by Barbara Paul
"Will he make it?"
"Fifty-fifty chance, I'd say. But he's young and he's healthy … maybe the odds are a little better than fifty-fifty."
Kirk nodded at this one little piece of good news. "They're not going to get away with this."
"What are you going to do?"
"McCoy, one of my people is dead, another is critically burned, and two are missing. What do you think I'm going to do?"
McCoy was aghast. "You're not going to attack that monster ship, are you?"
Kirk shook his head. "That's not the way. They could probably destroy us as easily as they destroyed the Gelchenites' ship. I'll have to think of something else. But I'm going to get those bastards—count on it."
McCoy looked at him closely. "You're worried about Scotty, aren't you?"
"Of course I'm worried about Scotty! I don't know whether he's alive or dead! He could be lying abandoned somewhere, too badly burned to work his communicator. He could be a prisoner … I don't even know whether the Sackers take prisoners or not! But if Scotty were in any position to contact us, he would have by now."
"I know. I'm worried about him, too."
Kirk's hands were fists. "I haven't figured out how yet, but those ghouls are going to pay for what they've done." His face hardened. "Believe me. They'll pay."
Chapter Four
UHURA SLAPPED AT her console in frustration. "Mister Chekov! I really do not think the Sackers would have a word in their language for borscht."
"Oh? Vhy not?" Chekov asked in all innocence.
"You know perfectly well why not. Besides, there's no point in arguing about it—look at the screen."
The screen was blank.
Chekov screwed up his face in mock concentration. "Maybe thet is the Sackers' problem. Poor nutrition."
Uhura growled low in her throat. "Let's go on. And please don't say chicken Kiev."
"You are the vun who suggested ve try food."
"I meant food the Sackers might eat."
"I do not know vhat food the Sackers might eat."
"Excuse me, Chekov, but aren't you supposed to be helping me?"
"I am helping you. I chust do not know vhat the Sackers are heffing for dinner tonight."
Uhura sighed. "Maybe we'd do better to look for variations of the word 'fire'. When I tried 'fire', the screen showed eighty-six words. Imagine—they have eighty-six different ways of saying 'fire'."
"If you vish," said Chekov, all agreeable cooperation. He thumbed on the microphone. "Blaze."
Sixteen symbols showed on the screen.
"Well, that narrows it down some," Uhura murmured, keying them in. "I wish I had some way of knowing which of these words are nouns and which are verbs. Keep going."
"Conflagration."
Three words.
"Ha!" Uhura cried. "Now we're getting somewhere. Let's try—wait a minute, Chekov. I have an incoming message." She listened carefully, recording the message at the same time. "Enterprise here. We acknowledge." She switched over to an intraship channel. "Bridge to Captain Kirk."
"Kirk here," came the immediate response.
"A message from Starfleet Command, Captain. It's bad news. Two more stars have been destroyed by the advancing heat front, and—"
"Did they have planets?"
"One of the stars had two planets, but neither was life-sustaining, fortunately. But some of the outpost stations are beginning to register sharp rises in temperature." She paused. "And Captain, Starfleet says the Sackers on other worlds have all departed. No one knows where they've gone."
"Damn. That's ominous. Do I have new orders?"
"Yes, sir. You are ordered to … hurry up." There was a silence. "Captain?"
"I heard you. Kirk out."
Uhura broke the connection. She turned to Chekov, and the two exchanged a long, grim look.
The navigator picked up the microphone, all business. "Combustion." Uhura barely had time to key it in before he said, "Ignition." Then: "Incineration."
No more kidding around.
* * *
Captain Kirk turned away from the intercom in the chief surgeon's office to see McCoy standing in the doorway. "Did you hear that?"
The doctor nodded. "The heat's getting closer and the Sackers are in hiding. Which problem do you tackle first?"
"They may be the same problem, if the Sackers are responsible for letting the three-minute universe in."
"It's no longer only three minutes old, of course," McCoy said. "But it still has a few billion years to go."
"Don't remind me."
"Jim, how long has it been since you've had some sleep? You don't exactly look fresh and ready to go."
"Ah … I don't know. I lost track."
"Better find time for a nap, then. You can't put out a fire when you're dead on your feet."
"I'll find some time."
"You know, I've been thinking about that," McCoy said. "We must not be getting the full blast of the new universe. If it explodes outward in all directions …"
"Then we're getting only a part of the explosion. Spock suggested the same thing. Not that it matters—the amount of heat we're getting is enough to cook us good. Did you hear my new orders? Starfleet wants me to hurry up." He snorted. "Bones, I have got to talk to that Zirgosian woman!"
McCoy grinned broadly. "That's what I came in to tell you. She's awake. And she's in good condition. Her vital signs check out positive, and she's clearheaded and articulate." Then, as if he'd just thought of it: "Why don't you go in and see her, Jim? Might do you both good."
Kirk glared at him and charged in to where the Zirgosian woman was sitting up in bed. He halted abruptly, struck by the thought that he was going to have to find the words to tell this woman that her homeworld had been destroyed. He temporized. "How are you feeling?"
She managed to muster up a smile. "Much better, thanks to your Dr. McCoy. He tells me I'll be 'up and around' in another day or so." She tilted her head and looked at him closely. "I remember you. You were one of the people who found me."
"I'm Jim Kirk—I'm the captain of this vessel. You warned me about the Sackers, remember?"
Her smile disappeared. "Sackers."
"They're the ones who poisoned you." He pulled a chair up next to her bed and sat down. "They strong-armed three men into doing the job for them, but the Sackers are behind it. We caught one of the poisoners—do you know a man named Borkel Mershaya ev Symwid?"
"No. That's not a Zirgosian name."
"He's a Gelchenite. He was on Holox as part of a trade commission." Kirk explained how the Sackers had forced ev Symwid and two of his fellow commissioners to poison the Holox water supply.
"Are the Sackers still on Holox?"
"Unfortunately."
Her face was anguished. "You must stop them! You can't let them do it!"
"Do what? Can you tell me what's happened? What do you know about the Sackers?"
It took a while, but eventually the whole story came out. The woman said her name was Dorelian, and her home was Zirgos, not Holox. She'd come to the colony planet to oversee the installation of and instruction in the use of some new mining equipment Zirgos had developed. At the time she'd left home, Sackers had been on Zirgos and were involved in a controversy about something they'd commissioned to be built.
"Their ship," Kirk said.
Dorelian looked surprised. "How did you know?"
"Someone had to build it for them. Their homeworld is not within the range of Federation worlds, so wherever it is it's too far away to be of much use to them in practical matters such as shipbuilding."
She nodded. "The ship had not been fully tested, and the builders were not ready to turn it over to the Sackers. But the Sackers didn't want to wait, so they just took it. The ship was built in orbit, so all they had to do was beam over from their old ship. It's a very special kind of ship, Captain Kirk. For one thing, it can transform itself into different shapes."
"We've seen two of them."
; "Ah, then you know. The compact form conserves power that's needed for their life-support system—the Sackers require a great deal of heat, you know. That's why they never stay overnight on most planets if they can help it—it's physically taxing for them."
"I didn't know that."
"The expanded forms of the ship are its combat and maneuvering modes, and they take a great deal of power to operate—power that must be diverted from life support."
"So they can't stay in combat mode for extended periods?" Kirk said. "They'll need to go back to the compact form to, er, warm up?"
"That's right. As I understand it, that was one of the areas the builders thought could be improved. But the Sackers were in a hurry. And right before I left Zirgos, we all found out why."
She paused, trying to get her thoughts in order. "Ships aren't the only thing built on Zirgos, Captain. To put it briefly, our scientists have made a tremendous breakthrough. They learned how to tap into the energy of adjoining universes."
Kirk caught his breath. "Go on."
"You understand what this means? It would be a limitless source of free energy, not only for Zirgos but for the entire Federation—if it could be controlled. For that purpose the scientists developed a device called a baryon reverter that's supposed to seal the breach between universes or limit its size, I'm not sure which. Perhaps both. Neither instrument has ever been tested, of course—how do you test something like that? Then the Sackers …" She stopped to swallow a couple of times.
"The Sackers stole both instruments," Kirk finished for her.
Dorelian pressed her fingertips against her eyes. "They're going to use them, Captain—I'm sure of it. Evidently they've been trying to find out the details of their operation ever since construction first began." She dropped her hands into her lap. "It may be the Sackers only want to keep all that nice free energy for themselves. But those instruments in the wrong hands would make an unstoppable weapon. And fire is the Sackers' natural weapon. So you see, you've got to stop them before they use it."
Every once in a while, a moment came along in which Captain James Kirk hated the things his job required him to do. This was one of those times when he would rather have been anywhere in the galaxy other than where he was at that moment. But someone had to tell her, and it looked as if he were elected. "You don't know how it distresses me to have to tell you this," he said to Dorelian as gently as he could, "but they've already used the first device."
Her face filled with horror. She opened and closed her mouth wordlessly a couple of times and then cried "No!" so loudly that Dr. McCoy came running. "Are you sure?"
"What's wrong?" McCoy asked.
"I'm sure," Kirk said sadly.
"Did they use the baryon reverter too? Did they stop it?"
Kirk slowly shook his head.
McCoy watched Dorelian closely, wondering if he was going to have another case of shock to treat.
"Where?" she whispered. "Where did they …?"
They were the hardest words Kirk had ever had to utter. "In the Beta Castelli system," he said, hating what he was doing to her. "I'm sorry … Zirgos is gone."
She stared at him a long time—and then she began to scream. Silently. Over and over she screamed, without making a sound. Kirk took her hand, wanting to comfort her. McCoy took the other and tried to soothe her. Her grip was like a metal vise.
"Sedative?" Kirk asked.
McCoy said no. "Her system's just been purged, Jim—it's too soon. Besides, she's doing the right thing. Let her get it out."
Kirk wondered what he would do if he'd just been told that Earth and all the people who lived there no longer existed. What must that feel like? He couldn't imagine it, and he doubted that he'd behave as well as Dorelian. Eventually the silent screaming stopped and the Zirgosian woman lay there sobbing, exhausted from her exertions.
"Dorelian," Kirk said, bending over her bed, "can you hear me? I want you to listen. I promise you right now that I'll find a way to stop them. They won't get away with what they did to Zirgos. I give you my promise. Do you hear?"
She looked at him with an unreadable expression, and then slowly nodded her head.
"I'll stay with her until she falls asleep," McCoy said. "Why don't you, uh." Get lost, his expression said.
Kirk took the hint and left them alone. In the corridor outside sickbay, he went to the nearest intercom. "Spock—where are you?"
"In my quarters, Captain."
E Deck. Kirk rode the turbolift up two levels and headed straight for the Vulcan's quarters.
Spock was seated at his library computer terminal studying the same material about the Sackers that Kirk had read earlier. "Jim—has something happened? You look distraught."
"I just told the Zirgosian woman she no longer had a homeworld to return to." Kirk plopped down in the nearest chair.
Spock frowned. "The Holox colonist we found in the administrative center?"
"She's not a colonist. She lived on Zirgos." Kirk went on to repeat everything Dorelian had told him, from the Sackers' premature occupation of their new ship to their stealing of the instruments that could open and close portals between universes. "I didn't tell her the universe the Sackers tapped into was a brand-new one—I figured she had enough grief. Anyway, now we know how it happened … but not why."
"More to the point, Jim, we also know there is a way to turn off the heat, so to speak. A baryon reverter. What a fascinating approach … if its name is a true indicator of the way it functions. I don't suppose the woman told you any of the details?"
"I don't think she knows them—she's a mining engineer of some sort. But figuring out how the reverter does what it does is a pleasure we'll have to postpone. Right now all we have to worry about is whether the damned thing works or not. It's never been tested."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "That's not quite all we have to worry about. There is only one baryon reverter in existence, and it is aboard a Sacker warship. We cannot attack, because we might damage or even destroy the reverter in the process."
"No, no—attack is out." Kirk didn't bother to explain he'd already decided against a direct assault. "They won't talk to us, they won't acknowledge our messages. If we try beaming a security force aboard, they'll simply roast us on sight. Dorelian said fire was their natural weapon, and they aren't going to hesitate to turn it on us." That reminded him. "Have you seen Franklin?"
"I visited him briefly. Nurse Chapel says his chances for recovery are good."
Kirk nodded. "What happened to Franklin—that's the kind of greeting we have to expect from the Sackers. Warm, to say the least. But we have to risk it, Spock. We simply must make contact with them."
"A rather formidable undertaking, I would say, since they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge our existence."
"Ah, but all the Sackers aren't in the ship. There's one other place where we might get at them."
"On Holox?"
"Right. In that blister dome that Scotty's team discovered." Once he'd mentioned Scotty's name, Kirk's whole body began to sag. He'd kept his worry over the chief engineer pent up too long, and now it all came spilling out. The two men had been together for so long … Kirk couldn't imagine the Enterprise without his old friend ruling over the engineering section like some benevolent laird of the manor. It was unthinkable.
Spock left his seat and crossed over to lay a gentle hand on the captain's shoulder. "We had better prepare ourselves, Jim. There's a very real possibility that he may be dead."
Kirk lifted his head. "From what we now know of the Sackers," he said heavily, "maybe we'd better pray that he is."
Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott felt his right cheek pressing against something hard, flat, and cool. He labored mightily and managed to get one eye open. He saw he was lying on the floor. Now why d'ye s'pose I'm sleepin' on the floor? he wondered vaguely. After a time he worked the other eye open and saw the floor didn't have the familiar carpeting that covered the deck of his quarters. He gravely considered the po
ssibility that someone had stolen his carpet, but then rejected that surmise in favor of the more likely explanation that it was someone else's floor he was sleeping on. It must have been a hell of a party.
He'd struggled up to a sitting position before it all came flooding back. The Sackers. Holox. Ching and Franklin. He stood up too quickly; a pain shot through his head and he almost succumbed to a wave of dizziness and nausea. When his eyes could focus properly, he saw he was not alone. He knelt by the recumbent body of the blond security man called Hrolfson and shook him by the shoulder. "Laddie! Wake up! Are y'all right?"
Hrolfson opened his eyes and blinked, and then went through the same slow remembering process Scotty had just gone through. He sat up and held his head. "Where are we, Mr. Scott?"
Scotty looked around. "We're inside the Sacker blister. An' it looks as if they built a special little cell just for us."
The cell was a perfect cube made of some sort of transparent plastiform; one wall held a door. Inside the cell an old-fashioned generator-powered refrigeration unit chugged away in the corner under a gridded vent. Other than that, the cell was empty.
"What happened to Ching?" Hrolfson asked. "And Franklin?"
"I think they're dead, lad," Scotty said leadenly. "Heaven only knows why we're still alive."
When Scotty thought his stomach could stand it, he forced himself to look outside their cell. The cell's transparent walls were smoke-colored, of a shade that blurred outlines and cut down on details. For this small mercy Scott rendered thanks; without some sort of muting effect he would never have been able to look at the Sackers directly. Even so, he felt his stomach turn over when he picked out one Sacker and examined him (her?) closely.
He saw a semitransparent membranous sac that looked tougher than leather; it made him think of the mole rat, one of the most repugnant-looking life forms Earth had given rise to. The sac was wrinkled, lumpy, and loose, like a poorly fitted space suit. The Sackers all looked as if they were molting but still carrying their dead skins around with them; Scotty watched several of them walking but none of them left pieces of themselves behind on the floor. That molty, moldy look was their natural state, then. Scotty heard Hrolfson gag once or twice and hoped he could hold it in; their cell contained no cleanup facilities. "Y'are not goin' to be sick, are ye, lad?" he asked.
