Em-three-green was gesturing hysterically at the approaching river of flame, screaming. Even Lara's reserve seemed ready to crack. Sord eyed the flow, then leaned over slowly. The cart creaked, supports and axles groaned. The wheels on the cart's opposite side rose off the sand. Em-three-green was too terrified to scream as the vehicle tilted precariously.
A massive paw grabbed Spock around the waist and lifted him onto the cart.
"Go!" Kirk screamed, clinging to the ladder.
Fear lent even more speed to Em-three-green's incredible reaction time. A roar of power drowned out even the sound of the closing lava as the cart's engine, rigged to permit it to pull energy unrestrainedly from the power pack, cut loose.
Kirk felt himself wrenched backward, locked arms and legs around the ladder and prayed the metal would last as long as his muscles. The front of the cart rose into the air from the force of the blast as it shot forward at an incredible turn of speed. Em-three-green adjusted controls, all four wheels hit the sand, and it shot down the slope seconds before an advancing cliff of red covered the spot where they had been.
Lava boiled angrily behind them, orange talons reaching after. But the flow was receding rapidly into the distance. Drive whining madly, wheels and axles spinning at a rate for which they had not been designed, the wagon raced away from the burning crest behind. Sparks were starting to fly from anguished components.
Tchar watched as the cart below reached the gap in the slope Lara had indicated. It raced through, over another slope and down a winding ravine, narrowly scraping stone walls and abutments. Here the downward slope of the land lay to the south instead of toward the black cube. The lava river would slam up against the ridge they had just raced over and turn harmlessly to the left.
At the end of this pleasant thought, there was a violent, grinding wail from the engine, mirrored by one from Em-three-green. He shut everything down with incredible speed, still not fast enough to reduce the shower of sparks now spitting from more and more sections of the car.
"Off, off, off, everyone off!" the little alien cried, even as he was running for the ladder. Flames began to belch from sealed innards.
With Sord carrying the still dazed Spock, they hurriedly abandoned the smoking cart. Taking shelter behind the first rank of sand dunes, Kirk turned, could make out a thin line of red orange flowing to the south. He turned his attention back to the cart. The expected explosion failed to materialize. Em-three-green had cut the power in time to keep anything from reaching dangerous overload and blowing itself to bits. Whether he had done so in time to keep the cart mobile was open to question.
Tchar glided down to a smooth landing next to them. The Skorr was panting heavily.
"I would like to know what the Vedala put in that cart, Captain. I could not fly fast enough to keep up with you."
"It was a standard Federation engine and drive system," Kirk told him. "The credit for its abnormal burst of speed goes to Mr. Spock and Em-three-green."
He glanced over at his first officer, who now stood unaided nearby. Spock said nothing, while Em looked embarrassed and tried to hide, the tips of his cilia running through a series of color changes.
"Close," Lara said into the awkward silence, staring toward the far river of lava.
"Far too close," agreed Spock. He was rubbing at the back of his head. "I prefer less substantial precipitation. And while I appreciate your actions on my behalf, Captain, your first duty should remain to the group and the mission."
"Quite right, Spock. I felt it paramount to maintain our expedition intact. Don't think anything as primitive as emotion entered into my decision." He made a movement over his chest. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
"The injection of humor," Spock began reprovingly, "does not obviate the fact that you risked the success of the mission to—"
"—save the best science officer in Starfleet," Kirk cut in.
A massive paw smote the sand between them. "Are you two going to argue each other's merits till I throw up, or do we get on with it."
Kirk grinned, turned to face the irritated reptile. "We—"
A blast of cold air hit them, staggered Kirk. Everyone looked back toward the volcanos. Neither peak could be seen. Both lay hidden somewhere behind and beneath the towering range of cumulo-nimbus clouds that had piled up out of nothing.
It seemed to be raining beneath the black cloudbank. "No, not raining," Kirk muttered to himself. Instead, the storm was putting forth a blizzard of considerable ferocity. A violent hissing sprang up from the land beneath the clouds—snow striking the lava. He shook his head, and wondered. A world most mad indeed! Mad was a mild adjective for this paranoid planet.
The dune, at least, would provide some slight protection. Everyone scrambled over to lie in the sheltering lee. The marching clouds caught them moments after.
"And I was just going to ask," Lara shivered, flapping her hands at her sides, "what next? Wish this place would make up its mind—a body can't find time to get comfortable here."
"We've no time to seek comfort," Kirk told her. "As Sord says, we've got to get on with it."
It took Em-three-green all of five minutes to determine that the cart wasn't going anywhere without several major repairs, for which they had been equipped with neither time, skill, nor parts. Kirk felt they could have managed the first two, but the matter of replacement components defeated him.
"Completely burned out," the tiny mechanic announced dolefully, his nose wrinkling at the pungent odor drifting up from the bowels of the engine housing.
Kirk sighed. "That means from here on we carry what we need."
No one voiced an objection, or an alternative. Kirk and Spock moved to the rear deck of the cart, opened the supply lockers, and began portioning out loads.
XI
Kirk eyed the deceiving circle of the sun above, put his head down and into the wind. It had changed direction four, maybe five times since they'd begun the trek.
He'd been right about the deceptiveness of this world—and that included distance. It felt as if they had been walking for years without drawing any nearer to their objective.
Thanks to the intermittent blizzard and freezing rain, many sandy areas had acquired a thin plating of ice. Walking on such terrain was next to impossible. They couldn't have managed it at all had not Sord volunteered an obvious solution. As a result, the big reptile was soon carrying the bulk of their equipment on his back. Doing so did not slow him up any.
Eventually the last snow and rain ceased, but the cold wind continued to blow.
"I don't understand," Kirk muttered, "we should have been there long ago."
"Perhaps, Captain," Spock replied, "the defenses surrounding the soul include image projectors. What we may have seen from afar might have been a false construct."
"What about Lara's certainty of direction, then, and Tchar, insisting he sensed it?"
"That is so. It may only be a matter of distance, then." He looked thoughtful. "If none of the preceding three expeditions had one of Lara's people, or a Skorr, with them, that might explain their demise. They could have hunted false projections in this malign wilderness forever."
Kirk paused, cupped his hands to his lips and yelled up into the chilled air.
"Tchar, see anything?"
A faint reply: "Wait . . ."
Tchar rose higher, stared into the distance. It was there, as he had known it would be—past tentacles and fields of ice-blocks at the bottom of the valley. A gigantic, featureless black monolith. He knew the soul of Alar lay within that ominous repository. They were on the course the humanoid Lara had indicated. He would have to tell the others.
"Yes!" He plunged downward, pulled up at the last second. "Ahead, Captain, it—" There was a low rumble, and he instinctively lifted off the ground. Kirk and Spock had no such ability and were knocked off their feet.
Somehow Lara kept her balance. Sord was not affected, of course.
"Another quake!" Lara cursed.
&n
bsp; All around them was the horrible crunching sound of ice breaking up.
Someone screamed. All eyes turned toward Em-three-green. He had been trailing slightly behind. A vast ridge of ice had risen beneath him, cracked, twisted, opening crevices in the ice and in the earth below.
Using every cilium, Em-three-green tried to scramble clear. But the huge slab of ice was tilting sharply, and fine cilia are not equipped with claws or hooks. They found no purchase on the slick surface. Clawing frantically, he found himself sliding backward toward the abyss.
Everything happened fast, then. Spock took several long strides and threw himself stomach-first onto the ice near the tilting slab. He slid to the edge of the crevice, reached out, and grabbed Em-three-green by the scruff of the neck just as the latter was sliding in. Kirk got there barely in time to grab Spock's ankles to prevent him from going in with Em-three-green.
With a doomsday groan, the enormous frozen mass crashed into the depths.
Kirk grimaced with the strain of holding both Spock and Em-three-green. He tried to dig his toes into the frozen sand, found himself to his horror sliding slowly, slowly forward.
A coil of rope flew over his head. He reached up, slipped the noose over Spock's legs. Immediately the cord went taut. He pulled himself to the lip of the crevasse, stared down past the dangling form of Spock to where Em-three-green still hung in the Vulcan's grasp, swaying slightly and moaning. His eyes were shut tight.
Kirk felt Spock's body moving backward, crawled along with it. A glance showed Sord carefully bringing in the cord. Then Tchar had taken Em-three-green's weight from Spock and the first officer was easily pulled clear.
They took a long break there—not because they were especially tired, but because Em-three-green was too frightened now to move. Spock administered the medicine they had found in the supplies, but that would take time to work, too.
If it could have any effect at all. For when Em's violent shaking had calmed sufficiently for him to talk, it became clear that their mechanic was now beyond even terror. It was reflected in his tired voice, his miserable attitude.
"I can't go on any farther," he barely managed to whisper.
Kirk bit back his instinctive reply. A more woebegone being he had never seen. No surprise, really—Em-three-green had been frightened and uncertain on the Vedala asteroid, let alone here. He had probably been pushed through more today than any member of his race had been forced to endure in the past hundred years.
That he was still alive instead of dead from shock was proof enough he was a remarkable specimen of his type. Kirk eyed Em-three-green in a fresh light, took stock of their battered but still intact little company.
Sord sat invincible, a bored block of steel, ignoring the biting wind. Lara leaned against an ice-block, confident, athletic, secure in her knowledge of where she stood in relation to the universe, her lacquered exterior punctuated only by an occasional worried glance at Em-three-green.
Spock, nearby, was as calm as ever, ready for whatever might offer itself as an intriguing problem. And Tchar, free and safe as the air, hovered patiently above.
And himself, of course—concerned, anxious, but still in firm command. He shook his head again. He hadn't the slightest doubt that the finest representative of all the races present was the miserable lump of shivering cilia huddled in their middle and presently suffocating in his own misery and self-pity.
"I'm not even afraid anymore," the subject of Kirk's scrutiny murmured. "Just very, very tired. So very tired."
"Come on, Em," Lara urged with surprising gentleness. "We know where it is, and we've seen it. It's just a little further."
"No!" Em-three-green shouted, with uncharacteristic force, "I'm finished, I tell you! I've had enough. Let the murvlgeed Skorr go on their gurvlmeed jihad! Let the Galaxy blow itself to its assorted perditions, for all I care. I'm . . ." and the last word came out long and slow and low, ". . . tired."
Kirk tried to find a way to say what had to be said diplomatically, and came to a dead end. He firmed himself.
"I'm sorry, Em-three-green, but there's still the possibility we'll be needing you." He glanced up significantly. "Sord . . ."
Em-three-green had enough srength left to protest as he all but vanished in that massive paw. Sord placed him carefully on his already heavily loaded back. The picklock fought to his feet.
"Let me go, you outrageous hallucination!"
"Shut up and hang on," Sord muttered over his shoulder. His head was bigger than Em-three-green's entire body. "Dig down under the seal-tarp, between those boxes. You can get out of the cold and wind." He started off downslope at a steady trot.
"And be still! If you itch, I may forget the source and scratch you!"
"I'll scout on ahead," Tchar suggested, rising into the wind.
Kirk nodded absently as he, Spock and Lara fell in at Sord's flank. Above them, from under the edge of the tarp, a high voice muttered with an equal mixture of pain and pathos, "Some day, you grotesque blob of creation, I'm going to cut you down to size."
Sord did not deign to reply.
Wind faded and clouds ran. The sun returned to melt the ice under their feet—fast enough, fortunately, to prevent the formation of much mud. As soon as the earth had dried sufficiently, they continued on.
They entered a region of low, sandy hills and encountered for the first time some local vegetation—scrub bushes and the toughest looking grasses Kirk had ever seen. They'd have to be to survive here, he mused. Even the brush grew parallel to the ground instead of up into the unpredictable sky.
"Wait," came a rumbling warning.
Kirk moved up alongside Sord.
"What is it."
"Quiet." Kirk looked in the direction Sord was looking, toward a thicket of bushes. For a moment, he thought he saw what had given the reptile pause—something dark and vaguely sinister moving among the branches.
"What is it?"
"You espy it too, then?"
"I thought I saw something move, though it might have been wind action. Hell, on this world it might have been anything."
"So. There is not supposed to be any animal life on this planet."
Reptile and man stared harder, but there were no more hints of movement.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the plants themselves had learned how to run away from things here," Kirk commented. Sord continued to stare, finally grunted.
"Guess you're right. This world just gets on your nerves."
When they topped the next rise, the black cube loomed just ahead. But there were no cheers, no shouts, no cries of eureka! Everyone was too bone tired, emotionally and physically. They were resigned rather than elated, for now their mission really began. Or would those sheer walls of unmarked, unbroken black prove deceptively easy to penetrate? None of them thought so, in the depths of their various minds.
"I can sense the soul," Tchar told them. He fluttered his wings as he stood near Kirk. "This is no illusion—it is here!" He beat the air, lifted.
"I will fly round, examine the structure, and return to meet you. There may be an entrance above the ground. If so, I will find it far more easily than any of you." He soared upward.
"Tchar!" Kirk yelled.
The Skorr stalled, hovered.
"Captain?"
"Watch it—we need you, too."
Tchar paused, added thoughtfully, "I will be careful, Captain." He dipped slightly, then rose and shot falconlike toward the roof.
"Tchar is right in his analysis," Spock finally declared, "but we should continue to search at ground level, if only to find shelter from the next meteorological aberration."
"Excellent idea, Spock," Kirk agreed, starting toward the nearest wall, "I'll see you shortly."
"A moment, Captain. I—" Kirk cut him off curtly.
"Not this time, Spock. If something unexpected gobbles me up, dissolves me, or otherwise renders me in corpus kaput, we're going to need you around to figure out how it was done and then to devise a way to
circumvent it."
Spock appeared ready to protest further.
"And that's an order," Kirk finished.
He started down the slope. Before he had gotten ten meters from the others, he felt a warm presence alongside—Lara.
"I'll go with you." It wasn't a question.
"Uh-uh, as long as I'm in charge you'll—"
"Don't uh-uh me, Kirk. Remember, scouting's sort of my job. By rights, I ought to be doin' this by myself. You've already gotten all the use out of my sense of direction you're goin' to. I'm more expendable than anyone. But if you want to join me in gettin' yourself shot at, well, it'll be nice to have company."
Kirk started to yell—then found the incipient lecture had turned into a mental smile that was mirrored on his face. They walked on together.
Spock, meanwhile, was trying to take his mind off the fact that Kirk was out ahead of them, out of range of immediate help, and nearing a structure they had every reason to believe contained hostile defenses ready for unannounced visitors.
"Sord, what did you think you saw back there?"
The massive brow frowned, forming a small facial crevasse. Its owner spoke without looking down.
"Don't know for sure, Vulcan. A shape—" Sord shook his head as if to clear it of a fog. Profound cogitation apparentiy wasn't one of his specialties. "Probably seeing things, as the captain figures."
Spock didn't look satisfied. "There should be no mobile life on this world." He started down determinedly after Kirk and Lara.
Em-three-green slipped off Sord's back, took two steps to every one of Spock's as he followed at his heels.
"You keep saying that, Spock."
"Yes," Spock admitted. The key word is 'shouldn't' The Vedala should have informed us."
Sord sighed, sounding like an ancient steam-engine, and followed too. "Maybe, the Vedala didn't know about whatever it was we saw."
"No, I still consider that an impossibility," Spock muttered.
"You think that," the dragon snorted. "Me, I ain't so sure. The longer I'm on this dump, the less I'm convinced of the omnipotence of our alien mentors. Now, mind you," he went on, "I'm just saying there are aspects of this they don't know nothing about.
Star Trek - Log 5 Page 17
