Star Trek - Blish, James - 01 Read online

  "Is this creature masquerading as your wife?"

  "Not a masquerade," Bierce droned. "It can be Nancy."

  "Or anybody else?"

  "Anybody. When it killed Nancy, I almost destroyed it. But I couldn't. It was the last."

  The repetition was becoming more irritating every minute. Kirk said stonily: "Is that the only reason, Bierce? Tell me this: When it's with you, is it always Nancy?"

  Bierce writhed. There was no answer. McCoy came forward again.

  "I wouldn't press that one if I were you, Jim," he said. "You can get the answer if you need it, but not without endangering the patient."

  "I don't need any better answer," Kirk said. "So we've intruded here into a little private heaven. The thing can be wife, lover, best friend, idol, slave, wise man, fool-anybody. A great life, having everyone in the universe at your beck and call-and you win all the arguments."

  "A one-way road to paranoia," Spock said. Kirk swung back to the drugged man.

  "Then can you recognize the creature-no matter what form it takes?"

  "Yes..."

  "Will you help us?"

  "No,"

  Kirk had expected no more. He gestured to McCoy. "I've got to go organize a search. Break down that resist-ance, Bones, I don't care how you do it or how much you endanger Bierce. In his present state of mind he's as big a danger to us as his 'wife.' Spock, back him up, and be ready to shoot if he should turn violent."

  He stalked out. On the bridge, he called a General Quarters Three; that would put pairs of armed men in every corridor, on every deck. "Every man inspect his mate closely," he told the intercom. "There's one extra person aboard, masquerading as one of us. Lieutenant Uhura, make television rounds of all posts and stations. If you see any person twice in different places, sound the alarm. Got it?"

  A sound behind him made him swing around. It was Spock. His clothes were torn, and he was breathing heavily.

  "Spock! I thought I told you-what happened?"

  "It was McCoy," Spock said shakily. "Or rather, it wasn't McCoy. You were barely out of the cabin when it grabbed me. I got away, but it's got my sidearm. No telling where it's off to now."

  "McCoy! I thought he seemed a little reluctant about the pentathol. Reluctant, and sort of searching his mem-ory, too. No wonder. Well, there's only one place it can have gone to now: right back where it came from."

  "The planet? It can't."

  "No. McCoy's cabin." He started to get up, but Spock lifted a hand sharply.

  "Better look first, Captain. It may not have killed him yet, and if we alarm it-"

  "You're right." Quickly, Kirk dialed in the intercom to McCoy's cabin, and after only a slight hesitation, punched the override button which would give him vision without sounding the buzzer on the other end.

  McCoy was there. He was there twice: a sleeping McCoy on the bunk, and another one standing just inside the closed doorway, looking across the room. The standing form moved, passing in front of the hidden camera and momentarily blocking the view. Then it came back into the frame-but no longer as McCoy. It was Nancy.

  She sat down on the bed and shook the sleeping doc-tor. He muttered, but refused to wake.

  "Leonard," Nancy's voice said. "It's me. Nancy. Wake up. Please wake up. Help me."

  Kirk had to admire the performance. What he was seeing was no doubt an alien creature, but its terror was completely convincing. Quite possibly it was in ter-ror; in any event, the human form conveyed it as di-rectly as a blow.

  She shook McCoy again. He blinked his eyes grog-gily, and then sat up.

  "Nancy! What's this? How long have I been sleep-ing?"

  "Help me, Leonard."

  "What's wrong? You're frightened."

  "I am, I am," she said. "Please help me. They want to kill me!"

  "Who?" McCoy said. "Easy. Nobody's going to hurt you."

  "That's enough," Kirk said, unconsciously lowering his voice, though the couple on the screen could not hear him. "Luckily, the thing's trying to persuade him of something instead of killing him. Let's get down there fast, before it changes its mind."

  Moments later, they burst into McCoy's cabin. The surgeon and the girl swung toward them. "Nancy" cried out.

  "Get away from her, Bones," Kirk said, holding his gun rock steady.

  "What? What's going on here, Jim?"

  "That isn't Nancy, Bones."

  "It isn't? Of course it is. Are you off your rocker?"

  "It killed two crewmen."

  "Bierce, too," Spock put in, his own gun leveled.

  "It?"

  "It," Kirk said. "Let me show you."

  Kirk held out his free hand, unclenching it slowly. In the palm was a little heap of white crystals, dimin-ishing at the edges from perspiration. "Look, Nancy," he said. "Salt. Free for the taking. Pure, concentrated salt."

  Nancy took a hesitant step toward him, then stopped.

  "Leonard," she said in a low voice. "Send him away. If you love me, make him go away."

  "By all means," McCoy said harshly. "This is crazy behavior, Jim. You're frightening her."

  "Not fright," Kirk said. "Hunger. Look at her!"

  The creature, as if hypnotized, took another step for-ward. Then, without the slightest warning, there was a hurricane of motion. Kirk had a brief impression of a blocky body, man-sized but not the least like a man, and of suction-cup tentacles reaching for his face. Then there was a blast of sound and he fell.

  It took a while for both Kirk and McCoy to recover- the captain from the nimbus of Spock's close-range phaser bolt, McCoy from emotional shock. By the time they were all back on the bridge, Bierce's planet was receding.

  "The salt was an inspiration," Spock said. "Evidently the creature only hunted when it couldn't get the pure stuff; that's how Bierce kept it in control."

  "I don't think the salt supply was the only reason why the race died out, though," Kirk said. "It wasn't really very intelligent-didn't use its advantages nearly as well as it might have."

  "They could well have been residual," Spock sug-gested. "We still have teeth and nails, but we don't bite and claw much these days."

  "That could well be. There's one thing I don't under-stand, though. How did it get into your cabin in the first place, Bones? Or don't you want to talk about it?"

  "I don't mind," McCoy said. "Though I do feel like six kinds of a fool. It was simple. She came in just after I'd taken the tranquilizer and was feeling a little afloat. She said she didn't love her husband any more-wanted me to take her back to Earth. Well... it was a real thing I had with Nancy, long ago. I wasn't hard to tempt, especially with the drug already in my system. And later on, while I was asleep, she must have given me another dose-otherwise I couldn't have slept through all the exitement, the general quarters call and so on.

  It just goes to prove all over again-never mess with civillians."

  "A good principle," Kirk agreed. "Unfortunately, an impossible one to live by."

  "There's something I don't understand, though," McCoy added. "The creature and Bierce had Spock all alone in Bierce's cabin-and from what I've found dur-ing the dissection, it was twice as strong as a man any-how. How did you get out, Mr. Spock, without losing anything but your gun?"

  Spock smiled. "Fortunately, my ancestors spawned in quite another ocean than yours, Dr. McCoy," he said. "My blood salts are quite different from yours. Evidently, I wasn't appetizing enough."

  "Of course," McCoy said. He looked over at Kirk. "You still look a little pensive, Jim. Is there still some-thing else wrong?"

  "Mmm?" Kirk said. "Wrong? No, not exactly. I was just thinking about the buffalo."

  Balance of Terror

  When the Romulan outbreak began, Capt. James Kirk was in the chapel of the starship Enterprise, waiting to perform a wedding.

  He could, of course, have declined to do any such thing. Not only was he the only man aboard the starship empowered to perform such a ceremony-and many others even less likely to occur to a civili
an-but both the participants were part of the ship's complement: Spe-cialist (phaser) Robert Tomlinson and Spec. 2nd Cl. (phaser) Angela Martine.

  Nevertheless, the thought of refusing hadn't occurred to him. Traveling between the stars, even at "relativis-tic" or near-light speeds, was a long-drawn-out process at best. One couldn't forbid or even ignore normal human relationships over such prolonged hauls, unless one was either a martinet or a fool, and Kirk did not propose to be either.

  And in a way, nothing could be more symbolic of his function, and that of the Enterprise as a whole, than a marriage. Again because of the vast distances and time lapses involved, the starships were effectively the only fruitful links between the civilized planets. Even inter-stellar radio, which was necessarily faster, was subject to a dozen different kinds of interruptions, could carry no goods, and in terms of human contact was in every way less satisfactory. On the other hand, the starships were as fructifying as worker bees; they carried sup-plies, medical help, technical knowledge, news of home, and-above all-the sight and touch of other people.

  It was for the same complex of reasons that there was a chapel aboard the Enterprise. Designed by some groundlubber in the hope of giving offense to nobody (or, as the official publicity had put it, "to accommo-date all faiths of all planets," a task impossible on the face of it), the chapel was simplified and devoid of symbols to the point of insipidity; but its very existence acknowledged that even the tightly designed Enterprise was a world in itself, and as such had to recognize that human beings often have religious impulses.

  The groom was already there when Kirk entered, as were about half a dozen crew members, speaking sotto voce. Nearby, Chief Engineer Scott was adjusting a small television camera; the ceremony was to be carried throughout the intramural network, and outside the ship, too, to the observer satellites in the Romulus-Remus neu-tral zone. Scotty could more easily have assigned the chore to one of his staff, but doing it himself was his acknowledgment of the solemnity of the occasion-his gift to the bride, as it were. Kirk grinned briefly. Ship's air was a solid mass of symbols today.

  "Everything under control, Scotty?"

  "Can't speak for the groom, sir, but all's well other-wise."

  "Very good."

  The smile faded a little, however, as Kirk moved on toward the blankly nondenominational altar. It bothered him a little-not exactly consciously, but somewhere at the back of his conscience-to be conducting an exer-cise like this so close to the neutral zone. The Romulans had once been the most formidable of enemies. But then, not even a peep had been heard from them since the neutral zone had been closed around their system, fifty-odd years ago. Even were they cooking something venomous under there, why should they pick today to try it-and with a heavily armed starship practically in their back yards?

  Scotty, finishing up with the camera, smoothed down his hair self-consciously; he was to give the bride away. There was a murmur of music from the intercom-Kirk could only suppose it was something traditional, since he himself was tune-deaf-and Angela came in, flanked by her bridesmaid, Yeoman Janice Rand. Scott offered her his arm. Tomlinson and his best man were already in position. Kirk cleared his throat experimentally.

  And at that moment, the ship's alarm went off.

  Angela went white. Since she was new aboard, she might never have heard the jarring blare before, but she obviously knew what it was. Then it was replaced by the voice of Communications Officer Uhura:

  "Captain Kirk to the bridge! Captain Kirk to the bridge!"

  But the erstwhile pastor was already out the door at a dead run.

  Spock, the First Officer, was standing beside Lieu-tenant Uhura's station as Kirk and his engineer burst onto the bridge. Spock, the product of marriage between an earth woman and a father on Vulcan-not the imag-inary Solar world of that name, but a planet of 40 Eri-dani-did not come equipped with Earth-human emo-tions, and Lieutenant Uhura had the impassivity of most Bantu women; but the air was charged with tension none-theless. Kirk said: "What's up?"

  "It's Commander Hansen, outpost satellite four zero two three," Spock said precisely. "They've picked up clear pips of an intruder in the neutral zone."

  "Identification?"

  "None yet, but the engine pattern is modern. Not a Romulan vessel, apparently."

  "Excuse me, Mr. Spock," a voice said from the comm board. "I'm overhearing you. We have a sighting now. The vessel is modern-but the markings are Romulan."

  Kirk shouldered forward and took the microphone from Lieutenant Uhura's hand. "This is Captain Kirk. Have you challenged it, Hansen?"

  "Affirmative. No acknowledgment. Can you give us support, Captain? You are the only starship in this sector."

  "Affirmative."

  "We're clocking their approach visually at..." Hansen's voice died for a moment. Then: "Sorry, just lost them. Disappeared from our monitors."

  "Better transmit your monitor picture. Lieutenant Uhura, put it on our bridge viewscreen."

  For a moment, the screen showed nothing but a scan of stars, fading into faint nebulosity in the background. Then, suddenly, the strange ship was there. Superficially, it looked much like an Enterprise-class starship; a domed disc, seemingly coming at the screen nearly edge-on- though of course it was actually approaching the satel-lite, not the Enterprise. Its size, however, was impossible to guess without a distance estimate.

  "Full magnification, Lieutenant Uhura."

  The stranger seemed to rush closer. Scott pointed mutely, and Kirk nodded. At this magnification, the stripes along the underside were unmistakable: broad shadows suggesting a bird of prey with half-spread wings. Romulan, all right.

  From S-4023, Hansen's voice said urgently: "Got it again! Captain Kirk, can you see-"

  "We see it."

  But even as he spoke, the screen suddenly turned white, then dimmed as Uhura backed it hastily down the intensity scale. Kirk blinked and leaned forward tensely.

  The alien vessel had launched a torpedolike bolt of blinding light from its underbelly. Moving with curious deliberateness, as though it were traveling at the speed of light in some other space but was loafing sinfully in this one, the dazzling bolt swelled in S-4023's camera lens, as if it were bound to engulf the Enterprise as well.

  "She's opened fire!" Hansen's voice shouted. "Our screen's failed-we're-"

  The viewscreen of the Enterprise spat doomsday light throughout the control room. The speaker squawked desperately and went dead.

  "Battle stations," Kirk told Uhura, very quietly. "Gen-eral alarm. Mr. Spock, full ahead and intercept."

  Nobody had ever seen a live Romulan. It was very cer-tain that "Romulan" was not their name for themselves, for such fragmentary evidence as had been pieced to-gether from wrecks, after they had erupted from the Romulus-Remus system so bloodily a good seventy-five years ago, suggested that they'd not even been native to the planet, let alone a race that could have shared Earthly conventions of nomenclature. A very few bloated bodies recovered from space during that war had proved to be humanoid, but of the hawklike Vulcanite type rather than the Earthly anthropoid. The experts had guessed that the Romulans might once have settled on their adopted planet as a splinter group from some mass migration, thrown off, rejected by their less militaristic fellows as they passed to some more peaceful settling, to some less demanding kind of new world. Neither Romulus nor Remus, twin planets whirling around a com-mon center in a Trojan relationship to a white-dwarf sun, could have proved attractive to any race that did not love hardships for their own sakes.

  But almost all this was guesswork, unsupported either by history or by interrogation. The Vulcanite races who were part of the Federation claimed to know nothing of the Romulans; and the Romulans themselves had never allowed any prisoners to be taken-suicide, apparently, was a part of their military tradition-nor had they ever taken any. All that was known for sure was that the Romulans had come boiling out of their crazy little planetary system on no apparent provocation, in primi-tive, clumsy cylindr
ical ships that should have been clay pigeons for the Federation's navy and yet in fact took twenty-five years to drive back to their home world- twenty-five years of increasingly merciless slaughter on both sides.

  The neutral zone, with its sphere of observer satel-lites, had been set up around the Romulus-Remus sys-tem after that, and for years had been policed with the utmost vigilance. But for fifty years nothing had come out of it-not even a signal, let alone a ship. Perhaps the Romulans were still nursing their wounds and per-fecting their grievances and their weapons-or perhaps they had learned their lesson and given up-or perhaps they were just tired, or decadent....

  Guesswork. One thing was certain now. Today, they had come out again-or one ship had.