Chapter Six

She hung there inside the lacy filigree of the orbital dry dock. Enterprise!

Montgomery Scott, with some unexpected flair for drama, had maneuvered to keep the starship from Kirk’s sight until the last possible moment. Then, he had used the lateral thruster to nudge their travel pod into a sweeping turn, bringing Enterprise into glorious full view.

Kirk’s eyes saw only her. It was as if the delicate latticework structure around the starship did not exist—or, if he was aware of the dry dock at all, he saw it and its lights as bejeweled space-sculpture existing only to frame and highlight the new symmetry and beauty of the Enterprise.

The dramatic impact was heightened by the light which flooded her from every angle within the huge orbital dock, seemingly doubly brilliant against the velvet blackness of space beyond. Kirk had, of course, seen some of her new lines before, but only at a mid-point in the renovation. She was complete now, gracefully whole—Kirk searched for some phrase, some description that expressed what he was feeling. Was she like a lovely woman? No; at this moment she was more than that to him. A fable? A myth come alive? Yes, that was it! She was as Aphrodite must have been when Zeus first raised her up from the sea, naked and shockingly beautiful.

“Raised up who, sir?” It was Scott giving him a puzzled look. Kirk realized he must have said some part of it aloud.

Scott steered their pod along the length of her and breadth of her, allowing Kirk to savor every view—and the chief engineer was tactful enough to point out enough design changes and details to maintain the fiction of this being merely an inspection look. But now their pod’s control monitor was flashing the symbols which assigned them to use one of the airlocks at a cargo deck.

Kirk felt the pod mating home, the metallic sound of security bolts locking, and the familiar pneumatic whoosh of the airlock doors opening.

You can go home again! Whoever denied that had been wrong! And now, what was it Scotty was saying?

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” repeated Scott.

The cargo deck was a confusion of supplies and equipment, zero-g cargo carriers, and hurrying technicians. Kirk felt apprehensive when he saw how completely redesigned she was even here. Neither his study of the design prints nor his visits during construction had prepared him for the sheer multitude of changes which her final form carried now. But even in the confusion here he could begin to discern those patterns of activity which come only from careful design planning—there was something comfortably sensible in the way these odd-shaped new cargo containers traveled along on zero-gravity sleds, almost as if ignoring the scattered, perspiring crewmen, each container like an intelligent jigsaw puzzle piece capable of finding its own planned storage place in the vessel.

The airlocks behind Kirk and Scott had clanged shut—the travel pod which brought them here was needed elsewhere in some part of the orbital dockyard. There was hurry and signs of fatigue among the work crews here as they struggled to have their part of the Enterprise ready in the near-impossible time of twelve hours.

Could she be gotten out in time? Somewhere inside the vessel here was Captain Decker, who had argued to Starfleet that a bare dozen hours were not enough. And Decker knew this Enterprise—there could be no doubt but that he must know her intimately by now. Could he, Kirk, do what young and capable Decker said was impossible?

A perspiring young ensign was coming forward to greet them, suddenly nervous at the sight of an admiral having come aboard. Lord, how young they were making them these days!

“Permission to come aboard, sir,” Kirk said.

“Granted, sir,” the ensign said. “Welcome aboard, Admiral . . . and Commander Scott, you’re needed in engineering immediately.”

“Sir, if you’ll excuse me?” said Scott, hurrying off. The full impact of all this hit Kirk again. I’m back! In the same instant, he became aware that his presence here was complicating the life of a very harried young ensign who clearly had other jobs needing his attention, too.

“Sir, if there’s somewhere you’d like to be escorted . . . ”

“I think I can find my own way, Ensign.” Kirk moved off, feeling the young officer’s relief at his back. He moved across a catwalk and then crossed the open deck toward the nearest turbolift. He waited a few seconds and then began to wonder if the lifts featured some redesign that required he do more than stand within sensor range. He searched his mind rapidly for any memory of any such redesign in Enterprise’s turbolifts. . . .

The turbolift cab arrived; it had the familiar old whoosh sound as it opened. Kirk stepped inside, drinking in the sensation of being there and of giving the voice command which came next.

“Bridge,” he ordered, savoring the moment.

The turbolift mechanisms responded; they engaged and began to move more quickly than he remembered. He could feel just the slightest residue of undampened inertia which told him of the cab’s rapid acceleration upward, and then the slightest feeling of sliding sideways as the turbolift traveled horizontally to enter another shaft before continuing up again. On the wall of the cab there was a new-style turbolift position readout, but he gave it only a glance since his own trained senses told him all that he needed to know—the lift had passed through the starship’s great engineering section, and it was now streaking up inside the broad support pylon toward the saucer section. Yes, there was the faintest feeling of acceleration now as it shot up through the first eleven decks toward the bridge level.

Deceleration! He was a couple of seconds from being there. Would the bridge crew have been informed that he was her captain again? Either way, his first impression on them would be important. He should appear intelligently concerned, but also confident that they would give him their full  . . .

The turbolift doors snapped open. Kirk stepped out onto the bridge, his entry unnoticed and his presence unrecognized. Unlike the cargo desk’s vast arena of confusion, the bridge here was more like a pressure pot at full boil: disarray everywhere; test equipment underfoot; consoles open; viewing screens disconnected; relays clocking; servos whining; and somewhere an overload signal protesting with its nerve-jangling warning squeal.

Again Kirk felt a touch of apprehension—a sensation of having come into this perhaps too precipitously, possibly even too unprepared. Characteristically, he was immediately angry at himself for permitting negative thoughts—command was a positive function! He had visited here during refit, carefully looked over all her new design plans and specs. He’d make himself at home here, and fast—some of this disarray was already beginning to make sense to him.

They had begun to see him. The Asian romantic Sulu, lieutenant commander’s stripes now, stood sweat-soaked at the helm where he had frozen in mid-motion on seeing Kirk. Uhura, also a lieutenant commander, the same classically lovely features, abruptly stopping in the midst of a flurry of hailing frequency checks. And Chekov, appearing almost too boyish to be a full lieutenant, at the complex new weapons-control station. Kirk remembered hearing that Chekov had recently returned from weapons-defense command school.

“Sir . . . ?”

“You, over there, kill that overload signal!”

A hush began to fall, the fact of Kirk’s presence carried one to another by looks and quick murmurs. There was no questioning the delight and welcome on Uhura’s face. Then she used the word that he had hoped someone would use. “Captain,” she said, “Starfleet just signaled your transfer of command.”

Uhura, moving toward him now, Sulu and Chekov, too, grins on their faces. Murmured welcomes from some of the new people too. Kirk became aware that it could quickly become a sentimental and time-consuming welcome. The first moments of taking command were too important for that.

“I appreciate the welcome; I wish the circumstances were less critical.” His tone and the look delivered the message he intended. Time for handshakes and sentimentality later. He turned to Uhura: “Outpost station Epsilon Nine is monitoring the Intruder. Keep a channel open to them.”

“Aye, sir,” said Uhura.

Kirk looked around the bridge again, then asked, “Where is Captain Decker?”

Sulu broke the hush that followed. “He’s in engineering, sir.” The helmsman indicated the captain’s seat. “He doesn’t know.”

Kirk turned to Chekov. “Please assemble the full crew on the Rec Deck at 0400 hours. See that the large viewer there is hooked up and working. I want to show everyone what we’re facing.”