Strange New Worlds IV

by Dean Wesley Smith

  Fear? From James T. Kirk? The thought astounded David Marcus. In all his malignant thoughts of this man, he had never thought him a coward. No, not a coward—this wasn’t fear for himself, for his own safety. The admiral feared for his charges—the young trainee crew, Carol, Spock and Uhura. Sulu, Saavik, the Russian at the weapons console—what was his name again? Chekov. And even, he knew it to be true, even David Marcus.

  “Time, from my mark,” Kirk said.

  They all turned to face him, but it was Saavik who spoke. “Two minutes, ten seconds.”

  “Engine room. What’s happening?”

  Still, no response.

  He felt suddenly cold and childish. The cadets still watched Kirk, leaching strength and courage from his seemingly bottomless well. David tried not to look at his father, because he half-feared he would be as energized by Kirk’s charisma as the cadets had been, and that Kirk would recognize him for the fool that he was.

  He lost focus again, fumbling with memories of his youth without a father, interspersed with the same memories now somehow altered so Kirk was there. He was there on his graduation from Daystrom at age twenty-two. There on his tenth birthday when Mother had invited the world to celebrate. There on vacation at the Sojourner Ranch on Mars, where sixteen-year-old David had injured himself and nearly bled to death. There for his first kiss, his first shave, his first fight.

  Despite his best efforts, David Marcus couldn’t keep his throat from constricting or his eyes from misting.

  “Time,” Kirk said. He was back in the command chair, his arms folded casually, his legs crossed. The aura of calm reached David and he breathed.

  “Three minutes, thirty seconds,” Saavik replied.

  Around the bridge, all eyes were on the viewer. David wrung his hands.

  “Distance to Reliant,” Kirk said.

  Chekov turned from the weapons console. “Four thousand kilometers.”

  “We’re not going to make it, are we,” Sulu said in a deep whisper.

  Kirk turned and looked directly at David. My God, he’s looking to me for an answer. He’s looking to me for guidance. He’s looking to me…. His throat tightened again and he couldn’t speak. It was all he could do to shake his head no.

  He had handed his father their sentence of death.

  His father. A sudden giddiness washed over him as the fatal seconds ticked by. David Marcus. David Kirk? Oh, what might have been. His mother had been right. David could like him. And if his mother had been right about Kirk—about his father—that meant David had been wrong, and about a great many things. The man sitting there, in the center seat of this warship, no, this ship of exploration, awaiting death with a mastery of resolution—that man was a hero. And David suddenly wanted to be like him. Be with him. He wanted to apologize for his attacks and for his anger and for his ignornace. Most of all, he wanted to tell his father he was …

  Yes, David realized. He was proud to be his son.

  There would be no other chance. In fifteen seconds they would all die as their atoms were forged into the exploding protomatter matrix. He had to tell him now. Right now. His throat relaxed and he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Sir,” a young cadet said. “The main’s are back on line.”

  “Bless you, Scotty,” Kirk said, leaning forward. “Go, Sulu!”

  David staggered as the Enterprise shifted into warp speed and shot away from the Reliant. He gripped the rail and bowed his head, half in jubilation, half in calculation. They just might make it.

  The explosion could not be heard or felt, but David had known when it occurred. There was a violent decompression of light on the viewscreen. Then the nearby, tenuous cloud matter of the nebula dissolved as the Genesis effect swept outward in all directions from the epicenter of the explosion.

  They had survived the detonation, but if the Genesis effect overtook them they would dissolve into particles as swiftly as the cloud matter had. Onward they sped and on the screen, David could see the effect wave chasing them.

  So close …

  So damn close …

  “Yes,” he said so softly he was sure no one had heard. The wave was dissipating. They had outrun it. They had made it.

  There was no cheering, although David suspected many of the cadets had desperately wanted to. Kirk remained seated, in control. A moment later, Carol Marcus stepped out of the turbolift. She wore Kirk’s jacket and it looked so good on her. So natural.

  “My God, Carol,” Kirk said, his awe undisguised. The viewer displayed the throes of creation as the sparse matter of the Reliant and the nebula coalesced into the bud of a new planet. He could have paid no greater compliment to David’s mother. Or to her son. His son.

  She came to him and David reached for her hand. There was so much he wanted to say to her. To them both. It was like a new world had suddenly opened up for him, even as a new world was being born before him.

  So much wasted time. David stared at the magnificent sight the viewer bequeathed and vowed silently he would waste no more of it. In the grip of death he had come to understand more about his father, and about himself, than ever before in his young life. But he could die tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month, and he didn’t want that to happen without Kirk, his father, knowing how he felt.

  The center seat was empty. Kirk had left the bridge for whatever reason. No matter. David would catch up with him. And perhaps the two of them could get to know each other. Perhaps they could even get to like each other. And respect each other.

  Perhaps they could.

  Missed

  Pat Detmer

  She found it in the back of her closet, back behind her shoes. At first she thought it was a pair of shoes, and then remembered that she hadn’t had a pair that ridiculous and fuzzy in at least a decade.

  She reached back into the dark corner and almost jumped out of her skin when she felt the thing move. She fought down the urge to drop it and flee, and then grasped it tight and brought it to the light.

  “Oh no,” Uhura said out loud. It was a tribble. “How did I miss you?” she asked, resisting the impulse to bring it to her face and pet it. She, after all, had been the cause of the whole mess. She was the one who had gone on shore leave and had come back and infected the Enterprise. Captain Kirk would officially have her hide if he found out she’d missed one.

  But she’d be damned if she’d give it to Scotty! Beam them over to the Klingons, indeed! If he didn’t think that those poor things hadn’t been put out an airlock the minute those monsters realized they were overrun … she shuddered when she thought of it. Thousands and thousands of tribbles, tumbling through space …

  She would keep it, she decided. She would keep it until they reached a planet with a research facility, or a zoo, or some little girl with a weakness for precious pets. All she had to do was make sure she didn’t overfeed it. Then it would procreate and the whole mess would start all over again. She’d have to reread Dr. McCoy’s missives about them that he’d put on the system when the whole thing had started to go bad.

  “We’ll just make sure we follow the rules,” she purred to it as she headed for her comm unit. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  “What the hell?”

  McCoy was on his knees in sickbay, muttering to himself and reaching underneath a diagnostic bed. He had seen something out of the corner of his eye from the other side of the room. He didn’t think the Enterprise had rats, but as he touched a warm, fuzzy thing, he wondered. He grasped the fur and pulled.

  “Well hello there, little fella,” he drawled. It was a tribble. He chuckled and plopped cross-legged on the floor. If he didn’t think Jim would have his head on a stick for it, he’d keep the damn thing and toss it in the middle of the table during their next formal dinner.

  We were bound to miss one, he thought, petting the purring ball. A shame he’d have to dispose of it.

  But then he’d never really had the opportunity to study a live one for as long as he would have liked. Who k
new what he might learn from prolonged medical observation? It could make for an interesting paper. And he hadn’t been published in a while.

  It was not a pet; it was a means to an end. He thought that even Spock would appreciate the logic in that, and would understand his scientific curiosity.

  He rose, looked around sickbay, and tucked it under his arm, close to his side.

  Mr. Spock was finding meditation difficult. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began. Again.

  He had been distressed by the resolution of their last mission. He had perhaps been most troubled by Chief Engineer Scott’s means of eradicating the tribbles from the Enterprise.

  He had no doubts that the tribbles had met with an undignified end at the hands of the Klingons.

  To him, a tribble was a life-form as worthy of existence as he was. Or as the Klingons were, for that matter. True, tribbles rated high on the potential pest scale, but they were, nonetheless, life, and to Spock, that meant that they were sacred. Sacred, and warm and fuzzy, and strangely mesmerizing.

  The waste was that it had been unnecessary. Spock had checked the computer and had found that on Belinium II, not a day away at warp six, there was a xenozoological research facility. And according to the records that he could access, they did not have a tribble. But he had discovered this only after the tribbles had taken their unfortunate transporter ride. He had reprimanded himself for not thinking of it or checking it out earlier.

  Not that Captain Kirk would have necessarily taken pity on the tribbles and asked to have the Enterprise’s orders changed to effect their salvation. The captain had been out of sorts ever since the expired tribbles had fallen on his head from the quadrotriticale bin.

  Something moved in his meditation robe. He opened his eyes. There, near his right knee, something was indeed moving. Spock reached into the deep pocket of the robe.

  The moment he touched it, he knew what he had found. And he also knew what he would have to do.

  He would have to keep it.

  Montgomery Scott stared blankly at the gauges on the panel in front of him and absently tapped his fingers on the side of his face. His head was resting in his hand, his elbow was resting on the desk, and his heart was resting in a briar patch of guilt.

  What had he been thinking?

  At first, he’d thought it was pretty funny, beaming those tribbles to the Klingon ship. He’d even made a joke about it: “Where they’ll be no tribble a’tall …” He cringed. He honestly hadn’t thought about the Klingons and about what they might do with them. He was so hell-bent on cleaning up the ship and getting back in the good graces of Captain Kirk that he hadn’t stopped to consider the consequences.

  Not, at least, until Uhura had read him the riot act in the corridor. He’d never seen her so angry. And then he’d begun to receive intership mail. Some of it anonymous, some of it signed. They were from angry, hurt tribble owners—brief tribble owners—but the depth of their feelings had moved him. And scared him a little, too.

  Even Mr. Spock had seemed cold and distant since then. But that could be hard to gauge sometimes.

  “Mr. Scott! Guess what I found?”

  It was Ensign Burton, and his voice pulled Scott from his reverie.

  “Lad?”

  Burton was grinning, his hands behind his back.

  “Look, Mr. Scott!” He pulled a hand around and thrust it in Scott’s face. “A tribble!”

  Salvation! Scotty thought as he looked at the purring ball of fur, and said aloud, “Now where did ye find that?” He took it from Burton’s hand.

  “Wedged between a ladder and the wall in a Jeffries tube. Don’t know how we could’ve missed it.”

  Burton was right. They shouldn’t have missed it. They couldn’t have missed it. But they had. It was fate, and this, Scotty decided, was meant to put all things back to right. The tribble was a good omen, a positive sign, and it would be the perfect opportunity to prove to the tribble-lovers on the Enterprise that he was not the heartless bastard that they thought he was.

  “I have heard through the grapevine, gentlemen, that there is a tribble on this ship.”

  Captain James T. Kirk announced it quite seriously, and he noted with some satisfaction that it seemed to have been taken quite seriously by the officers he’d gathered in the briefing room. Spock, Uhura, McCoy, and Scott were unmoving, eyes front, and silent, something that rarely happened in a meeting.

  He knew who the culprit was. He had overheard Ensign Burton as he’d come around a corridor curve, so he knew that Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was harboring a tribble, somewhere, somehow.

  Encouraged by their rapt attention, he continued.

  “I can’t overstate how important it is for us to make sure that the tribbles have all been caught and contained. We witnessed what can happen to them, and what happened to this ship. We were overrun. We ceased to function efficiently.” He paused for effect. “My God! We ceased to function, period.”

  Again, silence. He had never seen his officers so serious. He had at least expected an acerbic crack from McCoy, and some kind of numeric quotation from Spock on efficiency rating percentages and how they had taken a precipitous dive during the incident. But they were mute. He took a deep breath.

  “Let’s have it then, gentlemen. Who here is harboring a tribble?”

  As he expected, after just a few seconds, Scotty’s hand went up into the air. Then, around the table, like an unenthusiastic wave at a poorly attended intergalactic soccer match, all hands went up. The shock must have shown on his face, because the excuses tumbled from them like tribbles from a quadrotriticale bin.

  “… for research, Jim, medical research …”

  “I dinna think that a single wee beastie would make a difference, given what I’d done to all the rest …”

  “… It is a life-form, Captain, and as such I found it difficult …”

  “… and I was afraid you’d just send it out an airlock.”

  No wonder they’d been so attentive. He allowed them to run their course. When they had, Mr. Spock cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Captain, our computer banks show that there is a xenozoological research and display facility on Belinium II, not two days from our present position by warp six.”

  Kirk allowed the words to hang there. He turned to his first officer.

  “Are you suggesting, Mr. Spock, that I have our orders changed and turn this starship around so that we can deliver these tribbles … to a zoo?”

  They all exchanged glances.

  “Yes, Captain,” Spock replied solemnly. “In essence, that is what I am suggesting.”

  “I will take that under advisement. Dismissed.”

  Chastened, his officers kept to their chairs as he left the briefing room and headed for his cabin. When he reached it, he went immediately to the comm unit and typed in his request for a course change.

  “I’ve got some good news, and I’ve got some bad news,” he said aloud. “The bad news is, you’ll be leaving soon.”

  His tribble, perched on the top of the comm unit, purred. Jim grinned. It loved the sound of his voice, and it loved the heat from the comm unit. It was his tribble’s favorite place.

  “The good news is you’ll have lots of company.”

  Tears for Eternity

  Lynda Martinez Foley

  Rocks skittered across the dusty terrain in all directions as Tetsua finally emerged onto the planet’s dimly lit surface. She struggled to heave her bulky body out of the hole she had carved through the crust of the world she still reluctantly called home. Her physical being begged for rest, but her mental essence knew she could take no respite. The research ship was scheduled to arrive within the hour, providing Tetsua with another chance at escape from the burden of her past promises.

  Though trembling with fatigue, Tetsua forced her mind to remember the Vulcan male responsible for her exile; the stark purity of her rising anger provided much-needed energy for her arduous journey. This time s
he was determined to leave her forsaken planet, even though she would once again have to confront her memories as she crossed Vanderberg Point, where the Stones of Honor sat neglected and in ruin.

  Despite the light from the feeble sun’s rays and the cool, dusty wind, Tetsua found it much more difficult to maneuver on the surface than in her underground labyrinth. She allowed herself a moment’s rest as she balanced her aged body against a toppled pillar and contemplated the worn and scattered relics of great honors long past.

  Only one Honor Stone mattered: the one of a carved figure, with sculpted, pointed ears. All the others, including the one bearing her likeness, had eroded to shapeless lumps ages ago. When the science ships used to arrive yearly, she had always requested that the pergium statue of the Vulcan be cleaned and preserved. It had lasted as long as she, mocking her with its thin, aloof figure, a figure that her body’s acids could destroy in an instant if she wished.

  Though that last remaining sculpture stood beyond her sensory limits, Tetsua could imagine the detailed face that had now been worn smooth, as the period between outsider visits had grown greater and greater. She knew one raised eyebrow still captured the essence of the humanoid responsible for her plight.

  Spock, of Vulcan.

  He had changed her life so profoundly, so completely, that she had willingly accepted her isolation on this desolate planet. While others had journeyed to the stars, while others had explored the galaxy, she had stayed and learned, persevered and endured.

  Tetsua railed against the unfairness of it all as she sensed the shifting dust and barren outcroppings around her. She worried that her honored legacy meant only this: she was caretaker of a rockpile.

  She had dreamed of so much more. But logic, diplomacy, and duty had crushed those dreams. Now, the logic withered, the diplomacy faded, and the duty numbed her existence. The passage of time had even expunged her great fear of failing to live up to her role as caretaker. All that remained was the bitter loneliness as her people left or died, one by one, while she lived on and on.