Sulu still had control of the ship, which at the moment was drifting more or less in the direction of the Spacedock observation windows. Gently—very gently—he eased the Enterprise to a safer path.
“Mr. Scott!” Kirk said for the third time.
Scott paused. “Aye, captain?”
“Damage report, Mr. Scott.”
“The engines, the housings—they’re no’ designed for such use—”
Sulu called on the impulse engines. They delivered the faintest thrust to the ship, just enough acceleration to press it toward the Spacedock doors.
“What’s the damage, Mr. Scott?” Kirk said again.
“Well, sir, there isna any damage, if ye put it—”
“Then why are you calling the bridge? Don’t you have anything constructive to do?”
After a moment’s silence, Scott replied, “I will certainly do my verra best to find something, captain.”
“Very good, Mr. Scott. Carry on.”
The Enterprise cleared the dock. Space opened out before it.
A twinge of dizziness swirled before Sulu’s eyes. He [91] released his breath, wondering when he had begun holding it.
“Mr. Sulu,” Captain Kirk said.
Sulu pretended to be too busy to turn around. The last thing he wanted to see was the look on Kirk’s face.
“Yes, captain.”
“Spacedock appears still to be there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No damage done.”
“No, sir.”
“And no harm, I’m relieved to say.”
“Me too, captain,” Sulu said. Relief was hardly an adequate word.
“Navigator, plot a course to Starbase 13—”
Sulu applied reverse thrust to the Enterprise and brought it almost to a standstill, relative to Spacedock.
Kirk cut off his words. His silence descended.
Collision warnings sounded. Sulu acknowledged them and shut them off. “Sailboat, captain.” Sulu increased the magnification on the viewscreen. Off their port bow, a solar-powered boat sped across their path. Hundreds of times the size of its capsule, the sail showed its nearly invisible black surface to the Enterprise. It tacked. The gilded side of the sail reflected a bright crescent across the Enterprise’s sensors.
The viewscreen damped the intensity of the light.
“I see it, Mr. Sulu,” Captain Kirk said. “Good work. That skipper has more nerve than sense.”
“And in human-controlled regions, such as this one,” Mr. Spock said, “that skipper has the right of way as well.”
“It’s tradition, Commander Spock,” Kirk said. “I thought Vulcans respected traditions.”
“We do, sir. However, Vulcan traditions make sense.”
Kirk looked skeptical, but the tension faded from the bridge. The sailboat passed very close before them. After it cleared their path, Sulu set the Enterprise under way.
“Course to Starbase 13 entered, captain,” the navigator said.
“The Enterprise is clear of traffic and cleared for warp speed, captain,” Sulu said.
“Warp factor one, Mr. Sulu.”
[92] “Warp factor one, sir.”
The Enterprise sped majestically toward the stars. It’s too bad I’m going to request a transfer, Sulu thought. I could get to like this ship.
When the director of the oversight committee of the Klingon Empire—that is, the head of the oligarchy’s secret police—tried to contact the commander of the newest fighter ship in the fleet, a prototype and test vehicle for which everyone had great hopes, he received no reply. He increased the intensity of his contact attempts, but the ship was nowhere to be found.
This caused the director considerable consternation. If the commanding officer of the new ship had lost it—to mutiny, or accident, or sporting too close to the Federation—he could not be excused. And if he had been so foolish as to lose it to capture rather than to destruction, if he had actually given it into the hands of Starfleet—for the first time, the director felt glad that the Federation took such scruples to return prisoners alive and undamaged. In the unlikely event that the officer were a prisoner, that he were still alive, the director would himself take the responsibility for disciplining him.
The director felt too much anger to experience grief. When another emotion did cut through his anger, still it was not grief, but fear. If the government determined fault, if it decided the officer had acted out of incompetence or malfeasance, the officer’s family would be responsible for the tremendous value of the ship.
The director of the oversight committee had worked long and hard to get that particular ship for that particular officer. And he had worked long and hard to amass great power and resources during his own tenure. Now it looked as if all his power, his work, and his resources would vanish between the requirements of the oligarchy and the mistakes of the officer.
He diverted all his operatives to the search for the new ship, the ship commanded by his son.
Jim invited Lindy’s company to dine at the captain’s table that evening; he looked at the paperwork already piling up [93] for him and decided to leave it till later; he continued his exploration of the Enterprise.
Most of the science section was deserted. It would be staffed after this tour, but Starfleet saw no point in keeping a hundred scientists on a starship that was going nowhere worth exploring. Jim wondered how he was going to get through the next three months.
He paused outside Engineering.
Go on in, he told himself. Your chief engineer may think you’re green behind the ears and wet as grass, but he’s hardly going to say it to your face.
He went on in.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Scott.”
“Er ... Captain Kirk.”
“I thought I’d get acquainted with the ship.”
“Verra well, captain.” He remained where he was, neither offering to show Jim around nor going back to his own business.
Jim walked around him.
The place gleamed with care. No wonder the Enterprise and Commander Scott enjoyed such a high reputation in Starfleet. Jim had begun to wonder about the curmudgeonly engineer, but he could see that the respect had been earned.
“I’m very impressed, Mr. Scott.”
“Then—ye’ll want to be making some speed trials, will ye, captain?” Scott said hopefully.
Jim started to jump at the chance—but stopped long enough to consider. If the ship traveled full-speed to Starbase 13, not only would it have to remain there for several extra days—and no telling how the Klingon oligarchs would react, never mind that the stop would be boring—but the ship would have to push its fuel reserves to get all the way to the end of the Phalanx and out again. He did not want to refuel at 13, because all 13’s supplies had to be imported.
“Not just now, Mr. Scott. Maybe later in the trip.”
“But, captain—”
Jim knew that if he let Scott persuade him, the temptation would be too much. “Later, Mr. Scott,” he said shortly.
Scott retreated into silence. Jim left Engineering, aggravated with himself for coming so close to letting his own preferences override the best interests of his ship and crew.
[94] He decided to go back to his cabin and do some paperwork after all.
During the slight, barely noticeable checking of his stride, Spock progressed from a quickly repressed sense of surprise at the scene in the mess hall, through a brief impulse to retire to his cabin, to a determination not to let the changes alter his routine.
The Enterprise seldom carried civilians, at least not this many civilians. Their costumes—and some of their dress seemed to be costume, rather than current fashion or ethnic style—glared among the Starfleet uniforms. The civilians talked and laughed in an uninhibited fashion, no doubt because they had no superior officer to answer to, only a general manager. The manager sat at the central table with her company and with a Starfleet officer—the ship’s new surgeon, Spock realized. Barbered, cle
an-shaven, and dressed in decent clothes, Dr. McCoy had made himself presentable. Earlier this afternoon, Spock would not have been willing to swear that such a feat was possible.
The chair at the head of the table remained empty.
The manager hugged one of her performers. Spock doubted such behavior to be conducive to discipline.
Two human beings in baggy black and white checked suits rose. First one, then the other, performed odd foot motions loudly accompanied by a sound which Spock identified as metal on the soles of their shoes rapping against the deck. Their compatriots egged them on with shouts and cries. Spock wondered if he were witnessing an altercation that he would have to stop. No, they were engaged in an informal competition, each trying to complicate a basic series of steps till the other failed to duplicate it. By the third variation the pair had attracted the attention of every being in the mess hall. The cheers and exclamations approached cacophony.
At the synthesizer, Spock obtained his usual salad. He proceeded toward his usual table.
Several of the new officers—Sulu, the navigator Commander Cheung, and Hazarstennaj, a lieutenant from Engineering—sat there, watching the performance, talking animatedly, laughing, joking with each other. Spock hesitated, [95] but several chairs remained at his table and he could think of no logical reason to avoid using one.
The two performers finished their demonstration with overstated bows to their impromptu audience and to each other. The hall erupted with a final round of applause. Spock placed his tray on his table.
The three younger officers stopped applauding, stopped cheering, and fell silent. Spock nodded to them. They stared at him. He sat down.
“Uh, Mr. Spock,” said the navigator.
“Yes, commander?”
“Nothing. I mean, hello, sir.”
As Spock raised a bite of his salad, its odor assailed him. He lowered his fork and gazed at his meal. Though Spock preferred his greens to possess a distinct bite of chlorophyll, without any admixture of hemoglobin or myoglobin or whatever animal protein preceded the greens in the synthesizer, he could subsist on poorly designed food. However, he had noticed long since that a starship crew’s morale depended heavily on the quality of the food. He was—for the moment—first officer; he must pay attention to factors about which he was personally indifferent.
The greens smelled as if the meat analogue were incorporated into their substance, rather than being an incidental admixture. In fact, they smelled like a dish of which Captain Pike had been extraordinarily fond: boeuf bourguignon, a loathsome concoction of animal protein and fermented fruit pulp. Spock respected Pike as he respected few human beings, but Pike did have human flaws. Eating boeuf bourguignon was one of them.
He glanced at the meals of his table partners. Sulu had chosen broiled fish, the navigator an offworld variation of glazed fowl, and the Engineering lieutenant a steak. As the lieutenant belonged to a carnivorous felinoid species, the steak was raw. When he noticed that, Spock rather wished he had chosen another table. Odd that the smell of raw meat had escaped him.
None of them had eaten much.
“Are your meals satisfactorily synthesized?” he asked.
They looked at each other. The navigator giggled.
[96] “Erroneous synthesis is a serious problem,” Spock said. “I did not intend levity.”
“I know, Mr. Spock,” Cheung said. “But we were just talking about the food. It’s been getting worse all day.”
“Does starship food always taste this bad?” Sulu asked.
“The synthesizer must be reprogrammed. I suspect that the repair crews adjusted it at Spacedock.”
“Anything’s a disappointment after fresh salmon,” Sulu said. “But this tastes like ... chicken.”
“I knew I was challenging the synthesizer,” Cheung said, “so I suppose I was asking for it.”
Spock tried to sort out her syntax, but failed. “I beg your pardon, commander, but do you mean you got the meal you asked for, or you did not get the meal you asked for?”
Cheung grinned. “Neither. Both. What I asked for was duck lu-se-te. It’s a variation of duck à l’orange, but lu-se is from my home world, and it’s green. I didn’t expect the synthesizer to know what I was asking for. It didn’t reject the request ... but it didn’t exactly fill it, either. This tastes like ... wood pulp waste with sugar syrup.”
The food sounded abhorrent, but many of the foods humans ate sounded abhorrent to Spock. “Am I correct in assuming this is not what you wished it to taste like?”
“You are correct,” she said.
“Wood pulp and sugar syrup would be an improvement on this!” Hazarstennaj growled and thrust a shred of bloody meat before Spock’s nose. “Taste it!”
Spock barely prevented himself from recoiling. “Your assurance that it is unacceptable is quite sufficient.”
“No, you must taste it to get the full effect,” Hazarstennaj exclaimed. “It tastes like—” She sneered. Her long ruby fangs glistened against black and silver striped fur. “It tastes like vegetables.”
Spock raised an eyebrow. He took the morsel from Hazarstennaj’s long, slender fingers, smelled it, then gingerly put it in his mouth and chewed.
If one ignored the visual stimuli, it was quite acceptable. It looked like meat but tasted like avocado, an earth fruit for which, in the spirit of self-control, Spock curbed his inclination.
[97] Spock speared a bit of his salad and offered it to Hazarstennaj. “Perhaps you will find this to your taste.”
Hazarstennaj growled. “You wish me to eat—leaves?”
“Hazard will never live it down if she eats a salad, Mr. Spock,” Commander Cheung said.
“The salad may be her only choice, if she wishes animal protein in her dinner.”
Growling softly, Hazard plucked the leaf from Spock’s fork. With trepidation she placed the bite of salad in her mouth, ready to spit it out at the least excuse. She closed her eyes and gulped it down. “It is cooked,” she said.
“That is true,” Spock replied.
She blinked, looked at her steak and at his salad, and exchanged the positions of the plates. “Better than nothing,” she said. “I will trade you.”
“Very well.” Spock dissected the steak-disguised avocado. “Commander Cheung, Lieutenant Sulu, will you have some? It tastes—I assume—more acceptable than wood pulp waste or sugar syrup.” In addition, there was a good kilogram of it on the plate before him, and it would be a lapse in dignity—not to mention restraint—to eat it all.
“Thanks.”
Spock and Cheung and Sulu shared Hazard’s meal; Hazarstennaj, who ate only once each day, gulped down the salad and ordered another one. She ate most of it with enthusiasm, then curled her tail around her hind feet and picked delicately at the leftovers while her companions finished their dinner.
Another member of Hazarstennaj’s species approached the table. Spock and Hazarstennaj noticed him at the same time. This was not the other felinoid, a security officer, who worked on board the Enterprise, but an unfamiliar individual. His sleek black silver-tipped fur rippled over taut muscles when he moved.
“They need not even disguise their vegetables to make you eat them,” he said to Hazarstennaj, a snarl of contempt in his tone. “Have they declawed you as well?”
Hazarstennaj moved in a languorous curve and faced the other being. Her ears flattened against her skull; her shoulder blades hunched. Her ease changed to threat.
[98] “Ignorance does not become us,” she said.
“Nor do vegetables!”
With a violent scream, Hazarstennaj launched herself at the other being. Sulu leaped to his feet, about to try to separate the pair as they rolled over each other and snarled and shrieked.
“Sit down, Mr. Sulu,” Spock said.
The young officer did not hear him. Overcoming his reluctance, Spock grabbed his arm.
“Mr. Sulu, sit down.”
“But, sir—they’ll hurt each other!”
“Sit down,” Spock said a third time. He lowered his hand, trying not to bruise Sulu’s arm; Sulu had no choice but to accede to his command.
“They’ll kill each other!”
“Do as I say.”
Spock thought Sulu might try to resist him, an even more foolish idea than trying to separate Hazarstennaj and her new acquaintance. But the shrieking diminished to low snarls, to a purr. The two beings rose, unhurt, rubbing each other beneath the chin in greeting. Sulu subsided, astonished.
“What is your name? You smell familiar.”
“I am Hazarstennaj.”
“I am Tzesnashstennaj!”
They lapsed into their own speech, of which Spock could make out a few words. The similarities in their names indicated that in the past, a past so distant their species knew almost nothing of it, their ancestors had come from the same band. Or so they believed; so the myths of their people claimed.
Sulu watched, mystified.
“They were greeting each other,” Spock said, explaining the ritual insults and the mock battle.
“Oh.”
Hazarstennaj plucked a leaf of the salad from her plate and offered it to Tzesnashstennaj. Tzesnashstennaj pulled back his whiskers in disgust, but since it would have been inexcusably rude to refuse the offer, he accepted it and ate it. His whiskers bristled forward.
“Unusual meat animals you keep on this ship,” he said.
[99] Hazarstennaj blinked slowly in satisfaction. “Sit,” she said. “Join me.”
Tzesnashstennaj glided onto the sitting platform beside her. They helped themselves to the remains of the salad.
“Do you perform?” Tzesnashstennaj said.
“Not for many years. It is too difficult to gather enough people.”
“Perform with us,” Tzesnashstennaj said.
“I will. And another of us lives on board.”
“Excellent. Our troupe is small, more people will be welcome. Come and meet the others.”
Chief Engineer Scott paused beside their table. “Lieutenant Hazarstennaj!”
“ ‘Hazarstennaj,’ ” the lieutenant said. Spock detected the difference, but he wondered if human hearing could.
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