by Jerry Oltion
"Helm, take us to Distrel," he said. "We will beam the captain and the others aboard as soon as they are located. Perhaps, since they have experienced the phenomenon directly, they will know something that we do not."
And if they didn't? Spock didn't know what he would do then. He was sure there had to be a logical explanation for all this, but he had no idea what it might be.
Onscreen the Grand General's messenger approached him again and whispered in his ear. The Grand General scowled at the news, then turned to Spock and said, "Apparently they were here, in the same reception center that your android appeared in, but they attacked one of the instructors and ran away. They could be anywhere on Distrel by now."
Chapter Nineteen
THE NICE THING about stealing a spaceship, thought Scotty, was that you only had to point it at the sky and light it up; you could learn to steer it later. And these fighter craft were already resting at about a thirty-degree angle. Good thing; the Nevisians didn't use a control yoke or a joystick or any other method Scotty was familiar with. They did use ignition keys, for which he was grateful. That meant all the important wires came together in one spot, which saved looking all through the control panel to find the pair that needed shorting out.
The toughest part of the whole job had been climbing into the cockpit in the first place. Since it was raining, the fighter ships had been parked with their canopies down, and it had taken him a few seconds to figure out how to raise one. The guards had caught up with him by then; only the captain's diversion kept them from looking up and spotting him as they ran past.
Once inside he had lowered the canopy again and found the engine start wires, but no obvious steering controls. He had wasted a few more seconds looking for them, but a glance out the window made him decide to launch without. A red-clad Prastorian lay on the ground between the guards and the Enterprise crew, and Captain Kirk, heedless of the danger to himself, was trying to drag him to safety.
Time to provide a diversion for him, Scotty thought. He shorted the ignition wires together and the tiny cockpit rumbled alarmingly as the fuel pumps and ignition chamber came to life right under his feet. It didn't come fast enough for the captain, though; Scotty saw a disruptor bolt strike him square in the side of the head before the guards turned to see who was in the fighter.
"Captain!" he yelled, his instincts telling him to jump out and rush to his friend's aid, but he knew he would never make it. And a second later Kirk vanished anyway, no doubt spirited back to Prastor by whatever strange agency had brought them here.
One of the guards fired at the canopy, and his disruptor charge blew an inch-wide hole in the clear plastic. Scotty didn't give him time for a second shot; he stabbed the big green button in the middle of the control panel with his thumb and shoved the slide control beside it all the way forward. He was instantly slammed back into the seat as the fighter took off under full thrust. The city streaked past below him, then disappeared behind. These ships might be primitive, but they were fast.
Air whistled through the hole in the canopy. That would be a problem in a few more seconds. Scotty looked for something to seal it with, saw a plastic ball dangling just about eye level from an overhead mount, and tugged on that. Silly place for an ornament anyway; it would work much better as a plug.
But the ship veered down hard and left when he pulled on the ball, and he realized belatedly that he had found the steering mechanism.
The ground became a flat wall in front of him. Scotty pushed the ball upward and to the right and the ship veered back around, shoving him down into the seat with four or five g's of force. No internal gravity! He would have to watch how hard he turned, then, or he could easily black out.
Now that he knew how to steer, though, there was one more thing he could do for Sulu and Chekov before he went after the Enterprise. He pulled the ball down and left again, more gently this time, and held it while the fighter angled around and headed back toward the spaceport. He aimed straight for the spot he had taken off from, leaving the throttle all the way forward, and only leveled out at the last second. For an instant he saw the upswept tails of the ships parked on either side of his flash past his canopy; then he was rising back up into the sky again.
Another pass showed him the effect of his barnstorming buzz; the two fighters he had flown between had been tipped onto their wingtips by the sonic boom and the jetwash, and the guards had scattered for ships farther down the line to chase him with.
Good. That meant they would leave Sulu and Chekov alone. Scotty lifted the steering ball up again and held it until he was aimed straight into the sky, then centered it and waited until he punched through the gray cloud layer.
The hole in the canopy still needed plugging. There was nothing else loose in the cabin, so Scotty held his left hand over it, flying with his right. The sky turned deep blue, then black, and the canopy grew cold. The vacuum just outside sucked at his skin, and Scotty knew he was going to have a hell of a bruise there, but if that was the worst of his troubles then he would be lucky.
He wondered how he was going to find the Enterprise up here. For that matter, he wondered if he could find Prastor. There were a couple dozen bright points of light out there, one of which was no doubt the planet, but most of them were probably nearby bright stars. If he picked the wrong one, it could be a long flight.
There had to be some sort of navigation equipment. Scotty leaned forward and inspected the control panel, looking for anything that looked like sensors. He punched a few buttons experimentally, finding the disruptor cannon and activating some kind of heads-up display, but it just presented him with multicolored static.
"Come on, I know you're here somewhere," he muttered, punching another button, the first of a row of five under the one that had turned on the display.
The static swirled into the image of a Nevisian woman's face. "Turn back at once or we will shoot you down," she said.
Aha! That was progress of a sort. "I'm trying to," Scotty told her. "But I nearly crashed the first time, and now I can't find the navigation controls to guide me back."
"Oh." She thought it over for a second, then said, "Top right panel, the yellow button labeled 'locate.' Push that, and while you're still holding it down tell the computer you want the Kelso spaceport. Then push the blue button below that and tell it 'autoland.' After that, keep your hands off the controls."
"Got it," Scotty said. "Thanks."
He pushed the button that had turned on the comm screen, and smiled as it faded away. Then he tried the yellow navigation button—he couldn't read the label, but there was only one button it could be—and said, "Computer, find Prastor." Another heads-up screen shimmered into existence, and on it a crosshaired targeting circle winked on and off in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, surrounding a bright red dot that had to be the planet. Scotty moved the steering ball until the circle was centered and had stopped blinking; then he punched the comm screen again, this time pushing the second button in the row below it.
The screen lit up with static again. Before anyone could come on the channel, he said, "Scotty to Enterprise, come in Enterprise." Then he pushed the next button in the row and tried it again, and then the next.
Uhura answered on the fourth channel.
"Enterprise to Scotty. Where are you?"
"Somewhere between Distrel and Prastor," he said, feeling an immense weight lift off him. "Where are you?"
"En route from Prastor to Distrel. Wait a second while I get a lock on your signal…all right, we see you. Come around and wait for us to pick you up."
"Sorry, I'm being chased," Scotty said. "You'll have to match my course and pick me up on the fly."
"Yes, sir. Stand by."
Scotty waited in the rumbling fighter ship, his hand pressed against the hole in the canopy and the g force still pushing him back into the seat, for what seemed like five minutes, but was probably more like five seconds. Then a streak of white burned across the blackness of space ahead o
f him and came to a stop less than a hundred yards away on his right: the familiar saucer and warp nacelles of the Enterprise matching velocity with him. Scotty felt as if he could reach out and touch it.
"Cutting engines," he said, pulling back on the slide control for the throttle. The Enterprise slowed to keep pace without shifting more than a few yards ahead of him.
"Locked on," Uhura said. "Ready to beam you aboard."
He was floating free now in the cockpit, held in place by his left hand stuck to the canopy. This wasn't a bad ship, primitive as it was. He hated to see it go to waste. "Just a second," he said. He pushed the navigation button again and said, "Computer, find the Kelso spaceport." Then he pushed the blue button below that and said, "Computer, autoland." Then he let off the button and, sighing deeply, said, "Enterprise, beam me home."
McCoy scowled at the monitor over the exam table where Ensign Lebrun lay, her husband still clutching her hand and spoiling the biometry readings. They weren't telling him anything he didn't already know anyway. She was healthy as a cadet. No sign of disruptor wounds, no sign of trauma of any sort; not even the mental distress that should have shown up ike a neon light on the psychological profile of someone who had gone through a near-death experience.
He was beginning to wonder if she actually had. She reported no memory of the actual event; just of going into danger and a moment later arriving in a tub of hot water halfway across the Nevis system. If she was suppressing the memory of death McCoy should have been able to see the neurological effects of that, but it looked to him as if she had never actually died.
The door slid open and Scotty stepped in, cradling his left hand in his right.
"Good, lie down here," McCoy said, patting the exam table next to Lebrun's.
"Nice to see you again, too," Scotty said.
McCoy grinned. "Sorry. Glad you're back. But I've got a mystery on my hands."
"And I've got a bruise the size of Mars on mine." Scotty showed him his hand, which did indeed sport a large red circle over most of the palm.
"How'd you get that?" McCoy asked him.
"Exposure to vacuum," Scotty said. He sat on the edge of the exam table and told McCoy about his adventures while McCoy treated his wound with a Wasner-effect antiinflammatory protoplaser.
"Do you remember dying?" McCoy asked him.
Scotty shrugged. "I was curled around an overloaded phaser. I don't remember the actual explosion, but then I doubt if anyone would. We're talking nanoseconds between then and complete disruption."
"Ick," Lebrun said.
"That's—" her husband began, but he stopped himself.
"What?"
"Uh, that's apparently what happened to you, too. Completely disintegrated, they told me."
"That's supposed to make it less icky?"
"I didn't mean it that way," he said. "I meant…"
"You meant what?" she insisted when he fell silent.
"I don't know. I was just talking."
"Well talk about something else. This gives me the creeps."
McCoy shook his head. These two were incredible. Reunited less than ten minutes, and they were already bickering again. They were still holding hands though; that was a good sign. "Go home," he told them. "Hang a 'do not disturb' sign on your door and don't come out for a week. Doctor's orders."
They both blushed, but Nordell helped Lebrun down off the exam table and they headed arm-in-arm for the turbolifts. Before the door swished closed behind them, McCoy heard Lebrun say, "I've been thinking about last night, and I think I owe you an apology," and Nordell answered, "No, no, it was all my fault."
McCoy smiled. Oh yes, there was hope for them yet.
He turned back to Scotty and made him lie back on the exam table, but he learned no more from him than from Lebrun.
"I don't know what happened to you two, but I can pretty confidently rule out death."
"You should examine Sulu and Chekov," Scotty told him. "I know they died. I saw it with my own eyes."
"And I saw Lebrun," McCoy said. "She was hit twice, but she was dead after the first shot; I'd swear to it." He began to pace the floor. "Yet you all came back, and you don't show any sign of trauma. I tell you, it gives me the creeps, too. I want to know how this happened."
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Doctor," Scotty said. He swiveled his legs around off the table and stood up, then flexed his fingers. "Thank you for fixing my hand. Now if you'll excuse me, I should go see how things are goin' in engineering."
"Right," McCoy said distractedly. "And welcome back!" he called out as Scotty disappeared through the door.
Then he turned to the intercom. "Sickbay to Spock. Have we picked up Jim and the others yet?"
"We are just now beaming them aboard," Spock said. "Stand by." A moment later he said, "We have recovered Sulu, Chekov, and Harry Mudd, but the captain was apparently killed again during their escape attempt on Distrel. We are en route to Prastor to search for him."
"Jim's dead again?" McCoy asked. "Good grief, isn't once enough?" He was appalled at himself for sounding so flippant, but the knowledge that the captain would survive the experience apparently none the worse for wear did soften the blow considerably.
But Spock shattered his confidence with his next words. "I am sure it was unintentional, Doctor. However, I am far less sure of his chances for recovery this time. He apparently died after the resurrections stopped."
"What?" McCoy had to grab the edge of the exam table for support. This couldn't be. Jim couldn't be snatched away again, not after all he had been through already.
Just then the door opened and Sulu and Chekov entered sickbay, bearing Harry Mudd between them, his arms over their shoulders.
Harry Mudd. He was at the heart of this, McCoy was sure of it. "What have you done this time?" he growled.
All three men seemed taken aback by McCoy's outburst. Mudd cringed and looked to either side as if searching for something to hide behind, but he was in no shape to go anywhere. And like a cornered rat, he switched to bluster. "What have I done, Doctor? I have been fired upon, that's what. I have been kidnapped and subjected to indignities too numerous to count, but the one that concerns you is my leg. I believe they have broken it."
Indignities too numerous to count. Sure. Lebrun had told McCoy all about the Roman-style baths. But Mudd did indeed seem to have a leg injury. "On the slab," McCoy told him, gesturing toward the exam table Scotty had just vacated.
Chapter Twenty
SUCH A JOYOUS REUNION, thought Mudd. He should have been used to it by now, especially from the Enterprise crew, but he had allowed himself to hope that their shared experience would provide some camaraderie this time. Wrong. McCoy had healed his damaged knee, all the while complaining that Mudd had somehow engineered this whole sorry state of affairs simply to annoy him; and as soon as McCoy had finished his harangue Spock had summoned him to an inquisition.
Mudd took some joy in seeing that everyone else from the ship who had died on Distrel or Prastor was also seated around the long, oval conference table in the briefing room. And that the damnable android wasn't. She was apparently stuck in some kind of transcendental do-loop, appearing and disappearing again and again in the same pool of water on Distrel, a condition which Spock seemed to think was connected somehow with the halt in resurrections elsewhere.
"I think it's divine retribution, myself," Mudd said.
Spock, at the head of the table, looked exasperated, but then he always did. He said, "We cannot rule out the influence of a higher power; however, I suspect that once we uncover the nature of that power, we will find that it is no more divine than we are."
"Could be," said Mudd. "The locals refer to 'the Gods' whenever they talk about it, but whatever the cause, this whole situation reaffirms my faith that there is justice in the universe after all."
"Harry, I remind you that the Nevisians are poised to go to war on an unprecedented scale over this, and if they do, millions of them will die for real
. Also, the captain is still missing and must be presumed to be in danger, if not dead himself."
"Yes, there's that, too."
That earned him no points with anyone at the table, not even with Ensign Lebrun. And McCoy, directly across the table from Mudd, looked as if he might re-break the leg he had so recently healed. Mudd held out his hands and said, "All right, all right, personal differences aside, I'm sorry he's in trouble. But what do you expect me to do about it?"
Spock glowered at him like a Federation Court judge. "I expect you to tell me the real reason why you came here. And anything else you know about the Nevisians."
"I was brought here," Mudd reminded him. "I've been shuttled back and forth completely against my will, and I'm getting—"
"To the Nevis system itself," Spock said. "What enticed you to come here?"
Mudd considered his response. He was a complex man; certainly Spock didn't expect him to explain everything. So he simply said, "The war. It was a chance to prove to those—those androids that I wasn't the person you had convinced them I was. I came here to help negotiate peace."
"And make a fortune on Palko distribution," Chekov said.
"Pah," Mudd said contemptuously. "A drop in the bucket to a man with vision."
"Your vision seems extraordinarily acute when profit is involved," Spock said.
"Why, thank you," Mudd replied, genuinely surprised to receive a compliment from the Vulcan, of all people.
But of course Spock couldn't let it go at that. "I cannot believe that a man of your…talents…would come here without an ulterior motive. Perhaps you could tell us about the other potentially profitable ventures your educated eye may have spotted in the Nevis system. With an emphasis on anything that might shed light upon our current situation."