Yes, it was a child. Of sorts. One who does not understand responsibility of power or leadership and only used its powers to entertain itself. Someday it will mature and use its considerable powers constructively.
A moral, Foster? Yes, a moral. Power without responsibility is madness, just as responsibility without power is useless.
Why, yes, Foster, you may refill my glass. A toast, then. To Mister Spock! Wherever he is.
World’s End
“Parking orbit completed, Captain,” Sulu stated. He glanced over his right shoulder at Admiral James T. Kirk, who nodded brusquely.
“Report, Mister Spock,” the captain said.
“Life forms detected, Captain. A few score, is my guess, no more, and deep down.” The Vulcan turned to look at Kirk. “May I remind you, Captain, we must report to Base IV in three days’ time.”
“Yes, Spock, I know,” Kirk said patiently, then grinned. “But how often do you find a world completely covered by a building hundreds of stories deep? And abandoned?”
“Never, sir, as far as the library reports. It is a unique situation. But we still must get the medicines to Starbase IV.”
“We have thirty hours’ leeway, Mister Spock. I propose a few hours exploring this unique situation. Is there any indication of its racial origin?”
“None detectable from space, sir. The construction is standard. It seems to vary from three to seven hundred feet deep. A strong but not unusual steel alloy was employed. The variation in depth might indicate an underlying terrain. The outer surface is varied, with starship locks, domes, towers, and other unremarkable markings all over it. Logic indicates a highly developed industrial world which has been abandoned, or devastated by some plague. I do not suggest exploration, Captain Kirk.”
“Spock, Spock,” Kirk said with amusement. “A mystery world and you don’t want us to unravel the mystery?”
“May I remind the captain of the necessity to arrive on time at Base IV?”
“Yes, yes, but none of the ships will be leaving to distribute their cargoes to the Moradaine System until all the Federation ships arrive with their cargoes. There are four others besides us, Mister Spock. Caladral vaccine from Regulus, aboard the Hood. Triasphal and megathormal on the Republic. The Steven Barnes has the biotynes and the medical assault teams. The Tajarhi has the menaprophyne, I believe. None of these things is effective without the other. We have time, a little time. I am not being irresponsible, am I?” He said it with a smile, and Spock raised his eyebrows.
“No, Captain. It is my duty to remind you of such things.”
“It will be noted in the log, Mister Spock. Now, would you care to accompany me down to the surface?” Spock nodded, and Kirk looked at the young Russian, Chekov. “Mister Chekov, you have the conn.” Kirk punched the intercom. “Doctor McCoy, meet me in the transporter room.”
• • •
“Sir, the transporter beam is set for the sixth level down, which is the first section sealed against the vacuum,” the transporter officer said.
“Air is good?” Kirk asked.
“We sent down a scoop, sir, While you were on the way from the bridge. The computer reports it within defined limits of breathable atmosphere for humans. And, uh, Vulcans, too, Mister Spock.”
Spock only raised an eyebrow. Doctor McCoy entered briskly. “What’s going on, Jim? I have a couple of crewmen in sick bay who—”
“Anything critical, Bones?”
“No, an allergic reaction to some Coridan melbar—God only knows where she got it—and a good old-fashioned case of Centaurian flu.”
“Doctor Chapel can handle it, then?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“Prepare to go ashore, Doctor McCoy. That is your kitbag, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Jim, and a Mark IV Feinberger, too, but—”
“Lieutenant Collins?”
“My men are ready,” the security officer reported.
“Where’s Bradley? Ah.”
“Sorry, sir,” the young engineering officer said as he ran into the transporter room. “I was helping Commander Scott recalibrate the Three-Thirteen logistic circuit and—”
“Time for some hands-on experience, Mister Bradley.”
At Pat Bradley’s puzzled frown, Kirk smiled. “I have a habit of using archaic phrases from the dawn of the Age of Technology, mister. Hands-on: practical experience, not texttape theorizing. You would be amazed at the difference. Would he, Mister Spock?”
“Yes, Captain. Reality is often more complex than theorizing. Nothing is as clear-cut and precise.”
“You just hate that, don’t you, Spock?” McCoy said with a grin as they climbed onto the transporter stage.
“I accept, Doctor McCoy, that is true. It makes for interesting variations.”
“Ready?” Kirk asked. “Energize!”
The landing party shimmered as the transporter beams scanned their bodies. They glittered and vibrated and were gone.
• • •
The space they materialized in was large and desolate and bitter cold. There was a mist of frost on the blotched metal walls. It had once been some kind of manufacturing area, with blocks and raised platforms all about, with bolt holes and rusting freezelock pediments where machinery had once been attached.
“Scouts out,” Kirk ordered, and two of the red-jacketed security men moved ahead and two dropped behind. In the main party were Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Bradley, and Tom Collins, the security lieutenant.
They moved into a corridor, bleak and cold, and Spock consulted his tricorder. “Life-form readings this way, Captain.”
They went down a ramp, turned along a passage and down another set of stairs. Deeper and deeper they went, passing through airlocks and rusting hatches. It became progressively warmer. They went down a non-functioning escalator and stopped.
“What conclusions have you drawn, Mister Spock,” Kirk asked.
“By the width of the passages and the height of the steps, I calculate a large race, on the order of three meters, or about half again the usual humanoid size. By the placement of controls, I estimate large, four-fingered hands. You’ll notice that decorations, button placement, and architectural design is on multiples of four. Common enough; humanoids with their ten fingers base everything from mathematics to games on ten.”
“Hostile or friendly?” Kirk asked.
“Unknown, Captain. Insufficient data. I would say they were perhaps bureaucrats.”
McCoy raised his eyebrows. “How do you determine that?”
“A world covered with a building indicates a highly centralized civilization. They are technological, of course, and quite sophisticated in that way, but you’ll have noticed the near absence of artistic decoration. Methodical minds, and perhaps even hivelike.”
“Logical?” McCoy said with a faint smile.
“Logic dictates a rational approach to goals, Doctor McCoy. Just as the eye needs resting places amid chaos, so does the mind. Art in its many forms are ‘resting places’ for the intellect, Doctor. Therefore even the illogical products of art serve a logical function. Do you have any other comments, Doctor McCoy?”
McCoy flushed and shook his head. Kirk said, “Hivelike, Spock? Like bees, ants, ranothrax, and so on?”
Spock nodded. “It’s possible, Captain. With an average depth of thirty-five hundred feet and the estimated size of the world beneath, I would say the volume of the buildings is large enough to cover North and South America with a building nine stories deep.”
“Whew!” Lieutenant Collins said in amazement.
“And a few dozen life forms?” McCoy said. “It’s virtually a dead world. Let’s hope whatever caused it to be deserted is not still here.”
“We have twenty-nine hours left, gentlemen,” Kirk said. “Shall we continue?”
• • •
They were down fourteen floors before they encountered any sign of life. It was on a tattered strip of cloth. McCoy’s Feinberger detected harmless ba
cteria, but it was the first sign of any life.
Two floors down they encountered the first life form: a rat. Not exactly a Terran rat, but a rodentlike creature the size of a mouse, gray and scaly. It scampered away into the darkness out of the exploring party’s lights, humming rather than squeaking.
The next life form was something more substantial: a genuine inhabitant. “A moment, Captain,” Spock cautioned, looking at his tricorder. “I detect something ahead, around that corridor. It’s—”
There was a flicker of movement and, even as phasers were drawn, a pale ray enveloped them. The men grunted as they fell. Spock was the last to fall, and his phaser’s beam caroomed off the metal walls as he fired.
There was silence. The lights lay on the metal flooring, canted and making strange shadows on the wall. Then something moved slowly out of the darkness and crept closer.
A four-fingered hand reached through the light beam to tug at a body. Slowly the body was pulled out of the tangle of limbs and dragged away into the darkness.
Mister Spock had been selected.
• • •
Kirk flipped open his communicator. His head ached and he felt stiff and twitchy. A reaction of his nervous system to whatever had downed them, McCoy had said. He was bandaging the bleeding cut on one of the security women’s head.
“Enterprise, come in, this is Kirk.” He stared at the device moodily. “How come there’s never a starship around when you need one? Collins!”
“Yes, sir!” The lieutenant was right at Kirk’s side.
“Report!”
“Except for Kuntz’s head, everyone is all right, barring headaches. Mister Spock has disappeared. We’ve scouted the immediate area, and detect no one. Mister Spock’s tricorder is gone, too, sir.”
“Collins, give Kuntz a message and have her climb back to where the communicator can penetrate all this metal. Report to the ship what has happened and that we are proceeding deeper. Have two assault teams in full armor beamed down. Tell them we’ll leave a four-ten radiation trail for them to follow.”
“The trail of breadcrumbs,” Collins grinned, then sobered. “Yes, sir, at once!”
• • •
Spock came to slowly. He was being dragged along by one leg, his head and body bouncing over trash and distortions in the metal floor. He could barely see the creature who was pulling him along as casually as a child’s wagon. If they went down some stairs, the Vulcan was not sure he would survive.
He moaned loudly to attract attention, and faked a limp posture. The creature stopped and looked back. In the dim light from a wall lamp—the first he had seen—Spock made out the hulking giant who held his ankle in a grip of steel.
There was some satisfaction in noting that he had diagnosed the approximate size. The thing was about three meters high, but not humanoid. It was barrel-shaped, with long, thick, powerful arms. It was bipedal but not humanoid, for the thick legs were like those of an elephant. The head was large, tapering to a thick snout not unlike an anteater. It was hairy and gray-green and had small, suspicious eyes. It did not look friendly.
Spock groaned again and feebly moved his limbs, faking a weakness. The response was more than Spock expected. The creature picked him up as easily as a baby and slung the Vulcan across its broad shoulders. Spock struggled, but the huge creature simply pulled Spock around and struck him in the side of the head, then reslung the limp body of the Vulcan over its shoulder.
• • •
Kirk’s team walked deeper and deeper into the world-spanning building. Every few feet, or at every turning, Collins “drew” on the metal walls with a low-radiation device, leaving a trail invisible except under ultraviolet light.
“Come on,” urged Kirk at every hesitation. “Spock may be in trouble.”
• • •
“Mister Chekov, a communication from the surface,” Uhura said.
“Chekov here,” the young Russian said, thumbing the switch.
“Commander, this is Kuntz, Corporal Natasha Kuntz, I have a message from Captain Kirk.”
Chekov listened to the message, his face tightening with concern. “How many levels did you have to climb to get us?” he asked.
“Up to the eleventh, sir. This metal must be more dense than it looks.”
“Establish a command post there, Kuntz.” Chekov thumbed another stud. “Security, two combat teams on the double! Full battle gear, prepare to be beamed down at once! Mister Spock has been … Mister Spock is missing. Beam in on Corporal Kuntz’s transmission!”
Chekov signed off and stole a concerned look at Uhura. They exchanged meaningful glances. They had been there before, but both were fully aware that this time might bring disaster to their friends. Uhura smiled reassuringly.
Chekov looked at the screen. They were holding stationary over the turning metal world, right over where Kirk and his team had penetrated the vast structure.
Would the world become an immense tombstone for Kirk, Spock, and the others?
• • •
Spock regained consciousness lying on a slab. It was cold in the room, but all Vulcans can bear up under cold better than most humans. He looked around as another part of his mind checked over his body.
Headache. Bruise on side of head. Otherwise unharmed.
Equipment check. Still clothed. Communicator still in belt but both phaser and tricorder gone.
Spock sat up. Had he lost the tricorder while being dragged? The phaser he remembered in his hand as he was felled under the pale beam. Undoubtedly dropped at that point. He pulled out the communicator, but as he suspected, all he got was static. He replaced it and looked around.
Bare metal room with high ceiling, wide tall door, no furniture but a slab jutting from the wall opposite the door. Blank smooth area on side wall, no visible controls.
Head pounding, Spock stood up. He blanked out the pain and crossed to the wall. He pressed the wall all around the smooth area, but nothing happened.
“Activate,” he said. Nothing happened. “Start. Begin. Open.” He quickly ran through similar commands in several languages of the Federation, then in Klingon, Romulan, and Sarcaniflex. No response.
Spock thought a moment. Perhaps it was not a screen, but he had no idea what else it might be, as it was not reflective enough to be a mirror. It might be one-way, a kind of sign or calling device, activated from the exterior.
He turned his attention to the large door. There was a cross-shaped knob, suitable for a four-fingered hand, but it would not turn. Spock walked to the slab, sat upon it cross-legged, and started to meditate.
• • •
The gray corridor opened into a vast hall, and Kirk heard scampering across the great space, echoing sharply. A few hums and scratchings, and then silence. Beams from the lights of Collins’ team swept the room.
It was a vast, bowl-shaped room with a raised center platform. And skeletons. Hundreds of them. Some whole, in clusters, some broken and scattered. Where breaks had happened, the bones were almost shattered into dust.
“Look at that,” McCoy said, pointing to a nearby skeleton that was virtually whole. The structure was immense, more than nine feet long, with thick, sturdy legs and hipbones. A great jawbone sagged open beneath a skull like a bison but with a long, sharp, beaklike protrudence.
Its only garment was the fragile, dry, rotting straps of some kind of harness. There were no weapons, no sign of why the creature had died.
“Are these the inhabitants, or invaders, or … or pets?” Kirk asked. They walked toward the center of the room, a vast graveyard full of unburied bodies. Here and there they saw smaller skeletons, almost as big as a human, but compared to the adult whatever-they-were, they had to be children.
They crossed the room and continued a short distance, then Kirk called a halt. “They could have taken any number of turnings,” he said. “We could get lost ourselves, except for the trail of crumbs.”
“Captain,” Pat Bradley said. “Could I make a suggestion?”
Kirk gestured for him to go on. “Someone or some thing took Mister Spock. He must have had a reason. Why him? Why not you or me or one of the others? He was the only Vulcan, sir.”
“You may have something, Bradley. Spock was the last to go down. I saw him out of the corner of my eye as I passed out. Perhaps that attracted whoever or whatever took him.”
“Sir, I hate to say this, but, uh, there could be cannibalism here, sir,” Collins said. “Place like this, no sign of food growing. We know there are some people here; at least something’s alive here.”
“A distasteful but logical thought, Tom. All those bones.”
“They weren’t eaten, Jim,” McCoy said. “At least not by carnivores or omnivores. Bugs, maybe, ants, that kind of thing. No teeth marks or limbs torn off.” Kirk gave an involuntary twitch, and he wasn’t the only one. “No, they died from something nonviolent and just rotted away.”
“Perhaps that is what killed off the original inhabitants,” Bradley said.
“Sir, Mister Spock thought this might be a bureaucratic world, a kind of star center.” Kirk nodded. “Then there would be ships coming in from all over, perhaps even from new planets.”
“There were no ships in the docking spots outside,” Kirk mused. “All gone. Indicating perhaps that the survivors fled.”
McCoy moaned. “Spreading the disease everywhere!”
“People in fear of their life don’t always think rationally,” Kirk said. “Good theory, Bradley. As good as any.”
“Um, sir?” one of the nearby security men said. “Does, uh, does that mean we might get whatever it was?” Kirk looked to McCoy.
“Perhaps. Some microorganisms can last a phenomenally long time. But my guess is that it does not. However, if there are survivors, it must mean that they are either immune or have some kind of protection. In which case we could get it from them.” He looked at Kirk. “Or Spock could.”
• • •
At the first sound of someone at the door, Spock’s slanted eyes popped open. The metal door squeaked open, and the creature who had captured him stood there. Or at least a genetic duplicate. The great gray-green creature barked a command in a language Spock did not recognize, but the gesture told him enough.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Short Stories Page 7
