Star Trek 02

by James Blish

  "Oh, she didn't at first. She was out for my blood. Almost hysterical. Charged into Stone's office calling me a murderer."

  "Why didn't you tell me that before?"

  "Why," Kirk said, "the subject never came up. Is it important?"

  "I don't know," Cogley said thoughtfully. "It's—a false note, that's all. I don't see what use we could put it to now."

  Stone rang the court to order. He had hardly done so when Spock and McCoy materialized squarely in the midst of the room—a hair-raisingly precise piece of transporter work. They moved directly to Kirk and Cogley; the latter stood and Spock whispered to him urgently.

  "Mr. Cogley," Stone said harshly, "what's the meaning of this display?"

  "May it please the court," Mr. Cogley said, "we mean no disrespect, but these officers have unearthed new evidence, and they could conceive of no way to get it to the court in time but by this method."

  "The counsel for the defense," Areel Shaw said, "has already rested his case. Mr. Cogley is well-known for his theatrics . . ."

  "Is saving an innocent man's life a theatric?" He turned to Stone. "Sir, my client has been deprived of one of his most important rights in this trial—the right to be confronted by the witnesses against him. All the witnesses, your honor. And the most devastating witness against my client is not a human being, but an information system—a machine."

  "The excerpt from the computer log has been shown."

  "Your honor, a log excerpt is not the same as the machine that produced it. I ask that this court adjourn and reconvene on board the Enterprise itself."

  "I object, your honor," Areel Shaw said. "He's trying to turn this into a circus."

  "Yes!" Cogley said. "A circus! Do you know what the first circus was, Lieutenant Shaw? An arena, where men met danger face to face, and lived or died. This is indeed a circus. In this arena, Captain Kirk will live or die, for if you take away his command he will be a dead man. But he has not met his danger face to face. He has the right to confront his accuser, and it matters nothing that his accuser is a machine. If you do not grant him that right, you have not only placed us on a level with the machine—you have elevated the machine above us! Unless I am to move for a mistrial, I ask that my motion be granted. But more than that, gentlemen: In the name of humanity fading in the shadow of the machine, I demand it. I demand it!"

  The members of the board put their heads together. At last Stone said: "Granted."

  "Mr. Spock," Cogley said. "How many chess games did you play with the computer during recess?"

  "Five."

  "And the outcome?"

  "I won them all."

  "May that be considered unusual, Mr. Spock, and if so, why?"

  "Because I myself programed the computer to play chess. It knows my game; and as has been observed before, it cannot make an error. Hence, even if I myself never make an error, the best I can hope to achieve against it is a stalemate. I have been able to win against Captain Kirk now and then, but against the computer, never—until now. It therefore follows that someone has adjusted either the chess programing or the memory banks. The latter would be the easier task."

  "I put it to you, Mr. Spock, that even the latter would be beyond the capacity of most men, isn't that so? Well, then, what men, aboard ship, would it not be beyond?"

  "The captain, myself—and the Records Officer."

  "Thank you, you may step down. I now call Captain Kirk. Captain, describe what steps you took to find Officer Finney after the storm."

  "When he did not respond to my call," Kirk said, "I ordered a phase-one search for him. Such a search assumes that its object is injured and unable to respond to the search party."

  "It also presupposes that the man wishes to be found?"

  "Of course, Sam."

  "Quite. Now, with the court's permission, although Mr. Spock is now in charge of this ship, I am going to ask Captain Kirk to describe what Mr. Spock has done, to save time, which you will see in a moment is a vital consideration. May I proceed?"

  "Well . . . All right."

  "Captain?"

  "Mr. Spock has ordered everybody but the members of this court and the command crew to leave the ship. This includes the engine crew. Our impulse engines have been shut down and we are maintaining an orbit by momentum alone."

  "And when the orbit begins to decay?" Stone said.

  "We hope to be finished before that," Cogley said. "But that is the vital time element I mentioned. Captain, is there any other step Mr. Spock has taken?"

  "Yes, he has rigged an auditory sensor to the log computer. In effect, it will now be able to hear—as will we—every sound occurring on this ship."

  "Thank you. Dr. McCoy to the stand, please. Doctor, I see you have a small device with you. What is it, please?"

  "It is a white-noise generator."

  "I see. All right, Mr. Spock."

  At the console, Spock turned a switch. The bridge at once shuddered to an intermittent pounding, like many drums being beaten.

  "Could you reduce the volume a little?" Cogley said. "Thank you. Your honor, that sound is caused by the heartbeats of all the people in this room. With your permission, I am going to ask Dr. McCoy to take each person's pulse, and then use the white-noise device to mask those pulse beats out, so they will be eliminated from the noise we are hearing."

  "What is the purpose of this rigmarole, your honor?" Areel Shaw demanded.

  "I think you suspect that as well as I do, Lieutenant," Stone said. "Proceed, Dr. McCoy."

  As Bones moved from person to person, the eerie multiple thumping became simpler, softer.

  "That's all," McCoy said.

  No one breathed. Faintly, somewhere, one beat still sounded.

  "May it please the court," Cogley said quietly, "the remaining pulse you hear, I think we will shortly find, is that of Officer Finney. Mr. Spock, can you localize it?"

  "B deck, between sections 18Y and 27D. I have already sealed off that section."

  Kirk hesitated, then came to a decision. "Captain Stone," he said, "this is my problem. I would appreciate it if no one would leave the bridge."

  As he turned to leave, Spock handed him a phaser. "The weapons room is within those quadrants, sir," he said quietly. "He may be armed. This is already set on stun."

  "Thank you, Mr. Spock."

  He moved cautiously down the corridor in the sealed section, calling at intervals:

  "All right, Ben. It's all over. Ben! Officer Finney!"

  For a while there was no answer. Then, suddenly, a figure stepped out of a shadow, phaser leveled.

  "Hello, Captain," Officer Finney said.

  Kirk found that he could not answer. Though he had been sure that this was the solution, the emotional impact of actually being face to face with the "dead" man was unexpectedly powerful. Finney smiled a hard smile.

  "Nothing to say, Captain?"

  "Yes," Kirk said. "I'm glad to see you alive."

  "You mean you're relieved because your precious career is saved. Well, you're wrong. You've just made things worse for everyone."

  "Put the phaser down, Ben. Why go on with it?"

  "You wouldn't leave it alone," Finney said. "You've taken away my choices. Officers and gentlemen, commanders all . . . except for Finney and his one mistake.

  A long time ago, but they don't forget. No, they never forget."

  "Ben, I logged that mistake of yours. Blame me, not them."

  "But they're to blame," Finney said. "All of them. I was a good officer. I really was. I loved the service like no man ever did."

  Slowly, Kirk began to move in on him.

  "Stand back, Captain. No more—I warn you—"

  "You're sick, Ben. We can help you—"

  "One more step—"

  Suddenly, Jame's voice cried down the corridor, "Father! Father!"

  Finney's head jerked around. With a quick lunge, Kirk knocked the phaser from his hand. At the same moment, Jame appeared, rushing straight into the distrau
ght man's arms.

  "Jame!"

  "It's all right, father," she said, moving her hand over the tortured officer's brow. "It's all right."

  "Don't, Jame," he said. "You've got to understand. I had to do it . . . after what they did to me . . ."

  "Excuse me," Kirk said. "But if we don't get this ship back under power, we'll all be dead."

  "Mr. Cogley," Stone said, "while this trial is obviously not over yet, I think we must congratulate you and Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy for a truly classical piece of detective work. Would you tell us, please, how the idea that Officer Finney was still alive even entered your head?"

  "I began to suspect that, your honor, when Captain Kirk told me about the change of heart Officer Finney's daughter had had about the captain. If she knew he wasn't dead, she had no reason to blame the Captain for anything."

  "But how could she know that?" Stone asked.

  "She had been reading her father's papers. Perhaps she didn't know the facts, but the general tone of what he had written must have gotten through to her. A man suffering delusions of persecution wants to set down his com plaints. She read them; she knew from childhood the kind of man the captain is; and she's fundamentally fair and decent."

  He paused and looked soberly over toward Kirk.

  "Or maybe," he said, "it was just instinct. Thank God, there's that much of the animal left in us. Whatever it was, the result is that she now has back both her father and her childhood friend."

  "Her father," Stone said, "will also have to stand trial."

  "I know that," Cogley said quietly. "I ask the court to appoint me his defense counsel. And off the record, your honor, I have the feeling I'll win."

  "Off the record," Stone said, "I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

  OPERATION—ANNIHILATE!

  (Steven W. Carabatsos)

  * * *

  The spread of the insanity was slow, and apparently patternless, but it was also quite inexorable. The first modern instance in the record was Aldebaran Magnus Five. Then, Cygni Theta 12. Most recently, Ingraham B—recently enough so that the Enterprise had been able to get there within a year of the disaster.

  Nothing had been learned from the mission. There were no apparent connections among the three planets—except that on each one, the colonists had gone totally, irrevocably mad, all at the same time, and had killed each other. It hadn't been warfare; the people had simply fallen upon each other in the streets, in their homes, everywhere, until there were none left.

  It was Spock who had suggested that there would nevertheless be a pattern, if one assumed that the long-dead civilizations of the Orion complex had fallen to the same cause. The archeological evidence was ambiguous, and besides, the peoples of the cluster had not been human. There was no a priori reason why they should have been subject to the afflictions of human beings.

  Nevertheless, given the assumption, the computer was able to plot a definite localization and rate of spread—like an amoeboid blotch upon the stars, thrusting out a pseudopod to another world at gradually shortening intervals. If the radioactive dating of the deaths of the Orion civilizations was correct, as it almost surely was—and if the assumption was correct, which was sheer speculation—then the madness had taken two hundred years to appear on its second victim-world, less than a century to crop up a third time, and the next outbreak was due with—in the next month.

  "On Deneva, I would say," Spock added. "An Earth-type planet, colonized about a century ago. Pleasant climate, no hazardous life-forms. Of course, I could well be completely wrong about this, since my basic premise is completely ad hoc."

  "Never mind the logical holes," Kirk said. "Mr. Sulu, lay in a course for Deneva. Warp factor four. Lieutenant Uhura, tell Starship Command where we're going and why. When we break into the Denevan system, raise the planet."

  But there was no time for that. The first thing the sensors showed when the Enterprise emerged in that system was a Denevan ship apparently on its way toward throwing itself into the Denevan sun.

  "Status!" Kirk said tensely.

  "He's got a huge jump on us, Captain," Sulu said. "A one-man vessel—sublight velocity but under heavy acceleration."

  "Contact, Captain," Uhura said.

  "Denevan ship, this is the USS Enterprise! Break your heading! You're on a collision course with your sun! Fire your retros!"

  From the speaker came a faint and agonized voice. "Help me . . . please . . . help me . . ."

  "We're trying to! Spock, can we reach him with a tractor beam?"

  "No, sir," Spock said. "Too much solar magnetism."

  "Sulu, intercept. Denevan, pull back! Fire your retros!"

  "Help me, please . . . take it out . . . take it out . . . please . . ."

  "Skin temperature four hundred degrees," Spock said. "Rising fast."

  "He's too close, Captain," Sulu said. "He'll burn—and so will we if we keep this up."

  "Keep closing."

  "Skin temperature now eight hundred degrees," Spock said.

  Suddenly the Denevan's voice came through again, much stronger, and much changed. It seemed almost jubilant. "I did it! It's gone! I'm free. I'm free! I won—oh great God, the sun, the sun . . ."

  The words ended in a terrible scream.

  "He's gone, Captain," Sulu reported.

  "Vector!" Kirk shouted. Then, as the great ship shuddered into its emergency turn, he stared blindly at the now-silent speaker.

  "What did he do that for?" he said. "Even if his instruments weren't working, we warned him."

  "Obviously suicide," Spock said.

  "But why? And Spock, I don't think he wanted to die. You heard him. He asked us to help him."

  "Suicides are not rational," Spock said. "By definition."

  "Mr. Spock, that may be perfectly good logic, but I'm afraid it doesn't satisfy me. And I hate puzzles. They don't look good on the log."

  "Captain," Uhura said. "I've gotten through to Deneva itself."

  "Good, let's hear it. Hello, Deneva, USS Enterprise calling."

  "Enterprise, please hurry!" a strong voice cried promptly. There was a blast of static. "Help us! I don't have much time! They'll know!"

  "Another madman?" Kirk said to nobody in particular. "Lieutenant, can't you clean up some of that static?"

  "It's solar static, sir. Should clear gradually as we pull away."

  "Hello, Deneva, Enterprise here. Please repeat."

  "Hurry! Hurry! They'll know in a minute! We need help!"

  There was more static. Kirk said: "We're on our way, Deneva. What's wrong? Please explain."

  But there was no answer, only still more static. Uhura turned in her chair. "Contact broken, Captain. I'm trying to reestablish, but I think they've switched out."

  "All right, Sulu. Course for Deneva—on the double."

  The landing party—Kirk, Spock, McCoy, two security guards, and Yeoman Zahara—materialized in an empty city street. There were supposed to be more than a million colonists and their descendants on this planet, nearly a hundred thousand in this city alone; yet the place looked deserted.

  "Where is everybody?" Kirk said.

  Spock scanned in a circle with his tricorder. "They are here. But they are all indoors. Apparently just sitting there. There is a signal center in that building across the street. It is inoperative, but the power is up."

  "All right, let's . . ."

  "Party approaching," Spock interrupted. "Four people—make it five. Coming fast."

  He had hardly spoken when five men came around the corner at top speed. They seemed to be ordinary civilians, but Kirk had the instant impression that their faces were warped with agony. All carried clubs. The instant they saw the group from the Enterprise, they burst into a bestial shrieking. It was impossible to tell which of them was screaming what.

  "Run! Get away! We don't want to hurt you! Go back! Look out!"

  "Fire to stun!" Kirk shouted. The Denevans charged, swinging their clubs.

  "Go away! Plea
se! They'll get you! No! Get away from here! We'll have to kill you . . ."

  Kirk fired, followed by the others. The charging Denevans fell in a clatter of clubs. Kirk approached them cautiously. Despite the fact that they had just taken the heavy stun force of a phaser blast at close range, they seemed to be twitching slightly.

  "Could you make out all that shouting, Mr. Spock?"

  "Indeed. They seemed greatly concerned for our safety—so concerned that they wanted to brain, us. This may not be the insanity, but . . ."

  "But it'll do for now," Kirk said. "Bones, check them over."

  McCoy checked the unconscious bodies quickly, then rose, shaking his head puzzledly. "Something decidedly odd," he said. "These people should be pretty close to being vegetables for the next few hours. But I'm getting high readings, as though their nervous systems were being violently stimulated even while they're . . ."

  He was interrupted by a woman's scream. Kirk whirled. "Fan out!" he said. "That came from that signal center. Come on!"

  The scream came again. Inside the building there was a dark lobby of some sort, and a closed door, which turned out to be locked. Kirk lunged against it.

  "Open up!" he shouted. "We're from the Enterprise."

  "They're here!" the woman screamed. "They're here! Keep them away!" Over her voice there was a heavy buzzing sound, which seemed to be rising in pitch.

  Kirk and the two guards hit the door together. It burst inward. Here was the signal center, all right, but it looked shoddy, unused. An elderly man lay unconscious on the floor; across the room, a girl was desperately holding a panel of some sort over a ventilation outlet, fighting with all her strength. As the party broke in she staggered backward, dropping the panel, covering her face with her hands and sobbing wildly.

  Kirk pointed to the old man while he took the girl in his arms. "It's all right. You're safe."

  She screamed again and began to struggle.

  "Bones, a hypo! I can't hold her."

  McCoy already had his sprayjet out, and a moment later the girl too had collapsed. "The man's alive," he reported. "Some sort of seizure, or maybe just exhaustion. I'd better get them both up to the ship."