“I’ll stay here and give Sulu a hand,” McCoy said, studying his tricorder. “Besides, I want a look at the mitosis going on with these.” He snapped a sprig of leaves from another vine.
McCoy watched as Kirk climbed up the butte. The trilling of the birds, or whatever they were, filled the skies. He wiped sweat from his forehead, turned back to Sulu, and said, “Is it me or is it getting hotter?”
“The ambient temperature of our location is indeed rising, Doctor,” Spock said, “as are the humidity and the activity of the local fauna.” He pointed to a clump of grass where three white, fist-sized, large-eared, naked-looking herbivores devoured it. One of the little rodentlike creatures stopped eating the grass long enough to give Spock the once-over, emit a sound much like a burp, grab one more mouthful of food, and bound away to disappear into an opening in the ground no bigger around than McCoy’s little finger. The rodent’s compatriots did likewise, burping all the way.
McCoy turned his attention back to his own tricorder and the piece of plant he still held in his hand.
Spock said, “The oxygen level is increasing, as is [35] humidity. No doubt a result of the increased metabolism of the plants. There are corresponding readings for decay of organic matter. ...”
But McCoy didn’t pay any attention to the last of Spock’s findings, for in the doctor’s hand, the freshly picked plant had more than wilted. It had disintegrated before his eyes to a black, slimy goo. Alarm raced through McCoy’s mind as he read the tricorder’s data. Bacteria swarmed over the tissue, breaking down the cell walls and using the nutrients to multiply. Then it hit him, and he felt so stupid. It would be logical, Spock would say, for something that grew so fast to also die off fast. Die off and deteriorate.
“Jim!” McCoy called, interrupting Spock’s observations, but the captain was too far up the mountain to hear him. He rubbed what was left of the plant on his pant leg and hailed Kirk on his communicator.
“Kirk here.”
“Jim, just a warning.” McCoy could see Kirk stop his ascent and turn back to the rest of the party. “Be very careful up there. Avoid getting cut. The bacteria on this planet are just as fast-growing as the plants, and I don’t want to take the chance that they’d use us as the next host.”
“Understood, Bones,” Kirk said. “I’m going to turn back when I get to the next ledge, anyway. The heat—”
“Jim!” McCoy shouted as he watched dirt and rocks give way under Kirk’s feet, and the captain lose his balance. The captain slid a short way down the slope, but managed to stop.
Kirk recovered quickly, found his communicator, and said, “Maybe I’ll start back now.”
[36] “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine. I—”
“Are you sure? Did you scrape yourself?”
“Not badly, just the top layer of skin on my left hand.”
“Well, get back here so I can check it out,” McCoy said. He turned to Spock and Sulu. “The same goes for you two, as well.”
“Yes, sir,” Sulu said. He bent back to digging the roots of the vine. “What the—?”
“What is it, Lieutenant?” Spock asked. He was also digging at the base of a clump of grass, but was having no more luck getting a complete specimen than Sulu.
“This plant has already gone to seed! There were flowers just a minute ago.”
“Most remarkable,” Spock said. He abandoned his digging to consult his tricorder. “Humidity is leveling off, as is the temperature.” He set aside the tricorder and took his phaser from his belt. “I shall attempt a different approach to obtain a specimen with an intact rootball.” Spock aimed his phaser at the ground surrounding the grass and used it to cut deep enough to pull out a plug of root and dirt ten centimeters long. “Your plant sample,” he said, handing it over to Sulu.
“Where is Jim?” McCoy asked. “He should be down by now.” He Hipped open his communicator. “Jim! Come in! Are you okay?”
“Up there, Doctor,” Spock said, pointing to a large, flat rock, halfway between the landing party and where Kirk had been when he turned around.
“Kirk ... here.”
McCoy could see him, sitting on the rock, bent over, his [37] elbows on his knees and his hands holding his head. His voice sounded tired.
“Stay put, Jim. I’ll be right there.” McCoy returned his tricorder to the medkit and indicated that the others should follow him as he raced up the rocky slope.
“Be careful,” McCoy warned. “I don’t want any more injuries until we’re off this rock.”
They hadn’t gone more than a hundred meters when Sulu said, “Listen.”
“I don’t hear anything,” McCoy said, picking his way around a boulder.
“I believe what Mister Sulu is referring to is the lack of noise. The chirps and calls from the flying creatures have diminished,” Spock said.
“So have the creatures themselves,” Sulu said.
Being careful of where he stepped on the rocky ground, McCoy took a glance at the sky. It was nearly empty. Only a few stray birds circled above the horizon. At this moment, however, the birds were not his concern.
He made his way to Kirk’s side. The captain’s breathing was nothing more than shallow panting, and his skin was pale and clammy. Definitely symptoms of shock. A pass of the tricorder confirmed what McCoy feared: single-celled organisms were multiplying unchecked in Kirk’s body. They’d reached his bloodstream and it had carried the bacteria systemwide.
“Spock. Hail the Enterprise. Tell them—”
Kirk’s communicator whistled for attention before Spock could grab his own. “Enterprise to landing party.” Scotty’s voice sounded urgent.
McCoy snapped the communicator open. “McCoy [38] here,” he said. “The captain’s been injured. Prepare to beam us up.”
“I canna do that, sir. That’s why I’m—zzzzzz—We’re reading gigantic storms—zzzzzz—all over the planet’s surf—zzzz—sprang up outta nowhe—zzzzz ...” Nothing but static.
While McCoy tried to raise the ship again, Spock surveyed the area with his tricorder. “The local barometric pressure is falling, and there is a dramatic increase in atmospheric ionization that is most likely affecting communications.”
“Zzzz—peat—zzzzzz—take cover! Zzzzzz—storm is—zzzzzz—your coord—zzzzzz.”
“Dammit, Scotty! Jim’s suffering from a raging septicemia! He’s in shock and he could die. You’ve got to beam us up now!” McCoy ordered.
“It’s too danger—zzzz—canna get a lock—zzzzz—”
A gust of wind blew through McCoy’s hair. The birds were gone.
“Mister Scott is correct. A storm is bearing down on our area,” Spock said. “We must find shelter soon.”
From McCoy’s point of view, they might as well be floating free in space, for all the cover he could spot. He hadn’t seen a tree since they arrived, and the rocky face of the mountain looked like it could all slide to the bottom with little provocation.
Spock scanned uphill from their perch, while Sulu worked his way down. Sulu seemed to have lost track of his mission and was instead chasing a horde of rodents over the rocky ground. McCoy was about to shout at him to forget the damned samples and concentrate on shelter, but a moment [39] later Sulu shouted, “Here! There’s a cave large enough for all of us!”
“Help me get the captain down there,” McCoy said.
Kirk forced his heavy eyelids open, looked Wearily at the faces of those helping to lift him, and let the lids slam shut again. He moaned, more than said, “Bones ...”
“I’m here, Jim. Just hang on and I’ll get you fixed up.”
The cave’s entrance stood behind three large boulders, making it invisible to the casual observer. “How’d you find this place?” McCoy asked Sulu.
“I didn’t, but lots of the locals knew about it. I noticed all the animals scurrying for cover and I followed them.”
“Ah. Smart,” McCoy said, turning away.
The inside of the cav
e smelled damp and musty. Faint light filtered past the boulder guardians at the entrance, but illuminated only a meter or so in. McCoy couldn’t tell how far back into the mountain the cave reached, nor could he see evidence of other cave dwellers. Maybe the landing party had scared the other animals away.
In the few moments it took to get Kirk inside the cave and settled, the storm had arrived in earnest. The wind blew strong, and a fertile-smelling rain pelted the rocks. McCoy heard a moaning sound. At first he thought it was the wind whipping around the mountain, but when Sulu shouted “Watch out!” and an instant later Spock’s phaser burst lit up the cave, he knew it wasn’t the wind. He whirled around just in time to see a wall of bristly gray fur topple to the cave floor at his feet.
He looked at the two-meter-long, barrel-chested beast. It now lay on its left side, stunned, its flat face in a grimace that exposed sharp, uneven teeth. It took McCoy a moment to [40] find his breath, but when he did, he turned to Spock and said, “Thanks.”
“Losing our doctor to predation at this point in time would have been most illogical,” Spock said, sticking his phaser back onto his belt.
He had a point. McCoy forgot the creature—and Spock as well—and turned to the captain. It was obvious that Kirk had slipped into unconsciousness, but McCoy kept talking to him anyway. “Jim, I’m giving you a wide-spectrum antibiotic booster,” he said as he injected his unresponsive friend with a hypospray from his medkit.
Spock held McCoy’s medical tricorder over Kirk’s prone body. “The injection appears to have reduced the bacterial population by fifteen percent, eighteen percent, twenty-four percent ...”
Sulu stood watch at the cave entrance. “Good thing we got in here when we did,” he said. “The wind speed is accelerating to fifty kilometers per hour. Seventy. Eighty.”
As Spock monitored the success of McCoy’s treatment, the doctor took a moment to look out over Sulu’s shoulder. The wind blew past the cave’s entrance, throwing dirt, rain, and rocks at lethal speeds. Mixed in with the flying mud were pieces of plants and what looked like a small animal carcass.
“Doctor,” Spock said, “the bacterial count is increasing.”
McCoy spun away from the view outside and grabbed the tricorder to see the data for himself. “Damn,” he said. “The booster has worn off already. I’ll have to increase the dosage.”
Kirk’s ragged breathing and pasty color distressed McCoy. The wide-spectrum antibiotics worked to keep bacteria to a minimum while the body’s own defense system [41] built immunity to the invaders. Unfortunately, it took the body seventy-two hours to start the process. The accelerated nature of this native bacteria wasn’t going to allow for that kind of slow response time. Left unchecked, massive infection could kill Kirk in less than an hour.
“Increased dosages of the medicine could cause damage to his liver and kidneys,” Spock pointed out.
“Increased numbers of bacteria in his bloodstream will kill him,” McCoy said, anger prickling just below the surface. He was hot, sweaty, and stuck on some damn fast-forward planet with the mother of all storms raging just meters from their shelter, unable to get to his sickbay, where he’d have more options open to him. McCoy took the hypospray, clutched it in his hand, and took a deep breath. After a moment’s reflection, he said quietly, “I understand your concern, Spock. I also know the limitations and dangers of the only course of treatment I can think of right now.”
Spock said, “I understand,” and took the medical tricorder back as McCoy injected Kirk a second time. “The bacteria count has leveled off. ...”
McCoy held his breath while he waited for Spock to continue. If this didn’t work, he didn’t know what he could do.
“The count is decreasing,” Spock said, “but the captain’s temperature is rising.”
“Dammit!” McCoy said. “Sulu, is there any change in the storm?”
“Only that it’s gotten worse,” Sulu replied. He hunkered down beside a large boulder that protected him from the storm, yet allowed him to see outside the cave. “Wind speed has increased to two hundred twenty kilometers per hour, and the particulate matter in the air has also increased.” He [42] looked up at McCoy and said, “The wind must have scoured the entire area of any plants and loose dirt to get that kind of particulate density. It’s thick as mud out there.”
“No rescue from the cavalry, then,” McCoy muttered. He’d feel much better if he could just get Kirk back to the ship.
“How can a storm like this one just ... happen?” Sulu asked.
“I suspect that this is not an unusual occurrence,” Spock answered. “The terrain shows evidence of harsh weather in the recent past, and the animal and plant life appear to have adapted to the unpredictability of their environment. It is possible that weather patterns like the one we’re experiencing can happen multiple times in a day.”
“But we were in orbit here for a full ship’s day before we beamed down, and didn’t observe any weather like this,” Sulu said.
“Computer simulations of weather have demonstrated its chaotic nature for centuries. An area can experience a long quiescent period, where the weather is calm and stable, but it takes only a minor alteration, such as a rise in temperature of just a few degrees, to cause a major change. Sometimes the new weather patterns can even lock into a repeating cycle of violent oscillation that is as stable as what we consider normal. This is the first planet we have discovered that actually displays these patterns, but they are well understood. It would not surprise me If the storm dissipated as fast as it arose.”
McCoy looked out at the storm again and marveled at the power behind something as basic as moving air. It wouldn’t surprise him if the storm never ceased.
“The antibiotic is not working,” Spock said. “The bacteria count is once again on the rise.”
[43] McCoy took back the tricorder. “Those bugs have gone through enough generations that they’re already resistant to the drug. But that’s not the worst part. Jim’s blood pressure is dropping and his pulse is extremely fast but weak. He’s in shock. If I give him epinephrine, it would counteract the vasodilation, but in his weakened state, it could kill him.”
“It would appear that anything we do could kill him, Doctor. It is also apparent that doing nothing will kill him as well.”
“You’re right, Spock,” McCoy said. “Which is no surprise, since that’s just what I was arguing a minute ago.” He changed cartridges in his hypospray and injected Kirk with the drug.
“I am merely stating the obvious.”
From behind him, McCoy heard grunts and groans and scrabbling sounds. Claws scratching a rock surface. “Sulu! Our host is waking—”
A burst from Sulu’s phaser flashed past McCoy and hit the bearlike form, knocking it back to the cave floor.
“—up.”
Spock continued to monitor the captain. “Doctor,” he said, “there is a buildup of an unknown substance in the captain’s blood. It is concentrating in the liver.”
McCoy looked at the readout. “It’s a bacterial toxin. Septicemia was bad enough, but now those damn germs are poisoning his liver, too. What we need is a specific antibody to the bacteria. I just don’t have the equipment or the time to synthesize one.” He sat next to Kirk, wondering how they were ever going to get out of this mess, stuck in a musty cave with a stunned creature big enough to ...
“Spock. That thing we just stunned. Its metabolism is [44] accelerated, too, isn’t it? Just like everything else around here?”
After scanning the animal with his tricorder, Spock said, “We have slowed it down considerably with our phasers, but your assessment is essentially accurate.”
“In the ancient days of vaccines,” McCoy said, “people used cows and rabbits to make antibodies for human use. It’s barbaric, but it worked.” He took a hemosampler from his medkit and withdrew a few milliliters of Kirk’s infected blood. Moving cautiously to the prone gray form at the back of the cave, he set his medical tricorder to search
for existing antibodies to the bacteria. None existed. He reached for the animal’s ear, looking for a vein that would be easy to inject.
The bear creature snorted. McCoy jumped back involuntarily, and both Spock and Sulu aimed their phasers.
“Don’t shoot it unless you have to,” McCoy told them. “I want his immune system to work on this as fast as possible.”
Spock nodded, holding his phaser ready.
With a quick, smooth motion, McCoy injected a drop of Kirk’s blood into the animal, then leaped back as the beast twitched one massive paw toward the sting in its ear. He backed away and focused his tricorder on the creature’s head, recording the entry of the invading bacteria and the immediate response of the animal’s immune system. In less than a minute, the creature demonstrated discrete antibodies to the bacteria and to Kirk’s blood components.
“I think we have something here,” McCoy said. “Okay, stun it.”
Spock fired his phaser, and the creature became a rug again. McCoy took another hemosampler and drew the animal’s blood, then ran it through filtration to remove all but [45] the bacterial antibodies. One last scan to determine the safety of the filtrate, and then ...
“Damn!”
“Problems, Doctor?” Spock asked.
“I’ve got the antibodies, but there’s a toxic peptide chain attached to it.” McCoy ran the antibodies through two more filtrations, but the tricorder insisted that the toxic substance remained.
“This is useless. Worse than useless,” McCoy said, glaring at the deadly contents of the hypospray.
He was running out of options. This must be the way doctors centuries ago must have felt before the advent of morphine or penicillin, standing by helplessly while their patients suffered and died. McCoy had already faced the specter of incurable disease when he took his own father off life support, only to find that the cure for his illness was just around the corner. Well, he wasn’t about to give up on Jim just yet.
“Spock, what keeps the ecology of any planet going? Even one as wacky as this one.”
STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II Page 4
