Kirk waited with agonized impatience as Chapel moved quickly from Fushi to O'Shea to Elijah.
"They'll all live," she said finally. Kirk turned.
"Scotty, check the cargo hold for the strobolin. Every freighter has a double-walled refrigerated chamber for storing extremely valuable cargo. It should be located close by the central accessway. The drug will be in it."
"Aye, sir." Scott turned, started back into the bowels of the ship.
"Uhura, see if you can get a playback off their log. I want to know what happened here."
Uhura nodded, moved to the chaos of the fore control console and commenced trying to make sense out of the tangle of wiring, torn metal and shredded plastics.
Kirk examined what was left of the small engineering station, wished Scotty were around to explain the destruction. Whatever had ruined the freighter had been guided by an intelligence with a definite purpose in mind. The damage here was severe—but still controlled. Something had disabled the freighter without destroying it.
It was difficult to fault their thoroughness. True, they had left O'Shea and his crew alive—barely. But there was no reason to expect three severely wounded men drifting powerless in a little-frequented section of space and existing on stored energy to ever be rescued and bear witness against their attacker.
No, the Huron might very well have gone down on shipping schedules as just one of those infrequent vessels marked "never arrived—cause unknown," if it weren't for the fact that the ship was to meet the oncoming Enterprise in free space. Something Kirk doubted her attackers had known, or they would have taken care to leave no one alive. They had made a mistake.
Possibly a fatal one.
There was a buzz close by, and Kirk flipped on his communicator.
"Scott to Captain Kirk," the familiar voice of the chief engineer came. Kirk glanced around the shattered bridge. Chapel had turned her ministrations to O'Shea. Uhura deftly avoided a sudden shower of sparks, then bent with renewed vigor to the task of extricating the remnants of the Huron's log.
"Kirk here . . . all steady forward, Scotty. Report."
"I'm in the main bay, Captain. The Huron's equipped with a security bin, all right—only it's been forced. It's as empty as the rest of the cargo hold. There's nothin' down here, Captain."
"No sign of the strobolin?"
"Not a single ampoule, Captain. The Huron's listed cargo for this trip was dilithium. Not a crystal in sight, either. The hold's been stripped clean."
"Life-support systems?"
"Stable here. No, if this was caused by a natural disaster it's been repaired with the slickest patch job I've ever seen. Also, it must have been a mighty selective disaster. The only major damage is to the security chamber and the cargo locks. I kinna tell for sure from this distance, but I think they were blown open and then resealed."
"All right, Mr. Scott. Report back up here."
"Aye, Sir. Sorry I am . . ."
No drug, a voice howled in Kirk's mind. No drug, no drug! He flipped off the communicator and walked over next to the busy Uhura. She looked up at him and wiped a forearm across her brow. The humidity was bad in here and getting worse, despite the valiant efforts of the damaged life-support system.
"All recorders are gone, sir—but indications are that the log tapes are intact. I think I can extricate them without damage. Well have to play them back on board ship, though."
"Good enough. Lieutenant." He left her to her work and turned his attention back to Chapel. She continued to labor on O'Shea.
"How is he, Nurse?"
"Scrambled inside, concussion upstairs—he needs surgery but," she smiled slightly, "he'll live, Captain. Nothing we can't fix. Another couple of days, though, and all three of them would have been gone."
Kirk moved away, thinking hard. He flipped the communicator open again just as Scott re-entered the bridge.
"Kirk to Enterprise. We're ready to beam over, Arex. Have a full medical team standing by. We need—" he glanced at Chapel, who nodded approval as he spoke, "—three pallets with tech-teams. Tell Dr. McCoy he's got a triple surgery on his hands."
"Very good, sir," the thin voice piped back.
They left the Huron where and as it was, it's automatic beacon still calling plaintively to an indifferent universe. Scott had installed a fully charged power pack to run the beacon when the freighter's emergency batteries finally gave out.
The shattered transport could be recovered later, by someone else. Right now something other than salvage dominated Kirk's thoughts. And Scott's, and McCoy's, and Sulu's—and those of every other member of the Enterprise's crew—though they might not have admitted it.
Such thoughts were doubtlessly the cause of the pounding headache Kirk suffered from as he paced the outer room of the Sick Bay. His attention was gratefully drawn from the miners excavating his skull when McCoy entered from a side doorway. The reflective figure, clad in transparent surgical garb, beckoned Kirk to a familiar chamber.
Kirk walked past the base of the bed where Spock lay immobile. He glanced once at the diagnostic readouts on the screen above, looked hurriedly away. By now even the figures were painful to see.
He turned in time to see O'Shea wheeled in from surgery. Two medical techs transferred the Huron's captain gently from the mobile pallet to a duplicate of the bed Spock lay in.
Both officers walked over, McCoy peeling the protective sealer from his face. "How's this one, Bones?"
"Oh, he'll pull through all right, Jim. Just a little rearrangement of his plumbing . . . no permanent damage." He paused. "Jim, what the hell are we going to do about Spock?"
"The best we can, Bones."
"I'm not sure that's going to be good enough, Jim."
Kirk could see that McCoy was sorry for the words as soon as he had said them. He was under more pressure than anyone else on board just now, and it manifested itself as frustration.
Probably there was nothing as agonizing to a doctor of Bones' ability as knowing exactiy what to do to cure a patient and simply not having the material to do it with.
"If we don't have that strobolin in twenty hours, he'll die," McCoy continued flatly. "That's a minimal figure, but it's pretty accurate. I wouldn't like to have to stretch it even five minutes."
There was nothing he could say . . . just as there was nothing he could do.
No, no—that wasn't entirely true. There was still a chance, still some hope. The dimness of the readings on the diagnostic indicators over Spock's head were matched by the snail's pace of his thoughts.
"We still might—"
"Might what, Jim?"
"Wait till I see the log tapes we took off the Huron. If they're wiped, or if the recorder was destroyed too soon—" He stopped abruptly. "See you later, Bones. Do what you can for Spock, and let me know the minute any of those three," he nodded to where Elijah was being brought in to join O'Shea, "recover sufficiently to talk."
Never enough time, he thought, never enough . . .
As Arex ran the Huron tapes through the library computer, Kirk stood nearby and urged the dawdling computer to faster action.
Eventually, the Edoan made his equivalent of a satisfied sigh. "Some of the last tape was burned, Captain. I've been able to reconstruct the damaged sections, however. The Huron was definitely, as we suspected, attacked by another vessel. It is interesting to observe that the belligerent ship is a new design, one apparently never before encountered by a Federation ship. There is also evidence to suggest that it possesses an older form of propulsion than modern warp drive."
"I don't care if it came from the far side of M one one three eight and is powered by ten million invisible gerbils—all I want to know is, can we track it?"
"That's the significance of its out-of-date drive, sir. If you'll look here . . ."
He hit a switch. Immediately a blank grid appeared on the small screen above the science console. Another control produced a star-chart nearby. Arex made a last adjustment and the two blended
together.
Kirk squinted. There were glowing dots on the composite screen which were not stars.
"The Huron's attacker may be sophisticated in many ways," Arex explained, "but its propulsive units are possessed of a few archaic features. One of these is that they generate a faint residue of radioactive particulate matter. Unless they are aware of us and have carefully laid a false trail for us to follow—which I strongly doubt—we should be able to find them.
"The most recent deposits give a bearing of two hundred twelve plus, one hundred seventy-five minus to the Galactic ecliptic. The half-life of the ejected material is quite short. If we had arrived on the scene as much as three days late, our sensors would have found nothing."
"Lay in that course!" Kirk shouted back to the helm. "Ahead warp seven, Mr. Sulu." He turned back to Arex. "Run through those tapes again—slowly, Lieutenant—and let me know if you find anything else you think significant. I'll be down in Sick Bay."
Kirk found McCoy seated at his desk, his head resting in his hands. "How is he, Bones."
"Worse than he was when you left, Jim," McCoy replied, looking up. "And he'll be worse the next time, and worse after that . . . until we get that drug.
"It's his breathing that worries me most. Pretty soon I'm going to have to put him on forced respiration. That'll draw reserves from other parts of his body already hard-pressed by the disease."
"Well, we're following the attacking ship's trail." Teeth gleamed. "We're going to crawl right up—"
"Ship?" McCoy interrupted. "How do we know there's only one ship involved in this?"
"Lieutenant Arex is certain the radioactive residue comes from a single vessel."
"Sure, only one ship attacked the Huron. What happens if they rendezvous with another and transfer cargo? Or with two others, or make multiple transfers?"
"Dammit, Bones," Kirk half shouted, "this one's got to be the only one. It's got to be." McCoy looked apologetic, but Kirk waved off the incipient sorrys.
"Don't complicate things with factual possibilities, okay? If there's more than one ship, well . . . that's probably it, then. We haven't enough time to go chasing all over the cosmos after several ships, even if their trails would last that long."
"A transfer," McCoy finished relentlessly, "would seem the logical thing to do." His voice cracked on the word "logical."
"Sure, if you anticipate immediate pursuit. But every sign points to these beings—whoever they are—not expecting another vessel in this region. Certainly not one capable of overtaking them.
"The tapes indicate they weren't much on conversation. Chances are that if O'Shea had been given the opportunity to explain he was about to rendezvous with a heavy cruiser, they might have called off the whole thing."
"I'm sure that'll be a great consolation to O'Shea when he comes around," snorted McCoy. He walked slowly back to stare down at Spock.
"What's the good of being a physician, anyway?" Kirk heard him mutter angrily. "We're only as good as current drugs and technology make us. We've got a few more books, a little more knowledge. Eliminate all the mechanical conveniences, and I might as well be practicing in the middle ages. There's nothing I can do for him." He walked a few steps away, slammed a hand against the door sill.
"Me—me, I'm helpless. Totally dependent on instrumentation and pre-programed chemicals. There isn't a thing I personally can do. So what's the point of it—what's the point?" He stared down at the floor.
"Better to be an engineer like Scotty. If one of his patients burns out, there's always a replacement in the catalog." A hollow laugh forced itself out.
Silence.
Then, "If you really believed that, Bones," Kirk told him softly, "you wouldn't still be a doctor after twenty-five years. Especially a ship's doctor.
"And that's something else I've always wondered about, Bones. Why did you bother entering the service? With your skill you could have made a fortune in government or private practice."
McCoy glanced back sharply, an unfathomable expression on his face. "You're going to find this funny, Jim, but . . . I entered the service instead of striking out on my own because I'm greedy."
"Greedy? As Spock would say, that sounds like an irrefutable contradiction in terms."
McCoy shook his head. "It's no different for me than for you, Jim. I'm here because challenge means more to me than money. And because money can't buy a sense of accomplishment.
"Besides, could you see me sitting in a private clinic on Demolos or on Earth, pandering to the private phobias of overweight matrons and spoiled kids?"
"I admit it's a tough scene to picture," Kirk agreed, amused. "I'm glad your avarice drove you to become doctor on this ship."
"Listen," McCoy began, "if Spock pulls through—"
"You mean when Spock pulls through," Kirk countered forcefully. "When Spock pulls through I'll see what can be done about rounding up some more interesting illnesses for you to play with. I don't want you feeling unchallenged."
"Thanks awfully, Jim," McCoy responded, a touch of his normal sarcasm coming back. "I'd appreciate some really different germs for a change. Trouble is, the people on this ship refuse to cooperate. You're all too damned healthy."
Kirk turned to leave. "Well Bones, you've got nobody to blame but yourself."
The dilithium, Kirk mused as he strolled down the corridor, he could understand. As good as currency—no, better. A load of good crystals would be easy to market to some of the Federation's less reputable concerns. Or to any of many non-Federation worlds.
But why did they take the strobolin? Why? Pirates would hardly have known what it was. And if they had, they would have realized it wasn't particularly valuable—it was demand, not rarity, that was responsible for that.
Come to think of it, he considered as he entered the lift, that was probably it. They had taken the strobolin out of ignorance, reasoning that anything worth protecting so well was worth appropriating.
If only they had left the drug, he could have overlooked the assault, forgotten the injuries, ignored the monetary loss. Suddenly he grew cold as he realized that they might now have discovered the drug's true value and simply have destroyed it, or dumped it in space—out of anger, perhaps, for the valuables the security chamber had failed to yield.
He tried not to think about it, just as he tried to ignore McCoy's hypothesis about intership transfers of the stolen goods.
In one way the situation was made simple for him. Because of the restrictions imposed by time, he was reduced to only one course of action, spared the need of choosing among several tortuous possibles.
All they could do was follow the thread of radioactive residue and hope it led to the intact ampoules of strobolin. Hope it did so quickly.
Exiting onto the bridge he automatically scanned left to right, insured himself that everyone who belonged at his/her post was present. Arex, he noticed as he took his seat in the command chair, was back at the navigator's station.
Handling the dual assignment was hard on the Edoan, he knew. But he was a better backup to have there than anyone else in a situation like this. Sulu could cover for him where necessary.
Besides, he mused bitterly, one way or the other the navigator wouldn't have to occupy the dual position much longer.
"Report."
"Emanations from the radioactive matter still registering strongly on applied sensors, Captain," Sulu informed him. "Bearing still two hundred twelve plus, one hundred seventy-five minus. We are moving up on a massive grouping of solid material."
"Slow to standard cruising speed," Kirk ordered, fingers tap-tapping on an arm of the chair. "Free-space asteroidal belt or globe," he muttered to himself.
Sulu was busily replacing the abstract information listed on the main screen with a view from the ship's fore scanners. Such groupings, Kirk reflected, were not common, but neither were they rare enough to arouse unusual interest.
Visual sightings confirmed that this was a normal collage, jagged fragments rang
ing in size from microscopic pebbles to a few moon-sized specimens. At the moment, however, abstract analysis was far from his mind.
"The trail of radioactives enters the group and begins a weaving pattern, Captain," Sulu reported.
Kirk nodded slightly. He had half expected as much. They had been closing steadily on their quarry, judging by the upsurge in radioactive intensity of the trail. This was the closest thing to a hiding place open space offered to an interstellar craft
"They're taking evasive action. A sensible maneuver, wouldn't you say, Mr. Sulu?"
"The ideal place to try and shake us, Captain," the helmsman agreed. "Especially if there are any natural concentrations of radioactives in this belt." He studied his port instrumentation.
"Preliminary indications point to many of the asteriods as having unusual energy properties that—" He stopped, staring at a particular readout.
"Share it with all of us, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said sharply.
"Extreme-range sensor scan indicates that the trail of radioactive debris we have been following ends in the approximate center of the grouping."
"Could be trying to cover their trail somehow, trying to throw us off by running on a different drive system, or perhaps arranging some kind of unpleasant welcome," Kirk murmured, to no one in particular. "We can be sure of one thing, now—they know they're being pursued." He glanced back to Uhura. "All deflectors up—sound yellow alert, Lieutenant. Mr. Sulu, cut speed and maintain evasive approach pattern."
A chorused "Aye, sir" came back to him, while bright flashes paired with suitably cacophonous whoops resounded throughout the starship.
"All sections secured and ready, Captain," Uhura was able to report minutes later.
"Thank you, Lieutenant. Approaching unknown's approximate sphere of confluence. Stand by for—"
A brilliant flare momentarily obliterated the scene depicted on the viewscreen, and the Enterprise shook to the force of destructive energies.
Star Trek - Log 5 Page 11
