Silik stood on one side, in the here, at the podium that sent pulses of energy through the archway to identify him. He was Suliban, a senior of the Cabal, here reduced to childhood by the being who floated on the other side of the archway. The creature there was as unidentified as the place from which he broadcast himself. They were a mere arm’s length away, but they were separated by the ages. Silik felt the privilege of his position eaten up by the smallness of his power.
“Where’s Klaang?” the milky being in the portal spoke. There was a preecho that obscured the creature’s words. Even his form was obscure, though he had a head and arms and legs like Silik, like most of the creatures who had achieved intelligence in this galaxy. But perhaps that creature wasn’t in this galaxy. Anything could be true, and Silik was at this person’s disposal for facts or deceptions. As he stood here, a lifetime’s achievements in the Suliban Helix were subordinated to this glowing individual beyond the archway.
“The humans have him,” Silik provided bluntly.
“Did you lose anyone else?”
“Two of my soldiers were killed.” His jaw grated tight at this report. “One of them was a friend. Can you prevent it?”
Coldly, the creature said, “Our agreement doesn’t provide for correcting mistakes. Recover the evidence.”
The preecho was both intoxicating and maddening. These ghostlike creatures had all the advantages. They had technology, which they dangled before the Suliban, a chance for enhancements far beyond the foreseeable future of technology. They wanted to tamper with things. The Suliban were their conduit. Silik wanted what they could give, but he disliked catering so much to them without any return of respect.
What choice did he have? They had all the power, and all of time on their side.
“I will,” Silik said. “I promise you. When will we speak again?”
The figure beyond the archway seemed to enjoy this part of their conversation whenever it came. He liked speaking of time as a plaything, as his pet. Silik could only stand by and be told yet again what he had heard before.
“Don’t be concerned with when,” the ghost said.
And the creature vanished, without the slightest hint of ceremony. The radiant energy subsided to a simple haze. The archway disappeared.
Once again Silik was alone in the labyrinth, thinking about losses and gains, and wondering which the Suliban would have in the end.
CHAPTER 3
“MR. MAYWEATHER, don’t stand too close to that contraption, please, lest we lose a bit of you.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Reed. I’ll be tending all the bits of me.”
“Mmm ... to be sure. New technology is always perfect from the start.”
Malcolm Reed held his concern in check, but was quite prepared to drop his Lord Nelson persona and knock Travis Mayweather right off that platform if any bit began to sparkle. Such a nightmarish miracle, this. “All right, now you really must stand clear. We’re receiving a clearance to—what’s the word they decided upon? Ream?”
“Beam.” Mayweather’s cocoa complexion glowed a little in the overhead prism lights that would soon show themselves as more than conveniences.
“Amazing, the group dynamics assessments they undertake to select descriptive terms for the unimaginable.”
“I heard they went through ‘scramble,’ ‘heat,’ ‘dissemble’ and ‘spear,’ before they found one that wouldn’t scare people. ‘Beam’ sounds so peaceful and sunny—”
“Not quite what’s going on here, is it?” Reed sighed at the awesome complexity of this contraption.
Travis Mayweather, though, was giddy with pleasure at the new might of their science. He had just come aboard, and the glaze of awe had yet to take a scuff. It would be his privilege to be the first command watch helmsman of this ship, and he knew his name would probably go down in a few history books. Reed contained his approval with proper British reins, but was secretly pleased at a shipmate’s delight and fulfillment.
Mayweather looked particularly stylish in the Starfleet dark-blue jumpsuit, with its geometrically drawn shoulder piping. Reed liked the uniform design. Simple, comfortable, easy on the eye, yet just military enough to make everyone stand properly. He wished they would bring back hats.
In any case, soon they would all be fulfilled, for they were all privileged. As armory officer, Reed’s duties would be rather less glamorous than Mayweather’s, but had the potential to be more satisfying in the large picture. Ah, well, time would tell whose stories might live on. Until then, it was their charge to make this interesting gadget functional to their purposes.
He stepped to the control island and flipped a toggle.
“Very well, dockmaster, we’re ready for you to engage the transporter.”
“Roger, shipboard. Are you standing clear of the platform?”
Reed glanced at Mayweather, who backed up two more steps and shrugged. “That’s affirmative.” He, too, stepped back, but commented, “Either this gentleman is paranoid or psychic. Both useful traits, I should imagine.”
The hairs on his skin began to shiver even before the lights on the platform changed. The transporter chamber quickly became a receptacle of patterns and flashes that made Reed wish there were some kind of partition to protect them. This thing must be giving off some kind of ray or contaminants. How else could it work? So much scrambling energy simply had to radiate.
But they said it didn’t. The royal “They.”
He and Mayweather watched, each guarding his expression, as containers of various sizes formed inside the chamber, bathed in glitter and fanfared by an earsplitting whine.
“Let’s hope something’s done about that squawk,” Mayweather commented over the noise,
“I shall send a memo.” Reed glanced about and scanned the control island after the whine had stopped and the lights had faded. He didn’t really believe it was completely safe to stand up there. What if someone hit the wrong button on the other end?
He controlled his apprehensions and led the way onto the platform, which now contained a clutter of cargo kegs that moments ago had been miles away. Despite the skittishness of the contraption and the doubtful nature of its methods, the transporter was indeed a magical gift from humanity to itself, a fulfillment of dreams from travelers from ages untold. To wish to be there ... then to be there ...
“I heard this platform’s been approved for biotransport,” Mayweather said as he pushed the receiving authorizations on the side of each container.
“I presume you mean fruits and vegetables,” Reed drawled.
“I mean armory officers and helmsmen!”
Reed accommodated him by touching his own uniform front with an expression that said Moi? “I don’t think I’m quite ready to have my molecules compressed into a data stream.”
“They claim it’s safe.”
“Do they indeed ... well, I certainly hope the captain doesn’t plan on making us use it.”
“Don’t worry. From what I’m told, he wouldn’t even put his dog through that thing.”
Reed opened a canister and was engulfed in frustration that changed the subject. “This is ridiculous. I asked for plasma coils. They sent me a case of valve sealant. There’s no chance I can have the weapons on-line in three days.”
“We’re just taking a sick man back to his homeworld. Why do we need weapons?”
“Didn’t you read the profile on these Klingons? Apparently they sharpen their teeth before they go into battle.”
Mayweather shrugged. “Then don’t let them get close enough to bite you.”
“Personally,” Reed opined, “I suspect it’s all rubbish and lore. After all, with whom do they do all this battling they speak of? And who supports this constant tactical front? Someone must do the sewing, cooking, construction, repair, and run a supply line, correct? Someone must cobble the soldiers’ boots, as they say. One should think they must have some other flammable race which also prefers to battle constantly, or they would have to simply batt
le with everyone they meet. Sooner or later, someone will have shown them their own heads.”
“You really think it’s a myth?”
“Oh, yes. One simply can’t behave that way without ultimately coming up against a bigger dog, sharpened teeth or no.”
“And a more disciplined dog, sir?”
“Why, of course. Discipline ultimately beats all Celts and Huns. It’s the British way.”
Mayweather rewarded him with a stream of laughter as they exited the mystical transporter room and hurried down the corridor, through a scaffold of working crewmen engaged in the hustle of making the ship ready in record time. No one had been ready for the captain’s morning muster. Three days? They wouldn’t be ready, but there would be a passable pretense of readiness.
“No doubt Mr. Tucker will reassure me that my equipment will be here tomorrow,” Reed went on, satisfied with his performance for the day. He continued, imitating Trip Tucker’s Southern drawl. “Keep your shirt on, looo-tenant.”
Mayweather wasn’t listening. “Is it me or does the artificial gravity seem heavy?”
Reed took a few measured steps. “Feels all right ... Earth sea level.”
“My father always kept it at point-eight G. He thought it put a little spring in his step.”
“After being raised on cargo ships, it must’ve felt like you had lead in your boots when you got to Earth.”
“Took some getting used to—”
“Excuse me.” Though Mayweather took a breath to say more, Reed was on to something else, for he had spotted a crewman about to tune the power conduits to the lower levels with his magnetic coil reader. “You may find that if you rebalance the polarities, you’ll get that done quite a bit faster, crewman.”
The midshipman glanced at him.
“Thank you, sir,” the young lady said, not meaning it.
“Very well. Come along, Mr. Mayweather.”
As the two men continued hurrying down the corridor, Mayweather cast a glance back and chided, “What was that all about? She didn’t need the help, y’know. Did you enjoy a little venture into superiorizing?”
“Yes, I did. Of course, it also helps that everyone in earshot got a little jab that we are indeed in a genuine hurry.”
“Ulterior motives. Sneaky.”
“Anything for king and country.”
“Listen, Malcolm,” Mayweather began, more quietly, “If I didn’t thank you for recommending me for this assignment, let me do it right now.”
“Oh, all I did was drop a syllable or two into the captain’s ear. Your record spoke for itself. All your life aboard spaceships, able to fly nearly any make or model—”
“There’s no model like this one.”
“No, there isn’t. So take heart, for there’s nothing against which to compare you. No one will know whether you’re mucking up at the helm or not. Wait—engineering is this way. Always bear to starboard below deck eight.”
“Starboard, aye. But thanks anyway.”
Reed nodded. “We shall see.”
“Okay, Alex, give it some juice!”
Trip Tucker danced his own kind of ballet through the outcroppings and knotholes of the cramped engineering deck, a complex scaffold made to support experimental technology of the most skittish kind. This was the red-light nerve center of the new ship, busy and tightly fitted, a place where a thousand adjustments had been bolted on where they were needed, from circuit breakers to flow quenchers, some just to see if they helped at all. Tucker swung and dropped, hooked and monkeyed through the arrangement rather like a child on playground equipment or a zoo monkey on the run. Malcolm Reed winced as Tucker’s foot slid on a rung, but the engineer succeeded in barely keeping a heel-hold with the other foot and hovered in place to check whatever he was doing.
“Beautiful!” he cried to someone among the many crewmen rushing around this area. “Lock it off right there!”
His voice, so high against the chamber’s ceiling, carried an echo. Reed, with Mayweather at his side, stood watching Tucker in his engineering flight suit dance about the ladders and support structures for the mighty and prelegendary warp core. Yes, the massive shipborne power plant already was a legend across space—the clever, useful, and somewhat shocking development, all-human, in spite of holdbacks from other races who already had faster-than-light speed. Apparently humanity had surprised everybody, coming up with warp power on their own, then developing it so quickly. For other cultures, it had taken centuries to get from point A to point B in this technology, but once humans had seen what others could do and knew they could do it, they wouldn’t be left behind now that they had a grip on the possibility. When the Vulcans held back, humans had surged forward with even harsher relentlessness. Spite? Perhaps, and wasn’t it joyfully irritating?
“Look at him,” Reed commented. “The very embodiment of glee.”
“I would be, too,” Mayweather sighed, “if this baby were all mine the way it belongs to its chief engineer.”
“Oh, or its primary watch helmsman, I dare say. Don’t sell your role short. You are the first, after all.”
“You’re determined to make me self-aware at the wheel.” A bright smile broke within Mayweather’s face. “But you’re right—it’s giving me butterflies to realize what I am, and where I am. Do you think all the men who came before us on ships felt like this?”
“Unless they were shanghaied.” Reed muttered his comment, then realized he had failed to fan the mystique. “Ah,” he added, “but each age has its Enterprise ... and always has. This is ours, for all our own people, and any other who wishes our friendly hand.”
Mayweather accepted the heartfelt sentiment. “Or our firm fist.”
“Amen to that.”
The two stood together, in their ship, among shipmates, and embraced this moment of charm.
A dash of spritely humanity came as Trip Tucker swung downward toward them, finally to slide down the handrail of the last ladder and land with a thunk on the deck not ten steps away, proudly eyeing the warp core. At last he pulled out an engineer’s cloth and relieved a smudge of its misery.
“I believe you missed a spot,” Reed charged.
Tucker turned, and seemed immediately proud, then eyed Mayweather.
“Commander Tucker,” Reed introduced, “Ensign Travis Mayweather.”
Tucker stuck out his hand eagerly. “Our space boomer!”
Mayweather seized the hand and tried to return the enthusiasm—helmsman and engineer, the right and left hands of any ship—but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the stunning warp core.
“How fast have you gotten her?” he asked, finding a compromise that excited them both.
“Warp four! We’ll be going to four point five as soon as we clear Jupiter. Think you can handle it?”
Reed buried a grin at the two children who had found each other in the midst of fantasyland, each wanting to do the other’s job, just for a few minutes.
“Four point five ...” Mayweather gazed hungrily at the power source, openly awed and not ashamed to show it. Unthinkable speed, indescribable power, soon to be in his hands.
“Pardon me,” Reed interrupted, “but if I don’t realign the deflector, the first grain of space dust we come across will blow a hole through this ship the size of your fist.”
Tucker snapped back to business. “Keep your shirt on, Lieutenant. Your equipment will be here in the morning.”
“What’s taking so long?”
“There was some problem at central dispatch with Spacecrate Incorporated’s shipment manifest. The crate with your stuff in it got waylaid in transit, and it’s being rerouted.”
“By whom? Who signed that reroute order?”
“Some guy at the dockmaster’s office.”
“Seems odd ...”
“That’s what we get for trying to hurry things up—they get more late.”
“But the shipment was confirmed for this afternoon,” Reed protested. “I got the bill of lading. How do these th
ings occur? Inefficiency?”
Tucker shrugged. “We’ve had six foul-ups already, and it’s not even breakfast. You’re not the only one.”
“All involving shipments?” Travis Mayweather asked.
“All but two, which were misinstallations of critical parts for the motive power system. I’m having to watch my engineers like a mama lion.”
Reed frowned. “Who made these misinstallations?”
“Don’t know. We’re trying to trace them, but nobody seems to know where the work orders are coming from. Just confusion, is what I think.”
“Well, I don’t care for that at all ... where’s the captain?”
“Oh, him?” Tucker shrugged again. “Where would you be if you had just ordered your ship fitted out with a seventy-two-hour readiness deadline and you didn’t even have a deflector or a command staff? He’s in Brazil. Where else?”
“Ghlungit! tak nekleet.”
“Very good. Again.”
“Ghlungit! tak nekleet.”
Ah, the sound of learning. Jonathan Archer came up on the doorway of his target classroom and noticed that he’d been doing a lot of eavesdropping lately. Gotten a lot of information out of it, too. He paused for a couple of moments and listened, trying to pick out which language the students were repeating to their teacher. The process was heartwarming, but quickly becoming obsolete, as most of the races humanity met as it moved into space had learned English just as quickly. They were probably more accustomed to dealing with foreign languages—but, on the other hand, Earth has more than her share of languages, so humans had been used to this sort of thing, too, for eons. Of all the planets Archer had heard of, both rumors and confirmed, Earth had by far the widest range of cultures, races, dialects, and languages. Though the Vulcans and others liked to pretend otherwise, Earth was the most cosmopolitan and diverse planet in the charted galaxy.
But diversity didn’t suit Archer’s purpose at the moment. He needed one narrow thread of talent. It was in that room.
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