by Diane Duane
It was dark space to fly in—a bad place for seeing who was getting close to you, but a good spot for a quiet rendezvous with people whose looks you already knew. So Enterprise found it when she came out of warp and coasted down into 285’s feeble little gravity well, settling into a long elliptical orbit around the star. Other shapes, barely illuminated, broke their orbits and gathered slowly in around her. Two of them kept to the usual five-kilometer traffic limit: Constellation and Intrepid, ships of Enterprise’s own class. The third ship held itself ten kilometers away, but for all the extra distance, it looked the same size as Intrepid and Constellation did. This was even more of an illusion than the dim space alone could have caused, for the third ship was Inaieu.
Inaieu, as one of the destroyer-class starships, had been built large; built to carry a lot of people on very long hauls, and built to carry more power and more armament than any three starships—just in case. Her upper-hull disk was three times the size of Enterprise’s; her engine nacelles twice as long, and there were four of them—one above, two on the sides, one below. Her central engineering hull was a quarter-mile in diameter, and a mile long. Having been built at the Starfleet shipyards at Deneb, she flew under Denebian registry, and had been named for the old High King of Deneb V who, as the song said, “rose up and smote her enemies.” Jim watched her now on the bridge screen—massive, menacing and graceful, a great, glowing, blood-red shape in 285’s simmering light—and felt glad to have her along on this business, in case some heavy-duty smiting should be necessary.
“How long, Mr. Spock?” he said.
Spock glanced up from his station. “The meeting is not scheduled to begin for another twenty-five point six minutes, sir. Captain Rihaul is obviously already aboard Inaieu; Captain Walsh is in transit via shuttlecraft; Captain Suvuk has not yet beamed over.”
McCoy, standing behind the helm and watching everything as usual, looked surprised. “Shuttlecraft? Why doesn’t Captain Walsh just beam over like everybody else?”
Jim looked with wry amusement at McCoy. “That’s right, you don’t know Mike Walsh, do you? You two are going to get along just fine. Mike hates the transporter. Remind him to tell you about the time on Earth when he was heading for the Sydney Opera House and wound up instead in Baltimore Harbor. Or on second thought, don’t remind him. He’ll tell you anyway.”
McCoy humphed. “Two sensible men in this crazy Fleet, anyway—Jim, do I have to go to this silliness? This is supposedly a strategy and tactics meeting. Why should I scramble up my stomach and my brain-waves in that thing to sit and listen to—”
“Sorry, Bones. All the section chiefs have to be there. Regulations.”
“—bloody battle plans on one side and a whole horde of overlogical Vulcans on the other—”
Jim started to laugh. “Oh, Bones! The truth will out, I see….”
“Indeed,” Spock said, without looking up from his work. “The thought of a whole starship full of Vulcans, all doing perfectly well without one single human to leaven the deadly weight of their logic, intellection and sobriety, obviously has shocked the good doctor into the unwelcome thought that he might possibly not be necessary—”
“Careful, Spock,” McCoy grumbled. “You’re up for a physical in a couple weeks….”
Spock merely raised an amused eyebrow at McCoy, letting the expression say what he thought of such a déclassé retort. Jim sat back, looking past Inaieu on the screen to where Intrepid hung, glowing like a coal. It was several years now since the first Intrepid had run afoul of the spacegoing amoebalike creature that Enterprise, with a lot of help from Spock, had managed to destroy. The Vulcans had naturally gone into the expected restrained mourning for their many dead; but the monument that they found most fitting was another Vulcan starship.
She was built along the usual heavy-cruiser design, but with details of construction so much improved that Fleet had decided to use the Vulcans’ design, later, to refit all the heavy cruisers. Years ago, Jim had looked at the plans and pictures of Intrepid, and had found the design surprisingly pleasant—not only more logical than the original starship design, but very often more pleasant to look at, and sometimes downright beautiful. McCoy had looked over the plans mostly in silence, only commenting at the end of his perusal that the Vulcans had at least made the bathrooms larger. But Jim had noticed that all through, McCoy had been making the “hmp” noises that meant he approved even if he didn’t want to admit it. At any rate, there hung Intrepid herself, and whether it was logical or not, Jim was glad to see her. Her captain, Suvuk, was a briefly retired admiral whom Jim was looking forward to meeting—a veteran of decades of cruises, and the kind of man Terrans would call a hero, though the Vulcans insisted that he was just doing his job.
“Pretty ship,” he said. “Look how they’ve trimmed her nacelles down…. Spock, did they sacrifice any power for the weight they dropped there?”
“They improved power generation fifty-three percent before they made the alteration,” Spock said; “so those engines run at a hundred thirty-three percent of the best level the Enterprise could manage. I fear Mr. Scott is probably deep in that ugliest of emotions, envy….”
McCoy groaned softly. “Can we get on with this?” he said under his breath. “I’ve got a sickbay to tend to.”
“Momentarily, Doctor,” Spock said. “I am waiting for a final piece of data for this research of mine. While we are off on Inaieu, the computer will process it and provide us with a solution—”
“That ion-storm business?”
“Affirmative.”
The bridge doors hissed open, and Ensign Naraht shuffled in with a sound like someone dragging concrete blocks over the carpet. Jim smiled. He always smiled when he saw Naraht; he couldn’t help it.
Naraht was one of the thirty thousand children born of the last hatching of the Horta, that now-famous silicon-based creature native to Janus VI. The Enterprise, early in her five-year mission, had been called to Janus VI to exterminate a “monster,” and instead had wound up first injuring, then saving, the single surviving Horta who was about to become the “mother” of her whole eggbound race. Once out of the egg, the hatchlings grew with the usual speed; they were tunneling rock within minutes of their birth, and all the thirty thousand who hatched reached latency, and high intelligence, within standard days.
Any race so strange, and yet so adaptable to “bizarre” creatures like hominids, was naturally of immediate interest to the Federated Worlds. And the Hortas—curious creatures that they were—returned the interest with interest. Nothing could have kept them out of the Federation; and as for the political formalities, a creature used to moving easily through solid rock will be only slightly slowed down by red tape. It took no more (and in some cases much less) than the four years in which a Starfleet Academy class graduates for Hortas to start appearing on starships.
Naraht had come to the Enterprise highly qualified, with an Academy standing in the top tenth of his class. (“He” was an approximation; his official Fleet “arbitrary gender designation” was “orthomale type B-4A,” which McCoy usually described as “close enough for jazz.”) The Horta had chosen to specialize in biomaths, that peculiar science claimed by both psychiatry and interactional mesophysics. This put him, at least nominally, in McCoy’s department. But engineering and analytical chemistry both wanted to get their hands, fins or tentacles on him; not surprising, since Hortas eat rock, deriving both nutrition and flavor from the metallic elements and silicates found in it. Naraht could take a bite of any metal or mineral you pleased, and seconds later give you a readout of its constituent elements, with the expert precision of a gourmet reporting on the ingredients and balance of a wine sauce.
Jim had watched the intradepartmental squabbling over Naraht with amusement, and hadn’t allowed himself to be swayed by it; the Enterprise was made for the entities who rode in her, not the other way around. He left Naraht happy in biomaths, and simply kept an eye on his progress. Meantime, Spock apparently fou
nd it illogical to waste his talents, and had been calling him up to the bridge for consultations now and then. Jim didn’t mind this at all; he had long since confessed to himself that he never got tired of being earnestly “Yes, Captain” ed by someone who looked like a giant pan pizza (sausage, extra cheese).
“I have the data you wanted on the meteoric debris, sir,” Naraht said to Spock, drawing himself up to his full height in an approximation of “attention.” Behind him, Jim heard McCoy most carefully preventing his own laughter; Naraht was basically a horizontal creature, and his “full height” was about half a meter at best.
“Report, Mr. Naraht,” Spock said, beginning to key data into his library computer.
“Yes, sir. In order of greatest concentration—iron-55 forty-five point eight zero percent, nickel-58 twelve point six one percent, lead-82 nine point eight eight percent, mercury-201 nine point four six percent, gallium-69 nine point three zero percent, gold-198 eight point one one percent, samarium-151 three point one zero percent, rhodium-101 one point two three percent, palladium-106 zero point two zero percent, iridium-193 zero point three zero, and trace amounts of neodymium, yttrium, strontium and tantalum making up zero point zero one percent.”
Spock was staring at his station with great interest. “Mr. Naraht,” he said, “are you quite certain of that figure for the iridium?”
“To six decimal places, sir! Zero point three zero four one four one two two.”
“That is eight decimal places, Ensign,” Spock said; but he said it so mildly that McCoy looked at him very oddly indeed.
“Oh,” Naraht said. “I’m sorry, sir! I thought you might like some more.”
“‘Liking’ is one of the humanities’ emotions to which Vulcans are not generally prone,” Spock said, in that same mild voice. Jim held his own smile out of sight, particularly noticing that Spock hadn’t said at all that he might not occasionally like something. “Nevertheless I am inclined to overlook the error—just this once.”
McCoy looked down at Jim, who had swiveled his chair around to look at the screen—and to have something to do besides laugh. Bones’s look said, very plainly, Is it just me, or is Spock teasing that boy! Jim shrugged and took Bones’s clipboard away from him, pretending to study it while the lecture went on behind him. “Enthusiasm about science is to be commended,” Spock was saying, “but enthusiasm in science is to be avoided at all costs; it biases the judgment and may blind one to valuable observations. Guard against it.”
“I’ll remember, sir,” said Naraht. “Will there be anything else?”
“Not at the moment, Ensign. You may go.”
Naraht went shuffling off toward the bridge doors.
“Mr. Naraht,” Spock said, just as Jim thought it might be safe to turn around again. Behind him he heard Naraht pause.
“Sir?”
“That was well done, Mr. Naraht. Keep working and we will make a scientist of you yet.”
“Sir!”
“You are dismissed.”
Off went Naraht, rumbling and shuffling, into the lift. Spock went back to his work at his station, ignoring Uhura’s quizzical look at him, as well as Jim’s and McCoy’s. Bones couldn’t stand it. “Mr. Spock,” he said, deadpan, and somehow sounding only slightly interested, “did I hear you compliment that lad?”
Spock was still touching pads and switches on his library computer, so that he didn’t look up. “I accurately assessed his performance, Doctor. Feedback is most important for continuation of optimum performance, as even you must know.”
“I take it then,” Jim said, equally nonchalant, “that you find his performance generally satisfactory?”
“Oh, quite satisfactory, Captain. In fact, he exhibits many of the most positive traits of a young member of your branch of humanity—being by turns, or all at once, cheerful, conscientious, obedient almost to a fault, courteous, enthusiastic, respectful of superiors—”
“And he’s probably thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, too,” McCoy said. “In other words, Mr. Spock, we’ve got a genuine ‘space cadet’ on our hands.”
“Bless ’em all,” Jim said. “Where would Fleet be without them?”
“But the point is, Jim, that Spock approves of him! Can I stand the strain!”
“Doubtful,” Spock said with a sigh, turning away from his work. “Doctor, Mr. Naraht has an eminently logical mind—unsurprising: so did his mother. If his emotional tendencies—”
“Aha! The truth will out!” McCoy said jubilantly. “That’s it! You like that boy because you knew his mother the Horta—and she liked your ears!”
Spock simply looked at McCoy. Jim started to whoop with laughter. Unfortunately, Uhura’s board chose that moment to let out one of its more strident whistles. She put her transdator back in her ear, looked off into space for a moment, then said, “Captain, it’s Inaieu. They’re ready for you.”
Jim got up out of the helm, still shaking with laughter. “Tell them we’re on our way. Gentlemen, the defense against the charge of nepotism-by-association will have to wait till this is over with. Uhura, call the transporter room.”
“No shuttlecraft?” McCoy said, a little sorrowfully.
“Sorry, Bones, we’re late.”
“One of these days,” McCoy growled as the three of them stepped into the lift, “that damn transporter’ll glitch, and we really will be.”
Inaieu was if possible even huger than it looked. Jim at first wondered if some slippage in protocol, or confusion on the part of his own transporter chief, had sent him to the cargo transporters instead of the one for staff and crew; for the room they beamed into seemed almost the size of a small hangar deck. But the Eyrene transporter officer on this side reminded Jim forcibly that not only ships, but people, came in rather different sizes.
Deneb was a large star with more than one planet. The Klaha, the first Denebian race that Fleet had made contact with, lived on Deneb V; it was that species which Federation nomenclature meant when it referred to “Denebians.” But the peoples of the other worlds, the Eyren and the!’ hew and the Deirr, were Denebians too—not simply because of sharing a star. The worlds of this huge blue primary were all big, and dense, and had heavy gravity, for which their various versions of the humanities were equipped. So the Inaieu had been built to accommodate the primarily “Denebian” crew who would be handling her—such as the Eyrene transporter officer. She was typical of her people, looking very much like an eight-legged, circular-bodied elephant with no head and four trunks—a squat, golden-skinned, powerful person, and one (with her six-foot diameter) rather too large for any merely hominid-sized transporter platform.
When they were all materialized she came out from behind her console and bowed by way of respectful greeting—a Denebian bow, more of a deep knee bend. “Captain, gentlemen,” she said, “you’re expected in main briefing. Will you follow me, please?”
“Certainly, Lieutenant,” Jim said, noting the stripes on one of the four sleeves; noting also, with mild amusement, that all there was to the uniform was those sleeves. The Lieutenant led the way out into the hall, moving very quickly and lightly—and understandably so; the common areas of the ship were apparently kept at light gravity for the convenience of a multispecies crew. “Hi-grav personal quarters?” Jim said to McCoy.
“So I hear. They had to do quite a bit of juggling with the power-consumption curves to make it work out. But this ship’s got power to burn.”
“That’s no joke, lad,” Scotty said, peering in an opening door as they went past one of Inaieu’s six engine rooms. “That one warp-drive assembly in there is by itself half again the size of the Enterprise’s.”
Jim glanced at Scotty, who was now nearly walking backward, and looking hungrily back the way they’d come. “Later, Scotty,” he said. “I think we can spare you time for a tour. We have to do a routine exchange of ships’ libraries anyway; you might as well stop in to see the chief engineer and exchange pleasantries.”
“And equations
,” McCoy said.
Scotty smiled, looking slightly sheepish, as the group entered a turbolift about the size of a shuttlecraft, and their Eyrene escort said, “Deck eighteen. Low-grav.” The lift went off sideways, then up, at a sedate enough pace; but even so Jim had to smile to himself. All the Denebian races, it seemed, love the high accelerations and speeds they were so well built to handle; and the thought of the speeds the lifts in this ship probably did when there were only Denebians aboard them made Jim shudder slightly. But that was part of their mindset, too; no Denebian would ever walk anywhere it could run, or do warp three if it could make warp eight. Life was too interesting, they said, to take it slowly; and certainly too short—if you have only six hundred years, you must make the most of them! So they plunged around through space, putting their noses (those of them who had noses) into everything, and thoroughly enjoying themselves; the galaxy’s biggest, merriest overachievers, and a definite asset to the Federation. Jim was very fond of them.
“Here we are. This way, gentlemen,” said the Eyrene lieutenant, and hurried out of the lift. The four of them went out after her, hurrying only slightly, and were relieved to see her turn leftward and gesture toward an open door. “Main briefing, gentlemen.”
“My thanks, Lieutenant,” Jim said, and led his officers in.
Main briefing, as he suspected, was about the size of a tennis court. The table was of that very sensible design that the Denebian races used when dealing with other species; a large round empty space in the middle, where Klaha and Eyren and!’ hew would stand—they never sat—and chairs or racks scattered around the outside of the table for hominids, along with bowl chairs for the Deirr. This way everyone, whether they had hominid stereoscopic vision or multiple eyes or heat sensors, could see everyone else; and of course everyone was wearing intradermal translators, so that understanding was no problem. At least, no more so than usual…
The company seated at that table rose, or bowed, to greet Jim and his party as they entered. One of them got up out of her bowl chair with the sucking sound that Jim remembered so well; and he started to grin. “Nhauris,” he said, holding out his hands, “you haven’t changed a bit.”
