As he worked the dials and switches and buttons, an image gradually began to form on the screen. Minutes passed. As helmsman, Sulu was especially adept in handling computer controls. The diagram formed rapidly under his skillful touch.
Eventually Sulu paused to study the picture, pressed another switch to add a little peripheral vegetation, and examined the finished program with pleasure. He touched another switch and the diagram rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, then displayed itself on an angle.
With a little flourish he keyed the INITIATE switch.
Around them, above them, below them, the room began to change.
Spock would have described it as a routine readjustment of physical conditions within a confined space produced by the recreational computer-annex drawing on the extensive fabrication facilities of the Enterprise. Anyone born over a couple of hundred years before would have called it a miracle.
But then, Spock could redefine that in simple, logical terms as well.
This design facility was primitive compared to the master dream computer they'd encountered on another world, (See "Once upon a Planet," Star Trek Log Three.) but within its limits it was capable of some very effective transmutations in the interest of alleviating shipboard tedium.
Shimmering, fluorescent forms took on substance and the illusion of solidity. Walls and ceilings vanished—to be replaced by a sandy seashore, complete with lapping wavelets and the distant call of gulls. The recreation annex wasn't up to producing three-dimensional simulacra of the birds themselves. That was too fluid an illusion to maintain. But three-dimensional projections of sea birds were available and they flashed on the distant deep-blue sky.
Sulu paid attention to details—after all, advanced manipulation of such instrumentation was an art form. A starfish hugged the water's edge here, dried kelp encrusted the sloping berm there.
"Nice job, Sulu," McCoy complimented, assessing the finalized creation. "You handle water well, but personally this is kind of hot for me. I'm more in the mood for a nice, quiet stroll in the woods."
"That sounds perfect, Doctor," Uhura admitted, squinting up to where a powerful light source reposed in placid imitation of a sun.
"Why didn't you say so?" Sulu asked agreeably. "Woods it is then . . . dark and deep."
A single touch dissolved water, gulls, sand, starfish and kelp. The helmsman began again from scratch.
Botany was a favorite hobby of his. As such, he was able to create an even better simulacrum of McCoy's request than he had of the beach. The forest he conjured up (deciduous, North American, temperate zone) was lush and seemingly endless. Rays of sunlight fell like wax blades through the branches and illumined shifting motes of dust. It was a fulfilled vision, even to the moss on the "north" side of the trees and the appropriate fungal undergrowth.
"Ahhh . . . that's more like it," McCoy complemented, savoring the crispness in the air and breathing deeply of the aroma of pine and birch . . . artificial through it might be. He made an after-you gesture and followed Uhura and Sulu as they started off down the path between the trees.
Their course would wind around and through the limited confines of the recreation chamber. If they got bored, a few touches on the console—now discreetly concealed by Sulu behind a young maple—would alter the terrain yet again. Meanwhile they enjoyed the cool, faint dampness of their own personal forest and tried to identify Sulu's purposely jumbled, programmed bird calls . . .
M'ress, running through the acknowledgments from key personnel which was standard procedure during a general alert, noticed the failure of three officers to report in. She double-checked before bringing the matter to Kirk's attention.
"Captain," she finally reported, "accorrding to elimination prrocedurre and last eye-witness accounts, officerrs McCoy, Sulu, and Uhurra arre still in the main rrecrreation rroom. They have failed eitherr to rrespond to orr to acknowledge the call to stations."
"That's not necessarily surprising, Lieutenant," Kirk said easily. "To maintain lengthy illusions the main recreation room can be total-sealed from the rest of the ship. You can probably reach them by patching through to the rec room's own speaker system."
"That's just it, sirr, I've alrready trried that." She sounded worried. "They still fail to rrespond. I can't even tell if the call is going thrrough."
Kirk stiffened in his chair. "Now that is surprising. Try once more."
M'ress turned back to her console, activated the necessary bypasses and overrides. "Drr. McCoy, Lieutenant Uhurra, Lieutenant Sulu . . . returrn to the Brridge immediately. This is a generral alarrm, I rrepeat, a generral alarrm. Please acknowledge."
"Again," Kirk ordered tightly. What was going on?
M'ress sighed, raised her voice even though she knew the pick-up would compensate automatically. "Drr. McCoy, Lieutenant Uhurra, Lieutenant Sulu . . . rreturrn to the Brrid . . ."
The path through the closely packed, tall trees was bordered with thick patches of ferns. Water dripped from a high place into a bog where a venus flytrap closed over the projection of an ant.
The faintly metallic ping of water falling into a small pond was the only sound in the solitude of the forest. The three strollers entered a glade lined with high ferns and brightly colored mushrooms and toadstools. Bark fungi formed elf ladders in the trees.
"So quiet, so relaxing," Sulu murmured. "Such a change from orders and routine. An excellent selection, Doctor."
"Me for a short snooze," Uhura declared, heading for the shade of a thick maple.
"And best of all, no practical jokes," McCoy exclaimed. "Unless," he added half-jokingly, "one of you is the dearly-sought culprit."
Sulu sat down on the grass and grinned. The grin vanished as an unnatural, distant giggle broke the stillness. Uhura looked up curiously from where she'd just gotten comfortable. McCoy was scanning the sky and surrounding trees.
"I know you're especially good at animal detail, Sulu . . . but this doesn't strike me as an Irish enough a landscape to qualify for leprechauns."
"That wasn't anything I programmed," Sulu informed him. He was inspecting the dark underbrush with some concern. The illusion inventory of the rec annex was pretty extensive. If someone wanted to give them a scare by introducing a Taurean scimitar-wolf, now . . .
"Almost sounded like someone chuckling."
The giggle—if that's what it was—wasn't repeated. McCoy finally shrugged. "Probably just a malfunction in one of the audio-effects tapes. Maybe a rewind blotch mixed in with the forward play . . . could be most anything. We're all a bit jumpy from the stories circulating."
Uhura climbed to her feet. The glade no longer seemed quite so inviting. "I think I'll pass on that nap. Besides, I'm not that tired yet."
They crossed the open patch of green, picked up the dirt path on the far side. It disappeared ahead and veered to the left among the trees.
Around that first bend, the path unexpectedly vanished. A large square hole intersected its course. As if coaxed by an argumentative breeze, branches appeared from the undergrowth and arranged themselves with unnatural precision across the gap. Once this latticework was complete, leaves and pine needles fell from above and masked the intertwined branches.
They continued to drift downward until even so astute an observer as Spock would have been unable to tell that only a smattering of dead leaves and twigs covered the hole in the pathway. A last leaf, an afterthought, slipped into place to conceal a tiny hint of darkness as McCoy, Sulu and Uhura appeared in the distance, admiring the scenery and landscape ahead.
None of them heard the unnatural yet familiar high-pitched giggling that sounded in that part of the forest. It was concealed by something by now expert at concealment.
"That's a hemlock, isn't it, Sulu?" McCoy asked, pointing at a tall, handsome growth. "Beautiful. I liked your beach, but . . ." he gestured expansively, "I wanted something a bit more closed and cooling. It's almost as if . . . hey!"
His exclamation was matched by a startled yelp
from Sulu and a scream from Uhura. This was followed instantly by some ungentle flopping sounds. A rustle of broken leaves and crushed twigs, and then all was quiet.
Quiet until a blast of all-pervasive giggling suddenly erupted around them. Three pairs of eyes turned nervously upwards.
But still nothing was to be seen. "That laughter again," Sulu murmured. "It wasn't our imagination."
McCoy sounded grim. "I was wrong. That's no tape malfunction. Someone's definitely laughing at us." He scrambled to his feet, wiping dirt and clinging splinters from his uniform.
"So we didn't lose our practical joker by coming here after all. But how the devil can someone hide in a cleared rec room? There aren't any sharp corners or dips to hide behind."
"There's an emergency override on the doorseal," Sulu recalled. "Someone might have entered after we'd established this simulacrum."
"Possible," McCoy agreed. "Everyone all right?"
Uhura was just getting to her feet. She winced slightly as she put pressure on her left ankle, but nodded. Sulu had fallen with the practice of one who reacts to such tumbles instinctively. He was unharmed and unbruised. McCoy had simply been lucky.
"Okay." The doctor glanced upward. "I don't know about you two, but I've had enough. I'm going to get to the bottom of this right now!" His statement provoked a response as unexpected as it was rapid. A barrage of giggles preceded an oddly stilted voice that chuckled, "Get to the bottom of this." The kibbitzer's tone was jovial, but it did nothing to improve McCoy's dampened humor. He pointed upward, aiming for a spiritual target in the absence of a physical one.
"All right, whoever you are. We fell for your idiotic little joke. Now get us out of here."
"Fell for my joke," the voice echoed, evidently entranced with its own wit. "Fell for . . ." it dissolved in burbling chuckles.
Ordinarily, one if not all of the imprisoned officers would have identified the source of that voice by now. But their memories were temporarily clouded by a combination of anger and disgust. They could still only conceive of a flesh and blood antagonist.
"When we find out who you are," McCoy continued furiously, "you're going to be called on the deck before a board of inquiry . . . you can bet on it."
Such threats produced no lapse in the steady flow of laughter. On the contrary, it seemed to increase in proportion to the severity of the threat.
"I'm warning you," Sulu added, "the captain will bust you, whoever you are. This has gone far enough. It's not funny any more . . . not that any of these pranks ever were."
More giggles . . . their unseen adversary appeared to have an unlimited capacity for laughter.
McCoy looked at his companions. "It seems obvious that whoever we're arguing with is too smitten with his own humor to listen to reason—much less to lend us a hand. We'll have to dig our way out of this."
Turning, McCoy tested the composition of the pit wall. The artificial soil was soft and crumbly. He let his gaze travel to the lip of the depression. The hole they found themselves in—no doubt that thought would amuse their unbalanced prankster if he were to voice it—was not terribly deep. But the four walls were vertical. No human ladder, then, and no climbing straight up.
Experimentally, he dug at the dirt. It came away easily.
"Maybe too easily, Doctor," suggested a worried Uhura. "We don't want any sudden cave-ins."
McCoy looked doubtful. "Oh, I don't think our jokester would let it go that far. Besides," he added sardonically, "if we're killed, how could we be the butt of any more jokes? In any case, I don't intend to sit around waiting for him to decide. Want to give me a hand?"
Working together they tried to cut a sloping path out of the pit, occasionally having to back off quickly when a handful brought the dirt above it sliding down. They rapidly became filthy. No sign of a cave-in appeared. It was a slow, monotonous job, but they'd be out before long. As McCoy had supposed, their unseen tormentor showed no inclination to offer assistance.
Spock finally looked up from his console to find an anxious Kirk staring at him, waiting for information. "Sorry, Captain . . . nothing. I've tried re-patching around the apparently defective emergency override, and canceling out any present programming, without result.
"Ample evidence exists to show that they are still inside, however. Someone's oxygen is being recycled, and from time to time power is still being drawn to operate the simulacrum machinery.
"Which leaves us with two possibilities," Kirk finished. "Either they can't respond—for what reason we don't know yet. Or else equipment malfunction is preventing them from even trying to answer." The command chair hummed softly as it swung round.
"M'ress . . . any luck yet?"
"Still no rresponse thrrough any channels, Captain."
Kirk pondered. "Let's go to the source on this, Spock. It's the computer that's been giving us trouble. The computer supervises everything that goes on in that rec room. So . . ."
"I was about to suggest that myself, Captain."
Spock turned, and his fingers began a lithe, precise dance over the ship's instrumentation. The blink of indicator lights and the compliant hums and beeps of responsive equipment followed. The reply was presented both in printed form on Spock's screens, and aurally over the Bridge speakers.
"That is for me to know and for you to find out," it announced.
Spock's eyebrows looked as if they had crawled clear up his forehead, through his hair and down his rear collar. Infantile riddle-replies he'd come to expect occasionally from humans. But that something as precise and coldly logical as the ship's computer might resort to such barbaric foolishness seemed to all but herald the end of reason.
Kirk's reaction was nearly as incredulous. "Did I hear that right, Mr. Spock?" he mumbled in astonishment.
"I am afraid," Spock said slowly, "that you did, Captain. The malfunction is clearly more severe than I believed possible." He returned his attention to his keyboard.
"Question," he inquired carefully. "Are you deliberately holding Dr. McCoy, and Lieutenants Uhura and Sulu captive in the main recreation room?"
Another prompt response, this time with a subtle alteration that hinted, perhaps, at something less than complete control over its disturbed circuitry. Certainly, Kirk mused, it wouldn't want to sound like a petulant child.
"I'll never tell," it whined. "Never ever never. Can't make me, either. Can't, can't, can't! And I won't."
Hands clenched tightly, Kirk rose and walked over to stand by Spock. "Let me try," he whispered, then directed his voice to the input pickup.
"This is Captain James T. Kirk speaking," he announced with as much steel in his voice he could muster. "You are programmed to obey any direct order I may give."
"That is correct," the voice replied evenly.
Some of Kirk's fury abated at that conciliatory response. Maybe what the computer needed to break it free of this inexplicable insanity was just a little drill-sergeant firmness. Slowly, he continued.
"Very well . . . I order you to release officers McCoy, Sulu and Uhura from the recreation chamber immediately."
A series of flashes and winks from the console, followed by a gentle query, "Say 'please?' "
"Well I'll be!" Kirk gulped, by now beyond amazement. Spock leaned back to murmur.
"One should not debate command priority with a machine, Captain. Under the circumstances, I would suggest compliance coupled with a temporary swallowing of pride."
Kirk started to object, then nodded slowly. Keeping his voice level with an effort, he murmured, "Please?"
A quiet pause, and this time the indicator lights seemed to flash in more natural sequence. He was about to exchange a glance of triumph with Spock when the voice jumped in with gleeful clarity, "Say 'pretty please' . . ."
Kirk snapped off the audio control before any further taunts could be offered. Arex appeared about to say something, thought better of it as Kirk switched the main viewscreen into the intercom system. A terse call and the result was an image
of a concerned engineer Scott to go along with his voice.
"Mr. Scott, I've had it up to here."
"Aye, Captain," Scott concurred, ignoring Kirk's angry tone. He could guess its source. Elaboration was sure to follow.
He was right. "We've got some serious trouble with the main computer, Scotty. It's not just custard pies and slippery decks, now. We're pretty sure it's kidnapped Dr. McCoy, Sulu, and Uhura."
"Kidnapped . . . the main computer?" Scott's lined face underwent a series of highland contortions as the import of Kirk's words penetrated. "The main computer . . . but how . . .?"
"We're not sure yet."
Scott considered. "Why not ask it to explain itself?"
"We've tried that Scotty." Kirk smiled tightly. "All we've got in reply are taunts and nonsense. Neither Mr. Spock nor myself think continuing along that line is going to produce any useful result—and it doesn't do anything for my blood pressure, either. I can see only one solution, one chance of forestalling even more serious trouble." He sighed.
"I want you to shut down all higher logic functions until we can get some kind of handle on what's responsible for perpetrating this cybernetic imbecility."
"Aye, sir," Scott replied, coming to attention verbally.
"Leave only the purely supportive circuitry operational," Kirk went on. "I want everything capable of abstract reasoning and creative cognition put out of commission until we can get a crew in the central core to dissect those information banks. We can't risk further mismanipulation of on-board functions."
"I'll get a crew right on it, sir. And I'll handle the main lobotomy myself. Scott out."
"Bridge out." Kirk switched off. Scott's image disappeared, leaving the captain confronted with a panorama of alien constellations.
VII
Star Trek - Log 6 Page 10
