Strangers from the Sky
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hunted through the fetid undergrounds where they functioned
best; it lent some spurious visceral energy to their
emptiness. Easter and his motley band Red, the
stringy-haired blonde whose heroes were Abu Nidal
and the Red Brigades, Aghan the greasy November
soldier, and others scattered globe-wide to foment
and instigate, and their arch-enemy and sometime-ally
Racher, whose name meant Venger, a hardcore
survivalist who would have them all dead, but only after
they'd helped him destroy his enemies, who were most
of mankind had killed and maimed and laid waste
without ever being so much as
captured. For one like Easter whose every waking moment
was a death wish, this was its own kind of agony.
"What's t'use of it, then?" he asked at
last, after he'd mulled over Aghan's
news until Aghan had begun to doze.
"Spacemen. So what? Was it an invasion,
left-brace could see. We'd sit back and let
"em do the killin" for us. But two, you'sd?
What's t'use of it, then?"
"You are thick!" Aghan despaired.
"Hostages. Trade-offs for whatever we want,
or else we waste "em. Then more spacemen come
to avenge them. There's your invasion. A jihad to end
them all."
Easter thought that over for a long time, too.
"How we gonter find 'em?" he asked at
last. "If t'ship was gonter take 'em away,
they could take 'em anywheres."
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Aghan waited for him to finish his thought. Irish were
as thick as legend. When Easter had run out of his
simple syllables, Aghan spoke a single word:
"Media."
Easter looked at him blankly. hiswere tome
again?"
"Slip this" Aghan fondled the tape of Comrade
Mediaperson Mariya Yevchenkova's conversation with
her niece was to some 'investigative
reporter" for a rival service. Say the
bleeding-heart North-Ams. They do the legwork, we
follow in their footsteps. They get headlines, we
get the spacemen."
Easter thought about it some more, tilted his chair back
until his feet were crossed on the tabletop and he was
staring at the damp on the ceiling. Six feet of
reinforced thermoconcrete and twenty feet of earth
separated him from the sky. He hadn't seen the sun
in over a year.
He thought, and his thoughts became lurid in their
violence. He and his band against the armed forces of
Earth, with Racher's people deployed as backup to take
as many of them out as possible, Perhaps even Racher himself
it was sure death, death in a blur of blood and
glory, the thing Easter craved most.
He swung his feet hard onto the concrete
floor. Sure death.
"Contact Racher," he told Aghan. "We'll
do it."
"Broadcast on the high frequencies only,"
Kirk instructed his troops, handing Dehner's
communicator back to her. "Earth equipment
won't be able to pick up that high. Lee, you'll be
relatively stationary while the rest of us
are moving around, so the others will call in to you at
four-hour intervals. As soon as you get set up,
contact Parneb and let him know where you are. Use
an ordinary telephone or computer link and assume
you're being overheard."
"What about you, Captain?" Kelso had not
secreted his communicator in his new Earth-style
clothes, held it out to Kirk. "You'll be in the
greatest danger."
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"I'll get your location from Parneb and try
to call in whenever I can," Kirk said lamely. His
communicator lay somewhere in the blue dust of
M-155, a victim of his temper. Any
junior officer that careless would have been chewed out for his
stupidity, but who was going to chew out the captain? He
would pay his own price. "I'll manage."
"It doesn't make sense!" Kelso
objected. "I'll be playing around with some of the most
sophisticated computer equipment in this century.
Want to bet I can't find a way to reach the high
frequencies? Besides, like you said, I'll be safe in
one spot. Captain Jim, seriously. Take
it."
"I said was Kirk began tightly, but Mitchell
headed him off at the pass.
"Take the damn communicator, James," he
said pleasantly. "We don't have time for heroics."
Kirk acquiesced.
"Thank you, Leeea5' he said humbly,
pocketing the communicator.
Parneb drove them to the airport.
"I shall not rest, my friends, until you have all
returned safely," he said sadly, clasping each
of their hands in turn, Dehner's last. "Captain,
if there is anything more I can do his
"We'll be in touch," Kirk promised, thinking:
You've done more than enough already!
"Mother, consider," Sorahl observed after
Captain Nyere had left them in their
well-appointed guest quarters deep within the great
ship, away from human eyes and human questions, late
into a night when several of those humans, enervated by the
day's events, were thinking of sleep. The Vulcans,
gifted with greater stamina, owever overtaxed, were at
least re/l. "There is a curious irony to our
situation."
T'Lera, Vulcan and commander lost to both her
planet and her command, student of life's
ironies,
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considered all that had befallen them and wondered to which
of a multiplicity of ironies her son referred.
"Indeed?"
"We have landed our ship in a vast body of water,
thence been transported over water to a
human-built structure, anchored, I am
told, not on Earth but on a coral reef."
Sorahl spoke these things with a quiet wonderment at
this world's diversity. "From there we have been
transported in a small water-borne vessel
to within a larger one."
T'Lera said nothing while he finished his thought.
"Mother, we have, quite literally, not yet set foot
on Earth!"
Chapter Six
IN THE WINDOWSEAT of a third-floor
bedroom of an old frame house in Boston,
overlooking a small rain-swept garden where an
oak tree and a gingko vied in sprinkling bronze and
saffron leaves respectively upon a patch of
soggy lawn, Spock considered a
worst-case scenario.
Logically, no natural phenomenon with which he was
familiar could have caused him to be here; therefore his
transport through time and space had been wrought by some
manner of
intelligence. Without knowing the nature of that
intelligence or the reason for its action, Spock's
options were limited, his outlook unpromising.
Assuming his companions had not been
similarly transported, they would have conducted a
Phase One search for him on the surface of
; M-155, then returned to Enterprise before the
planet disappeared again. Having no possible way of
knowing where further to look for him, they would eventually
abandon the search for Spock and move on. As,
logically, they should.
If his companions had been similarly
transported, it was as likely that they were on
Earth as that they were not. If they were not, there was nothing
to be gained by contemplating where they might be. An
intelligence
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capable of manipulating time and space, yet so
capricious as to transport other
intelligent beings into the void of space or onto a
planet of molten gases was beyond any logic
Spock understood. Logic dictated that cruelty'
and what humans called evil, were the offspring of
ignorance and fear. Superior intellect, having
transcended ignorance and fear, could only breed
superior morality, or so Spock believed. He
had not lived long among humans.
If his companions were on Earth, it was improbable
that, sequestered as he must remain, they would be able
to find him. He must
therefore, against all odds, attempt to locate them.
Jeremy Grayson proved instrumental in this.
"Delicate question," the professor said one evening
after they'd cleared the supper dishes and set up the
chessboard. "How precarious is your financial
situation? A temporary problem of liquidity, or
are you plain broke?"
"I beg your pardon?" Spock had been pleased
to learn that his ancestor held a grand-master rating;
it eliminated the need for handicapping.
"Considering the condition in which you turned up on my
doorstep, I'm assuming you have DO money, "
Grayson said bluntly, toying with a rook. "If
there's anything you need, don't be coy about
it.""
What could he possibly require beyond the
largess the professor had already provided?
Spock wondered. He had food and shelter, his
pick of closets full of clothing left
by previous boarders, a room of his own, access
to Grayson's private library, which literally
filled the house to bursting. Grayson never questioned his
keeping his head covered at all times, never invaded
his privacy or Questioned his need to be alone more than in
company. if he must remain here indefinitely,
surely there were worse prisons.
But as to anything he might need . . .
"There is one thing, Professor. Before I came
here, I 243
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was involved in a project of a sort, with some
colleagues. For reasons which I cannot explain, we
lost contact with each other . . ." He did not know
how to continue.
"And?" Grayson moved his queen, sat back in
his chair. "Check, by the way. You mentioned you were a
scientist. Dare I ask what the project was
about?"
"I regret I cannot tell you that,
Professor."
Spock rescued his king with a tricky knight-led
counteroffensive. "Check."
"No problem." Grayson found himself seriously
threatened for the first time in the game. "Didn't think you
could. But you lost contact with the others, and?"
"I have reason to believe they may be in some
danger," Spock explained carefully. "And since
they will have no way of knowing where I am, I must
communicate with them without attracting undue attention
from certain quarters."
"That should be easy." Grayson fiddled with his
queen, a mischievous gleam in his clear blue
eyes. "We can run an ad in the Personals."
He moved. "Check and mate, Ben. Game for
another?"
Spock reset the board.
Somewhere between the recipes and advice to the
lovelorn, between agricultural reports and
columns on pet care, the following evening's
"newspapers" broadcast to the home screen by a
global media service for those who'd rather read their
news than hear it carried this terse notice:
Kirk, James T.: Awaiting your command.
Spock csto GraysonlBoston.
"It'll run indefinitely on both the local
and the global wire services until I tell them
to pull it," Grayson said,
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
wondering who this Kirk might be to inspire such
loyalty from the likes of Spock.
"Doubtless the cost may prove
prohibitive..."
Spock knew something of the human obsession with
profit.
"Not a dime," Grayson assured him. "Put
your mind to rest on that score, Ben. I'm still owed a
few favors out there."
All that remained for Spock to do was a thing most
Vulcans excelled in: he waited.
At no time did he venture beyond the confines of the
professor's house or garden. He made himself
useful, doing whatever manner of
housekeeping and repairs had been long
neglected by a damaged old man. Despite
Grayson's insistence that he need do nothing more
than indulge him in a nightly game of chess,
Spock cleaned the house from attic to cellar, raked
leaves, climbed the precariously slanted
gambrel roof to patch its leaks, completed the task
of cataloging his thousands of books which the professor
had begun years ago but left unfinished following the
death of his wife. In all his activities,
Spock was silent, unobtrusive, and for the most part
lost in thought.
Others came and went through the Drofessor's life
a daughter who Spock knew would be his great-aunt
and any number of friends and associates of every stripe
who called or visited, often filling the parlor with
stories and debate long into the night. Though it would
have gratified his curiosity to attend these gatherings,
Spock refrained, remaining in his room whenever
Grayson had so much as a single other visitor, his
sharp ears enabling him to partake of the conversation
vicariously. He dared not do otherwise; there was too
much at stake.
As he performed his household chores, Spock
formulated a plan. With the professor's
permission, he would remain with Grayson for one
Earth year. If his
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companions did not find him in that amount of time,
he would seek a more permanent place of
concealment. Earth had deserts where no human could
live. Spock was a desert creature born and
bred; he would survive.
He did not permit himself to dwell upon the
arduousness, the solitude of such a way of life.
He would do what he must. At worst his
self-imposed exile would last for an additional
nineteen years, until the first arrival of
Vulcans within the Earth system. Would it constitute
a violation of the Prime Directive to reveal himself
to his own kind and explain what had transpired?
Even if it were not, and he were permitted to return
to Vulcan with tilde those rescued by the Earth ship
Amity, what dispostion would be made of him on a
planet where he had not yet been born?
The convolutions of such logic might drive a
human mad. Spock had not the luxury of
madness. He would do what he must; he had no
choice.
Alone in what passed for a fleabag hotel somewhere
on the west coast of the Americas, Jim Kirk
wrote until his hand cramped:
"Captain's Log: No Stardate. Stardates
will not exist for another forty-two years. If what
we are attempting to do fails, they won't
exist at afloat least on Earth.
"My people are all in place, awaiting further
orders. Those with communicators have kept in constant
contact with me. Lee Kelso has left me a
commphone extension where he can sometimes be reached; the
system is not ideal but is the best that can be managed.
Kelso insists he will find a way to hook our
communicators into a computer frequency even with this
century's primitive technology; I have known
Lee Kelso for years and believe he can do almost
anything, but I am dubious about this.
"Dr. Definer reports she has settled in
comfortably in her new identity as Dr. Bellero,
and has even set up a
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
clinic to treat private patients. Despite
her initial concerns, her arrival in Tezqan has
not aroused suspicion. In many respects this
century is infinitely easier to work in than our
own.
"Mitchell has fitted in well at Gdansk,
gaining access in ways I don't want to know about
to Aeroationav files on shipping routes and
code-classified activities. He
spends his evenings in waterfront bars telling
dirty jokes in Polish and asking merchanters what
they think about flying saucers. He has
reluctantly agreed to limit his social
activities to this much; we don't any of us dare
tempt fate in ways that might alter history.
"Gary informs me that the area where the Vulcans were
found is under the jurisdiction of Aeroationav Command
out of Norfolk Island, and has narrowed the number
of ships possibly involved in retrieving them
to three. Once he learns which of the three is the
correct ship and I have no doubt Gary will
accomplish this by whatever sub-rosa means we will need
Kelso's skills as a computer hacker more than