The impassive face of Aristocles Marcelli gazed out from the small screen in front of her. Myra was speaking to him over a secure channel from the quarters assigned to her by the captain. She might have simply recorded a subspace report for him to view later, but her instincts had told her to speak to Aristocles directly. She did not want him to think that she was becoming too friendly with the crew of the Enterprise; or that she was trying to conceal anything from him.
“James Kirk insists on leading a team inside the mobile anyway,” she continued.
One corner of Aristocles’s mouth curled up. “Isn’t the exploration of unknowns one of Starfleet’s prime directives?” he asked, as if to contradict her.
“Yes. The captain emphasized that. But I believe more data should be gathered before anyone enters the object. I can’t overrule Kirk, but he did agree at my insistence to take a Tyrtaean along with the team exploring the mobile.”
Aristocles’s expression changed; had his eyes not been so cold, she might almost have thought he was smiling.
“You, Myra? Are you going?” He asked the question as if the answer might be a threat to him. He was obviously wary of her distinguishing herself in any way.
She shook her head. “He’s taking Wellesley. I’m to give what assistance I can to the science officers aboard.”
“I hope the object doesn’t prove to be dangerous, then. Given that you think it might be, I’m surprised that you agreed to let young Wellesley go inside.” It seemed to her that he was setting the stage for future blame.
Myra said, “The mobile is in our system. We have as much right to explore it as James Kirk and his people.”
“And better that Wellesley take the risk than you.”
She tensed. “It was more practical—”
“Don’t look so offended, Myra. I only meant that, as one of our leaders, you shouldn’t needlessly expose yourself to danger. I’m sure Wellesley will be most cooperative with the Starfleet personnel exploring that object. A lot of people noticed how friendly he was to them while they were in Callinus.”
“It was appropriate to be friendly,” she said, annoyed at how he seemed to be searching for benefit from every possibility. “We had to work together. Wellesley—”
“I’m only telling you what some are saying,” Aristocles murmured. He looked down for a moment, and she saw that he was cleaning and polishing some eating utensils. Myra suddenly felt conscious of her empty, idle hands. “Besides,” he continued, “better to have Tyrtaeans aboard the Enterprise who can get along with Kirk and his crew. Having overtly hostile people there wouldn’t be practical, now would it?”
Myra said, “We’re wasting time, Aristocles.”
“Not at all. I think you need to be reminded of where your duty lies.” Aristocles leaned forward. “If the alien object can be exploited by us, then it’s your job to stake a claim. If it poses any kind of a threat to our world, that threat must be averted. That’s your only purpose in being there—to ensure our interests.”
She lifted a brow. To keep your interests safe, to keep your options open, she thought, but said, “We may also learn something, Aristocles.”
“If what we learn doesn’t serve us, then it isn’t of much use.”
“We can’t know if it’s useful unless we first find out what—”
His mouth twisted. For a moment it seemed that he would mock her.
“Useful is not the same as right,” she continued.
“Right? Are you serious? You’d betray our interests for what is right?”
She did not answer.
“You don’t fool me, Myra,” Aristocles said. “You’ve been curious about that object ever since we found out about it. If it had no practical use at all, you’d still want to study it.” And that makes you useless, he did not say.
He had never spoken so frankly to her before, and she knew why he was saying such things now, why he did not even try to hide his true feelings about her. He no longer had anything to gain by trying to smooth over their differences; maybe being openly hostile to her now was to his advantage. He would just as quickly revert to being friendly, if it suited him. The temporary loss of her world’s data base had weakened her politically, and Aristocles was ready to exploit any mistakes she made while aboard the Enterprise.
And, she admitted to herself, he was right about her curiosity, her impractical desire to learn about things that might be of no use. Perhaps her parents, who were a bit more fanciful than most Tyrtaeans, should have discouraged her theoretical pursuits more, but they had seen no harm in letting her spend hours with her telescope and astronomy books as long as she did her lessons and chores. She had hidden the part of her that dreamed and wondered, but knew that others sometimes glimpsed it; often she had thought that her more fanciful side might be responsible for her political success. Perhaps others sensed the part of her that tried to look beyond her world, and recognized the same suppressed impulse in themselves. Maybe they understood, on some level, that to repress one’s imagination was to cripple oneself; surely that was an imprudent and ultimately impractical thing to do.
“Better think of your people,” Aristocles went on. “You have to keep our interests uppermost in your thoughts. 1 worry that so much exposure to representatives of the Federation may cloud your thinking. Just because we and the captain are human doesn’t mean that our interests are the same. We’re not Earth folk—we’re Tyrtaeans. Remember that.”
“You’re insulting me,” she said.
“I’m warning you.”
You are trying to demoralize me, she thought. He wanted her to be off guard, to make mistakes; it would strengthen his position. He spoke of Tyrtaean interests while thinking only of his own. Much as she disagreed with his desire for a new and independent Tyrtaean colony, she had once believed in his sincerity; but after nearly two years of working with him, of trying to govern their world together, she had glimpsed his true purpose. He wanted a society in which nothing from outside could impinge on his own thoughts, beliefs, and desires. He wanted a world that would be entirely his own creation, whose people would owe everything to him.
Maybe if she had seen what he was sooner, she could have found ways to work against him, but he now had the advantage. Myra recalled how shocked she had been when Wellesley first told her of the rumors being spread by Aristocles’s aides: that she indulged in secret luxuries, that she spent public funds carelessly, even that she was secretly a Federation social engineer. To spread falsehoods was against Tyrtaean ideals; she could not believe that people would waste time in such gossip. She had not known how to fight back.
“I am thinking of our interests, Aristocles,” she said, feeling tired suddenly. “Nothing outweighs that in my mind. To have you lecture me on what I already know is wasting time. If I don’t sleep now, I won’t be able to function as well later, and I’m sure you have other duties. Coles out.”
She blanked the screen before he could respond with more debate about the opposition of right to interests; she would have that satisfaction at least. Then she remembered how precarious her situation was, what the penalties would be if she made any grave errors. Exile, they called it, when a Tyrtaean committed a grave offense against society; it might as well be death. She must not make any mistakes that might become weapons in the hands of Aristocles Marcelli.
Chapter Five
SULU KNEW FROM the start that he was not going to like it. As he materialized inside the alien worldlet, feelings of unease and distrust slid through him. There was no great sense of alarm. The unease was more like what he felt when a faulty turbolift came to an abrupt stop; the distrust was vague, a whispered warning from an unknown enemy.
A jagged tunnel with black walls was his first sight of the interior. He and the team were inside a tunnel that abruptly turned at ninety degrees into a claustrophobic triangular space. He found the dead-end space annoying, and also disturbing.
Next to him, Janice Rand muttered something about nightmares and solid
geometry. Up ahead, Spock was scanning the tunnel with his tricorder. Ensign Tekakwitha stood next to Captain Kirk, looking around with a slightly glassy look in her dark eyes.
It was obvious to Sulu that these passages had not been made for any kind of humanoid life. They seemed to be connections between insect nests.
“Insects,” Wellesley Warren said, voicing the same conclusion, “I just hope they’re not spiders.” He shivered.
Coming from such a tall man, the comment seemed out of place; Sulu had always unconsciously imagined that tall men were rarely afraid of anything. He knew better now, but the old habit of childhood, of imagining that the taller adults around him faced the world fearlessly, rushed back to him in moments of stress.
“You mean giant spiders?” Sulu asked. “I hope not, either.”
“Even small ones give me the creeps,” Warren said. “I remember when I first told my mother how afraid I was of spiders—it was a long time before I could admit it. She told me that I’d hidden my fear very well, but that the practical thing to do was to proclaim it openly.”
“Why was that practical?” Rand asked.
“If people around me know of the phobia, they can handle that easily enough—by keeping spiders out of the room, or compensating for my lapses if my fear makes it temporarily harder for me to function. But if they don’t know, they can’t do a thing about it in time, and I end up being less useful than I might have been. I might even cause harm.”
“That is logical,” Spock said.
“I had a great-great-grandfather,” Kirk said, “who had a serious problem with spiders on his ranch back on Earth.” Sulu noticed the playful look on the captain’s face. “The spiders pretty nearly ate him and his horses, after they finished off the local cattle.”
“Thank you,” Warren said, “for that vivid image.”
“We’ll beam you back, if you like,” Kirk said.
“I’ll stay,” the Tyrtaean said, forcing a smile. “Don’t worry, Captain Kirk. I try not to let my phobia get in the way of what I have to do. Ask Myra about the hairy spiders that overran our camp in the Euniss Mountains once. I managed to kill my share without flinching—and those were Tyrtaean spiders that make Earth’s tarantulas look tiny.”
Spock was peering at his tricorder. “I think we should go in that direction,” he said, motioning to his right.
Kirk nodded. “Lead the way,” he ordered.
Spock moved ahead, with Sulu just behind him. As he disappeared around another ninety-degree turn, Sulu hurried after him and nearly collided with the Vulcan. Far ahead of them, there seemed to be a bright green exit.
“What is it?” Kirk called from behind Sulu.
“A kind of phosphorescence,” Spock answered in his usual unimpressed way. “I see no apparent danger.”
Spock went on, and Sulu followed. “This seems to be an entryway,” the Vulcan called out, “to a much larger space.” Spock passed through the passage. Sulu stepped out after him—
—into a vast hollow space that made him catch his breath. He stood still in wonder. Here, the green glow was more subdued, but that made it difficult to judge distances. Sulu estimated that the space might be a few kilometers wide. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that black pathways wound across the green expanse in no discernible pattern. This is worse than any maze, he thought; the more he stared at the pathways, the more disoriented he felt. Behind him, he could hear Kirk reporting his observations to Uhura.
“—a wide green space,” the captain was saying, “about six—” His voice seemed to fade in and out, and Sulu realized that he could not pay attention to what Kirk was saying. For some reason, the chaotic pattern of the pathways across the green area disturbed him at a very deep level, almost as if something was reaching into him and leaving a residue that would never be cleared away.
He turned away and closed his eyes in an effort to regain his self-control, telling himself that there was no obvious danger. When he opened his eyes again, Kirk was still holding his communicator. “Kirk out,” the captain said as he flipped it shut. “Myra just came to the bridge,” he said to Warren. “Uhura will make sure that she hears my report.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Wellesley Warren looked very pale, his lips black; Sulu knew that it was the light. Janice Rand’s eyes were moving from side to side, as if she was expecting something to creep up on her. Tekakwitha stood stiffly, her eyes wide. Only Spock seemed unaffected by the color saturation of the site.
“Shall we continue, Captain?” Spock asked.
Sulu suddenly longed for the captain to order a return to the Enterprise. Beam us out of here, his inner voice shouted, and for a moment he feared that he had said the words aloud. He wanted to lie down and cover his head with his arms, but forced himself to keep standing. Warren looked even paler now, but there was a look of determination in his eyes; Sulu felt encouraged by the Tyrtaean’s display of steadfastness. His black, tightly closed lips seemed in character.
Kirk shuddered. “It’s as if …” he started to say, then paused. “… as if something’s trying to frighten us away,” he finished. “What do you think, Spock?”
“I would say, judging from your visible reactions, that some kind of chemical signal may be causing your disturbances. It is unlikely that the mere sight of this interior could provoke them. We also cannot conclude that there is a deliberate attempt here to frighten us off—it may be a coincidence.”
Maybe, Sulu thought, remembering what McCoy had suggested on the bridge, this could be the first stage of an alien disease. He pushed the fear aside.
“Ensign Tekakwitha, what do you feel?” Kirk asked.
The young woman took a deep breath. “I feel as if the surface under our feet might suddenly open and expel us into space.”
“What about you, Lieutenant Sulu?”
Sulu swallowed hard, then managed to say, “It’s more like an extreme uneasiness that could turn into panic. I want to crawl down on the floor and cover my head.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” Kirk said. “Yeoman Rand?”
“The same, Captain,” Janice Rand replied.
“I feel more like Cathe Tekakwitha,” Warren said, “almost as if I’m about to fall into space.”
“Curious,” Spock said, “that your reactions should differ from those of the others.”
“Wellesley and I share one characteristic,” Tekakwitha said. “We’re not as open and demonstrative as the rest of you—excepting Mister Spock, of course. We tend to restrain ourselves. Maybe that predisposes us to have different reactions.”
“Interesting,” Spock said, then continued scanning with his tricorder. “Still indicating life-forms aboard, but they are registering more weakly. That could mean that they are losing strength.” Spock’s voice sounded a bit strained; Sulu wondered if by now even the Vulcan was feeling uneasy from the assault of strangeness.
“Steady,” Kirk said, as if talking to himself.
“Captain,” Spock continued, “we must now consider the possibility that we may not have enough time, given this worldlet’s continuous acceleration, to find its inhabitants and to be of any use to them before they perish in this system’s sun.”
“How long before that happens?” Sulu asked.
“Given the present rate of acceleration, it is a matter of a week or so.”
“Where are the life-form signs coming from?” Kirk asked.
“All of them are registering from the other side of this hollow green space.” Sulu watched as Spock turned to gaze into the vast hollow once more, but could not bring himself to do the same. “All of the black pathways seem to end up there.” He pointed to a distant black spot on the other side of the hollow; Sulu had the illusion that Spock’s pointing finger was touching the spot.
Kirk flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise.”
“Uhura here,” the lieutenant’s voice responded.
“We’ll be exploring in here a while longer,” Kirk said. “I’ll decide wh
at course of action to take after that.”
“Yes, sir. Myra Coles is now with the science officers on the bridge. I’ll let you know immediately if their sensor scans indicate any changes in the object.”
“Kirk out.”
As Spock led the way along one of the green paths, Sulu noticed the deathly silence of the green hollow. The strange glowing light made the placement of the black pathways seem even more haphazard. Sulu felt panic wash over him again; he glanced toward Rand and saw beads of sweat on the ends of her damp, blonde bangs. The pathways zigzagged and turned at right angles, as if doubling back.
Tekakwitha let out a sound that might have been a whimper, then Sulu heard her curse.
“Even spiders,” Warren said in a high, toneless voice, “would be better than this.”
Sulu felt that the Tyrtaean was simply trying to fill the eerie, sickening silence with words. Spock was still moving forward. Sulu kept his eyes focused on the Vulcan’s back.
Only Spock seemed unaffected by the windless, breathless unease of the alien environment, but Sulu suspected that was only the facade of the commander’s discipline. The Vulcan’s human heritage was deeper than Spock’s self-control would allow him to reveal, most of the time.
Sulu sniffed at the thick but odorless air, and imagined that they were moving across a black tendon connecting living muscles of some kind. Finally, in the green haze ahead, another opening appeared: a black wound in a green liver. He made an effort to control his fancy, but it refused to obey him.
They passed through the opening. Spock took another tricorder scan, then motioned to the others to keep moving. An irregular passageway led them past a series of bizarrely shaped chambers. Along the walls were irregular openings from which shone a livid, yellow light. Sulu peered inside each chamber as he passed it and saw strange configurations of corners and walls, all without a single curve or right angle, all apparently designed by an architect who was fanatically devoted to obtuse and acute angles and jagged edges. And somehow, Sulu told himself as his stomach lurched, this designer knew exactly how to sicken him.
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