by Judith
Kirk stared at the conn. For almost four months he had awakened from dreams in which he was just about to take his natural place there—only to have it spin off into space without him. “I’m not a captain at the moment, Mr. Scott.”
“You will be again soon enough.”
Kirk shook his head. There would be time enough for that later. If there were a later.
Scott tilted his head and looked at Kirk with mock annoyance.
“Captain Kirk, you don’t leave me any choice. As the duly [377] appointed commander of this vessel, sir, I order you to sit in that chair.”
Kirk looked at Spock. “He can’t order a civilian, can he?”
Spock arched an eyebrow. “He is the commander of the vessel.”
McCoy sighed. “Well, if you don’t, I will. Now get down there.”
Kirk stepped down to the center deck, helped by a push from McCoy. “I’ll try to give her back to you in one piece, Scotty.”
“I’m sure the vice admiral would be most appreciative.” Scott looked around the bridge. “Och, now what happened to the other three?”
Twelve hours later, flashing through warp space, the Enterprise neared the coordinates the drone had transmitted.
“There is an object there,” Chekov said, reading the navigation board displays. He and Sulu had also been ‘ordered’ by Scott to take their stations, as had Uhura.
Kirk leaned forward in his chair. He had stopped thinking about how strange it seemed to see half his bridge crew dressed in civilian clothes. He only thought about what lay ahead—at the coordinates of the One.
“Sensors confirm, Captain,” Spock announced from his science station.
“Well, what is it, Spock?” McCoy stood by the captain’s chair, arms folded. “A spaceship, right?”
“We are still too distant to tell, Doctor. But if it is a ship, it is larger than any we have seen before.”
Kirk turned in his chair. “We’ve seen some pretty big ships in our day, Mr. Spock.”
“I believe we are about to see another.”
Kirk looked back to the viewscreen. Nothing showed there yet except the computer’s rendition of moving stars. “How much longer to intercept, Mr. Sulu?”
“Just over two hours at this factor, Captain.”
Kirk hit the comm switch on his chair arm. “Mr. Scott, how are the warp generators coming along?”
[378] Scott answered over the bridge speakers. “You wouldn’t believe the changes they’ve made in them since the last pair we had, sir.”
“Is that good or bad, Scotty?”
“Captain, if a thing’s not broke, then why fix it?”
McCoy and Kirk shared a smile. “But can you handle them, Scotty?”
There was a long pause from engineering.
“Are you still there, Mr. Scott?”
“Aye, Captain. You want to know if I can give you more power from these bairns, don’t you?”
McCoy had to turn his back to avoid laughing out loud.
“That would be appreciated, Mr. Scott.”
Scott sighed. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I can tell things are finally getting back to normal,” McCoy said.
Kirk settled into his chair and gestured at the brightly colored shirt McCoy wore. “Now if we could only get you some normal clothes to wear.”
Before McCoy could reply, the sound of the ship changed. She had been running rougher than before, but that was part of the break-in period her new warp generators required. However, now there was a second unusual harmonic added to the sound of them.
“Captain,” Sulu announced, “our speed is increasing. Mr. Scott has boosted the power output. New estimated time of arrival is fifteen minutes, sir.”
Spock stared intently into his science scope. “Captain, whatever it is we are approaching, it is not a ship.”
“Then what the blazes is it?” McCoy asked. Kirk could hear the disappointment in the doctor’s voice as he realized his theory was incorrect. McCoy didn’t mind being wrong from time to time, it was just that he hated it when Spock was right.
“Is it a collection of lifeforms like the seeder drones?” Kirk asked. At full magnification, the viewscreen was just beginning to show a small gray swirl at its center.
[379] “Life sensors are picking up readings consistent with the presence of drones, sir. But they don’t begin to account for the mass of the object.”
Kirk didn’t like the way Spock had said that. Over the years he had become attuned to the subtle variations in his science officer’s speech. Whatever he was seeing in his scope, Spock was startled.
“What is the mass of it, Mr. Spock?”
Spock straightened from his scope to look at the viewscreen. “According to all readings, Captain, we are approaching a planet. Slightly larger than Talin IV.”
“Keptin,” Chekov said, “the object ... the planet ... is changing course. It’s ... coming toward us, sir.”
Changing course? Kirk thought. Then it must be a ship. “Spock, can you pick up what kind of propulsion system is being used for something that massive?”
“I can detect nothing,” Spock said. “It has simply changed its trajectory.”
Kirk contemplated the energies that must be involved in altering the course of something the size of a planet—a planet already traveling fast enough to cross the half lightyear to the Talin system in just under sixty years.
“Lieutenant Uhura, go to red alert.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” The warning sirens sounded and the alert lights flashed.
“Mr. Chekov, Mr. Sulu, prepare phaser banks and photon torpedoes, all tubes.”
McCoy was suddenly concerned. “Is that wise, Jim?”
“Whoever is controlling that thing has sent out an advance force that destroyed a world. And they’ve got a propulsion system that can move a planet-sized mass around without any indication of how they do it.” Kirk frowned. “It may not be wise, Bones. But it’s safe.”
Kirk called down to engineering. “Scotty, we’re going to need full power to the shields when we leave warp. But then I’m going to want you to stand ready to get us back up to warp speed instantly, if not sooner.”
[380] Scott sighed. “The engines aren’t broken in yet, Captain. If they can’t take the surge, there’ll be a terrible mess to clean up in the nacelles.”
Kirk stared at the screen as the object in it grew. There was still no detail apparent, only a shifting gray whorl of what might be tendrils of gas. “Don’t worry, Mr. Scott. Those engines are so new they’re still under warranty. If they don’t work, we’ll send them back to the factory.”
“Aye,” Scott said, “but what worries me is where they’re going to send us.”
“Captain, we’re coming up to intercept,” Sulu announced. The object filled more than half the screen now. It was spherical like a planet, and wreathed in dark fog.
“Go to impulse, Mr. Sulu. Whatever it takes to stay ahead of that thing.”
The ship shuddered as she dropped from warp space with a slightly unbalanced transition. But the impulse engines ran smoothly.
“Holding at ten thousand kilometers,” Sulu said.
Kirk stood to see the viewscreen more clearly. If he were outside the ship on his own, he knew he wouldn’t be able to see the planet-sized object at all because of the lack of light, so far from the nearest star. But the ship’s sensors were able to amplify the dim starlight from all around and make the object visible on the screen. “There it is, Bones. The One.”
McCoy was not impressed. “It looks like a dirty snowball to me.” He turned to Spock. “How can a planet out here have a gaseous atmosphere. I thought it was too cold.”
“Those swirls of what appear to be fog are not an atmospheric phenomenon, Doctor. They are drones flying around the object. By the billions.” Even Spock seemed subdued by the scale.
Kirk tried to picture what that number of drones could do to a world.
�
�Uhura, are they transmitting anything on radio frequencies?” Kirk asked.
[381] “Yes, sir. Too many of them for the computers to handle. I’ll try to lock into the strongest one and tie it in through the translator, but I can’t promise anything.”
“Do your best,” Kirk said. “Spock, if those clouds are drones, then what’s beneath them?”
“Maybe nothing,” McCoy suggested. “It could be like a beehive. In the winter, the bees form a ball to conserve energy. They hang in the hive and slowly change position so that they each only have to spend a short time on the outside of the ball being exposed to the cold.”
“An admirable speculation, Doctor, though incorrect. Sensors show that the matter beneath the drones differs from them. Though our instruments cannot yet make a clear enough reading to tell us what that matter is.”
Kirk watched as Sulu made some adjustments to the impulse controls. “Is it changing course again?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Sulu said. “But it is accelerating. Only by a few meters per second though. We won’t have any trouble staying ahead of it ... so far.”
A rush of static burst from the bridge speakers. “I’ve got that signal,” Uhura said. “Patching it to the translator.”
The static warbled, then dropped in loudness as the translator’s circuits took over. “Cold cold cold coldcoldcoldcolco—” The speakers whined piercingly, then clicked off.
“Sorry about that,” Uhura said. “Feedback on the translator. Too many similar messages coming in at the same time. I’ll try to filter them down again.”
Kirk watched the masses of drones writhing over the object. “What’s the temperature out there, Spock?”
Spock didn’t look up from his scope. “Less than thirty degrees Kelvin.”
That didn’t make sense to Kirk. “But the seeder drone on Talin’s moon slowed right down as soon as I cast a shadow on it. How are these staying active without any sunlight?”
“Obviously, they must be receiving energy from another source,” Spock said.
[382] Uhura broke in. “Sir, I can’t get anything coherent on normal radio frequencies, but there is a strong, short-range low-frequency signal coming from the object.”
“Let’s hear it, Uhura.”
The bridge speakers hummed with a new sound, low and pulsing. “It’s not like the drones’ language, but I’ll try routing it through that part of the universal translator.”
The low pulsing noise dropped in volume. The speakers clicked. “Hungry. Strange life. Hungry. Consume strange life. Hungry. Faster. Hungry.”
Kirk tapped at his chest. “The seeder drone said that we were strange life. And whatever that was was talking about eating strange life. ... Mr. Sulu, is that thing still accelerating for us?”
“Yes, sir. Very slowly.”
McCoy put his hand on the back of the conn. “Do you think it plans to eat us?”
“That’s exactly what I think.” Kirk went up to Spock’s station. “Mr. Spock, is it possible that somewhere under all those drones there is another lifeform?”
“It is difficult for the sensors to penetrate the mass of drone readings. They appear to be in a layer more than one thousand kilometers thick,”
“A thousand kilometers,” Kirk said, turning back to the screen. “Like insulation against the cold. Living insulation.” He went to Uhura. “Open a channel to the subspace frequency you’re putting through the translator.” Uhura nodded at him to proceed.
“Who are you?” Kirk asked. He shrugged off McCoy’s frown. He had to start somewhere.
“I am hungry.”
“I,” Kirk said. “Not ‘we.’ Not a hive mentality like the drones. A single individual. The One.” He remembered the conversation he had had with the seeder drone. “What is your work?” he asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
“To consume life.”
Kirk turned to Spock. “The Many sow the seeds of life. The One consumes life. They’re symbiotes, Spock.”
[383] “Yes,” Spock agreed. “That would make sense.”
“What makes sense?” McCoy asked. “That thing out there doesn’t make a bit of sense.”
“Where are you going?” Kirk asked the One.
“To get food.”
“Where?”
“There.”
Kirk was certain he had solved it. “It’s in communication with the seeder drones on Talin’s moon. It has to be. And the way they damaged the Enterprise, they must have subspace capability, as well as radio.”
“But how can you know they’re in communication with each other?” McCoy asked.
“When I asked the seeder drone where it was, remember what it said. It said ‘here.’ When I asked this planet creature where it was going, it said ‘there.’ Simple concepts for simple, basic, rudimentary minds.”
Chekov called for Kirk’s attention. “Keptin, I am picking up a configuration change. The creature is ... altering itself.”
On the screen, the random gray tendrils of the massed drones were forming into a central vortex which covered half the area of the sphere’s visible side. The outer edges of the gray cloud spun out ahead of the rest like clay on a potter’s wheel while the inner surface became sharply concave, dipping in toward the hidden surface.
“Mr. Spock?” Kirk asked as a pale red glow began to appear in the deepest section of the growing planet-size whirlpool.
“The covering of drones is thinning, Captain. Our sensors are beginning to penetrate to whatever lies below.”
The apparition on the viewscreen was no longer a solid sphere. It had opened up, the edges of it stretching outward like straining tentacles. The glow from the interior was brightening steadily, red and pulsing.
“It’s trying to eat us,” McCoy said, unusually restrained. “It’s opening its mouth.”
“Still accelerating, Captain,” Sulu announced.
“Stay ahead of those tendrils,” Kirk ordered. He turned to [384] Spock. “What do the sensors show, Mr. Spock? What’s inside that thing?”
Spock turned away from his scope, and to Kirk it seemed as if the science officer were abandoning it. “Captain, there is no doubt that the creature is alive.” Spock sounded hesitant. The deep red tunnel which had formed within the creature, large enough now to swallow a world, flashed with odd purple bolts of energy. But the bolts arced and branched in lines which followed smooth and perfect curves, not the jagged streaks of ordinary energy discharges.
“And the lining of the creature’s tendrils does have the capability of consuming and metabolizing the algae that grows on Talin IV,” Spock continued.
“The lining of the tendrils?” Kirk said. On the screen, the tendrils appeared to be made of red glowing gas or shaped energy. “Are the tendrils solid matter?”
Spock stood by the railing, eyes fixed on the screen. “Not as it exists in our universe, Captain. It contains subatomic particles similar to our quarks, but the ways in which those particles interact are ... different.”
“Is the One from another dimension, Spock?”
The science officer shook his head without speaking and Kirk wondered what had so deeply affected him. Then he heard the impulse engines reset to a higher power curve as the creature accelerated again.
“All other extradimensional manifestations that we have observed have shared the same basic laws of energy and matter interaction established in the first nanoseconds of our universe’s beginning,” Spock said. “But this creature does not share those laws.”
McCoy turned to Spock. “Are you saying that thing’s from another universe, Spock?”
“An earlier universe, Doctor. One that preceded ours.”
Kirk stared at the thing on the screen—now a mad, spinning maelstrom of ... hunger. A primal hunger billions of years old. A simple, basic lifeform that had evolved over uncountable [385] eons to acquire the ultimate survival trait—the ability to live beyond its universe.
“How?” Kirk whispered. He suddenly knew how Ri
chter felt. So little time to understand.
“Captain, for a being to be able to maintain itself during the heat death of a universe ... for it to be able to withstand the infinite compression of a universal collapse of energy and matter ... and for it to then survive the creation energies of the Big Bang ... there is nothing in our science which would even begin to suggest how such a thing might be possible.”
Kirk had Uhura open the channel to the One. “What is your age?” he asked, not knowing if the creature would comprehend.
“Hunger,” it answered plaintively. On the screen, it twisted as if in agony, reaching hopelessly for the constantly retreating ship it wanted to consume.
“Where do you come from?”
“Consume need consume need. Faster. Faster.”
“Why?” Kirk asked.
This time, the translated voice gave no answer.
“Instinct,” Kirk said with finality as he stared at the screen. “As Spock said, it’s like asking a paramecium why it absorbs food. It is not a conscious decision. And this is not a conscious lifeform.”
Spock and McCoy watched as Kirk returned to the conn.
“Well, Doctor,” he said as he sat back in his chair, “at least now you know how the One, and the Many, had enough time to develop such complex behavior. If it could survive the collapse of one universe ... it could survive the collapse of billions.”
McCoy, for once, was speechless.
“Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said decisively, “take us back just beyond the distance we were when Chekov first noticed this creature change course.”
The straining maw of the One receded on the screen, slowly folding closed, again encasing itself within its living cloud of insulation against the harsh environment of interstellar space. When the Enterprise had matched her earlier distance from it, [386] Sulu reported that the creature resumed its original course—bearing directly for the Talin system.
“Keptin,’’ Chekov said, “we have passed out of phaser range. Shall I arm the photon torpedoes?”
“If it can withstand the Big Bang, Mr. Chekov, I don’t think there’s much we’d be able to do to it,” Kirk said.
