The hydrofoil's motor made a prodigious
noise pulling away.
They are not human, Melody thought, her eyes
adjusting to the dimmer light as she picked out Tatya
hugging one wall, looking simultaneously
defiant and scared. There were two other
figures in the room. Melody looked.
They are not human. They are not like us. If they go
to heaven when they die, it's their heaven, not mine. They
are not human. Killing one or both of them
to protect my world is not the same as killing one of
my own. They are not human....
Her first thought when she actually looked at them the
tall young male so striking he'd have reduced her
teenage daughter to a helpless puddle, the slender,
stark-faced female with the oddly crooked nose,
looking almost fragile in one of her old flannel
shirts was that this was a joke. Something cooked up
by Command to keep them on their toes, some top-secret
drill concocted behind closed doors at the
PentaKrem to see how Aeroationav personnel would
respond to a real alien invasion.
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Sure, Melody thought. Some HQ genius went
and hired a couple of actors or maybe
intelligence people, stuck those funny-looking ears on
them, trained them to speak in those clipped, accentless
tones . . .
Only the female actually spoke; she and
Jason Nyere exchanged formal understandings
in a way that always made Jason shine. He
considered himself a front-line diplomat ("If I
screw up there won't be anything left for the
hair-splitters to do but pick up after me," he
always said), and at the moment he was being magnificent.
The male alien stood silently behind the female,
who was obviously in charge, almost mirroring
Melody's parade rest behind Nyere's strangely
reassuring shoulder; he seemed to devour each
speaker's words, his eyes moving intently from face
to face as each spoke.
"dis . . quite understand your position, Captain," the
female was saying. "We will comply with whatever you
deem necessary."
Her eyes, Melody thought, were like those ancient
religious paintings where the eyes seemed to follow you
around the room. She spoke solely to Jason, her
eyes meeting his, yet at the same time they
followed Melo dy. And talk about burning holes
in a person!
She knows exactly how to work people with those eyes,
too! Melody thought when it was her turn to go into her
act, running the red-scanners over both aliens
without trying to look like she was hunting lice. Because now
she's not so much looking at me as looking
past me, as if I don't exist! I don't like this
one; I don't care how peaceful her intentions or
how many of her crew she lost getting here. I
don't trust her, and excuse me for living, I
don't like her!
In fairness, she tried being friendly to the male.
"Don't worry," she said off his serious face
when it was his turn to submit to the scanner. "This
won't hurt a bit!"
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"I was not under the misapprehension that it would," he
replied solemnly.
And they claim they learned our language from
video? Melody wondered. They sure go out of their
way to remember the big words! There's something
pompous about a kid his age using words that size.
Still, he has a nice voice.
"How old are you?" Melody tried, making
conversation.
"Nineteen-point-six-five-eight, as measured
in our years," Sorahl replied politely. The
question hardly seemed pertinent, though perhaps there were
medical reasons. "By conversion to your years, that would be
"Never mind!" Melody tried a different
tack. "Do you ever smile?"
"Never," Sorahl said sincerely.
"Jesus!"
Melody tried not to notice that Jason was
laughing at her.
"I'll have to ask you both to accompany me to our
vessel for the present, Commander," Jason Nyere
said. "For one thing, it's safer for all parties
concerned. For another, my superiors will probably
want to have a talk with you."
He had almost said "a look at you," because that was
what it would amount to, a lot of brassheads
goggling at the comm screen and asking fool questions. He
would see to it that it got no sillier than that.
Yoshi was right. There was something strangely compelling
about these people, something that de- manded respect and,
considering their
vulnerability on this alien world, evoked a kind
of protectiveness.
. Thank God! Jason Nyere thought, who had
been so reluctant to assume the responsibility
in the beginning. Thank God this has fallen to me and
not to some hotshot looking for a place in the history
books. The
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brass must be made to see the immeasurable value
of these people, and the race they
represent.
"As long as you're aboard my ship, you will be under
my protection," Nyere told T'Lera. As one
commander to another he had immediately
sensed in her something simpatico, and in listening
to her story his sense of who and what she was grew
stronger. If the rest of her people were anything like this . .
. "However, what my superiors will deem necessary after
that will ultimately be out of my hands."
"Understood, Captain," T'Lera acknowledged
with a tilt of her head. Without so much as questioning what
Nyere thought would be the final solution, she indicated
that they would go with him.
Tatya was less easily persuaded. She'd
been tensed against the far wall like a trapped
animal, watching her foundlings put through what she
considered a series of humiliations, and she had had
enough. She threw herself in T'Lera's path and all
but attacked Jason Nyere.
"You haven't asked me!" she accused him. "As
long as they're under my roof they're under my
protection, and I say they're not going anywhere!"
Within no span of real time, three forces of will
contended silently to change Tatya's mind. So
strong were those wills that the thoughts of all three
converged in Sorahl's telepathic mind, and he
heard them as if they were speaking aloud.
They've given their consent freely and without
duress, Jason Nyere would have said. Don't
complicate this, Tatya, don't
Make a scene, I dare you! Melody Sawyer
would have hissed. Just you dare, and I'll tell
Jason about the woman in Kiev, no matter if it
makes me look bad
We do not belong on your world, T'Lera would have
said. Therefore we have no rights. What the captain
chooses to do with us
But Sorahl found his voice before the others. 215
ST
RANGERS FROM THE SKY
"Tatiana," he said softly, and she turned
to him, tolerating that name from him as she never had from
anyone else, not even Yoshi. "It is
logical."
"But it's not right!" Tatya protested tearfully.
"Are the two frequently incompatible on your
world?" Sorahl asked, honestly puzzled,
and because she could not answer him, Tatya was puzzled
too. Unsure, she could no longer fight.
"I'm going with you!" she declared. "I won't let
either of you out of my sight!"
Like I'm not going to let you out of mine! Melody
thought. She and Yoshi would have had to go with them anyway.
Five sat in a skiff intended for a maximum of
three and overloaded with equipment, so low in the water
before Jason started the motor that the larger swells
slapped over the gunwale and Sorahl,
Vulcan-curious, marveled at the spray on his
face, touched it with sensitive fingertips, smelled
it, tasted it. T'Lera, erect and seeming unmoved
beside him, noted her son's reaction and rejoiced that,
whatever was to come, he had lived to experience this much.
Melody and Tatya sat squashed sullenly
together in the bow, facing aft, both keeping an eye
on the Vulcans for their respective reasons,
each keeping an eye on the other for the same reason.
Jason sat aft and steered, his mood strangely
serene considering the unknowns ahead. In the renter,
T'Lera, wearing a colorful Ukrainian
babushka Tatya's last-minute solution to an
obvious problem Of ears and Sorahl in one of
Yoshi's hooded sweatshirts, looked like
nothing so much as a pair of refugees.
"A question, Captain, if I may." T'Lera
half turned to address Nyere, aware that the one
named Sawyer tensed every time she made an
unexpected move. "Forgive my curiosity, but
how will you explain us to your crew?"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"I'd like to hear the answer to that myself!" Sawyer
called over T'Lera's head. The Vulcan's
eyes were upon her again, intent. "Last thing he told
them was we were hunting a satellite. was She
addressed T'Lera directly for the first time, felt
herself blushing, infuriatingly, like a schoolgirl.
"Indeed?" Could she have rendered her voice more
neutral, T'Lera would have done so. But she was
T'Lera, and Sawyer could not but hear the irony.
"Yes, ma'am!" she shot back rudely. "So
what's the answer, Captain sub?"
"Actually, Sawyer, I thought I'd let you
handle it," Jason Nyere said just under the wind,
aware of how voices carried, aware of Ensign
Moy waiting wide-eyed and twitchy with amazement
on the foredeck to bring them in. "Suppose you call
an all-hands briefing while I see our
guests secured. Inform the crew from me that we were
actually out looking for survivors of a Marsbase
craft but, owing to security reasons and the need
to notify next of kin . . . you know the drill. That
ought to satisfy everybody."
Except me! Melody steamed, aware that he was
laughing at her again. She vented her anger by shoving
Tatya over on the seat, aware once more of a pair
of laser eyes watching her, making her feel somehow
foolish.
"Two Vulcans, in this time? That's
impossible!" Jim Kirk breathed, resisting yet
again the urge to grab Parneb by the throat. "If
you've lived in the future as you claim, you know the
Vulcans aren't due to arrive for another twenty
years!"
"Of course I know!" the sorcerer said
plaintively. "Nevertheless, they are here. I cannot
explain it."
The large crystal sat opaque and pulsing in the
confer of its table, mesmerising. Kirk narrowed his
eyes at it.
"You saw them in the crystal?"
Parneb nodded miserably.
217
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"Parneb, it's time you told us how this thing works."
The conjurer weighed something carefully before he spoke.
"I am afraid I cannot do that, Captain. Now,
do not get angry; you know it accomplishes nothing.
I can tell you only that the stone works with my
natural psychic abilities, as it might with
anyone with a high esper rating, but it is activated
by a science taught in a century after yours and
possibly not on this planet. As
have told you, I also have a Prime
Directive."
Kirk sighed, sat. Disgruntled, defeated he
glared at the throbbing orb.
"It's all connected somehow," he mused.
"Spock's disappearance, the other Vulcans"
premature appearance. And the fact that
Enterprrse was not orbiting M-155 when you
looked for it, was it?"
Parneb sat fingering the folds of his djellaba,
eyed Kirk warily before he answered.
"It was not where I expected it, Captain. I
did not tell you that then, nor did I continue
to look overlong, for fear you might lose your temper
and attack me again, possibly damaging the
crystal. For if you had done that, you would never get
back home."
Kirk paced for what seemed the hundredth time that
day, and it had been a very long day; he was running on
one-hundred-proof adrenaline by now. Parneb,
doomed to travel the millennia, seemed to need no
rest. The others, endowed with lesser amounts of
stamina, were in various states of repose.
Elizabeth Dehner lay curled on a couch with her
eyes closed, though she might have been only
drowsing. Lee Kelso, adaptable as a cat,
sprawled snoring on a pile of Kaffir rugs in
one corner. Gary Mitchell sat staring at
Parneb's vidscreen, anachronism in a room
filled with anachronisms, watching a news
program with the volume at minimum.
"Is it possible" Kirk turned to Parneb,
rubbing his brow in perplexity "that by bringing us here his
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"I managed to wrinkle the fabric of time so
to speak, causing things to happen out of sequence?"
Parneb finished for him. "Quite possible, Captain.
Quite alarmingly possible, and I must take full
blame for not considering that before I began."
"And any change in the continuum of time was Kirk
began.
was can have untold ramifications in the future,"
Parneb said unhappily.
Kirk crouched beside him, reasonable, beyond anger.
"You've got to help us put things right. Can you
imagine what would happen if mankind came
face-toface with Vulcans before we even knew there
were other humanoids out there, much less his
Much less the kind of alien I still can't get
along with on my ship a full two centuries
later, Kirk thought without saying. We think we're
so sophisticated, so beyond all that, but we all still have
our residual prejudices, I as much as any
> man. Imagine the men of this century . . .
"No need to imagine, gents." Mitchell
switched off the via, laconic as usual, but with a
touch of cynicism. "Just tune in to the news for ten
minutes on any given day. Border squabbles,
unsettled reparations still outstanding from Colonel
Green's war, terrorist factions. All this on a
supposedly United Earth. I wouldn't give two
lonely Vulcans a snowball's chance."
"And if anything had gone wrong, if anything
goes wrong was Kirk stopped hmfeaeal
tilde zing he had begun to slip back and forth in time
as Parneb did. "If any harm comes to those two
Vulcans, there might be no Federation. No
Starfleet, no Enterprise his
"And no Spock," Mitchell chimed in.
No! Kirk thought.
No!
Admiral James T. Kirk thrashed about,
flailing his arms, catching Spock on the jaw.
Ordinarily so minor
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an annoyance need not disrupt the meld, but Jim
Kirk's mind was flailing too, searching in vain for
what was in fact at hand, hurling Spock backward
out of the meld
To where McCoy steadied him, gripping his arm.
"Enough, Spock, enough! Bring him up and leave
off. It's too much for him!"
Spock oriented himself, shrugged McCoy off; his
concern was elsewhere. Seldom was Kirk's force of will
powerful enough to break the meld, yet that was apparently
what had happened. Jim Kirk curled nearfetal
in the deepest recesses of his chair, lost somewhere
between now and memory, reliving who knew
what nightmare in his mind. Spock touched him.
"Jim?"
Kirk flinched, shuddered, groped unseeing.
"Spock? . . . Spock!"
The voice was a child's voice, lost and alone.
Spock focused all his will on bringing Jim Kirk
home.
"Jim, I am here. Be with me!"
"Spock?" Kirk's vision cleared, his face
lighted. "Spock, YOU are here!"
"Yes, Jim."
Slowly Kirk uncurled himself, aware of
McCoy's hovering. -
"I'm all right!" he insisted, drawing on all
his dignity, lurching to his feet and straightening his
clothes. "Spock, did I hurt you?"
"Of course not."
Kirk nodded, uneasy with the concern in his
companions' eyes. What the hell had happened?
"Take Five!" he suggested, trying to make
light of it.
He was no sooner out of the room than McCoy was
rummaging for a hypo.
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