STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II

by Dean Wesley Smith (Editor)

  “Doctor?” Spock asked, one eyebrow raised.

  McCoy answered his own question. “Checks and balances. All complicated systems have a method of checks and balances to keep them on track.”

  “Survival mechanisms,” Sulu said, sitting down beside McCoy. “Like camouflage, or butterflies that taste bad to hungry birds.”

  “Or mimicking a butterfly that tastes bad when the one in question tastes fine,” Spock said, nodding his head.

  “Or even mutating a gene to outsmart a local parasitic disease, like sickle cell syndrome to prevent malarial [46] infection,” McCoy added. “In this case, there must be something that keeps the bacteria in this valley, on this planet, from turning everything into goo.”

  “You are making the assumption that there is a naturally occurring antibacterial substance?” Spock asked.

  “That’s right,” McCoy said. “There are all kinds of examples of that sort of thing happening on other planets. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot we have left.”

  “In this situation, where we do not have access to anything beyond the confines of this cave, our success is bound to be limited.”

  “Without trying, our success doesn’t exist.”

  “There are the plant samples we collected,” Sulu offered. He handed McCoy the exploration satchel with the specimen stasis tubes in it.

  “Excellent,” McCoy said. The hemosampler he had used earlier still held enough of Kirk’s infected blood to experiment with. Plant by plant, he took a leaf from each stasis tube and quickly mixed it with a few drops of blood, then monitored the bacterial activity before the leaf degenerated. Four of the five plants showed no inhibition of the bacterial growth from Kirk’s blood. The fifth showed only a weak effect.

  “No good,” McCoy said. With a heavy sigh that was nearly drowned out by the howling wind, he handed each stasis tube back to Sulu to be put back into the satchel.

  “The captain’s condition continues to deteriorate,” Spock said. As if to verify this statement, Kirk groaned weakly.

  “Least I can do is ease his pain,” McCoy said. He held the fifth plant’s stasis tube as he reached for a hypospray of painkiller. That was when he noticed that this was the plant that Spock had dug out of the ground with his phaser. It had [47] a root still attached. It was also the only plant that had any effect whatsoever on the bacteria.

  “Spock, give Jim a dose of this,” he said, handing over the hypo. “Sulu, let’s see that ’sampler again.”

  McCoy tore off a piece of the white woody root and combined it with the blood sample. His tricorder told the story. The bacteria died the instant it came in contact with the root.

  “This is it!” McCoy crowed. “This is the inhibitor. I should have thought of this right from the start. The roots are the only permanent part of the plants on this crazy planet; of course they’d be the most heavily protected.”

  Extraction would be a simple matter. The only problem would be finishing the extract before the bacteria finished Kirk. But after the other close scrapes he and Kirk and Spock had been through, he knew Kirk would fight, was fighting right now, to live.

  The root gave off a bitter fragrance as McCoy mashed it. In a way, that was comforting. Many strong medicinal plants did the same. If he’d had the time, he would have purified the extract, making it an injectable liquid, but time was something he didn’t have. He checked and double-checked the tricorder readings for edibility and toxicity of the mash. When he was satisfied that the cure wasn’t worse than the disease, he slipped a lump of the mash under Kirk’s tongue where the capillary-rich tissues afforded the quickest, safest route for the inhibitor to enter his bloodstream.

  Spock held the tricorder over Kirk’s body. “Bacterial counts are decreasing dramatically,” he said. “Toxin production is arrested. ...”

  McCoy stared at Kirk’s face, watching the pain leave. “Well?”

  [48] Sulu sat silent next to McCoy, and looked nervously between the doctor and Spock and Kirk.

  “Fascinating,” Spock said in that irritatingly calm manner of his. “The toxin itself is deteriorating to smaller molecular particles, most of which the human body can easily excrete.”

  “Most? Give me that,” McCoy said, grabbing the tricorder back from Spock. Sure enough, there were still some borderline toxins—oxidants and the like—but none would do any permanent damage. Not like the live bacteria, at any rate. McCoy read the vital stats aloud. “Blood pressure returning to normal, kidneys functioning perfectly, liver processing what’s left of the toxins. His recovery is phenomenal!”

  Kirk groaned, a stronger sound this time, and blearily looked around. “Did someone identify the shuttle that ran me down?”

  “Welcome back, Jim,” McCoy said. “Now, just sit back and take it easy for a few minutes.” He turned to Sulu and asked, “Any change in the storm yet?”

  “I’ll check.” Sulu went over to the cave entrance again and consulted his tricorder, then looked out into the distance. “It does appear to be letting up. The wind speed has decreased to one hundred eighty, and I can see through the rain now.”

  “That is welcome news, Lieutenant,” Spock said. He flipped open his communicator and it emitted its familiar chirp. “Spock to Enterprise. Come in, Enterprise.”

  “Enterpr—zzzz—here. Can you rea—zzzz—”

  “We read you, Mister Scott, but your signal is weak. Can you beam us up?” Spock asked.

  [49] “I canna get a lock—zzzz—yet. But the storm is breaking up. Is the captain—zzzzz—”

  McCoy helped Kirk to a sitting position, with his back against the cave wall. Jim would recover fully; his heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs all showed no indication of permanent damage. McCoy nodded to Spock, and the Vulcan said, “The captain is out of danger.”

  “Good. We’ll get you out of there the moment we can—zzzz—through the ionization,” Scotty said.

  “Affirmative. Spock out.” He closed his communicator.

  “The wind is dying down as quickly as it picked up,” Sulu said. “The atmospheric ionization levels are still high, but dropping.” He paused, looking out around the boulder that had served as his shield during the storm. “Everything feels ... fresh. New.”

  McCoy joined Sulu at the cave’s entrance. The air smelled just as it had when the landing party first arrived at the scene: fresh, and at the same time sweetly rotten. He felt a tickling sensation on the top of his right foot, looked down and watched as a pale green, mouse-sized creature scurried over his boot toward the open air. Without thought, he jerked his foot out of the path, just as half a dozen more, a couple of which were juveniles, squeezed out of the crevices of the cave’s wall and took the same path as the first.

  “It would appear that the natives believe the storm is over,” Spock said.

  McCoy looked to the predator they had shared the cave with, but it still lay stunned. “Looks like he’ll have to hibernate for a season,” he said.

  Kirk struggled to stand, and Spock helped guide him to [50] the cave entrance, keeping a firm hand on the captain’s shoulder.

  “Jim,” McCoy said, “you shouldn’t be moving around yet. You should be resting.”

  “I feel fine, Bones. Just a bit of a headache and a nasty taste in my mouth.”

  “Be grateful for that nasty taste—it saved your life,” McCoy said.

  “It looks like it’s safe to go outside again,” Sulu said. He led the landing party back out into the open. They searched the sky, looking for signs of a returning storm. But all appeared quiet, calm. They eased down the rocky slope to the plateau where they had first beamed down.

  “Well, Jim,” McCoy said. “I guess this time the hot, ugly, smelly planet isn’t a prime candidate for colonization after all.”

  “Maybe next time, Eden will really be paradise,” Kirk said.

  McCoy glanced at the ground where he and Sulu first examined the hyperactive plants. Already, the first shoots of vines were snaking their way from thei
r solidly anchored roots.

  “I don’t know about you, gentlemen,” Kirk said, “but I feel like I’ve been on this planet for a year. It’s time to get back to work.” He flipped his communicator open and hailed the ship.

  A year. Hell, McCoy thought as he took up his position next to Spock, it felt like a lifetime.

  The First Law of Metaphysics

  Michael S. Poteet

  Captain Spock sat alone in his darkened quarters at Starfleet Academy, silently watching the fire in the fireplace die. From time to time a log splintered, breaking the stillness, sending a small swarm of sparks up the chimney. Spock could still feel some warmth from the flames, but it was quickly fading away. He considered stoking the fire but decided against it; the day had been taxing, and he would soon be ready to rest. He took a slow sip of lukewarm water from the glass he held, and then set it on the end table next to him. A thick book was on the table, a gift Jim had given him just a few days earlier. Spock picked up the heavy volume, admiring its leather binding and marble-edged pages in the fire’s flickering light. The title stood out in gilded letters on the spine: Kiri-kin-tha’s Metaphysics. Spock carefully opened the book to the first chapter. Although an English translation was on a facing page, he read the work’s first line from the original High Vulcan calligraphy: “Nothing unreal exists.” The words confronted him with a grim exercise in logic. Jim died today, thought Spock. He ceased to exist. Does that make him unreal? Can one grieve the loss of the unreal?

  [52] A beep from his computer terminal interrupted his thoughts. Spock rose and walked to his desk. Sympathy calls had been arriving all day—even one from Klingon Chancellor Azetbur, who said she fully expected Kahless himself to embrace James Kirk in Sto-Vo-Kor—but according to the information flashing on the monitor, this was the first message from Vulcan. Spock assumed it was his parents. “Computer,” he said, “open visual channel.”

  “This is a text-only message,” the computer said.

  Curious, Spock thought. “Display text.”

  The computer did:

  Captain Spock: I have heard about the accident aboard the Enterprise. I grieve with you and regret that I have not contacted you before now. I ask that you come to Vulcan as soon as possible. One of my students at the Institute, nearing her seventh birthday, lacks a than’tha. Would you serve? Please respond—Lieutenant Saavik.

  Spock pondered the white words on the black screen for several minutes. He and Saavik had not spoken with each other since she had requested assignment to the Institute for the Transmission of Vulcan Culture. While it was good to hear from her, he was puzzled that she should contact him about a than’tha. The duty of guiding Vulcan children through their first mind-meld on the eve of their seventh birthday was normally that of a parent. Where, he wondered, were this girl’s mother and father?

  Suddenly, like one of the few glowing coals in the fire, a painfully concrete hope began to burn in Spock’s heart. The [53] emotion startled him, but he could not extinguish it. He tried. At first he attributed it to the funereal atmosphere that had hung over the entire day. Then he blamed it on the lateness of the hour. But it would not disappear.

  Nor would memories from almost seven years before: forceful winds on the Genesis Planet ... incessant rumblings from beneath its crust ... the gentle words spoken to him as his blood boiled: “It is called Pon farr. Will you trust me?” ... the tender way she and he had caressed each other’s fingers and hands ...

  The next morning, Spock immediately contacted Starfleet Command to request a leave of absence—an indefinite leave. With Jim’s death, little was left for Spock on Earth. But much might be waiting for him on Vulcan.

  Including, perhaps, a daughter.

  They materialized in the middle of a storm. Spock was no longer surrounded by the transporter beam’s gentle, shimmering sparkles, but a swarm of thick, red sand. Blown about by a howling wind, it stung his hands and face. Vulcan’s sun burned high in the midday sky with harsh light and beat down with oppressive heat. Spock wondered briefly if the desert’s angry welcome anticipated that which he would receive at the Institute.

  “Oh, damn!” Spock’s escort—a gangly, perpetually flustered young cadet named Walters—coughed as he inhaled a mouthful of sand. “Can we walk it from here?” he shouted.

  Spock squinted at the horizon. Among the jagged peaks of the Llangon Mountains, barely visible through the storm, he spotted the valley that was their destination. “We can.”

  [54] “You lead!” Walters flipped a switch on the antigrav platform at his feet, on which sat a bulky computer case, and pushed it in front of him as he trudged behind Spock. Moments later, the swirling sand settled to the rocky soil and the fierce gale quieted to a soft but still sweltering breeze.

  “To think,” said Walters, spitting sand out of his mouth, “I used to complain about family vacations on Mars. ...” He trailed off, glanced sideways at Spock, and added, in obvious embarrassment, “No offense, sir.”

  “None taken, Cadet.” Spock swept sand from his maroon uniform jacket. “You are not the first human to find our climate uncomfortable. The winter sandstorms are wildly unpredictable; even Vulcans think them unpleasant.”

  Walters’s eyes widened. “After a winter like this—” He bit his lip and shut his eyes for a second, shaking his head in an abrupt motion. He was clearly uncomfortable in Spock’s presence. “I’m sorry about that beam-down, sir,” he finally said. “I’m still not too good with transporter coordinates, I guess.”

  “Again, no apologies are needed,” said Spock. “We did arrive safely.”

  Walters half-smiled a nervous smile. “Aye, sir.”

  “Hello there!” a cheery voice called from the valley they had now reached: Canvas tents covered several open pits where members of the Federation Archaeology Council were hard at work, scanning the ground with tricorders and peeling back its strata with specially calibrated phasers. A petite human woman wiped her hands on her pale blue jumpsuit, which was stained with dirt and mud. She brushed a lock of blond hair from her perspiring forehead and raised [55] her hand in the Vulcan salute. “Captain Spock,” she said. “It’s an honor, really.”

  Spock returned the salute. “Doctor Tully, I presume?”

  Tully laughed. “Afraid so. Welcome to FAC Site V-271 ... or, as I like to call it, Camp Camelot.” She extended a hand to Walters. “You must be Dustan; always nice to put a face with a subspace radio voice. Thanks for bringing the new computer.”

  Walters set down the antigrav unit and pumped Tully’s hand vigorously. “I was thrilled that the Raleigh drew the assignment. Your excavation logs from Chi Rho III were some of my favorite readings last semester at the academy.”

  Tully grimaced. “Great Bird, I’m not old enough to be on some professor’s reading list, am I?”

  “Despite your youth,” said Spock, “you have had a distinguished career.”

  “Hm. If this is how the FAC rewards its ‘distinguished’ members, I’m not sure I want to be among that company.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I don’t call this place Camelot for nothing. When the director asked me to head up a dig for ShiGral, I honestly wondered what I’d done to make him angry!”

  “ShiGral?” asked Walters.

  “According to some traditions,” Spock explained, “ShiGral was an oasis of logic and peace in the midst of Vulcan’s violent past, a village founded by Surak himself prior to the Time of Awakening. Stories about it are common in our nurseries, but the vast majority of Vulcans do not believe it existed. ShiGral is an important symbol of the Vulcan way, but is nonetheless a legend.”

  “And that’s not all,” added Tully. “Don’t some of the [56] stories go so far as to claim that ShiGral was the only place Surak’s ideals were ever fully realized?”

  “Yes,” said Spock. “There are some who wait for Surak to return to ShiGral, when Vulcan has fallen too far from his teachings. They view the village as a locus of incredible power that could be use
d to ‘purify’ our society.”

  “Well,” sighed Tully, gesturing at the arid plains around them, “if ShiGral ever was here it’s long since been swept away. The FAC doesn’t have the resources to be playing in the sand like this; we’ve got too many important digs on other planets.”

  “But this new computer we brought is state of the art,” said Walters, sounding puzzled. “If the PAC isn’t paying for it, who is?”

  Tully lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “I can’t prove it, and I wouldn’t be crazy enough to risk my ‘distinguished’ reputation trying, but I’d bet my credits on the Vulture.” She chuckled. “Sorry. That’s my pet name for the matron up there.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder where, on a rocky outcropping overlooking the campsite on one mountain’s side, the wrought-iron gates of the Institute stood watch.

  “I see,” said Spock, gazing at the Institute. He arched his left eyebrow. “The comparison is not altogether unfair.”

  “You know the matron?”

  “She tutored me during my year at the Institute.”

  Tully shook her head in mock amazement. “Yet you’ve led a productive adult life.” She resumed a serious tone of voice. “T’Ryth is down here every other day, asking me about our progress. I tell her that if there were anything to find we would’ve found it, but she doesn’t understand. [57] ‘Work harder,’ she says, ‘dig deeper.’ She says our presence disrupts the Institute’s work, and she’s eager for the excavation to end.”

  “You sound dubious,” said Walters.

  “I am. I think she’s convinced that ShiGral is here.”

  “Have you suggested expanding the site’s boundaries?” asked Spock. “Perhaps she would be satisfied if you investigated the caves around the valley.”

  “I have suggested that,” said Tully, her voice heavy with exasperation. “T’Ryth won’t hear of it. The caves are, in her charming words, ‘forbidden to outworlders.’ ”

  “But many of your team members are Vulcans,” Walters observed.