Strangers from the Sky
Page 36
her feet and Sorahl followed suit. "If you will
excuse us his
They were gone as silently as T'Lera had come.
Jim Kirk pounded the table in frustration.
"Am Morgen. was Racher's lips did not move
when he spoke. His voice was metal against metal
in the cold of the unheated outbuildings at Byrd.
"When there is sun. his
"That's nearly twelve hours!" one of his
followers complained; Racher had forbidden heat flares
lest they attract attention should anyone
chance to look out from Delphinus's conning tower.
They'd hidden their snowmobiles behind the ancient
glacial ridge some hundred yards distant,
waited for dark to creep and crawl across the ice to the
deserted complex. They had not questioned why it was
deserted; waited now, their attention focused on the
grim grey conning tower jutting above the ice,
giving barely a hint of how much ship lay beneath.
"Ja," Racher replied, unperturbed. His
bionic eyes were infrared-equipped; through the
starboard port he
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could discern a human figure Jason's alone in
the dark of the bridge, and was tempted for the briefest
moment. But he had built his reputation as a
terrorist upon merciless dawn attack; he would not
change that now.
"I want them to know who kills them. We breach
from the conning tower." He motioned with the muzzle of his
favorite automatic; the laser rifle was only
to impress thugs like Easter. "And we go in.
Search and destroy. Everyone."
Some of the white-clad figures murmured in the
darkness. They'd been promised hostages,
trade-offs, reparations for their various causes,
not a night of subzero cold and a dawn of profitless
slaughter.
"Everyone?" someone asked.
'iJa." Racher's eyes glinted metallically
in the darkness. "Everyone!"
"You deliberately tried to corner them
into revealing their warp-drive technology," Dehner
said, amazed at Kirk's temerity. "What did you
hope to accomplish?"
Kirk shrugged. "I thought T'Lera might see
it as a way to bargain for their lives."
Dehner shook her head. "When will you learn?"
"About Vulcans? Probably never." He was
thinking about the general and all the other experts, pounding
at T'Lera with the wrong questions. "Those idiots! They
could have had access to warp-drive technology a
full decade earlier if they'd gotten over their
paranoia and his
"What makes you think T'Lera would have told them
any more than she told you?" Dehner asked
quietly.
Kirk didn't answer her. "I can't get through
to her!" he said, amazed at himself. "I feel so so
helpless!"
He and Dehner were almost alone, still across the table from
each other in the mess hall. Yoshi could be heard in
the galley unloading the dishwasher; everyone 316
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else was gone, somewhere in the big empty ship.
Yoshi had replaced the Prokofiev with some Bach;
the "Air for the G-String" matched Kirk's somber
mood.
"Does that surprise you?" Dehner asked
mildly
Kirk looked at her askance. "What that I
can't get through to T'Lera? Or that I feel
helpless?"
"Either. That you as a captain without a ship, a
leader with no one to lead, should feel helpless. Or that
you still don't know how to talk to a Vulcan. was
Dehner leaned across the table at him, playing the
lovers" tete-a-tete to the hilt; she could learn
to like this. "Or that there's at least one female in the
galaxy who's impervious to your charm?"
The conversation reminded Kirk too much of one
he'd recently had with Gary.
"Don't play doctor with me, doctor!" he
said tightly, knowing she was right on all counts.
"Maybe you'd like to try this yourself?"
"Who, me?" Dehner stretched, cracked her
knuckles, put her elbows back on the table.
"I've got my evening cut out for me trying to find
a way into the pharmaceuticals locker."
Kirk gave her a puzzled look. "How's
that?"
"If you're serious about my having to "wipe"
people," Dehner explained, "I'll need the proper
drugs for the job." Kirk nodded. "Meanwhile, why
don't you go another round with Scarlett O'Hara
cum John Wayne?" she suggested. "You two
seem to understand each other."
"If we ever get out of here" Kirk was on his
feet; he'd intended to track Melody anyway;
was Dehner reading his mind again., "remind me I owe
you a reprimand for insubordination."
Definer just smiled at him.
Melody Sawyer stood rooted to the gym floor
in her tennis whites, repeatedly whacking a tennis
ball off the same spot on the handball wall as
if it were a bull's-eye,
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or possibly the back of a Vulcan's head.
She'd thought of working off her rage in a
few fast sets with the robot, but she knew all its
moves by now and was usually one step ahead of it.
There'd never been anyone on board she couldn't beat
one-handed.
Whack, whack, whack! She slammed the ball
at racquetball speeds, not needing to chase it because
it homed to her like a boomerang. Whack, whack,
whack! If anything, she was building tension instead of
relieving it
Feeling positively murderous, she
programmed the robot for high lobs and determined
to sweat it out.
"Service'" she yelled, triggering the robot
while she was still on the wrong side of the net. It
spat out the first ball and she waited on it until
she really had to chase it. About twenty lobs later
she was beginning to IQ-OSEN up when she saw that she was
not alone. She gave the solid figure in jogging
clothes a once-over without ever slowing up.
"Great form," Jim Kirk tried for openers.
"Captain Nyere tells me you were on the pro
circuit."
"And I bet you came all the way down here just
to tell me that, didn't you, Mr. Kirk?" she
asked, all molasses and sarcasm and never
missing a beat.
"Actually, I thought I'd do some running,"
Kirk lied, picking up a spare racket and testing
the grip. "I thought the gym would be empty this time of
night."
The robot had run out of balls and Melody
scrambled around the court retrieving them. Kirk's
attempts to help only irritated her.
"Listen, Buster: you want to run, go run."
"Sure." Kirk grinned, casually lobbing the
ball in his hand over the net and making it look
easy.
"You play?" Melody challenged rather than asked.
"Well . . I'm a little rusty," Kirk said
diffidently.
Melody kicked the last of t
he stray balls off the
court and threw Kirk one. "How rusty?"
* * *
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Yoshi was stacking the last of the clean dishes in the
pantry and had started on the silverware when
Elizabeth Dehner brought her coffee cup out to the
galley.
"I'll do this one," she told him when
he tried to take the cup from her.
She put it in the sink and rinsed it, awkwardly,
too accustomed to her era's disposable, recyclable
containers, and saw that the young man was watching her out of the
corner of his eye, she hoped not because of her domestic
technique.
"What is it?" she asked when he continued to stare
Her voice was cool, clinical, but with the right
note of accessibility.
Yoshi responded to it. "Can I talk to you for a
minute, doctor?"
They sat in the deserted mess hall and he told
her whatever she didn't already know about him and
Tatya, the events of the last few days, the
Vulcans, the kelpwilt, his fears for the future.
"Tonight Sorahl gave me this," the young man
finished, showing Dehner the formula, sweeping his long
hair out of his eyes in the characteristic gesture. "It's
probably a miracle cure, and he just gives it
to me. After I've done this jealousy trip on him and
Tatya, after everything else. And he gives it
to me. No "shall we share the discovery," no "what
about patent laws," nothing. A gift. No
strings, no applause, nothing. "We who are about
to die salute you," or something. I'm so
confused!"
"We all are, Yoshi," Dehner assured him
vaguely. How could she possibly explain
Sorahl's behavior without explaining flow she
knew? "That's really what this whole thing is about.
When we don't understand something, it's natural to fear
it."
"I thought I understood," Yoshi said sadly.
"In the beginning, that first night when Sorahl told
us about his people and his world I could see it; I could feel
it! It was this weird gut feeling that maybe I'd
been born on
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the wrong planet. I wanted to see the world he was
describing a world without war or violence, a world of
peace and order and common sense where a person can
live and work according to his gifts. I come from a
tradition of discipline and respect for elders and
spiritual awareness; I would have thrived on that. The more
Sorahl talked about Vulcan, the more I felt
homesick for a place I've never seen. Do you
think I'm crazy?"
"NO," Elizabeth Dehner said sincerely,
thinking that if they could set history right again,
Yoshi might yet live to see this world of his dreams.
If everything that brought Yoshi and me to this time and
place hadn't happened, Dehner thought, suddenly
visited with a bad case of Weltschmerz. She
shook her head. NO, she didn't think Yoshi was
crazy, only depressed, and justifiably so.
"Yoshi," she asked in her best clinical
manner, "how much would you be willing to do to get the
Vulcans home safely? To make it possible for
you to visit that world you envision?"
Yoshi's eyes widened in a kind of rapture,
which sparked and died almost as quickly as it had come. He
shook his head sadly.
"I lost that chance when I handed Sorahl and
T'Lera over to Jason. And if you're asking me
what I'd do now that it's too late I'm no kind
of hero."
"There are many kinds of hero, Yoshi," Dehner
said, getting to her feet. "I need a walk. How
well do you know the inside of this ship?"
Yoshi grinned shyly. "About as well as the people who
run her. Would you like a guided tour?"
Dehner linked her arm in his. "Please."
"Forty-love!" Melody announced a little too
smugly. "Always suspected you peaceniks
were cream puffs. Sure you want to go a whole
set?"
"Just play!" Kirk's grin was feral, masking his
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breathlessness. He wished he hadn't been so
ambitious at dinner. Not that it would have made much
difference; the woman was a killer.
"Masochists, too!" Melody's serve was a
rocket.
"Okay, where were we?" Kirk huffed, getting under
the ball just in time and sending it wobbling back into a
clear fault. With a kind of noblesse, Melody
allowed it.
"You were asking why an intelligent person like me
couldn't overcome my prejudices, just walk up
to one of the Vulcans, and "engage in dialogue,"
is how I think you put it," she said, sending him
running again. "Is that what happens when you sleep
with a shrink? You start talking like one?"
"Maybe," Kirk gritted, feeling his racket
scrape the flooring as he volleyed back, lost his
balance, and slammed into the far wall. If she got
this point, she wouldn't get it easily. "Well,
why don't you?"
"Because" Melody got the point, easily
"somebody has to keep a clear head until this
thing settles out."
Kirk rubbed his shoulder and went to chase the ball.
"I don't understand what that means."
Melody bounced on her toes and laughed
humor-lessly. "You know, Kirk, I'm
beginning to believe you are a pacifist after all. No
one else would be so naive. Haven't you figured out
what happens next? Or do you really believe those
people will be allowed to go home?"
He couldn't answer for several moments, needed
all his wind to keep the ball in play. By the time he
could draw breath the score was thirty-love.
"All right." He mustered the last of his charm.
"Indulge my naivete. What happens next?"
"The United Earth Council is going to decide
that these people don't exist," Melody explained.
"Then it's up to Aeroationav to "disappear" them,
and Jason gets the tag." She whacked the ball.
Kirk got under it and 321
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whacked it back, barely. "And if you think that
big old sortie is going to be able to train a
weapon on these people and march them into
exile" whack "or, worse by his standards,
cleaner by mine, pull the trigger on them, you are
grossly mistaken."
To his surprise, Kirk actually saw an
opening and scored his first point in a game and a half.
"You, then?"
"Damn straight!" Melody shot back.
Whack!
"And that's why you're keeping your distance," Kirk
countered. Whack! "The good soldier. Just doing her
duty. Like the Gestapo, and Colonel Green's
troops. Just obeying orders. As long as they aren't
human his
"They aren't!" Melody yelled. Whack!
"Nothing you say is going to make them human! And
don't give me that "good soldier" crap,
Kirk!
You civilians always think It's black and
white!"
"Oh, no!" Kirk assured her with what little
wind he had left. If she only knew! "I know
exactly how many shades of grey there are in any
command decision, believe me."
That point made them thirty-even. Melody
stopped play and came up to the net, ferocious.
"I don't know why I'm telling you this,
Kirk. Maybe it's because I won't give your
shrink friend the professional satisfaction, and there's
no one else aboard this tub I can talk to. But
aside from all that soapbox stuff I gave you at
dinner and don't get me wrong; I meant every word of
it there's one little thing I won't even tell
Jason, and that is that whatever I end up doing over
the next few days I'll do because of him, even if
he hates me for it."
She was back in play without warning, and Kirk was
recovered enough to chase whatever she belted at him.
"I love that man like a brother!" Melody
Sawyer stated. Whack! "He took me on when
I was
nothing but a loudmouth maverick, insubordinate
to the death, transferred off nearly every ship in the
fleet and just this side of a dishonorable discharge, and he
stayed 322
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with me. Turned me into something resembling an
officer, and maybe even a gentleman." Whack!
"I have worked beside him for fifteen years. I know
him better than I know my own husband."
Whack! "I've held his head when he was sick,
and he's held my hand when I damn near
died. He's not only my CO, he's my best
friend, and I've watched him bleeding for these Vulcans
from the outset."
With a final murderous flourish she punished the
ball across the net and Kirk didn't bother to go after
it. He conceded the game with a gesture and collapsed
in a corner, nursing a stitch in his side.
Melody wasn't even winded.
"Paint me the villain of the piece, Kirk; it
doesn't matter was She was all but attacking him.
"History won't get it straight anyway.
I'll do whatever I can to spare Jason Nyere
whatever agony I can, if it means I have to pull the
trigger myself."
"I hear you!" Kirk wheezed, thinking of himself and
Gary and the parameters of friendship. "But it doesn't
have to go that way if his
"That's a girl's set," Melody cut him
off. "Or do you want to go three out of five like a
man?"
He would have gone the full set if it killed him,