by James Blish
"Hitler and Nazism won the war?"
"Yes. Because this lets them develop the fission bomb first. Let me rerun it, Captain. You will see that there is no mistake. And Edith Keeler was the guiding spirit of the peace movement."
"But," Kirk said, "she was right. Clearly, peace would have been . . ."
"She was right," Spock said, "but at the wrong moment. With the atomic bomb, and their primitive rockets to carry it, the Nazis captured the world, Captain. And after that, barbarism. The Nazi yoke was so heavy that the world tore itself apart trying to throw it off. Spaceflight never did develop."
"No," said Kirk, softly, in pain.
"And all that," Spock said implacably, "because McCoy came back and somehow kept her from dying as she should have, in a street accident. We have to stop him,"
"Exactly how did she die? What day?"
"I can't be that precise," Spock said. "I am sorry, Captain."
"Mister Spock," Kirk said slowly, "I believe I am in love with Edith Keeler."
"I know," Spock said, very quietly indeed. "That is why I said, 'I'm sorry.' "
"And if I don't stop McCoy . . .?"
"Then, you save her. And millions will die who did not die in what would have been our history."
"Abstract millions," Kirk said. "A different history. But Edith Keeler is here. She's real. She deserves to live."
"And so do Scott, Uhura, the others we left behind—or ahead. Sir, you are their Captain. They are waiting for you, in the ruined city on the edge of Forever. They, and the future that nurtured you. The choice is yours."
It had to be faced; but he could not face it—not yet. There would be time to decide when the crisis came. Of course.
In the meantime, there was still Edith . . . still. Spock said no more about the matter. He was with the two of them sometimes, somehow silently supportive. At others, guided perhaps by his peculiar form of semitelepathy, he vanished at just the appropriate moment.
This time, they emerged together from the mission, but separated almost at once. Spock started away from the twilight street, while Edith and Kirk crossed to the opposite sidewalk. Edith seemed even happier than usual.
"If we hurry," she said, "we can catch that Clark Gable movie at the Orpheum. I'd really love to see it, Jim."
Kirk smiled. "A what kind of movie?"
"That's funny," she said, looking up as if startled. "Dr. McCoy said almost the same . . ."
Kirk stopped dead in his tracks and whirled to face her, his heart suddenly racing.
"McCoy?" He took her by the shoulders, his fingers tightening until she winced. "Leonard McCoy? Edith, this is important."
"Why, yes. He's in the mission, in a little room upstairs. He's been very sick, almost raving, but I think he's nearly . . ."
"Spock!" Kirk shouted. "Edith—wait here for me."
He ran across the street, waving at the first officer. Spock turned back, his whole face a question; but he did not need to ask it. As the two men met in front of the mission door, McCoy came out of it.
The surgeon stopped dead in surprise, and then a grin split his face. There was a great deal of hand shaking and back thumping, with all three of them talking at once.
"Bones, where have you . . ."
"How'd you find me? And for that matter, where are we?"
"When Edith said 'Dr. McCoy' I . . ."
"Remarkable that you should have been that close to us . . ."
"I seem to have been sick for a long time . . ."
Kirk looked quickly back toward Edith. Her expression was mostly one of intense curiosity; but she also looked as though she felt a little left out of it all. As she saw him turn to her, she stepped out into the street.
She did not see the moving van lumbering down on her. This was the time. Without a moment's thought, Kirk ran toward her.
"Captain!" Spock's voice shouted. "No!"
Kirk froze, his body a solid mass of anguish. At the same time, McCoy's mouth opened in a wordless yell and he lunged for the curb. With a terrible flash of self-hatred, Kirk, knowing what must come next, threw himself in McCoy's way, blindly, almost sobbing. McCoy stumbled. Edith cried out, and then there was the screaming shriek of brakes.
Then, silence.
"Jim," McCoy said raggedly. "You deliberately stopped me . . . Did you hear me? Do you know what you just did?"
Kirk could not reply. Spock took his arm gently. "He knows," he said. "Soon you will know, too. And what was . . . now is again."
Kirk sat at his desk in the Enterprise, back in uniform, staring at nothing. Behind him, Spock's voice said:
"Coordinates from the bridge, Captain."
The words meant nothing. The papers before him meant nothing. It was as though he were all but dead.
"Jim," Spock said.
The deadness did not lift, but a small thread of startlement crept through it. Kirk turned slowly.
"Mr. Spock," he said. "That's the first time you've ever called me anything but Captain."
"I had to reach you," Spock said gently. "But never mind the coordinates. Jim, on my world, the nights are very long. In the morning, there is the sound of silver birds against the sky. My people know there is always time enough for everything. You'll come with me for a rest. You'll feel comfortable there."
"All the time in the world . . ."
"And filled with tomorrows."
Suddenly, the bitterness welled up. "Not for her," Kirk said. "For us, but not for her. She was negligible."
"No, Captain, she was not. Her death saved uncountable billions of people. Both the living and the yet unborn. Far from negligible."
"And I failed her," Kirk said, groping for understanding. "I didn't save her. And I loved her."
"No. You acted," Spock said. "No woman was ever loved as much, Jim. Because no other woman was almost offered the universe for love."
SPACE SEED
(Carey Wilber and Gene L. Coon)
* * *
It was only sheer luck that Maria McGivers was on the bridge when the SOS came in. Officially, Lieutenant McGivers was a controls systems specialist, but on the side, she was also a historian. Probably nobody else on board the Enterprise would have recognized Morse code at all, since it had gone out of use around the year 2000, in the general chaos following the Eugenics Wars; but she was a student of the period (though, Kirk thought, she looked a good deal more like a ballerina).
The SOS, when answered, changed promptly to the Morse for SS Botany Bay, and stayed there as if stuck regardless of further hails. Homing on the message, the Enterprise eventually found herself drawing alongside a dark hull of a ship of the CZ-100 class. The library computer said the last one of those had been built around 1994. Clearly a derelict, its signal left on automatic.
Except that the Enterprise's sensors showed other equipment also still operating, over there across the vacuum between the two vessels. Other equipment—and heartbeats. They were very faint, but they seemed to be coming from some eighty or ninety sources. None were faster than four beats per minute. There were no signs of respiration.
"Aliens?" Kirk asked McCoy.
The surgeon shrugged. "You've got me, Jim. Even aliens have to breathe. Besides, the ship's name is in English."
"The English," Kirk said drily, "were notorious for not breathing, I suppose. Mr. Spock, can you trace the registry?"
"Nothing in the computer, Captain."
"Lieutenant McGivers, what can you tell us about the period when that ship was built?"
"Not as much as I'd like," Marla McGivers said. "The Eugenics Wars were caused by a group of ambitious scientists—of all nationalities—who were trying to improve the race by selective breeding. They were pretty ruthless about it, and before their identity was guessed, half the countries on Earth were accusing each other of being responsible for the plague of sports and monsters that was cropping up. The result was the last World War, and in the process, a lot of records were lost. I'm surprised that any ship from that era e
ver got off the ground."
"Well, we'd better go across and look it over," Kirk said. "Since you're a specialist in the period, you'd better be in the party. Scotty, I'll want you to inspect the machinery and see what's salvageable, if anything. Bones, you too."
"Why am I always included in these things?" McCoy complained. "I signed aboard to practice medicine, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by a transporter."
"You're included because we hear heartbeats, and that is your department. Let's go."
It was almost dark inside the Botany Bay. Where the boarding party materialized, there was little to see but a long corridor, flanked on each side by row upon row of coffin-like drawers or canisters, each about two meters square on end, thrust into the wall. Each had a small green light blinking over it, producing eerie, confusing reflections. Kirk eyed them.
"Mr. Scott?"
"I don't make anything of it yet, sir. They look a little like food lockers—but why so many? Ah, there's a control panel."
"I've seen something like them," Marla said. "Or rather, drawings of them. They look like a twentieth-century life-support system."
McCoy applied his tricorder to the nearest cabinet. At the same moment, Scott said, "Ah, here we are!" and lights came on overhead. McCoy grunted with interest.
"Look here, Jim," he said. "A new reading. The lights seem to have triggered something inside."
Kirk did not have to look at the tricorder reading to see that. There was now a clear hum from the cabinet, and the little light had turned from green to red.
"I've got it!" Marla said suddenly. "It's a sleeper ship!"
This meant nothing to Kirk, but McCoy said: "Suspended animation?"
"Yes. They were necessary for long space trips until about the year 2018. They didn't have the warp drive until then, so even interplanetary travel took them years. We'll find crewmen in there, or passengers, sleeping, waiting for the end of their journey . . ."
"Or more likely, all dead," McCoy said. "On the other hand, those heartbeats . . . Is it possible, after all these centuries?"
Scott joined them, and in a moment had discovered that the front of the cabinet was actually a protective shield. Pulling this away, he revealed a transparent observation panel. On the other side, bathed in a gentle violet glow, was a motionless, naked man. He was extremely handsome, and magnificently built. His face reflected the sun-ripened Aryan blood of the northern Indian Sikhs, with just an additional suggestion of the oriental. Even in repose, his features suggested strength, intelligence, even arrogance.
"How beautiful," Marla said, as if to herself.
"This cabinet is wired to be triggered first," Scott said practically. "Maybe that means he's the leader."
"Or only a pilot," Spock added. "Or a doctor, to supervise the revival of the others."
"He's the leader," Marla said positively.
"Oh?" Kirk said. "What makes you think so?"
"Well . . . you can see it. A Sikh type. They were fantastic warriors."
"He is reviving," McCoy said. "Heartbeat up to fifty-two already, and definite breathing."
"Scotty, see if they're all like that."
The engineer went down the line, pulling off the shields and peering into each canister. "No sir," he said finally. "A mixed bag, Captain. Western, Mid-European, Near-Eastern, Latin, Oriental—the works. And all their lights are still green, as you can see yourself."
"A man from the twentieth century," Marla said, as if hypnotized. "Coming alive now. It's incredible!"
"It's about to be impossible," McCoy said, checking the tricorder again. "His heartbeat's beginning to drop back down. If you want to talk to this living fossil, Jim, I suggest we get him over to my sick bay right away quick."
"Oh no!" Marla said.
McCoy shot her a sidelong look, but he said, "I quite agree. A patient well worth fighting for. And think of the history locked up in that head!"
"Never mind the history," Kirk said. "It's a human life. Beam him over."
While McCoy worked on the sleeping man, Kirk took time out to collect more information from his officers.
"As near as I can work out their heading," said Spinelli, who had relieved Sulu at the helm, "they must have been trying for the Tau Ceti system."
"Makes sense. It's near Sol, and there are three habitable planets."
"Yes sir, but they would never have gotten there. Their port control jets took meteor damage, and the hits put them off course, too."
"Scotty, any log books or records?"
"Negative, Captain. They must have been in suspended animation when the ship took off."
"Ship's equipment?"
"Colonization gear mainly," the engineer said. "But quite heavy on armaments. I suppose that's typical of their era. Twelve of the life support systems malfunctioned, leaving seventy-two still operating. About a dozen of those are women."
"Seventy-two alive," Kirk said reflectively. "Any conclusions, Mr. Spock?"
"Very few, Captain. The CZ-100 class vessel was built for interplanetary travel only—not interstellar."
"They tried it."
"Granted," said the first officer. "But why?"
"Possibly because life on Earth had become so unbearable during the wars."
"Captain, consider the expense, just to begin with. Healthy, well-oriented young humans would think of some less costly way of surviving—or of committing suicide. It was ten thousand to one against their making it to Tau Ceti, and they must have known it. And another thing: Why no record of the attempt? Granted that the records are incomplete, but a maiden star voyage—the name Botany Bay should have been recorded a thousand times; one mention, at least, should have survived. But there is nothing."
"Botany Bay. Hmm. Lieutenant McGivers tells me that was a penal colony on the shores of Australia. Is that of some significance?"
"Are you suggesting a deportation vessel?" Spock said. "Again, logically insufficient. Your Earth was on the edge of another Dark Ages. Whole populations were being bombed out of existence. A group of criminals could have been eliminated in a far less expensive way than firing them off in what was the most advanced spaceship of its time."
"So much for my theory. I'm still waiting for yours."
"I do not have the facts, Captain. William of Occam said that one must not multiply guesses without sufficient reasons. I suggest that we take the Botany Bay to the nearest Star Base for a thorough study."
Kirk thought about it. "All right. Rig tractors for towing. In the meantime, I'm going to look at the patient."
In the sick bay, the man out of time was still unconscious, but now breathing regularly. Marla McGivers was standing to one side, watching.
"How is he, Bones?"
"By all rights he should be dead," McCoy said shortly.
"False modesty?"
"By no means. I'm good, but not that good. His heart stopped three times. When I got it going the third time,, he woke up for a moment, smiled at me, and said 'How long?' I guessed a couple of centuries. He smiled again, fell asleep, and damned if his heart didn't stop a fourth time, and start up again of its own accord. There's something inside this man that refuses to accept death."
"He must have the constitution of an ox."
"That is not just a metaphor," McCoy said, pointing to the body function panel. "Look at that. Even in his present shape, his heart valve action has twice the power of yours or mine. Lung efficiency, fifty percent better. And courage! . . . Whoever he is, or whatever, it'll be a pleasure to meet him."
Kirk looked at Marla, and then said quietly to the surgeon, "I can get you agreement on that."
Apparently encouraged by the notice, Marla said, "Will he live?"
"If he gets some rest, he may," McCoy said tartly. "Beat it, both of you. This is a sick bay, not a wardroom."
Grinning, Kirk motioned Marla out and followed her. As she turned down the corridor, however, he said, "Lieutenant."
She stopped and turned.
Kirk went on. "Lieutenant, if I were forced to rate your performance as a member of the boarding party today, I wouldn't give you a very high mark."
"I know, Captain," she said. "I'm sorry."
"That's not enough. At any one time, the safety of this entire vessel can rest upon the performance of a single crewman. The fact that you may find a strange man personally compelling is the worst possible excuse."
"Personally?" she said, flushing. "Captain, my second profession is history. To find a . . . a specimen from the past, alive . . . the sheer delight of anticipating what he might tell me . . ."
"More than that," Kirk said. "Men were much more adventurous then, bolder, more colorful."
She was silent for no more than a heartbeat. Then she said firmly, "Yes, sir, I think they were."
Kirk nodded. "That's better. If I can have honesty, I'll overlook mistakes—at least the first time. Dismissed."
As she left, Kirk turned to find McCoy watching him, smiling. "It's a pity," the surgeon said, "that you wasted your life on command, Jim. You'd have made a fair psychologist."
"Thanks, Bones, but command is better. It covers every other subject."
"Touché—or should I say, checkmate?"
It was only a few hours later that McCoy called Kirk on the bridge. "Captain," he said, "I have a patient with questions—and I don't mind telling you, patients like this could put medicine out of business. Can you come down?"
The big man from the Botany Bay, now dressed in a tunic from the stores of the Enterprise, was still on his bed; but he was indeed awake—vitally awake. Kirk introduced himself.
"Thank you," the man said. "I am told I have slept for two centuries or more, and am on board a real starship—not a makeshift like mine. What is our heading?"
Kirk was both amused and annoyed. "Would you care to give your name first?"
