Spock Must Die sttos(n-1

by Джеймс Блиш

  “Mr. Sulu, can the Klingon see what’s going on there from the outside, or otherwise sense it?”

  “I don’t know, Captain. I wish I couldn’t.”

  “Lieutenant Uhura?”

  “It’s quite possible, Captain, considering how excited the warp field is becoming. But perhaps they won’t know how to interpret it. Like the library, I’ve never heard of this having been tried before, and maybe the Klingons haven’t either. But I’m only guessing.”

  The bulge in the warp field grew, gradually becoming a blunt pseudopod groping into subspace. From the Enterprise it was like staring down a dim tunnel, with the twin beams as its axis. From the depths of his memory there came to Kirk a biology-class vision of the long glass spike of a radiolarian, a microscopic marine animal, with protoplasm streaming along it, mindless and voracious.

  “Captain,” the intercom squawked. “I’ve got trouble down here already. My engines are croonin’ like kine with the indigestion.”

  “Ride with it, Mr. Scott, there’s worse to come.”

  The blunt projection became a finger, at the tip of which the mine, looking as harmless as a laburnum seed, dwindled into the false night of subspace. Very faintly, the hull of the Enterprise began to groan. It was the first time in years that Kirk had heard his ship betray any signs of structural strain serious enough to be audible.

  “Thirty seconds to breakout,” Spock Two said.

  “The Klingon’s peeling off!” Uhura cried. “He’s detected something he doesn’t like, that’s for sure. And he’s under full drive. If…”

  Was the mine close enough? Never mind, it would never be any closer.

  “Fire, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said.

  An immense ball of flame blossomed on the view screen — and then vanished as the Enterprise dropped into normal space. One second later, deprived of the ship’s warp field, the fireball, too, was back again.

  “Got him!” Sulu crowed.

  The fireball swelled intolerably as the matter and anti-matter in the doomed Klingon’s warp-drive pods fused and added their violence to the raging hydrogen explosion of the mine. The viewing screen dimmed the light hurriedly, but finally could accomodate it no longer, and blacked out entirely.

  At the same time, the Enterprise rang with the blowtorch howling of the reaction engines coming up to full thrust, and a colossal lurch threw them all to the deck. The light flickered.

  “Posts!” Kirk shouted, scrambling back to his command chair. “All department heads, report!”

  The ship was screaming so fearfully in all its members that he could not have heard the answers even had his staff been able to hear the order. But a sweeping glance over the boards told him the bare-knuckle essentials; the rest could wait though not for long.

  The Enterprise had held together — just barely. The three surviving Klingon corvettes had taken several seconds to react to the destruction of their command cruiser and the disappearance of their quarry. They had dropped out of warp drive now, but in those few seconds had overshot their target by nearly a million miles, and the long, separating arcs they were executing now to retrace their steps were eloquent of caution and bafflement — and, if Kirk knew his Klingons, of mind-clouding fury.

  The Enterprise, so fleet on warp drive, was something of a pig under reaction thrust, but she was wallowing forward bravely, and gaining legs with every stride. Within only a few minutes she would be plowing through the very midst of her erstwhile harriers.

  “Klingons launching missiles, Captain,” Uhura reported.

  Pure, random desperation. “Disregard. Mr. Sulu, engage the enemy and fire at will. When you’re through with them, I don’t want one single atom left sticking to another.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sulu said, a wolfish grin on his normally cheerful face. This was the opportunity of a lifetime for a Starship gunnery officer, and he was obviously enjoying it thoroughly.

  As the Enterprise picked up speed, she responded better to her helm; in that respect she did not differ much from a nineteenth-century clipper ship on the high seas, though the comparison failed utterly on warp drive. And she had a tremendous amount of energy to expand — indeed, even to waste — through her reaction engines. The Klingons apparently were stunned to see her bearing down on them, but their stupor didn’t matter now. The corvettes could not have reformed in time to meet her, even had their commanders understood the situation instantly.

  Sulu’s hands danced over the studs before him. A stabbing barrage of phaser fire shot out from the Enterprise. The deflector screens of the corvettes fought back with coruscating brilliance; the viewing screen, which had crept cautiously back into operation after the death of the cruiser, dimmed hastily again.

  Then there were no Klingon corvettes — only clouds of incandescent gas, through which the Enterprise sailed as majestically as an ancient Spanish galleon over a placid Caribbean bay.

  “Very good, ladies and gentlemen,” Kirk said. “Assess damage and report to the First Officer. Mr. Sulu, relay course for Organia at Warp Three, to a position in opposition to the present calculated position of the planet. Lieutenant Uhura, open all lines to the staff — including Spock One. I want a conference, as of right now.”

  “I’ll give you a report, Captain Kirk, and it’s a twenty-four carat dilly,” Leonard McCoy’s voice said out of the middle of the air. “I can now tell you how to determine which Spock is the ringer.”

  Kirk shot a glance at Spock Two, but the incumbent First Officer showed no reaction whatsoever. Well, that was in character, as far as it went; Kirk had expected nothing else.

  “Belay that,” Kirk told McCoy evenly. “Our present business is much more urgent, and I want both Spocks to hear it.”

  “But, Jim — !” McCoy’s voice said, almost as if in shock. Then there was a sound of swallowing, and the surgeon started over again. “Captain, this matter in my opinion has the highest possible urgency.”

  “Belay it. And attend, all.”

  Chapter Eight — SPOCKS ON TRIAL

  From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4794.4:

  Despite Spock Two’s alarming predictions, the damage to the ship from the maneuver of this morning appears to be minimal, consisting chiefly of a deflector generator failure and some even less important burnouts of scattered sensor units. All of this is easily reparable from ship’s stores, Mr. Scott reports. In the meantime, there appear to be no Klingon vessels in or near this arc of Organia’s orbit, and I mean to use the breather this affords us to bring several other matters to a head — and high time, too.

  Those sensors that were still alive — a large majority — were at full extension and tied in to an automatic flight plan; the bridge staff were at their consoles; and lines were open to the engineering bridge, to the sick bay, to McCoy’s laboratory, and to the transporter room. Kirk looked at each of his physically present department chiefs in turn, and his expression was glacial.

  “We have been acting first, and thinking afterward, entirely too much,” he said, “and I do not except myself. Nor am I blaming anyone, since we’ve been under Continuous pressure, both of emotion and of event. But it’s time for a casting up of accounts.

  “First of all, I find that Klingon reception committee highly peculiar. There are two ways of regarding it, as far as I can see:

  “One: that it was a trap that had been set for us. This implies advance knowledge of where we were going to be, and I think it’s safe to say that the Klingons couldn’t have come by such knowledge unless somebody aboard the Enterprise got it to them, somehow.

  “Two: that the Klingon force was stationed in this area anyhow, and jumped us as a matter of course when we showed up. The main difficulty with that theory is that it requires another one, and I’m no fonder of ad hoc assumptions than Mr. Spock is. Why should the Klingons post five ships — a cruiser, three corvettes and a fifth ship of unknown size — so far from the main battle area? We already know that their forces are penetrating deeply, and with great daring, into F
ederation space. If those five ships were simply part of a reserve, why were they stationed here, a good long way away from any Klingon base big enough to supply them, and so far away from Federation territory that they couldn’t have been thrown into any battle fast enough to reinforce a Klingon fleet in trouble? That’s utterly uncharacteristic of them, and it doesn’t make sense any other way, either.”

  There was dead silence. Kirk let his expression soften a little, and added, “Anyone who wishes to volunteer an opinion is at liberty to do so.”

  “In that case, Captain, I have a third hypothesis to suggest,” said the voice of Spock One.

  “With no price tag?”

  “None, Captain. I ask for my price only on what I know to be the case. At present, what I have to offer is only a possible alternative to your theories. It is this:

  “The Klingons may well have invested the Organian system because they regard it as a sensitive area. They may no more understand what has happened to the planet than we do; but they certainly know that should the Organians choose to come back from wherever they have gone, or whatever state or condition they may be in, the war would be over. And worse; since the Klingons started the war in defiance of the Organian Peace Treaty, their return would place the Klingons, as an old Earth expression has it, in the soup.”

  “No possible or even imaginable Klingon naval force could prevent the Organians from taking action if they chose to do so,” Spock Two said, “and it is elementary games theory to assume that the Klingons know this.”

  “Quite true,” said the voice of Spock One. “But if they do not understand what has happened to Organia — contrary to my original assumption that they might have caused it — they would not want any Federation ship investigating the situation and possibly finding out the answer before they did, especially not a vessel as well equipped for research as a Starship. They would infinitely prefer the status quo; and so, they deploy valuable forces around the area.”

  Despite the fact that the presence of the two Spocks aboard the Enterprise was now one hundred and seventy-six days old, it still gave Kirk a faint chill to listen to the two identical voices arguing with each other, as if he were deep in some nightmare from which he was never going to awaken. The dispassionate tone of both voices, as they pursued a discussion which must end, eventually, in the death of one of them, made it even more eerie. With an effort, he said, “Spock One, six weeks ago you were claiming positive knowledge of what had happened to Organia. Now you’ve changed your tune.”

  “Not at all, Captain. I do know what has happened to Organia. I simply offer an alternate hypothesis as to its cause, and the Klingons’ response.”

  “Spock Two, what’s your opinion of this hypothesis?”

  “It has certain attractive features,” Spock Two said. “For instance, it explains why the Klingons did not attack us when we first appeared in the area. Had they had a trap prepared, they would have blown us out of space within a few seconds; they are highly efficient in such matters, as the Captain will recall. Whereas, as a garrison force, they would have been taken by surprise by our first irruption.”

  “And another ‘attractive feature,’” Kirk said stonily, “is that the theory doesn’t require the ship to have been betrayed — by either one of you.”

  “May I butt in, Captain?” Sulu said.

  “Go right ahead, Mr. Sulu.”

  “There exists no way whatsoever by which the Klingons could have known we were coming here. They couldn’t possibly have predicted my course after we shook that first little craft. And in normal space, they couldn’t have detected our approach in warp drive either, isn’t that right, Uhura?”

  “Out of the question,” the communications officer agreed.

  “So,” Sulu said, “a garrison seems to be the answer.”

  “It sounds plausible,” Kirk said, “but unless I read the signs wrong, Spock Two has some reservations. What are they?”

  “I would not describe them as reservations, Captain. I have myself suddenly realized what happened to Organia. The answer also contains the solution of the duplication problem, as was almost inevitable. Hence there is no further need for us to trade in guesses and probabilities. I should add, however, that the solution absolutely requires the destruction of the replicate in Dr. McCoy’s laboratory.”

  “Why?” Kirk said, in rising desperation.

  “Because he also claims to know the answer. I cannot say for certain whether his answer is the same as mine. I hope it is not. It is vital that he not have the correct answer, or, if he does have it, that he not be allowed to act on it.”

  “So you’re holding out on me too, eh?”

  “I regret that I must,” Spock Two said.

  “I am getting so damn tired of all this blackmail,” Kirk said, “that I’m more than tempted to get rid of you both. Never mind, forget that I said it. Mr. Scott.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Does anything you’ve heard this time offer you any clues to your side of the problem?”

  “It makes nae physical sense to me at all, Captain, I’m verra sorry to say.”

  “Dr. McCoy, what about your method for distinguishing between the two Spocks? Does that have any bearing on the other questions?”

  “It probably does, Captain, but if so I don’t see how. I’m nevertheless quite sure of it, on biological grounds alone. In fact I’m so sure, that I can tell you right now which one is the replicate, and I will, and I won’t put any price on the information, either. It has to be Spock One.”

  “But you can’t tell me which of the two has the right answer to the problem of Organia — or even how the replication itself happened?”

  “Sorry, Jim, but I haven’t the foggiest notion.”

  “Then we’re still up in the air. Both Spocks claim to have those answers, and neither one will tell me what they are. We have to keep both men with us until we find out what they’re concealing — or if, on the other hand, they’re both of them simply bluffing.”

  “One of us,” Spock One said, “is the original and therefore cannot be bluffing, Captain. Surely you will do him that courtesy.”

  Kirk put a hand briefly over his eyes. “I’ll offer an apology to the survivor. And I’ll assume that one of you is telling the truth, of course. But which? The honest man, the real Spock, ought to offer his information freely; that’s his duty. Yet you’re both insisting, now, upon the death of the other Spock before you’ll talk. This is more than blackmail — it’s an endorsement of murder. That’s enough to make me wonder if either of you can be the original Spock.”

  Now there was a nasty notion. Suppose the original had been destroyed in the mysterious accident in the transporter room, and both of these were replicates? But McCoy thought otherwise. Kirk was glad the idea hadn’t occurred to him earlier.

  The rest of the staff on the bridge was listening with breathless fascination, as if they were onlookers at a performance of the penultimate act of a tragedy — as indeed they might be.

  “May I point out, Captain, as you did during the battle, that we are at war?” said Spock Two. “To my certain knowledge, the replicate Spock must be, and is, a creature of the enemy, exactly as I proposed to you when you confronted the two of us in my quarters, nearly six months ago. The wages of treason are death for a good reason, Captain: not as a punishment, for we know capital punishment is useless as a deterrent, but because the traitor belongs by conviction to the enemy, and is therefore a permanent danger as long as the enemy himself remains an enemy.”

  “And what about due process of law?” Kirk said. “You’re asking me for the death of Spock One, as far as I can see, as if it were a marketplace transaction — his death in exchange for your information, just as though you were a quartermaster charging me for a uniform. It’s a man’s life we’re dealing with here, and I’m not about to condemn him to death, even for treason, without trial and conviction.”

  “To what tribunal could we submit such a case?” said the voi
ce of Spock One. “There is no competent community of appeal aboard the Enterprise.”

  “You can appeal it to me,” McCoy said, in a voice that sounded as if it was full of gravel. “I can tell the two of you apart, I know I’m right, and it’s easy to put to the test. Do you want to hear my proposal privately, Jim, or shall I just blurt it right out?”

  “The accused have a right to know how they’ll be tried. Speak up, Doc, it’s getting late. There may be Klingons on our backs again any minute.”

  “Very good, Captain. The test is this: let the barricaded Spock out, if he’ll come, and offer both men a standard ship’s meal. One of them will refuse it. That man is the ringer — and very likely a traitor too, at least potentially.”

  Kirk leaned back in his command chair, feeling his jaw dropping. Were all these high issues, all these personal conflicts, all these emotional and military tensions to be resolved with two plates of chicken-and-quadrotriticale soup? It was a fantastic anticlimax; for an instant, he felt that he would almost rather have the problem than this answer. But he said finally, “Do you really think this is a critical test, Doc?”

  “Yes, I do, Captain. If it fails, you’re no worse off than before. But I assure you, it won’t fail.”

  Kirk turned to the incumbent First Officer.

  “Spock Two, do you agree?”

  “I do,” Spock Two said promptly. “Since I’ve been eating standard ship’s fare for months within everybody’s observation anyhow. And may I add, Captain, that the test is a highly elegant, simple and ingenious one. I congratulate Dr. McCoy; it had not occurred to me at all.”

  “Spock One, do you also agree to it?”

  There was no answer.