing. He reached for his medical tricorder.

  Garth was watching from the opening, a look of horror on his face. “Beam her up!” He looked toward [222] the forward end of the craft. “Beam her up!” he repeated. “Kirk, it’s Hala-Jyusa, and she’s dying. Beam her up to sickbay!”

  Kirk shot Garth a quick look from his pilot’s station, then turned back to the controls. “Kirk to Enterprise. Scotty, one to beam up—just inside the opening, next to McCoy. Get a fix on her and—”

  “I canna do it, Captain.” Scotty’s voice sounded faint and far away, but McCoy was able to make out his words. “Every transporter beam is occupied. I would have to break in on a precision program, and then there’s no telling how many I might lose.”

  “Try!” Garth cried out.

  McCoy looked at his tricorder readings and knew then that they had lost the Antosian. “It’s no use, Garth, even if we got her up to the ship. Her heart is burst beyond repair, with massive arterial and pulmonary damage.” He “reached down and closed her bulging, bloodshot eyes. “She flew her heart out.”

  Garth came toward them and seemed to shiver in the sea air coming in through the entrance. He looked down at the lifeless form of Hala-Jyusa, then covered his face with one hand and wept.

  The Galileo and the Columbus crept ahead of the rapidly shrinking flock toward the coast of Anatossia. Kirk sat at his pilot’s station, watching the sensor readout. The blips he saw there were of two kinds: the ones that vanished quickly, and those that plummeted into the sea, still visible but rapidly fading.

  [223] He glanced to his right as Garth sat down next to him. “We have twenty-two Antosians aboard,” he said in a weary voice. “We could squeeze in some more, but the ones still flying aren’t even trying to get inside.”

  Kirk studied another sensor reading. The six fliers who had found safety on top of the Columbus were still there, but had to be tiring. More fliers fell into the sea; the last of the blips disappeared from the screen of data readouts.

  Kirk looked up; through the viewport, in the distance, he could now barely make out the high rocky wall of the Anatossian eastern coast.

  “Kirk to Enterprise.”

  “Scott here.”

  “How many did we pick up, Scotty?”

  “Two hundred, Captain. There are no more coming in now, and it’s drained our energy. We’ll have to shut down for a bit.”

  “We’ve got more than twenty,” Kirk said, “and the Galileo picked up about as many.” He turned his head toward Garth. “Most of them, Garth. Do you hear? We managed to save most of them.”

  Garth nodded at him listlessly. “Yes, Captain, most of them.”

  “Bones,” Kirk called out, “better get away from the exit. I’m going to close it now.”

  “Wait a minute, Jim!” McCoy shouted from the opening. “I see a school of large fish, about twenty of them, heading for the coast.”

  Up ahead, Kirk saw the tiny forms of Antosians at [224] the top of the coastal cliffs, thousands of them, gazing out at the sea. He brought the Columbus lower until the craft was almost skimming the surface of the water. On the screen, the readout now showed twenty-one blips below them, swimming westward.

  McCoy saw the aquatic life-forms clearly now, swimming just below the surface. He had thought that they were large fish, but they bore a closer resemblance to porpoises or dolphins, and McCoy knew them for what they actually were: Antosian shape-changers who had fallen into the sea.

  “Some of our brothers and sisters,” a voice said near him. McCoy turned and noticed that a tall man was standing near him, looking down at the swimmers. “More of us will live.”

  But only a few more, McCoy thought. Most of those who had struck the water would have been far too weak to make this last transformation. Even as he watched, one swimmer morphed into a pale-haired woman and disappeared beneath the waves.

  “Sit down,” McCoy said to the Antosian next to him. “You’re still recovering.” The man made his way back to a. seat. North of the Columbus, the Galileo was also flying close to the sea, following the swimmers.

  “If they can’t make it as birds,” Garth said from his forward station, “then they will succeed as fish.” His voice had regained its former resonance; McCoy heard him over the sound of the rushing wind.

  [225] They flew on after the fish. As the Columbus neared the sheer cliffside, the shuttlecraft began to turn slowly to the south in a long curve. McCoy caught a glimpse of two humanoid figures as they stumbled from the water and fell forward on the black sand just before the shuttlecraft’s door slid shut.

  Chapter Ten

  THE SUN HAD JUST risen out of the ocean. Sulu brought the Galileo in about fifteen meters away from the Columbus. Both shuttlecraft were now about half a kilometer south of the Antosian multitude gathered along the cliffside overlooking the ocean.

  “Kirk to Enterprise,” Kirk said.

  “Scott here.”

  “What’s the current status of those Antosians you rescued?”

  “About a hundred and twenty of them are already back on Acra,” Scotty replied. “We beamed the strongest of them there, the ones who needed no medical care, although it’ll be a while before they regain
all their strength. There’s a security detail with them for the time being, but I canna think any of them are [227] going to try to escape again. Another sixty are resting here under guard until they’re well enough to leave.” The engineer paused. “We lost twelve Antosians, Captain. Five died just after they came through—accordin’ to Dr. Soong, their poor hearts couldna take the strain. The other seven came through scrambled too badly to be saved. And there’s about eighteen of them still in sickbay.”

  “More transporter accidents?” McCoy said from behind Kirk.

  “Dr. Soong said that some of them had suffered strokes, and that the hearts of others were too damaged for them to be moved right now. All of our medical personnel are on duty in sickbay, and Wenallai is helping them with her healing techniques.”

  Kirk was about to ask how Empynes was faring, but kept silent. If Wenallai was trying to help other Antosians, then Empynes no longer needed her aid. That might mean either that her bondpartner had recovered, or else that he was dead.

  “Stay where you are,” McCoy was saying to the Antosians aboard their shuttlecraft, some of whom were in seats but most of whom were now stretched out on the floor. “You’re all in a greatly weakened state. We’ll get food to you as soon as we can, but the best thing you can do right now is rest and give yourselves time to recover.”

  “Stand by, Scotty,” Kirk said. “You may need to beam some more Antosians up to the ship soon.” He got up and made his way past the seated Antosians to [228] McCoy; he wanted to get the physician’s assessment of which of their passengers might require some time in sickbay.

  “Captain Kirk,” Garth suddenly called out, “the sensor readings are showing—” Garth jumped to his feet. “People are diving off the cliffs!”

  Kirk slapped the panel near the exit; the doorway slid open. He was out of the shuttlecraft in an instant, leaping to the ground and then running across the plain of grass. Garth jumped out right behind him and soon caught up with him.