I drew forth my communicator to inform the others. Before I could begin to transmit, I heard a loud noise from the direction of my companions. It was the roar of a beast like the one that had just killed Williams. Then I heard the wailing screech of laser fire.
I stood and began to run down the dried riverbed toward my friends. I was determined not to lose any more people on this accursed planet.
[9] The sounds of laser fire continued. That was encouraging. It meant my crewmates were still alive. But it also meant that they were still in mortal danger.
I came to a bend in the riverbed, and an awesome spectacle greeted my eyes. One of the loathsome beasts had emerged from its underground lair and was laying siege to my companions. Spock and the others had climbed the riverbank until they had their backs against the sheer face of a cliff. The cliff was far too steep to climb, and any descent was cut off by the monstrosity below. All four crewmen blasted away at it continuously, but it stood its ground.
I contemplated trying to draw it away, but this didn’t seem a very promising strategy. It was too fast for me to outrun, and once it got me it would return to its attack on my companions.
As I examined the beast, I came to realize that its underside was not nearly as well armored as its top. If the underbelly was soft, then a laser might be able to do some damage there. Spock and the others couldn’t possibly hit the beast’s underside from their position high above.
It was up to me. I would have to rush underneath the creature, dodging its dozens of clattering legs. Our only hope was that the laser could rip its belly open.
For a moment I looked for alternatives, but could find none. Still I hesitated, unable to launch myself at the horror that threatened my friends.
Then the thought occurred to me. I don’t know why I should think of it at that moment, but I did.
“What if all of this isn’t real?”
The thought was all that I needed. It broke the tension in my mind. The thought that this might all be some Talosian [10] illusion was funny to me. I actually laughed out loud at the absurdity of the thought.
Then I ran. I ran harder than I had ever run before. With my own laughter still ringing in my ears I ran between the monstrous legs. I sprinted up the creature’s length, firing blindly overhead. I felt the splatter of warm liquids on my back. I kept firing until I emerged from beneath the beast’s shadow.
I turned to face the creature. If I had failed, there was no point in running further. I stared at the bulky head of the creature. Its mandibles were still. Suddenly the creature’s legs began to wobble. Then the beast collapsed. It fell into a massive heap of dying flesh.
My companions rushed down the hill to my side.
“Chris!” shouted Boyce. “Chris, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Doctor. This blood all belongs to that thing.”
Trawley slapped me on the back.
“You saved all our lives!” he was shouting. “Can you believe that?”
Technically Trawley was being overly familiar with his commanding officer, but I overlooked it for the moment. The situation warranted a little laxity in discipline.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, reaching for my communicator.
“Chris, I can’t believe what you just did,” said Boyce. “I’d never have been able to summon up the strength to take that beast on by myself. What possessed you to do that?”
I just smiled at him. I didn’t know how to tell him what was going on in my mind at that moment. I never did tell Boyce that I had saved his life because of a momentary indulgence of a foolish little thought. I wish I had told him [11] now, because I will never again be capable of sharing that story.
Trawley was also present the next time that the thought occurred to me. He had risen in the ranks quite a bit by that time. He was a full commander. His first command was an old class-J cargo ship that was being used for cadet training.
He had matured quite a bit in the decade since our adventure on Corinthia VII, but he still had a worshipful look in his eyes when I came aboard for an inspection. His cadets were no younger than he had been when he joined the crew of the Enterprise, but still Trawley called them his “kids.” I still saw Trawley as one of my children.
Trawley had only been aboard the ship himself for a week. He and the cadets were going to have quite a job getting this vessel into working order. Trawley was a good, thorough organizer. Given time he would be able to restore this ship to mint condition.
None of us knew it then, but time was not on our side.
Trawley gathered the crew together on the cargo deck and introduced me to them. They looked to me like children playing a dress-up game.
Trawley insisted on telling the cadets about our experience on Corinthia VII. I could tell that he had told this story many times before. He had perfected his delivery of it over time. My own memory varied a bit on some of the details, but I didn’t quibble.
There was one detail, however, that I was surprised by. I couldn’t imagine how he could know this particular detail.
“... and do you know what the captain did just before he attacked the creature? You’ll never guess this in a million [12] years. He laughed! I swear, I could hear it all the way up the cliff wall. He laughed!”
The cadets laughed as well. I considered telling Trawley the whole story that day, but I didn’t get around to it. I was a little embarrassed by all the attention, so I decided not to bring the subject up again. Now I’ll never get the chance.
Later that night I was alone in my cabin, reading the cadet reviews. They looked like a good bunch of kids. It looked like Starfleet was going to be in good hands for another generation.
Suddenly a shudder rolled through the ship. A lump formed in my throat. The shudder wasn’t really all that bad, but sometimes you sense when a disaster is bearing down on you.
I stepped out of my cabin. The corridor was filled with terrified cadets. Alarm klaxons began to sound. One frightened young girl emerged from her cabin wearing nothing but a towel. Her eyes were already filling with tears.
I grabbed her by the shoulders. I kept my voice calm, expressing a cool confidence that I did not feel.
“Everything is going to be all right. Go get dressed and report to your station.”
She straightened up and returned to her cabin. I looked at the confused crowd of cadets that had gathered in a circle around me.
“What’s the matter with you people?” I shouted. “Get to your posts!”
Shame is a good motivator. The embarrassed crew members ran for their stations, eager to show me they knew their jobs.
I raced down to the engine room. The hatch was sealed. I [13] looked through the porthole into the room beyond. I could see billowing clouds of gas.
A baffle plate had ruptured!
I could see the motionless bodies of half a dozen cadets. They might already be dead. I knew I couldn’t leave them in there, but I also knew what delta rays can do to a man. For a moment I froze, unwilling to face the horrors on the other side of the hatch.
Then the thought came to me again.
“What if all of this isn’t real?”
I didn’t laugh this time. I knew as I looked that this was very real. If I didn’t act fast, none of those cadets had a chance.
I felt a blast of heat as I opened that hatch, only I knew it wasn’t really heat. It was the delta radiation knifing through my body. I stumbled in and grabbed the nearest cadet. She was wearing the thick protective coveralls of an engineer. That was good. That would help to minimize the effects of the radiation. I, on the other hand, had no such protection.
Six times I entered the engine room. Six cadets I pulled from that chamber of horrors. Two of them would die later at Starbase 11. But four of them would survive.
As for me, I’m not sure if I would count myself as a survivor or not. I cannot move and I cannot speak. All I can do is sit, looking and listening to the world around me.
I sit here and I s
tare at the ringed moon and at the lovely young redhead. I look at a world that I can no longer participate in.
And I think. I think so much that my head hurts. I am fearful of the days to come. I am afraid that my mind will [14] begin to wither and die. It frightens me to think that my sanity may begin to leave me.
In the midst of the horror that my life has become, the idea returns to me again. Once again I imagine that I am back in my cage on Talos IV. I dream that all of this is just an illusion, soon to be replaced with better dreams. Perhaps the Talosians will send me back to Mojave next, or back to Orion.
“What if all of this isn’t real?”
Inwardly I laugh. But I know that this is real. This isn’t Talos IV. This isn’t an illusion. But for the first time in thirteen years I wish that it were. Perhaps it is a sign of my weakening spirit, but I wish I could trade this reality for a dream.
I wish I were back in my cage.
The Last Tribble
Keith L. Davis
Cyrano Jones inched his way along the ventilation duct. Just ahead on the left was a smaller feeder duct, probably from one of the hydroponics sections. Once he was across from it, he stopped to take another tricorder reading and opened his communicator.
“Transmitting grid reference 6,” he said flatly, knowing that there was little likelihood of any new information coming from the other end of the comm channel.
“Coordinates received,” replied the familiar voice. “We’re still positing a location within about ten meters of your present position. Source stable. Repeat, source is stable. We suggest continuing on your present path and report crossing into subsection 17.”
“Acknowledged,” replied Cyrano, grumbling slightly. “You know, Lurry, this wouldn’t have been necessary if someone would occasionally check the calibration of the internal sensors.”
“Yes, Cyrano, but remember that when you started this job, you couldn’t even fit inside a ventilation duct, let alone navigate them.”
“Cyrano out.”
[16] He knew Lurry was beaming one of those “Oh-I-got-him-with-that-one” grins around the station manager’s office, but he wasn’t going to give Lurry the satisfaction of hearing his barb hit the mark. Still, Lurry’s point was valid—he couldn’t have done this seventeen years ago. That was just one of the many changes over that span.
Stardate 4523.2 had started relatively well, or at least that was the way he remembered it. He had cleared station customs after a rather minimal inspection by the resident constabulary. Of course one or two cases of Romulan ale that never appeared on any manifest might have had something to do with that. They had never even bothered to examine the aft compartment—the one with the tribbles.
It hadn’t occurred to him at the time that the tribbles had reproduced while in transit. He hadn’t counted them when he’d brought them on board. Once he had discovered their rather soothing qualities, he’d merely made trip after trip, bringing in armful after armful until he’d figured he had enough. The compartment had only been about seventy percent full, but he had felt that there should be some room left for growth. He had even provided them with what he thought was an ample supply of the lichens upon which they seemed to be feeding.
Then came Mr. Nilz Baris and his quadrotriticale. And then the Enterprise, Captain Kirk, and Mr. Spock showed up. Then the Klingons arrived. After that, the tribbles somehow got into the storage compartments and gorged themselves on the poisoned grain. But they also eventually led Kirk to uncover Darvin as the Klingon agent responsible for the tampering. At that point, the Klingons left rather hurriedly and the Federation got the Organians’ permission to [17] develop Sherman’s Planet by default. Finally, Kirk and his Vulcan science officer turned a day from bad to disastrous by glibly confining him to the station. His “crime” had been transporting animals proven harmful to human life, and his punishment was the singular task of removing all the tribbles from the station.
With no alternative, he had started his sentence by stuffing tribbles into his oversized tunic and taking them to a sealed cargo bay. After a few days of this drudgery, he had managed to fill barely one fifth of the bay. At that time, while he rested on a storage container contemplating his fate, a more expedient solution had begun to tempt him. He’d envisioned masses of tribbles being sucked into space by the rapid decompression of the cargo bay, their miserable little bodies becoming novas of protoplasm in some stellar chain reaction. He’d only gotten as far as some tentative tampering with the cargo bay door controls when he’d been discovered. Lurry had apparently been expecting something like this, and the threat of having to manually remove tribble guts from the walls of the cargo bay and station exterior had been enough to discourage further attempts.
Once more he had returned to the numbingly endless cycle of cargo bay to tribble pile to cargo bay. Meals, sleep cycles, and tribble collecting had all merged into some form of altered consciousness, and he’d begun to lose the distinctions between the phases. That imbalance had almost gotten to the point where his sanity could have been questioned. Fortunately, someone on the station had seen this coming and had interceded on his behalf. Soon thereafter, his schedule had been adjusted by the inclusion of standardized rest [18] and exercise periods as well as the occasional day off. During these respites, Lurry would hold brief meetings with him to evaluate his progress. Sometimes Lurry would invite other station personnel from the various departments to attend.
Now, as he propelled himself forward on the smooth metallic surface of the duct’s interior like a Gazanian salamander, he had to admit that those brainstorming sessions had contributed substantially to his reaching this point. At slightly less than the Vulcan’s 17.9-year estimate, he was closing in on the last tribble. Of course, no one at those meetings would have had anything to do with the physical task of picking up any of the 1,567,117 surviving tribbles. However, the meetings did produce measures which were able to limit the tribbles’ growth curves and make the completion of his task possible.
First, Mr. Lurry had declared it illegal to feed tribbles outside of secured areas within the station. Customers at the bar had been feeding them anything that had come to mind since the contaminated quadrotriticale had been disposed of. Only later had they realized the significance of that development. It had never occurred to them to consider evaluating what tribbles ate.
When the diverted freighter carrying the replacement grain for Sherman’s Planet had arrived at the station, Cyrano had cornered one of the xenobiologists on board and had deluged her with questions until she had given him a five-kilogram sample of untainted grain and some simple experiments to perform on the tribbles. Sure enough, as they’d expected, the grain was somehow directly responsible for the rapid, uncontrolled population growth. But the full [19] explanation had remained elusive. It wasn’t until he’d been allowed back on his ship (under guard) that the answer appeared right in front of him.
The lichen.
The original tribbles hadn’t eaten more than one tenth of the food supply in the compartment. This led to a hunch. He sent a message to the xenobiologist at the colony on Sherman’s Planet. When he got the response three days later, he knew he was onto something. Using the directions contained in the reply and with Lurry’s permission, he had station maintenance construct three test chambers. He’d placed the lichen in one, quadrotriticale in the second, and oral rehydration solution in the third. A series of sensitive microdetectors were placed to measure changes in the environmental chemistry.
The oral rehydration solution group had exactly the same number of tribbles as it had had at the beginning—ten. That wasn’t surprising, because no one would drink the rehydration solution unless they had a near-fatal gastroenteritis. It had often been rumored to be part of the interrogation protocols for Klingons.
The second group, the lichen group, showed a modest growth in population, for tribbles. Thirty-five tribbles were present at the end of the third day of the test. Also interesting was the presence of small
quantities of airborne protein molecules picked up by the detectors.
The final proof came in the third chamber or, to be more specific, what was left of the third chamber. The tribble population had grown so rapidly that the outward pressure of the bodies had caused the thin polymer walls to shatter. Fortunately, the other containment procedures had held. [20] What was more important, however, was the presence of massive amounts of the same airborne proteins.
One more message was sent to Yersa, the xenobiologist. By that time, Dr. McCoy of the Enterprise had posted his autopsy of the tribble on the Starfleet Medical Newsnet. Among other items of interest beside the taxonomic classification, Polygeminus grex (how original), were the presence of spiracles, a single gonad, and a uterus. Once he’d informed Yersa about the airborne proteins and the other results of the food-population experiment, Yersa had become hooked. Somehow she managed to get transferred from her duties on Sherman’s Planet to a research assignment on K-7. Her stay had been brief, however. She’d left almost immediately upon reviewing the data, bound for the tribbles’ homeworld (unfortunately later given the rather sterile name of Iota Geminorum IV).
While Cyrano had continued his daily routine of tribble retrieval, Yersa had been off pursuing her studies into the secrets of tribble reproduction. Eons later, as it had seemed, she returned.
Contrary to Dr. McCoy’s learned judgment, she’d discovered, tribbles were not “born pregnant.” Actually, as it turned out, they had a rather stable, or for that matter sensible, population strategy. Tribble populations were governed strictly by the amount of available food—in this case, lichen. When the food supply was abundant, the release of procreation pheromones went up until a new steady state was achieved. When the food supply was decreased by seismic or volcanic activity, the population fell either by starvation or by not replacing losses from predation.
To test this hypothesis, Yersa had actually released the [21] aerosolized pheromones into a small rock outcrop that was sprinkled with a minor distribution of tribbles. The result was as expected.
STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds I Page 2
