Captain's Peril

by William Shatner

  “Now you just don’t get along with other species.” Corrin did a little dip to build momentum for throwing the rebreather up across his shoulders.

  Kirk thought back to something Sedge Nirra had said to him. “Politics and religion, Mr. Corrin…two topics to be avoided on a sea voyage.”

  Corrin jerked his head back at the shore. Everyone was still gathered there, small dark smudges at this distance, with the women’s lavender cloaks the only mark of color. “Politics and religion,” he repeated. “That’s all Bajor is.”

  “Not all,” Kirk said as he strapped his bolt gun holster to his left leg. The underwater weapon resembled spear guns used on Earth, but fired short metal darts propelled by pressurized gas. “Don’t forget greed.”

  Corrin handed Kirk a pair of trivaned diving fins. “Greed is for Cardassians.”

  Which might explain a great deal, Kirk thought. Then he slipped his mask over his head, tightened the twist connectors that sealed it in an inverted triangle over his face, took a deep breath, exhaled, everything worked.

  He lifted his mask aside. “Ready?”

  Corrin already had his mask on, and nodded.

  For a moment, Kirk and Corrin locked eyes, and as if a telepathic bond had been created, both men knew what it was they must do.

  Together they swung around to stand in the railing opening, and with hands on their masks and arms braced against their weight vests, as one they stepped forward into the Inland Sea.

  For Kirk, the moment was always that of rebirth.

  To float in space, in water, to fly through the atmosphere on an orbital skydive…each a timeless instant of surrender to the overwhelming intensity of life itself.

  His plunge had taken him only two meters below the surface, and he hung there for a moment as the air trapped in the folds and bends of his gear escaped back to the surface in a rush of pale-green bubbles.

  A small trickle of water had entered his mask, and he angled his head back and blew out, clearing the mask with another explosion of air.

  He waved a hand and as if by magic, slowly rotated in place to see Corrin close beside him, curled up as he slipped on his fins.

  Kirk did the same, focusing on each movement, getting the sense of his new environment.

  The gentle rush of air through the tubes feeding his mask.

  The thick, muffled hum of the pumps and regulators in the rebreather on his shoulders.

  The shift and pressure of the tubes and straps of his gear.

  The cold of the deep green water, bracing around his hands and his head.

  If it had just been the moment, Kirk would have been at peace.

  But he was not here for the moment.

  He was here for the mission.

  He focused his concentration to expand beyond the sensations that enveloped him. He turned slowly in the water. Found the yellow rope he sought.

  He signaled to Corrin, pointed to his eyes behind his mask, then pointed to the rope.

  The Bajoran circled his index finger and thumb in a universal symbol of agreement.

  Kirk moved his hand to signal descent.

  Another circle from Corrin.

  Kirk adjusted his buoyancy tubes, venting air back to his rebreather. And as the inflated tubes diminished around his shoulders and chest, he began to sink.

  With a kick that startled him because of the sudden pain in his right knee, Kirk flipped headfirst to begin to swim down toward the rope’s anchor point, at a depth of fifteen meters.

  He didn’t look behind to see if Corrin were following.

  Kirk knew the Bajoran had no choice.

  As he neared the sea floor, Kirk snapped on the hand beacon strapped to his wrist. Its beam spread out in a cone of green filmy light, revealing the soft curves of shadowed silt, rough-textured stone blocks, and slowly waving filaments of underwater plants.

  Kirk floated a meter above the sea floor, being careful not to move his legs or fins, in order to avoid stirring up clouds of silt. A second cone of pale green light joined his.

  As Corrin floated down beside him, Kirk and he both adjusted their buoyancy, traded okay signs. Then the Bajoran pointed to his eyes, and off to the side.

  Kirk looked in the direction indicated, and saw the gently waving strands of the end of the yellow marker-buoy rope. It was tied off on a large, stone block. They swam to it together.

  At the block, Kirk pulled out a waterproof drawing sheet, like the ones the previous divers had used to make their location maps and sketches. On it, he had drawn a rough layout of the Bakery site, based on Nilan’s site plan.

  Kirk looked around, moving his head more than he would on land to make up for the way his mask cut off his peripheral vision. The actual location did not seem to match the site plan. Supposedly, four corners had been found to mark the foundation of the Bakery. But the only one Kirk could see was the one to which the rope had been tied.

  He held his map so Corrin could see it, pointed to the roped block, then gestured for the Bajoran to show him which of the four corners that block was supposed to be.

  Corrin swam closer, studied the map, then pointed behind Kirk.

  Kirk turned, expecting to see another foundation stone, but saw nothing. At least, not within the ten to fifteen meters of water that lay within his range of visibility. Beyond that, all detail faded in the green gloom of the murky depths. Even the surface was little more than a dim, shifting ripple of light far overhead.

  Kirk turned back to Corrin and gestured with palms up, saying he didn’t see whatever Corrin was pointing to.

  Corrin aimed his beacon ahead, this time playing its cone of light over something at the very limits of Kirk’s visibility. Kirk squinted to sharpen his focus.

  It was a rock, Kirk saw, but not a regular, carved stone block.

  So far, everything was as he had expected.

  He turned back to Corrin, and Corrin moved to float horizontally, as if ready to swim toward the distant rock.

  But Kirk aimed his own beacon in the opposite direction.

  Eight meters away, a second stone block.

  He pointed to it and before waiting for Corrin’s response, he began to swim toward the block, being careful to favor his right leg. At least, at this stage of his mission.

  When he reached the block, Kirk hung for a moment, motionless, and immediately noticed two details that he hadn’t expected, but which made perfect sense.

  The first was a length of yellow rope tied around the block, but severed, as if a marker buoy had once been used to indicate its position, then cut free.

  The reason was obvious: Someone had tried to disguise the location of the structure called the Bakery.

  The second detail was a drop-off in the sea floor. How deep, Kirk couldn’t tell, only that it was deeper than his beacon’s reach. But whatever this structure had been in millennia past, it had been built on the edge of a small cliff.

  A small cliff which Professor Nilan had not marked on his site plan.

  Which meant that what Kirk was looking for was almost certainly just a few meters below.

  By now, Corrin had swum up to join him, so Kirk continued the game he had begun, pointing to the drop-off, and signaling his confusion.

  Corrin returned the same puzzled gesture, as if to say he had not known of the drop-off, either.

  Kirk indicated they were to swim down the face of the cliff.

  Corrin tapped the pressure gauge on his vest, shook his head.

  Kirk looked at his own gauge, translated the Bajoran symbols on it, noting that the bar indicator was just outside the green zone which represented danger. The rebreathers were good only to a depth of about thirty-two meters. Beyond that, for diving in Bajoran seas with pressurized Bajoran atmosphere, other gas mixtures would be required. Without them, the accumulation of compressed nitrogen in the blood could result in decompression sickness upon a return to the surface.

  But Kirk knew the camp had no facilities for other gas mixtures. And as far as d
ecompression sickness went, that was something he’d have to worry about only if he survived this dive.

  He made a circle of his thumb and finger to Corrin, then turned, angled down, and began to descend headfirst.

  He found the opening he sought another six meters down. Part of it was ringed with bricks, showing that it had once been artificial. Kirk hovered beside it, aimed his beacon in.

  The light could not shine far enough; the long tunnel beyond remained a mystery.

  Corrin was beside him again, close enough that Kirk could see the Bajoran’s face in the backscattered light from the beacons. The water here was even more clouded with small particles of what on Earth would be algae. Through the gleaming droplets of water that clung to the inside of his mask, Corrin’s scarred face was tinted green. Kirk could see him mouth the word, “No,” as he shook his head and pointed to his pressure gauge once more, then to his rebreather-status readout.

  But Kirk didn’t bother checking either of his own readings. He had already considered the pressure risks he took. And his rebreather was good for hours yet.

  Kirk held up his hand, spread all his fingers, mouthed, “Five minutes.”

  Corrin violently shook his head.

  But Kirk moved on as if he hadn’t noticed Corrin’s protest.

  Beacon held like a sword of light, he swam into the underwater tunnel.

  Only a few seconds later, the light from Corrin’s beacon danced ahead of him as well. Kirk looked back to see the Bajoran swimming to catch up. His passage kicked up tiny thunderclouds of silt that roiled behind him, obscuring the way out.

  It was the Bajoran’s first mistake on this dive.

  The man was becoming rattled.

  And who could blame him? Kirk thought.

  About thirty meters along the passageway—well past the Bakery site above them, Kirk knew—the underwater tunnel began to angle to the right.

  This far inside, beyond the reach of any hope of sunlight. Kirk saw little sign of plant life. Even the accumulation of silt and encrustation was slight.

  In his beacon’s light, Kirk noted that the passageway was lined with bricks, its floor paved with large stone tiles. A few of them, every two meters or so, held carvings, a tall, oblong-shaped symbol he remembered seeing many times before, of a world watched over by a representation of the Celestial Temple, joined by a shaft of light.

  Again, Kirk was not surprised, but he shone his beacon on one of the symbols for the benefit of Corrin, as if just discovering and being startled by the symbol’s presence.

  Corrin took advantage of the brief stop by vigorously waving at Kirk to turn back.

  But Kirk shook his head, aimed his beacon ahead, and kept going.

  Corrin’s beacon followed him.

  A few more meters on, Kirk detected a difference in the water’s opacity and shut off his beacon. Then he gestured to Corrin to shut off his as well.

  Kirk could still see.

  Somewhere up ahead, there was a source of light.

  He swam on, kicking harder despite his knee. Found a staircase with wide stone steps. In the walls to either side of it were indentations that once might have held firelamps or torches.

  Kirk changed angles, swam up the staircase.

  The light was getting brighter, almost the intensity of a full moon on Earth.

  And a moment later, to his complete surprise, his head broke through the water’s surface.

  Acting quickly to establish his surroundings, Kirk switched on his beacon again. A large domed room…no, not a room, Kirk realized, as his eyes adjusted to the enclosure’s odd balance of light. He was in a natural cave, but one in which it seemed ancient Bajorans had inlaid stone-block walls as well as what looked to be a series of tiered stone benches, some of them fallen.

  Slowly circling as he treaded water, Kirk swept his beacon around the cavern. He estimated it to be perhaps sixty meters in diameter, with about half its stone floor dry, and the rest under open water. And even as Corrin broke through the surface beside him, Kirk saw something else in his beacon’s light, on the far side of the cavern: An ancient carving in a tall stone block.

  It was the same carving Kirk had seen on the passageway stones that led to this hidden cavern. The World and the Temple and the Light—the symbol of Bajor and its faith.

  Treading water beside him, Corrin ripped off his mask, rivulets of water streaming down his face. “What is this place?” he sputtered. “And what’s that smell?”

  Kirk slipped off his own mask, wiped water from his eyes. He had once visited a fishing pier on a long-forgotten planet, where the natives cleaned fish hauled up from their nets. In the awful heat of the world, that pier had smelled like this cavern did.

  “It’s a place of worship,” Kirk answered Corrin. His voice sounded oddly flat and hollow to him. Likely something to do with the high pressure that existed in this pocket of breathable atmosphere, that kept the water out.

  Kirk directed his beacon upward, toward the carving again, so Corrin could see the reason for his assessment. The light cast by his beacon was faint at that distance. The source of other light in the cavern appeared to Kirk to be coming from irregular funguslike splotches of glowing yellow and green phosphorescence on the cavern’s rocky surfaces. Perhaps the source of the smell?

  “How did you know this was here?” Corrin demanded.

  “I didn’t,” Kirk said. And that, at least, was the truth.

  Feeling solid rock beneath his fins, he slowly waded forward until he encountered another level of stone stairs that rose up to the dry floor of the cavern. The air was cold and damp, but Kirk felt no ill effects from it, other than the acrid stench of rotting fish. He sat on one of the steps to remove his fins and switched off his rebreather. Corrin stood beside him, dripping water, still playing his beacon around the cavern.

  “All the work Nilan and the rest put into surveying these ruins,” he said, “and they still missed all this.”

  “Someone didn’t,” Kirk said. He stood up, eased the rebreather from his shoulders and placed it carefully on the cavern floor.

  “You think this is the treasure the murderer was trying to keep a secret?” Corrin asked.

  “Maybe part of it.” Kirk shone his own beacon toward the dark surface of the water. The only movement on it was the rippling he and Corrin had caused when they had surfaced and moved about.

  “Looking for something?” Corrin asked.

  “Just amazed by this place, that’s all,” Kirk said. And even that was true. “I’m going to guess there’s a whole network of caves in the area, but that this is the topmost one. The one to which all the air rushed when the area was flooded.”

  “A network of caves,” Corrin said, as if the idea was an unpleasant one.

  “A city beneath a city,” Kirk continued. “Twice as many ruins to search.”

  Corrin glanced at him sharply. “Search…for what?”

  “The lost Orb.”

  Corrin blinked. “What lost Orb?”

  “The one Nilan suspected was here.”

  Corrin looked at Kirk skeptically, as if offworlders would never be understandable. He tugged off his own fins and rebreather, joined Kirk on dry stone. But he couldn’t keep silent. “You think Professor Nilan knew about this underwater temple, and kept it a secret because…he thinks there’s an Orb in it?”

  “The professor was a very devout man. When he thought that B’ath b’Etel was protecting this site, he believed there could only be one reason for it.”

  “An Orb?”

  “Your world, not mine,” Kirk said. He turned away from Corrin and began to leap toward the center of the cavern floor. His beacon found another wide opening there. A meter below the level of the stone, the opening was filled with still, black water. Kirk had no way of knowing if it ran to another inundated cave, or back to the sea.

  Corrin’s voice was raised enough that his voice echoed in the cavern. “Do you know what I think, Captain Kirk?”

  Kirk st
udied the edge of the opening as he approached. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “I think you don’t believe one of those people back at the camp is the murderer. I think you believe I am the murderer.”

  Kirk looked back at Corrin, and each man kept the other locked in the beam of light from his beacon. “And why would I go on a potentially dangerous dive with someone I think is a murderer?” Kirk asked.

  “To keep the others safe. That’s what you offworlders do, isn’t it? Play the hero. Make everything your responsibility.”

  “We try to help, and sometimes we even manage to do some good.” Kirk turned his attention back to the opening. His beacon’s light had revealed something on the opening’s far edge, just at the water’s surface. Something organic, resembling a moray eel from Earth.

  “Corrin, is that a Bajoran sreen?”

  Kirk studied the creature. Without doubt, it was dead. Its eyes were clouded, sunken. But more oddly than that, it appeared to be embedded in an outcropping of strange gray rock that formed the inner edge of the tunnel opening.

  Corrin approached, saw where Kirk’s beacon shone. “A sreen. Very good, Captain. That’s where the smell’s coming from.” He moved his own beacon to the side to find another sreen, also dead, again embedded in odd gray rock.

  “Did they die trying to burrow through the foundations of this place?” Kirk asked.

  “No,” Corrin said. “They were captured. Then they died.”

  Kirk looked at Corrin for more explanation.

  “That’s how rayl fish deal with their supper,” the Bajoran said. “The biologists say it has something to do with their digestive process. When rayl capture their prey, they stick the body to the rock with a kind of foam they spit up that can harden underwater. Then they go away for a few days until the body decomposes enough for them to return and eat.”

  “Like Earth spiders,” Kirk said.

  “So, are you going to answer my question?” Corrin asked.

  “I don’t remember you asking one.” Kirk swept his beacon across the cavern floor, found another shadowed opening closer to the far wall and the large carving. He started toward it.

  “Do you believe I’m the murderer?”