Strangers from the Sky
Page 28
ever.
"As for Spock I dare not allow myself to think about
Spock. Our mad friend Parneb seems to think he
still exists somehow; I can only attribute this
to wishful thinking on Parneb's part, since
Spock's nonexistence would be his fault.
Nevertheless, something in me refuses to admit the
Vulcan is dead or, worse, cannot exist in this
version of history. How I would value his logic
to help us now!
"Assuming Aeroationav procedures
to be not
unlike that of the United Earth Space Probe
Agency that will be its offspring, and which in turn will be the
forerunner of the Starfleet in which we serve, the people in
charge will be concerned with keeping the Vicars safe and as
far removed from the general public as possible. The
only question is: Where?"
"Antarctica?" Jason Nyere repeated. It
wasn't as if he hadn't heard it. "Commodore his
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"You have a problem with that, Captain?" the stolid
face on the comm screen inquired. It was a
paperpusher's face, a bland, impersonal,
just-followingorders face, and it was frowning
disapproval at him. Jason Nyere seldom
gave Command trouble; it didn't expect it from him
now.
"You bet I do, sir! I have a problem with this
entire scenario. If you people would take inffconsideration
his
"That's too bad, Captain. Are you requesting
we relieve you?"
Nyere felt the blood pounding in his temples with the
effort to stay calm. "Absolutely not,
sir. I'm simply requesting his
"Very well. Then I suggest you get under way at
once. You will proceed beneath the pack ice to the old
Byrd Research Complex. Once you've got your
detainees tilde ecured, you will be joined by several
wingboats. They'll be bringing some people in, and your
crew except for you and your first out."
So that was the way of it! Jason thought. Take
away my crew so I can't budge my ship until
whatever little top-secret charade has been acted out
to everyone else's satisfaction. Nyere leaned into the
screen, trying to read his superior's mind.
"What 'p," Commodore?-was
"Not at liberty to tell you that yet, Captain.
You're due at Byrd by 0800 Thursday. You will
not break radio silence until then."
"Sir!" Jason cut across his attempt
to terminate. "Commodore, goddammit, either I'm
told the next move or by God I don't play!
I want to know how many "p"' and from where military,
civilian, intelligence, who? None of you has had
the courtesy to so much as speak directly to the
individuals I am detaining here with their complete
consent and cooperation, Commodore; I'll remind you
of that his
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"I have your report here, Nyere. Don't get
snappish
"And another thing, sir!" Jason's slow, even
temper was fired now. "Has it occurred to anyone in
charge that these are citizens of another world, and that their
government might not take kindly to the manner in which
they are being treated his
"That will be all, Captain!" The commodore's
voice was shaky, as if he'd been sitting up all
night with an itchy trigger finger contemplating
exactly that. "You will radio Norfolk from Byrd
upon your arrival. Out!"
Jason looked an apology at T'Lera, who
had been listening out of range of the screen as Nyere
felt she had a right to do, regulations or Melody
Sawyer's temper tantrums notwithstanding.
"I'm sorry!" he said quietly. "But you see
what I'm up against."
"I quite understand, Captain." T'Lera
considered how her superior the deskbound,
planetbound Prefect T'Saaf would respond,
for all her training in logic and diversity, to a like
situation. "This place where you are to detain
us . . ."
Now that the screen was off, Nyere could dab the
sweat off his face.
"Byrd is a polar research center, built and
then abandoned in the Nineties, in possibly the
coldest, remotest place on God's green
Earth. The people who pay my salary would have me put
you,
literally, on
"Captain?"
Jason chuckled quietly. He'd visited the
Vulcan commander daily in her quarters in the six
days Command had kept them waiting for a reply, had
seen to it that she had ready access to him at all times
provided she let him know in advance so he could
clear the corridors. He found her
remarkably easy to talk to despite the constant
need to clarify the idiom, had
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
stressed this ease of communication most
emphatically in trying to get Command to stop hiding
behind its cloud of jingoistic paranoia and confront the
reality of Vulcans.
Vulcans, Jason mused. Pity their
name for themselves transliterated so closely to the name of
one of Earth's less popular ancient gods
crippled iron forger, hurler of lightning bolts.
Surely that sort of subliminal silliness
wasn't what was affecting the people who made the
decisions for this planet?
I'm a ship's captain, not a shrink, Jason
Nyere reminded himself. I haven't the foggiest
idea what goes on in those people's heads. But I
read this lady with the fancy ears loud and clear. She
charts a straight course, and she's yare. Nyere
found himself chuckling again. If nothing else, these
mood swings had him marked for an early grave.
"One thing I am going to see to," he assured
T'Lera, "is that whoever gets off those wingboats
does not bunk on my ship. Let them keep each
other warm inside Byrd; the main structure's little
more than a glorified quonset hut, and I wouldn't
vouch for the plumbing. The more uncomfortable they feel, the
sooner they'll give up and go home. Then it will be
my privilege to show you and your son my ship's
true hospitality, instead of keeping you under wraps
like criminals. Who knows, maybe I can strong-arm
Melody into giving you tennis lessons!"
T'Lera understood that this last was meant as
irony. Sawyer's general disaffection, her barely
concealed fury at being shut out while T'Lera was
let in to hear the comm from Norfolk Command (though
doubtless she'd tapped in from her quarters; in a
calculated oversight, Nyere had not forbidden it),
her inability to be within ten feet of either Vulcan
without, in Jason's words, "starting something," were sore
points with the captain. He'd expected this kind of
small-mindedness 250
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
from his superiors, but with Melody turned on him
he felt like he was getting it from all sides.
"Captain to First," he spoke into the i
ntercom, not
waiting for her to acknowledge; he knew she was
listening. "Sawyer, inform the crew we will be under way
in one half hour."
"Destination?" Sawyer asked, pure as the driven
snow.
"Don't believe it's necessary for me to repeat what
you already know," Captain Nyere said tightly. Did
he read bemusement, or at least appreciation, in
those steady laser eyes beneath their perpetually
quizzical brows?
"Laying in a course for Byrd now," Sawyer
shot back.
"tilde Acknowledged." Jason kept it
succinct. "Is Yoshi back yet?"
"Affirmative, sub! Aboard this past hour."
"Very well. Inform him and Tatya they'll be
taking a little vacation."
True to his word, Yoshi had returned at
dusk on the first day of the Vulcans" voluntary
exile. He brought further bad news.
"It's the wilt!" he cried, finding Tatya in
Sorahl's quarters, deep in conversation. He showed
them both the dispirited-looking clump of kelp he'd
brought back. "Beats me how, but it's got us.
Half the north quadrant's affected."
Sorahl examined the kelp thoughtfully, mindful of
everything he had learned of Earth's flora from his
departed teachers.
"It appears to be a fungal infection," he
observed. "What preventive methods do ploy?"
"None," Yoshi lamented. "And there's no known
cure, either. The stuff doesn't respond to anything
we zap it with, and we don't even know what causes
it. A 251
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
mutation, some little surprise left over from the last
century's pollutants we haven't a
clue."
"The only thing we can do is slash and burn,"
Tatya said remotely. Forty-eight hours ago
she might have shared Yoshi's despair; now little things
like losing their entire harvest seemed somehow
unimportant. "Although once it's gotten to more than
10 percent of the crop even that doesn't usually
work."
"Well, I'm sure as hell going to try!"
Yoshi declared. "Jason's got to let me back out
tomorrow. Has he said anything about what they're going to do
with us?"
"He sent a report to Aeroationav Command,"
Tatya told him. "He's waiting for them
to reply."
"Hell'll freeze over!" Yoshi plunked
himself on Sorahl's bunk beside the young Vulcan,
who was still studying the kelp, turning it over and over in
his sensitive hands. "You're looking at our entire
year's crop down the drain, my friend. And the experts
say, if this thing can't be stopped it could put a
serious dent in food production."
"Indeed?"
Yoshi nodded. "Some of the hysterical types are
even talking famine. Luna has its own
hydropomcs labs, but Mars is still terraforming; they
import all of their food, and it's mostly
processed kelp, algae, soybeans. If they
can't get enough, they'll have to requisition our
reserves or come home. At least, that's the worst
of it. Anyway, what am I bothering you with this for?
You obviously have nothing else on your mind!"
"May I keep this?" Sorahl asked,
indicating the weed.
Yoshi found the request surprising. "Sure.
Why?"
"I should like to study it," the Vulcan explained.
"Captain Nyere informs me the Delphinus has a
number of research laboratories aboard which are not
presently in use. If I might have access
to certain materials . . ."
"I'll ask himl" Tatya volunteered at
once, and there 252
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
was a kind of animation in her voice Yoshi
hadn't heard since this misadventure began. He
wondered what she and Sorahl had found to talk
about in his absence, did not like the trend his thoughts were
taking and dismissed them. He too had more important
things on his mind.
Jason Nyere was only too happy to honor
Sorahl's request for a computer terminal and some
of the chem lab equipment. Unaware of the rigors of a
Vulcan's upbringing, unable to conceive of the limitations
imposed upon the body and the spirit by the confines of
scoutcraft travel or the mental disciplines
mastered to compensate for them, he'd been troubled at
having to keep the younger Vulcan a virtual
prisoner.
All guest cabins were equipped with vidscreens,
of course, and Ensign Moy had been kept busy
trotting to the ship's library to fetch requested
books and tapes, leaving them outside the
visitors" closed doors, but Nyere found this
inadequate compensation for denying his charges the
freedom of the air. That the young Vulcan had a
project to occupy him eased the captain's conscience
considerably.
For his part, Sorahl was grateful for the
intellectual exercise, but well aware of a more
pragmatic concern as well. The unchecked
destruction of the kelp would mean personal hardship
for Yoshi and Tatya, and inconvenience for all of
Earth. Though Sorahl was no biologist by his
people's standards, any Vulcan held the
equivalent of several science degrees, and there had
been a paper published on his world some months ago
regarding the treatment of a similar plant disease
among the hydroponic farms of Vulcan. If he
could apply the same research principles to plant
life grown in salt water, Sorahl believed he
could find a cure, and a way of repaying his debt
to those who had saved his life.
He labored long hours over his research,
sometimes
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
overtaxing the human-built computer at his
disposal, sometimes outdistancing it with his mental
calculations. Whatever humans decided to do about him
and his kind, surely none of them could find fault with
what he did here.
One of them did.
"He's good on that computer, Jason," Melody
Sawyer remarked. "So good he's got it panting
to keep up with him most times. I don't like it!"
"Seems to me you don't like much of anything around
here lately." Nyere was using the endless wait for
Norfolk Command's reply to catch up on the
paperwork he usually ignored until he
couldn't find his desk. "What's your beef this time?
Or do you simply object to their breathing the same
air as you?"
"It just occurred to me" Melody ignored his
sarcasm; it hit too close to the truth "that this little
Merit Badge biology project could be a
cover. I don't buy Her Nib's story about them
being the only ones out there. For all we know,
Junior could be signaling in an entire invasion
force right down on our heads."
"Not likely with you bugging him round the clock."
"It's an open computer system, Captain sub.
He's gonna
buy time on it, I have a right to tap
him."
"Tell me, Sawyer, have you bugged the heads,
too? Or don't you want to know if they do that the
same as us?" Jason didn't wait for her
to reply. "Besides, I really don't think he's
calling in any big guns at this late date. I
understand his grandfather had the opportunity during World
War II."
He hadn't told Melody the history of the
Vulcan scoutcraft as T'Lera had told it
to him as a gesture of openness, told it to her now in
yet another attempt to convince her that these
people meant no harm. His narrative had the opposite
effect. Melody listened slack-jawed, her face
gone so white her freckles looked like they'd been
painted on.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"Pete's sake!" she said finally, and stormed out.
Jason Nyere returned to his paperwork,
seriously considering a request to Norfolk, if
they ever got back to him, to have Melody Sawyer
transferred off his ship.
Lee Kelso waited for the shift change at
Media- Magix, Inc., his current home, before
locking himself into a security terminal and keying in the
final sequence he'd kept in his head all afternoon.
If Mitchell was on time, and if he'd done
everything right . . .
Beneath a roar of static and discordant microwave
melodies, a laconic, skeptical voice
seeped through.
"Mitchell to Kelso, Mitchell to Kelso, do
you read? Lee, old buddy, you told me this would
work... personally I think you're nuts, but I'll
play tilde along . . . Mitchell to Kelso."
There was far too much static, and a whine that
reminded him of a three-day hangover he'd earned
during a hard night on Argelius, but Kelso was
inordinately pleased with himself. He tinkered and
finetuned, letting Mitchell babble on.
"Lee, if you're listening, respond, will you? This
is beginning to get very old . . . Seriously, old
buddy, you've got another minute or two before I
give this up . . . Oh, Le-ee, this is Gary!
Hey, sailor, you come here often?"
Kelso made a final adjustment and keyed the
answer back.
"Hiya, Mitch. Kelso here. How are things in
Glockamorra and Gdansk and points north and
east?" He heard Mitchell's laugh through the
static. Old Reliable had struck again. "And they
said it couldn't be done!"
"Yeah, well, you did it, all right."
Mitchell tried not to sound surprised. "You're