One Small Step

by Susan Wright

  “That sounds reasonable.” Kad began scanning the cube in the ceiling. “What about these computer nodes? Can we reactivate them if we get the portal operational?”

  “My examination of the node in the entrance chamber indicated it was damaged beyond repair. The tricorder readings of the node in this chamber are identical.”

  “Then we’ve lost the directional units,” Kad said.

  Spock calmly pointed out, “The fact that the nodes are not functional lessens the potential for the portal to be used as a weapon, as it was in our case.”

  Kad looked determined, while Marl wasn’t as enthused any longer. “We must report to our commander about this.”

  Spock agreed and made arrangements to meet them back in the portal chamber when the subprocessor had been replicated. The Kalandans said they would need to meditate for a short time, as Spock intended to do.

  Before they left, Spock tried to return the microfocus sensor and diagnostic unit. But Kad refused, shutting their case and sealing it. “We have plenty on the ship. You may need it again.”

  Spock hesitated, though it appeared perfectly harmless. Perhaps he was influenced by the captain’s lingering distrust of the Kalandans. Yet he pocketed the handheld sensor device, to take it up to the Enterprise so he could examine it. It could indeed be a useful device during the work ahead.

  * * *

  Captain Kirk had only been stuck in the Kalandan station for a few days, but it felt strange to be back in his quarters on board the Enterprise. Despite the several glasses of synthehol that he’d had at the reception, he couldn’t make himself lie down to sleep. He trusted his alert feeling. They were in danger.

  Kirk read through Spock’s latest report, filed before the Vulcan retired for a bit of reviving meditation. So it appeared they had indeed located the interstellar transporter. Spock hoped to be able to get it functioning again.

  Kirk got dressed in his duty uniform. He could feel the pressure of unknown vessels descending on them — the Klingons and every other scavenger out there who had intercepted that strong energy burst from the interstellar portal. The Klingons would be out for blood, since their Defense Force cruiser had been destroyed.

  And he didn’t trust these Kalandans. . . .

  It was that kiss. He had realized it during the reception when Tasm had flirtatiously brushed against his arm, then let her gaze focus on his mouth. She was trying to seduce him, and it might have worked, except for that kiss.

  It was an experience unlike any other. He had been the object of seduction before. Eve McHuron, Harry Mudd’s associate, had not needed a Venus drug to make her kiss seductive. Elaan of Troyius had been petulantly provocative, trying to manipulate him, yet underneath she was just a scared young woman. On the other hand, Lenore, daughter of Kodos the Executioner, had been insane. Yet he hadn’t guessed it from her warm and loving embrace.

  Kissing Tasm made him feel like he was under a microscope. He had felt weirdly removed from the experience.

  Even more unpleasant, the image of Captain Mox flashed through his mind as her lips touched his. All of those Klingons, killed without a second thought. Tasm had never mentioned regret over what she had done.

  McCoy kept insisting that the Kalandans were helping them. It was true that it should be enough, but Kirk questioned why Tasm had given them no new information about the Kalandans. The exchange of cultural and legal information, as proscribed by Starfleet’s diplomatic protocols, had been skimpy on the Kalandan side.

  After spending a whole day with Tasm, Kirk still didn’t know her very well. She didn’t talk much about herself — her needs or desires. Her responses to his questions were almost cloying, as if she was humoring him. Also she was not as attractive as he had originally thought.

  But she got what she wanted almost every time. Kirk wasn’t sure why he had agreed to send down only a few search teams, when he wanted to comb the station with every available hand. She resisted because she didn’t want Starfleet occupying the station in greater numbers. She had finally, and reluctantly it seemed, told him the size of her crew. It was surprisingly small for the size of her ship.

  Kirk frowned as he glanced around his quarters. Now that he was back on board the Enterprise, he wanted nothing more than to be inside the Kalandan station.

  He attached a communicator to his belt and grabbed a tricorder. “Bridge, Kirk here. I’m transporting down to the station. Alert me if anyone from the Kalandan ship beams down as well.”

  The two Starfleet security guards in the entrance chamber said that only the search teams were currently inside the station. Spock and the Kalandan officers were scheduled to be transporting back down shortly, to begin installing the new computer.

  Kirk didn’t linger on the first level where ship’s sensors could read his presence. Tasm had insisted that they would question Losira only when they were together. He had agreed, but that bothered him, too. What was Tasm worried about?

  Going down the corridor, he avoided the search teams in the botany labs, alerted by their voices as they catalogued things left behind in the cupboards.

  Voices also echoed down the long corridors of the living quarters. Sounds were oddly distorted by the muffling walls. He moved quickly across the corridors. Now that he was down a few levels, the forcefield layers would baffle the sensors.

  In the command center, Kirk once again took the chair. Losira winked into existence. “Captain James T. Kirk,” she said in greeting.

  “Commander Losira,” Kirk replied cordially.

  He would be breaking what amounted to a diplomatic agreement if he questioned Losira alone. But he made his decision after one look at the Losira replica. Then he knew why he needed to see her again.

  Kirk kept thinking that it couldn’t be true, that Tasm couldn’t be a descendent of Losira, because there was none of the cultural and physical refinement he expected to see in a developing civilization. He thought Tasm and her officers were blunted in both intellectual response and individuality. For one thing, Tasm seemed completely unaware of her body, while every move Losira made was the embodiment of harmonious grace.

  It was a gut feeling he had, and it came from knowledge of his own ancestors ten thousand years ago. Humans had just started creating agricultural civilizations, having been hunters and gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. It was literally the stone age, with no real metallurgy. Yet he kept thinking there would be a stronger resemblance and sense of progression between him and that stone-age man than he could see between Tasm and Losira.

  “The Kalandans seem like a highly developed civilization,” Kirk said thoughtfully. “How far back does your history go?”

  Losira seemed pleased she could answer his question. “Our people became space-faring in cycle 903.”

  “I don’t know what a cycle is,” Kirk told her. Thinking of a way to translate time, he suggested, “Show me a star map of that time.”

  Losira briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them, a sphere appeared and floated near her head. It looked as if it contained every shining star in their double-spiral galaxy. Kirk aimed his tricorder at the sphere to record it, then initiated a comparison analysis. The image was of the galaxy two hundred thousand years ago.

  “That’s impossible.” Kirk didn’t want to think of what humans had been like two hundred thousand years ago. “There must be some mistake.”

  “The Kalandans are an ancient civilization.”

  Kirk wasn’t sure what to say. Suddenly his Earth-centric focus seemed a little absurd.

  Losira’s voice was dreamy. “We are descended from noble scientists who refused to serve their great and terrible people.”

  “What people?”

  “That information is controlled by the defense computer.”

  Kirk shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?” He tried another tact. “Why did the Kalandans leave their people?”

  “Our people were feared by the still-developing races throughout the region. The Kalanda
n scientists believed that the hostile attitudes of our people were wrong and would lead to the downfall of our civilization. They were proven correct. Not long after the Kalandan scientists left, the rest of our people were utterly destroyed.”

  Kirk nodded. “I’ve wondered myself at your ruthlessness. You can send a replica to kill with a touch, yet you’re aware that it’s wrong.”

  Losira looked pensive. “We are life-loving explorers, yet my people have a history of creating extremely destructive weapons.”

  Kirk knew his doubts were shaken. Losira was the end product of thousands of generations of development, yet the Kalandans had not progressed beyond their ruthless origins. Tasm was most similar to Losira in this regard.

  With that, Kirk realized he had let his cultural expectations of physical refinement affect his opinion of Tasm. Suddenly his concerns took on a new complexity. He had to be able to trust his own judgment, yet he had already jumped to conclusions about them. How far could he trust his doubts about these new Kalandans?

  His deliberations were interrupted by a call from the Enterprise. “Captain, Mr. Spock is transporting down to the outpost along with Second Officer Kad. You asked to be notified.”

  Kirk acknowledged, looking at Losira a moment longer. But he didn’t want to be discovered and held accountable by Commander Tasm. He would lose an edge in their already tricky diplomatic negotiations.

  So he slipped into the crew quarters until Spock, Kad, and Marl passed by, pushing the new computer suspended by anti-grav units. They were going to try to reactivate the portal.

  Kirk knew it was the perfect time for a hard game of anti-grav handball. His yeoman wouldn’t mind being woken up in the middle of the night — not much, anyway. And she had nearly beaten him last time, so he would have to look sharp. Maybe if he cleared everything out of himself, physically and mentally, he would have a new perspective. Then he could have a fresh look at these Kalandans.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SCOTTY LIKED WORKING with Officer Marl. Except for the lurid stripes over his eyes, the Kalandan engineer was an ordinary humanoid. A real nice, obliging guy.

  Together they dismantled the cylindrical unit from the old computer bank and shifted it closer to the floor. The monofilaments extended with only a slight pressure, so Scotty slowly moved the cylinder over to the massive arch. They constructed a bracket to attach the cylinder directly to the new computer that was resting at the base.

  Mr. Spock and Officer Kad were attaching the monofilaments from the cylinder to the subprocessor. They rarely spoke as they went about the methodical and exacting work of joining each monofilament to the optical data network of the subprocessor.

  Marl was an excellent engineer, but he was a bit clumsy in the hands and feet. They couldn’t afford to break any monofilaments through a careless misstep. So for safety’s sake, Scotty installed a square casing over the monofilaments that ran from the power junction to the cylindrical unit that was now secured to the computer. The long monofilaments that had originally stretched between the arch and the cylinder lay coiled next to the subprocessor.

  There was nothing more they could do with the portal until Spock finished attaching the new computer. So Scotty and Marl had another go at the stasis seal over the power junction. But the magnetic flux couldn’t be measured, which told them something about the magnitude of the power they could tap.

  Since his tricorder couldn’t penetrate beyond the diburnium and osmium layers in the walls of the chamber, Scotty turned to the open sections of flooring. Marl was the one who suggested it, diving in to use the maser-saw. Starting near the other foot of the arch, Marl opened the plasticized osmium sheeting to reveal a neutronium beam lying across the base of the arch.

  Further exploration revealed the beam was as wide and thick as the arch, about half a meter, and ran underneath the flooring to join the other side of the arch. The arch was really an enclosed neutronium rectangle. The base was supported by diburnium-osmium structural beams.

  Under most of the top layer of flooring, throughout the chamber, there were crisscrossing conduits for monofilaments. Scotty traced the bundles leading from the computer to the node overhead. More bundles disappeared into the wall. Certain monofilaments, most likely leading straight to the entrance chamber above, were nearly all fused.

  So Scotty went back to the floor, rooting around until he found an empty section where they could get to the final layer of diburnium-osmium alloy.

  This layer consisted of thick plates. Scotty unsealed the edges of one plate and pried it up.

  He almost dropped it in surprise. Below was a shimmering blue forcefield. The energy discharge distorted the air above it. A loud humming filled the room.

  At first it looked continuous, like the security shields in the brig. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the brightness, he could see the series of interlocking octagonal superconductors that formed the matrix below the forcefield.

  Spock and Kad joined them. The blue glow reflected on their faces. “What is that?” Officer Kad asked.

  “A forcefield layer,” Scotty said proudly. “Isn’t she a beaut?”

  “That would explain the energized ions in the diburnium-osmium alloy,” Spock commented.

  “Aye, and why the sensors canna penetrate below the first level of this station,” Scotty agreed.

  Aiming his tricorder at the exposed matrix, he recorded a tremendous power reading. The superconductors were creating a number of special forcefields that oscillated in overlapping patterns.

  “It’s made of keiyurium and silicon animide, fueled by magnetic taps,” Scotty said.

  Kad was taking his own readings. “The forcefields probably aid in the transformation of geomagnetic energy into power. I worked on a magnetic-flux generator back home, and it’s augmented by forcefields of this magnitude.”

  Marl nodded. “It helps if the forcefields are layered in successive levels, as they seem to be on this station.”

  Scotty was impressed. “Geomagnetic field generators are tricky machines. What else do your people use them for?”

  “We don’t build them this big anymore,” Marl said ruefully. “Mainly we use the magnetomotive for supplying power to our experimental stations.”

  Kad finished taking his readings and returned to work on the subprocessor along with Spock.

  Marl lowered his own sensor padd closer to the hole. But as he keyed in some command, the thin padd shifted sideways and slipped from his fingers.

  Scotty caught it with one hand just before it hit the open forcefield. “Watch what you’re doing there, lad!”

  Marl’s hand was shaking as he accepted the padd back. “If the magnetic flux generator is as large as we think — it could have blown up this entire chamber ” The Kalandan shuddered to think they had come that close to disaster. “Your quick reflexes are much appreciated.”

  “No need to mention it,” Scotty assured him. “We’ll just tack this back down.” With a few quick spot welds, the heavy-duty plate of diburnium-osmium alloy was placed back over the forcefield.

  Scotty thought it was best not to inform Marl’s superior officer of the near-accident. Marl was a good lad: he had some of the puppy-dog ways of John Watkins. Watkins used to follow Scotty around, and was always so eager to please.

  Besides, Scotty wasn’t interested in making trouble. He was just satisfied to be able to explain why they couldn’t get a transporter lock on the lower levels. The forcefield layers were preventing it.

  With that question now settled, Scotty ambled back to the portal. “Have you figured out what these are yet?”

  Scotty pointed to the concave curve at one end of the cylinder. The blue neutronium was polished to an iridescent sheen, and he could barely make out a tiny line forming a spiral a thousand layers thick. Because of the superior Kalandan air filtration system, there wasn’t a speck of dust on it.

  “Unknown at this time,” Kad said shortly.

  Scotty blinked at his concise reply. He
sounded remarkably like Mr. Spock.

  Without fanfare, Spock announced, “I am activating the subprocessor. Mr. Scott, would you please monitor the power flux in the monofilaments?”

  “Sure, let’s fire her up!” Scotty removed the casing he had put over the monofilaments. Marl assisted, moving carefully this time. Scotty gave the lad an encouraging wink.

  Spock stood next to Officer Kad, ready to initiate the subprocessor. “The current default program is a self-diagnostic stimulator. Whatever programming is hardwired within the components of the device will activate the appropriate response.”

  “We’re ready.” Scotty crouched next to the monofilaments, the laser wand in place. He detected minimal power levels inside the monofilaments.

  “Powering on.” Mr. Spock activated the plasma unit that ran the subprocessor. The preliminary sequence began to run.

  Kad had the microfocus sensor pressed against the port into the cylinder. “There’s activity in the cryostatic junction nodes.”

  The floor rumbled slightly.

  “Power levels rising!” Scotty braced himself against the shaking until it died down. “Up twenty percent . . .”

  Next to him, Marl was muttering, confirming his findings with his own laser wand.

  Spock read the activity on the screen. “Interfacing with local system. Accessing artificial intelligence routines.”

  “It’s working!” Scotty exclaimed.

  Grinning up at Spock, he saw the archway behind the two men as they leaned over the subprocessor. It had gone cloudy.

  “Look out!” Scott dropped the laser wand.

  Spock turned, holding out his tricorder. The center of the portal was forming into a multireflective vortex. Scotty grabbed his own tricorder to take readings. The clouds were caused by the vaporization of the air on either side of the arch.

  Then something started to appear. Three figures stepping away from them, one right after the other. They seemed to appear within the threshold of the portal, yet it gave the illusion of much greater depth.

  “That’s Losira!” Scott recognized her from the message he had seen. Her uniform left her back mostly bare, with only a narrow strip of purple up the middle, exposing her shoulders and the curve of her waist. He knew she was deadly, yet was somehow vulnerable looking.