Chapter 4

As soon as the inspection ended, Peter dropped the “left-handed spanner” into its bin and sprinted to his locker. He was late for his math lesson. He scooped up his little computer, banged the locker door closed, turned around, and ran smack into his Uncle Montgomery.

“Uh—” Peter came to attention and saluted. “I’m due in tutorial, sir, with your permission—”

“Permission denied, Cadet. I’ll have a few words wi’ ye first.”

“But, sir, I’ll be late!”

“Then ye’ll be late! What did ye mean wi’ that display of impertinence?”

Oh, boy, Peter thought. Now I’m in for it.

“Sir?” he said innocently, stalling for time.

“Dinna ‘sir’ me, ye young scoundrel! Were ye trying to embarrass me in front of the admiral? In front of James Kirk himself?”

“You didn’t have to tell him who I was!” Peter said. “Nobody knew, till now!”

“Aye, is that so? Ye are embarrassed to be my nephew?”

“You know I’m not! It just seems like everybody will think I only got here because of it.”

Montgomery Scott folded his arms across his chest. “Ye have so little faith in ye’sel’?”

“I just want to pull my share,” Peter said, and saw that that was not the right thing to say, either.

“I see,” Uncle Montgomery said. “ ’Tis not ye’sel’ ye [74] doesna trust, ’tis me. Ye think I’d do ye the disservice of letting ye off easy? If ye think ye havna been working hard enough, we’ll see if we canna gi’ ye a bit o’ a change.”

I’m definitely going to be late to math, Peter thought. Lieutenant Saavik will cancel the lesson, and on top of everything else it’s going to take me three days to get uncle over his snit. Well, smart kid, was it worth it?

He remembered the look on the admiral’s face when he gave him the “left-handed spanner” and decided that it was.

But not, unfortunately, as far as Uncle Montgomery was concerned.

“You know I don’t think that, uncle,” Peter said, trying to placate him.

“Ah, now it’s ‘uncle’! And stop changing the subject! Ye havna explained thy behavior!”

“He was testing me, uncle, to see how dumb I am. If that happened, Dannan said—”

“Dannan!” Uncle Montgomery cried. “That sister o’ thine has only just missed being thrown in the brig more times than thy computer can count! I’d not take thy sister as a model, mister, if ye know what’s good for ye!”

“Wait a minute!” Peter cried. “Dannan is ... she’s—”

It was true she had been disciplined a lot; it was even true that she had nearly been thrown out of Starfleet. But even Uncle Montgomery had told him a million times that once in a while you had to work on your own initiative, and that was what Dannan did. It didn’t matter anyway. Dannan was Peter’s sister, and he adored her.

“You can’t talk about her that way!”

“I’ll talk about her any way I please, young mister, and ye shall listen with a civil tongue in thy head.”

“Can I go now?” Peter asked sullenly. “I’m already five minutes late, and Lieutenant Saavik won’t wait around.”

[75] “That’s another thing. Ye spend far too much time hanging around after her. D’ye think she’s naught to do but endure the attentions of a puppydog?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Peter asked angrily.

“Dinna play the fool wi’ thine old uncle, boy. I can see a schoolboy crush—and so can everyone else. My only advice for ye,” he said condescendingly, “is dinna wear thy heart on thy sleeve.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Nay? Well, then, be off wi’ ye, Mister Know-It-All, if ye are too wise to listen to the advice o’ thine elders.”

Peter fled from the locker room.

 

Saavik arrived at tutorial rather late, for the inspection and undocking disarrayed the usual schedule. She was surprised to find that Peter was not there yet, either. Perhaps he had arrived and, not finding Saavik, assumed that the training cruise would change the routine. But she thought he would wait more than two or three minutes. Perhaps Mr. Scott had lectured his trainees after the engine room inspection.

That could take considerable extra time, Saavik thought. I will wait.

When Spock first requested that Saavik tutor Peter Preston in advanced theoretical mathematics, she had prepared herself to decline. Peter, fourteen, was nearly the same age as Saavik had been when the Vulcan research team landed on her birth-world.

Saavik had feared she would compare the charming and well-brought-up young Peter to the creature she had been on Hellguard. She had feared she would resent the advantages childhood had presented to him and withheld from her. She feared her own anger and how she might react if she released it even for a moment.

When she tried to explain all this to the captain, he listened, considerately and with all evidence of understanding. Then he apologized for his own lack of [76] clarity: he had not made a request; he had given an order which he expected Saavik to carry out as a part of her training. Unquestioning obedience was illogical, but trust was essential. If, in all the years that Saavik had known Spock, she had not found him worthy of trust, then she was of course free to refuse the order. Many avenues of training and advancement would still lie open to her. None, however, would permit her to remain under Spock’s command.

Spock had been a member of the Vulcan exploratory expedition to Hellguard. He alone forced the other Vulcans to accept their responsibility to the world’s abandoned inhabitants, though they had many logical reasons—and unspoken excuses far more involved—for denying any responsibility. Saavik owed her existence as a civilized being, and possibly her life—for people died young and brutally on Hellguard—to Spock’s intervention.

She obeyed his order.

Saavik heard Peter running down the hall. He burst in, out of breath and distracted.

“I’m really sorry I’m late,” he said. “I came as fast as I could—I didn’t think you’d wait.”

“I was late, too,” she admitted. “I thought perhaps you were delayed by the inspection, as I was.” Saavik had to be honest with herself, though: one of the reasons she waited was that she thoroughly enjoyed the time she spent teaching the young cadet. Peter was intelligent and quick, and while their ages were sufficiently different that Peter was still a child and Saavik an adult, they were in fact only six years apart.

“Well ... sort of.”

“Are you prepared to discuss today’s lesson?”

“I guess so,” he said. “I think I followed projecting the n-dimensional hyperplanes into n-1 dimensional spaces, but I got a little tangled up when they started to intersect.”

Saavik interfaced Peter’s small computer with the larger monitor.

[77] “Let me look,” she said, “and I will try to see where you began ... getting a little tangled up.”

As she glanced through Peter’s work, Saavik reflected upon her own extraordinarily erroneous assumption about the way she would react to Peter. Far from resenting the boy, she found great comfort in knowing that her own childhood was anomalous, rather than being the way of a deliberately cruel universe. Cruelty existed, indeed: but natural law did not demand it.

She learned at least as much from Peter as he did from her: lessons about the joy of life and the possibilities for happiness, lessons she could never feel comfortable discussing with Spock, and in fact had avoided even mentioning to him.

But the captain was far more subtle and complex than his Vulcan exterior permitted him to reveal. Perhaps he had not, as she had believed, given her this task to test her control of the anger she so feared. Perhaps she was learning from Peter precisely what Spock had intended.

“Here, Peter,” she said. “This is the difficulty.” She pointed out the error in one of his equations.

“Huh?”

He looked blankly at the monitor, his mind a thousand light-years from anything.

“Your tangle,” she said. “It’s right here.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” He looked at it and blinked, and said nothing.

“Peter, what’s wrong?”

“Uh, nothing.”

Saavik remained silent for a moment; Peter fidgeted.

“Peter,” Saavik said, “you know that I sometimes have difficulty understanding the way human beings react. I need help to learn. If everything is all right, determining why I thought something might be wrong will pose me a serious problem.”

“Sometimes there’s stuff people don’t want to talk about.”

[78] “I know—I don’t wish to invade your privacy. But if, in truth, you are not troubled, I must revise many criteria in my analyses of behavior.”

He took a deep breath. “Yeah, something happened.”

“You need not tell me what,” Saavik said.

“Can I, if I want?”

“Of course, if you wish.”

He hesitated, as if sorting out his thoughts. “Well,” he said, “I had this fight with Commander Scott.”

“A fight!” Saavik said with considerable distress.

“Not like punching or anything. But that isn’t it; he gets snarked off about little stuff all the time.”

“Peter, I think it would be better if you did not speak so of your commanding officer.”

“Yeah, you’re right, only he’s been doing it my whole life—his whole life, I guess. I know because he’s my uncle.”

“Oh,” Saavik said.

“I never told anybody on the ship, only now he’s started telling people. He told the admiral—can you believe it? That’s one of the things I got mad about.” He stopped and took a deep breath and shook his head. “But ...”

Saavik waited in silence.

Peter looked up at her, started to blush, and looked away. “He said ... he said you had better things to do with your time than put up with me hanging around, he said I’m a pest, and he said ... he said I ... Never mind. That part’s too dumb. He said you probably think I’m a pain.”

Saavik frowned. “The first statement is untrue, and the second is ridiculous.”

“You mean you don’t mind having to give me math lessons?”

“On the contrary, I enjoy it very much.”

“You don’t think I’m a pest?”

“Indeed, I do not.”

“I’m really glad,” Peter said. “He thinks I’ve [79] been ... well ... acting really dumb. He was laughing at me.”

“You deserve better than to be laughed at.”

He felt humiliated—Saavik could see that. She knew a great deal about humiliation. She would not wish to teach it to another being. She wished she knew a way to ease his pain, but she felt as confused as he did.

“Peter,” she said, “I can’t resolve your disagreement with your uncle. I can only tell you that when I was a child, I wished for something I could not name. Later I found the name: it was friend. I have found people to admire and people to respect. But I never found a friend. Until now.”

He looked up at her. “You mean—me?”

“Yes.”

Inexplicably, he burst into tears.

 

Pavel Chekov screamed.

Nothing happened. ...

His mind and his memory were sharp and clear. He was hyperaware of everything on the bridge of Reliant: Joachim beside him at the helm, Terrell sitting blank and trapped at first officer’s position, and Khan.

Khan lounged in the captain’s seat. The screen framed a full-aft view: Alpha Ceti V dwindled from a globe to a disk to a speck, then vanished from their sight. Reliant shifted into warp, and even Alpha Ceti, the star itself, shrank to a point and lost itself in the starfield.

“Steady on course,” Joachim said. “All systems normal.”

“It was kind of you to bring me a ship so like the Enterprise, Mr. Chekov,” Khan said.

Fifteen years before, Khan Singh had flipped through the technical data on the Enterprise; apparently he had memorized each page with one quick look. As far as Chekov could tell, Khan remembered the information perfectly to this day. With the knowledge, and with Terrell under his control, Khan had little trouble taking [80] over Reliant. Most of the crew had worked on unaware that anything was wrong, until Khan’s people came upon them, one by one, took them prisoner, and beamed them to the surface of Alpha Ceti V.

The engine room company remained, working in concert with each other, and with eels.

Out of three hundred people, Khan had found only ten troublesome enough to bother killing.

“Mr. Chekov, I have a few questions to ask of you.”

Don’t answer him, don’t answer him.

“Yes.”

The questions began.

He answered. He screamed inside his mind; he felt the creature writhing inside his skull; he answered.

Khan questioned Terrell only briefly, but it seemed to give him great pleasure to extract information from Chekov. By the time he finished, he knew each tiny detail of what precious little anyone on Reliant had been told about the classified Project Genesis. He knew where they had been, he knew where they were going, and he knew they reported to Dr. Carol Marcus.

“Very good, Mr. Chekov. I’m very pleased with you. But tell me one more thing. Might my old friend Admiral Kirk be involved in your project?”

“No.”

“Is he aware of it?”

“I do not know.”

With an edge in his voice, Khan asked, “Could he find out about it?”

Kirk was a member of the Fleet General Staff; he had access to any classified information he cared to look up. Chekov tried desperately to keep that knowledge from Khan Singh. His mind was working so fast and well that he knew, without any doubt, what Khan planned. He knew it and he feared it.

“Answer me, Mr. Chekov.”

“Yes.”

Khan chuckled softly, the sound like a caress.

[81] “Joachim, my friend, alter our course. We shall pay a visit to Regulus I.”

“My lord—!” Joachim faced his leader, protest in his voice.

“This does not suit your fancy?”

“Khan Singh, I am with you. We all are. But we’re free! This is what we’ve waited for for two hundred years! We have a ship; we can go where we will—”

“I made a promise fifteen years ago, Joachim. You were witness to my oath, then and when I repeated it. Until I keep my word to myself, and to my wife, I am not free.”

“Khan, my lord, she never desired revenge.”

“You overstep your bounds, Joachim,” Khan said dangerously.

The younger man caught his breath, but plunged on. “You escaped the prison James Kirk made for you! You’ve proved he couldn’t hold you, Khan, you’ve won!”

“He tasks me, Joachim. He tasks me, and I’ll have him.”

The two men stared at each other; Joachim wavered and turned his head away.

“In fifteen years, this is all I have asked for myself, Joachim,” Khan said. “I can have no new life, no new beginning, until I achieve it. I know that you love me, my friend. But if you feel I have no right to any quest, say so. I will free you from the oath you swore to me.”

“I’ll never break that oath, my lord.”

Khan Singh nodded. “Regulus I, Joachim,” he said gently.

“Yes, Khan.”

 

“That’s it,” Carol Marcus said to the main computer. “Genesis eight-two-eight-point-SBR. Final editing. Save it.”

“Ok,” the computer said.

Carol sighed with disbelief. Finally finished!

[82] “Fatal error,” the computer said calmly. “Memory cells full.”

“What do you mean, memory full?” She had checked memory space just the day before.

The damned machine began to recite to her the bonehead explanation of peripheral memory. “The memory is full when the size of the file in RAM exceeds—”

“Oh, stop,” Carol said.

“Ok.”

“Damn! David, I thought you were going to install the Monster’s new memory cells!”

All their computers stored information by arranging infinitesimal magnetic bubbles within a matrix held in a bath of liquid hydrogen near absolute zero. The storage was very efficient and very fast and the volume extremely large; yet from the beginning, Genesis had been plagued by insufficient storage. The programs and the data files were so enormous that every new shipment of memory filled up almost as quickly as it got installed. The situation was particularly critical with the Monster, their main computer. It was an order of magnitude faster than any other machine on the station, so of course everyone wanted to use it.

David hurried to her side. “I did,” he said. “I had to build a whole new bath for them, but I did it. Are they filled up already?”

“That’s what it says.”

He frowned and glanced around the lab.

“Anybody have anything in storage here they’ve just been dying to get rid of?”

Jedda, who was a Deltan and prone to quick reactions, strode over with an expression of alarm. “If you delete my quantum data I’ll be most distressed.”

“I don’t want to delete anything,” Carol said, “but I just spent six weeks debugging this subroutine, and I’ve got to have it.”

At a lab table nearby, Del March glanced at Vance Madison. Vance grimaced, and Carol caught him at it.

[83] “All right, you guys,” Carol said. “Del, have you been using my bubble bath again?”

Del approached, hanging his head; Vance followed, walking with his easy slouch. They’re like a couple of kids, Carol thought. Like kids? They are kids. They were only a few years older than David.

“Geez, Carol,” Del said, “it’s just a little something—”

“Del, there’s got to be ninety-three computers on Spacelab. Why do you have to put your games on the main machine?”

“They work a lot better,” Vance said in his soft, beautiful voice.

“You can’t play Boojum Hunt on anything less, Carol,” Del said. “Hey, you ought to look at what we did to it. It’s got a black hole with an accretion disk that will jump right out and grab you, and the graphics are fantastic. If I do say so myself. If we had a three-d display ...”

“Why do I put up with this?” Carol groaned. The answer to that was obvious: Vance Madison and Del March were the two sharpest quark chemists in the field, and when they worked together their talents did not simply add, but multiplied. Every time they published a paper, they got another load of invitations to scientific conferences. Genesis was lucky to have them, and Carol knew it.

The two young scientists played together as well as they worked; unfortunately, what they liked to play was computer games. Del had tried to get her to play one once; she was not merely uninterested, she was totally disinterested.

“What’s the file name?” she asked. She felt too tired for patience. She turned back to the console. “Prepare to kill a file,” she said to the computer.

“Ok,” it replied.

“Don’t kill it, Carol,” Del said. “Come on, give us a break.”

[84] She almost killed it anyway; Del’s flakiness got to her worst when she was exhausted.

“We’ll keep it out of your hair from now on, Carol,” Vance said. “I promise.”

Vance never said anything he did not mean. Carol relented.

“Oh—all right. What’s the file name?”

“BH,” Del said.

“Got one in there called BS, too?” David asked.

Del grinned sheepishly. Carol accessed one of the smaller lab computers.

“Uh, Carol,” Del said, “I don’t think it’ll fit in that one.”

“How big is it?”

“Well ... about fifty megs.”

“Christ on a crutch!” David said. “The program that swallowed Saturn.”

“We added a lot since you played it last,” Del said defensively.

“Me? I never play computer games!”

Vance chuckled. David colored. Carol hunted around for enough peripheral storage space and transferred the program.

“All right, twins,” she said. She liked to tease them by calling them twins: Vance was two meters tall, slender, black, intense, and calm, while Del was almost thirty centimeters shorter, compact, fair, manic, and quick-tempered.

“Thanks, Carol,” Vance said. He smiled.

Jedda folded his arms. “I trust this means my data is safe for another day.”

“Safe and sound.”

The deepspace communicator signaled, and he went to answer it.

Carol stored the Genesis subroutine again.

“Ok,” the computer said; and a moment later, “Command?”

Carol breathed a sigh of relief. “Load Genesis, complete.”

[85] A moment’s pause.

“Ok.”

“And run it.”

“Ok.”

“Now,” Carol said, “we wait.”

“Carol,” Jedda said at the communicator, “it’s Reliant.”

She got up quickly. Everyone followed her to the communicator. Jedda put the call up on the screen.

“Reliant to Spacelab, come in Spacelab.”

“Spacelab here, Commander Chekov. Go ahead.”

“Dr. Marcus, good. We’re en route to Regulus. Our ETA is three days from now.”

“Three days? Why so soon? What did you find on Alpha Ceti VI?”

Chekov stared into the screen. What’s wrong? Carol wondered. There shouldn’t be any time lag on the hyper channel.

“Has something happened? Pavel, do you read me? Has something happened?”

“No, nothing, Doctor. All went well. Alpha Ceti VI checked out.”

“Break out the beer!” Del said.

“But what about—”

Chekov cut her off. “We have new orders, Doctor. Upon our arrival at Spacelab, we will take all Project Genesis materials into military custody.”

“Bullshit!” David said.

“Shh, David,” Carol said automatically. “Commander Chekov, this is extremely irregular. Who gave this order?”

“Starfleet Command, Dr. Marcus. Direct from the General Staff.”

“This is a civilian project! This is my project—”

“I have my orders.”

“What gold-stripe lamebrain gave the order?” David shouted.

Chekov glanced away from the screen, then turned back.

[86] “Admiral James T. Kirk.”

Carol felt the blood drain from her face.

David pushed past her toward the screen.

“I knew you’d try to pull this!” he shouted. “Anything anybody does, you just can’t wait to get your hands on it and kill people with it!” He reached to cut off the communication.

Carol grabbed his hand. Keep hold of yourself, she thought, and took a deep breath.

“Commander Chekov, the order is improper. I’ll permit no military personnel access to my work.”

Chekov paused again, glanced away again.

What’s going on out there? Carol thought.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Dr. Marcus,” Chekov said. “The orders are confirmed. Please be prepared to hand over Genesis upon our arrival in three days. Reliant out.”

He reached forward; the transmission faded.

On Spacelab, everyone started talking at once.

“Will everybody please shut up!” Carol said. “I can’t even think!”

The babble slowly subsided.

“It’s got to be a mistake,” Carol said.

“A mistake! Mother, for gods’ sake! It’s perfect! They came sucking up to us with a ship. ‘At our disposal!’ Ha!”

“Waiting to dispose of us looks more like it,” Jedda said.

“David—”

“And what better way to keep an eye on what we’re doing? All they had to do was wait till practically everybody is on leave; they can swoop in here and there’s only us to oppose them!”

“But—”

“They think we’re a bunch of pawns!”

“David, stop it! You’re always accusing the military of raving paranoia. What do you think you’re working up to? Starfleet’s kept the peace for a hundred years. ...”

[87] Silence fell. David could not deny what she had said. At the same time, Carol could not explain what had happened.

“Mistake or not,” Vance said, “if they get Genesis, they aren’t likely to give it back.”

“You’re right,” Carol said. She thought for a moment. “All right, everybody. Get your gear together. Start with lab notes and work down from there. Jedda, is Zinaida asleep?” Carol knew that Zinaida, Genesis’s mathematician, had been working on the dispersal equations until early that morning.

“She was when I left our room,” he said. Like Jedda, Zinaida was a Deltan. Deltans tended to work and travel in groups, or at the very least in pairs, for a Deltan alone was terribly isolated. They required emotional and physical closeness of such intensity that no other sentient being could long survive intimacy with one of them.

“Okay, you’d better wake her. Vance, Del, Misters Computer Wizards: I want you to start transferring everything in the computers to portable storage, because any program, any data we can’t move we’re going to kill—that goes for BH or BS or whatever it is, too. So get to work.”

“But where are we going?” Del asked.

“That’s for us to know and Reliant to find out. But we’ve only got three days. Let’s not waste time.”

 

The doors of the turbo-lift began to close.

“Hold, please!”

“Hold!” Jim Kirk said to the sensors. The doors opened obediently, sighing.

Lieutenant Saavik dashed inside.

“Thank you, sir.”

“My pleasure, Lieutenant.”

She gazed at him intently; Kirk began to feel uneasy.

“Admiral,” she said suddenly, “may I speak?”

“Lieutenant,” Kirk said, “self-expression does not seem to be one of your problems.”

[88] “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Never mind. What was it you wanted to say?”

“I wish to ask you about the high efficiency rating.”

“You earned it.”

“I did not think so.”

“Because of the results of Kobayashi Maru?”

“I failed to resolve the situation,” Saavik said.

“You couldn’t. There isn’t any resolution. It’s a test of character.”

She considered that for a moment.

“Was the test a part of your training, Admiral?”

“It certainly was,” Jim Kirk said with a smile.

“May I ask how you dealt with it?”

“You may ask, Lieutenant.” Kirk laughed.

She froze.

“That was a little joke, Lieutenant,” Kirk said.

“Admiral,” she said carefully, “the jokes human beings make differ considerably from those with which I am familiar.”

“What jokes exactly do you mean?”

“The jokes of Romulans,” she said.

Do you want to know? Jim Kirk asked himself. You don’t want to know.

“Your concept, Admiral,” Saavik said, “the human concept, appears more complex and more difficult.”

Out of the blue, he thought, My God, she’s beautiful.

Watch it, he thought; and then, sarcastically, You’re an admiral.

“Well, Lieutenant, we learn by doing.”

She did not react to that, either. He decided to change the subject.

“Lieutenant, do you want my advice?”

“Yes,” she said in an odd tone of voice.

“You’re allowed to take the test more than once. If you’re dissatisfied with your performance, you should take it again.”

The lift slowed and stopped. The doors slid open and [89] Dr. McCoy, who had been waiting impatiently, stepped inside.

All this newfangled rebuilding, he thought, and look what comes of it: everything’s even slower.

“Who’s been holding up the damned elevator?—Oh!” he said when he saw Kirk and Saavik. “Hi.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Saavik said as she stepped off the lift. “I appreciate your advice. Good day, Doctor.”

The doors closed.

Jim said nothing but stared abstractedly at the ceiling.

Doing his very best dirty old man imitation, McCoy waggled his eyebrows.

“Did she change her hair?”

“What?”

“I said—”

“I heard you, Bones. Grow up, why don’t you?”

Well, McCoy thought, that’s a change. Maybe not a change for the better, but at least a change.

“Wonderful stuff, that Romulan ale,” McCoy said with a touch of sarcasm.

Kirk returned from his abstraction. “It’s a great memory restorative,” he said.

“Oh—?”

“It made me remember why I never drink it.”

“That’s gratitude for you—”

“Admiral Kirk,” Uhura said over the intercom. “Urgent message for Admiral Kirk.”

Jim turned on the intercom. “Kirk here.”

“Sir, Regulus I Spacelab is on the hyperspace channel. Urgent. Dr. Carol Marcus.”

Jim started.

Carol Marcus? McCoy thought. Carol Marcus?

“Uh ... Uhura, I’ll take it in my quarters,” Jim said.

“Yes, sir.”

He turned the intercom off again and glared at [90] McCoy, as if having any witnesses to his reaction irritated him.

“Well, well, well,” McCoy said. “It never rains but it—”

“Some doctor you are,” Jim said angrily. “You of all people should appreciate the danger of opening old wounds.”

The lift doors opened, and Kirk stormed out.

“Sorry,” McCoy said after the doors had closed once more. Well, Old Family Doctor, he thought, needling him isn’t working; you’d better change your tack if you want to bring him out of his funk.

On the other hand, McCoy said to himself, depending on what that call is about, you may not have to.

 

Jim Kirk strode down the corridor of the Enterprise, trying to maintain his composure. Carol Marcus, after all these years? It would have to be something damned serious for her to call him. And what, in heaven’s name, was going on with McCoy? Every word the doctor had said in the past three days was like a porcupine, layered over with little painful probes veiled and unveiled.

He hurried into his room and turned on the viewscreen.

“Dr. Marcus, Admiral,” Uhura said.

The image snowed and fluttered across the viewscreen. For an instant, he could make out Carol’s face; then it fragmented again.

“Uhura, can’t you augment the signal?”

“I’m trying, sir, it’s coming in badly scrambled.”

“... Jim ... read me? Can you ...”

What did come through clearly was Carol Marcus’s distress and anger.

“Your message is breaking up, Carol. What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“... can’t read you. ...”

“Carol, what’s wrong?” He kept repeating that, [91] hoping enough would get through for her to make out his question.

“... trying ... take Genesis away from us. ...”

“What?” he asked, startled. “Taking Genesis? Who? Who’s taking Genesis?”

“... can’t hear you. ... Did you order ... ?”

“What order? Carol, who’s taking Genesis?”

The transmission cleared for a mere few seconds. “Jim, rescind the order.” It began to break up again. “... no authority ... I won’t let ...”

“Carol!”

“Jim, please help. I don’t believe—”

The picture scrambled again and did not clear. Jim slammed his hand against the edge of the screen.

“Uhura, what’s happening? Damn it!”

“I’m sorry, sir. There’s nothing coming through. It’s jammed at the source.”

“Jammed!”

“That’s what the pattern indicates, Admiral.”

“Damn,” Jim said again. “Commander, alert Starfleet HQ. I want to talk to Starfleet Command.”

“Aye, sir.”

 

Jim Kirk strode onto the bridge.

“Mr. Sulu,” he said, “stop impulse engines.”

Sulu complied. “Stop engines.”

The bridge crew waited, surprised, expectant, confused.

“We have an emergency,” Kirk said stiffly. “By order of Starfleet Command, I am assuming temporary command of the Enterprise. Duty Officer, so note in the ship’s log. Mr. Sulu, plot a new course: Regulus I Spacelab.” He paused as if waiting for an objection or an argument. No one spoke. He opened an intercom channel to the engine room. “Mr. Scott.”

“Aye, sir?”

“We’ll be going to warp speed immediately.”

“Aye, sir.”

[92] “Course plotted for Spacelab, Admiral,” Mr. Sulu said.

“Engage warp engines.”

“Prepare for warp speed,” Saavik said. Her voice was tense and suspicious; only the regard in which Captain Spock held this human kept her from rebelling. She shifted the ship to warp mode.

“Ready, sir,” said Mr. Sulu.

“Warp five, Mr. Sulu.”

The ship gathered itself around them and sprang.

Kirk stepped back into the turbo-lift and disappeared.

 

In his cabin, Spock lay on a polished slab of Vulcan granite, his meditation stone. He was preparing himself to sink from light trance to a deeper one when he felt the Enterprise accelerate to warp speed. He immediately brought himself back toward consciousness. A moment later, he heard someone at his door.

“Come,” he said quietly. He sat up.

Jim Kirk entered, hitched one hip on the corner of the stone, and stared at the floor.

“Spock, we’ve got a problem.”

Spock arched his eyebrow.

“Something’s happened at Regulus I. We’ve been ordered to investigate.”

“A difficulty at the Spacelab?”

“It looks like it.” He raised his head. “Spock, I told Starfleet all we have is a boatload of children. But we’re the only ship free in the octant. If something is wrong ... Spock, your cadets—how good are they? What happens when the pressure is real?”

“They are living beings, Admiral; all living beings have their own gifts.” He paused. “The ship, of course, is yours.”

“Spock ... I already diverted the Enterprise. Haste seemed essential at the time. ...”

“The time to which you are referring, I assume, is [93] two minutes and thirteen seconds ago, when the ship entered warp speed?”

Kirk grinned sheepishly. “I should have come here first, I know—”

“Admiral, I repeat: The ship is yours. I am a teacher. This is no longer a training cruise, but a mission. It is only logical for the senior officer to assume command.”

“But it may be nothing. The transmission was pretty garbled. If you—as captain—can just take me to Regulus—”

“You are proceeding on a false assumption. I am a Vulcan. I have no ego to bruise.”

Jim Kirk glanced at him quizzically. “And now you’re going to tell me that logic alone dictates your actions.”

“Is it necessary to remind you of something you know well?” He paused. “Logic does reveal, however, that you erred in accepting promotion. You are what you were: a starship commander. Anything else is a waste.”

Kirk grinned. “I wouldn’t presume to debate you.”

“That is wise.” Spock stood up. “In any case, were the circumstances otherwise, logic would still dictate that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

“Or the one?”

“Admiral—” Spock said. He stopped, then began again. “Jim, you are my superior officer. But you are also my friend. I have been, and remain, yours. I am offering you the truth as I perceive it, for myself and for you.”

“Spock—” Kirk said quietly. He reached out.

Spock drew back within himself.

Kirk respected the change. He let his hand fall.

“Will you come to the bridge? I didn’t do much explaining, and I think your students wonder if I’ve mutinied.”

“Yes, Admiral. But perhaps we’d best talk with Mr. [94] Scott first, so he may explain the situation to his cadets as well.”

 

That day at lunchtime, Saavik went to the cafeteria and got in line. All around her, her classmates speculated about the change in plan, the Enterprise’s new course, the admiral’s unusual move in taking over the ship. Saavik, too, wondered what all these abrupt changes meant. She leaned toward the view that it was another, more sophisticated, training simulation.

A few minutes after the admiral’s order, Captain Spock had returned to the bridge accompanying Admiral Kirk. He assured the crew that Kirk’s action had his consent. Yet Saavik still felt uncomfortable about the whole procedure.

She hesitated over her choice of lunch. She would have preferred steak tartare, but the captain considered eating meat—raw meat in particular—an uncivilized practice at best; consequently Saavik ordinarily chose something else when she was to take a meal in his company. She had tried for a long time to conform to the Vulcan ideal, vegetarianism, but had succeeded only in making herself thoroughly sick.

She compromised, choosing an egg dish which came out of the galley in a profoundly bland state, but which could be made nearly palatable by the addition of a large amount of sesame oil and pippali, a fiery spice. Peter Preston had taken a taste of it once, and Saavik had not warned him to use it sparingly. She had had no idea of the effect it would have on a human being. Once he stopped coughing and drinking water and could talk again, he described it as “a sort of combination of distilled chili and nuclear fission.”

She wondered where Peter was. They occasionally ate together; but though now was his lunch break, he was not in the cafeteria.

Saavik stopped beside Captain Spock’s table. He was eating a salad.

“May I join you, sir?”

[95] “Certainly, Lieutenant.”

She sat down and tried to think of a proper way to voice her concern about the admiral’s having taken command of the Enterprise.

“Lieutenant,” Spock said, “how are Mr. Preston’s lessons proceeding?”

“Why—very well, sir. He’s an excellent student and has a true aptitude for the subject.”

“I thought perhaps he might be finding the work too difficult.”

“I’ve seen no evidence of that, Captain.”

“Yet Mr. Scott has asked me to suspend Mr. Preston’s tutorial.”

“Why?” Saavik asked, startled.

“His explanation was that the engines require work, and that Preston’s help is needed.”

“The engines,” Saavik said, “just scored one hundred fifteen percent on the postoverhaul testing.”

“Precisely,” Spock said. “I have considered other explanations. An attempt by Mr. Scott to shield Preston from overwork seemed a possibility.”

Saavik shook her head. “First, Captain, I believe Peter feels comfortable enough around me that he would let me know if he felt snowed under—”

“ ‘Snowed under’?”

“Severely overworked. I beg your pardon. I did not intend to be imprecise.”

“I meant no criticism, Lieutenant—your progress in dealing with human beings can only be improved by learning their idioms.”

Saavik compared Scott’s odd request to her earlier conversation with Peter. “I believe I know why Mr. Scott canceled Cadet Preston’s tutorial.”

She explained what had happened.

Spock considered. “The action seems somewhat extreme. Mr. Scott surely realizes that proper training is worth all manner of inconvenience—for student and teacher. Did Mr. Preston say anything else?”

[96] “He preferred not to repeat part of it. He said it was ... ‘too dumb.’ He seemed embarrassed.”

“Indeed.” Spock ate a few bites of his salad; Saavik tasted her lunch. She added more pippali.

“Saavik,” Spock said, “has the cadet shown any signs of serious attachment to you?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Does he express affection toward you?”

“I suppose one might say that, Captain. He appeared quite relieved when I told him that I do not consider him a ‘pest.’ And I must confess ...” she said, somewhat reluctantly, “I am ... rather fond of him. He’s a sweet-natured and conscientious child.”

“But he is,” Spock said carefully, “a child.”

“Of course.” Saavik wondered what Spock was leading up to.

“Perhaps Mr. Scott is afraid his nephew is falling in love with you.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Saavik said. “Even were it not highly improper, it would be impossible.”

“It would be improper. But not impossible, or even unlikely. It is, rather, a flaw of human nature. If Cadet Preston develops what humans call a ‘crush’ on you—”

“Sir?” Now she felt confused.

“A crush, for humans, is something like falling in love; however, it occurs only in very young members of the species and is looked upon with great amusement by older members.”

The reasons for Peter’s behavior suddenly became much clearer. If this were what he was too embarrassed to tell her about, no wonder. She was well aware how much he disliked being laughed at.

Spock continued. “You must deal with it as best you can, as gently as you can. Human beings are very vulnerable in these matters, and very easily hurt. And, as you quite correctly pointed out, it would be improper—”

Saavik felt both shocked and uncomfortable. “Mr. Spock,” she said, returning to the title she had used for [97] him for many years, “Peter is a child. And even if falling in love is a flaw of human nature, it is not one of Vulcan nature.”

“But you are not a Vulcan,” Spock said.

Saavik dropped her fork clattering onto her plate and stood up so fast that her chair rattled across the floor.

“Sit down,” Spock said gently.

Unwillingly, she obeyed.

“Saavik, do not misunderstand me. Your behavior as regards Cadet Preston is completely proper—I entertain no doubts of that. I am not concerned with him for the moment, but with you.”

“I’ve tried to learn Vulcan ways,” she said. “If you will tell me where I’ve failed—”

“Nor are we speaking of failure.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“I chose the Vulcan path when I was very young. For many years, I considered it the best, indeed the only, possible choice for any reasoning being. But ...” He stopped for a moment, then appeared to change the subject. “I spoke to you of tolerance and understanding—”

Saavik nodded.

“I have come to realize that what is proper for one being may not be correct for another. In fact, it may be destructive. The choice is more difficult for someone with two cultures—”

“I have only one!”

“—who must choose between them, or choose to follow another’s lead, or choose a path that is unique. You are unique, Saavik.”

“Mr. Spock, what does this have to do with Peter Preston?”

“It has nothing at all to do with Mr. Preston.”

“Then what are you trying to say to me?”

“What I am trying to say—and I am perhaps not the most competent person to say it, but there is no other—is that some of the decisions you make about your life may differ from what I might decide, or even [98] from what I might advise. You should be prepared for this possibility, so that you do not reject it when it appears. Do you understand?”

She was about to tell him that she did not, but she felt sufficiently disturbed and uneasy—as, to her surprise, Mr. Spock appeared to feel also—that she wanted to end the conversation.

“I’d like to think about what you’ve said, Captain.” Saavik put herself, and Spock, back into their relationship of subordinate and commander.

“Very good, Lieutenant,” he said, acquiescing to the change.

She stood up. “I must get back to the bridge, sir.”

“Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

She started to go, then turned back. “Sir—what about Cadet Preston’s tutorial?”

Spock folded his hands and considered the question. “It must resume, of course. However, Mr. Scott has made a statement about the condition of the engine room which would be indelicate to challenge. I will wait a day or two, then suggest that the lessons continue. Do you find that agreeable?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Saavik returned to her post. She had a great deal to think about.