STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds I

by Dean Wesley Smith (Editor)

  Commander Chakotay’s personal log—“Personal log, Stardate 50721.7. This region of space is truly a malevolent place. I just had a horrible encounter while attempting to contact my animal guide. I initiated the vision state without difficulty, entered my centering space and looked for my guide. But I did not see her. I waited, breathed, and tried to be at peace. After a short period, I became aware of another presence, looked and saw a murky shape moving toward me. It approached the way that she always does, but as she came near, she suddenly grew several times in size. In that same instant, the sky turned dark and stormy. Lightning slashed across the landscape and a wind roared from out of nowhere. I had only a moment to absorb it all before she was right on top of me. She towered over me, opened her mouth, and screamed with a sound I hope to never hear again. It was agony—nothing like an animal. More like a disembodied voice out of hell. I tried to end the vision but could not break free. She lunged at me with her mouth gaping. I started to run, but she moved too quickly and seized me with her jaws in an instant. I heard myself scream as her teeth pierced my body. I thought I could [387] actually feel the pain but suddenly awoke from the trance. I have never heard of such a thing happening. All I can think of is Captain Uthlow and his Monthuglu stories. I’m going to talk to the captain right now. I’m starting to believe in them.”

  Captain Janeway’s log—“Captain’s Log, Stardate 50721.7. Commander Chakotay has suffered an attack in his quarters. Having learned of the encounter, Ensign Kim has described a vivid nightmare he had before coming on duty. It appears that the Monthuglu possess the ability not only to manipulate matter, but also to invade our very minds. If that is so, a major attack may be imminent.”

  Lieutenant Tuvok’s log—“Tactical Officer’s Log, Stardate 50721.8. We are urgently seeking some means of defense against a race that is apparently out of phase with our normal space or time. These creatures also appear to possess acute mental powers that can be used against a subject who is asleep or in a meditative state. As a result, the captain has ordered the crew to remain awake as much as possible and not to engage in any kind of mental exercises. We have increased speed as much as Lieutenant Paris considers safe, but the severe shearing action of the currents continues to hinder our progress. I am randomly rotating the shield harmonics and have electrified the hull in an attempt to prevent further assaults.”

  Ensign Kim’s log—“Operations Officer’s Log, Stardate 50721.9. We are experiencing heavy buffeting from the worst currents we have seen yet. EM hull pressure has risen to dangerous levels. Lieutenant Paris has reduced speed, but we have suffered minor structural damage to the outer hull, and internal power is fluctuating. ... I have just received [388] word of a plasma leak in Engineering. Repair teams responding.”

  Lieutenant Torres’s log—“Chief Engineer’s Log, Stardate 50721.9. The plasma leak is contained, but my people are very shaken. We were trying to compensate for a severe power brownout on Deck 5 when one of the plasma injectors in the warp core pit ruptured. Everyone started to dive for oxygen masks and erect a containment field at the same time. The field was quickly in place, but a cloud of plasma built up within it. As it grew, shapes began to appear. At first it just looked like swirling shadows. But then we saw faces start to emerge. They were gruesome, with hideous, bestial heads and features. Some with horns. Some with long, jagged fangs. Humanoid arms with what looked like claws and hooves flailed out and kicked at the force field. The faces roared in frustration but made no sound. Only the ship’s alarms and the screams of my staff filled the room. I finally came to my senses and shut off the plasma flow. The cloud dissipated quickly, the creatures seeming to howl in frustration as they vanished. I don’t know what we just saw and I don’t want to see anything like it again.”

  Lieutenant Tuvok’s log—“Tactical Officer’s Log, Stardate 50722.0. We have just had an intruder physically appear before every crew member in Engineering, but we have no data on it. Internal sensors show no one but the crew. Moreover, video playback shows nothing of note in the cloud of plasma, despite the reactions of the crew. I have no explanation for what has occurred. Even if this race possesses the ability to alter what humanoids perceive, they themselves should be visible. I am obviously at a complete loss to understand and combat these creatures.”

  [389] Captain Janeway’s log—“Captain’s Log, supplemental. We have emerged from the Tenebrous Cluster. As we ran for the boundary of the nebula, systems continued to fail intermittently and the ship rattled around us. I had just asked Mr. Paris if he detected the edge of the cluster when I began to hear a low noise. I ignored it at first. But the sound intensified and everyone on the bridge began to look at each other. I realized that we all heard it. It was a deep, guttural howl. Then Ensign Kim cried out and pointed above our heads. A dense fog emanated from the ceiling. Captain Uthlow started to scream. Tuvok immediately erected a containment field between us and the ceiling. But it didn’t hold them. The cloud condensed into a group of shapes. It appears that we each saw something different in the cloud. I saw several young women with their arms extended toward us. But Ensign Kim says he saw seven ancient warriors with swords drawn. Lieutenant Paris saw monstrous, skeletal creatures with fire where their eyes should be. Only Tuvok seems to have seen just a cloud. But all of us saw the same thing next.

  “The shapes lunged downward around the screaming Captain Uthlow. They dissolved into an unrecognizable mass swirling around him. Several bridge officers tried to intervene in that instant but found they could not move. On the viewscreen, I noticed the gases starting to part and stars emerging in the distance. We had reached the edge of the nebula. The screams of the captain and the howls of his tormentor brought my attention back to what was happening on the bridge. Captain Uthlow started to disappear before our eyes. He reached out to me at the last moment, pleading. Then he faded away before our eyes within the cloud. Moments later, the cloud resumed the shape of the women [390] and lunged toward me. My ears rang with their high-pitched screech of anger—then of frustration—as the cloud suddenly dissipated. Voyager had cleared the nebula and reentered normal space. ...

  “We continue on course for the Alpha Quadrant, but there are more questions than answers regarding the Tenebrous Cluster’s terrifying inhabitants and the fate of Captain Uthlow. Since we have no intention of reentering the cluster, I am quite confident that we will never fully explain the events of the last few days. But I am equally sure we will not forget them.”

  Because We Can*

  *We’ve been asked a number of times why we decided to publish a fan-written anthology. Here’s part of the reason: so that the two of us could publish our own fan stories in a real honest-to-Betsy book. Obviously, just kidding. And we’d like to make it clear that these stories were not part of the contest (and, in fact, they break several of the rules we held you folks to) and that no fan-written stories were bumped to make room for “The Man Who Sold the Sky” or “The Girl Who Controlled Gene Kelly’s Feet.”

  The Man Who Sold the Sky

  John J. Ordover

  It’s not fair, the seventy-year-old man thought as he lay dying in a Los Angeles hospital. There was so much of the future I wanted to see.

  There was no doubt in his mind that he was dying; things were just not right inside him, and each time the heart monitor on his bedside beeped he could feel more of himself drifting away. When he was a child, his chronic asthma had sometimes brought him close to death, but that was a different feeling, a fearful one, not this quiet frustration that he would never know what happened next.

  Not that I have done so little in my life, he thought. Many people have dreams, but very few have those dreams come true as well as mine have, and even fewer see their creations bring pleasure and hope to so many around the world. I may not have lived as long as some others, but I have prospered.

  A high-pitched humming sound filled the room, and he opened his eyes. His fading eyesight took a moment to register the six figures who had appeared around hi
s bed. He could not see them clearly, just as outlines of colored [394] shapes, and he wondered if they were truly there or just creatures of the drugs he had been given. He tried to greet them, but he was too weak and his words came out as a choking cough.

  “Goddamn primitive medicine!” a blue-clad figure to his left exclaimed. The figure moved toward him, followed by another blue figure, this one topped in red.

  The old man heard an electronic whine. “We got here just in time,” the red-topped figure said in a deep but feminine voice.

  “Damn right,” the blue man said. “You stabilize him, I’ll get the homeostasis booster ready.”

  The old man felt a moment of fear as the figures moved toward him, but there was something about them that made him certain they meant him no harm. There was a feather touch on his arm, so light he could not be sure he really felt it. Almost at once he felt much better, as if there was no longer any need to fight for life. Am I dying now? he thought. Is this death? He lay back and listened calmly to the oh-so-familiar voices around him.

  “Sir,” a new voice, a high-pitched monotone, said from the right side of his bed, “I must remind you that what we are attempting is extremely dangerous.”

  “I understand the risks,” a cultured British accent responded, “but for him it is worth the chances we must take. There is no limit to what we owe this man.”

  “Besides,” said a voice more playful than the last—but, the old man thought, having the same air of command. “The odds are on our side for once—”

  “Yes, Captain,” put in a sharp, intelligent voice from his left side, “I would calculate them to be—”

  [395] “Don’t!” snapped the blue-clad man by his bedside. “Jim, I’m giving him the booster.” The old man felt another phantom touch on his arm. “Give me five minutes and he’ll be ready to transport.” Well, the old man thought, if this is the end, it’s entertaining at least.

  “Sir,” he heard the monotone voice ask, “whatever the odds, should we risk what could be many lives for the sake of any one man?”

  “Sometimes,” the sharp voice from the left of the bed replied, “the needs of the many are outweighed by the needs of the few, or the one.”

  “I do not understand,” the monotone replied.

  “It took me many years to learn it,” the sharp voice said. “It is a very human thing.”

  At last it came to the old man who these people were. Now I’m certain of it, the old man thought; it’s the drugs, or I’m dreaming.

  “Jim,” the blue man said, “he’s ready for transport. Better make it fast.”

  “Right.” There was a beeping sound, and a muffled voice from somewhere that the old man could not hear clearly. “Seven to beam up,” he heard the playful commander say.

  The old man felt the blue man step away and a yellow-clad figure move toward him. When the figure bent down the old man saw a man’s face, a face he recognized and that made him doubt his sanity again. He knew this man, these people, as well as he knew anyone, as well as he knew himself, knew how impossible it was that they were here. “We’re taking you away,” the commander said. “Do you understand?”

  The old man nodded, then tried his voice. It was hard to [396] talk but he tried his best. “Where are you taking me?” he asked calmly, not certain he really spoke aloud.

  The commander seemed to hear him and flashed him a boyish smile. “To where you’ve always been,” he said. “To the future.”

  The old man smiled. That’s okay by me, he thought, that’s okay by me. Before he could ask more, the high-pitched humming came again and the room dissolved and he could no longer see.

  The Girl Who Controlled Gene Kelly’s Feet

  Paula M. Block

  There aren’t any vocational counselors on the U.S.S. Enterprise. The fact is, there isn’t even a chaplain, although there are numerous ecclesiastical tapes for those who require their comforting drone. And there’s a universal-denominational chapel for those who like a little atmosphere with their drone. And there’s a perfectly adequate psychiatric section, of which I happen to be a functional component, for those crewpersons with really overt adjustment problems. And that’s not even mentioning kindly Doctor McCoy, who’s always on call for those who merely need a shoulder to cry on that’s fully equipped with a shrink’s degree.

  Of course, hypothetically, all of the messy problems which might have inspired a need for the services of the aforementioned persons, places or things should have been caught at the academy, during the initial matriculation procedure for Starfleet. But sometimes they’re not, and they get covered up, or sometimes they occur due to the pressures of the job, and sometimes people go nuts for no reason at all. [398] Hence the need for the annual psych workup that Starfleet imposes on all personnel, and hence my introduction to the inner workings of the mind of one Minnie Moskowitz, yeoman third class on the U.S.S. Enterprise.

  She was one of the dozens I was assigned to check out that month, initially indistinguishable from all of the others, at least in terms of appearance (average), mannerisms (normal), or intelligence (slightly above normal), and all of the general items on the standard checklist. Even what originally caused me to take a personal interest in her, the casual revelation of what seemed to be a somewhat richer than average fantasy life, was not particularly unusual in her situation, considering the mundane chores of the yeoman-any-class. People who are bored, people who are dissatisfied, people who are depressed—they all have the tendency to fantasize a bit—and they’re all in Starfleet, too. I’ve come to expect that sort of thing, and the only thing I normally check out in evaluating cases like that is whether the subject has the ability to comprehend that his/her fantasies are only an escape vehicle. And Minnie seemed to understand that perfectly.

  “After all,” she told me, “what else is there to do, stationed in a little room all by my lonesome, editing endless stacks of tapes. And then re-editing those same tapes. And recycling them. Why would anyone in her right mind want to restrict her thoughts to reality with a career like that? Why shouldn’t I want to dump all those tapes into a disposal chute every now and then. Don’t you ever feel that way, Doc?”

  “Probably twice a day, on average,” I admitted with a small smile. “But tell me—what would you do if you weren’t in Starfleet? What would you like to do?”

  [399] “What would you do?” she retorted.

  “Me?” I thought for a moment. “Oh, I might become an exotic dancer on Argelius II. I always heard that I had talent potential for a navel career.” Yuk, yuk, yuk. “But, as the phrase goes, I asked you first.”

  Minnie leaned back in her chair. “I’m not sure,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m not programmed to do anything but this at the moment.”

  “Yes, but there must be something you’d really like to be,” I urged. “Someplace you’d like to go.”

  She was silent for a moment; then a smile lit her face as she said, “I was a dragon once. I enjoyed that quite a bit.”

  “A dragon?” I echoed bemusedly.

  “Yeah. Oh, in one of my fantasies,” she added quickly.

  “Of course,” I said. “But there aren’t too many openings for dragons these days anyway.”

  “That’s the truth,” Minnie agreed.

  “Tell me about some of your childhood ambitions,” I prodded.

  “My childhood?” she said with a laugh. “Okay, here’s Minnie Moskowitz’s childhood ambition. The big dream was always to grow up to be the creative genius who figures out how to isolate the universal kitsch factor.”

  “The what?”

  “All that’s wistful in humankind. See, first you isolate it and then you learn to distill it into a good strong fix of altruistic nonreality and then you hype it. Not a bad ambition. If I could achieve that, maybe I’d be able to pull myself free from this damn body and soar.”

  “Soar,” I repeated densely.

  “Soar,” she confirmed. “You know what it’s like on a [400] sunny day in th
e country when this nice warm breeze comes along and blows through your hair?”

  “I’m afraid I spent most of my childhood in big cities and envirodomes. Is it anything like standing in the wind tunnel at the Academy?”

  “Not really. It’s like ... it gets inside of me no matter what I am ... where, I mean, and it fills me with this restless soaring energy. Not like a bird or anything with a body. It’s this need to be nothing and everything at the same time. I always thought that if I had the choice of what I got made into, that I’d be the wind that moves the leaves on trees. Always moving and commingling and soaring ...” She paused and glanced down distastefully. “In this body, though, I’m tied to the ground. Even flying around in this mindless flying robot ship. I can’t soar.”

  I thought I understood what she was getting at, although I’d never put it quite that way. I often felt something like it myself. I felt an unprofessional wave of empathy for her. “But nobody can soar ... not like that. Except in a fantasy, and you can’t just exist on a hype.”

  “Yeah, but what if there was a way to hype into something so powerful that you could cut loose from your body completely and soar away from it ... forever?”

  I was at a loss for a reply. “Well ... don’t you think, uh, that you’d miss your body?”