The Unsettling Stars

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Only a half klick?” McCoy sounded doubtful. “Fine for you maybe, Jim, but running was never my favorite exercise.” He indicated the wounded Perenorean. “Especially when carrying a patient.”

  Kirk’s expression was grim. “We have to move from this place, Bones. If only because our phasers are running low.” Holstering his phaser, he started toward the Perenorean. “I’ll carry him. He’s lighter than a human. You and Spock flank me.”

  “No.” His breathing still labored, the Perenorean raised a hand and spread all seven fingers wide.

  “ ‘No’?” McCoy gaped at the supine alien. “What do you mean, ‘no’? If we leave you here, the moment we step outside and make a run for it, there’ll be half a dozen of those bloodsuckers in here draining the life out of you.”

  “There is no need for panic.” The Perenorean’s response emerged half-natural and half via his translator. “I know that my people are capable of dealing with this problem. Before leaving our homeworld, we were trained to cope with every conceivable threat.”

  “Well, either your training overlooked the possibility of an attack by thousands of airborne carnivores,” McCoy countered, “or else it’s taking an awful long time to kick in.”

  “Patience, please.” The pain in his back caused the Perenorean to flinch. Seeing someone who was multiply double-jointed “flinch” was an education in alien physiology all by itself, McCoy reflected. “I know that my fellow colonists are preparing a response. Do not risk your lives to carry me from this place.” Vertical golden pupils focused on the doctor. “I could not live with myself if harm came to you, Masteresque McCoy, after what you have already done for me.”

  The doctor turned contemplative. “ ‘Masteresque McCoy.’ That has a nice ring to it.”

  “Enjoy it while you can, Bones.” Kirk looked back to Spock. “It’s good of our patient not to want to see us come to harm, but we really need to consult with the other colonists and the SiBoronaans. After we’ve done that and made sure that everyone is on the same page, we can proceed.” He tried to sound encouraging. “Assuming of course that we can come up with a next step.”

  Turning, he moved past McCoy. The doctor stepped back out of the way as Kirk slipped one arm beneath the Perenorean’s right arm and the other under the alien’s leg. Hoisting the protesting colonist onto his shoulders, Kirk repositioned the weight slightly before turning back toward the street. Outside, multiple incarnations of winged death awaited.

  “Spock will cover me on one side,” he told the doctor. “Even if you’re only half as good with a phaser as you are with your medical tricorder, we should make it to the administration center.” Taking a deep breath, Kirk started forward. “Let’s go. And if I fall, pick up this guy first.” He juggled the Perenorean lying across his shoulders.

  They had gone maybe fifty meters when they were set upon by the first flyjaws.

  Spock methodically began shooting the attackers out of the sky, beginning with the nearest predator and then moving on to the next. McCoy was less systematic but no less enthusiastic. Torn and shredded, a ragged line of dead and dying aerial predators took shape behind the sprinting officers. But for each flyjaw that went down, two or three more were called to the attack.

  It was growing more difficult to hold them off. One actually clamped itself to the back of a cursing, frantic McCoy until Spock shot it off. When the science officer’s phaser finally died, he had to quickly switch weapons with Kirk. And they were still barely halfway to the administration center.

  Then the sky landed on them and they were shoved to the ground.

  One minute they had been sprinting between unfinished buildings and piles of construction material; the next, they found themselves forced into prone positions. It was as if the irresistible hand of an unseen giant had descended to push them into the ground. The hand took the form of near-hurricane-force wind.

  A wind that was blowing straight down. And in contrast to the usual temperate daytime temperatures, it was freezing cold.

  Struggling to rise against the howling gale, McCoy found that he could barely lift his head off the ground. Lifting his arm and the hand holding his phaser proved next to impossible. The steady tornadic force that was being applied against his back was not painful, but it was unrelenting. He could hardly move. Twisting his head to his left he saw that Spock was similarly pinned, as was Kirk. The injured Perenorean had rolled away from the captain and off to one side. As a horrified and helpless McCoy looked on, a flyjaw came hurtling out of the sky to slam directly into the science officer’s back.

  But it did not bite, did not attempt to drill through the Vulcan’s uniform to sink its saw-toothed circular mouth into the soft areas on either side of the science officer’s spine. Instead it flapped its four wings madly in a desperate attempt to regain control and climb back into the air. Despite its most strenuous efforts, it could not get more than a couple of centimeters off the ground before the howling wind shoved it back down again.

  Around them McCoy could see one flyjaw after another plunging sharply downward. It was then that he realized they were not attacking. They were desperately fighting to stay airborne. Forced into the ground by the same relentless gale that had pressed the three Starfleet officers into the dirt, one after another of the aerial predators were smashed into the unyielding surface. Massing far less than any of the four sprawled bipeds and entirely dependent on their wings for maneuverability, those still capable of movement flopped about helplessly on broken limbs, torn ligaments, and snapped tendons. Putting forth a considerable effort, the doctor managed to tilt his head back enough to look skyward.

  It was raining flyjaws.

  Forced groundward by the strange storm, they crashed into the settlement by the hundreds. Bouncing off buildings, clawing at one another, they struggled impotently to return to the air. Where they formed a pile of bodies, those still relatively intact resorted without hesitation to cannibalizing their less fortunate fellows.

  Kirk placed both hands flat against the ground and pushed with all his might. He had not been weakened or injured: he could feel the strength coursing through his arms. But he could do no more than briefly raise his upper torso off the surface. When he tried to get his legs under his hips, the downward-thrusting tempest that had knocked him off his feet all but collapsed his arms beneath him. Giving up any further attempt to stand he lay there, pinned and helpless, aware that his ultimate effort had been doomed to failure. If the much stronger Spock couldn’t raise himself up, Kirk knew there was no way he could manage it. But he’d felt compelled to try.

  It was the injured Perenorean who provided an explanation both for their inability to move and the sudden mass collapse of the attacking flyjaw swarm.

  “I told you that my people would respond. I see that they have the weatheranse operating.”

  “The what?!” Teeth chattering from the sudden onslaught of cold, McCoy had to shout to make himself heard above the roaring in his ears.

  Though pinned to the ground as decisively as his human rescuers, the Perenorean was sounding increasingly confident. “It is a simple device that is included with all colonial supplies. As the weather at this site has thus far ranged from tolerable to invigorating, there was no need to set it up. Our engineers have obviously recognized that it can be a useful means of dealing with these unforeseen predators and have reacted accordingly.” His tone turned apologetic. “It is to be regretted that it has taken this long to do so.”

  “Excuse my ignorance,” a shivering Kirk shouted, “but I don’t understand how a single machine located somewhere in the settlement can generate anything like this kind of wind—much less keep all of it blowing in one direction—down!”

  The Perenorean’s clarification came without hesitation. “Among my kind, a weatheranse is a useful and proven means for controlling the climate in the immediate vicinity of a settlement. Its most important function is to provide precipitation on demand. But it can also variegate the climate in other
ways. Clouds can be called forth to shade new growths that are sensitive to sun.” He looked upward. “In this instance, I would say that the device has been utilized to alter temperature and atmospheric density in such a manner as to generate the meteorological forces we are presently feeling.”

  Kirk gaped at the alien, then struggled to turn toward his science officer. “Mister Spock, is that possible?”

  “We are living proof of it, Captain. The Perenorean device is apparently capable of rapidly and severely lowering the temperature of the DiBoronaan atmosphere in our immediate vicinity. Generating a dense cold-air pressure system within a sharply confined area would generate the kind of powerful—and cold—winds we are presently experiencing.” He looked upward. “They have somehow generated a miniature arctic climate directly above us.”

  “I follow you, Spock,” Kirk shouted back, “but why are the winds blowing straight down instead of sideways?!”

  “It would seem that the Perenoreans can also control wind shear, Captain. How, I do not know. But while we only suffer from the resultant gale by being forced to lie flat on the ground, the same wind is powerful enough to render flyjaw flight impossible. The situation is not dissimilar to one that might be encountered on Earth where in a category four or five hurricane, humans cannot walk but can survive by lying prone while small flying creatures are blown about helplessly.” He looked over to where piles of dead and dying flyjaws were rapidly accumulating. “It is an elegant and eminently efficient solution to the problem. Instead of dealing with these airborne predators on an individual basis as we have been doing with our phasers, the Perenoreans have initiated a means for dealing with the entire swarm at once.”

  Spock’s gaze shifted skyward and he squinted against the airstream. “If, as we have surmised, the flyjaws do communicate across long distances with one another, then the same method they have been using to continuously call forth others of their kind should now be employed to warn newcomers away from the sudden and fatal onset of weather in this vicinity. Until this clever and skillful counterattack concludes, I suggest that we remain where and as we are.” So saying, he looked downward and sought to use his hands to cover as much of his face as possible.

  Kirk’s inability to rise mitigated any further attempts to try and make it to the colony administration center—much less continuing to take aim with and fire his phaser. He no longer had a functional one anyway, and there was no point in trying to get it back from Spock. So he swallowed his yearning to strike out at the plummeting carnivores and did his best to imitate the science officer’s example by burying his own face in the ground.

  Only McCoy did not retreat into immobility. Crawling on his belly at the rate of one violent adjective per meter, he worked his way across a small patch of open ground while the unrelenting tempest did its best to push his nose into the dirt. Like Kirk and Spock, the doctor could have stayed where he had first been forced to the ground. Physically it would have been much easier for him to do so. Mentally and ethically, for him to remain in place and do nothing was something else entirely.

  He had a patient to look after. He had no choice but to try and continue to give comfort to the injured, even if the surrounding conditions made treatment more difficult than usual, even if the tips of his fingers were turning numb from the cold.

  9

  The unremitting howl that was the wind from above and kept them pressed to the ground died with a suddenness that left the three Starfleet officers gasping. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. Which, in effect, was exactly what had happened. As soon as the Perenorean device was shut down, normal atmospheric equilibrium returned and the wind stopped.

  Rising slowly to their feet, the battered visitors and the injured Perenorean saw that Spock’s supposition had been correct. Not only was the sky overhead devoid of predatory flyjaws, so was the air above the winding river, the forest, and the mountains that demarcated the far boundaries of the settlement site. The few remaining flyjaws that had managed to survive the horrific and consistent down rush of air were fighting to gain altitude as they dispersed in all directions, desperate to escape to anyplace where the weather was stable and the winds less likely to suddenly turn mad.

  The stench of death that was beginning to rise from hundreds of crumpled flyjaw bodies reminded everyone in the colony that construction would have to pause until a settlement-wide cleanup could be completed. While the relieved and more than slightly dazed SiBoronaans stumbled about on their pseudopods, struggling to recover mentally as well as physically from the swarm’s attack, the Perenoreans set to work. Before the last dispirited flyjaw had disappeared into the distance, the settlement site filled with a quiet frenzy of activity.

  Perenorean medics tended to the wounded, and the respectful removal of the deceased. As other settlers set to the disagreeable task of removing piles of dead flyjaw bodies, McCoy marveled at the calm being displayed by the colonists.

  “You’d think they did this sort of thing all the time.”

  He gestured toward a peculiar vehicle that was vacuuming up broken corpses several at a time and depositing them in its capacious, bulbous interior. Designed and built to remove construction debris, it had been quickly modified to deal with the unexpected avalanche of organic detritus instead. A pair of Perenoreans followed patiently behind, picking up and tossing into the ventral vacuum chute the smaller body bits that the vehicle missed. Though these “smaller bits” consisted of heads, entrails, pieces of wing and other body parts, the two Perenoreans never blanched. The fact that their seven-fingered hands and lower legs were slick with flyjaw gore did not appear to trouble them in the slightest. It was a scene that was being repeated throughout the colony.

  “At this rate,” an admiring McCoy commented, “they’ll have the whole site cleared by tomorrow.”

  “They are indeed proceeding with remarkable efficiency.” Hands folded behind his back, Spock was following the cleanup with as much interest as the doctor. “In fact, from what we have been able to observe, it would appear that the Perenoreans are a people who go about every task they take on with equal eagerness and expertise. If they do not know how to do something, they are quick to ask, and even quicker to learn. I have never heard of a species that learns so fast and so thoroughly.”

  “Come on now, Spock.” Kirk smiled pleasantly as they continued their stroll through the bustling colony site. “Humans are quick to learn, and no one is faster at picking up new things than Vulcans.”

  The science officer paused to watch a group of Perenorean youngsters at play. They were building something out of flyjaw bones that had not yet been collected for disposal. As the Starfleet officers looked on, the outlines of the juveniles’ architectural effort rapidly became visible. They were building a perfect replica of the automated navigation tower that had been erected at the far end of the shuttle landing site. Supply shuttles traveled in a steady stream between the Eparthaa and the colony.

  Exiting the field hospital, McCoy strode over to the steadily rising osseous edifice, the young Perenoreans deferentially moving aside, leaving him alone to appreciate what they had built. Putting his left arm around the gently tapering tower and ignoring the blood from the bones that threatened to add more stains to his uniform, he turned to face his colleagues.

  “How are the wounded?” the captain asked.

  “Recovering rapidly. Get an image, would you, Jim? I feel like playing tourist.”

  “What could you possibly want with a picture of…?” Kirk caught himself. “Oh, right—bones.” Pulling out his tricorder, he made a recording of the scene. As McCoy stepped away from the graceful yet grisly plaything, he nodded his thanks to the youngsters.

  “You are most welcome, Masteresque McCoy,” the eldest told him without the aid of a translator.

  Startled, the doctor blinked at the youth, who gazed back innocently. “Yeah, okay. Uh, have fun.”

  Spock immediately stepped forward. “You have learned our language already? When have
you had time to receive formal instruction?”

  “No formal instruction.” A second slightly smaller and younger Perenorean sculptor spoke up cheerfully. “The details of the language you are using were disseminated widely among us as soon as they became known. We have all been studying it since our ship first made contact with yours.”

  Spock’s tone did not change as he bent slightly toward the speaker. “You are required to do this?”

  The three Perenorean youths looked at one another. It was left to the eldest to reply. “Required? You mean, was it demanded of us?” Spock nodded, and it was evident that his youthful audience was as familiar with the gesture as they were with the visitors’ words. “Among our people, learning is never a requirement. It is a joy, a delight. A new piece of knowledge acquired is… is…” He struggled for the right term.

  “Exhilarating,” trilled the youngest member of the trio.

  “Is there something new you can teach us?” The second youth, a bright-eyed female, regarded the science officer eagerly.

  “Not at the moment.” Spock straightened. “My friends and I must return to our ship. Now that you are properly established here and safe from the Dre’kalak, we have our own work to do and we must prepare for our departure.”

  “Oh-weh.” All three youngsters looked disappointed. “Perhaps we could come with you?” The eldest’s earnestness was unmistakable.

  Kirk eyed the slight figures arrayed before him. All three appeared to be deadly serious. “You mean you’d leave your friends, your parents, to go off on a strange ship crewed by a species that until just recently had never been in contact with your own kind?”