Chapter Eleven

ENSIGN Ro, Myra and Gregg Calvert, and Doctor Drayton rematerialized in Transporter Room Three aboard the Enterprise. They were met by Chief O’Brien and Captain Picard, who was dressed to travel in a warm-looking suede jacket. He welcomed them with a smile.

“Wow!” said Myra, gaping at a transporter facility the crew of the Enterprise took for granted. “Can we look around?”

Captain Picard stepped jauntily aboard the platform. “Perhaps later,” he replied. “At the moment most of the crew is performing diagnostic tests and maintenance.”

“Can we get on to the ocean?” asked Louise Drayton impatiently. “I don’t want to waste a second.”

“Very well,” said Picard, centering himself on a transporter pad. “Chief O’Brien, you have the coordinates.”

The chief nodded. “Locked in. If you want to come back quickly, don’t hesitate to call.”

“We shan’t,” answered Picard. “Energize.”

A dull hum suffused the room, and the five people in the chamber evaporated into shafts of light.

They materialized on a black beach with copper-colored waves washing ashore at a leisurely pace. The polished ebony pebbles crunched loudly under his feet as Captain Picard took a few hesitant steps along the beach. A wave splashed ashore and dumped some reddish scum atop Picard’s boot; the substance instantly coalesced, like mercury, clinging to itself. It slid off the toe of his boot into the coarse black sand, leaving a gray trail where the black shoe polish had been.

“Hey!” exclaimed Picard, jumping back in alarm.

“Oh, yes,” said Doctor Drayton, “the sea foam is acidic. Don’t let it get on you.”

“Also alive and sentient!” yelled Myra, jogging down the beach toward an archway of black rock that jutted from the forest and disappeared into the churning sea, forming a natural bridge between the two elements.

“Myra! Wait for the rest of us!” called Gregg like a worried parent. He trod after her and was quickly followed by Ensign Ro.

Drayton shook her head at Picard, muttering, “That child. She thinks the pond scum you see on the waves is sentient. I will admit our tests show it may have a hive mind, like bees and ants. But how much thinking it does is open to debate.”

“What do you think?” asked Picard.

“I think it’s a remarkable organism,” answered Drayton, “and we need to camp out here for a year to study it. We have quite a world here, and we don’t know one fifth of what there is to know about it. Come along to the tide pools, and you will see for yourself.”

They trod along the beach toward the immense, jagged archway, and Picard tried to reconcile colors that seemed in the wrong places: a black beach and forest, a copper-red sea, and a sickly green sky. The only healthy green was at the very tops of the trees, and the trees seemed to be slinking back from the ocean, as if they knew its waters were deadly. It was peculiar to see the lazy red waves washing ashore to deposit clumps of mysterious sea life that oozed into the black pebbles as quickly as they could. Picard glanced at the white patch on his boot, now bleached bone white.

They stepped under an ebony archway that had been carved by waves from solid black rock that must have been the same material as the beach. Even now it crumbled away over their heads, a victim of the higher splashes of acidic sea foam, and Picard dashed under it. He saw Ro and the Calverts gathered around a few shallow pools that had been carved from a solid shelf of ebony rock. With a stick Myra was poking at the sea foam that had been trapped there when the tide rushed out.

The foam contracted into a floating lump when she put the stick near it. If she actually touched the substance with the stick it struck back, splashing and oozing and melting away bark.

“It’s got to be animal,” she said to Doctor Drayton. “Plants don’t act like that.”

“Ever seen a Venus flytrap?” scoffed Drayton. “There are many plants that recoil and react to stimuli.”

“It’s more like sea anemone,” countered Myra. “And that’s classified as an animal. If it’s intelligent in this small amount, what’s it like when a big glob of it gets together?”

“Depends,” answered Drayton.

While they argued the point Picard glanced at the other members of the party.

Gregg Calvert was alert, surveying the jungle, his hand close to his holster. He didn’t seem to be enjoying the outing at all, but he was doing it for his daughter. Ro was wide-eyed, taking in the unique flora and fauna. She did not seem herself, thought Picard, but she didn’t appear ill. He decided it was time to fill her in on all that had transpired.

Picard ambled to Ro’s side and remarked, “This black rock is volcanic, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Raw molten lava from the belly of this planet. Isn’t it magnificent?”

“Very lovely.” Picard frowned and lowered his voice. “Ensign, while you were sleeping off your unfortunate insect bite Commander Data witnessed something very odd. Balak, the leader of the Klingons, went to see a goddess in the woods, and he had sex with her.”

That got Ro’s full attention, and she blinked at the captain. “Are you speaking in the metaphysical sense?” she asked.

“Not at all,” replied Picard. “This was a real woman in every sense, but she was passing herself off as a goddess in order to influence these young Klingons. You must be on the lookout for this woman —she could be one of the colonists.”

Instinctively Ro looked away from the captain’s hawklike features and peered at Doctor Drayton. The doctor was peering back, an enigmatic smile on her face.

“Captain Picard,” said Drayton, rising and taking his arm, “let me show you some amazing insects that live in this sand.”

“They can live here despite that acidic sea foam?” asked Picard.

“They have adapted,” she explained. “They are beetles that have developed a calcium shell. Too much acid and they suffocate, but the sea foam seems to slide around them. It does not attack. There may be a symbiotic relationship, as the beetles finish specks of food the acid can’t and keep the beach clean.”

While Drayton commandeered the captain and Myra made notes on her tricorder about the sudsy creature in the tide pools, Ro stared at the ocean. It looked like an endless pool of blood sloshing back and forth in a steamy cauldron. The waves performed a mute dance under a somber sky—no birds flew over them, nor did fish leap from one to the other.

Ro was not one given to fits of imagination, but she could almost envision the great slabs of crust on the ocean bottom, all being forced upward by seething molten lava. This sea was dead because it was fighting a losing battle against underwater continents that wanted supremacy over Selva. It was a very young planet, indeed.

She turned back to look at Gregg Calvert and his joyous daughter. Ro couldn’t help but wonder if anyone—Klingon or human—should be on this planet It obviously hadn’t come close to developing any sort of high-level life on its own. The species she had encountered, like the pit mantis and the sea scum, were extremely dangerous. The amount of habitable land was small, although destined to get larger. It might be a pretty nice place, she thought, if you could come back in a couple million years.

She looked back at the sea, wondering if it had really lost the war already.

Perhaps Selva would develop into an aquatic planet, and the sea foam would evolve into a sentient being, not just the far-flung appendages of a hive mind.

That would mean, she thought abruptly, that the land masses in existence now would be flooded. It could happen, given the forces at work—great floods were part of the creation mythology of many races.

Ensign Ro’s thoughts were abruptly cut short by a horrible screeching sound from the forest, and she turned around to see a scrawny young Klingon running toward them. Another lithe figure bounded after him, but when he saw the settlers he dashed back into the obscurity of the forest. The first ragged Klingon rushed onward, staggering as he came, and Gregg Calvert drew his phaser.

“Hold your fire!” ordered Picard. “There’s only one, and he’s unarmed.”

But Picard talked to the wrong colonist, because Louise Drayton calmly drew her phaser and took dead aim. Before she could shoot, Ensign Ro flung a sinewy arm into her face and blocked her vision. She grabbed the phaser with her other hand and pulled it out of the doctor’s grasp.

“What are you doing?” shrieked Drayton.

“The captain said not to shoot,” snapped Ro. On impulse she checked the doctor’s phaser. It was set to kill. She reset it to light stun.

“When we get back,” she told Drayton coldly, “I’ll show you how to set these things for stun.”

Louise Drayton glared at her for a moment, then looked away.

The young Klingon finally realized he was no longer being chased, and he slumped to the black sand, breathing heavily. His exhaustion didn’t seem nearly as bad as the deep cuts and gashes that covered his emaciated body. Ro and Picard rushed toward him while the colonists hung back.

“Turrok!” said the captain, recognizing the boy as he got closer. Kneeling down to put his arm around Turrok’s shoulders, Picard was relieved to see that most of the gashes and wounds were healing and not as fresh as they looked from a distance.

Ro drew her phaser and stood guard over them, glancing both at the forest and behind her at the settlers, not sure where trouble would come first.

“You must go,” gasped Turrok in Klingon. “Leave now. They are in the forest.”

“How many?” asked Picard in Klingon.

“All,” rasped Turrok. “Balak says to attack

and kill.”

Ro shifted uneasily. “I see more of them, sir. At the edge of the forest.”

Picard didn’t wait to see them. He tapped his comm badge and announced, “Picard to transporter room. Five to beam up.” He glanced at Turrok. “Make that six.”

O’Brien’s response was drowned out by a shriek from the forest, and about a dozen young Klingons rushed toward them, wielding knives of various lengths. Ro, Picard, and Turrok were much closer to the mob than the Calverts, and the strapping youth in the lead was upon them in seconds. Ro aimed and fired a dazzling beam that spun the big Klingon around and dropped him to the ground at their feet.

“Energize!” Picard shouted.

From the forest Wolm could see the swirling lights that engulfed the humans and whisked them away to their magic land, that mysterious thing they called a “ship.” Her comrades just stopped and stared at the strange apparitions. Then she saw Balak lying unconscious on the black beach. Wolm touched her swollen cheek where Balak had hit her the night before after stealing her pretty badge.

Then she drew her knife.

The lithe Klingon dashed between the others before they even had a chance to see her. She crouched over Balak’s stunned body, gripped her knife in both hands, and plunged it deep into his chest. The big Klingon gave an involuntary gasp and went to sleep forever as blood gushed over the hilt of the knife and Wolm’s fist.

“Wolm!” screamed a large boy named Maltz. He grabbed the girl and tossed her away from the body.

The other warriors, Balak’s closest allies and henchmen, just stared at the girl and their dead leader, unbelieving and uncomprehending. Maltz bent down and shook Balak’s limp shoulders, calling his name, but he could see the waterfall of blood tumbling over his ribs, seeping into the black pebbles of the beach.

Balak was no more. The younger members of the tribe stumbled out of the forest, looking numb and confused. The shreds of order that were left in their society had suddenly vanished.

Wolm crawled back to the body and retrieved her weapon. She stood and shook the knife over the fallen leader. “He had to die!” she proclaimed. “He wanted to kill flat-heads and never make peace. That is not way to live! We cannot kill and kill and kill. They have much to offer, and they give it freely. We will learn to fly ships, make food out of air, and change into stars!”

Maltz snarled at her, “You will take Test of Truth!”

Wolm stood defiantly and brushed back her scraggly hair. “I will take it,” she declared. “But you know I am true.”

“The goddess will be angry,” warned another.

“Let goddess punish me!” snapped the female. “I never see goddess. No one sees goddess but Balak.”

“I saw her,” said one young Klingon. “Last night. What if we not see her again?”

Wolm crossed her scrawny arms and said determinedly, “Then we make our own decisions.”