Kirk swung his command chair to his right. “Lieutenant Uhura, we’re getting out of here. Open a channel to Starfleet, give them our situation, and tell them we’re leaving Kyros until things quiet down.”
“Aye, sir,” Uhura replied. She placed a hypertronic earphone in one ear and turned toward her console.
“In the meantime,” Kirk was saying to McCoy, “Spock and his department can pin down the reason for that intensity increase…”
Suddenly, he was interrupted by an exclamation from the communications officer.
“Captain, I’ve lost contact with Starfleet,” Uhura said. “I sent out the standard signal, but when I listened for their recognition call, a blast of QRM nearly blew out my eardrum.”
“Malfunction, Lieutenant?” Kirk asked.
“Checking now, sir,” she replied. Hesitantly, she replaced the earphone and bent over her panel. After a full five minutes of rapid checking, she straightened. “Negative, sir. Everything is in order, but there is something interfering on the sub-space bands.”
“That’s impossible,” Kirk said. “Helman, scan sub-space.”
The tall science officer bent over his console and moments later snapped upright with a look of surprise. “Computer!” he snapped, “check antenna and sensor circuits for malfunction.” He swung toward Kirk who had come out of his chair at Helman’s order to the computer. “Captain, you won’t believe this…”
“All sub-space sensors fully operational,” the computer said after a small pause.
“Put it on the main screen,” Kirk ordered.
As Helman complied, it was Kirk’s turn to feel surprise. The main screen showed a cloud-like formation, vast, pulsing, and ominous. It seemed to swell visibly toward Kirk, expanding outward evenly in all directions. Throughout it, hot spots and radiation peak points flared with rapidity and in close proximity to one another; it seemed as if the bridge crew was peering into the heart of an exploding sun.
“What is that?” Kirk asked.
Helman, looking puzzled, tried to answer. “It’s radiation, sir, and it must be a sub-space aspect of the front we’ve been tracking, but what it’s doing down there is beyond me.”
“Captain,” Chekov said, “it’s moving toward us at Warp Ten!”
Kirk stared at Chekov for a moment. “Warp Ten?” He glanced back at the visual monitor. “Whatever it is, Mr. Helman, it’s beyond me, too.” Looking at Chekov, Kirk said, “Prepare a course, Ensign, 246, Mark 347. Mr. Sulu, we’ll move out at Warp Factor Six as soon as the survey party is aboard. Uhura, once we’re out of this hash, contact Starfleet, give them a position report, and transmit full information on this radiation.”
As the navigator and the helmsman began laying in the course necessary to take the Enterprise out of harm’s way, Kirk stabbed a button on the arm of the command chair.
“Transporter room,” someone replied.
“This is the captain. Has the survey party been beamed up yet?”
“No sir,” the transporter officer replied. “They’re waiting for Commander Spock. Lieutenant Dawson just checked in and said he’s had no word from Mr. Spock all day. I was about to call you, sir.”
Kirk frowned at the news. Such behavior was completely uncharacteristic for the precise, punctual science officer. Kirk immediately was afraid something had happened to his Vulcan friend.
“Activate his tingler circuit. Send him the emergency recall signal,” Kirk ordered. “I’ll keep the communicator open. Let me know as soon as he acknowledges.”
“Tingler circuit?” Uhura asked curiously. “What’s that?”
“Another idea of the Cultural Bureau,” Kirk replied. “An audible signal on the communicators might create a problem in a crowded place, so they came up with a tiny implant that’s hooked into a branch of the wearer’s sciatic nerve. When activated, it causes a tingling sensation. The wearer then finds a private place and answers the call. If that would take time, the communicator also includes a new circuit. By pushing a button, the wearer can at least acknowledge receiving the signal. But so far Spock has done neither,” Kirk finished on a worried note.
“Gadgets in the head, gadgets in the body,” grumbled Dr. McCoy. “By the time Survey gets through tucking gadgets inside of us, we’ll all be walking machines. I think…”
The surgeon was interrupted by the urgent voice of the transporter officer.
“Rogers, again, sir,” the officer said. “There’s been no reply from Mr. Spock.”
Kirk glanced at McCoy. The doctor’s eyes were wide. “Home in on his communicator, Lieutenant,” Kirk ordered tightly. “Then notify Dawson of the coordinates. I want him to get his party to wherever Spock is on the double.”
Kirk punched another button, not even acknowledging Rogers’ “Aye, sir.”
“Security, Kirk here.”
“Commander Pulaski, sir,” replied the security officer.
“Get a security team to exosociology. Have them outfitted in Kyrosian clothing and issue phasers. Double-check to be sure they’re set on low-intensitystun. We may have to beam down for a rescue operation, and I want a minimum amount of force.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Pulaski replied, switching off.
“Do you think that will be necessary, Jim?” McCoy asked.
“I hope not, Bones, I hope not,” Kirk replied.
Kirk forced himself to relax as he waited for word of his science officer. McCoy placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Jim. Old Spock’s indestructible. He’s never walked into a situation he couldn’t handle.”
“Captain!” It was the transporter room again.
“Yes?”
“I have Lieutenant Dawson on, but I think you’d better speak to him directly. Mr. Spock wasn’t where he was supposed to be.”
“Put him on the main visual monitor, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. He turned to Uhura. “Pick up Dawson’s transmission and patch into the visual on his tricorder.”
The communications officer nodded. Pressing several buttons, she picked the transmission up from Kyros. The graph of the radiation storm that was bearing down on the Enterprise with increasing intensity disappeared from the screen. There was a flicker and a picture of the inn room below (that served as a rendezvous point and transporter pick-up location for the survey party) appeared. In the center of the picture was a weirdly masked figure. Underneath the mask, Kirk knew, was a young dark-haired lieutenant. He was dressed as a hillman of Kyros.
The most arresting aspect of his costume of leather vest and short cape was the hood, which fitted over the wearer’s shaven head. Dawson’s was dark blue-dyed leather with white, slanting lines under narrow eye slits. Only his lips were exposed between similar slits. Two small holes let air into his nostrils. A thicker leather cap was sewn onto the hood and slotted, triangular flaps extended below Dawson’s nape. Small strings dangled where the hood was laced together along the temples.
“Report,” snapped Kirk.
“I must have been given the wrong coordinates, sir,” Dawson began. “On our grid map of the city, according to the bearings I was given, Mr. Spock, or at least his communicator, was in a small square not far from here. We went there, but it was completely deserted. I took a chance and called the transporter room to check the coordinates. Rogers gave me the same coordinates but, sir, Mr. Spock wasn’t there. What should we do now?”
“Send the others out to search for him,” Kirk said. “His hood is green and yellow, isn’t it?”
“Aye, sir,” Dawson replied.
“He should be easy to spot, then. You stay at the inn as liaison. I’m going to the transporter room to see if something is wrong with the locator board. If it’s not malfunctioning, I’ll be down shortly to direct search operations. Kirk out.”
Dawson faded off the main screen. Kirk’s inner worry didn’t show on his face as he rose swiftly from his command chair. He strained to keep his emotional responses bottled up at all times; so, for the benefit of
those around him, he seemed to meet even the most desperate situation with an air of confident composure. That’s why Kirk so enjoyed his occasional hours with Dr. McCoy, when he could unbend and become a mere human.
“Sulu, take the con. I’ll be in Transporter Room One, if you need me. McCoy, come with me.”
When Kirk and McCoy entered the transporter room, it seemed empty. The circular transporter stage with its six personnel plates was on his left. The main control console was to his right and ahead of him. From a door in a niche next to the transporter stage, he heard a familiar Scots’ burr.
“Itcannabe!”
“What can’t, Scotty?” Kirk asked, stepping up to the compartment where much of the transporter’s equipment was.
Scott and Rogers looked up from a partially disassembled electronic module.
“Look,” Scott said, pointing to a junction box. “Someone has tinkered with the locator circuit tuned to Mr. Spock’s communicator in such a way that the readout on the board seems perfectly normal. That shunt, there, and the one right next to it,” he pointed to two tiny connections with his synchronic meter, “give a coordinate readout on the board that looks perfectly normal, but actually the tight beam connection between the ship and the communicator has been cut. It’s a braw piece o’ work. We’d have had nae reason to suspect anything was wrong if Mr. Dawson hadnae checked the coordinates and found nae’an there. But why would anybody want us to think Mr. Spock was in one place when actually he was someplace else?”
“I wonder if…” The transporter officer’s voice trailed off and he shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense, either.”
“What?” Kirk demanded.
“Yeoman Jenkins was on duty here the night before last. He mentioned that Mr. Spock came in about oh-two-hundred, and sent him to check something in the Jeffries tube—the tight beam antenna, that was it. Anyway, when Jenkins came back, about a half-hour later, he found Mr. Spock gone. It seemed strange to him that Mr. Spock would leave the station unmanned, even though no one was down at Kyros at the time. He was bothered by it and by Mr. Spock’s manner. He said there was something almost furtive about it.” Rogers fell silent.
“Well, whatever his problem is, we’ve got to get him up here at once,” Kirk said. “But before we can do that, we have to find out where he is. Scotty, how long before you can straighten out the locator circuit and get Spock’s coordinates?”
For an answer, Scott put down the synchronic meter, removed a small disassembler from a repair kit, and removed the shunt.
“Ready now, sir,” he said. “We’ll snap this module back in the locator board an’ have the answer in a second.” He picked up the component gently, carried it to the transporter room console, crawled underneath the console, and replaced the unit. He replaced the inspection plate, came out from under, pressed a button for a circuit tester and nodded in satisfaction as green lights appeared.
“Now we’ll find him,” Scott said. He checked a display for the communicator frequency assigned to Spock. “If it were anyone else but our Vulcan friend, I’d guess he had a lassie down there and didna want us to ken where he was, during his more loving moments. It must be sair hard to mate once every seven years. Whatever his reasons were for his tinkering, if it was he, they weren’t the usual ones.”
“The coordinates, if you please, Mr. Scott,” Kirk demanded impatiently.
“Coming up, sir,” Scott said. He pressed a button.
The locator board remained black.
“I thought you had the circuit straightened out!” Kirk said.
Scott swore softly and his fingers punched button after button. The green lights continued to come on. Finally, the engineer threw up his hands in baffled discouragement.
“Well, Scotty?” Kirk asked.
“It’s no good, sir. The circuits are all right, but Mr. Spock has vanished!”
CHAPTER THREE
“That tears it,” Scott murmured. “You can see for yourself, sir, Mr. Spock is gone. Where, I dinna ken, but gone he is.”
“At the least, the locator circuit on his “communicator isn’t responding to our signal,” Kirk said. He thought for a moment. “I wonder if that radiation front could be interfering with our locating frequencies?”
“I’ll check,” Scott said. “We’ll see if Dawson’s communicator is responding.” He fed its frequency into the locator and pressed a button. Instantly, a series of bright green numerals appeared on the screen set in the face of the console.
“We’re getting through, at least,” Kirk said. “Check those against Dawson’s location.”
Scott nodded and bent over the console. A second later, a map of the city of Andros appeared on the viewing screen, a grid superimposed on it. When Dawson’s coordinates were compared against where the board said he was, a bright blip appeared in the exact center of a circled location.
“They check, sir,” Scott said. “That readout shows that Dawson is at the inn, and that’s where he’s supposed to be.”
Kirk took a long moment before replying. When he did, he spoke carefully. “Since the locator is working properly, Spock is either dead, unconscious, or he’s tampered with the communicator’s locator circuit. Considering the tinkering that was done up here, it seems likely he’s modified his communicator. But… why?”
“Now, Captain,” Scott said. “We’re not sure he altered the board. And what’s mair, it’s humanly impossible for a communicator to be tampered with, with what Mr. Spock has available to him down there.”
“He could have done it up here,” McCoy said.
“But, Doctor, a man’s communicator is his only link with the ship when he’s planet-side. It’d be crazy to disable the locator circuit.”
“Spock isn’t human,” Kirk observed dryly. “He can do almost anything he wants to and, in this case, it seems as though he doesn’t want us to find him.” He turned to McCoy. “Bones, why? That’s your department. Do you have any idea why Spock wouldn’t want his location known?”
“It might 4iave something to do with his not beaming up with the rest last night,” McCoy answered. “And then again, it might not. I should give up trying to figure out what makes Spock tick, I’ve tried long enough. He’s always taken care to keep the human side he inherited from his mother suppressed. It’s true that he always acts logically, but it’s usually such an alien logic that much of the time I don’t understand why he does what he does—unless he cares to explain, that is. When he does, his actions always make perfect sense. When he doesn’t, the man’s an enigma. Maybe that’s what makes him so attractive to women. They find him ‘fascinating,’ ” McCoy finished.
“Could his implant have anything to do with this?”
McCoy shook his head. “I don’t see how. When Spock came to sickbay to get his implant, Ensign George and I checked the profiles carefully and picked the one with the lowest emotional quotient. Even though he knew some of his dop’s emotion would come through the link, Spock said it was no problem.”
“Couldn’t you have altered the device to screen out all emotional input?” Kirk asked.
“Sure,” McCoy replied, “but then we would have defeated one of the most important purposes for using it, perfect mimicry of native behavior. Vulcans always react logically to events. With humans and Kyrosians, there’s an inevitable emotional component. Eliminate that, and you’ll start to call attention to yourself as someone odd and different—which is the last thing we want to happen to a survey party member who’s trying to pass as a native!”
McCoy went on, “Speck’s dop is a very proper, very respectable, and very unemotional merchant who owns a small pottery shop. There’s absolutely nothing in his profile to explain Spock’s present behavior. I picked it myself and Sara fed it in.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to assume that we have a normal Spock who has some good reason for getting himself lost,” Kirk said. “But when he returns, he’d better have a very logical explanation for his behavior. We can’t wait
around here indefinitely. At the rate that radiation is peaking, I’ve got to get the Enterprise out of here before too long. I won’t endanger this ship because of some private whim of my first officer.”
Kirk paced the floor of the transporter room. “He knows something has happened to make us send out an emergency recall.” He paused suddenly. “Or does he? Bones, what if the tingler doesn’t work on a Vulcan? If he never received our message, he’d have no way of knowing that he’d have to cut short whatever he’s up to. He’d never disobey a direct order, no matter how important his project was.”
“It’s as you said before, Jim,” McCoy said grimly. “If he’s dead… but if he’s alive, he got the signal. There may be a lot of anatomical differences between humans and Vulcans—Spock’s heart being where his liver ought to be, among others—but a nerve is a nerve to both of us.”
“He could be a prisoner…” Scott said.
“We’ve got to know for sure,” Kirk said. “Scotty, is there anyway you could lock onto Spock’s tricorder? He took it with him.”
“Negative, sir,” replied the engineering officer. “A tricorder is too well shielded. There’s nae enou’ energy leakage to get a fix.”
“There has to be a way…” Kirk muttered, clenching his fists and resuming his anxious pacing of the transporter room.
As if on cue, the communicator on the transporter console bleeped, signaling a call from the survey party. Scott reached toward the board, but Kirk, who was a bit closer, jabbed down a finger.
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