by KATHY OLTION
Captain Kirk shifted in his command chair. “Any time,” he said.
As if responding to his order, an oblong patch of light blossomed in the distance, then immediately streaked away to the right, toward the inner solar system. It was bright as a strobe light, and left an afterimage in Spock’s eyes.
No, that was a true image. It stayed put when he moved. Somehow, he was seeing the length of the laser beam itself, not just the leading edge, as it reheated the exhaust plume to incandescence and swept it out of the way. But how could that be? The exhaust stream couldn’t be moving fast enough for more than a few molecules to hit any given kilometer of the beam’s flank as it flashed past. He had expected that much—had counted on it, and had planned on reviewing his recordings at high amplification to determine the structure of the beam later—but this was far more illumination than he had expected.
And the beam was far wider than he’d imagined it, too. Not just a line in the distance; it was a scintillating wall blocking out a quarter of the starfield. Of course if it was the width of a planet, that should not have been surprising, but his mental picture had not accounted for the scale of it, seen from only a few thousand kilometers away.
Scotty said, “Kind o’ pretty, isn’t it? In a deadly sort of way.”
“It’s very puzzling,” Spock replied. “We should not be seeing the side of the beam that clearly. It’s almost as if—” He stopped, his mental picture of the situation shifting yet again.
“Spock?” asked Kirk.
“The beam is angled.”
There was a moment of silence, then Kirk said, “Explain.”
Visualizing it even as he spoke, he said, “We have been thinking of the laser beam as a straight line drawn between the emitter and its target. That is usually close approximation to reality when the travel time is measured in milliseconds, but in this case we have a beam of apparently some seconds’ duration, aimed at a moving target. The Kauld would have been tracking that target, pivoting the exciter beam inside the carbon dioxide column as it lased. The result is a laser beam that moves sideways as it moves forward.”
Scotty nodded. “Like sprayin’ water from a hose and swingin’ it around at the same time.”
“A crude analogy, but yes. The actual angle is less than—” he did a quick calculation “—three minutes of arc, but it is a significant deviation from true. Significant enough that the side of the beam is colliding with our exhaust stream, rather than the other way around.”
“I notice it’s still doing it,” Kirk said. “How long has it been?”
Spock consulted his readouts. “Thirty-two seconds,” he said.
The beam continued to roar past.
“Forty seconds.”
“Are we in any danger here?” Kirk asked.
“No,” Spock said. “We are moving away faster than it is moving toward us.” Of course they were, he realized as soon as he said that. The beam was tracking the planet, and even a few seconds of impulse power would get the ship moving much faster than a planet’s orbital velocity around its sun.
Spock watched the chronometer. “Sixty seconds.”
The beam grew smaller as they raced away from it, but it was still quite visible as a bright blue, almost ultraviolet streak against the black backdrop of space.
“Do we need to keep thrustin’ away, or should we turn back and get a closer look?” Scotty asked.
“We do not yet know the duration of the beam,” Spock said. “We must keep a continuous exhaust stream pouring into it until it passes.”
“It canna be more than a couple o’ minutes long, can it?”
Spock looked back to his chronometer. “Two minutes and twelve seconds and counting.”
Uhura upped the magnification on the viewscreen. The beam looked like a searchlight shining through fog.
“There is structure to the flank,” Spock reported.
“The significance of that?” Kirk asked.
“Unknown. No, wait. It must mean that the carbon dioxide column was growing turbulent from the thermal effects.”
Kirk shook his head. “No, I meant what’s the significance for us? How’s that going to affect our ability to deal with it?”
The question brought Spock up short. How would it? He thought about it for a moment, but came up blank. “Since we have no idea what our strategy will be, I cannot speculate.”
“Great,” said Kirk. His tone of voice made it clear it was anything but.
They watched the beam slide past. Three minutes. Five. Ten. Uhura kept raising the magnification on the main screen to keep the beam about the same width as a person’s forearm held out in front of them, but on his own monitor Spock periodically checked the direct, unmagnified view. From the Enterprise’s distance of nearly a million kilometers, the beam was a bright gash in space, extending in-system as far as the eye could follow. It was tens of millions of kilometers long, and still coming.
How could they stop such a thing? With each passing minute, the immensity of the task grew more apparent. It was ten minutes—now fifteen—of pure destruction, any second of which could wipe out all life on the planet.
And yet, despite its magnitude, it was still just a streak in the distance. If he thought of it in the right terms, it almost seemed manageable. After all, it was only the width of a planet. A small, terrestrial planet at that. Its length might seem vast even on that scale, but compared to the solar system itself, it was no more than one or two percent of the total diameter. And if it missed Belle Terre and swept on through the system, it would be quickly lost in the vastness of interstellar space. It wasn’t even aimed along the plane of the galaxy, but outward, into intergalactic space. The odds of it encountering anything ever again were infinitesimally small.
If it would just miss the planet.
He double- and triple-checked its position. No such luck. The Kauld had taken very careful aim. Not only would it hit Belle Terre; it would do so when the main city, Buena Vista, was facing directly into the beam. It would be just a few minutes past midnight there.
And the olivium moon? Spock displayed the visual ephemeris for that moment. It would be on the other side of Belle Terre, of course. Safely protected from harm by the bulk of the planet. The Kauld, it seemed, had thought of everything.
Twenty minutes. Spock struggled against a growing sense of annoyance. Surely this was overkill. What little admiration he had for the elegance of their construction faded under the continual barrage of its product. They had failed to understand the fundamental principle behind artistic beauty: enough is enough.
At last the fluorescing exhaust stream began to lose its sharp-edged definition, and a moment later it winked out as the last of the laser beam receded into the distance. Spock checked the chronometer.
He read the number aloud for all to hear. “Twenty-one minutes, fourteen seconds.”
Mr. Scott was standing beside his engineering station with his fists planted on his hips. “Good God,” he said. ”Do ye realize that’s more firepower than all o’ the weapons in all o’ the fleets in all o’ the Federation put together? What could we possibly do to stop that?”
Spock had no answer for him. Neither did the captain. Kirk rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then said softly to Sulu, “Take us home.”
Chapter Twenty-six
THE GLITTERING vision of the laser lingered as an after-image whenever Kirk closed his eyes. He didn’t need Spock’s assessment to know that the beam was powerful. Powerful and unstoppable. He clenched his hand into a fist, pushing all his frustrations into the spaces between his fingers.
Once again the Enterprise rode the waves of Gamma Night back to the beleaguered fort that was Belle Terre. Spock immersed himself in the data that scrolled in a constant stream across his instruments. The rest of the bridge crew waited in unnatural silence while Sulu flew them home. Kirk suspected that they had more on their minds besides the wild ride. He certainly did.
The moment they dropped out of warp, however, the br
idge resumed a more normal level of activity. Uhura’s fingers danced across her communications panel, imposing order on the confusion of the dozens of incoming hails they were receiving all at once. Scotty, apparently satisfied with the state of the bridge’s repairs, set off for engineering.
The viewscreen now displayed an image of Belle Terre, three of its eight remaining moons visible from their position. From here, the Burn wasn’t apparent. Kirk could see clouds forming over the ocean, building up at the coastline. It seemed like such a peaceful place. The thought of it being burned to a crisp made his stomach roil.
“Captain, I have Governor Pardonnet for you,” Uhura said.
“Onscreen.”
Pardonnet’s handsome face replaced the blue-and-white planet. “Captain, what the hell’s going on! I got a message from you telling me to start evacuation procedures, but when I try to contact you, poof! You’re gone! Out of communication and it isn’t even Gamma Night!”
Maybe not where you were, Kirk thought. “Sorry, Governor, but it couldn’t be helped. You couldn’t be reached at the time, and we couldn’t wait for you. I hope you’ve already started on that evacuation, because we don’t have time to waste.”
“No, we haven’t started! I’m not about to abandon everything on your say-so. My office is working with Dr. Neville, Mrs. Coates, and the mayors of our various settlements to form a plan, but they’re waiting on my go-ahead before they implement anything. I’ve got to tell you Captain, this had better be damned good. I’m not about to crush what’s left of the colonists’ spirit with this kind of defeat, being chased from our homes like vermin.” The muscles along Pardonnet’s jaw clenched.
Kirk wished the governor’s sheer determination could actually help this time, but after what he had just seen he knew it couldn’t. “Trust me,” he said, “evacuation is the only option available. We’ve got to get these people loaded up and headed back to Federation space.”
“I thought we were in Federation space.”
“We’re trying to make it that way, but the Kauld are trying just as hard to prevent it. Unfortunately, I think they just outgunned us. Uhura, play the video of the laser. Give me audio.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kirk heard the electronic bleep from her console, noted Pardonnet’s eyes shifting slightly to account for the change in his view, and said, “What you are seeing here is a laser that’s over twenty light-minutes long aimed directly at Belle Terre. We sustained substantial damage during an exposure of only a second or two.”
The governor was silent a long minute while he watched the screen. At last he spoke. “Twenty light-minutes long, you say.”
“Yes. And if you can think of a way to stop it, I’m all ears.”
“I . . . see,” he said, all of his bluster evaporating like the paint from the Enterprise’s hull. “How much time before it hits?”
Kirk softened his own tone. “Approximately three days. We’ve got to move on this now.”
“So that’s it. This is how we lose Belle Terre, by turning our tails and running.” Pardonnet shook his head sadly. “There are people down here who won’t run, you know. They’ve paid for Belle Terre over and over again with their sweat, their tears and blood, and the blood of their loved ones. They would rather die than evacuate.”
“I’m well aware of people’s attitudes, but I can guarantee that anybody who chooses to stay will die. They can burrow into the deepest cave on the planet and they’ll still be cooked. Even if they somehow manage to survive the twenty minutes of inferno, there won’t be a breathable atmosphere left. We’ve seen the result of the Burn, how devastated that left the planet. Well, that’ll be a walk through paradise compared to this burn.” He shook his head. “I have orders. I’ve been charged with protecting the planet of Belle Terre, but when I can no longer do so, I will protect the colonists’ lives any way I can. I believe those were your orders as well, were they not?”
Pardonnet looked down and nodded.
Kirk took the quiet moment as an opportunity to drive forward. “We’ll need to get all the Conestoga-class vessels loaded as soon as possible, even those without drive capability. We can tow them far enough away to escape the laser and get them travel-worthy once the dust clears. Everything that can be salvaged from the planet will have to be packed up, too. There won’t be anything worth coming back for.”
The look that crossed Pardonnet’s face was his “are you crazy?” look. But to the man’s credit, he didn’t say it. Instead he said, “This is going to take a full-blown mobilization effort. Getting people moving without panicking them is going to be nearly impossible. We’ll need to find ways to store fresh food for the duration of the trip. We’ll need refrigeration equipment, medical equipment—the whole infrastructure. We can’t wedge it all into the remaining Conestogas in three days.”
He was right. It had taken months to off-load everything. There was no way they could put it all back in the time they had left. “You’ll just have to beam it into space, then,” Kirk said.
“What?” Pardonnet’s eyebrows tried to disappear over the top of his head. “Did I hear you correctly? Beam it into space?”
“That’s right. Put it in the Lagrangian point between Belle Terre and the olivium moon. It’ll be in the planet’s shadow when the laser hits, so it should be safe there. We can come back and pick it up afterward.”
“But . . . but . . . do you know what exposure to vacuum and extremes of heat and cold can do to things?”
“Oh, I have some idea,” Kirk replied, and he heard Uhura stifle a snicker. “Believe me, it’s better than what they’ll face on the ground. Imagine what it would be like if the sun went supernova. That’s what it’s going to be like under that laser beam. Get anything you want saved in the shadow of the planet.”
Pardonnet swallowed hard, then nodded. “Very well.” He reached forward to switch off, but stopped with his hand halfway to the button. “What about the moon?” he asked.
“It should be safe,” Kirk said. “The Kauld timed their shot so it would be in the planet’s shadow, too.”
“That’s what I mean. We aren’t going to just leave it for them, are we? The most concentrated energy source in the universe in the hands of hostiles?”
“It’s either that or blow it up on our way out,” Kirk said. “It’s tempting, but that’s not the way the Federation does things.”
“And why not?”
Kirk suppressed a sigh. Starfleet spent years drilling the ethics of engagement into their cadets, and here he was trying to explain it to Pardonnet in a few seconds. “Because that olivium could offer a wealth of opportunity to every civilization in the galaxy, that’s why not. The Kauld may not be the best stewards of it, but we would be no better if we destroyed it just to keep them from getting their hands on it. Besides, if we leave it intact, there’s always the possibility that we could take it back at a later date.”
Pardonnet nodded his grudging acceptance. “Maybe so, but do the Kauld know we think that way?”
“Probably not. What’s your point?”
“My point is, they’ll expect us to blow it up. They’re going to try to stop us.”
Kirk stared at the governor for a moment, his opinion of the man rising another notch. Kirk would have thought of that eventually, but Pardonnet had beat him to it. “You’re right,” he said. “And now the last piece of the puzzle has clicked into place. Lieutenant?” He turned toward Uhura. “The fleet video.”
“Yes, sir.” Another bleep from her console.
“Mr. Scott and Dr. McCoy discovered this while doing some reconnaissance in neighboring star systems. I was wondering why they were still building up their fleet when they had just fired their ultimate weapon, but now I know. They expect they’ll have to prevent us from destroying the moon before we go.”
Pardonnet seemed to go a little paler as he watched the enemy warships in action. “That does seem likely,” he agreed.
“Which means we’ll be fighting a batt
le while we evacuate unless we’re already gone when they get here. We need to be ready in two days, not three.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
SPOCK STACKED his olivium-powered sensor experiment on the far end of the science lab’s counter. He could work on that later, during the long flight home. He suppressed a shudder at the thought of escorting twenty Conestogas full of angry, defeated colonists back to civilization, but there truly seemed no other option. Everyone expected the Enterprise to work some miracle to save them, and Spock would work right up to the final hour to give them that miracle, but the final hour was now less than three days away.
Even if it had been three weeks away, the odds of success would not be good. How could they stop the Kauld superweapon? How could any number of ships stop such a thing?
Mirrors, mass, and motion. Those were the traditional methods for defending against laser attacks, and none of them would work here.
That left more exotic methods. Spock rested his hands on the bare tabletop before him, facing the grav board covered with tools at the back of the workspace, then closed his eyes and considered the possibilities. Despite the laser beam’s size, it was still made up of photons, and the individual photons were still subject to quantum effects. They behaved like both particles and waves, depending upon the circumstances. They would, for instance, create interference patterns if they passed through two side-by-side slits. Their own wave-forms would cancel one another out in narrow bands of interference, and amplify one another in alternate bands.
He didn’t bother calculating the size of the slits required to create an interference pattern big enough to neutralize a light beam this size. If they could make a diffraction grating that big, they could make a mirror that big.
What else? He let his mind go blank, allowing the synapses to seek new connections on their own, letting the quantum uncertainty of raw creativity work for him where logic was little help.
