Chapter Eight

Kirk moved blindly through the corridor. He hardly saw the hurrying crew and dockyard technicians as they moved aside out of his way. He fought to clear his mind of the image of that distorted thing which had been a woman named Lori. Could he have saved her if he hadn’t lost that split-second looking for the new pattern-booster switch?

Lori. She must have volunteered, last-minute. Had she discovered they needed an officer trained in her zeno-psychspecialty? Or had she come hoping for—what? His forgiveness? He hoped that hadn’t been it, since she had done him no injury. That first year back on Earth he had needed exactly what she had been to him. She had realized that, too, and it had pleased her immensely to both heal and pleasure him so. The fact that the old fox Nogura had used her took none of that away.

Even as these thoughts passed through Kirk’s mind, the old habits of command were returning, demanding that he set aside personal agony. The effect of this on his vessel, on the mission? Sonak was the critical loss. He was the second best science officer in the Fleet. No, the best on active duty.

Kirk looked up in confusion, then embarrassment—he had lost his way. A passing yeoman stopped in response to his puzzled look. “Turboshaft eight?” he asked, feeling the fool.

“Back that way, sir,” the yeoman said, pointing toward the way he had come.

With the crew exhausted already, concern over these transporter deaths could run through the ship like a shock wave. Despite all its safety back-ups, the transporter had malfunctioned badly. What other systems might fail? Would this shake confidence in the new design? Or confidence in him, now the new captain? Should he launch on schedule with the ship this unready? Decker had been right—she was not the Enterprise that Kirk had once known so intimately. Would Decker’s knowledge of her have prevented the accident?

Decker! He was standing there by the turbolift, watching curiously as Kirk approached. Had he seen his replacement having to ask the location of this turbolift shaft?

“We’ll have to replace Commander Sonak,” said Kirk. “But I’d still like a Vulcan there, if possible.”

“None available, Captain.” Did Decker know this for certain? Could he have checked on this already? “There’s no one, in fact, who’s fully rated on this design.”

“You are, Mr. Decker,” Kirk said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to double as science officer.”

Kirk moved on, feeling Decker’s eyes on his back. Was the new exec waiting for him to fall on his face? Wouldn’t he, Kirk, have been resentful if years ago someone had snatched away his first command? Kirk thought probably so. Decker’s resentment could begin to affect his performance as exec, possibly as science officer, too? Had he loaded too much responsibility on Decker?

Kirk was aware that he needed McCoy. Was he being unfair to Decker? Certainly, he was being unfair to himself. He had many times solved problems greater than any exec could create. And anyway, Decker might create no problems at all—he was a brilliant and responsible young officer. If Kirk was indeed the right captain for this mission, Decker would begin to see that. But he also knew that Nogura had manipulated him with almost ridiculous ease; and beyond that he knew that he had been out of the center seat for almost three years now. Could he again become that starship captain he used to be? Or could that be delusion too? Was it possible he had just been lucky?

Kirk patched his intercom through to Scott. “I need a working transporter, Engineer! Total checkout and fail-safe back-up of any questionable part. Full safety trials before each beam-up. Kirk, out.” He had less than ten hours before launch, and then only another twenty-two hours before they would reach and intercept the Intruder—assuming no engine problems. Could he mold this ship, crew, and himself into a star-worthy unit in that limited time?

Kirk switched his viewer to a look at the Rec Deck and saw that only a few of the crew were early for the 0400 assembly which he had ordered. He made a random ship scan and his spirits were buoyed somewhat as he saw that most of the crew were staying at their launch preparation tasks until the last possible minute.

He could not recall that any starship captain had ever assembled a full crew as he planned to do. There would not have been adequate space for it in earlier design vessels, anyway. And there was usually no need for it—a starship’s “nerve system” of computer-regulated scanners and viewers permitted instant contact with anyone at any time. But this case was unique—it needed the crew and captain face to face. They would be seeing the gigantic size of the Intruder’s powerfield (if indeed that was its explanation), they would also see the awesome weaponry that destroyed the Klingons, and instinct told Kirk that in a moment like this the crew needed to be with the man who would be leading them. And it was important that he be able to measure his crew’s reactions to all this. And as old-fashioned as some might consider it, Kirk knew that peril was always more easily faced when standing shoulder to shoulder with one’s comrades.

The thought occurred to him that there were those who might criticize this mass announcement as contrived dramatics. To blistering hell with any such critic! He damn well intended to use anything and everything that would help weld these people together into the crew that he was going to need.

It was 0404 hours when Kirk entered the great multilevel Rec Deck, the largest single interior ever designed into a starship. The four hundred-plus crew members had gathered in loose ranks across the vast deck area, spilling onto upper balconies and against the huge observation ports which looked out into the orbital dry dock, busy with last-minute launch preparation.

This Rec Deck interior was three, perhaps four, times the size of Enterprise’s former recreation area, before the redesign—and this without including the exercise rooms and new sports areas adjoining it. There were many (none of them deep-space veterans) who thought this new design was wasteful preoccupation with games and sociability. But those whose space experience was numbered in years knew that the function served here was as necessary to a starship as its engines. Here the most vital of the ship’s mechanisms were kept in peak operating efficiency through music, song, games, debate, exercise, competition, friendship, romance, sex—the list was as endless as human ingenuity itself. Companionship and community were as basic to life support as oxygen and food. To those who might spend years of their life in this vessel, this place was their village square, their park, library, café, family table, their mall, meeting hall, and much more.

The sounds of chatter and shuffling feet died away as Kirk entered and crossed to the platform facing them. At his signal, Uhura switched the main Rec viewer to the recording of the Epsilon subspace transmission. There was the expected reaction to the K’t’inga-class heavy cruisers, the puzzled wonderment over the luminescent “cloud.” Kirk was surprised to find his attention wandering, as if these images were some fictional adventure he had seen once too often. But his attention returned, and with full intensity, as the first green whiplash energy bolt struck spectacularly and the first Klingon cruiser imploded into nothingness. . . .

When it was over, Kirk looked out at the faces he knew and at the many he didn’t, seeing that many of the new ones seemed almost impossibly young. He knew that most of them were wondering if they had just watched their own deaths on the viewer here. He could also sense that he had been right to change uniforms and wear captain’s stripes once again.

“That’s all we know about it, except that it is headed for Earth. Enterprise is the only starship within interception range.”

There was a stir and a few murmurs at that. He continued: “Our orders are to intercept, investigate, and take whatever action is necessary and possible. We assume there is a vessel at the heart of the ‘cloud.’ It is our hope that there are life forms aboard that vessel which reason as we do.”

Kirk had intended for it to end with that. He knew that what they had just seen might panic a few members of the crew—some might even request relief from this assignment—and he had already given orders that an immediate non-prejudicial transfer out should be granted in any such case. He turned toward the crew, intending to dismiss them.

“Captain, we have an urgent subspace call from Epsilon Nine.”

It was Uhura, referring to the outpost station whose sensor drones had gathered the Klingon destruction images which they had just seen.

“Put it on the viewer here,” said Kirk. From now on, the crew deserved to have as much information on the Intruder as he could provide to them. He saw Uhura keying the viewer to pick up the incoming subspace message—the usual flutter of hyper-dimension static, then the huge viewer settled into an image of Lieutenant Commander Branch, who commanded this outpost station near the Klingon border. He was flanked by a sensor operator and a pretty, young female lieutenant on scanner duty.

Kirk got a nod from Uhura, then called, “Hello, Branch, this is Kirk, Enterprise. What do you have for us?”

The viewer image now showed more of the outpost, its array of powerful sensors and long-distance tracking equipment, and out an observation port through which faint starlight revealed the vast complex of antennae which stretched out into cold space in all directions around the central core of the outpost.

“The Intruder is holding its Earth heading,” Branch was saying, “and is now passing our station within visual range of us. We can give you a fairly close look. at it if you’d like.”

The outpost’s main observation port came into prominent focus on the Enterprise viewer and Kirk could see the strange “cloud” much closer now than ever before. What had been a strange luminescence in longer views of it could now be seen to be made up of bizarre patterns of glowing colors in great geometrical displays and combinations.

Branch checked console readings, spoke to the viewer: “Enterprise . . . what we’re seeing there is definitely a powerfield of some kind. Measures . . . over eighty-two A.U.’s in diameter. Must be something incredible inside there generating it.”

Eighty-two times the distance from Earth to the sun?

But Branch was looking up from the console, gravely. “We’re transmitting linguacode friendship message on all frequencies. No response.”

“I have a null reading at the center of the cloud, sir,” the technician said.

“Definitely something inside there,” the pretty lieutenant added, “but all scans are being reflected back. Receiving an odd pattern now . . . they seem to be reacting to our scans.”

“Some kind of energy surge,” Commander Branch said, looking up. “Enterprise, they could be mistaking our scans as a hostile act.”

Kirk saw Branch stiffen at a reading—he knew the look.

“Deflectors, emergency full!” Branch hit an alarm button. The alarm Klaxon sounded. The viewer image distorted, wavered, cleared again, Branch reacting to it: “We are under attack!”

“External view,” Kirk snapped. Uhura keyed a switch, getting an outside view of the outpost as a pinpoint of writhing green fury could be seen emerging from the cloud—it was identical to the whiplash bolts which had destroyed the Klingons. Groans came from out among the crew assembled there. It was no recording they were seeing—this was happening now and it was frighteningly real. Then someone screamed.

There was simply nothing anyone could do—here or out at the distant outpost. The writhing fury struck outpost Epsilon Nine with cataclysmic force, and as the viewer image broke up, the Starfleet outpost had already become a maelstrom of flaring energy and shattered debris. Then there was nothing.

“Viewer off.” Kirk said it quietly. It took effort to turn back to the assembled crew and face them again. Was there anything he could say to them now? No, he decided. For those who could not handle what they had just seen, nothing he could say could change how they felt.

“Pre-launch countdown” he said, “will start in forty minutes. Dismissed.”