"Easy, M'ress," he said soothingly, "I've got you ... grab the board edge there, that's it." M'ress stopped twisting and straightened herself out.
"Thanks Arex, I -" She put a hand to her stomach, held onto the console with the other. Her expression was not pleasant. "I think I'm going ... to be sick."
"Please, Lieutenant," he implored her, backing away hand over hand, "not in free-fall."
Only Scott retained any semblance of normality. With the typical reactions of a chief engineer in a situation involving mechanical failure, he had kept enough presence of mind to secure a firm grip on the arms of the command chair.
Leaving one of his arms locked to the arm of the chair and pinning both legs against the sides, he leaned carefully to one side and reached for an intercom switch. It was a feat anyone could accomplish with lightning thought and equally fast reactions.
"Engineering deck! Gabler, what's the problem back there? We've got zero-gee on the bridge."
Back in Engineering Control, Gabler heard the call over the open 'com. He had no intention of letting go of the port hatch he had managed to reach - not until his stomach and head agreed on up and down, anyway. But his voice should carry to the intercom. He continued floating parallel to the floor as he yelled toward it.
"You're not alone, Chief. According to readouts, and some choice comments received verbally, the whole ship's lost artificial gravity. The trouble seems to be in the grav-computer control, which makes sense; but the bay hatch is jammed and I can't get to it without risking a good bump or two. Be no problem with a little help, but I'm alone back here at the moment. Can you get any visual up there?"
Scott rearranged himself and nudged another lever. A small bridge screen over the engineering station lit up, cleared. It revealed the free-floating engineer clinging tightly to the hatch-cover, as indicated.
"Got you, Frank," he told the other. "What's the trouble? It should turn easily."
"But it doesn't," the second engineer finished. "I could turn it ... if I could get some purchase. I don't think it's jammed that badly. But it's enough to keep me from opening it in zero-gee. I've tried twisting, but I just spin."
"And you could turn it without spinning if we had artificial grav, which we could have if you could get into the computer bay, but you can't because..." He sighed. "Hang on, Frank, I'm going to make a few checks of my own."
Scott let go of the chair and pushed himself toward the engineering board. Carefully gauging energy and momentum, he drifted smoothly toward it, like a coasting diver. On the screen, Gabler continued to struggle with the hatch.
IV
Sulu sounded anxious as he checked his chronometer and reported to the others.
"It's been almost five minutes, Captain."
"I know, Mr. Sulu. Something had better happen soon."
"What if the computer has disconnected any medical apparatus?" the navigator persisted.
"Well then, we're out ten ccs of corpelomine, aren't we?" Kirk shot back.
The three crewmen crouched inside the cave, each keeping to his respective shadow and staring down the narrow path that led out of the canyon. The inert form of Spock lay where he had slumped to the ground, in plain sight.
If it didn't work, Kirk told himself, there was no loss - they would simply have to try something else. And it would have only cost them a few drops of a drug Bones could spare.
Of course, if the pterodactyls came back now, while Spock was still unconscious...
"They should have reacted by now, if they still exist," McCoy muttered nervously. "Maybe the computer smells a trick." Kirk noticed that the doctor, too, was throwing occasional uneasy glances skyward.
"Wait just a bit longer," Kirk advised.
"The effect will start wearing off any minute now, Jim. Even allowing for slight variances in Spock's hybrid metabolism, it ought to -"
"Shssh!" Sulu waved them to quiet and pointed.
A large, flat boulder near the far end of the canyon was moving. Without a sound it flipped upward, revealing a dark opening in the cliff-face. A small robot hovercraft glided out of what looked like a ramped tunnel and drifted like a metal beetle toward Spock.
The machine appeared both sophisticated and efficient, though it wasn't much bigger than a coffee table. Antennae and flexible limbs sprouted from all sides.
"If that's a mechanical nursemaid," Sulu whispered, "it wasn't designed to reassure its patients."
"I'm not interested in its bedside manner," Kirk said tightly. "Get ready to move. If it's going to take Spock, we'll have to follow him inside that door."
The peculiar automaton paused near the science officer's head. It seemed to study the limp form, hovering quietly above. Then it made a slow circuit of the body. There were no pupiled eyes, only a ring of lenses circling the body around its front. They would have to be careful if they succeeded in trailing it - it's peripheral vision would be considerable.
The lenticular glass didn't dip, but the device's actions were revealing enough. Anyone watching would know immediately that it was examining the still form of the Vulcan - and perhaps even diagnosing. Abruptly it reached a mechanical decision. Six metallic arms telescoped outward from its lower sides. They slipped under Spock with what looked to be astonishing gentleness and lifted him over the flat body. Making a complete pivot in the air, the craft started back for its trap door.
Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu were already moving cautiously after it. As soon as the retreating robot started to disappear inside the mountain, the three officers broke into a run. Unfortunately, Sulu, the fastest of the little group, stumbled over a loose rock right at the cave entrance and went sprawling. Kirk and McCoy kept their footing, but the doctor was no athlete and soon had trouble keeping up with Kirk.
Spock stirred slightly, held firmly in the grasp of six metal limbs. He blinked, opened his eyes a tiny crack. As soon as the dim light revealed that the ploy had been successful, he shut them tight and did his best to imitate a corpse. Keeping them open would have been useless, anyway. They were moving into rapidly deepening darkness.
Well behind him now, the stone trapdoor started to close. Silent when opening, it now squeaked noticeably - either from long disuse or little lubrication. Regaining his feet, Sulu had already caught and passed McCoy, but he was still well behind Kirk.
The trap was more than halfway down and closing faster. Kirk saw he wouldn't make it standing up. Gritting his teeth and trying to pretend he was back on the Academy rugby team, he took a leap, dove, and slid roughly into the shrinking gap just seconds before it slammed shut.
Sulu skidded to a stop right behind him. The navigation officer tried to get his fingers under the edge of the fast-closing stone. His grip was slight and showed no sign of slowing the rock door down. Deciding he might want to use his fingers later on, he let go as the rock closed the last few centimeters. Then it was flush with the cliffside. Even though he knew where it was, he was still hard put to find the seam in the rocks.
McCoy finally arrived, panting heavily and using up what little breath he could catch in short, sharp cursing. Sulu found a thin blade of hard stone and managed to insert it a little ways into the crack at the base of the door. Together they both put pressure on it. The blade didn't break, but the door didn't budge, either. They might as well have been trying to tip over the mountain.
They had been engaged in this futile pushing for only a few minutes when it suddenly grew dark. Something was eclipsing the sun - something huge, moving, and very uncloudlike. Both men turned together.
Two nightmare skulls stared down at them, both joined to the same torso. The dragon breathed short bursts of bright orange flame from both jaws. It roared, a most impressive, full-throated bellow that echoed down the canyon. And somehow it had gotten into the arroyo between them and the sheltering cave.
Sulu was shaking his head. "Not in my wildest dreams would I think of something like that." McCoy was tugging on his sleeve and trying to pull Sulu with him toward the canyon
exit.
"Aren't dragons oriental, anyway?"
"Since when?" Sulu objected, backing up slowly, eyes fixed on the lumbering reptilian bandersnatch in front of them. "That's an occidental dragon if I ever saw one."
At that point a blast of fire from two black gullets seared the ground in front of them, and further speculation upon unknown cerebral origins of same was cut short. They turned and ran.
The monster stumbled in the harrow defile, righted itself, and stumbled again. Either the computer had never actually produced this type of dragon before, or else it wasn't adept at handling such size in a narrow place. It was improving its control rapidly, however. The dragon lurched out of the canyon in clumsy pursuit. It was still slow, but it took enormous strides, setting trees and shrubs ablaze with continual blasts of flame.
The dragon should have been able to move even faster, but here the inexperience of the mental force directing it showed. It had made the legs too short and too close together for much speed, perhaps designing it after someone's mental image of a dragon painting. Now if it had been...
Mary had a little lamb, McCoy thought hurriedly to himself, its fleece was white as ... In considering a quotient higher than A = prime, but less than C, we must...
Anyhow, dragons were not naturally rapidly moving creatures. They had nothing to run away from.
Kirk had had a bad moment when the narrow corridor became totally black. A hurried exploration indicated that mere human muscles would never move the door that had closed behind him. If anything, McCoy and Sulu should have even less success from the outside. That meant he was on his own in the black tunnel. He started crawling, found himself starting at tiny, harmless sounds. After all, who knew what intricate, inventive safeguards lurked in this or side tunnels.
Kirk's relief when he encountered the first strips of overhead luminescent paneling was immense. They were set at convenient intervals into the ceiling and provided almost normal light in the corridor. It was a relief for another reason - the presence of the artificial light indicated that the servant machines like Spock's nurse probably worked more by direct sight than by feel or sonar or some inexplicable alien electronic sense.
After a slow jog over what seemed like kilometers of smooth stone floor, he turned a bend in the main tunnel and suddenly found himself in a gigantic flat-roofed cavern. Rank upon rank of flashing, clicking, steadily humming machinery filled the immense chamber with an electronic symphony.
Corridors between the machines seemed endless, like staring down a series of reflecting mirrors back into infinity. He forced himself to look ahead, trying to take in the awesome technology represented here and at the same time not lose sight of Spock and his animated transport. If he lost them in this whirling, endless maze he would never find them again.
Abruptly Kirk halted and flattened himself against the cool metal of what looked like a monstrous information storage bin. There were dozens, hundreds of such bins arranged in double rows behind him. If they were indeed for information storage and their technology was at least standard, then the amount of material available here matched that in the central Federation archives on Terra.
And this was only one section of one room of who knew how many of such.
Up ahead, the little medical hovercraft had stopped beside a complex collection of tubes and tables. Dominating the setup was a flat table over which was suspended a clear plastic dome.
The hovercraft laid Spock gently on the table. Hopefully the machines would do nothing and leave Spock alone, waiting for some more-proper physician-like machine to take over the diagnosis and subsequent treatment.
Such was not the procedure. The robot inserted a limb in a nearby wall. The curved dome began to descend downward.
When it became apparent the dome was not going to stop until Spock was completely sealed in, the science officer suddenly rolled off the table and scrambled to his feet. The machinery might have done nothing - the dome might merely be a means of keeping an injured patient safe and isolated. On the other hand, it might also decide Spock wasn't worth working on and simply incinerate him for convenient disposal. Spock wasn't inclined to wait around to find out.
A red light lit the dome with a crimson glow, and somewhere an aural alarm was also sounding. The nurse robot hummed off in silent pursuit of the fleeing Spock.
A light was also blinking on the great console in front of Uhura, though no howling alarm sounded here. She stared at it in fascination, half hypnotized.
The viewscreen itself still offered a panorama of the surface. Just now it showed Sulu and McCoy dodging behind boulders and trees in their attempts to elude the dragon.
"We have a visitor," the computer voice announced suddenly. There was a brief, crisp ripple of static. The picture on the screen now showed Spock dashing down right-angled arroyos of memory banks and storage consoles.
"Mr. Spock!" She shouted instinctively, uselessly. The view shifted once more, moving now to a close-up of Kirk as he stood warily in a narrow cul-de-sac between two U-shaped blocks of solid metal.
"Spock!" he yelled as the first officer sped into view, "over here!"
"Correction," said the computer, "two visitors." The angle changed again.
Spock almost shot past, but Kirk reached out and half pulled him into the passageway. The nurse hovercraft was right on the science officer's heels.
It slammed to a stop in mid-air, spun, and tried to enter the cul-de-sac. No matter how it twisted and turned, it couldn't slip inside, nor would its telescoping arms extend quite far enough to reach the two men trapped inside. After several minutes of futile probing and flailing, it backed off and glared at them, humming angrily to itself.
Sulu and McCoy were trying to make their way up the side of a rapidly steepening hill. The rock here was mostly shale and gravelly sandstone. Footing was difficult.
A maze of loosely bunched boulders crowned the crest of the rise. Just below them, a scrub bush exploded in flame. This was followed by a throaty howl of easily identifiable origin. They struggled a little harder, though McCoy was badly winded and by now even Sulu was breathing with some difficulty.
"We've got to make those rocks, Doctor," the helmsman gasped, pointing to the nearing labyrinth of boulders. "Our only chance." They might be able to lose themselves in the maze, and the dragon couldn't burn them out. It might even have some real difficulty in following them.
Behind, blatantly ignoring the fact that dragons are not good climbers, their scaly pursuer was clawing its way slowly up the slope. Whatever was fueling its breath seemed to operate from an inexhaustible supply.
Once, Sulu slipped and fell. Only McCoy's desperate, weak grab prevented the helmsman from sliding down the incline into the ambling incinerator behind.
Somehow they made it to the boulders, whose narrow crevices and paths looked even more promising as a means of escape than they had hoped. And if the dragon faltered, the massive rocks also offered shelter from any marauding flying reptiles the computer chose to send against them.
"Made it!" McCoy barely managed to choke out.
"Don't stop now, Dr. McCoy." Now Sulu was supporting him. He glanced backward. "For all we know the dragon might be able to - Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true..."
He'd almost blown it.
Together they stumbled into the convoluted alleyways of worn stone, each man concentrating on thinking nothing thoughts, from abstract mathematics to flavors of ice cream and childish songs - anything but how a dragon might be able to negotiate a way through their new-found haven.
Lieutenant Uhura's thoughts as she witnessed all this on the master console screen were no less frenetic. A second later the picture had once again switched to Kirk and Spock. The hovercraft had been called off, and now the two officers were moving cautiously deeper into the cavern.
She recognized a corner she and her mechanical captor had turned when coming here. There was a chance ... she took two quick steps in its direction and yelled.
"Captain - don't!" One of the hovering robots was immediately at her side. It clamped an ungentle set of metal palms over her mouth.
Fortunately the subjects of her intended warning appeared moments later - fortunately, because the robot had covered both mouth and nose and she was starving for air. It released her and she sucked in deep, grateful breaths.
"Uhura -!" Kirk took a step toward her.
"Welcome, Captain Kirk - Mr. Spock," said the computer. Both men turned to face the console that dominated their small section of cavern.
As they waited, more hovercraft suddenly appeared. They were all similar in shape and size to the medical machine that had carried Spock so gently underground. Nonetheless, Kirk could not help but feel that they had something other than therapeutic intentions toward them.
Spock spared them the briefest of glances. His attention was concentrated on the quietly sparkling curved grid in front of them.
"I presume you are the planetary master computer."
"You are partially correct. I am the central nexus of the master computer itself."
Kirk turned a slow circle, seeing again endless rows of memory banks, unending stretches of storage bins. "This cavern ... it's all one computer?"
"That is correct. But even a center must have a nucleus. I am a nucleus."
"What did you do to the Keeper?"
"I did nothing to the Keeper," came the neutral voice. "He was merely old. He ceased to function by himself, beyond even the skill of my medical components to repair."
So the computer hadn't gone crazy until after all organic supervision, as personified by the Keeper, had vanished. There was an outside chance, then, that its mania might be reversed, cured. He took a firm step forward.
"We have been repeatedly attacked since peacefully landing on this world. Why? And why are we now being held prisoner by a world system noted for its hospitality?" He eyed the patient hovercraft uneasily.
Star Trek Log Three Page 6
