Desert; I flew over it on the way here.
PentaKrem records state everything ports
ble's been removed, but there are still three
DY-100 sleeper ships unaccounted for, and it's
my guess that unless they've been stripped for parts,
they're still down there. Not exactly your late-model
heavy cruiser, but since I don't think we're
likely to scrounge up any antimatter, much
less
dilithium his
"Antimatter?" Jason Nyere frowned.
"Di-who?"
"Thank you, Mr. Mitchell," Kirk warned.
"No need to get too technical. Or to give
Captain Nyere too much to forget. What
he's saying, Captain, is the same thing you and I
discussed a few days ago: if we can get the
Vulcans out of here, we can conceivably crank
Imp one of those old sleepers and get them safely
off the planet. Granted, it might take them ten
years to get back home, but considering the
alternatives his
"You'll have my help, Kirk," Nyere
promised. "'Captain Kirk. Although I don't
know how much help that can be without my crew."
"We're not inexperienced in running a ship,
Cam lain." Kirk eyed Gary thoughtfully. "For the
moment, I can at least scare you up a decent
navigator. Under duress he's even been known
to get his hands dirty."
"Mr. Mitchell," Nyere said, shaking his hand
incredulously. "Welcome aboard!"
"Spock, help me!"
This was not a voice Spock had ever heard before.
It was not the dispassionate voice of a commander issuing
an order, not the
sarcasm-tinged tone of the sometime
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martinet who had chewed him out on the
bridge of the Enterprise in a time that had not yet
happened, but the voice of a man who had been to the
abyss and understood his chances of falling a man
humbled, vulnerable, in need. To fail to respond
to such need would be not only illogical, but cruel.
"Help you, Captain? In what way?"
"Instruct me," Kirk said. "Tell me what
to say to T'Lera. Because I must go in there, Spock.
I must know what to do, what to say to her. And I
keep seeing blood on the walls if I fail."
"Captain," Spock hesitated, not wishing
to give offence, not knowing how to avoid it. "I do not
think it is possible to teach you to
fully understand, to counter T'Lera's
reasoning to think his
"Like a Vulcan?" Kirk finished, more
frustrated than angry. Spock's long hoped-for
reappearance had solved nothing. He must speak
to T'Lera, but what could he say that he had not said
already, and to no avail? He rose from his bunk, all
but started out the door. "I have to do something!"
Impatience serves no purpose, Spock
thought, and considered what he might have done if Kirk
were not here. Had T'Lera come from his own time, a
victim of Parneb's tampering as he
was, his choices would have been simpler.
Nevertheless "There is an alternative.
Logically, I am better able to persuade
T'Lera to our ends. If I can do so without revealing
my true identity you must permit me to go alone."
"No!" A clatter of bootheels announced
Elizabeth Dehner's return. "You cannot do it
alone! Neither of you can! Don't you see? The risk
is too great. T'Lera has to know what her actions
will do to future history. There is no other way.
The way she sees it now, she's caught between a
rock and a hard place, and she's fully prepared
to sacrifice two lives to what she believes must
be done. And you two sit here squandering what little time
you have left, perpetuating the myth that humans 368
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
and Vulcans are so different there can be no common
understanding, when his
"That's enough Doctor was Kirk began.
"I don't think so!" she snapped, her pale
hair flailing about her face in her intensity.
"Haven't you learned' anything about trust,
Captain? Or you, Mr. Spock? How can you
expect to convince T'Lera that humans and
Vulcans can work
together if you don't believe it yourselves. You cannot do
it alone," Dehner repeated.
Kirk met Spock's eyes and held them.
Both were silent for a moment.
"Do we know where T'Lera is now?" Kirk
asked of no one in particular. If what Dehner
said was true, every second counted.
"In her cabin," the psychiatrist reported.
"Sorahl told Yoshi they would "await the
Council's decision in their own privacy,"
unquote."
It was all Kirk needed to hear.
"We go together then, Mr. Spock," he said. The
Vulcan was already on his feet. "Together, or not at
all."
T'Lera stood alone in the darkness of her cabin,
considering the hordes congregating outside the ship.
Some, she thought, would put us on display, and
Jason Nyere would permit them, for the sake of the
greater good. Others would kill us merely because of our
differences, and Melody Sawyer would join them.
They are not ready, she thought. And we must not force
them.
Mine is the error, she thought, for not acting
sooner. Now mine will be the solution.
"Mother9" Sorahl stood uncertainly in the
doorway, framed by the light from the hall.
T'Lera's thoughts had summoned her son. She
turned to face hirn.
"Sorahl-kam . . ." she began.
# * *
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"She's unarmed," Kirk said as he and Spock
hurried down the corridors. "Theoretically she
could strangleSorahl with her bare hands, but his
"No, Captain. That is not what she would do,"
Spock said, well aware of what T'Lera would do.
Tal-skaya for her son, having sought his permission
in mind-meld, then a variation on the healing trance for
herself a trance from which no one could waken her would be
T'Lera's choice.
Spock froze in mid-stride, staggered, winced
as if in pain. "Captain!"
They were just outside T'Lera's door. Kirk
grabbed him.
"What is it?"
"I sense tilde aptain, it has already begun.
T'Lera has his
Kirk crashed through the door, groping for the
lights. Spock was right behind him.
Sorahl lay unmoving on the bunk. T'Lera
had been seated beside him, her fingers at the reach
centers of his face. She was on her feet at
once.
"I had forgotten humans lock their doors,"
she said, her eyes darting from Kirk to his
unidentified companion, lingering perhaps overlong on the
stranger before fixing on Kirk. "You will leave us."
"No, ma'am," Kirk said adamantly.
"See if Sorahl is all right," he ordered
Spock, his eyes never leaving T'Lera's.
Spock moved, but T'Lera moved faster, stan
ding
between her son and any outside force. Spock
realized if he came any closer, if she touched
him, she would know what he was.
"I surmise Sorahl is as yet unharmed,"
he said, "though in deep trance. We have not much time."
His words, his voice, drew T'Lera's attention
only for a moment.
"Do not interfere," she said, her eyes still locked
on
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Kirk's. "This is no longer any
human thing. Your world is not ready for us. By my
logic, there is no other way."
"But there is to was Kirk said, and stopped himself. Was
he out of his mind? Was the only answer to tell
T'Lera the truth? Was violating a Prime
Directive that did not yet exist the only way
to guarantee a future in which it would?
"Commander," he began, feeling his throat tighten
around each word. A single wrong one would end everything.
"What can I say to
persuade you?"
T'Lera studied him, the intensity of her eyes
damped down so as not to intimidate him. How
vulnerable these humans were! Was it logical, was it
ethical, to leave them isolated in a galaxy
fraught with unknowns? For the briefest moment she
might have relented for this reason alone. But that
decision was not for her tomake.
"Do not think to persuade me with words, Mr.
Kirk," she said slowly. "Bitt if you offer a
perspective which outweighs mine . . ."
Jim Kirk hesitated. And in that momentary
nesitation, the burden fell to Spock
who studied T'Lera, and considered. She looked,
he thought, precisely as he had surmised
she might, given what she was. Vulcan and
commander, dweller in the void of space for more years
than he had lived, she would no more be moved by mere
dialectic than any Vulcan. Nor was she the
only Vulcan caught between a rock and a hard
place. Could his human captain possibly understand
the moral implications of what they were about to do?
For nothing less than absolute truth, Spock
saw, would satisfy T'Lera. Nothing less than
certain knowledge of the future would sway her from her present
course. And once accepted, that truth, that knowledge would be
hers to carry alone, unrelieved, and in unbroken
silence for all time.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Neither word nor thou kit, neither mind-touch nor
mere slip of tongue could reveal any portion of that
truth to any other of her truth-seeking, telepathic
kind. Self-exile would be T'Lera's choice an
absolute solitude in which to preserve an
absolute truth.
Spock had no doubt T'Lera would consider such
death-in-life an equitable exchange for the life of
her son and the fate of two species. It was
logical. But it was a bitter thing.
T'Lera had been correct; this was no longer
any human thing. Only a Vulcan could accept
such responsibility. And only one neither human
nor Vulcan could make it known to her.
"Commander," Spock began, wondering for the first time
in his life which of his worlds he spoke for. "What can
I say to persuade you?"
T'Lera now studied him, making no effort
to mitigate her gaze. This one, whatever he was,
did not fear her. She must know why.
"Who are you?" she asked, slowly approaching
him.
Spock hesitated. Since he had entered the
room, all his energy had been given to blocking her
thoughts from his, preventing her from knowing this very thing. He
had only to open his mind . . .
"Who are you?" T'Lera said again, drawing very
near. Somehow she sensed that her fate was in his hands,
as his future was in hers. Yet she must know.
He is the same as you! Jim Kirk wanted
to cry out against the awful silence. As I am, as we
all are more alike than different, stronger together than
alone! Dehner's words echoed in his ears, haunted
him.
Kirk held his peace. Shouting would not
serve. Mere words would not serve.
A perspective which outweighed hers, T'Lera
had said. There was no other way.
Kirk looked at Spock, and knew his first
officer had reached the same conclusion. Kirk nodded.
"Do it," he said.
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Slowly Spock removed his hat.
T'Lera's gaze never faltered.
Her far-searching eyes saw in Spock's the
future that would form him haloing, hybrid, offspring
of the best of both worlds, bridge between the world
presently lost to both of them and the world on which they
stood. She whom no planet could contain
recognised one kindred soul.
And another. T'Lera's gaze took in Kirk
so obviously human and yet, she saw now, no
Earthbound thing. In these two she beheld not one
future but two a future that would give them life,
and a future within that future which they themselves could not yet
see, which would forge them, at each other's side, into a
whole greater than the sum of its parts.
T'Lera saw the future, and accepted the
challenge.
The blizzard had let up. The media people,
frustrated in their efforts to cut in on
Delphinus's silenced radio, had set up a
loudspeaker system out of their pooled audio
equipment, and
mounted a continuous auditory assault upon the
battened-down ship.
"tilde Captain Nyere!" boomed out across the
ice, penetrating the thick hull to where Nyere and
Mitchell labored. "Captain Nyere! We
demand to see the aliens! We demand to know who is
responsible for the deaths of four citizens of
Earth. We demand his
"Citizens of Earthl" Nyere snorted, getting
the bugs out of the sonar and checking his fuel consumption
ratios.
"Kind of clears your sinuses, doesn't it?"
Mitchell mused, working with Yoshi to repair the
stress fractures caused by the snowmobile's
explosion.
Tatya was manning the radio, jamming
everything the media tried to ram through. Jason had
drafted the twosome along with Mitchell. After some
soulsearching, he'd told them why.
"There's another Vulcan on board?"
Tatya was over
- STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
whelmed by this information; the fact that these were people from
another century seemed to have gone right by her. "Can we
see him, talk to him?"
"Then what T'Lera and Dr. Bellero I
mean, Dr. Dehner said was true," Yoshi
marveled, staring at Mitchell as if he expected
him to glow. "Someday we really will have an alliance with
Vulcan."
"And about five hundred other worlds, son,"
Mitchell assured him. "But not unless you and I
get this jury-rigging done right, and fast."
"Gods!" Yoshi said, working faster.
The noise
outside was, if possible, growing
louder; some of the media types had gotten up the
nerve to attempt a physical assault on the
great ship, climbing the connimg tower and banging on the
hatch as if they expected it to open magically for
them.
"Hey, Captain!" Mitchell yelled above the
loud- speaker, the banging, and Yoshi's welding
torch. "How soon before we can put some distance between us
and them?"
"Right now!" Jim Kirk announced, striding
onto the bridge. T'Lera and Sorahl were with him,
and Spock was at his side.
A man couldn't ask for a better crew, Jason
Nyere thought, quietly amazed at what he saw
happening on his bridge.
The virtually inseparable younger threesome was down in
the engine room, the
doctor whatever her real name was had gone to check
on Melody and get some rest herself, and the bridge was
still top-heavy with talent. Jason's helmsman, a
starship captain in another life, sat at ease
beside one of a plethora of navigators, and this new
Vulcan, who in his quiet way seemed capable of
handling any station, had his ears on, so to speak, at
communications. Jason Nyere sat back in his command
chair, utterly confident that they 374
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
would reach their destination, whether it was Fairbanks
or Timbuktu.
"A little closer to the latter, I think," Kirk
had told him after conferring with Mitchell. "We'll
know for sure as soon as we can open
communications."
Nyere watched, bemused and utterly
calm. He'd used up about a year's worth of
adrenaline in the past few days; calm was all he
had left. Beside him, essence of calm, stood
T'Lera watchful, certain, as if no ship's
bridge were alien to her.
They would be going under the ice.
The racket outside had virtually ceased when a
new storm front moved in, first scattering those
pounding on the hull, then toppling audio equipment
and sending everyone back to the helicopters or to the
cold comfort of the complex from where, as Spock
reported: "They are tapping our communications,
Captain."
It was never clear which captain he addressed; both
turned their heads whenever he spoke.
"Let them!" Jason Nyere said. "They'll
get an earful in a moment. Engine room: stand by.
I'll want full steam in five minutes mark."
"Affirm, Captain," came Sorahl's
crisp response.
I could get used to this, Jason told himself.
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