by Carey, Diane
“They could’ve killed us, but they didn’t,” George thought aloud. “Why didn’t they?”
“Small favors. Let’s not remind them, eh? Oooh . . . I feel like a gutted calabash.”
George gazed around their cramped prison, taking in the configuration of the bulkhead structure and colors. “Starfleet vessel . . . but old. And small. Maybe a personal transport of some kind.”
“It’s a Hubble VXT interstellar runabout, actually.”
George blinked and turned to Drake accusatively. “What?”
“Interstellar runabout.”
“How do you know that?”
“It says so right on the wall here. Construction contract number 116-B . . . commissioned January of twenty-one-sixty—”
“All right, all right.”
“Second-generation warp drive—”
“Enough, Drake. On your feet.”
“I have no feet left, George. They’re gone. I tried to find them, but they’re gone.”
Since George had feet, he got up first and moved along the wall to the door panel. “Not very good security,” he said, examining the door. “If it’s meant to lock at all, this kind of hold is meant to keep people out, not keep them in. We should be able to get out . . . if we can find the hydraulics inside the wall, we can sever the lines and just push the doors open.”
“Assuming,” Drake began, “they’re not also magnetically locked. You always assume.”
“And you’re still sitting on your ass. Get up and help.”
“Patience. I’m still several toes short of a set, fellow.”
George tapped the wall. Hollow. Typical low-security interior bulkhead, no heavy mechanics; no reason they shouldn’t be able to get out. “This ship might be too old to have magnetics. I’ll bet on that. Got any tools on you?”
“Brains. Only brains.”
“Are you up yet?”
“Any minute now, I swear.”
“Something to use as a pry bar . . .” George blinked his eyes to clear them one more time and scanned the small hold area. “Here. Here’s the access.” He wedged his fingers into the rim of the small panel and wrenched it off, exposing a hollow area with some circuit boards and interior diagrams stretching down into the wall. “Good. No molecular circuitry. They didn’t need anything fancy. We should be able to do this.” He reached into the wall as far as he could. “Drake, come here. Your hand is smaller than mine. Reach in there and feel around for the lock release.”
Drake took a deep breath and struggled to his feet.
“It’s got to be down to the left,” George told him. “I felt the tip of it. You were always better at circuitry than I was. Come on, hurry up.” He grasped Drake’s arm and pulled him up to the access hole.
“I hear and I do. Stand abreast.” Drake squared his shoulders and kissed the tips of his fingers before they vanished into the hole. “Yes . . . I feel it . . . I think I have it.”
“Be careful,” George warned.
“Oh, yes. Oh, I love success.” Drake drew back his lips and concentrated. Then—
plink
And the artificial gravity turned off.
“Drake!” George howled as they suddenly found themselves floating in place.
“Hmmm,” Drake observed. “That isn’t right.”
“Get away from there before you shut down the life support too!”
“So serious all the time, Geordie,” Drake scolded.
“You could stand a dose of serious—” An involuntary flex of his muscles sent him floating upward. George bumped his head on the light fixture running along the ceiling edge and turned to push away from it, then changed his mind. “Well, as long as I’m up here . . .” He braced his feet on the ceiling, worked his fingers between the lighting plate and the bulkhead, and heaved. The metal groaned and cut into his fingers, but he refused to ease up. His legs shook with the strain. His cheeks flushed with color and his fingers throbbed, but the creaking of the metal plate urged him on.
The creak became a horrid shriek. Bolts popped and flew across the hold. Finally, the plate gave on one side, then the other, and with a great clack it came off in George’s tortured hands. He let out a breath of victory that instantly became a gulp of surprise as he shot across the hold and smashed the back of his head and shoulders into the opposite bulkhead, bounced toward the floor, then floated back toward the ceiling.
“George!” Drake reached out for a passing ankle and pulled until he could get a better grip on George’s arm and belt. “George, are you all right?”
George winced and rubbed his pounding head, becoming disoriented as his legs started to float sideways. “I’ll get you for this. I know it’s your fault.”
“You know, George, you look just like Peter Pan! I never noticed it before. Has your wife ever seen you in zero-G?”
With a testing stretch of his ravaged shoulder muscles, George pulled himself back to the access hole and wedged the corner of the lighting plate into it. “All right. It’s coming off now, whether it likes it or not. Stand aside.” He leaned back, braced his feet against the bulkhead, and put his weight into his work. “One . . . two . . .”
• • •
“Hello, children.”
The bridge crew shared a mutual smile at their captain’s unique greeting. At first his manner had seemed awkward, but now they accepted it for what it was and simply appreciated his infectious charm. This wasn’t their usual assignment ship; that was plain from their unfamiliarity with the design. This was nothing more than a getting-from-here-to-there ship, and this time the “there” was top secret. No one but the captain himself seemed to have any idea of where they were going or why.
The young man on helm turned immediately and said, “We have warp, Captain. Our ETA is thirty-nine minutes.”
“Ah! Good,” the captain responded in his reassuring Coventry chant. “Thank you, Carlos. You always do such a magnificent job.” Clad in a sloppy Irish wool cardigan that hid much of his mustard-gold Starfleet uniform, the captain was a one-man destruction zone for the hackneyed image of the stuffy, passionless Englishman. That was evidenced as he dropped his hand on the helmsman’s shoulder. “Have you had your lunch? This is a good time.”
The helmsman looked up for confirmation and found it in the captain’s offhand nod. “Thanks, sir . . . thank you.”
“Not at all. Off you go.” He waved a hand at the thick-set communications officer and said, “You too, Claw. Off you go. Dr. Poole and I can handle things up here for a short while, I ’magine.”
The two junior officers gratefully left the bridge. On the port side, a woman with dark blond hair folded her arms and said nothing, but merely watched the captain.
He was a gentle-faced man in his early forties, with brown hair sloppily palmed to one side, a slightly hooked nose, and powder-blue eyes pouched with experience. Given to hanging his hands in the pockets of that nonregulation cardigan, he looked out of place on the tight little bridge. She remembered the time she’d pecked at him about the sweater, only to be informed by another officer that the captain suffered a rare blood deficiency that made him slightly chilly most of the time. While any other officer in Starfleet would feel obliged to wear a thermal layer under the uniform, this man simply slipped the sweater on and called it solved. Over several years of service, the sweater, like its master, had acquired a slight sag and a lot of respect, not to mention a professorial image that smothered any hint of his Starfleet accolades—considerable ones.
When the juniors were gone, the captain lounged back in the helm chair instead of his command seat and shifted his gaze to the woman. She was still looking at him as though he needed looking at.
With a deep breath and an easy grin, he said, “Rolf tells me you knocked them out straightaway.”
The woman shrugged. “I didn’t want to have to explain anything to them. I don’t have the answers.”
The captain stuffed his hands into his old knitted friend. “I could give you the detai
ls of the mission—”
She held up a defensive hand. “No, thanks.”
“You’ll have to find out sooner or later, doctor, my dear.”
“No, I don’t. The less I know, the less involved I have to get, and the sooner I can get back to the colony I’ve been assigned to. The one I requested and was granted by the Federation.”
The captain’s thin lips curled in amusement. He tipped his head. “It’s a compliment.”
The woman leaned forward. “It’s an intrusion. I have other work to do in another place.”
“Can’t you see that you must be the most qualified person? You’ll be the first, you know.”
“I’m sure there’ve been doctors on big boats before,” she responded dryly. “I don’t know how you arranged to get my orders changed, but I intend to log a formal protest as soon as we get back.”
He chuckled. “Orders do change, Sarah. And this is an emergency mission, after all.”
“You’re not going to admit it, are you?” she accused.
The captain tossed his head and laughed. “In my experience, it’s wisest never to admit anything to a pretty woman who’s also smart.”
She grimaced, her ivory face made pasty by the poor lighting and given a green cast by the Medical Services smock. Only her eyes, as she narrowed them at him, seemed to have any substance in the unflattering light. She gave her head a shake as though to call attention to what she had once described to him as uneventful hair. “Don’t smooth me, Captain. I’m over thirty. I’ve heard it before.”
“Obviously not sincerely enough.” He lolled back still farther in the wobbly helm chair and watched space stretch by at warp two. “At least I managed to convince the authorities to let me select my own command crew. And there was barely time for that. You’ve known me for a long time. You know I like to have familiar people around me. Perhaps it’s a weakness . . . we’ll see. Well,” he said, giving the ship’s navigation console an affectionate slap, “I’ll explain it in full to you as soon as Kirk gets up here.”
Dr. Poole settled into the science station seat and told him, “He’s not going to get up here. I locked them in the hold.”
“Oh, that won’t make any difference.”
She blinked. “Houdini?”
“Stubborn.”
His rueful nod ushered in a silence that lasted several long, quiet minutes. Through the wide main portal, he watched space peel by at the kind of speed it takes time to get used to. It never ceased to be startling, or beautiful, or even a touch frightening, and none of it was natural. This speed was the accomplishment of inventive minds. Of all the wonders of the natural universe, this wonder belonged to intelligence alone. It was nice for something to be marvelous because it didn’t know any better, but to be marvelous by design . . .
The captain sighed and contemplated the miracles he would see in the next few days. Inside the pockets, his hands clenched with anticipation. His eyes reflected the passage of hope’s foothills.
Then the bridge entry panel shot open and the floor vibrated—and he knew the time for contemplation was over.
“On your feet!”
The captain and the doctor turned and stood up to face the two security men, the russet-haired one armed with a particle cutter from a ship’s emergency kit. Though Dr. Poole froze, the captain swung his arms out wide and greeted, “George! How good to see you! You look strapping. How’re the boys?” He strode to them and gave George a pat on the arm, then turned to Dr. Poole. “I told you they’d be right along.” He gave George a little shake and drawled, “Ingenious fellow.”
George Kirk let his breath out in a gasp and sucked in a new one, staring fiercely at the captain, then the doctor, then the bridge, then the captain again. “R—” He took another breath and tried again. “Robert!”
Behind him, Drake brandished the bent lighting panel they’d used to break out of the hold, still not quite convinced by the captain’s joviality.
The captain rocked on his heels, devilishly pleased with the reunion he’d arranged. “Didn’t think I could be so clandestine, did you?”
“You . . .” George began. “You kidnapped us?”
“Well, there simply wasn’t time—”
“There’d better be time now!”
“Oh yes, plenty. A good eight or ten minutes yet, I’m sure,” the captain said, glancing at the chronometer.
George took a few uncertain steps around the bridge, his head still swimming, and demanded, “Where is everybody? This ship’s practically empty. Where’s the crew?”
“In the mess hall, I suppose, having a good lunch. There are only a few on board. Security reasons, you see.”
George narrowed his eyes. “Security . . . what are you up to?”
“I want you to volunteer for a mission.”
“What mission?”
“I can’t specify.”
“To where?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“For how long?”
The lopsided grin appeared. “Sorry.”
“After I volunteer, then you can tell me?”
“Right.”
“And I’m supposed to just trust you?”
“I’d be so grateful.”
“All right. I volunteer.”
“What about you, Drake?” the captain asked, starting to turn.
George stepped closer and waved a hand. “He volunteers too. Now, what’s all this about?”
The captain’s grin widened and he looked at Sarah. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Sarah shrugged her innocence. “It wasn’t my idea to drug them.”
“Yes, would you care to explain that?” George demanded, glaring at the captain.
“Well, you see, this mission is the top-secret response to an emergency situation, and decisions had to be made quickly. They finally allowed me to choose my own officers, so—”
“Who did?”
“Starfleet Command.”
“You got Starfleet Command to authorize you to knock us out and kidnap us?” George shook his head. “I’d like to see that memo.”
The captain held his hands out wide. “It was the only way they’d agree to it.” Amused by Kirk’s dubious expression, the captain suddenly touched his lips with one finger and said, “Oh, forgive me. I’m being inhospitable.” He gestured gallantly between them and the woman. “May I present Commander George Kirk, and over there is Lieutenant Francis Drake Reed. Gentlemen . . . Dr. Sarah Poole.”
George stared rudely at her, quite aware of the rude part, and once his memory made adjustments for the bridge lighting and the green smock, he recognized her. “We’ve met,” he snapped.
Sarah bobbed her eyebrows. “Don’t look at me like that. He did the same thing to get me here.”
George snapped back at the captain, “You did that to her? And why pull Drake into this?”
The captain shrugged and strode a few steps to the upper bridge for a long look at Drake. “While it would be easier if you’d just drag around a teddy bear or a blanket, I knew you’d want him along.” His hands went back into the pockets, and the captain suddenly looked as though he was hovering in front of a blackboard, waiting to see if his students comprehended a new concept, so innocuous and self-assured that he was almost impossible to dislike. With that tolerant grin, he nodded. “Well, then. This is a good time for explanations. Gather round, children.” He moved to the computer bank and tapped the access. “Computer on,” he said.
“Working.”
“This is Captain Robert April. Request security access, Starfleet Command authorization, graphic tape one.”
The console buzzed to life, and its raspy voice responded, “Authorization accepted. File on screen.”
Above them appeared a series of diagrams and photographs of a familiar colonial transport ship, one of the Seidman-class long-distance movers. Old, but time-proven. It meant nothing at all to anyone except, of course, Captain April. He nodded at the diagrams. “This is the United Federation
Colonizer S.S. Rosenberg. She was off to colonize a newly discovered planet in the space just recently charted by the Federation. Five days ago we received a distress call from the Rosenberg. They don’t, of course, have an advanced sensor system and weren’t able to realize the severity of an ionic storm cluster they encountered until after they were already too deep inside it to stop the damage and reverse course. They’re adrift. No engine power, and heavy radiation leakage in their storage compartments and engineering areas. Most of their foodstuffs have been contaminated. Actually, even if they did have the food, there’s radiation leakage into the inhabited parts of the ship. It’s only a matter of time, and not much time at that. To make a long story tolerable,” April said with a sad sigh, “they’re going to die out there.”
George was the first to break the heavy silence. “How many?”
April half turned. “Fourteen families. Fifty-one people. Twenty-seven are under fifteen years old. Young families with babies, and without experience. And without food.”
“God . . .” Sarah breathed, then caught the breath with the knuckle of her thumb.
“Of course, a shuttleplane was dispatched straight off,” April went on, “but no conventional ship can risk going through the ionic storms until they’ve dissipated, and that could take years. The rescue ship is going around the storms, but even at warp three that’ll take four months. The Rosenberg only has about three weeks’ worth of supplies on hand, and, of course, I mentioned the radiation leaks.” He gazed at the graphic screen. It cast its pattern of lights on his face. “Fifty-one people who think they’re going to die in space, hopelessly out of range. And the really tragic part is that we can communicate with them quite nicely, with communications at warp twenty. All of the Federation is listening to them die out there. Journalists are having a field day, you can well imagine.”
He stepped off the upper deck, past the three pained faces of his chosen crew, only to find himself yanked around. He stared up into George Kirk’s eyes, and the unmistakable image of two little boys in a cornfield, on a planet suddenly too far away for peaceful memory.
“You’ve got something planned,” George snapped. “What is it? We’ll try it.”
