Spock Must Die sttos(n-1

by Джеймс Блиш

But before he could get any sort of a decent aim, the great tree wilted, rotted, and fell into the water in a shower of dead leaves and punky sticks and chips, as if it had been attacked all at once by mildew, black spot, canker, fireblight and the Titanian mold. Spock One fell with it.

  Instantly the rain stopped, a glaringly hot sun came out, and the water sank without a trace into the sands of an endless white desert. Spock One was unharmed, but Kirk realized at once, from years of experience at playing chess with the original, that the replicate had lost ground; he had made a move which was purely defensive, and did not at the same time threaten his opponent.

  Spock One must have realized it at the same time, for immediately an immense cyclone dropped its funnel out of the sky and came twisting and roaring across the sands, not at Spock Two, but at Kirk. It was a shrewd stroke, for Spock Two could not defend the Captain without dangerously exposing himself.

  By now, Kirk thought he understood at least some of the rules of the game. Everything the two combatants had done thus far had been, essentially, to change the environment. Evidently their abilities to make changes in their own physical structures, or to provide themselves with defensive equipment, were relatively limited. But Kirk’s mind, though entirely without the telepathic/hypnotic skills of the Vulcan hybrids, was also being acted upon by the screen; it was at least possible that he could produce a reaction, though certainly not an equal and opposite one; this was not a Newtonian situation.

  He concentrated on pushing back the cyclone. Slowly, slowly it came to a halt, spinning and howling exactly between the two Spocks, who had not narrowed the distance between them which had widened during the flood. Then, gradually still, it squatted down like a great beast and began to broaden, and in a few moments had engulfed them both.

  Kirk had a brief glimpse of Spock One soaring aloft in a widening circle, seemingly borne upon bats’ wings, before the rim of the funnel reached him too; and then everything was obliterated by the maelstrom. For what seemed like years, he was aware of nothing but the roar, the scorch, the sting of the madly driven sand.

  Gradually, however, the sound began to fade, not as though it were actually becoming less noisy, but as though it were instead retreating into the distance. After a long while, nothing was left of it but a reminiscent ringing in Kirk’s ears, the air had cleared, and he was standing in the rock-tumble — with Spock and Scott beside him.

  Scott looked dazed; Spock, tranquil. Kirk shot a quick glance at the first officer’s fingers. No ring. That was almost certainly diagnostic; since Spock One had not thought to remove it when he had had the upper hand, he surely hadn’t had time to think of it during the subsequent wild scramble of combat and of pseudo events.

  “Mr. Spock! What happened? Where is he?”

  “Dead,” Spock said. “I used his own tornado illusion to drive him into the thought-shield. He was a creation of the screen to begin with, and knew he could not survive a second exposure. I was seriously affected myself, but as you see, I escaped. I could not have prevailed, though, Captain, had you not intervened just when you did.”

  “Well, that’s good — but I still don’t understand how you did it. Surely no tornado could reach as far as the screen. The atmosphere itself doesn’t.”

  “No, Captain, but you must understand that nothing you have seen in the past hour or so actually happened. In fact, probably many of the events you witnessed looked quite different to me. It was a combat of illusions — and in the end, the replicate believed he had been driven into the screen. That was sufficient.”

  Kirk frowned. “Can a man be destroyed by nothing but a belief?”

  “It has happened before, many times, Captain,” Spock said gravely, “and doubtless will again.”

  “That’s true,” Kirk said thoughtfully. “Well, finis opus coronat, as my Latin professor used to say when he handed out the final exams. Mr. Scott?”

  “Eh?” the engineering officer said, starting. “Oh. Here. Och, Captain, ye wouldna credit…”

  “Yes I would, I assure you, but I don’t want to hear your story just yet. We’ve got to get moving. The question still is — where?”

  “To the Hall of the Council of Elders,” Spock said. “And, if I am not mistaken, there it is.”

  Chapter Thirteen — THE STEEL CAVE

  From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4201.6:

  My suspicions, unfortunately, were correct; we are being herded into a trap. The sensors indicate a mass of heavy ships ahead of us, dispersed hemispherically with the open end of the cup toward us, and our pursuers are now deploying to form the other half of the sphere. We shall eventually be at its center, where conditions are obviously going to be a little uncomfortable at best.

  We are on full battle alert. By the time the Klingons manage to destroy the Enterprise, they are going to wish that they had decided to let us quietly through, instead. It will leave a proud record for Captain Kirk, if he is still alive, to bring to his next command. I shall drop the Log by buoy just before the engagement.

  It was true; the village was around them, not ruined now, but just as Kirk had remembered it, even to the people — and even to their complete lack of curiosity about the three uniformed starship officers, which had once been so puzzling. Kirk knew now that all this too was an illusion, for the Organians actually had no bodies at all, and no need of dwelling; but since it was — in contrast to the hallucinations that had preceded it — one generated by the Organians themselves, it was decidedly reassuring.

  “They’re still alive, and still here, Mr. Spock.”

  “So it would appear, Captain. Shall we proceed?”

  “By all means.”

  They entered the building which had once been designated to them as the meeting hall of the temporary Council of Elders — just how temporary (for the Organians had no rulers and no need of any) they had then had no idea. It, too, was as it had been before. The Council room proper had whitewashed stone wall, decorated with only a single tapestry and that not of the best, and was furnished with a single long, rude wooden table and even cruder chairs.

  The putative Elders were there, an even dozen of them. They were modestly robed, white-bearded, benign, almost caricatures of paternal god-figures, smiling their eternal smiles — but were their smiles a little dimmed this time? Among them were three whom Kirk recognized at once.

  “Councilor Ayelborne,” he said formally. “And Councilors Claymare and Trefayne. We are pleased to see you again, both personally and on behalf of our Federation. Do you remember me, by any chance?”

  “Of course, Captain Kirk,” Ayelborne said, extending his hand. “And your non-terrestrial friend Mr. Spock as well. But we have not previously had the pleasure of meeting your second companion.”

  “This is Mr. Scott, my engineering officer, who is really the main reason we are here, both for our sakes and yours. But first, if you please, sir, will you tell me just how much you know about the present situation, both on Organia and elsewhere?”

  Claymare’s smile was now definitely shadowed.

  “Surprisingly little,” he admitted. “Without warning, we found our world surrounded by a force-field of novel properties which not only prevented us from leaving, but which had most distressing effects upon our very thought processes. Until very recently, we also did not know by whose agency this had been done, or for what purpose, though of course we had several plausible hypotheses.

  “Then an equally mysterious living entity somehow penetrated the screen and landed on our planet in a small spacecraft. We at first took him to be your Mr. Spock here, but we quickly discovered that he was instead an order of organic being quite unknown to us previously. Even his neural currents flowed backward; we could neither understand their import, nor decide what steps we ought to take about his presence.

  “Finally, you three appeared, and we were able to determine from your thoughts that you knew what had happened, and that you had come to be of help. But the malignant creature who had arrived in the
spacecraft had a mind as powerful as Mr. Spock’s — truly remarkable for an entity dependent upon a substrate of matter — and one which, furthermore, seemed to work well with the effects of the thought-shield, whereas ours were much impeded by them. We sent out impulses which we hoped would guide you to us, but until that creature was eliminated — which you have now managed to do, and for which we congratulate you — your course was necessarily somewhat erratic.”

  “Aye, an’ thot’s for sooth,” Scott said feelingly.

  “We now further see from your thoughts,” Trefayne added, “that the Klingons are responsible for the shield. They should be properly penalized. But we find ourselves nearly as helpless as ever.”

  “Perhaps not,” Kirk said. “That’s why I brought along my engineering officer. It’s his opinion that the screen is generated by a machine which was deposited on your planet by a pilotless missile. Had it been manned, you would have detected the pilot’s thoughts. It’s probably hopeless to try to locate the generator itself, let alone the missile, but Mr. Scott believes that be can build a counteracting generator.”

  The councilors of Organia looked at each other. At last Ayelborne said, “Then by all means, let him proceed.”

  “I fear it’s no sae easy as a’ thot,” the engineering officer said, with an odd mixture of embarrassment and glumness. “You see, Councilor, it wasna possible tae bring much wi’ us in the way ‘of tools an’ parts. Since we didna ken where we were goin’ tae wind up, nor what we were goin’ tae encounter, we traveled light. We’ve got beltloads of miniaturized components an’ other leetle gadgets, but it’d be sair helpful to have some bigger bits an’ pieces with mair wallop to ‘em, if you follow my meanin’.”

  “Quite without difficulty,” Claymare said. “Unfortunately, we have no — hardware? — of that sort…”

  “Aye, I feared as much. An’ it’s oft before, lang an’ lang, that I’ve cursed the designer who thought it’d be cute to put no pockets in these uniforms.”

  “…but we know where the malignant creature’s spacecraft is now stored. Would that be of any assistance?”

  “The gig!” Kirk shouted. “Of course it would! Provided that the replicate entity didn’t booby-trap it; that is, rig it so that it would destroy itself and us if touched. But we’ll just have to take that chance.”

  “It would also be interesting,” Spock said reflectively, “to study how he managed to equip a shuttlecraft with a warp drive.”

  “Yes, but later,” Kirk said with a little impatience. “Scotty, would the parts and so on in the gig solve your problems?”

  “One of them,” Scott said, even more embarrassed. “Y’see, Captain, I canna answer exactly, because my mind’s sae bollixed up by the screen itsel’, an’ by all the weirds I’ve had tae dree since I began walkin’ across this fearsome planet, that I hardly ken a quark from a claymore any mair. ‘Tis doubtful I am indeed that I could do useful work under such conditions. Equally likely, I’d burn us all up for fair an’ for sure.”

  Claymare, who for an instant seemed to think that he had been addressed, frowned and held back whatever he had perhaps been about to say, but Ayelborne smiled and said, “Oh, as to that, we can protect the few minds in this present party against the screen. It is always easier, at least in principle, to raise an umbrella than it is to divert an entire cloudburst, even in the realms of pure thought. However, clearly we shall all have to proceed without delay. We are all suffering seriously, and ever more progressively, under the pressure of the screen — our own population included. Have you a decision?”

  “Yes,” Kirk said. “Act now.”

  “Very well. Since you need your renegade spacecraft, it is…”

  “…here.”

  The meeting chamber dissolved, and with it nine of the other councilors. Kirk found himself and the remaining five entities — one other Earthman, a Vulcan hybrid, three Organians whose real appearances would never be known — in a deep cavern, indirectly lit and perhaps no more than half as big as the hangar deck of the Enterprise. He did not know how he knew that it was far under the surface of Organia, but there was a direct feeling of a vast weight of rock above his head which he accepted without question as real mass, not any sort of hallucination. The air was quite dry, and motionless; the floor smooth, and cupped toward the center.

  In the exact midst of the cup was the stolen shuttlecraft. It looked familiar and innocuous.

  Spock obviously did not regard it as an old friend. Head cocked, eyes narrowed, he scanned it from nose to tubes with his tricorder.

  “Anything out of the ordinary, Mr. Spock?” Kirk asked.

  “Nothing that I can detect, Captain. There does not appear to be any unusual pattern of energy flow in the circuitry of the combination to the main airlock, though that is the first point where one would logically establish a booby trap — and the easiest. Nor can I think of any reason why the replicate, having decided not to interdict entrance to the shuttlecraft as a whole, would trouble himself to mine only parts of it.”

  “I can think of several,” Kirk said. “If I wanted to use the gig again, to get off Organia in a hurry, I wouldn’t booby-trap the door; I wouldn’t even lock it. But I’d put a trigger on the controls, which only I could make safe easily, and nobody else could find at all.”

  “Risky,” Scott said. “Somebody might touch it off by accident; might as well put a trigger on the pile and be done with it, so the gig would blow nae matter what was touched, an’ thot’s easiest done by wirin’ the lock, as Mr. Spock says. But maybe I’d want to blow the gig only if somebody fooled wi’ my invention; otherwise, I’d save it for mysel’ until the vurra last minute.”

  “The miniature warp drive?” Spock said. “Yes, I might do that also, under the circumstances. But that would not be simple. He could have done so only after landing on Organia, and the probability is that he did not have nearly enough time to design such a system while in flight from the Enterprise, let alone complete it after a fast landing and a hurried escape.”

  “We are going to have to take all those chances as they come,” Kirk said.

  “Mr. Spock, actuate the lock. But Scotty, once we’re inside, touch nothing until Mr. Spock has checked it.”

  “Sairtainly not,” Scott said indignantly. “D’ye take me for an apprentice, Captain?”

  Spock approached the airlock, scanned it once more, replaced his tricorder and took out his communicator. Into this he spoke softly a chain of numbers. The outer door of the airlock promptly rolled aside into the skin of the shuttlecraft, almost without a sound. Under the apparently emotionless regard of the three Organians, they went in, almost on tiptoe.

  The single central corridor which led from control room to engines was lit only by the dim glow of widely spaced “glow-pups” — tubes of highly rarified ethon gas which were continuously excited by a built-in radioactive source. That meant that all main power was off; the glow-pups themselves had no switches and would never go out within the lifetime of humanity, for the half-life of their radioactive exciter was over 25,000,000 years.

  By unspoken consent, Spock and the engineer moved toward the shuttlecraft’s engine compartment. Kirk followed, feeling both useless and apprehensive; but after a moment, a great sense of peace unexpectedly descended upon him.

  “Och, thot’s a relief,” Scott said. Even Spock looked slightly startled. It took Kirk several seconds to fathom the cause: the pressure of the field upon their minds was gone. The Organians were shielding them. He had become so used to fighting against it himself — it had become so much a part of his expected environment — that the feeling of relaxation was strange, almost like sleepiness.

  “Keep alert,” he said. “This feeling of well-being is at least partly spurious. There could still be traps aboard.”

  “A useful reminder,” Spock agreed.

  The gig’s engines had not been modified noticeably, except for a small, silver-and-black apparatus which squatted, bulging and enigmatic, atop the
one and only generator. Spock inspected this cautiously, and Kirk, his mind still a little erratic after its concentrated course of hallucinations, had the odd feeling that the machine was looking back at him.

  Scott ignored it. Instead, he sat down before the very small maintenance board and began to unload the contents of the kits which were hung from his belt. Shortly, the board was littered with tiny parts, small snippets and coils of wire, and tools which seemed to be almost too miniaturized to be handled. Scott’s fingers, indeed, almost engulfed the first one of these he picked up, but he manipulated it, as always, with micrometric precision. For still finer work, he screwed a jeweler’s loupe into his left eye.

  In the meantime, Spock was busy with tools of his own, taking the faceplate off the mysterious addition to the generator. It was slow work, for after each half turn of a screw he would step and take tricorder readings; evidently he suspected that the possible concealed bomb or self-destruct mechanism might be triggered after any one screw had been removed a given distance, and he was checking for preliminary energy flows which would mark the arming of such a trigger. This thoroughness was obviously sensible, but it made the time drag almost intolerably. It seemed to Kirk that whole battles could have been won or lost while they labored in their silent, utterly isolated steel cave on this inaccessible planet…

  Scott’s apparatus, a breadboard rig of remarkable complexity and — to Kirk — complete incoherence, at last seemed to be finished. He was now wiring it into the maintenance board at various points; two such connections required him to crawl under the board, into a space that seemed scarcely large enough to admit a child.

  “That’s as far as I go the noo,” he said, emerging at last. “Now, Mr. Spock, can I have a leetle power from yen generator, or have you bollixed it completely?”

  “The generator is of course, intact,” the first officer said frostily. “I disconnected the replicate’s warp-drive device from it at the earliest opportunity, and made no alterations at all in the generator proper.”