Strangers from the Sky

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  next thing I may have to ask you to do is help me

  pack a suitcase."

  As if by some prearranged signal, the

  commphone began to beep. Grayson

  looked at Spock, eyes twin

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  kling beneath their tangled brows. He switched the

  vidscreen from news to the commphone. Within moments he

  was conversing with a former student, now head of the Peace

  Institute in Stockholm.

  Shortly Spock would indeed be helping him pack

  a suitcase.

  "Oh, Sally?"

  For a sinking moment Kirk thought Elizabeth

  Dehner would fail to respond to her cover name, but it

  was only his tone of voice that made her hesitate

  a particular tone in the male voice she was too

  accustomed to ignoring in her role as Elizabeth

  Dehner. But training got the better of reflex, and

  she turned to find Jim Kirk standing in the doorway

  of his cabin, smiling his

  charming-as-ever smile and crooking his finger at her.

  When she approached, he grabbed her, pulled her

  inside, and shut the door.

  "Captain, what the hell . . . ?"

  ""Colonel," if you must call me something.

  As you were, doctor." Kirk dropped the act

  immediately, became all business.

  "Don't jump to conclusions. Unlike Mitchell,

  I'm concerned with a different sort of diversionary

  action."

  Dehner seemed visibly relieved.

  "Sorry."

  Kirk dismissed it. "We've got more

  important things to worry about.

  "I want you to do whatever you can to remain here when the

  others leave," he instructed her. "Up to and

  including faking an affair with me as a reasonable

  excuse. We can't take the risk of their moving you

  somewhere where we can't find you."

  Dehner relaxed, sat on Kirk's narrow

  bunk. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"

  "How much do you know about this "wiping"

  pFO-CESS?"

  "Mandatory reading for any history-of-med

  course,"

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  Dehner replied. "Mostly the administering of

  large doses of meperidine and the neo-dopamines

  combined with selective hypnosis. Banned during the

  Mind Control Riots. It's crude by our

  standards, but effective."

  "Could you do it if you had to?" Kirk wanted

  to know.

  Dehner thought about it. "Theoretically, given the

  right drugs. But I'm not sure if I'd want

  to morally, I mean.

  Kirk sat beside her on the bunk. "If it meant

  the difference between this mess we're in now and getting

  history back on course, could you? Morally?"

  "I think so," Dehner said after a long moment.

  "Good!" Kirk patted her knee fraternally, was

  on his feet to check the door and the corridor beyond.

  Satisfied that no one could overhear them, he shut the

  door and stood with his back to it. "As nerve-racking

  as all this is, it's working in our favor. The

  government will make sure

  everyone who leaves retains no memory of what

  happened here. That leaves only the people aboard that

  ship. And you and I, doctor, are going to get

  aboard that ship."

  He told her about his encounter with the pacifists and

  how he'd managed to contact their Professor

  Grayson via Stockholm. The pacifists'

  wingboat had lifted off less than an hour before.

  "If Grayson turns up, he'll be one

  extra factor we'll have to consider,"

  Kirk said grimly. "But I understand he's an old

  man, and not well. He might not show. We may

  get lucky. What about the other medical

  personnel?"

  Dehner smiled her wry smile. "They couldn't

  wait to get out of here. I think they were looking forward

  to being "wiped." Being confronted with anything so

  different was frightening to them."

  was "So different," was Kirk repeated.

  "Wonder how they'd cope with some of the really different

  types

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  we've encountered. We forget how parochial we were

  in these times."

  In these times? Definer thought, but said nothing.

  Kirk was already off on another tangent.

  "You all have had to file reports."

  "Right," Dehner confirmed. "They're stored in the

  computer system down the hall. It's an antique

  even by tds standards. Took us half a day

  to figure out how to store things instead of dumping them."

  "That's useful," Kirk said, suddenly

  animated. "See if you can get back into the computer

  room. Sweet-talk the guards, do

  whatever you have to. Get into the system and dump

  whatever you can your reports, the other medics',

  anything the other civilian personnel might have

  entered."

  "Is that all?" Dehner asked dryly, already on

  her feet. "Where will you be?"

  "Right here," Kirk promised. "At least

  until morning. Mitchell hasn't reported in for

  two days. He may just be moving around, or he could

  be in trouble."

  Watching the Ivory Coast slip rapidly

  by to his left, Comrade Engineer Jerzy

  Miklovcik tried not to grin as the captain of the

  speedcruiser grunted and handed him back his

  departure orders.

  "Beats me why they have to divert an entire ship

  to transport one engineer to the ends of the Earth," she

  growled. "What the hell you going to be doing in

  Antarctica anyway?"

  "Building igloos," Gary Mitchell joked in

  his best Polish accent. "Ours not to question why

  correct, Captain?"

  She gave him a sour look and went below.

  Mitchell stood at the rail with the wind ruffling his

  close-cropped hair and hoped he'd be in

  time.

  Jim Kirk had told him to stay put in

  Gdansk unless and until he ordered him to come

  to Byrd. Mitchell was

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  acting against orders, acting on an internal order

  an absolute psychic certainty that Jim Kirk

  would need him soon, if he didn't already.

  Mitchell had had such flashes of insight with

  uncanny regularity all his adult life; they

  rarely misled him. He hoped he was wrong this time,

  Pooped he'd get to Kirk in time to earn a

  reprimand for disregarding orders over something as

  harebrained as a "feeling." But, better safe.

  Besides, considering what Parneb had told him

  to look for in the Western Desert on his way here,

  Jim Kirk should be pleased to see him no matter

  what.

  "Lee's gone to ground and I can't take the time

  to look for him," Mitchell had told the sorcerer,

  popping in on him unexpectedly, if it were possible

  to do that with a true psychic. "It doesn't feel right

  to me, but right now I've got to get to Jim. I

  figured if you wanted something useful to do .

  . ."?

  "I too have been searching for Mr. Kelso since

 
his last transmission," Parneb announced in an

  injured tone. "As I continue to search for your

  Vulcan companion. his

  "Yeah, well, you keep at it," Mitchell

  advised, not expecting results on either search, but

  it kept Parneb out of further mischief. "See you

  around. I've got a ship to commandeer."

  "Mr. Mitchell." Parneb pulled himself up

  to his full height in an attempt at hauteur;

  in such a comic-opera figure it was hopeless. "There

  will never be any love lost between us; I can

  appreciate that. But there is a. larger

  consideration here, which is why I will tell you one thing:

  if you chance to be passing over the Western Desert in

  your travels, you might wish to observe from your window

  what appears to be an abandoned petrol refinery.

  It is in fact an installation left over from the

  Third War . . ."

  * * *

  293.

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  Flying over the neatly disguised half-ruined

  silos in the special Aeroationav plane

  reserved for transporting high-level personnel,

  and using the on-board computer to cross-reference

  certain files he'd left open in Gdansk,

  Gary Mitchell wondered if Parneb was a total

  bungler after all.

  A sudden blizzard waylaid Easter's band

  less than a hundred kilometers from where they'd

  started, bringing both snowmobiles to a standstill.

  Worse, one of them had developed a fuel leak,

  the result of a stray shot from Aghan's penguin

  massacre.

  "Must have ricocheted and hit the tank," Aghan

  offered, as if it were nothing.

  Even if they siphoned some fuel from the second

  mobile there might not be enough, and there was no way

  all five of them, with their weapons, could travel in

  a single vehicle. Easter sat at the controls and

  cursed himself hoarse. Red, disgusted, kicked the

  hatch open and braved the flailing ice storm

  to huddle in with Noir and Kaze, while Aghan

  shrugged and went to sleep, oblivious to the rage of his

  leader and the wind outside.

  Meanwhile, Racher's dozen, unstopped by either

  storm or stupidity, continued on their deadly way.

  "You look unwell, Professor,"

  Spock observed, pausmg in his task. "Perhaps if

  I could accompany

  "Accompany me?" Grayson wheezed, breathless

  from the preparations and perhaps something more. "Lord, Ben, I

  almost wish you could go in my place!"

  He sat on the bed beside his single battered

  suitcase as Spock packed it for him in his

  purposeful, methodical way.

  "Quite seriously," Grayson said. "I'd take

  you if I could. Even send you alone. I don't know

  what it is about you maybe it's nothing more than the way

  you look a person in the eye when he talks to you but

  I

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  believe I could trust you with my life. Or any

  number of lives, for that matter."

  There was no logical response to such an

  accolade. Spock's hands continued their work, folding

  sweaters and shirts and extra

  handkerchiefs, while his eyes met his ancestor's

  blue-eyed gaze in their characteristic steady way.

  "But there's a strong chance they'll turn me back

  at the borders," Grayson went on. His breathing

  was labored, as Spock had never heard it

  before. "I'm sorry, but I can't risk

  antagonising them. They'll have to make their best use

  of one old man, that's all."

  Spock had heard the report from Stockholm, and

  Grayson had added his knowledge to the journalese still pouring

  from the vidscreen on the topic. Extrapolating from

  these scant facts and his knowledge of the time and place and of

  Vulcan scoutcraft procedure, Spock had come

  to the disquieting conclusion that the aliens in question were in

  fact Vulcans.

  Their untimely presence must be linked to his own,

  to the disappearance of his crewmates, to the distortion of

  present history. Ironic that it was to be his

  ancestor who attempted to set things right, while he

  could only stand helplessly by. But if Grayson

  failed . . .

  "Professor, if I may ask" Spock

  closed the suitcase, set it near the bedroom

  door preparatory to bringing it downstairs "if these

  are indeed beings from another world, what can be done about

  them?"

  "Oh, they're from another world, all right!"

  Grayson stated unequivocally, pulling himself off

  the bed suddenly and rummaging in a bureau drawer for

  something. "No human would have tolerated the

  nonsense they have without raising hell. If it rested

  with me and that's a rather improbable 'if" I'd see

  they got a ship to return to their world and hope to God

  they can forgive us our immaturity!" He found what

  he was

  searching for, a small odd-looking talisman on

  a tangled silver chain. Grayson proceeded

  to try untangling it. "Mind 295

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  you, if you think the powers-that-be are going to take the

  advice of one decrepit pacifist here, give me

  a hand with this, can you'd

  The tremor in his hands made him drop the

  talisman; Spock retrieved it from the floor and

  examined it curiously.

  "Doubt if your generation would know what to make of that

  little object." Grayson's breath came in shorter

  gasps now, but his eyes remained untroubled, studying

  his mysterious lodger under his eyebrows, glinting

  mischievously.

  Spock disentangled the talisman from its chain and

  studied it. It was a simple thing a circle

  enclosing a modified inverted y or perhaps a

  runic K simple, but of great significance.

  "I believe it was commonly called a

  peace symbol," Spock observed. "Of obscure

  but possibly ancient origin, first used

  extensively during the antiwar movements of the

  1960's."

  Grayson nodded, as if he'd expected

  Spock to know this much. "It became our symbol in the

  underground durinand the Third War a way of knowing whom

  we could trust. Now that peace is the majority

  opinion, the symbol has fallen inffdisuse. Though

  if I fail in what I've been asked to do well,

  this small thing has gotten me through many a dangerous

  situation; let's hope it can get me through one more."

  He sat heavily on the bed, his breathing growing more

  and more labored. He seemed to be

  listening to some inner voice. Spock watched him with

  growing, concern. Unaware that he was doing so, he had

  untangled the fine silver chain and extricated the

  talisman; he held it gently, reverently in his

  hands.

  "You have extraordinary hands, Ben, has anyone

  ever told you that?" Grayson's voice sounded

  dreamy, far away. "I've watched them do

  things strong, deft, accustomed to work, but gentle

  at the
same time . . ."

  Those same hands caught Jeremy

  Grayson and pre- 296

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  vented him from falling as he was suddenly taken by some

  sort of seizure.

  "You are ill," Spock said, steadying him,

  activating the alarm on the commphone, which would alert the

  nearest hospital. He lifted the old man

  effortlessly in his arms and carried him downstairs

  to await the ambulance.

  "Ben . . ." Grayson gasped, clinging

  to Spock as if to life itself. "Benjamin . . .

  favored son . . ."

  He suffered a second seizure, which sent him

  into cardiac arrest. Spock laid him out on the

  living-room carpet and began CPR, breathing life

  into him to whom he owed life.

  Mahmoud Gamal al-Parneb Nezaj

  abandoned his crystal-gazing with something like despair.

  Lee Kelso was nowhere to be found, and whatever hope

  he'd had of finding Spock was finally exhausted.

  Parneb made himself a pot of mint tea and

  absently flicked on his vidscreen. Voices

  trickled in and out of his consciousness as he waited for the

  tea to steep.

  "dis . . in major capitals and small

  villages alike, demands from groups of every

  political stripe calling for the aliens to be brought

  forth and made available for questioning, if they in fact

  exist. Meanwhile, planetary comdefences continue

  on the alert, and countless millions scan the heavens

  nightly, waiting with dread for the appearance of further

  strangers from the sky . . ."

  "dis . . have gone so far as to suggest that the arrival

  of aliens is in fact a reprisal for the launching

  of the Icarus mission to Alpha

  Centauri. Spokesmen for the Back to Earth

  Movement, at a prayer meeting hastily assembled

  in Salt Lake City, called for a halt to all

  further space exploration, and one source was quoted

  as saying there would be nothing morally wrong with abandoning

  the Icarus in space if this would put an end to the

  alien invasion . . ."

  "dis . . eyewitnesses claim that such aliens have

  landed

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  before, and have been secretly interbreeding with human

  stock since the first UFO sightings nearly one

  hundred years ago . . ."

  "dis . . seventeen people injured when an

  unidentified person or persons spread the rumor

  that alien invaders had taken over the airports . .

  ."

  "Oh, dear!" Parneb sighed, stirred his tea,

  and changed the channel. In a moment of