Chapter Twenty-Five

At Enterprise Airlock Four, Kirk pushed out into the darkness just as Spock had done only twenty-one minutes before. He was also equipped with the same high-thrust jetpack, plus Spock’s log messages giving vectors and timings that would permit Kirk to follow and locate him.

Chekov, Uhura, Sulu, and a dozen others, for that matter, had come perilously near insubordination when Kirk had announced his intention to go after Spock alone. He had been shocked to see deep-space veterans unable to understand the simple fact that a hundred of them could not accomplish more than one person alone under these circumstances. With them hardly an hour from Earth, and with Spock’s startling message that this was all a gigantic life form, he had no choice but to go himself in case Spock was now in communication with the giant Intruder.

“Standing by for multiple launch,” said Sulu over the transmitter.

“Acknowledge, Mr. Sulu. Begin launching capsules in twenty seconds . . . mark!”

Kirk used his thrusters to carefully align himself as Spock’s log directed. At the very instant in which he accelerated toward the far inner wall, Sulu would launch the starship’s remaining sensor and message capsules, hoping to draw attention away long enough for him to reach Spock and . . .

“Jim, hold your present position!” It was Decker’s voice. “Spock is being sent back to us.”

Kirk could hear Decker ordering a medical alert at Airlock Four, informing sickbay that Spock would be unconscious when he arrived. The exec’s voice sounded curiously ragged, strained.

“Decker, what are you talking about? Where is this information coming from?”

“Vejur, Captain. Through its probe.”

Kirk peered into sickbay emergency, where Spock lay with his eyes open and staring fixedly ahead. Above the Vulcan’s rigid form, medical readouts indicated that he was dying. McCoy and Chapel, aided by an emergency recovery team, worked feverishly to stem the decline in vital signs.

Spock had been “sent” back to them—his form came cartwheeling through the darkness with its limbs twisted grotesquely, as if in rigor mortis. The crystal-sheet swarms had let the unconscious body pass without interference, and Kirk had used his jetpack thrusters to get Spock to the waiting medical team fast.

“We’ll have to risk hexadiscalmaline,” said McCoy. “Fifty cc’s.”

Kirk saw Chapel blanch but still quickly prepare the injection.

“Captain, if I can make my report now . . . ”

It was Decker, looking almost as bad as Spock, but Vejur was near Earth now and there had been little time for questions. The Ilia-probe was still with Decker, but it was acting more like a mechanism now. Kirk indicated toward it.

“McCoy said that it seemed to have some of Ilia’s memory patterns . . . ?”

“Yes, sir. It had seemed so. For a while.”

Kirk waited. “Well? What happened, Will?”

“I don’t know,” said Decker. He looked positively haggard. His voice was tight and strained, but he was managing to control himself. The probe stood next to him, unmoving, expressionless.

“Spock was right about its memory patterns,” continued Decker. “They were . . . were exceptionally strong. I thought I had . . . had established a . . . a rapport with it. Perhaps I had, since Vejur took control of it back immediately.”

Kirk looked at the probe again. “And you got it to tell you about Vejur sending Spock back . . . ”

“Vejur volunteered that information, Captain. The probe ignores me completely.”

“Then why is it constantly staying next to you like this?”

“I’ve no idea, sir. I’d like to get loose of it now, if I have your permission.”

Kirk hesitated, then shook his head—and saw the tremor of a muscle in Decker’s face. But the probe had attached itself to Decker, and whatever the reason for it, Kirk hoped it might turn out helpful somehow. There were few other things that offered even that slim a hope.

At least the vital readings showed some signs of life, although Spock continued lying in a motionless, catatonic state. Chapel was running a scanner over the Vulcan’s brain area as McCoy examined its readouts. “Now scanning pons area at spinal nerve fiber connection,” she said.

“I see nothing indicating physical damage to the brain,” said McCoy, turning to Kirk. “But there are strong indications of neurological trauma. The sheer quantity of information pouring into his brain during mindmeld must have been enormous. Losing consciousness may have saved him from . . . ”

Before he could finish, they heard a laugh. They whirled to see Dr. Chapel looking down at Spock disbelievingly.

Spock let himself float up through layers of information pressed into him by Vejur. Most of it he did not understand and could never understand, since neither symbols nor words nor finite images could describe it.

How could the unimaginable immensity of this universe around them be only a brief spark in a still greater reality? It had all seemed so clear and logical to Spock when he had been part of Vejur’s thoughts. Spock had also seen that Vejur was almost capable of traveling into these higher dimensions. But just as their starship was trapped inside Vejur, Vejur was trapped here in its present dimension of existence.

What a cosmic joke!

Vejur was everything that Spock had ever dreamed of becoming. And yet Vejur was barren! It would never feel pain. Or joy. Or challenge. It was so completely and magnificently logical that its accumulation of knowledge was totally useless.

Spock laughed again. Then he saw Kirk’s face. He reached out weakly and found Kirk’s arm, then his hand, and took a startled Kirk’s hand in his own.

“Jim,” Spock said.

McCoy looked his astonishment at the visible and unashamed emotion on Spock’s face as he clutched Kirk’s hand.

Kirk returned the pressure and brought his other hand to cover Spock’s, holding it between both of his, signaling Spock that there was no shame in either giving or in answering fully.

“This simple feeling . . . “—Spock struggled for strength—” . . . is so far . . . beyond Vejur’s comprehension . . . ”

“Did we understand your message, Spock? Is Vejur alive? Is it all a living machine?”

Spock nodded with effort. “A life form of its own. A conscious, living . . . entity. But not . . . not so different . . . ”

Spock gasped for breath. The effort to talk was exhausting.

McCoy turned to Kirk. “Jim, I think he’s trying to say that we’re actually living machines ourselves. Protein mechanisms!”

Kirk nodded. “And it considers Enterprise a life form, too.”

Chapel looked up, troubled. “And it also called us an ‘infestation.’”

McCoy nodded. “Bacteria, microbes . . . ugly little carbon-based things cluttering up the Enterprise, perhaps sapping its strength . . . ”

Kirk nodded; this led to an important question. “Does it still feel that way about us, Spock? After melding with your thoughts?”

“My thoughts?” Spock almost laughed again. “What knowledge could I possibly have . . . that would interest it? Jim, it’s not more knowledge that Vejur needs. It needs to be able to feel! It needs the very thing . . . that I was unable to give it!”

“You called it barren.”

Spock nodded. “It is. Logic without need is sterile. Vejur may . . . ultimately learn everything there is to know about our universe . . . this part of it we can understand. But for all that knowledge . . . all that power, it has less wisdom than a child.”

“But it must have taken wisdom for someone or something to build Vejur.”

Spock shook his head. “If there’s an answer to that, Vejur doesn’t have it. I saw . . . the planet from which it came—a planet of living machines, infinitely complex technology, machines that could repair themselves, change themselves to adapt to outside changes . . . ”

Spock felt himself clinging to Kirk’s hand—he was both shocked and pleased to feel such profound pain over the timeless, meaningless existences he had seen among the machines on that planet. They should not have been built so well and left there to exist without the capacity to know hunger or fear or loneliness or anger or any of those marvelous things that would have driven them to adjust their programming to fit their own needs. How important it was to a living thing to have needs!

“Jim,” said Spock finally, “Vejur has knowledge which spans this universe. And yet in all this magnificence, Vejur feels no awe . . . no delight . . . no beauty.” Spock began to sink back, exhausted. “And, Jim, no answers! But it has to look for answers!”

“To what questions?” Kirk asked.

“’Is this all I am?’” Spock said, quoting the essence of the emptiness he had felt. “ ‘Is there not more?’ ”

“Bridge to Captain.”

Kirk heard the intercom and released the Vulcan’s hand. “Kirk here.”

It was Uhura. “A faint signal from Starfleet, sir. Intruder on their inner monitors now, decelerating, its powerfield cloud dissipating rapidly.”

Sulu’s voice cut in. “Starfleet reports show us seven minutes from Earth orbit, Captain.”

“I’ll be right there,” Kirk said. Then to McCoy and Chapel, crisply: “I need Spock on the bridge.”