The turbolift reached its destination and the doors parted. As they made their way to the transporter room, Chapel asked, “Why would somebody build a spaceship to resemble an asteroid?”
“I don’t know,” said McCoy, having pondered the same thing. “Maybe they intended it as a means of defense, a way of not drawing attention to themselves.”
“Except that the ship apparently launched an unprovoked attack on the Enterprise,” she said. “Maybe they disguised it as an asteroid so that they could get closer to their targets.”
“Maybe,” McCoy allowed. “Or maybe there’s a malfunction. Unless we find some records left by the builders, we may never know.”
They arrived at the transporter room and entered. The console had already been activated, McCoy saw, while the operator—Mr. Brent, obviously taking a rotation as a transporter technician—worked at the sensor panel tucked along the inner bulkhead of the compartment. Brent looked up from his station and said, “Doctor. Nurse Chapel.”
McCoy acknowledged the officer with a nod as Chapel moved to the transporter console. As she set down the medical pouch, he realized that he still carried his tricorder, phaser, and utility belt in his hands. He quickly hung the strap of the tricorder over his shoulder, then wrapped the wide cloth belt about his waist, to which he attached the phaser.
“Be careful,” Chapel said earnestly. She opened the medical pouch and appeared to verify its contents, doubtless a precautionary act motivated by her profession.
“Does it really matter?” McCoy asked, immediately wishing he hadn’t, since such a question would inevitably provoke a response.
“Yes, it does matter,” Chapel said in a serious tone. Behind him, McCoy heard Brent walk over from the sensor station to the transporter console. Chapel closed up the pouch and held it out to him. “A lot can happen in a year,” she said as he took the pouch and affixed it to his belt. “Please, give yourself every minute.”
McCoy felt terribly uncomfortable that his conversation with the nurse had returned to the issue of his health, even if only obliquely. Brent currently stood close to them and might well have heard just enough to understand that McCoy faced some sort of a problem. Bad enough that Jim and Jabilo and Christine knew; he did not want the rest of the crew to know as well. He did not want people’s pity.
Wanting to end the discussion, McCoy responded to Chapel’s concern with a look of appreciation, but then quickly walked past her and toward the transporter platform. At the same time, the doors to the corridor slid apart, and Jim and Spock arrived. Before the captain could comment about his presence—he hadn’t informed Jim that he’d be joining the landing party—McCoy mounted the platform and took his position on a targeting pad. Once he had, he saw that Jim and Spock had stopped in the middle of the compartment and now regarded him with some degree of surprise. He couldn’t tell whether the first officer knew of his illness, but since he’d asked the captain to keep that information to himself, he guessed that Spock’s bewilderment had arisen not because of his xenopolycythemia, but because McCoy hadn’t been asked to be a member of the landing party.
“Doctor McCoy,” Jim said carefully, “Mister Spock and I will handle this.”
“Without me, Jim?” McCoy said, choosing to deal with the situation humorously. “You’d never find your way back.”
“Well,” Jim started, and then he glanced back at Spock, who raised an eyebrow. “I think it would be wiser if—”
“I’d like to go,” McCoy interrupted. “I’m fine, Captain.” He hoped that Jim would perceive the importance of this to him and not push the issue.
Jim hesitated, and McCoy realized that he wouldn’t let this go, and that Spock and the rest of the crew would find out about his condition. But then the captain said, “All right, Doctor. If that’s what you want.” He climbed up onto the platform, and Spock followed. In his peripheral vision, McCoy could see Jim studying him, but then the captain looked across the compartment to Brent, who set to working his controls. To McCoy’s surprise, he saw that Chapel hadn’t yet left, but stood behind the transporter console.
For once, the dread of having his atomic structure parsed, encoded, disassembled, transmitted, and reassembled, didn’t fill his thoughts, his desire to continue on with his life right now overwhelming all other concerns. For the moment, he wanted only to get out of the transporter room and ignore everything else that had happened today. His vision misted with the golden stardust of dematerialization and then renewed itself as the process reversed.
Before him, the Enterprise transporter room had gone, in its place a bleak, rock-infested landscape composed of browns and grays. A quiver of steam emerged from a cluster of boulders, and above, a burnt orange sky hid any trace of the stars. McCoy wondered how an asteroid could possess an atmosphere and then recalled that he actually stood on an object that had been intentionally constructed, not randomly created during the formation of a solar system. Still—
“You’d swear you were on the surface of a planet,” he said. Beside him, Spock had already begun taking sensor readings with his tricorder.
“One fails to see the logic in making a ship look like a planet,” Spock observed. McCoy tended to agree.
“Wouldn’t know this was a spaceship,” Jim said, then pulled out his communicator and flipped it open. “Kirk to Enterprise,” he said.
“Enterprise, Scott here,” came the voice of the chief engineer, obviously left in command of the ship.
“Transported without incident,” Jim said. “Kirk out.” He closed the communicator and placed it back on his belt.
Jim started forward, toward a break between two rock faces. McCoy and Spock trailed after him, the first officer for the moment putting his tricorder aside. They walked through paths in the rocks that appeared naturally formed, and McCoy had to remind himself again that everything here had been built by someone. Jim and Spock peered all about, and McCoy did too, searching for anything that might indicate controls or an entrance to an operations center. Though he saw nothing, he supposed that they must have beamed down to the area on the asteroid-ship most likely to contain such things.
Jim suddenly stopped, and McCoy at once saw why. Ahead of them stood five cylindrical objects, orange like the sky, two or so meters in diameter and two-thirds again as tall. They all appeared solid, with no obvious breaks in their surfaces or means of entry. One rose from the dirt directly to their left, two a few meters apart a little farther away, and two off in the distance. Spock activated his tricorder and began scanning again.
As the trio cautiously approached the cylinders, McCoy worked his medical tricorder, opting to look for vestigial signs of habitation, or any remnants of biological material that might remain from the time of the ship’s construction. Perhaps sensors could provide some clue as to the identity or nature of the builders.
Jim mounted a small rise between the two neighboring cylinders and walked past them, peering at their far sides. “No apparent opening,” he reported.
McCoy turned back to the first cylinder and concentrated his scans there. He wondered precisely what the ship’s sensors had shown that had compelled Jim and Spock to select this area for the landing party. “You found no intelligent life-forms, Mister Spock,” McCoy said, “but surely—”
“The asteroid-ship is over ten thousand years old, Doctor,” Spock said, answering a question McCoy had not intended to ask, “but still no sign of life-forms, Captain.” They all drifted back to the first cylinder.
For an instant, McCoy saw a spike on his tricorder, a fleeting life sign that had come and gone before he’d gotten a chance to read its particulars. He worked the controls, wanting to play the scan back and freeze it. Something must have caused—
McCoy heard something to his left, and he looked in that direction in time to see a tall figure race past Spock and throw himself at the captain. The doctor had just enough time to note the glint of a bladed weapon before additional movement drew his eye. A second man—they looked li
ke men, in colorful, caftanlike garb—followed behind the first, and McCoy registered that they seemed somehow to be coming from one of the cylinders, which had changed colors from orange to light blue.
Suddenly he saw another man, this one emerging from a different cylinder, but then somebody else sped toward McCoy, a sword held high, ready to strike. The doctor let go of his tricorder and raised his arms in a desperate attempt to ward off the attack. He had no time to reach for his phaser. As the man brought his blade forward and down, McCoy managed to deflect his arm. The man overbalanced as his weapon came swinging down, almost to the ground. McCoy grabbed him with one hand and pushed him past. The man stumbled and dropped his sword, and McCoy thrust both his hands into the man’s side, sending him face first onto the ground.
McCoy breathed deeply, aware of the sounds of struggle all about him. He moved toward the man who’d just attacked him, wanting to subdue him before he regained his footing. But then arms reached around McCoy from behind and held him tight. He battled to break free, then lifted his boot and pounded his heel down onto the man’s foot. His assailant cried out in pain, his grip loosening. McCoy spun around, bringing his fist back, but the man recovered, and he grabbed the doctor and threw him from his feet. McCoy rolled, trying to put some distance between him and his attacker, then scrambled up to his knees. He turned back just in time to see the man diving toward him. McCoy brought his left hand back across his body and frantically leveled a backhanded fist into the face of the man, who fell to the ground.
The man wouldn’t stay down, though, and as he rushed to stand, so too did McCoy. But as he got to his feet, he saw that another figure had appeared from within one of the cylinders. His arms raised high to continue the fight, he froze, and felt his eyes go wide. Something clicked inside his brain, jolting him in a way he couldn’t identify. It felt almost like recognition, almost like friendship, almost like love….
The woman wore a green, patterned dress, which covered a slender, fit figure, leaving her shoulders and midriff bare. She had striking blue eyes and elegant, almost regal features: smooth, ivory skin; high cheekbones; full lips; and a thin, button nose. Her auburn hair encircled the top half of her face in large spirals.
McCoy felt a hard blow to the back of his neck, and his knees buckled at once. He fell forward, toppling to the ground, barely able to get his right arm up in time to break his fall. His mind floated toward unconsciousness, and he fought to remain awake. He could not even brace himself for the next attack, which he knew would come at any second—but then didn’t. Woozy, he opted to lie motionless, thinking that might in the short term keep him safe.
Seconds passed, two or twenty, he could not tell, and then voices reached him, though his muddled awareness could not focus enough on the words to make them out. But he heard a woman’s voice—the woman’s voice—and no longer heard the sounds of conflict. Jim spoke, and McCoy tried to listen.
“Let me go to my friend,” Jim said, almost pleading. McCoy hoped that Spock had not been hurt, but then somebody’s hands closed around his own right biceps and pulled gently upward. McCoy responded without thinking, pushing himself up from the ground with his left hand.
“You all right?” Jim asked him, and McCoy looked at him.
“I think so,” he said, still trying to clear the clouds from his head. He attempted to stand, and Jim helped him up. Then the woman whose appearance had stopped him cold spoke.
“I am Natira,” she said, “the high priestess of the people.” Her words came wrapped in an imperial lilt. “Welcome to the world of Yonada.” McCoy couldn’t take his gaze from her face, but he did note that she hadn’t referred to this place as a spaceship.
“I can’t say I think much of your welcome,” Jim said, and McCoy could easily have seconded that sentiment. The back of his head felt as though it had been hit by a photon torpedo.
The woman—Natira—looked to the men who had attacked, subdued, and now guarded, the three Enterprise officers. “Take them,” she ordered, her voice commanding without rising in volume, her annoyance with Jim’s comment plain.
The guards closed ranks around the landing party, their swords drawn, motioning with the weapons toward one of the cylinders. McCoy saw now that the outer, orange casing had risen to reveal an inner, sky-blue shell, in which there stood an open doorway. Urged on by one of the guards, Jim entered first, at sword point. With a guard on his own heels, McCoy followed.
Inside, a tight spiral staircase wound down into darkness, which suddenly grew more intense, probably because the cylinder had settled back into place above them. The footfalls of the group rang on the metal steps as they descended. McCoy furtively checked his waist, confirming what he’d suspected, namely that he’d been divested of his communicator and phaser. He tried to watch Jim for any move he might make to escape their captivity, though the lack of light made it difficult. McCoy also realized that Jim probably wouldn’t take any action right now, not until they had more information about this asteroid-ship and the people who apparently called it home. Their presence here likely would not change the aim of the landing party’s mission; if anything, their existence on this ship, headed for a collision with Daran V, made the situation even more grave, the outcome potentially even more disastrous.
As McCoy’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he detected light emanating from below. Finally, the group reached the bottom of the stairway. There, they stood at a corner where the ends of two wide corridors intersected. People had gathered there, McCoy saw, men and women, older and younger, dressed in colorful, loose-fitting clothing of a design similar to the one-piece outfits the guards wore. They peered at Jim and McCoy and Spock in silence, and with expressions that appeared mixed of curiosity and fear. McCoy doubted that this “world” saw many visitors.
Natira came down the stairs last. Without either a word or a glance, she stepped in front of the landing party and started down one of the corridors. McCoy saw now that, on the back of her head, her hair had been arranged into a bun, with longer tresses spilling from its center and down to the middle of her back. A guard pushed at Jim’s back, and the captain followed Natira, as did McCoy and Spock. The guards stayed at their backs, occasionally making their presence known with the touch of a hand or the flat of a sword blade. More people lined the corridor.
Not far from the base of the stairway, Natira stopped at an area inset into the wall on the right. She turned to face a trapezoidal set of doors, narrower at the top than at the base. Several large triangles lined the walls on either side of the doors, their raised forms inscribed with complicated symbols McCoy did not recognize.
At the doors, Natira did nothing for a moment, and then she raised her arms in wide circles until her hands nearly came together above her head. She carried a communicator and a phaser in her right hand, and a large, green stone adorned a finger on her left. She waited just a second, then leaned in a graceful movement to her right, where she waved a hand before the symbols there. She then swayed left and performed a similar motion with her other hand.
The doors opened with a whisper, withdrawing into the walls. Natira did not move forward immediately, and McCoy saw past her into some sort of a chamber, only dimly lighted. A raised, five-sided platform of a green, marblelike material sat in the center of the room. Beyond it stood a monolith or monument of the same material, a couple of meters wide and twice as tall. In the upper half of its surface had been inscribed a golden starburst.
Natira entered the chamber, and again the guards encouraged the landing party to follow. When Natira reached the platform, she turned and faced them. McCoy heard the doors close.
“You will kneel,” the high priestess said. McCoy felt a hand on his shoulder and the point of a sword in his back. He looked behind him and saw that only the three guards had entered the chamber with them. Jim looked as though he might assault his guard, but then he lowered himself to one knee instead, as did McCoy and Spock.
Natira turned and stepped up onto the platform, t
hen kneeled and bowed her head, her arms at her sides. The lighting in the chamber came up, bathing the surroundings in a soft glow. With an effort, McCoy peeled his attention from Natira and gazed around. Shapes and angles dominated the scene. Polygons decorated the floor around the platform in light shades, and green, marble monuments stood along the perimeter of the chamber. More of the raised triangles adorned the walls, arranged in groups of nine to form larger, inverted triangles. McCoy saw that the wall with the starburst, which stood opposite the door and in front of the platform as the obvious focal point of the room, actually angled downward, held between two uprights. Yet another small, inverted triangle sat below the starburst, and a small chest rested on a step before that. It looked to McCoy like a geometer’s paradise.
He regarded Natira again, who remained silent and still as she kneeled on the platform, her head down. To Jim, McCoy quietly said, “She called this ‘the world.’ These people don’t know they’re on a spaceship.”
“They’ve been in flight ten thousand years,” Jim replied. A guard reached forward and poked the captain in the shoulder with the point of his sword. Lowering his voice to a whisper, Jim concluded, “Maybe they don’t realize it.”
“O Oracle of the people, most perfect and wise,” Natira said, as though reciting the words. McCoy saw that she’d lifted her head and now stared at the starburst on the wall in front of the platform. “Strangers have come to our world.” She held up the communicator and phaser still in her hand. “They bear instruments we do not understand.”
Seconds passed, and McCoy didn’t know whether or not to expect anything to happen. A small circle in the center of the starburst then lighted up. Natira bowed her head as though in response, then stood and turned to face her captives. “Who are you?” she demanded, addressing Jim as the obvious leader of the group.
Crucible: McCoy Page 25
