Captain Kirk put away his communicator looking very thoughtful.
• • •
“Jim, I tell you I was nowhere near the support, either of them!”
“There are witnesses who say so, Bones.”
“Admiral Kirk, are you accusing me of sabotage?”
“I’m investigating, Bones. I know you want to stay here, study all this, and—”
“Jim, I wouldn’t sabotage the Enterprise!” Dr. McCoy seemed genuinely amazed. “And the Azphari—you think these gentle people would wreck the ship? Jim—”
“Doctor McCoy, the Federation has never had contact with these people before. We have no idea what they would or wouldn’t do. Or are capable of doing.”
“But, Jim—”
“Bones, we’ve seen a lot of different races, different intelligent beings, from self-aware energy clouds to telekinetics, reptilian intelligences, remnants of ancient gods … Can you say for certain what the Azphari can or can’t do?”
“No, I can’t, but—”
“Then until further notice you keep the Azphari off the Enterprise. I’m getting the ship back to Earth as soon as I can. Then, Doctor McCoy, then you can return here and learn all you want.”
“Great balls of fire, Jim! Don’t you realize what a medical miracle they do here, routinely? I have to stay here, to learn—”
“Have to, Bones? Enough to sabotage the Enterprise?” McCoy’s mouth snapped closed and he glared at his commander, then strode away.
Kirk pulled out his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise.”
“Enterprise here, sir,” Uhura answered.
“Until further notice, neither Doctor McCoy nor any of the natives of this planet are to go aboard the Enterprise for any purpose.”
“Doctor McCoy, sir?”
“Affirmative. Kirk out.”
Admiral James T. Kirk turned and walked briskly toward the dwelling that had been given to his security staff as a command post. He did not notice the tall, graceful figure of Saffar step from behind a concealing decorative fungus and stare at his back.
• • •
“Enterprise to Admiral Kirk.” Kirk pulled out his communicator, flipped it open, and identified himself. “Admiral, Commander Scott reports further damage to the port pod support.”
Kirk’s head went up and his face grew grim. “Uhura, order all the shields up. Complete unity. No transport window, no radio communication.”
“But, sir, how will we talk to you?”
“Use the shuttles and messengers. But seal it up tight! Nothing—nothing—gets through!”
“Aye, sir. Enterprise out.”
Kirk looked at the now useless communicator in his hand, then put it away out of habit. He looked at the handful of security men in the corallike structure. Four. Tough, intelligent, the Marines of the space fleet. But only four.
“Sergeant Gregg, yellow alert.”
“Aye, sir!” Gregg turned at once and checked the status of each of his team of three. Then they followed Kirk to the minaret-house of the family of Saffar. He strode through the curtained opening, and found Leonard McCoy bent over a table, staring at a small furry animal with protruding teeth and long claws.
“Bones!”
“Jim! Oh, you’ve got to see this! Quick! See that pink line, see? It’s fading. A minute or so ago it was severed! The whole limb removed! Now look at it: healing! Jim, this is the most amazing—”
“Bones!” Kirk pulled McCoy back, his eyes staring fiercely at the half-dozen tall Azphari surrounding the table. “Doctor! These people have somehow blinded you! They’ve sabotaged the Enterprise! They want to keep us here!”
“Aw, Jim, be reasonable. We can learn from them. What can we teach them? Now, look, the fur is growing back. Isn’t that amazing?”
Kirk turned to stare hard into the large, limpid eyes of Saffar. “You’re doing it, aren’t you? You’re causing the pod support to fall apart. You’re making the metal rot!”
“Jim, be reasonable,” McCoy protested. “Metal doesn’t rot, these people can’t—”
“They can and they are! I don’t know how, but they are. Maybe there are submicroscopic metal-eating microbes chewing away, maybe they are depolarizing the atoms, I don’t know, but they are doing it.” His eyes locked with those of Saffar. The eyes were huge, liquid, without depth.
“Man of the other Earth, we only wish to learn,” Saffar said.
“No, you wish to keep us here, learn our technology, our—” Kirk stopped, his eyes bulging. His hands went to his throat and he turned red. Phasers leaped into the hands of the security men, but before they could fire they flung them aside violently, as if they were on fire. Then they, too clutched at their throats, gasping hoarsely.
“Stop it!” McCoy screamed. “Stop it!” McCoy jumped across the table, his hands going for the throat of Saffar, but she stepped back. McCoy gasped and fell unconscious. The small furry creature squirmed out from under and scampered away.
Saffar looked down at the limp figures of the six spacemen. At a gesture, the figures began breathing again, but they were still unconscious. Saffar bent down and removed Kirk’s communicator. She hesitated a moment, then spoke into the communicator in a perfect imitation of Jim Kirk’s voice.
“Enterprise, this is Kirk. Come in, please.” A faint frown creased the smooth face of Azphari’s Number One Medical Person. “Enterprise, this is Admiral James T. Kirk, come in, please.”
Nothing.
Saffar growled and threw aside the communicator. With eye contact she drew together the other Azphari, and they concentrated. Sweat appeared on their smooth features, but at last they broke contact. Saffar strode angrily from the minaret, and outside there appeared, coming from every field and structure, all the Azphari adults.
They stood silently in the square before the house of the old queen, their features strained and harsh as they sought to break through the electronic screens of the Enterprise.
Then Saffar jerked, and the linked net dissolved. She marched stiffly back into her home and stared at the Earthmen. In a few moments they regained consciousness and sat up, rubbing aching heads and whispering through raw throats.
“They blocked our air passages,” McCoy said. “Caused our own flesh to grow and—”
“Never mind, Bones, there’s something more important now.” Kirk got shakily to his feet. “You couldn’t break through, could you?” He smiled thinly at Saffar.
“Powering those screens is a power plant big enough to light a small planet. You’ll never break through.”
Saffar spoke, and the translator clicked. “You will get us aboard or you will die. Your own bodies will attack you. You will know pain driven to the ultimate and yet live.”
“Saffar!” McCoy said in astonishment. “You’re not like that, you’re—”
“But she is,” Kirk said. “They all are. They want to get off this planet. We’ve shown them the civilizations of the stars, and they want to go see. Can you imagine them out there? Who could resist? They can make our own bodies betray us.”
“Exactly, Earthman Kirk,” Saffar said. “And you will help us.”
Kirk shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Saffar. Oh, you can hurt me, you can hurt us. But we were not selected for our mission because we were weak, nor because we did not understand the dangers. We will probably die. It will not be pleasant, I’m sure. I’m going to hate it a lot. But the alternative … the alternative is to let the Azphari loose on the Federation, and, after the Federation, the Romulans and the Klingons, too. As much as I’d like to see them bothered, I would not wish you upon even them.”
Saffar looked at Kirk for a long moment, then, abruptly, Kirk screamed and his body bent backward in a spastic jerk that made him cry out again. “Stop it!” McCoy said. “I’ll get you aboard! Stop hurting him!”
“No.” Kirk’s voice was weak and harsh as he grunted out his protest. “Don’t.”
“Jim, they’re killing you!”
Kirk gasped and his muscles contracted, his skin tightened. Through the tight-fitting Starfleet uniform McCoy could see every muscle of Kirk’s body clearly outlined, as if in the grip of a huge squeezing invisible hand. The Starfleet admiral croaked out another “No!” to McCoy before his head fell back as his consciousness left.
But almost at once consciousness returned as Saffar restored the blood flow. Kirk screamed in pain as his own blood seemed like acid in his veins. His skin was on fire. Everything hurt, everything.
“I’ll tell you how!” McCoy screamed, and abruptly Kirk slumped to the ground, to lie limp and unconscious.
“How, Earthman?” Saffar asked.
McCoy hesitated, then his body jerked painfully. McCoy stared at his hands. His fingers had grown together, the skin thickening as he watched, until he had thick paddles for hands. The doctor cried out, but Saffar was merciless. “How?” she asked softly.
“My hands.” Saffar nodded and the skin thinned, his fingers split apart, and in moments he was whole again.
“The shuttle. The ship will send down a shuttle.”
Saffar smiled.
• • •
The shuttle dropped out of the blackness of space and angled in smoothly toward the single city. It set down just outside the cluster of minarets and Kirk, McCoy, Gregg, and the security men strode briskly toward it. The hatch came down, and they entered. Moments later, the hatch closed and the shuttle lifted.
“Well, Doctor McCoy, did you learn something on Azphari?”
“Yes, Admiral Kirk, I did. They are a harmless race, but with great medical skills. After we return to Earth, I will return here to study.”
“Good, Doctor McCoy, I’m certain it will do us all good.” Kirk stared out the port at the darkening sky. The shuttle cleared the last wisps of atmosphere and took an arcing orbit toward the Enterprise.
“Shuttlecraft Columbus, this is the Enterprise. Security check. Please respond.”
“Enterprise, this is Admiral James Tiberius Kirk. I am coming aboard.”
“Admiral Kirk, please respond with Security Clearance Sequence One.”
Kirk looked at McCoy and their faces contorted with effort as their minds sought to probe through the starship’s defensive screens. Their figures blurred and rippled as the effort of mind took away from their efforts to maintain their illusion as Federation officers. The security men, too, sloughed off the Terran images and reclaimed their Azphari identities.
The young lieutenant at the security post gasped and fell back, but not before he slapped the intruder alarm.
At once a nerve gas, keyed to the central nervous system of ninety-six races, billowed into the Columbus cabin. The Azphari fell at once, for their nervous system was within the parameters of several of those ninety-six.
• • •
The shimmering bars of light all around the Azphari village became armored security men, their battle phasers at the ready. They approached the minarets carefully. The moment they saw an Azphari, they fired, the phasers set on stun. In minutes their detectors brought them to the minaret where Kirk and his crew lay tied up.
“Well, Doctor McCoy, do you still want to stay here and study the medical technology of Azphari?” Kirk asked, rubbing his wrists.
“Yes, I do, but I won’t.” He sighed. “They have such wonders to teach us. They would have been welcomed with open arms.” He sighed again, looking to where the Columbus has set down and the unconscious Saffar and her people were being offloaded. “It means they’ll be off limits, doesn’t it?”
“That’s what I’ll recommend,” Kirk said. “We’ll leave the standard Federation indoctrination package. And every few years they’ll get checked out by people who know what to expect. Maybe someday they’ll learn how to get along with other people, to respect them, respect their rights.”
McCoy nodded. “I can live with that, but…” He sighed again. “Well, thank heavens you built in some security checks.”
“They had the look, they had the words, Doctor,” Kirk said, “but they just didn’t have the rhythm.” He flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise. Beam Doctor McCoy and myself up. Tell Commander Scott I want an estimate of time on the completion of his repairs. And ask the cook to prepare something special for dinner tonight.” Kirk looked at McCoy. “Doctor, have you anything special you’d like?”
“Anything that doesn’t fight back,” McCoy grumbled. He looked at the cluster of minarets, thinking of the scientific and medical wonders that were going to be prohibited until the race that developed them learned to live in peace with their neighbors. “Let’s go, Jim,” McCoy said.
Kirk looked around one final time, and couldn’t help asking himself if what he had done was what Spock would have done. He lifted the communicator to his lips.
“Activate,” he ordered.
McCoy and Kirk shimmered and were gone. The Columbus, with the security men aboard, lifted into the sky. All was still for long moments, then the first of the Azphari stirred and awoke.
Saffar raised her liquid dark eyes toward the heavens, her face expressionless. A tear formed in the corner of one great eye and trickled erratically down her smooth cheek.
The Jungles of Memory
Personal Log, Lieutenant Commander Nyota Uhura.
Stardate 8210.1
While the Enterprise is undergoing repairs in spacedock, we have been given leave to go earthside. Although in terms of time it has not been long since we had been on Earth, in terms of physical and emotional stress it seems like ages. I’m taking the government shuttle down, my face pressed to a porthole, watching the most beautiful sight in the galaxy.
We’ve been to a lot of planets, my shipmates and I, from the stark beauty of Vulcan to the lush jungles of Leighvien, from spinning balls of war-blasted rock to great city-worlds like Rothstein II. But there has been nothing to compare to Terra. The big blue marble. The home planet. Once thought to be the center of the universe, it is still center to homo sapiens.
When I left, to first go into space, I didn’t really want to come back. Jomo Murambi, my first love, had been killed in the service of his country, our country, the United States of Africa. Getting out into space, getting away from things that reminded me of him—and everything did—was as important as the job I was undertaking. Then, when I was posted to the Enterprise, his memory began to fade. It will never disappear, never, but I have it in a safe place now, a place in my heart where not everything can hurt it. So I can go home now. Back to Earth, back to Africa, back to Nairobi, back to my family.
It’s been along time.
I think I can take it.
We’re setting down at Sahara Spaceport in a few minutes. Home at last.
• • •
Personal Log, Supplementary
It’s been quite a day. Sahara has grown since I was here last. It’s one of the chief terminals for solar system travel. I saw ore ships from the asteroids, a bulgy science ship in from Pluto, shuttles from two of the Moon bases, a big tourist liner outward bound for Jupiter and Saturn, and lots of the little ore-catchers buzzing back and forth. They’re rather cute, like bumblebees. All the rich mines on Luna pack up processed metal ore into uniform “bullets” that are electrically propelled off tracks on the Moon—mass accelerators working against the low gravity there—and they go into close Earth orbit. Then these little ships go out, snag ’em, and bring down the cargo. We have a rich system, but we only narrowly averted ecological disaster in the late twentieth century, until we learned how not to foul our own nest.
I took an Air Africa jet to Nairobi. Lake Victoria looked so beautiful as we came down over Kampala. I remembered water-skiing there as a girl, fishing, swimming, the picnics. Then we were down.
I saw Malcolm first, because he’s taller, then my little sister Uaekundu. My older brother is a big, handsome man with a lovely wife and two children. I spent the day with them, getting reacquainted and making friends with my niece and nephew. They hadn’t seen me sin
ce they were practically babies and didn’t know me, really.
Uaekundu had left college up in Cairo to greet me and we caught up on things. But I kept looking at the children, wondering if I had missed something. I couldn’t decide then, and I can’t decide now, if I have.
I’ve done things, seen things, been places my brother and sister cannot imagine. On my first starship, the Elst Weinstein, as Assistant Communications Officer, I saw more in the first year than I had ever even read about in all my years of school! The galaxy is so big it is impossible to grasp! So rich in variety, so immense, so dangerous—and so exciting!
I have to keep reminding myself there are millions of galaxies!
Then, in my other ships—with the Enterprise being my heart of hearts—I saw so much more. Alien worlds, alien creatures, strange life forms, societies so different from ours that they were almost unrecognizable as societies. These people are my family, yet … yet the crew of the Enterprise is my real family. We have shared so much together, not only the dangers, but the comradeship, the laughter, and the realization that we were doing something really important.
I was a stranger in the bosom of my own family. I knew that and they knew that. They were like strangers; I was like a stranger to them. I think they think I think they are stuck-in-the-mud, while I go off on missions of glory. It’s true, I couldn’t really settle down, not now at least; but I certainly don’t think they are lacking in courage or have not made the right decisions. Some people simply require different lives.
Little sister Uaekundu was just bubbling over. Her famous sister was back. “Is Khan really dead? What is that handsome Captain Kirk like? The Vulcan, Commander Spock, is he—” and so on. My autobiography, Space, The Final Frontier, had just been published, and I regretted having written it. Perhaps such things should be published after you’re dead and gone. But after Captain Kirk became an admiral and most of us had been transferred off the Enterprise, it seemed as though an era had come to an end. We never guessed we’d actually ever get together again, much less have such an experience as fighting Khan.
It had been a strange time. We had been scattered, and like disciplined people and career Starfleet officers, we had done as we had been told, even James T. Kirk. Chekov had been promoted and had gone off to the Nelson, later to the Reliant. Doctor McCoy had taken duty at Starfleet Academy. Scotty had gone over to the Yorktown. Sulu had been promoted, too, and had been posted to the Regulus as Chief Helmsman. Mister Spock had gone to Starfleet Academy, too, then had taken a leave of absence. And, of course, Captain Kirk had been placed on the faculty at Starfleet Academy. I’d gone to the Antares, but then we’d all come flying back to be with Captain Kirk when he’d asked for us.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Short Stories Page 3
