STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II

by Dean Wesley Smith (Editor)

  Both officers were overflowing with questions, but they couldn’t talk in that place, with an audience. Kirk scribbled the address of the rented flat on a cocktail napkin, adding “Tonight, after the show” for Uhura’s eyes only. She obviously didn’t want to let him out of her sight, but he smiled encouragingly and she managed to wave after them without blowing their cover, or her cool.

  When she came to the door much later that night, Worsley was with her. Kirk lit the stove and made coffee, and the four officers related their experiences since coming through the Guardian.

  “It’s been difficult for us,” Uhura admitted, glancing at the security officer. “A light-skinned man and a dark-skinned woman together .. . you wouldn’t believe some of the things we’ve seen.”

  “And heard,” Worsley added, his lip curling. “I had no idea people could be so ugly.”

  “Ignorance is always ugly, Ensign,” Kirk said quietly. He rubbed his hands over his face tiredly. Spock had agreed that [23] chances were good Scott and Jameson were already in the city somewhere, searching for McCoy even as they were. But Kirk could see they were all too tired to tackle that additional complication tonight. “All right,” he said, “let’s get some shut-eye. We’ll see about locating Mister Scott in the morning.”

  Uhura insisted that Worsley take the single bed. He had been working odd jobs wherever he could find them, sometimes fourteen or sixteen hours a day; glad to oblige, he began snoring almost immediately. Kirk, curled up on a blanket on the threadbare carpet, soon followed.

  Uhura wasn’t surprised when Spock made no move to quit for the night. The Vulcan had been working steadily as they talked, hooking up Uhura’s tricorder to his jury-rigged interface. Kirk had related the troubling discovery they had made three nights before, and the subsequent burnout that had prevented getting a definitive answer about Keeler’s fate. Spock had advised against making another attempt for at least another day, but the acquisition of Uhura’s tricorder, with its precious record of three divergent timelines, had prompted Kirk’s decision to risk it.

  Accustomed to working nights at the club, Uhura found that sleep eluded her. She lay curled on her side, watching Spock unobtrusively through half-closed eyes. Locked within her tricorder’s memory were images of the original timeline prior to McCoy’s intervention and the one after, the one Kirk and Spock had created, and even the one created by Scott and Jameson. They were now existing in yet a fifth reality—their last chance to repair the ever-widening rift between the future-that-should-have-been and the future-that-was. Time travel had always fascinated Uhura, but it was easy to get lost in the twists and double-backs of temporal logic. [24] She began to drift, aware of the soft snores of Kirk and Worsley, aware of the dark head bent under the dim yellow light of the room’s one bare bulb.

  Then, after what might have been minutes or hours, she found herself suddenly wide awake. She sensed that something had woken her, some sound, but the captain was dead to the world and she could still hear Worsley’s even breathing. Her eyes went to Spock.

  He had gone very still, a stillness so profound that for a moment he didn’t even appear to be breathing. Other than that, she could see nothing amiss. His face was expressionless, his posture exactly the same as it had been the last time she’d looked at him, hunched over the tiny screen. But something about the way he sat there, not moving, made her get up and go to him.

  He said nothing, did nothing to acknowledge her approach. It was only when he moved to clear the screen that she saw the way his hands trembled.

  “Mister Spock?” she murmured involuntarily, suddenly feeling the chill in the room. “Is everything all right?”

  For a moment he didn’t answer. But then he seemed to pull himself together. “Yes, Lieutenant. Quite all right.”

  He started to disconnect the tricorder unit—and stopped, startled, at the touch of her hand on his shoulder. He looked up.

  She nodded toward the kitchen. “Break time, sir,” she said, still almost whispering. “You’ve caught a chill.” Her eyes held his. “Come on, let’s go warm up.”

  The tiny kitchen was barely big enough to permit them to stand side by side, leaning against the cracked sink. The [25] warmth of the stove gradually seeped through the pervasive cold of the room, though Spock suspected he might never rid himself of this particular chill.

  He stood facing the doorway, where he could see the sleeping man curled on the floor. Uhura seemed content to share the silence, and Spock was both shamed and shamefully grateful that his involuntary gasp had woken her.

  One thing, to understand intellectually what forces they manipulated, what kind of power the Guardian wielded. Another to see it, in black and white on a three-inch screen. The grainy photograph felt permanently imprinted on his optic nerves.

  “You saw something, didn’t you?” she said quietly, after a time.

  He didn’t look at her, but studied a spidery crack in the ancient baseboard.

  “Yes.” Despite his best efforts, the word came out a hoarse whisper.

  “One of us?”

  Time passed, inexorably.

  “Yes. One of us,” he said at last.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the direction of her gaze, toward the captain, who slept on. “He loves her, doesn’t he?” Spock glanced at her, surprised. He didn’t answer, but she nodded sadly, as if he had. “It’s going to be hardest on him.”

  “I would spare him that decision, if I could.”

  She sighed. “I wish I could believe Fate will be that kind. But all you can really do is be there afterward, to pick up the pieces.”

  [26] Spock didn’t know what it was, exactly, that made him speak, what made him tell her the thing that had been troubling him for the past three days. But something about this moment—here with this remarkable woman in this dingy, drafty kitchen in 1930—made the words come easily.

  “I am afraid,” he confessed, seeing the image again, flashing starkly behind his eyes. “I fear he will not be able to let her die.” Spock immediately wanted to take the whispered words back. Too late—they had taken shape in the tiny room, inescapable.

  But Uhura steadily met his gaze, and illogically, he was reassured.

  “I don’t know how anyone could make a decision like that,” she said. “I don’t know that I could. But he is the captain. We just have to do what we always do, Mister Spock.”

  He raised one eyebrow, questioning.

  “We just have to trust him.”

  Scott mounted the stairs from the basement, making a futile effort to wipe his hands clean on a rag. He longed for a hot shower, but coal dust and grease would have to be scrubbed off. Hot water was not easy to come by in this time and place.

  The captain and Mr. Spock were standing with Keeler in the dining room, and saw him come up. Kirk smiled, but it didn’t do much to hide the strain just under the surface. “Scotty, there you are. We saw Uhura on the way to the post office. She said you might need some help with the boiler.”

  “Nay, she’s working like a trouper. You and Miss Keeler go on now and enjoy your evening.” Scott smiled at Edith, then remembered what he must look like after two hours [27] with the boiler. “Forgive me for insulting your nice clean dining room. I’ll go wash up.”

  “You look just fine, Mister Scott.”

  He chuckled. “Aye, for a coal miner. I’m not fit to be seen with.”

  “And here I was thinking chivalry was dead.”

  “Never in the presence of a true lady, Miss Keeler.”

  “You, sir, are a flatterer.”

  Kirk leaned closer to Scott and said conspiratorially, “I think she’s got your number, Scotty.” He gave Keeler a smile and said, “Have to watch this one every minute.” He took her hand, and they started toward the door, plainly having eyes only for each other.

  Scott watched them go, not wanting to think of what the future might hold for them. He became aware that another pair of eyes watched the young couple with the same though
t. “May heaven watch over us all tonight, Mister Spock,” Scott said with a sigh.

  The Vulcan said nothing about the illogic of his prayer, saying only, “Good night, Mister Scott,” in much the same tone.

  Kirk called from the door, “Coming, Spock?” and the Vulcan followed them out into the evening chill.

  Uhura felt each step throb in the soles of her tired feet. She had been walking most of the day, most recently to check the post office box for possible replies to the classified ads they’d placed in the city’s newspapers for McCoy. She had not expected any, nor had the captain, but they were determined that even the smallest possible avenue should be explored. The fact was they were getting desperate.

  [28] The light was red at the corner of Twenty-first and Fourth, and she stood on the corner as rush-hour traffic sped by, wondering if she would ever set foot on the bridge of the Enterprise again. She had managed to keep her chin up, for the others if nothing else. But tonight she felt afraid, really afraid, for the first time since the captain had found her.

  As if in response to her sudden despair, some hundred meters down the block the door to the mission opened and Kirk himself appeared, Keeler on his arm. The sight of them lifted Uhura’s spirits, and she felt instantly better. Spock emerged a moment later. The three stood for a moment on the sidewalk, talking. Then Spock headed off down the street, and Kirk and Edith crossed to the opposite curb. Uhura’s light changed; she had just started to cross toward them when a stranger’s hand snatched her back forcefully.

  Not a moment too soon. A battered truck barreled through the red light and turned, tires screeching, onto Twenty-first Street.

  Each stop-action flash of motion seems to take a small forever, each frame imprinting in Kirk’s memory with scarring, indelible accuracy. By the time he turns, she is already halfway across. Her eyes are asking him a question, a tiny, puzzled frown gathered between her brows.

  The rumble of the oncoming vehicle comes up through the pavement, the soles of his feet, rooting him in place.

  Beside him, McCoy starts forward.

  Beside him, Spock trusts his captain, and doesn’t.

  Unable to take his eyes from hers, Kirk pays the cost and moves.

  [29] Two men in motion, one in fear, one in love. One frozen moment in which a few scant inches become an infinity. One woman, dead before her time, a thread in the loom.

  For an instant nobody, and nothing, moved. Then McCoy, frozen to stillness in the circle of Kirk’s iron hold, found words at last for his shock. “You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could’ve saved her. Do you know what you just did?”

  Kirk let him go, but did not turn, his back kept firmly to the street.

  Spock’s words were for the doctor, but his eyes were on his captain, whose fist was clenched tightly against his mouth with the effort not to turn and look.

  “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”

  They appeared on the barren plain in twos. Uhura maintained the presence of mind to hustle Worsley out of the way, as a disoriented Scott and Jameson stepped out of the mist behind them. Scott turned to her in confusion. “What in heaven’s name—”

  It took Uhura a moment to orient herself, the image of Edith Keeler’s death far more real to her than the surreal gray landscape. “There was an accident,” she said. Saying it helped anchor her to this reality; she recovered enough to reach for her communicator. As if on cue, it chirped.

  Scott fumbled for his own communicator and flipped it open, hope lighting his face. “Enterprise, this is Mister Scott. Come in please!”

  “Sulu here, sir. Are you all right?”

  “Sulu! Ah, laddie, you don’t know what good it does me to hear your voice!”

  [30] Sulu sounded amused. “Is that a request for beam-up, Mr. Scott?”

  “Aye, is it ever! Stand by.” Scott turned to Uhura, grinning broadly.

  But she was already turning back toward the Guardian, scanning it for activity. Scott’s grin faded, as he realized the others had not yet appeared. “I was saying good night to the captain and Mister Spock, and next thing I know, I’m here. Did you see—?” Just then, the misty center shifted, and they were there, first Kirk and Spock and, a moment after, McCoy.

  Scott searched Kirk’s face, plainly not liking what he saw. “What happened, sir? You only left a moment ago.” Uhura’s gaze, too, went instinctively to Kirk’s, but he did not seem to see either of them.

  It was Spock who answered, in an even tone that somehow forbade questions. “We were successful.”

  The Guardian flickered, a hint of promised wonders within. “Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before. Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway.”

  Uhura broke in, offering her captain the one thing that might bring him back to the present “Captain, the Enterprise is up there. They’re asking if we want to beam up.”

  It seemed to reach him. Kirk’s eyes lost their faraway look, regaining focus for the first time. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  His officers took up transporter formation behind him. Uhura adjusted the tricorder at her shoulder, mindful of the priceless cargo she carried.

  The Quick and the Dead

  Cathy Oltion

  The air where the landing party beamed down on Theta Tau V held a confusing combination of odors, like rotting compost and spring flowers, and the sky resembled a bowl of thin pea soup. What a disgusting color, McCoy thought, wiping the sweat from his forehead. It was warm, too—warmer by far than the Enterprise’s climate-controlled environment.

  “Why is it,” McCoy said to Kirk, Spock, and Sulu, who comprised the landing party, “all the perfect, Edenlike planets the Enterprise has come across are somehow fatally flawed for colonization? Yet a planet that smells like this one has so much more potential?”

  “Well, Bones,” Kirk said, “maybe we aren’t ready for Eden, yet.” He kicked at a clump of dirt.

  “Maybe Eden flat out doesn’t exist,” McCoy said. He looked around at the rugged landscape where the transporter had deposited them. They stood on the only level spot on the flank of a small mountain. From here, it was either up or down, and up was a steep boulder scramble. Even where they stood, there were boulders and rocks strewn about, and sparse, bushy vegetation grew between them. Looking [32] down, McCoy could see a brown, dusty basin that stretched kilometers across, surrounded with rocky hills like the one they were on.

  The landscape bore the signs of heavy erosion; deep gullies cut into the hillsides, rock debris and boulders forming talus slopes at their bases. Upon closer inspection, McCoy noticed that the hillsides were riddled with dark crevices, some of which appeared to go deep into the rocky outcrops. He could hear rushing water somewhere to the left of where he stood.

  Lieutenant Sulu huddled over some low-lying plants while Spock studied geological readings from his tricorder, searching for signs of any desirable minerals. The captain had walked a few steps away from the landing party, looking down a steep embankment. Hands on hips, he peered out over the land.

  “Well, Jim,” McCoy said as he approached Kirk, “it looks like we got ourselves a real find, here.”

  “Indeed, Bones,” Kirk answered. “There’s an indescribable feeling to be the first people, maybe the first intelligent life ever, to step onto this unknown soil.”

  “Unknown soil, unknown plants, unknown animals.” McCoy spread his arms. Overhead, he heard a trilling, and he looked up to see a flock of some kind of animal circling in the breezy sky. “For now, at least, the whole place is one big question mark.”

  “Yes,” Kirk said with a smile, “it is.”

  “I am endeavoring to identify some of those unknowns,” Spock said as he joined Kirk and McCoy. “For instance, there are seven hundred thirty-four different species of animal life alone within the range of my tricorder. The terrain in [33] this area is composed of granite and limestone with forty-seven trace minerals and elements. There are—”

  Kirk interrupted Spock wit
h a raised hand. He shaded his eyes and peered out into the basin. “The ground out there,” he said with hesitation, “looks ... greener ... than when we arrived.”

  “It could be your eyes adjusting to the weird light,” McCoy suggested without much conviction.

  “No, the cliffs over there are still the same dusty brown, but the basin floor looks like an irrigated field in spring,” Kirk said.

  “Captain,” Sulu called. He squatted near a patch of dark, green-leafed vines with large blue, bell-shaped flowers. “I’ve found something interesting here.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Kirk said, smiling at McCoy as they made their way to Sulu’s side.

  “These plants are growing at a phenomenal rate! The vines have grown fourteen centimeters in the past three minutes.” He held up a vine, and McCoy could actually see it stretch out and form new leaf buds.

  “Good gods, Jim! Imagine the cellular division that must be going on in that plant.”

  “The energy readings from all these plants are sky-high,” Sulu said. “At this rate of growth, the plant is consuming nutrients at the equivalent of an average Earth growing season in a matter of minutes.”

  “Any normal plant would burn itself out at this rate of growth,” McCoy said. He pulled his own tricorder out of its case, which he carried slung over his shoulder.

  “Mister Sulu, make sure you collect some of these—extraordinary—plants for further study,” Kirk said.

  [34] “Aye, Captain,” Sulu said, holding up a couple of fifteen-centimeters-long, cylindrical stasis tubes. “I have two samples already, but I’m having trouble getting an intact root from any of them. Even when I loosen the ground with a trowel, the stems break off more easily than the roots let go of the soil.”

  “Keep trying,” Kirk said. He glanced back to the basin below, then up toward the butte’s summit. “I think I’ll go see what’s on the other side,” he said.