The Three-Minute Universe

by Barbara Paul

  McCoy's face lit up. "Now you're cooking!"

  "I am glad you think so, Dr. McCoy, as you are coming with us. Please pick up your medical kit and report to the transporter room."

  "On my way."

  "Mr. Sulu, you have the conn. Maintain monitoring of the Sacker ship and notify me immediately of any change in status."

  "Yes, sir."

  Spock quickly joined McCoy in the turbolift, wondering if he hadn't already left it too late.

  Captain Kirk, Uhura, and Chekov crowded around the console screen in their quarters on the Sacker ship. Selected parts of the ship's schematics were being fed through to them, so Kirk would have a chance to familiarize himself with the layout before taking command. Notations were in two languages, English and one other that the three from the Enterprise assumed must be Zirgosian. Nobody knew the Sackers' language except the Sackers—and now Uhura, a little bit.

  They read in silence for a while, and then Chekov gulped and said, "It is big!"

  "Think of it as a bigger but not necessarily better Enterprise," Kirk said. "Remember, the Zirgosians weren't finished with it yet when the Sackers took over. That means there are still bugs in here somewhere that haven't been worked out. What we have to do is find them."

  "And do what, Captain?" Uhura asked. "Correct them or exploit them?"

  "Exploit them. Our primary objective is to get that baryon reverter aboard the Enterprise. If we do it the way Red wants us to—sorry, I mean Babe—then we'll have no control over what happens after the heat advance is stopped. Assuming the reverter works at all, that is. As long as the Sackers have possession of it, they're going to be a threat to the entire galaxy. But if we can beam the thing over to Spock … I wonder how big it is."

  "Is there anything in here about it?" Chekov asked.

  "Let me see." Uhura tapped a few keys. "No. They're not going to let us look at it."

  "Let's go back to the engines," Kirk said. He studied the screen silently for a few minutes and then said "These are some engines. What can they do? How does the radiation-damping work? And what's this device here? Damn, I have a thousand questions and no one to ask! Uhura, how do I use this console to speak to Babe?"

  "Press here, talk there."

  Kirk pressed and talked. "Kirk to bridge." Immediately the image of the red commanding officer appeared on the screen—without either the concealing cloak or the translator mask. Kirk felt himself flinch, but he didn't look away.

  She put on her translator mask. "Commander Babe speaking," she said. "You have a problem, Captain?"

  "I need to talk to an engineer. There are parts of the engine plans that are not self-explanatory. Can you send someone to answer questions?"

  "Very well, Captain, an engineer will be sent to you." Her image faded from the screen.

  "Whew," Uhura breathed heavily. "I guess it's not so bad as long as you don't have to smell them."

  "You think so?" asked a white-faced Chekov.

  "Let's see what they use in place of a deflector dish," Kirk said. Uhura called up the data. "Hm, an enclosed unit. Very compact. I wonder if the Enterprise could use something like that."

  But the Enterprise's navigator wasn't impressed. "I am supposed to get navigational readings from thet?" Chekov protested. "Vhat is the feed route?"

  Uhura tapped the keys—and all the data disappeared from the screen. Something unreadable appeared. Uhura said, "It probably means 'Access denied.'"

  "Try the weapons system," Kirk said.

  Here again they were given limited access, but Kirk was able to determine that the Sacker ship boasted no new superweapon. Of course, with the Zirgosian invention for opening doors between universes they didn't need one. Nevertheless, the Sacker armament still outweighed that of the Enterprise three to one; a battle between the two ships was to be avoided at all costs.

  They were interrupted by the sound of the door opening, followed by an indignant voice loudly protesting, "Here now! I'm goin', I'm goin'! Nae need to be proddin' me with those things!" And a helmeted Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was propelled unceremoniously into the room.

  "Scotty!" Kirk yelled, happily abandoning decorum in his joy at seeing his old friend alive.

  "Captain! Uhura! Chekov!" There was much pounding of backs and squeezing of shoulders. Scotty picked Uhura up and gave her a hug that took her breath away. "I'm glad to see ye, lass!" Then his expression changed to one of dismay and he held her off at arm's length. "Nae, I am not glad to see ye! What are y'doin' here? Captain, why did ye leave the Enterprise?"

  "Ostensibly to meet with the Sackers, but the meeting was just a ploy to kidnap us. Scotty, how long have you been on this ship?"

  "Just since yesterday. They kept me in that hothouse down on Holox until then." He took off his helmet. "Captain, do y'remember Hrolfson, the security man who was with me? They killed him. An' only because he dinna know anythin' about the operation of the Enterprise! That's all the excuse they needed."

  Kirk looked sick. "That makes two. They killed Ching, too. Franklin survived."

  "Franklin's alive? Ah! Thank heaven for that!"

  "Scotty," Uhura said, "how did they kill him?"

  "They incinerated him. Burned him alive. I watched 'em do it."

  Uhura covered her eyes with her hand and turned away. She crossed the room and sat down at the table.

  "Captain," Scotty said, "I'm sorry to have to tell ye, but these beasties know everythin' about the Enterprise that I know. They used a memory probe on us, Hrolfson and me."

  "Can't be helped, Scotty. Don't worry about it. What have you been doing since they beamed you aboard?"

  "Checkin' the engines. Their chief engineer was killed in some sort of accident."

  Kirk and Chekov exchanged a quick look. "Their enchineer too?" the latter said. "Also their navigator, their communications officer—and their kepten."

  Scotty's eyes grew wide. "What's this?"

  "It's true," Kirk said. "That's the reason we're all here. They want us to run their bloody ship for them."

  For once in his life, Scotty was speechless.

  "Vhat is going on here?" Chekov asked the room at large.

  "Isn't this interesting," Kirk mused. "I ask them to send me someone to answer questions about the engines, and they send me a man who's never been inside this ship until a day ago. Scotty—you are their expert on their own engines?"

  "I think I must be, Captain. Mr. Green is only a trainee an'—"

  "Who?"

  "Ah, that's me Sacker, the one who's been stickin' to me like glue. I call him Mr. Green. Anyhoo, he's only in trainin' but he knows more than any of the rest o' them. They don't have one real engineer on this ship. Not countin' me, o' course. But Captain, I have a lot to tell ye."

  "Let's sit."

  They joined Uhura at the table. "Mr. Green must be younger than he looks," Scotty said, "even though he looks as if he's been dead a coupla hundred years. But he talks too much. D'ye know what they were doin' down on Holox? They were growin' baby Sackers!"

  This was news. "Cloning?" Kirk asked. "In vitro?"

  "In vitro. There were these huge vats of bubbly stuff kept at ultrahigh temperatures. Mr. Green says the entire Sacker race lives in clans o' one thousand individuals, but I couldna get him to tell me how many clans are scattered throughout the galaxy. An' Captain, they're totally nomadic. Somethin' happened to their home system some time back and they've been wanderin' ever since. Aboard ship is the only home the younger Sackers have ever known."

  "And so they started making contact with Federation worlds," Kirk mused, "looking for a place to settle? And found they made every race they met sick at their stomachs. Go on."

  "They're very strict about keepin' the clan number at exactly one thousand. When one o' them dies, they just put down on the nearest planet an' grow a new one. But Captain, I saw half a dozen vats down there! An' they were big ones—lots o' baby Sackers floatin' around inside."

  "They're replacing all of their co
mmand personnel," Uhura told him. "Whatever that accident was, it took out everybody capable of running the ship."

  "Ah. I see."

  "Why do they have to go to a planet to incubate?" Kirk asked. "Why not do it on board?"

  "The ship is certainly big enough to hold a nursery," Chekov remarked.

  "Well, Mr. Green says infant Sackers canna survive in space," Scotty explained. "Sacker bodies have these wee white things crawlin' around inside—"

  "We've seen them," Kirk said shortly.

  "They're part o' the Sacker nervous system, an' they stay immobile for the first week or two o' life. Once these white things start movin' around, the Sackers beam the babies aboard an' they all go on to wherever they're goin' next."

  Kirk nodded, thinking. "You know what this means? The accident that killed off their command personnel must have happened after they destroyed the Zirgosian system. Babe couldn't have directed an operation like that, not if she needs our help to run the ship."

  "Babe? And who might Babe be?"

  "The Sacker commander," Chekov grinned. "Uhura named her."

  "Inadvertently," Uhura said.

  "Uhura!" Scotty said in a tone of reprimand. "Callin' another woman 'Babe'!"

  "She's not exactly another woman, Scotty," Uhura protested dryly. "Besides, I was being sarcastic."

  "We probably have a bunch of people here trying to work outside their own fields," Kirk commented. "Geologists trying to be navigators, that sort of thing. This is good. They won't know when we're lying to them."

  Just then the door opened and Pinky came in, carrying another air mattress and blanket. "The Scott is to stay here also," she said and was gone before they could get their helmets on.

  When they'd finished gagging, Scotty said, "What was that?"

  "Thet vas Pinky," Chekov explained. "She is our Sacker."

  "All right, listen up," Kirk ordered, taking deep breaths. "Here's the plan. Scotty, I want you to look for ways to sabotage the engines a little bit. Don't put them out of commission. Just make them sluggish in responding, or cause them to vibrate excessively—anything you can think of to buy a little time without incapacitating the ship. Can you do that?"

  "Aye, Captain, can do. I'll work on the bleeder valves. That'll make the ship buck like a bad-tempered horse when we go into warp."

  "Good! That's exactly what I want. Uhura, you are to try to find out as much as you can about this accident that killed off the command personnel. Get as many specifics as you can. They aren't telling us the whole story. Get the Sackers to talk, see what you can piece together."

  "Yes, sir. Will I be instructing trainees?"

  "It sounds like it from what Babe told us. Chekov—you've got the hardest job of all. I want you to find out where on the ship they're keeping the baryon reverter. As navigator you'll be within your rights to ask to inspect whatever unit they're using instead of a deflector dish—take advantage of it, look around. I know you won't have free run of the ship, but do the best you can."

  "Yes, sir. If there is vun place on the ship none of us is allowed to go, thet is probably vhere the rewerter is being kept."

  "Good point. Do you all understand what you have to do? Are there any questions?"

  "One," Uhura asked. "What do you plan to be doing while we're doing all of this?"

  "Who, me?" Kirk grinned. "Why, I plan to work on Babe, of course."

  * * *

  Mr. Spock checked his tricorder. No doubt about it; the heat the Sacker dome emitted was decreasing appreciably. "You are right, Doctor. The dome is cooling down."

  "Thought so," McCoy said. "I was sweating when we first got here."

  They were crouched behind a jumble of sandstone in the Holox desert. The security force Spock had ordered down had been able to advance to within a hundred meters of the dome without being challenged. There was no sound from the dome, no sign of activity.

  "Don't they post guards?" McCoy asked, uneasy at being that close to Sackers.

  "Possibly they depend upon sensors to warn them," Spock answered. "They may already be aware of our presence."

  "Then why haven't they done anything?"

  "I do not know, Doctor."

  Spock's communicator sounded. "Berengaria here. We've circled the dome, Mr. Spock. We can't find an entrance."

  "Then we shall make one, Lieutenant. Remain where you are and leave your communicator open. I shall join you." He turned to McCoy. "Wait here. Do not approach the dome unless I call for you."

  "Count on it," McCoy shuddered.

  Spock began to move cautiously, following Berengaria's communicator signal around the perimeter until he found her and several other members of the team kneeling in a natural depression in the ground. Berengaria had already ordered a photon grenade mortar into place, and the man handling it was taking point-blank aim at the dome.

  "Any time you're ready," Berengaria greeted Spock.

  "At your discretion, Lieutenant."

  "Fire."

  It took two shots, but a gaping hole appeared in the dome at ground level, the edges curling back as they burned. Spock pressed the stun select button on his phaser and started toward the dome, but a word from Berengaria made him fall back and let her team go in first. They slipped quickly around the still smoking edges of the hole to avoid being backlighted; Spock did the same and hunched down, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. A decidedly unpleasant odor assaulted his olfactory senses, causing a twinge of nausea. The fetidness was uncommonly offensive.

  "Stinks in here," Berengaria said.

  The fresh air pouring in through the hole they'd forced in the side of the dome gradually made the smell bearable. The security team spread out, cautiously searching for the dome's inhabitants. Spock stuck to the wall, thinking that was where any lingering Sacker might be hiding. But he circled the entire interior without finding anyone.

  "Nobody's home, Mr. Spock," Berengaria called out.

  Even though the Sackers had gone, the dome was still uncomfortably warm for most of the Enterprise crew. They found evidence of equipment no longer there—probably generators and similar machinery. A transparent, cell-like cube stood opposite the entry they'd made, its purpose unclear. But what caught their attention was a series of enormous plastiform vats, six in all, with their pipes, tubes, and wires now unconnected to any machine or instrument that might have provided a clue to their use. The vats were empty.

  "Now what do you suppose these are?" Berengaria asked, knocking on the side of one of them. "Storage bins?"

  Spock was studying the control panel on the side, trying to decipher the purpose of the dials without knowing the language used for the notations. "I do not think so," he answered Berengaria. "They are more likely to be giant pressure cookers."

  "Pressure cookers!"

  Spock opened his communicator. "Spock to McCoy."

  "McCoy here. What's happening, Spock?"

  "The Sackers have departed, Doctor. Please come into the dome. You will find an entrance on the side opposite to where you are now."

  Spock thought he knew what the vats had been used for. A hunch, Jim Kirk would call it. But while Spock trusted Kirk's hunches, he was leery of his own. He had them too seldom to have reached any conclusion as to their reliability.

  He walked around the vat, inspecting the various gauges. Then he moved to the next one, and a quick look told him it was identical to the first. He abandoned the vats to look at the strange cell that seemed to have no connection with anything else. He located a door and opened it. The temperature inside was lower than that of the rest of the dome, which meant it had undoubtedly been even lower still before the Sackers removed all their equipment and the two temperatures began to equalize. Spock placed a hand against one of the walls. Decidedly cool.

  What did the Sackers keep in here that required a lower temperature than the rest of the dome? Could it possibly have been a human being? Spock's heart beat a little faster at the thought that Mr. Scott might be alive
after all.

  "Yucch. What a smell!" Dr. McCoy had arrived.

  Spock stepped out of the cell. "Doctor, I would like you to take a look at—"

  "What about Scotty?" McCoy interrupted.

  "I think he is alive and on board the Sacker ship." He explained about the cell and what he thought it had been used for.

  "He's alive!" McCoy accepted it as fact. But then his face clouded. "Dammit, Spock, if we'd just come a little earlier—"

  "We might all have been killed," Spock interrupted in his turn, "including Mr. Scott. Please inspect these vats, Doctor. Tell me if you know what they were used for."

  McCoy glanced at the nearest one and said, "Why, they're incubation vats." He walked around the vat, peering at the control panel and the various gauges the same way Spock had done. "Yep, that's what they are, all right. So Sacker females don't gestate—they reproduce externally. These incubators were filled with some sort of chemical nutrient and the fetuses were grown right here."

  Spock nodded, and filed the information away under Hunches, Confirmed. "Quite possibly the Sacker reproductive cycle adheres to a rigid time schedule, forcing them to stop everything else while they attend to their newborn. But it does seem odd that they would have started their assault on our universe so soon before such reproduction was due. No, there must undoubtedly be some other reason behind this. Why such an urgent need to reproduce more Sackers?"

  "They're growing an army," McCoy growled.

  Spock's communicator beeped. "Spock here."

  It was Sulu. "Mr. Spock, the Sacker ship is leaving orbit!"

  "Have us beamed aboard immediately, Mr. Sulu." He summoned Berengaria and her team.

  They beamed up to the Enterprise and hurried to their posts. A shared sense of urgency kept them from speaking; the moment they'd both wished for and dreaded was at hand. The Sackers were at last making their move.

  Chapter Seven

  IT WAS CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK who had ordered the Sacker ship out of orbit.

  Their first view of the Sacker bridge, glimpsed through the opening doors of the turbolift, had been an awe-inspiring and unsettling one. The bridge was about twice the size of the Enterprise's, and it had four turbolifts as well as more manned stations. In the time they'd been on the ship, Kirk, Uhura, and Chekov had never seen so many Sackers gathered together in one place; the sight was enough to disconcert even the most stalwart of hearts. Their captors were cloaked and wearing translator devices, but a bulging green forehead here and a decayed-looking hand there were unnecessary reminders of what lay under those cloaks. All the Sackers had turned and were staring at the three helmeted humans standing uncertainly in the lift.