replacing the Borodin with some Prokofiev; the
composer's "Kije" also joined them for dinner. "You'd
never be so nice if it was just us!"
The good-natured banter went on, with Yoshi
joining in, and Sorahl at least managing to look
less somber. Jim Kirk exchanged glances with
Dr. Bellero when she came in. Whatever was going
on in the world beyond, morale was high in here.
"Maybe too high," Elizabeth Dehner
whispered, reading Kirk's thoughts. "It could be
false euphoria. The calm before the storm.
Overcompensation for recent events and future
uncertainties. I'd be careful."
"So noted," Kirk whispered back. "How do you
do that?"
"What, read your mind?" Dehner
teased; if they were going to pretend to be lovers, she
would give it her best shot, in public anyway.
"You telegraph with your face, didn't you know that?
I also have a high esper rating. Though not as high as
Parneb's."
"I'll keep that in mind!" Kirk grimaced,
aware that Sorahl could not help overhearing. He was
searching for an opening gambit to talk to the young
Vulcan when T'Lera was suddenly among them.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
She made no entrance, in fact made no sound,
but her presence was such as to reduce them to silence and
draw their attention to her. An of ficer and a
gentleman, Jason Nyere was on his feet at
once; the other males, excepting Sorahl,
followed suit. Accepting Earth's antique
chivalry with her silence, T'Lera seated herself beside
Jim Kirk.
"I am told you are sent to offer us freedom,"
she began without preamble, including Dr. Bellero
in her careful, damped-down gaze, but primarily
addressing Kirk. "I am also told you are not what
you earlier purported to be, "Colonel"
Kirk. Is my information accurate?"
"Yes, ma'am," Jim Kirk responded almost
humbly, daunted by her proximity for all her
containment. "Right on both counts."
T'Lera disregarded his attempt at lightness.
"If I may be so bold: what are you, Mr.
Kirk?"
"A friend," Kirk said at once, without meaning
to. He'd been running prepared speeches in his
head for days. Where was his celebrated glibness when
he needed it?
"Apparently our definitions of friendship are
somewhat dissimilar," T'Lera suggested.
Jim Kirk heard Jason chuckle. The
captain had broken out the ship's liquor supply;
Kirk accepted a scotch on the rocks with silent
gratitude.
"Perhaps it was a poor choice of words," he told
T'Lera. "Or a less-than-precise choice."
Damn! he thought. He'd learned nothing since his
encounter with Spock on the bridge, was left falling
over his tongue in an attempt to clarify himself.
"Perhaps what I mean is that what I am is less
important than what I am attempting to do."
"Forgive me, Mr. Kirk," T'Lera said
dryly. "But the limits of my
perspective render me unable to separate motivation
from motivator."
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
A sharp, humorless laugh announced Melody
Sawyer's arrival.
"Save your breath, Kirk! She can't accept
your help; you're only human!" She plunked
herself down next to Dehner, as far away from the
Vulcans as she could be while still at the same table.
"Thought it might be refreshing to eat with human beings
again," she announced, helping herself from the serving
platters.
The Vulcans had the good grace to say nothing.
Yoshi and Tatya looked embarrassed, and Jason
Nyere looked as if he was about to chew Sawyer's
ears off.
"Does their presence threaten you,
Commander?" Dehner asked ingenuously.
"It does backslash backslash not!"
Melody snorted.
"Then why do you act out in such a hostile manner
whenever they're in proximity?"
"Listen, honey." Melody pointed a fork at
her. "You may be impressed with your own
credentials, but I've got nearly twenty
years on you and I don't impress. You can look
in my file; you'll find I don't suffer from
paranoid delusions or feelings of persecution his
"Just bad manners!" Jason rumbled.
"I have the perspicacity to recognise a threat
when I see one, sub!" Melody barked back.
"What exactly do you see as the threat?" Jim
Kirk chimed in, finishing his drink and changing
direction. Maybe he'd struck out with the
Vulcans, but a fellow human's distrust of the
alien was familiar territory. "I see us sharing a
meal with two quiet, well-mannered fellow beings
who have neither taken hostages, blown up our
military installations, nor demanded that we "take
us to your leader."" Nyere was chuckling again. "I
don't understand his
"What I "perceive as the threat,"" Melody
mimicked him, "is what all those people up north
looking for flying saucers are afraid of. It may
not have a name, or maybe it does. Maybe it's the
simple deflation of ego
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
accompanying the realisation that we're not
supreme in this corner of creation. Maybe it's the
fear that everything we've fought through three world wars
to preserve on this lowly little dustball will have to change
now. Maybe it's the idea that these people have watched us,
learned our language, and happen to look a little like
us, but they aren't like us; in fact they take an
inordinate self-inflating pride in not being like us.
Maybe I sit here thinking "would I let my
daughter marry one of them?"' I don't know what it
is; all I know is I don't want it happening
in my lifetime. And the response from the rest of the
planet sure as hell indicates I'm not
alone."
That said, she put her food on a tray and
stalked off. Jason looked as if he might be
tempted to go after her, if only to dump her
overboard in her underwear. He shook his head, put
his fork down, and excused himself to return to his
solitary vigil at the comm screen.
No one but Kirk ate much after that, and he
unobtrusively, convinced that whatever lay ahead
he'd need the strength for it. Tatya began to clear
away the dishes; Yoshi and Sorahl retreated
to one end of the table to consult over something on a computer
printout. Elizabeth Dehner poured herself
a cup of coffee and watched it grow cold at her
elbow. In the galley, the last melancholy strains
of "Lt. Kije" wafted away and no one bothered
to replace the disk. The false euphoria was
gone.
Only T'Lera, her hands folded in a
configuration not unlike one Spock might have
chosen, Kirk noted with a pang, sat unmoved and
unmoving in the midst of emotional ou
tburst or the
disintegration in its aftermath, centered and certain. If
he could get to the core of that certainty, Jim
Kirk thought, and somehow
challenge it
He sighed. Here under the ice day and night were
indistinguishable, but topside the sun would be going
down about now. Another day shot to hell. He'd
told 310
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
his people it would be easy once he got to the
Vulcans; here he was sitting right beside one of them and
he had no idea what to do next.
He felt rather than saw T'Lera's eyes on
him.
My God, he thought. How often have I gotten that
same look from Spock assessing,
weighing, and, I always assumed in my paranoia,
finding me unworthy. But Spock's gaze, however
incisive, was always tempered with with something; I'm not
sure what. Certainly nothing as emotional as
compassion, but something softening, mitigating. There is
nothing soft in T'Lera's gaze, nothing soft about
T'Lera at all.
"You realise, Mr. Kirk, that Commander Sawyer
is correct," T'Lera said.
"I'm not so sure," Kirk said, swallowing the
last of his dinner and pushing the plate away. "There
are at least as many humans who would welcome you,
given the chance."
"Provided we did not move in down the
block," T'Lera said dryly; she'd been getting
a handle on the idiom after all, with Jason's
help. Across the table, Elizabeth Dehner tried
not to choke on her cold coffee. "Tell me my
presence does not make you uneasy, Mr. Kirk,
and I will remember that humans have one skill
Vulcans have never
mastered, and that is their ability to stretch a
truth."
I've struck out twice in ten minutes, Kirk
mused. What have I got to lose by going up
a third time?
"Commander," he began. "What can I say
to persuade you?"
"Persuade me of what, Mr. Kirk? That your
people are at best ambivalent about mine? Of this I
need no reassurance. his
Kirk shook his head. "Of the fact that some of us
want to help, and we may be empowered to get you off
the planet, if only we can get you out of
Antarctica." He heard Dehner inhale
sharply; he had no basis for making that last
statement, but he made it anyway. He 311
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
got as close to T'Lera as he dared. "I
asked you a question yesterday at the inquiry, Commander; you
never got a chance to answer it. What would you do if you
were free to leave here?"
He saw Sorahl's head go ups saw that
Yoshi was listening, too less-than - His
"Is this an intellectual exercise, Mr.
Kirk, or some manner of test?" T'Lera wanted
to know. "I had thought the tests concluded with the
departure of the inquiry panel. As
to intellectual exercises . . ."
"Commander T'Lera, sometime over the next
few days" Kirk felt his temper simmering,
decided to use it "your fate, and your son's" he
included Sorahl in the conversation "is going to be
decided for you, either by the United Earth Council
or, God help you, by 'public opinion," in
the shape of whatever nosy reporters manage
to sneak through the security cordon and find their way
here. I'm offering you a chance out. I have no time for
intellectual exercises!"
He subsided, wondering not for the first time if he'd
blown it completely. T'Lera let the silence
continue interminably, let it settle on them both,
oppressive.
"Mr. Kirk," she said at last. "What I have
attempted to do to prevent this you know. What I am
permitted by my conscience and by my oath to do next is
contingent upon what is best for your world and for mine.
Isolated from both in this place, I cannot
accurately know what that is. Yours may be a
simple question, but it has no simple answer."
"All right," Kirk acquiesced. Jason had
left the liquor cabinet unsecured, and he
helped himself. "Let's say I'm simplifying
matters for the sake of expediency. Let's say
I'm as aware as you of the danger here not
only to you and your son, but to both our worlds. Perhaps more
aware than you can know."
"Jim," Elizabeth Dehner said correctly,
in character, "you're telegraphing again.""
"Why, Sally." He grinned, also in character,
return312
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
ing to his seat with drink in hand. No, I
wasn't going to tell her who we really are! he
thought, hoping she was reading him loud and clear. If
I'd wanted a watchdog or a lecture on the
Prime Directive, I'd have brought well,
Spock, if I could have. "Don't you trust me?"
"As far as I can throw you!" Dehner said
sweetly
T'Lera, assuming this to be some human lovers'
quarrel, as Definer had intended her to, lowered her
eyes in respect for human privacy even in this
public forum. Her high beams off him for the moment,
Kirk stopped sweating and thought hard. -
"tilde Commander, I'm told your people pride
themselves on logic, on the ability to predicate
future occurrences based upon present events.
Am I correct?"
"It is not a matter of pride, Mr.
Kirk. These are our gifts, and we make use of
them."
"But you could, for example" Kirk held his
temper this time "project a time when
Earthmen, in the course of space exploration, would
happen upon Vulcans or others out
there. Assuming there are others out there."
T'Lera was watching him closely. "Perhaps."
"Then I put it to you that if your ship had not entered
Earth's atmosphere and crashed, and created who knows
what repercussions in terms of human fears and
misunderstandings, there would come a time in Earth's
technological evolution when we would reach out
into space and
encounter other technological life, whether
Vulcan or not, if such life existed."
"Mr. Kirk," T'Lera answered. "Three of
your years ago an Earth ship was launched toward the
system you call Alpha Centauri. I suggest that
your scientists would not have dispatched so dangerous,
time-consuming, and costly a manned expedition without the
expectation of finding intelligent life."
"What do you think, Commander?" Kirk asked
incisively. "Is there intelligent life on
Alpha Centauri?"
"I have never been to Alpha Centauri, Mr.
Kirk,"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
T'Lera replied, and Elizabeth Dehner
excused herself to get another cup of coffee.
She's not going to violate her Prime
Directive, Kirk thought. Not even to the degree
of revealing her knowledge of other life forms, not even if it
could sav
e her life. He had to admire her for it,
at the same time he felt like throttling her for bringing
him so close to violating his own. Was there no other
answer?
"Hypothetically, Commander," Jim Kirk began,
feeling an extra gear kick in somewhere in the back
of his brain as he found the persuasiveness he'd been
searching for all evening. "Assuming your ship had not
crashed, assuming the scoutcraft missions proceeded
without incident, how long approximately in your
opinion before
Earthmen and Vulcans encountered each other?"
"Based upon your present level of technology
and exploration correlative with ours," T'Lera
answered after the briefest moment of calculation.
"Approximately 19.285 of your
years."
Practically down to the date and time! Jim
Kirk marveled, wondering if the famed rescue
mission by the Amity had been accident after all. He
risked a glance at Dehner when she returned from the
galley to see if she'd overheard. She had. And,
Kirk realised, so had Sorahl tilde
"You know, it's always amazed me," Kirk mused,
"the sacrifices in time space travelers are
willing to make. The crew of the Icarus wild take
six years to get to Alpha Centauri and six
to get back. I m cunous, Sorahl how far is
Vulcan from Earth?"
"Approximately 58,782,000,000,000
Earth miles, based upon our ship's trajectory,
Mr. Kirk." The young Vulcan was too new at
interaction with Earthmen to suspect the trap Kirk was
laying for him.
Kirk whistled softly. Elizabeth Dehner
wanted to hit him. "That's quite a distance. How long
did it take your ship to go that far7"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
- The young Vulcan knew his mother's thoughts as he
walked blindly into the trap. Perhaps,
indeed, it was not yet time.
"Perhaps my commander could better answer that, Mr.
Kirk," he said politely, knowing it would not serve.
"But you were the navigator," Kirk challenged
him. "I'm asking you. That much distance I'm no
physicist but, my goodness, that comes out to about ten
light- years, I think. You couldn't have been in
space that long; you'd have had to be a child when you left
Vulcan. How long, Sorahl?"
The young Vulcan hesitated, though not out of doubt
as to what answer he would give, only in search of a
way to give it without offence. "With all due
respect, Mr. Kirk, I cannot answer that question."
"Nor will I, Mr. Kirk." T'Lera was on
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