by Джеймс Блиш
“Sair gud for ye. Then I’ll just pour a leetle central heatin’ into my construction here.”
Scott snapped a switch and the generator hummed itself decorously up to operating level. Telltales lit up on the maintenance board under his watchful eye.
“I dinna ken,” he said dubiously, “whether I’ll be able to strip an energy envelope off a whole world with only a trickle of power like that to work with. Bu’ hoot, men, there’s only one way to find out.”
Slowly, he turned the knob of a potentiometer, still watching the board intently, as well as his own jury-rigged apparatus.
“We’re getting some feedback,” he said at length. “The battle is joined. Now to value up the gain a mite…”
The knob turned once more.
“‘Tis David against Goliath,” Scott muttered. “And me without my sling. Captain, somethin’s takin’ place out there, all richt, but I canna tell from these meters just how much effect I’m havin’; this board wasna designed to register any sich reaction. Mickle though it fashes me, I’ll ask you to request our friends outside tae step pretectin’ us, or I’ll get no read-out I can trust.”
Kirk started to turn back along the companionway, but the Organians must have picked up Scott’s request instantaneously from his mind. The eerie oppression of the thought-shield returned promptly. It was much less strong now, but Scott clearly was not satisfied.
“I’m only setting up a local interference,” he said. He turned the knob again. The sensation diminished further, but only slightly. “It’s nae gud. Even with the Organians’ help, I canna combat a planet-wide screen with no source but the gig’s generator. The necessary power just isna there.”
“I believe I can be of assistance,” Spock said. “I have worked out the principle of this warp-drive adjunct. It appears to draw energy directly from Hilbert space, from the same source out of which hydrogen atoms are born. In other words, a method of tapping the process of continuous creation.”
“What?” Scott said. “I’d as soon try to stick a thirteen-ampere tap directly into God. I’ll ha’e nothin’ tae do with thet.”
“It’s a hair-raising idea,” Kirk agreed. “But, Mr. Spock, obviously it did work once, for the replicate. Can you connect it back to the generator without starting some kind of catastrophe?”
“I believe so, Captain. Anything the replicate could do, I can probably do better.”
“Hubris,” Scott muttered. “Overweenin’ pride. Downfall of the Greeks. If ye don’t get a catastrophe, ye’ll get a miracle, an’ thot may well be worse.”
“At this point we need a miracle,” Kirk said. “Go ahead, Mr. Spock — plug it in.”
Spock worked quickly. Grumbling, Scott advanced the knob again. The sensation created by the thought-screen dwindled like the memory of a bad dream. His face gradually lightening, the engineer turned the knob all the rest of the way.
Five minutes later, Organia was free — and…
“Good day, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said. “Mister Spock, assume command. All department heads, report.”
Chapter Fourteen — A VISITATION OF SPIRITS
From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4202.0:
I do not suppose anyone will ever piece together exactly what happened on all the battlefronts at the moment the Organians were let loose from their planet-wide prison. Some of the myriads of incidents, however, are reflected in reports which reached the Enterprise officially, or were intercepted, and were duly entered by Sulu as Captain pro tern. Even most of these, of course, are virtually incomprehensible, but in some cases we had previously encountered the Klingon officers who were involved and can guess how they might have behaved or what they were confronted with; and in others we can reconstruct approximately what happened with the aid of the computer. But the total picture must be left to the imagination, and the computer has none — perhaps fortunately for us.
If the universe were shrinking at the rate of a centimeter a day, and all our measuring rods were contracting with it at an equivalent rate, how could we even suspect that anything was happening?
Commander Koloth sat before the viewing screen of the Klingon battleship Destruction as silent and motionless as a stone image. In the navigation tank to his left, points of green light showed the deployment of the rest of his force, faithfully keeping to the formation — an inverted hemisphere — he had ordered when they had left the Organian system, but he never looked at them. He knew that the squadron was following his orders — indeed, the thought that they might not be never entered his head. In any event, all his attention was focused on the quarry, the tiny red spot in the center of the viewscreen, a spot which represented The mightiest machine ever conceived by Terran humanity — and soon to be nothing but a cloud of radioactive gas.
Days ago, he had determined that the Federation ship he was pursuing was the USS Enterprise, a discovery which had transformed his feeling for the chase from ordinary military pleasure to one of almost savage joy. He had encountered — and been defeated by — James Kirk and his command on two previous occasions: the affair of the Xixobrax Jewelworm, and the dispute over the colonization of Sherman’s Planet. The latter occasion had been the most serious defeat for the Empire, and therefore for Commander Koloth, for the Empire most correctly was not forgiving of failure; but what rankled with Koloth personally was not any diplomatic consideration, nor even the setback to his own career, but the fact that as a last gesture of seeming contempt, Kirk had somehow managed to inflict upon Koleth’s vessel an infestation of loathsome, incredibly fertile vermin called tribbles. It had taken the better part of a lunation to get them all cleaned out.
He repressed a shudder and touched a toggle on the board before him. “Korax.”
His first officer appeared as if by magic. “Lord Commander?”
“Any broadcasts from the enemy?”
“None, Lord Commander, or I would have informed you instantly. Nor have they changed course or relative velocity.”
“I can see that much. In extremity, Federation vessels drop a buoy containing the Captain’s Log, for later recovery. I see no chance that the Federation could ever pick it up in this situation. However, neither do I want it destroyed in battle. See to it that we detect the drop, and pick up that buoy.”
“We are at extreme sensor range for so small an object, Lord Commander.”
“All the more reason to exercise extreme vigilance. The buoy will emit some sort of recognition signal; scan for it.”
Korax saluted and vanished. Koloth continued watching the screen. Nothing could save the Enterprise this time; she was moving straight into a trap — she could in fact do nothing else — which would crack her like a nut. He hoped that he would be the man to make the actual kill, but it seemed probable that the admiral in charge of the much larger Empire force awaiting ahead would claim that privilege. Net only was that normal — rank has its privileges — but Koloth knew that Admiral Kor also cherished personal desires to rid the universe of Kirk and his ship, or at least had reason to.
Well, that was not of final importance. What counted was not who obliterated the Enterprise, but the fact of the obliteration itself. And that end would soon be accomplished…
For what Koloth did not know was that it had taken him a Klingon year simply to call Korax; that the entire galaxy had made its twenty-seventh rotation since its birth around its center during the course of their conversation; and that since then, it had gone around three and a third times more. For the Destruction and all aboard her, Time was slowing down on an asymptotic curve; and for Commander Koloth, the chase would never end.
…and Koloth would never knew it.
Koloth’s estimate for Kor had been mistaken; that was one reason why Koloth was still a Commander — and would remain one now, forever and ever, even after the whole of the universe had died — while Kor was now an Admiral. It had been Kor who had been involved with Kirk in the struggle on Organia which had resulted unpleasantly in the Organian Peace Treaty, but Kor h
arbored no resentment.
He did not regard that outcome as a defeat, but simply as a frustration. Federation and Empire forces had been positioned for the final struggle when the Organians struck them all powerless, on both sides, and imposed their terms; and Kirk, Kor judged, had been as offended at the intervention as Kor had been. These Federation officers tended to strike one as milksops until fighting was inevitable, but thereafter they were formidable antagonists. The penetration of the Enterprise this far into Empire territory spoke for itself: an act of great daring, and worthy of a warrior’s respect.
That it was also foolhardy did not bulk very large in Kor’s opinion; only cowards avoid battle when the odds are against them. Kor also knew that Federation starship captains had more freedom to act against orders, more discretionary powers than he would ever be allowed to exercise; though he was sure that this fact would contribute to the downfall of the Federation in the long run — and perhaps very soon now — it made him all the more appreciative of Kirk’s boldness, to say nothing of his ingenuity.
It would be interesting to know what Kirk had hoped to gain by such a foray. Insofar as Kor had been told, there was no such place as Organia any more, and the Organian system was no longer in a strategic quadrant; yet the Enterprise had ducked and dodged to get there with enormous doggedness, and in the process had quite failed to do any of the damage to real military targets within the Empire which Kor would have obliterated en route as a matter of course, especially on a suicide mission.
One could allow only a certain weight to ordinary curiosity — after all, Kirk could not have been sure that Organia was extinct; why, then, had he not gone in shooting? He could, for example, have knocked out Bosklave, which was well within his reach and unprepared for a starship attack. Surely he knew where it was, and that its destruction would have been a bad blow to the Empire. But instead, he had done nothing but wipe out the token Organian garrison — a rather neat piece of entrapment, that — and then go right back to the Organian system, thus setting himself up for the present cul-de-sac without charging the Empire any real price for it. Wasteful — and more than wasteful: mysterious.
But that was the trouble with democratic societies: they shared with the Empire all of the disadvantages of bureaucracies, and none of the advantages of hierarchy and centralization. Sooner or later, even a brave but prudent commander like Kirk, and a multimillion-stellor investment like the Enterprise, would be lost to some piece of bad judgment, or even to a whim. Fighting the Federation had been interesting, certainly. but Kor was just as glad that the long war — or, until recently, non-war — was about to be over. Fighting the Romulans, the next society on the Empire’s timetable of conquest, would be more fun; the Romulans were short on imagination, but they were as brave as eglons, and they had the military virtues — discipline, a hierarchy of respect, a readiness to place society above self, an ernest poetic willingness to live with tragedy, and above all the good sense to realize that good government consists of weighing heads, not just counting them.
Under the present circumstances, it would be possible to capture the Federation ship, which would be a valuable prize. The odds against her were now hopeless, and Kirk would not sacrifice the four hundred and thirty people in his crew — mere than a third of them female, a most irrational Federation custom — in a suicide stand; few Federation captains would. But Kor’s orders from the High Command were for complete destruction.
He did not even think of asking questions, but no amount of loyalty or discipline can prevent a humanoid creature from speculating. He could only conclude that Kirk and his officers had found some piece of information so important that the High Command was willing to throw away a Class One starship to make certain that it never reached the Federation, or even could. Whatever the information, Kor himself would no doubt never find out what it was…
“On the contrary,” a gentle voice said behind him. “I believe I can help you there.”
Even before turning in his command chair, Kor knew the voice was familiar, though it was not that of any of his officers. A sensation of anticipatory dismay began to build in him.
And for good reason. The voice, he saw now, was that of the Organian Elder, Ayelborne, who had been temporary Council head when Kor had attempted to occupy the planet.
“So,” the Klingon said stolidly, controlling his expression with the training of a lifetime. “I was told Organia was no more. It appears that my information was inaccurate.”
“At best, incomplete,” Ayelborne agreed, with his well-remembered perpetual, maddening smile. “And the war is over, Admiral Kor. Your ships still have power, but you will find that your weapons do not. I would advise you to make planetfall, with your entire fleet, as soon as possible.”
“My orders,” Kor said, “are to destroy the Enterprise. If my weapons are inoperative, I can nevertheless still ram — which will cause an even greater loss of life.”
“I know your orders,” Ayelborne said. “And I observe that your courage has a match in your stubbornness. But my advice is sound, for within three Standard Days your ships, too, will become inoperative, and if you are not grounded by then, the loss of life will be greater still — and all on your side. In view of the Klingon breach of the treaty, I am not obligated to give you this information, but I do so in the interests of minimizing subsequent violence. In fact, I would not be here at all, Admiral, did I not need from you the exact coordinates of your home system.”
“I will never — ” Kor began.
But Ayelborne had already vanished — and Kor knew with gray despair that, regardless of his will, his mind had already given the Organian the information he had wanted — and that Kor the ruthless, Kor the efficient, Kor the brave, Kor the loyal, was a traitor to his Empire.
The Grand Senate of the Klingon Empire, alarmed by the fragmentary reports of unprecedented disasters coming in from the field, was in session when the Organians arrived. There were three of them, but they appeared in the barbaric, gorgeously caparisoned Senate hall, a relic of a recorded ten thousand years of internecine warfare before the Klingons had achieved space flight and planetary unity, in their perhaps natural forms — balls of energy some six feet in diameter, like miniature suns — so that it was not possible to tell them apart or distinguish which ones they were (if indeed their identities had not been from the beginning as much of a convenient fiction as their assumed humanoid appearance). That they were Ayelberne, Claymare and Trefayne is only an assumption, based en merely human logic.
The swarthy faces of the Grand Senate were pale in the actinic glare emitted by the thought-creatures. When one of the Organians spoke, his voice echoed through the great chamber like the sound of many trumpets.
“You have broken the treaty, and been the direct cause of much death, misery and destruction,” he said. “In addition, you have committed violence against ourselves, which only the action of your adversaries stopped short of genocide.”
“Untrue,” the Senator in Chief said coldly. His voice was shaky, but he seemed otherwise to be in command of himself — no mean feat under these circumstances. “Our planetary thought-shield was no more than a method of confinement, to prevent you from meddling further in our Imperial affairs.”
“Your intentions do not alter the facts,” the Organian said. “You understood only ill the nature of your own weapon, and its effects upon us hardly at all. Five years under that screen — and we see in your minds that you never intended to let us out, and indeed dared not — would have destroyed us utterly. Putting such a screen around the Earth, as we see you also planned to do, would have destroyed humanity as well, and far more quickly. Such carelessness compounds your crime, rather than mitigating it.”
“We defy you,” the Senator in Chief said.
“That will avail you nothing. However, we are not vindictive; our justice is not based on vengeance. We simply observe that you cannot be trusted to keep treaties, even those backed by humane coercion. We therefore interdict y
our planets, and all your colony worlds, from space flight for a thousand years.”
The hall burst into a rear of pretest and rage, but the Organian’s voice soared above it easily.
“After a millennium back in your playpen,” he said, “you may emerge as fit to share a civilized galaxy. I say may. It is entirely up to you. And so, farewell, Klingons — and the Klingon Empire.”
Chapter Fifteen — “YOU MAY BE RIGHT”
From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4205.5:
It has taken a good many hours, and the participation of all department heads, to prepare a comprehensive — and what is more important, comprehensible — report of this entire imbroglio. And even after the report was filed, there were a number of additional questions from Earth, which is hardly surprising. However, we were able to answer them, and our role in freeing Organia has won us official commendations from Starfleet Command, which I have passed on to all hands.
There remain some additional questions which Command has not asked us, which is probably just as well, for I am far from certain that we know the answers — or ever will know them.
Kirk paused in his dictation and Spock, who had been monitoring the recording of the Log entry into the computer, turned from his station toward the command chair.
“May I ask, Captain, what these questions are? It is possible that I could be of assistance.”
“I think perhaps you could, Mr. Spock.” Kirk put the hand microphone back into its clip on the control board. “Some of them, in fact, concern you — which is why I was hesitating about logging them.”
“Why should you, Captain?”
“Because they are more or less personal, and in addition, not essential for Starfleet Command’s understanding of the affair. You needn’t answer them yet if you’d prefer not to.”
“I could make no judgment of that,” the first officer said, “without knowing what the questions are.”