Star Trek Log One

by Alan Dean Foster

  STAR TREK

  The show that would not die...

  Back in 1966 Gene Roddenberry convinced NBC-TV to give sophisticated science fiction a try, and Star Trek was launched. Getting the show on the air was a triumph in itself; keeping it on the air was something else again. Toward the end of the second season there were rumors of impending cancellation.

  Viewers passionately devoted to the series deluged the network with letters of protest. Loyal fans picketed NBC's offices both in California and New York. The Save Star Trek Campaign - one of the most phenomenal expressions of viewer interest in the history of tv - worked.

  So Star Trek was back on the air for a third season. Alas, however, many factors combined to lower the program's ratings, giving the network the ammunition it needed to cancel the series.

  But still the fans wanted more...

  Books about Star Trek were published, each one selling hundreds of thousands of copies to the faithful. Star Trek conventions all over the country attracted thousands of fans.

  And now we have the exciting animated Star Trek. All the original actors are back aboard the starship Enterprise, assuring success.

  Ballantine proudly launches the STAR TREK LOG series, publishing all the exciting new stories in paperback for the first time.

  STAR TREK LIVES!

  About the Author

  Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City in 1946; he currently resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches "Cinema" at Los Angeles City College. Upon graduating from UCLA in 1969 with a B.A. in Political Science and an M.F.A. in Cinema, he briefly worked in public relations. About that time, Foster began selling short stories to such magazines as Analog, Galaxy, If, Adam, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. His first science-fiction novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, was published by Ballantine in 1972. He quickly followed that success with Blood-hype and, most recently, Icerigger - all three novels set against the same fantastic background. Foster has also adapted the jungle movie Luana into a popular novel for Ballantine. He is now hard at work on Star Trek Log Two, continuing the adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise and its crew.

  STAR TREK

  LOG ONE

  Alan Dean Foster

  Based on the Popular

  Series Created by

  Gene Roddenberry

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  For Judith

  Whom I Love

  Copyright 1974 by Paramount Pictures Corporation

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions

  SBN 345-24014-6-095

  First Printing: June, 1974

  Cover art supplied by Filmation Associates

  Printed in the United States of America

  BALLANTINE BOOKS

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  201 East 50th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  CONTENTS

  PART I

  Beyond the Farthest Star

  PART II

  Yesteryear

  PART III

  One of Our Planets is Missing

  STAR TREK LOG ONE

  Log of the Starship Enterprise

  Stardates 5321-5380 Inclusive

  James T. Kirk, Capt., USSC, FS, ret.

  Commanding

  transcribed by

  Alan Dean Foster

  At the Galactic Historical Archives

  on S. Monicus I

  stardated 6110.5

  For the Curator: JLR

  PART I

  BEYOND

  THE

  FARTHEST STAR

  (Adapted from a script by Samuel A. Peeples)

  I

  Veil of stars.

  Veil of crystal.

  On the small viewscreen the image of the Milky Way glittered like powdered sugar fused to black velvet.

  Here in the privacy of the captain's cabin on board the Enterprise, James T. Kirk had at fingertip's call all the computerized resources of an expanding, organized galactic Federation in taped and microfilmed form. Art, music, painting, sculpture, kinetology, science, history, philosophy - the memory banks of the great starship held enough material to satiate the mind of any civilized being. Satisfy and fulfill him whether in the mood for matters profound or trivial, fleeting or permanent, whether curious about the developments of yesterday or those as old as time itself.

  Yet, now, in this particular off-hour, the man responsible for guiding the Enterprise safely through the multitude of known hazards and an infinitude of imagined ones that lay strewn throughout space - when he could have devoted his thoughts to little things of no importance and rested his mind - chose instead to study a smaller though no less awesome version of the same scene he was compelled to view so many times from the commander's chair on the bridge of the starship.

  His eyes strayed idly to the lower corner of the screen. Gossamer thin threads of crimson and azure marked a spectacular nebula of recent origin - the flaming headstone marking the grave of some long vanished star, perhaps marking also a cemetery for a great, doomed civilization, caught helpless when its sun exploded.

  Men in his position who would have deliberately chosen to observe such a sight fell into three categories. First were those for whom natural creation was too small. Men who found universes of greater magnitude within - artists, poets, landscapers and dreamers of hologram plays, sculptors in metal and stone and wood.

  The second group would be that now dwindling but still sizable number of individuals who also looked inward - but whose gaze was forever out of focus - the catatonic, the insane, the mad...

  The third and last assemblage fell somewhere in between, not quite artists, not quite mad. These were the men and women who forsook the solidity of Earth, gave up the certain knowledge of a definite sky overhead and unarguable ground underfoot, to ply the emptiness between the stars. Starship personnel.

  James T. Kirk was a captain among such, a leader of this kind - which made him, depending on which extreme you tended toward, either a frustrated artist or a well-composed madman.

  He sighed and rolled over on the bed, temporarily trading the pocket-view of infinity for the cool, pale blue of the preformed cabin ceiling.

  A visit to the Time Planet, where all the time lines of this galaxy converged - and who knew, perhaps those of others as well, for men knew nothing of other galaxies except what little they could see through their attenuated glass eyes - was their present assignment. A pity that time lines did not choose to make themselves visible to man's puny instruments of detection. Only one race had found that secret.

  It hadn't saved them.

  A visit to the Time Planet was always interesting. That wasn't its designated name, of course. But popular conceptions had a way of overwhelming scientific notation. He smiled slightly. There were enough new shocks, enough running discoveries taking place every time a new section of space was charted to cause the once unbelievable Time Planet to recede into the land of the commonplace.

  Kirk was a starship captain, not a historian. So his prime interest in the Time Planet was from the standpoint of its curious chemistry and even more curious physics. The trip promised to be at least as interesting as previous ones. But it was no longer possessed of that special thrill.

  The remarkable view of the Milky Way in the tiny screen was as complete a portrait of the galaxy as anyone was ever likely to see. Few probes, even unmanned ones, had flown further outside the galactic rim than the Enterprise was now speeding. Starships were too expensive to operate and too scattered for Starfleet Command to waste them on, say, just convoying experiments from world to world.

  That's why the Enterprise had swung wider than its best course to the Time Planet, to enable it to take readings and star-map this section
of the galaxy's fringe.

  Kirk flipped a switch on the tiny console by the bed and was rewarded with the view out the starboard side of the ship - a view of almost unrelieved blackness. Here and there were tiny dots of luminescence, dots which were not individual stars, but rather distant galaxies - some vaster, some more modest than our own.

  Thoughts uncommon to most men raced through the deepest pools of his mind as he contemplated that yawning, frightening intergalactic pit. Someday, he mused, someday we'll have engines that won't burn out at warp-maximum eight or nine. Someday we'll have engines capable of driving a ship at warp ninety, or even warp nine hundred.

  Someday.

  Of course, the spatial engineers and physicists were agreed that it was impossible for any form of matter to travel faster than warp nine. Kirk thought that this belief was simply a modern superstition. It had also been said that man would never be able to fly or, wonder of wonders, exceed the speed of light.

  An inship communicator buzzed insistently for attention. Again. Kirk looked at it irritably, then remembered that he'd blocked off the channel. In effect, he'd hung out a Do Not Disturb sign. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. There was nothing for it but to answer.

  There were only two men on the starship who were on permanent, round-the-clock call. Doctor McCoy was one. He was the other. He opened the channel.

  "Kirk here."

  "Spock, Captain."

  It was only a trick of aural mechanics, true, but somehow the monotone of his assistant commander seemed less distorted by intervening kilometers of solid-and fluid-state circuitry than the voice of anyone else on board.

  No, not completely monotone - for now he heard a definite hint of puzzlement in Spock's tone.

  "Captain, I hate to bother you during your rest period, but we have encountered what appears to be a unique and extremely peculiar situation -"

  That woke Kirk up. "An extremely peculiar situation" to Spock could be anything from just mildly serious at best to imminent disaster at worst.

  "Be right up, Mr. Spock." He flipped the switch off, threw on his captain's tunic, dilated the door, and headed for the bridge double-quick.

  Behind him, the miniature glowing panorama of the intergalactic gulf, forgotten, patiently awaited his return.

  ***

  The elevator paused once, at B-deck, where Spock joined him. At the same time, the lights in the lift car and in the disappearing corridor beyond began to flicker. An all too familiar uneven yowling sounded.

  "General Alarm." He looked at Spock, who replied to the unasked question.

  "Lieutenant Commander Scott should be the officer of the deck, I believe."

  "Why didn't he call me direct?"

  "He did not say, Captain. But I think, if I interpret Mr. Scott's actions correctly, that he did not feel qualified to interrupt the Captain's rest period for a phenomenon of as yet undefinable proportions. He left that up to me."

  Kirk considered that as the lift halted once more at the last level below the bridge. Dr. McCoy joined them.

  "Jim ... Spock ... what's happening?"

  "I don't know yet, Bones," Kirk said honestly. "You know as much as we do. Something that Scotty felt strongly enough about to sound the general alarm for."

  Seconds later the doors split, and the three walked onto the bridge.

  Helmsman Sulu was working busily at the navigation station. Uhura glanced back and forth between her communications console and Sulu. And from the engineering station, Scott looked up at their arrival and let out a visible sigh of relief.

  "Glad to see you, Captain. I wasn't ready for makin' too many more decisions. Not considerin' the nature of this thing, whatever it is."

  Spock went directly to his library computer seat - the control station for the brain and nervous system of the Enterprise. As Kirk took his own place in the command chair, he noted that the alarm system was still sounding its howling warning.

  "That's enough noise, Mr. Sulu." Sulu nodded. Lights and alarm returned to normal status.

  "Situation, Mr. Scott?"

  Kirk was already studying the projected vector-grid Sulu had thrown up on the main screen. In a lower right-hand quadrant, the white dot of the Enterprise was moving rapidly centerward - too rapidly, Kirk thought.

  He envied the old sea captains of Earth's ancient days, when a vessel's energy came only from the blowing winds, envied a skipper who could feel a change in his ship's speed through his feet. Out here in black, uncaring vacuum, there was nothing to push against, nothing to feel against you. Compared to a rambunctious sea or strong gale, artificial gravity was a poor stimulant.

  Man's senses only operated here artificially, through enormous mechanical amplification - and the only waves one could get the feel of were in wave mechanics.

  "We've picked up speed, sir," informed Scott, confirming Kirk's analysis of the situation depicted on the screen. "A great deal of speed!"

  "Cut back, then, Scotty."

  "I've already done so, sir - cut back twice - but we continue to gain momentum!"

  "Now don't get excited, Mr. Scott -" The question had to be asked, despite any damage that might incur to the engineer's pride. "- but have you checked your instrumentation?"

  "Aye, Captain, checked, and triple-checked. I'd prefer the instrumentation were off, than to have to proceed with these readings. No sir, the information is correct." He gestured in the direction of the vector-grid.

  Kirk swiveled slightly in the chair. "Mr. Sulu?"

  If anything, Sulu's expression was twice as worried and half again as uncertain as the chief engineer's.

  "She's not answering the helm, sir! We're -" he paused to check his own readouts, "- two minutes right ascension off course." He hammered at the stubborn controls in front of him, as if that might have some naturalizing effect on the incredible information coming in.

  "And drifting farther off every second, sir."

  "Mr. Spock."

  "Captain?"

  "Do me an in-depth computer-library scan on all known major stellar bodies in this fringe sector."

  "Yes, Captain."

  "And put it up on the big screen when it's ready."

  There was a brief, quiet pause. Nothing moved on the bridge except the white dot of the Enterprise on the view-screen. Then the vector-grid was replaced by another, an overlay star-map. Or rather, part of the grid was replaced. Three-quarters of the screen did not light up with the light blue of completed mappings. It remained maddeningly blank - except for one large word in yellow, a word Kirk had almost expected to see.

  UNEXPLORED

  A second later, information appeared beneath this first disappointing word in the form of the legend.

  To Be Mapped - No Accurate Data Currently Available.

  "That's what I thought, Mr. Spock. But there was a chance. Information comes into Starfleet's banks so fast these days."

  "Evidently not fast enough, Captain."

  "No. Not fast enough. That'll do, Spock."

  The uninformative star-map overlay blanked out and the vector-grid dominated the entire screen once more.

  "Captain?" The call came from the rear of the bridge.

  "Yes, Uhura?"

  She seemed confused. "Captain, I've been picking up strong, but very strange radio emissions for the past two hours. Both source and direction were at first far to the right plane of our course. But since our position has been shifting, the source of emission and the course of the Enterprise are lining up."

  Kirk considered this piece of news. It was not especially foreboding. Not yet, anyway.

  "All right, Uhura, I'll keep it in mind." He looked back at the screen. "At least there's something out there."

  The white pinpoint continued to move purposefully across the grid, drawn by ... what? He could reach out with a forefinger and blot the great starship from view. At the same time he reached a decision. While whatever was pulling them off course had shown nothing that could be definitely interpreted as a hostile ac
tion - it was probably a natural phenomenon anyway - it still behooved them to put up some form of resistance.

  "Mr. Sulu, stand by to back engines."

  "Standing by, sir." Sulu divided his attention between the screen and his bank of controls.

  "Back engines."

  The helmsman's hands moved over the navigation console, flipped a last knob 180 degrees. A slight jar traveled through the bridge, followed by a distant but distinct rumbling. Everyone made an instinctive grab for the nearest solid object. But only the slight jar gave evidence of the tremendous stresses operating on the starship.

  Kirk stared at the vector-grid intently. The white dot slowed perceptibly, slowed ... but continued on its new path, moving inexorably forward.

  "Mr. Spock," Kirk demanded, "have you got anything yet?" We'd operate a helluva lot more effectively if we had some idea of what we were up against, Kirk thought.

  Spock had remained glued to the hooded viewer of the computer readout. Now he looked up and over at the captain's position.

  "At this point, Captain, I can only say we are headed toward an unknown object - probably natural, probably of at least planetary mass - that is generating a remarkable amount of hyper-gravity. Hyper-gravity more concentrated than any we have ever encountered."

  "Well, if there's something like that out there," and Kirk gestured at the screen, "that can put out that kind of pull plus radio emissions, why aren't our evaluative sensors picking it up?" He rolled his fingers against one leg. "Open the forward scanners all the way, Mr. Sulu, and close off everything else. Divert all sensor power forward."