Star Trek - Blish, James - 01 Page 7

  The crew of the Enterprise moved to battle stations with a smooth efficiency that would hardly have sug-gested to an outsider that most of them had never heard a shot fired in anger. Even the thwarted bridal couple was at the forward phaser consoles, as tensely ready now to launch destruction as they had been for creation only a few hours before.

  But there was nothing to fire at in the phaser sights yet. On the bridge, Kirk was in the captain's chair, Spock and Scott to either side of him. Sulu was piloting; Second Officer Stiles navigating. Lieutenant Uhura, as usual, was at the comm board.

  "No response from satellites four zero two three, two four or two five," she said. "No trace to indicate any are still in orbit. Remaining outposts still in position. No sightings of intruding vessel. Sensor readings normal. Neu-tral zone, zero."

  "Tell them to stay alert and report anything ab-normal."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Entering four zero two three's position area," Sulu said.

  "Lieutenant Uhura?"

  "Nothing, sir. No, I'm getting a halo effect here now. Debris, I'd guess-metallic, finally divided, and still scat-tering. The radiant point's obviously where the satellite should be; I'm running a computer check now, but-"

  "But there can't be much doubt about it," Kirk said heavily. "They pack a lot more punch than they did fifty years ago-which somehow doesn't surprise me much."

  "What was that weapon, anyhow?" Stiles whispered.

  "We'll check before we guess," Kirk said. "Mr. Spock, put out a tractor and bring me in some of that debris. I want a full analysis-spectra, stress tests, X-ray dif-fusion, micro-chemistry, the works. We know what the hull of that satellite used to be made of. I want to know what it's like now-and then I want some guesses from the lab on how it got that way. Follow me?"

  "Of course, sir," the First Officer said. From any other man it would have been a brag, and perhaps a faintly insulting one at that. From Spock it was simply an utterly reliable statement of fact. He was already on the intercom to the lab section.

  "Captain," Uhura said. Her voice sounded odd.

  "What is it?"

  "I'm getting something here. A mass in motion. Noth-ing more. Nothing on visual, no radar pip. And no radia-tion. Nothing but a De Broglie transform in the computer. It could be something very small and dense nearby, or something very large and diffuse far away, like a comet. But the traces don't match for either."

  "Navigator?" Kirk said.

  "There's a cold comet in the vicinity, part of the Rom-ulus-Remus system," Stiles said promptly. "Bearing 973 galactic east, distance one point three light hours, course roughly convergent-"

  "I'd picked that up long ago," Uhura said. "This is something else. Its relative speed to us is one-half light, in toward the neutral zone. It's an electromagnetic field of some kind... but no kind I ever saw before. I'm cer-tain it's not natural."

  "No, it isn't," Spock said, with complete calmness. He might have been announcing the weather, had there been any out here. "It's an invisibility screen."

  Stiles snorted, but Kirk knew from long experience that his half-Vulcanite First Officer never made such flat statements without data to back them. Spock was very odd by Earth-human standards, but he had a mind like a rapier. "Explain," Kirk said.

  "The course matches for the vessel that attacked the last satellite outpost to disappear," Spock said. "Not the one we're tracking now, but four zero two five. The whole orbit feeds in along Hohmann D toward an inter-cept with Romulus. The computer shows that already."

  "Lieutenant Uhura?"

  "Check," she said, a little reluctantly.

  "Second: Commander Hansen lost sight of the enemy vessel when it was right in front of him. It didn't reap-pear until it was just about to launch its attack. Then it vanished again, and we haven't seen it since. Third: Theoretically, the thing is possible, for a vessel of the size of the Enterprise, if you put almost all the ship's power into it; hence, you must become visible if you need power for your phasers, or any other energy weapon."

  "And fourth, baloney," Stiles said.

  "Not quite, Mr. Stiles," Kirk said slowly. "This would also explain why just one Romulan vessel might venture through the neutral zone, right under the nose of the Enterprise. The Romulans may think they can take us on now, and they've sent out one probe to find out."

  "A very long chain of inferences, sir," Stiles said, with marked politeness.

  "I'm aware of that. But it's the best we've got at the moment. Mr. Sulu, match course and speed exactly with Lieutenant Uhura's blip, and stick with it move for move. But under no circumstances cross after it into the neutral zone without my direct order. Miss Uhura, check all frequencies for a carrier wave, an engine pat-tern, any sort of transmission besides this De Broglie wave-front-in particular, see if you can overhear any chit-chat between ship and home planet. Mr. Spock and Mr. Scott, I'll see you both directly in the briefing room; I want to review what we know about Romulus. Better call Dr. McCoy in on it, too. Any questions?" There were none. Kirk said, "Mark and move."

  The meeting in the briefing room was still going on when Spock was called out to the lab section. Once he was gone, the atmosphere promptly became more infor-mal; neither Scott nor McCoy liked the Vulcanite, and even Kirk, much though he valued his First Officer, was not entirely comfortable in his presence.

  "Do you want me to go away too, Jim?" McCoy said gently. "It seems to me you could use some time to think."

  "I think better with you here, Bones. You too, Scotty. But this could be the big one. We've got people from half the planets of the Federation patrolling the neutral zone. If we cross it with a starship without due cause, we may have more than just the Romulans to worry about. That's how civil wars start, too."

  "Isn't the loss of three satellites due cause?" Scott said.

  "I'd say so, but precisely what knocked out those satellites? A Romulan ship, we say; but can we prove it? Well, no, we say; the thing's invisible. Even Stiles laughs at that, and he's on our side. The Romulans were far behind us in technology the last we saw of them- they only got as far as they did in the war out of the advantage of surprise, plus a lot of sheer savagery. Now, suddenly, they've got a ship as good as ours, plus an invisibility screen. I can hardly believe it myself.

  "And on the other hand, gentlemen... On the other hand, while we sit here debating the matter, they may be about to knock us right out of the sky. It's the usual verge-of-war situation: we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't."

  The elevator door slid open. Spock was back. "Sir-"

  "All right, Mr. Spock. Shoot."

  Spock was carrying a thick fascicle of papers bound to a clip board, held close to his body under one arm. His other hand swung free, but its fist was clenched. The bony Vulcanite face had no expression and could show none, but there was something in his very posture that telegraphed tension.

  "Here are the analyses of the debris," he said in his inhumanly even voice. "I shan't bother you with the de-tails unless you ask. The essence of the matter is that the Romulan weapon we saw used on S-4023 seems to be a molecular implosion field."

  "Meaning what?" McCoy said roughly.

  Spock raised his right fist over the plot board, still clenched. The knuckles and tendons worked for a mo-ment. A fine metallic glitter sifted down onto the table.

  "It fatigues metals," he said. "Instantly. The metal crystals lose cohesion, and collapse into dust-like this. After that, anything contained in the metal blows up of itself, because it isn't contained any more. I trust that's clear, Dr. McCoy. If not, I'll try to explain it again."

  "Damn you, Spock-"

  "Shut up, Bones," Kirk said tiredly. "Mr. Spock, sit down. Now then. We're in no position to fight among ourselves. Evidently we're even worse off than we thought we were. If the facts we have are to be trusted, the Romulans have, first, a practicable invisibility screen, and second, a weapon at the very least comparable to ours."

  "Many times superior," Spock said stolidly. "At
least in some situations."

  "Both of these gadgets," McCoy said, "are Mr. Spock's inventions, very possibly. At least in both cases, it's his interpretation of the facts that's panicking us."

  "There are no other interpretations available at the moment," Kirk said through thinned lips. "Any argument about that? All right. Then let's see what we can make of them for our side. Scotty, what have we got that we can counter with, given that the Romulan gadgets are real? We can't hit an invisible object, and we can't duck an invisible gunner. Where does that leave us?"

  "Fully armed, fast and maneuverable," the engineer said. "Also, they aren't quite invisible; Lieutenant Uhura can pick up their De Broglie waves as they move. That means that they must be operating at nearly full power right now, just running away and staying invisible. We've got the edge on speed, and I'd guess that they don't know that our sensors are picking them up."

  "Which means that we can outrun them and know approximately-what they're doing. But we can't out-gun them or see them."

  "That's how it looks at the moment," Scott said. "It's a fair balance of power, I'd say, Jim. Better than most commanders can count on in a battle situation."

  "This isn't a battle situation yet," Kirk said. "Nor even a skirmish. It's the thin edge of an interstellar war. We don't dare to be wrong."

  "We can't be righter than we are with the facts at hand, sir," Spock said.

  McCoy's lips twitched. "You're so damned sure-"

  A beep from the intercom stopped him. Way up in the middle of the air, Lieutenant Uhura's voice said:

  "Captain Kirk."

  "Go ahead, Lieutenant," Kirk said, his palms sweating.

  "I've got a fix on the target vessel. Still can't see it- but I'm getting voices."

  Even McCoy pounded up with them to the bridge. Up there, from the master speaker on the comm board, a strange, muted gabble was issuing, fading in and out and often hashed with static, but utterly incomprehensi-ble even at its best. The voices sounded harsh and only barely human; but that could have been nothing more than the illusion of strangeness produced by an unknown language.

  The Bantu woman paid no attention to anything but her instruments. Both her large hands were resting delicately on dial knobs, following the voices in and out, back and forth, trying to keep them in aural focus. Beside her left elbow a tape deck ran, recording the gabble for whatever use it might be later for the Analysis team.

  "This appears to be coming off their intercom sys-tem," she said into the tape-recorder's mike. "A weak signal with high impedance, pulse-modulated. Worth checking what kind of field would leak such a signal, what kind of filtration spectrum it shows-oh, damn-no, there it is again. Scotty, is that you breathing down my neck?"

  "Sure is, dear. Need help?"

  "Get the computer to work out this waver-pattern for me. My wrists are getting tired. If we can nail it down, I might get a picture."

  Scott's fingers flew over the computer console. Very shortly, the volume level of the gabble stabilized, and Lieutenant Uhura leaned back in her seat with a sigh, wriggling her fingers in mid-air. She looked far from relaxed, however.

  "Lieutenant," Kirk said. "Do you think you can really get a picture out of that transmission?"

  "Don't know why not," the Communications Officer said, leaning forward again. "A leak that size should be big enough to peg rocks through, given a little luck. They've got visible light blocked, but they've left a lot of other windows open. Anyhow, let's try..."

  But nothing happened for a while. Stiles came in quietly and took over the computer from Scott, walking carefully and pointedly around Spock. Spock did not seem to notice.

  "This is a funny business entirely," McCoy said almost to himself. "Those critters were a century behind us, back when we drove them back to their kennels. But that ship's almost as good as ours. It even looks like ours. And the weapons..."

  "Shut up a minute, please, Dr. McCoy," Lieutenant Uhura said. "I'm beginning to get something."

  "Sulu," Kirk said. "Any change in their course?"

  "None, sir. Still heading home."

  "Eureka!" Lieutenant Uhura crowed triumphantly. "There it is!"

  The master screen lit. Evidently, Kirk judged, the picture was being picked up by some sort of monitor camera in the Romulan's control room. That in itself was odd; though the Enterprise had monitor cameras almost everywhere, there was none on the bridge-who, after all, would be empowered to watch the Captain?

  Three Romulans were in view across the viewed cham-ber, sitting at scanners, lights from their hooded viewers playing upon their faces. They looked human, or nearly so: lean men, with almond-colored faces, dressed in military tunics which bore wolf's-head emblems. The severe, reddish tone of the bulkheads seemed to accen-tuate their impassivity. Their heads were encased in heavy helmets.

  In the foreground, a man who seemed to be the com-manding officer worked in a cockpit-like well. Com-pared to the bridge of the Enterprise, this control room looked cramped. Heavy conduits snaked overhead, almost within touch.

  All this, however, was noted in an instant and for-gotten. Kirk's attention was focused at once on the commander. His uniform was white, and oddly less dec-orated than those of his officers. Even more importantly, however, he wore no helmet. And in his build, his stance, his coloring, even the cant and shape of his ears, he was a dead ringer for Spock.

  Without taking his eyes from the screen, Kirk could sense heads turning toward the half-Vulcanite. There was a long silence, except for the hum of the engines and the background gabble of the Romulan's conversa-tion. Then Stiles said, apparently to himself:

  "So now we know. They got our ship design from spies. They can pass for us... or for some of us."

  Kirk took no overt notice of the remark. Possibly it had been intended only for his ears, or for nobody's; until further notice he was tentatively prepared to think so. He said:

  "Lieutenant Uhura, I want linguistics and cryptogra-phy to go to work on that language. If we can break it-"

  There was another mutter from Stiles, not intelligi-ble but a good deal louder than before. It was no longer possible to ignore him.

  "I didn't quite hear that, Mr. Stiles."

  "Only talking to myself, sir."

  "Do it louder. I want to hear it."

  "It wasn't-"

  "Repeat it," Kirk said, issuing each syllable like a bul-let. Everyone was watching Kirk and Stiles now except Spock, as though the scene on the screen was no longer of any interest at all.

  "All right," Stiles said. "I was just thinking that Mr. Spock could probably translate for us a lot faster than the analysts or the computer could. After all, they're his kind of people. You have only to look at them to see that. We can all see it."

  "Is that an accusation?"

  Stiles drew a deep breath. "No, sir," he said evenly. "It's an observation. I hadn't intended to make it public, and if it's not useful, I'll withdraw it. But I think it's an observation most of us have already made."

  "Your apology doesn't satisfy me for an instant. How-ever, since the point's now been aired, we'll explore it. Mr. Spock, do you understand the language those people are speaking? Much as I dislike Mr. Stiles' imputation, there is an ethnic resemblance between the Romulans and yourself. Is it meaningful?"

  "I don't doubt that it is," Spock said promptly. "Most of the people in this part of space seem to come from the same stock. The observation isn't new. However, Vulcan has had no more contact than Earth has with the Romulans in historical times; and I certainly don't understand the language. There are suggestions of roots in common with my home language-just as English has some Greek roots. That wouldn't help you to under-stand Greek from a standing start, though it might help you to figure out something about the language, given time. I'm willing to try it-but I don't hold out much hope of its being useful in time to help us out of our present jam."

  In the brief silence which followed, Kirk became aware that the muttering from the screen had stopped.
Only a second later, the image of the Romulan bridge had dissolved too.

  "They've blocked the leak," Uhura reported. "No way to tell whether or not they knew we were tapping it."

  "Keep monitoring it and let me know the instant you pick them up again. Make a copy of your tape for Mr. Spock. Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott, please come with me to my quarters. Everyone else, bear in mind that we're on continuous alert until this thing is over, one way or another."

  Kirk stood up, and seemed to turn toward the ele-vator. Then, after a carefully calculated pause, he swung on Stiles.

  "As for you, Mr. Stiles: Your suggestion may indeed be useful. At the moment, however, I think it perilously close to bigotry, which is a sentiment best kept to your-self. Should you have another such notion, be sure I hear it before you air it on the bridge. Do I make myself clear?"