Then it was silent on the bridge again.
Hesitantly, hopefully, Kirk called out. "Mr. Talliflores, Mr. Arex?"
No response.
Sadly, Kirk turned to face Vedama, gestured significantly at the officer's waist. Vedama drew his phaser, made the agonizingly painful adjustment of the setting . . . and sat back to wait.
"Let me take the first shot, Mr. Vedama," Kirk instructed him. "If I miss . . ." He didn't have to finish the directive, and had no desire to.
"Lieutenant M'ress?" He directed his voice to the square black eye of the hatchway. Again, no response. "Lieutenant M'ress, this is the captain. I don't know what you think you're doing, Lieutenant, but whatever you have in mind can't be allowed. Your two companions, M'viore and R'leez, have already been captured and can't help you. You haven't got a chance, Lieutenant."
The black orifice stared back at him mockingly.
He tried a different approach. "Listen, M'ress, I know you're not doing this of your own free will. You've got to realize that yourself. Whatever's compelling you to act this way, I understand. I'm not holding you and the others responsible for your actions. But this has to stop, now. You've got to fight whatever's gripping you, M'ress! You've got to break this madness before . . . we have to stop you."
"I . . ."
It was a faint, barely audible sound, and for a second Kirk felt he had imagined it. But a quick glance showed that Vedama had heard, too. It was more a cry than a challenge, and sounded as if it had been forced out against terrific odds.
"What is it, M'ress?" Kirk called eagerly. "I'm listening. Talk to me, talk and fight it."
"I'm angrrry . . . confused. I . . ." and she mumbled something in broken Caitian which Kirk didn't understand. The Caitian had been mixed with English.
". . . can't . . . stop . . . myself," she moaned, as if fighting with her own voice. "Must . . ."
"Must what, M'ress?" Kirk had to keep her talking. "Tell me what you need and maybe something can be worked out."
"Must . . . go home. Go to Cait."
"Your homeworld? But why?" Kirk had felt sure that when the Caitian's purpose had been revealed, it would clear up the rationale for their bizarre behavior. He was wrong. The knowledge only added one more confusing aspect to the whole incident.
"Can't . . . Must go to Cait-rrrr—" Her voice changed, overtones of anger replacing the desperate striving for understanding. "Must go to Cait now, fast. Give me contrrol of the ship, Captain. Orr . . . change courrse forr Cait."
Kirk threw Vedama a querulous look, saw that the science officer was equally bemused at the imperious request. "M'ress, we can't possibly go to Cait now. Have you forgotten the Briamos conference? We have to be there on time, to represent the Federation, or the Briamosites will probably align themselves with Klingon. You don't want that to happen, do you, Lieutenant? I know you're not a traitor."
"Must . . . go now to Cait!" It came out a half-order, half-sob. Conflicting desires were tearing M'ress apart.
"You're not being sensible, M'ress," Kirk countered, aware that none of the Caitians had been acting sensibly recently. "It's impossible and you know it. We can't miss the conference. Listen, give yourself up peaceably, right now, and after the conference I give you my word we'll go directly to Cait. You don't even have to give me a reason."
"Captain," Vedama began, "other Starfleet orders—"
"Lieutenant, I have the authority to overrule any subsequent Fleet orders in order to respond to any emergency threatening my ship—barring a Federation-wide danger." He turned back to the open hatchway.
"Did you hear that, Lieutenant?" he asked, raising his voice slightly. "I have the authority to order the Enterprise to Cait immediately following the conference's conclusion. I'll put it in the official log, if you want." No response. "Are you willing to bargain, M'ress? Will that satisfy you?"
"Can't . . . help," came the threatening yet pitiable response from somewhere beyond the hatch. "If you will . . . not orrderr us to Cait now, give . . . contrrol to me. Orr . . . I will . . . I must . . . take overr yourr brridge."
"You can't do it, M'ress." Kirk sounded more positive than he felt. "I know that you're partially immune, somehow, to phasers set for stun. Lieutenant Vedama's phaser is set to kill. He won't shoot except as a last resort. I'm holding a tranquilizer pistol, M'ress. Dr. McCoy prepared a serum keyed to the Caitian metabolism. That's how we knocked out M'viore and R'leez. The serum will do that to you, too.
"You can't possibly overwhelm two of us from the serviceway and take over the bridge before a security detail finally gets here. They're probably on their way right now, running the turbolift on bypass controls and power, or coming up through the serviceway access below us. They won't have my orders to restrain them, M'ress," he said desperately. "They won't have their phasers set for stun, or wait for me to fire first. Don't you see? You can't possibly win. There's no way you can take over the bridge."
"Tell . . . that to . . . Arrex and . . . Talliflorres," came the half-taunting, half-sorrowful reply.
"Captain?"
"Just a minute, Mr. Vedama. Lieutenant M'ress, let me think about your demand. Give me just a minute."
"Don't want to . . . hurrt anyone," M'ress insisted, sounding as if she meant it. "But must go to . . . Cait . . . now!"
"What is it, Vedama?" Kirk whispered.
"I've bypassed normal communications and computer network, sir," he murmured tightly. "We have intership communications again. Several sections are calling steadily, trying to contact us. Several sound frantic."
"That's not surprising. If we can just stall her a little longer . . . Give me Security."
"Try your chair pickup, sir."
Kirk directed his voice toward the command chair pickup, his gaze never leaving the gaping hatchway. "Security, this is the bridge."
"Yeoman Dickerson here, Captain. It's good to hear from you. What's going on up there?"
"Lieutenant Talliflores and Lieutenant Arex have been stunned. Mr. Vedama and I are holding off Lieutenant M'ress. She's in the serviceway encircling the bridge. You must try to break through the serviceway door or come up the turbolift. She's cut all bridge power. Under no condition, except as a last resort to preserve the integrity of the ship, is anyone to use a phaser set higher than stun. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir, but—"
"Is that understood, mister?"
"Yes, sir." The voice sounded disappointed, but the acknowledgment sent a wave of relief over Kirk.
"Then get moving, Yeoman. Bridge out." He glanced quickly back at Vedama. "Who else is calling, Lieutenant?"
"Sick Bay has priority, sir."
"Put them through."
A pause, then an anxious familiar voice sounded over the chair speaker. "Jim, are you all right? Jim?"
"I'm okay, Bones. So far. M'ress has us pinned down here, but I think we have her trapped as well. What's been happening at your end?"
"Jim, we've been doing frantic research on Caitian disorders. That's been part of the problem."
Kirk frowned. "I don't think I understand, Bones."
"We've been looking for a disease, a physical malady, something rare and unusual. It took a while for me to realize that while the Caitians' behavior might be extreme, it might have a perfectly normal cause."
"That sounds contradictory, Bones."
"Jim, I think I know what's causing them to act the way they have. Has it occurred to you that all the seriously injured personnel—security and otherwise—have been men? Or rather, male? And that the women who were part of the eight-person security team that was assaulted were incapacitated but not harmed? Listen to this, Jim."
There came a pause, and then a horrible screeching and yowling sounded over the speaker. It was a frantic, uncontrolled din, and yet somehow it seemed sorrowful rather than ferocious.
"Bones, what the—?"
"That's M'viore and R'leez, Jim," came McCoy's reply. They're both conscious again. I've got them both stra
pped down so they won't hurt themselves—or anyone else. Needed extra straps to keep them from breaking free. Jim, the level of Caitian-equivalent adrenaline in their blood is unbelievable! But what's most important is their Caitrogen hormone level. Absolutely crazy. Sent my diagnostic indicators right off the graphs.
"I've given them the moderating dosage necessary to bring their hormone levels back to normal . . . the dosage they should have received normally. They should both be sensible in a couple of hours."
"Dosage they should have received?" Kirk thought he saw motion at the hatchway, but decided he was imagining things. The tension had grown worse with the passing minutes. "What are you talking about, Bones?"
"When we couldn't find anything physically wrong with them, I tried to imagine what could induce a Caitian to go insane like they did. Caitians usually control their emotions fairly well. I thought about drugs, the presence of certain stimulants in their food, maybe even accidental self-hypnotism. But the chemists couldn't find anything foreign in their recent menus.
"That's when it occurred to me that maybe they weren't ingesting something they regularly took, instead of having eaten something they shouldn't have. The chemists were put off because their blood tested normal, except for the excessive hormone level. I tied that in with the suddenly realized fact that all the badly injured security personnel had been male, Jim. Couple that with the fact that our three Caitians all happen to be female—"
A definite shadow appeared at the hatchway. Kirk fired refiexively. The syringe-dart struck metal somewhere beyond the blackness and the shadow vanished.
"Neither of the ensigns is coherent enough to give me any help, but their behavior fits what I discovered in the limited Caitian biology references in the medical records. They take biannual doses of a drug called pheraligen, which moderates their body's production of Caitrogen. And that in turn suppresses the otherwise extreme reactions Caitian females used to have at this time of the year."
"This time of year . . ." Kirk finally had the answer to the mystery.
"Apparently," McCoy continued, "the pheraligen is programmed into their diets in innocuous-tasting supplements, Jim. They're so used to receiving it without having to think about it, they didn't realize what was happening to them. Since the regimen is in no way a treatment for a disorder, I didn't know about it. Programming it becomes the responsibility of the science life-support section, not medical."
Vedama had turned pale. "My department, Captain, my department. But I've never had to—"
"And Spock isn't here to check on it. Probably the facts are resting right in his daily work-log: Caitian female personnel, semiannual pheraligen dose due. So that's why they've been acting the way they have."
"Right, Jim. All it takes is a standard dose of pheraligen to counter the excessive hormone production and they'll return to normal."
"That's all very well and good for M'viore and R'leez, Bones, but what am I going to do with M'ress?"
A phaser bolt erupted from the upper right-hand corner of the hatch opening. Aimed with difficulty, it struck several centimeters from Kirk's right foot. Nerves tingling from the nearness of the beam, he abandoned the command chair and limped around behind it. Vedama crouched lower but didn't abandon the science console.
"Bones, M'ress isn't sensible enough to understand what you've been saying, though I think she's trying to. She can't control herself, and I think maybe desperation's making her frustrated enough to kill. She wants to take over the bridge and change course for Cait."
"Not surprising, Jim," came McCoy's voice over the open bridge speakers. "She's only reacting the way primitive Caitian physiology's instructing her to, and there are no Caitian males on board. If there were, none of this trouble would have happened. That's why our security personnel were attacked, and then not killed. Even with their hormone level driving them insensible, they still retained enough knowledge of who they were to stop before committing murder. The injuries to our security teams were inflicted out of frustration, not malice. You've got to get one of those tranquilizer darts in her."
A second phaser burst poured from the hatchway. This time Kirk couldn't be sure the beam was still set to stun.
"She's becoming hysterical, Bones!" Kirk tried to spot the elusive lieutenant, saw only black in the hatchway opening. "She doesn't dare use too powerful a setting, though. If she damages the controls, she won't be able to try turning us toward Cait."
"Captain, if you've no objection . . ."
"What's that? Who's speaking? Scotty, is that you?"
"Aye, Captain. I've got an idea I've been working on since Dr. McCoy found out what was wrong with the two ensigns. With your permission, I'd like to give it a try. I know this business isn't my department, but—"
Kirk ducked as a phaser beam scored the top of the command chair. "Anything nonlethal, you've got my permission, Scotty. Go ahead with it."
Kirk didn't know how long they could continue to stall M'ress. In between useless exchanges of phaser fire he conjured up every argument he could think of. None of them would have done any good, save for the fact that M'ress retained just enough sanity and sense to respond to them. So she listened and reacted, even if her comments were not particularly sensible.
Of course, Kirk knew he might be deluding himself in thinking that he was keeping her mind busy. She might be waiting for him to grow so involved in his chatter that he would drop his guard and allow her a reasonable charge at the command chair. Eventually, he knew, she would have to come to the inevitable decision that he wasn't going to voluntarily relinquish control of the ship, and that her time was running out.
That moment came sooner than she expected or Kirk had hoped.
A hissing noise reached the bridge. It came from somewhere beyond the open hatchway.
"Captain," M'ress yowled, "call . . . them off. Tell them to . . . stop trrying to cut . . . in."
"I can't," he lied. "They're operating independently of my orders, M'ress."
Her voice rose unsteadily. "I'll use my . . . phaserr on the firrst one who comes thrrough the opening!"
"Lieutenant, you haven't killed anyone yet! Fight what's controlling your mind. We know what your trouble is now!"
Not surprisingly, M'ress refused to listen.
There sounded a sharp spang of stressed metal giving way. Any second Kirk expected to hear the slight, deadly hum of M'ress's phaser as she made good her threat on whoever was coming through the opened serviceway.
Instead, he heard a strange yowling from the Caitian unlike anything heard thus far. It was followed by a distinct phut, then silence.
A figure started to emerge from the hatchway opening. Kirk raised the tranquilizer pistol, then hesitated. So did Vedama. The figure that stepped into the dim light of the bridge would have caused them to fire instantly, except for the fact that it was carrying its head beneath one arm!
"Scotty! It worked."
"Aye, Captain." The Enterprise's chief engineer looked relieved. He gestured back toward the hatchway. Sounds of moving feet came from behind it. "Dr. McCoy's inside now. And a whole crew of techs. If the damage M'ress caused isn't too serious, and I dinna think it could be, bridge functions should be"—the regular lights abruptly came back on and Kirk blinked at the bright, familiar illumination—"restored quickly." Scott permitted himself a slight smile of professional pride.
"What about Lieutenant M'ress?"
"Dr. McCoy says she'll be fine, Captain," Scott replied, "as soon as the pheraligen takes effect on her system and she's had a couple of hours' rest." Walking forward, he deposited an object in his right hand on the navigation-helm console. It was a twin to the dart-pistol Kirk still held.
As he approached, Kirk grew conscious of a peculiar, powerful odor emanating from the chief engineer. His nose twitched. Scott noticed it and grinned.
"Strong stuff, Captain. That smell's the only thing that made it work. Dr. McCoy synthesized the appropriate male Caitian pheromones to complement this costume."
He indicated the furry, catlike suit he was wearing. I'm not so sure the costume alone would have let me get within shooting range, but the pheromones fooled her—or overpowered her. We only had to distract her for a couple of seconds, long enough for me to get a syringe into her." He gestured at the dart-pistol resting near the helm controls.
Kirk was putting his own weapon down. The crisis was all over, but the tenseness drained slowly from him. "What ever made you think of such a crazy idea, Scotty?"
The engineer looked embarrassed. "From a costume ball I went to, Captain, several years ago. I went dressed as a Fiorellian and a real female Fiorellian mistook me for a male of her species. To complicate matters, she was costumed as a human female. So it was doubly disconcertin'."
"I can imagine," agreed Kirk, slowly resuming his position in the command chair.
"Captain?"
Kirk looked over at the science station. "What is it, Mr. Vedama?" When he saw the lieutenant's position, he swiveled fully to face him, frowning. "What's wrong?"
Vedama was standing stiffly before his console, unsmiling. "I hereby present myself for arrest, sir."
"At ease, Lieutenant." Vedama relaxed, but only slightly. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't anybody's fault, except maybe the Slavers'. They had the poor timing to present us with one of their stasis boxes at a time when Mr. Spock had to be two places at once. I'm sure that by tomorrow or the next day, in routinely checking over his schedule, you would have spotted the instructions to program the pheraligen into the Caitians' diet. It was bad luck and timing that their metabolism chose this particular time to shift into high gear.
"In fact, it's surprising you haven't overlooked more than one thing. You're doing your best, Lieutenant, and so far that's been quite satisfactory. Resume your post."
"Yes, sir." Vedama's salute was crisp.
Scott had slipped out of the suit. "Bloody hot, Captain. I don't understand how the Caitians can stand their own fur."
Star Trek - Log 10 Page 13
