STAR TREK - TOS - 37 - Bloodthirst

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Star Trek - TOS 037 - Bloodthirst
BY J. M. DILLARD
Prologue
YOSHI AWOKE KNOWING that sometime in his sleep, he had made the decision to kill.
His eyes opened to the flickering yellow light of the half-melted candle in the hurricane lamp, and after a
second of disorientation in which he feared he had awaktned to the wrong century, he remembered he
was in Lara's quarters. His jaw ached. He had been sleeping sitting up, with one side of his face flattened
against the hard lap of the rolltop desk.
He had not been able to bring himself to sleep in her bed.
His tongue seemed fashioned of dry wool. It stuck to the inside of his cheek, and he winced as he tugged
it away; bits of soft, membranous skin clung to it.
The pain awakened his anger. He had been dreamingjust then of Reiko, and he could still taste the
bitterness that had filled him in his dream: anger at her for leaving him, fury that she was not with him now,
when he most needed her. Dying alone was a cruel thing. Of all times, he wanted her with him now, so
badly that he saw her in front of him, there, in Lara's quarters, laughing, hair and eyes shining. Her eyes
were clear amber glass, nothing hidden, so that he could see right down to the bottom of them, just as on
their honeymoon he had looked down through the warm celery waters off HoVanKai and seen minnows
nibbling his feet. He had always read those eyes: seen the joy in them each
I BLOODTHIRST day when she greeted him, seen the pain when their infant daughter died. He could
bear his own sorrow, but he could not bear the grief in Reiko's eyes.
Even then, it had seemed she still loved him.
Reiko's image stopped laughing. Against his will, he saw the time she had faced him with those sweet
eyes-a memory more painful to him than the day the child died-and he had seen... nothing at all. Nothing
for him, just a new, strange deadness that made him want to cry out when he saw it. How have Ifailed
you? he asked. What have I done? What have Iforgotten to do?
Nothing, the image whispered, and those beautiful crystal eyes generated cold so fierce it took his breath
away. There was someone else, he knew instantly, someone else. Nothing you've done.
It had always been so with the evil in his life. Nothing he had done, and yet the evil never ceased coming.
He had been a model son, a model student, a model husband and worker, for his own part inflicting grief
on no one, yet it always managed to find him. First the loss of his mother, then a different loss in Reiko...
and now, to be forced to kill-and die, all for nothing he had done.
His right hand gripped the scalpel so tightly that the skin above the knuckles paled to the color of the
bone beneath. He hardly realized that he was still holding it, that he had clutched it tightly through the long
fitful night. He was knotted with the need for revenge, for his mother, for himself... but there could be no
retribution for him. For his mother, perhaps, if he died quietly. It was for her sake that he would consider
it.
In his office there was an old holo of his parents, taken long ago when his mother was alive. He wanted
to see it again so badly that he physically ached, but there was no chance of that. He stared at the dark
red back of his eyelids and summoned it from memory as best he could. His father appeared first,
olive-skinned and proud, back when he still had a full head of dark hair. Next to him stood his Japanese
wife, as delicate and slender as her husband was thick-boned and coarse. Yoshi's father had changed
when she died, become morose and brooding, and Yoshi had grown up constantly reminded of her
absence. His father had never quite forgiven himself and Yoshi for living.
Now his father could only blame himself-, now he was losing his only child. Yoshi thought unhappily of
the added grief it would bring his father, and slumped over the desk again.
His hand touched the open page of a book he had been reading. Lara was an avid collector of antiques,
including the paper books that lined the shelves. He had read himself to sleep the night before, a book
chosen because he found the title vaguely familiar, but the choice had been poor and haunted his dreams.
His eyes fell upon a line: I was indeed awake and among the Carpathians. All I could do now was to be
patient, and to wait the coming ofthe morning.
Yoshi closed the book and pushed it away. He had been patient, but morning for him would not come
again. He drew a breath deep into his lungs to clear his head, but the air was stale and heavy and yielded
little oxygen. He had cut off the circulation system to Lara's quarters.
Any of the rooms could be sealed when containment was breached, but the system presumed that
decontamination of the rest of the station would take only a few hours. Naturally, there would be no need
during that time for food, or water, or fresh air.
No provisions had been made for the insanity that occurred here. He closed his eyes and saw the
impossible: he and Lara in the stasis room, standing in front of the closed burial tube... and watching
aghast, as the lid slowly rose because it was being pushed open from the inside- Don't think of it.
He swallowed a sob of fear and calmed himself by listening to his stomach rumble hollowly. Without food
it was not so bad-after the first two days, his hunger was replaced by a dull headache. But thirst
tormented him unbearably.
It would be quicker, better, to go outside. It was no longer a question of surviving: it was a question of
choosing how he was to die.
Yoshi rose from the desk too quickly, and had to clutch it to keep from falling. The worst thing was what
the lack of water had done to his mind, making him the victim of his thoughts rather than the master of
them. He could face dying, even killing, if his mind were clear.
He pushed himself away from the desk and walked unsteadily through the gloom. The lights had gone out
some time ago, and he had groped, childishly frightened of the dark, and found the lamp, candle, and
lighter in the old desk. Now he held the lamp in one hand and the scalpel in the other, moving past the
bookshelves and the dusty tomes with cracked spines, past the picked-over display of antique medical
instruments, to the great thick slab of metal that sealed him off from the outside.
For a time, Yoshi contemplated the door. Small beads of sweat stung his cracked lips and he savored
them greedily with his tongue as he thought of what lay beyond: murder, followed by his own suicide.
He tried to swallow and could not, the muscles in his neck pulsing with the effort. He would not lose
heart now. He would do it. Dying of thirst was worse... letting the evil live was worse. Killing had
become an act of mercy. He leaned weakly against the cold metal and pressed the control. The seal slid
upward with a whisper. The door opened.
The corridors beyond were draped in blackness. Yoshi held the lamp high and ventured tentatively
beyond the threshold. The small stub of candle flickered, capturing at the far edge of its illumination a
pale, indistinct shape. Heart fluttering, he followed that shape down the hall to sickbay, where he
stopped, sensing a presence within. He leaned forward into the open door and raised the scalpel high,
like a dagger at the ready.
"Lara?" His voice was low, scarcely audible, yet in the darkness it carried as if he had shouted.
And in the lampglow, Yoshi glimpsed straight to the bottom of the eyes of death: the clouded eyes of his
mother as she lay dead on the floor of the shuttle, the eyes of Reiko that spoke of betrayal, the wide,
unseeing eyes of Lara Krovozhadny.
The light of the candle reflected the swift, downward glint of silver.
Chapter One
LEONARD MCCOY ABHORRED technology; in fact, it was his firm conviction that it would someday
be the death of him. So when the transporter beam deposited him a half mile underground into total
blackness, his heart skipped a beat at the prospect that his belief might suddenly be vindi- cated.
"God almighty!" McCoy reached out, unable to see anything but the faint glow outlining his hands. He
waved them cautiously in front of him without touching anything. "Stanger, you still there?" "Here,
Doctor." The soft tenor voice came from a short distance away on his right. "We'll be okay in just a
second-" and before Stanger finished, a focused beam of light cut through the blackness. Behind it,
McCoy could just make out the security guard's brown features beneath the fleeting glimmer of his field
suit.
McCoy felt for his communicator and opened it with an indignant flourish.
"McCoy to Enterprise, " He had to speak up to be sure he was heard. The suit muffled the sound of his
own voice, rather as if he had a head cold.
"Jim, how the hell do you expect us to operate in the dark down here?" There was a pause at the other
end, and he could picture the corner of the captain's mouth crooking up a half inch or so, but the reply
showed no trace of it. "Don't tell me neither of you thought to take a flashlight." "I did, sir," Stanger
volunteered from a distance-a little too eagerly, McCoy thought. He frowned at the transmitter grid
before speaking into it.
"That's not the point, Captain. The point is that-" "The point is inferred and noted," Kirk said, and now
the smile was in his voice, too. "Next time, we'll warn you." "Thanks," McCoy answered sarcastically.
"Everything else okay, so far?" "How should I know? I just got here," McCoy said. "I'll yell if we need
anything." "You do that, Doctor. Kirk out." Stanger had already made his way to the nearest wall and
had located the control panel for the lights, but he was frowning. "Power source cut off.
That's odd. Other systems seem to be working." McCoy nodded. "What kind of place are we in,
anyway?" Stanger swept around with the flashlight at waist level. "Looks like some sort of lab..." The
beam swept over gleaming onyx counter tops and an elaborate assortment of Petrie dishes and vials-all
encased in a pentagon of crystal. The entrance to the pentagon shimmered with the same type of field as
Stanger and McCoy's suits. As they moved closer, the crystal threw the light back in their faces. "Looks
like a medical lab," Stanger said.
"A hot lab," McCoy murmured, mostly to himself.
Stanger frowned. "A what?" "A pathology lab, from the looks of their containment setup. An isolated
disease control center. Reminds me of the one in Atlanta. Wonder why they'd have such a small setup in
the middle of nowhere like this." "Seems to me you'd want to keep something like this out in the
boondocks," Stanger said.
"Maybe. But you'd think they'd have given some sort of warning. If we'd beamed down here without the
precaution of the suits-" Stanger's expression grew sickly. "You mean they didn't tell us anything?" "Just a
class-one medical emergency. But there's nothing to worry about.
These suits are standard procedure. They'll keep us safe."
The guard grunted dubiously and started moving the light around the comers of the room. "Anyone in
here?" His voice echoed in the shadows of the empty chamber; no answer came.
"Guess we'd better take a look around," McCoy said, though quite frankly it was the last thing he wanted
to do. He'd never been afraid of the dark, not even as a kid-well, not really-but the lab was giving him a
distinctly uncomfortable feeling. He wanted to find whomever he was supposed to find and get out of
there. "That was a class-one medical emergency signal. We can't afford to take our time." In response,
Stanger led the way to the door and glanced down at the tricorder. Its dials glowed feebly in the dark.
"I'm getting a faint life-form reading coming from that direction." He pointed and started moving for the
door. McCoy followed-perhaps too closely. At one point in the corridor, he stepped on the back of
Stanger's heel.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly, feeling embarrassed.
"That's okay." Stanger swung around to look at him, politely lowering the flashlight so it didn't shine in the
doctor's eyes. McCoy could tell from the sound of his voice that Stanger smiled slightly. "Place getting to
you?" "No-well, actually, yes. Don't you think there's something creepy about this place?" "I find it all
very appropriate." Sounding bemused, Stanger turned away from him and started following the tricorder
again. McCoy tried this time to maintain a respectable distance. "You do know what day it is, don't you,
Doctor?" McCoy frowned. "Stardate.
"No, I mean Old Earth calendar." "Oh. Uh, October something... I think it's the last day. Is it the thirtieth
or the thirty-first? I can never remember that damn poem-" "The thirty-first," Staager said helpfully.
McCoy grinned in spite of himself. "Well, I'll be... It's Halloween. I'd forgotten. Not many people
celebrate it these days."
"A shame, too," Stanger said. "My folks did. It was my favorite holiday when I was a kid." "Well, that
explains it, then. These people are having a Halloween party, and they've invited us." Stanger chuckled.
"Thank God we remembered to wear our costumes." McCoy smiled, feeling a little more relaxed. He
liked Stanger.
Personable, good sense of humor, and seemed to know what he was doing.
But awfully old for an ensign. There was some sort of rumor going round the ship about him, something
bad he'd supposedly done that Tjieng had been repeating to Chris Chapel, but McCoy had been too
busy to stop and listen. Besides, he disapproved of gossip... in theory, anyway. "No wonder I was
feeling a little skittish." They inched their way along the corridor until Stanger planted himself in front of a
closed door and gestured at it with the tricorder. "In there." "What do you think we'll find?" "Bats hanging
from the ceiling," the ensign retorted, but his eyes were faintly anxious.
"Well, then, itfter you." McCoy gestured gallantly; Stanger turned to face him. "You are the security
guard, after all." Stanger's lip curled beneath the field suit, and he shot the doctor a sour look. "You
know, that's the trouble with this job." But he went in first-not without resting his free hand lightly on his
phaser. McCoy followed close behind.
The flashlight swept the room at eye level.
"Looks like their sickbay," McCoy said. And a small one at that, barely big enough to accommodate
three or so people. "See if there's anyone on the diagnostic bed." Stanger lowered the flashlight. "Funny,
I'm not reading anything now, but I could have sworn the tricorder said in here-" McCoy's communicator
beeped, and he flipped it open. "McCoy here." The ray of light shot straight up, painted an insane zigzag
on the ceiling, then disappeared as the flashlight rolled into a far comer.
"GEEzus!" Stanger gave a muffled cry. The faint outline of his suit showed him sprawled across the floor.
"Stanger! Are you all right?" McCoy dropped the open communicator.
"What the hell is going on down there?" An angry voice emanated from the communicator on the floor.
Stanger emitted a small bleat of disgust and pushed himself away and up into a standing position. He was
on his feet by the time McCoy recovered the flashlight and shone it on him.
"My God, Stanger-" Deep red fluid beaded up and dribbled down the front of Stanger's suit, repelled by
the energy field. McCoy grabbed his arm, but Stanger shook his head and pulled his arm away.
"I'm all right. Fell over something-someone. Feels like a body-still warm." He pointed at the floor.
The beam shone down into the dull eyes of a woman, beautiful, bronze-haired, dead. On top of her, face
down in a gruesome embrace, lay the still, white form of a darkhaired man.
McCoy gave the flashlight to Stanger to hold while he bent over the man.
The woman was cold, dead for a few hours at least, but the man's body was still warm to the touch.
McCoy shook his head bitterly. If they had only gotten there a fcw minutes earlier... He gently rolled the
body over, and started. "Will you look at that?" His voice was soft with awe.
The light shone on the man's neck, which had been slit from ear to ear in a hideous, gaping grin. An
old-fashioned scalpel dropped from his limp fingers.
"I'm trying not to, thanks." Stanger averted his eyes quickly. "What about the woman?" "She's been dead
for some time. Both bled to death. You can see how pale they are. You probably were picking up a
reading on him a half minute ago-if we hadn't spent so much time stumbling in the dark, I might have been
able to do something-"
"Must have gone crazy." Stanger shook his head. "There's nothing we can do?" McCoy sighed. At times
like this, his medical knowledge seemed a useless burden. "I can beam him up to the ship, and by the
time I get him pumped full of enough blood to make a difference, the damage to the brain-" Frowning,
Stanger interrupted. "Do you hear something, Doctor?" McCoy listened carefully. The sound of someone
talking, very far away.
. "For God's sake, my communicator-" Stanger took the flashlight and retrieved it for him.
"Anybody there?" McCoy said apologetically into the grid.
"What the devil is going on?" The captain's voice had no trace of am usement in it now.
"We just stumbled over two corpses, Jim. Quite literally. They've been cut very neatly." McCoy could
hear the slow intake of breath at the other end of the channel.
Kirk was silent for a beat, and then he said, "Doctor, I just got a message from Starfleet Command in
response to my report that we were answering the distress call. It says that under no circumstances are
we to respond.
Unfortunately, we were too far out to get the message before we beamed the two of you down." "But it's
standard procedure-" McCoy began to protest indignantly. Behind him, Stanger had overheard and
muttered what McCoy assumed was an obscenity.
"You don't have to tell me, Doctor," Kirk said dryly. "What interests me is that there is no explanation as
to wkV we should not respond." The thought did not strike McCoy as a pleasant one. "Did you tell them
we're already down here?" "Not yet. But if there's nothing you can do down there, we may as well go
ahead and beam you up. I don't want you exposed to any unnecessary danger-" "I'd just as soon not be
exposed to necessary danger, either, if it's all the same to you." Stanger interrupted, flashlight down, his
eyes fastened on the glowing tricorder. "Doctor, I'm getting another faint life-form reading.
BLOODTHIRST
McCoy sighed. "Jim, someone else is down here. I just lost one person by a few seconds, and though I'd
just as soon get out of here, I think we ought to stay a bit longer and see if there's something we can do."
He and Stanger exchanged unhappy glances; it was clear that the security guard was just as displeased to
have a reason to stay longer.
There was a second's pause, and then Kirk said, "All right. I suppose we can't disobey the order more
than we already have." "That's the spirit. I'll check back in if there's any problem. McCoy out." He
snapped the communicator shut and looked up at Stanger. "Where's the reading coming from?" Stanger
nodded at the door just as it slid open in the dark. There was an instant of confusion before he got the
flashlight aimed at the intruder's face.
The man in the doorway threw pale arms up to protect his face. "The light! Please, the light!" There was
honest agony in his voice. Stanger lowered the flashlight. "Who are you?" Even the presence of the light
near his feet seemed to dismay the man.
Still shielding his face with his hands, he squinted at the others in obvious discomfort.
McCoy gave a small, involuntary shudder at the sight of the man's face.
Maybe it was an illusion created by the shadows, but the man's skin was gray, the expression
pinched-like a corpse, McCoy thought, like a med school cadaver that'd been taken out of stasis and left
lying around the classroom too long.
"Adams. Jeff Adams." He did not move closer. The light at his feet kept him pinned in the doorway,
unable to come any nearer, but drawn to Stanger and McCoy by some need. "I'm not used to the light
anymore-it's been shut off for days." "Mr. Adams-- McCoy began.
"Dr. Adams." Good Lord, did titles matter at a time like this? "Dr. Adams, then, can you tell us what's
going on here? We intercepted an emergency signal-" "I broadcasted that signal, yes. Thank God you're
here."
Although Adams' face was shadowed, it looked like the man was making an effort to smile.
"How many of you are there?" "Three. Three of us." Stanger aimed the beam on the faces of the dead.
"Then would you mind explaining this?" Neither of them made it to Adams in time before he fell.
Jim Kirk felt a headache coming on. At first he attributed it to the cumulative effect of several days'
unrelenting boredom on a stellar mapping assignment. Such tasks invariably left the captain with nothing
to do but fidget, so Kirk had jumped at the chance to respond to a distress signal. But the more he
listened to what McCoy had to say, the less thrilled he was that the Enterprise had answered the call, and
the more his head throbbed. He took a generous mouthful of chicken salad on rye, in the hopes that it
would somehow help.
"Here's the thing that bothers me." McCoy leaned forward over an untouched plate of fried chicken and
mashed potatoes. Normally, such a meeting would have taken place in sickbay or the captain's quarters,
until McCoy put up a fuss about missing lunch and it already being past dinnertime. Which was no
problem, except that McCoy had simply stared at his plate for the first five minutes.
Kirk finished swallowing. "You mean only one thing about this bothers you?" "All right, then, the thing that
bothers me the most about all this is-what happened to all the blood?" "Please elaborate, Doctor." Spock
sat opposite McCoy and next to the captain with his fingers steepled, having already silently and
efficiently disposed of an unconscionably large salad.
"There just simply wasn't enough blood left in the corpses-" Kirk had just taken another huge bite of his
sandwich; he stopped chewing. He wasn't particularly squeamish by nature, but with the headache.
"Forgive me, but I believe you mentioned that the throats of both victims had been slit," Spock said
calmly. "Isn't it logical for significant blood loss to occur?" "Yes, but Stanger and I examined the area
around the bodies-with a flashlight, mind you; kind of spooky down there, in the dark-before we moved
them, and there wasn't as much blood as there should have been.
Yoshi-that's the man, Adams says-was face down with his carotid slit. Do you have any idea how fast
blood would drain from a body under those circumstances?" "Approximately-" Spock began. Kirk
looked up from his cup of coffee in dismay, but McCoy came to the rescue.
"Chrissake, man, when are you going to learn to recognize a rhetorical question? Suffice it to say that
there would have been enough blood to swim in." "Doctor." Kirk set down his mug.
"At least to go wading," McCoy persisted.
"Do you mind?" McCoy caught the look on the captain's face and a sheepish grin slowly crossed his
face. "Sorry about that, Jim." His expression grew more serious. "But there are at the very least three or
four liters total of blood unaccounted for, particularly in Lara Krovozhadny's-the woman's- case. She
hardly had a drop on her-of her own blood, that is. Most of what was on her belonged to Yoshi." Kirk
looked disconsolately at his half-eaten sandwich. "Any ideas as to why that is?" McCoy shook his head.
"Obviously, someone removed it," said Spock.
McCoy eyed him with disgust and brutally thrust a fork and knife into his chicken. "Well now, that
thought occurred to me, too, Spock. But who would want to steal blood? Our friend Adams?" "He is a
likely suspect." "Our only living one, actually. And, intriguingly enough, he's severely anemic. I've had to
give him a massive transfusion." McCoy's expression became thoughtful as he speared a piece of chicken
and chewed it. "It's a weird bug he has. I've never seen anything like it-and frankly, I have the gut feeling
it's been genetically engineered. Stop rolling your eyes, Spock. The lab's running tests on it now. At first I
thought his symptoms indicated porphyria, but they're not quite right." Kirk frowned. "That's a new one
on me. Por-what?" "Porphyria. I doubt you've heard of it before. Of course, I'm sure Spock has-"
"Porphyria," Spock recited. "A genetic mutation affecting the production of enzymes required for the
synthesis of heme-" "Thanks, Spock, but that wasn't an invitation to lecture." McCoy shook his head and
turned back to the captain. "Anyway, like Spock said, porphyria is caused by a genetic mutation, not an
organism. An interesting disease, though. Explains how stories of vampires and werewolves got started.
A person with porphyria is sensitive to light-so sensitive that it can literally burn holes in the skin."
"Vampires?" Kirk frowned. "I thought that was a sort of bat that lived in South America." "I'll bet your
mother never told you about Santa Claus, either," McCoy retorted.
The Vulcan explained. "A vampire is indeed a South American bat, but the term also refers to a
legendary creature-a human who each night leaves the grave to feed on the blood of the living, employing
similar methods to the vampire bat. At sunrise, the vampire must return to its crypt, or be destroyed by
the light. Its victims in turn become vampires themselves." He paused. "Would you also like to know
about Santa Claus?" McCoy groaned audibly.
"No thanks. I appreciate the folklore lesson," Kirk said impatiently, "but what does this have to do with
Adams?" "He suffers from many of the same symptoms," McCoy answered. "Such as photosensitivity.
The photochemical reaction of light on his skin literally bums holes in him-he has a number of lesions. The
presence of light is excruciatingly painful for him. If exposed long enough, he would die. A porphyria
victim is also extremely anemic-which Adams definitely is-and the disease makes the gums recede from
the teeth. But Adams' disease seems to be much more insidious. I'm running some tests now to see what
we can do to help his body produce its own heme because if the anemia worsens as its present rate, we'll
be giving him a liter of whole blood every five minutes." "What about his mental state?" Kirk asked.
"You mean is he capable of killing the others? I don't know, Jim, I really don't. He seems lucid one
minute, disoriented the next, but I can't really say he seems violent. Of course, slitting one's throat is
hardly a preferred method of suicide." "Regardless, I'm going to question him," said Kirk. "This whole
situation on Tanis smells too fishy." "I don't deny that." McCoy put down the fork and knife. "What
exactly are they doing on Tanis? What's the official word?" "No official word at all," Kirk said. "I've
advised them of the situation and I'm waiting to hear back, that's all. They aren't telling much of anything."
"The planet is charted, but listed as uninhabited. There are no records of a base being constructed,"
Spock said. "Yet the fact that a hidden underground laboratory facility exists indicates one of two things:
either Starfleet purposely intended the facility's location to remain secret-which would explain why we
were instructed to avoid contact with it, medical emergency notwithstanding-or the base was built without
Starfleet's knowledge. Considering our orders, the first explanation is the most logical. Most probably,
the base was built in order to do secret research." "The question is, what type of research?" McCoy said.
"They've got some sort of microbiological facility down there. And the fact that our boy Adams is
infected with some type of bug that the computer is unable to catalog makes me very uneasy. Soon as I
came up, I put Stanger and myself through decontam. Ran some blood tests, too. Both of us negative,
fortunately." "What's your point?" Kirk asked.
"My point is that Tanis is set up for work with microbes. Disease-causing organisms. I asked Adams
what they were doing down there, and he handed me some cow patty about agricultural research-plant
diseases and the like. But Tanis is a sterile, practically atmosphereless planet. Nothing grows on its
surface, and I didn't see them cultivating anything for testing purposes in the underground facility. And the
containment procedures they're using strike me as being awfully elaborate for plant diseases on a planet
that couldn't grow mushrooms in the dark." Kirk frowned. "Would they be working on cures for
diseases?" McCoy shook his head vehemently. "Adams is infected with something so new, so
unheard-of, that the computer can't even classify it, much less diagnose it. And explain to me why
Startleet would want to keep disease research a secret? That's public domain. Any news ofa
breakthrough is good news." "Microbial warfare," Spock said softly. It was addressed to no one in
particular.
"Exactly," said McCoy, apparently so intrigued by the subject at hand that he failed to realize he had just
agreed with his adversary. "I'll bet you credits to doughnuts they're creating bioweapons down there,
Jim." Kirk shot an angry glance at each of them. "The Federation outlawed that a hundred years ago.
And Starfleet Intelligence is answerable to the Council. If that's what they're doing, they're not working
for Starfleet." "The equipment I saw down there sure looked suspiciously Fleet issue." "That doesn't
mean anything," Kirk said. "Before you start making accusations, Doctor, let's wait until Spock takes a
look at their records." "Have it your way, Jim, but I think you're being awfully fair. It still doesn't explain
why we were told not to respond to their distress call." McCoy gave a careless shrug and stabbed his
chicken. "It's as simple as that." "I don't know the explanation," Kirk said shortly. "But I intend to find
out." He rubbed his temples and wondered why McCoy's statement made him feel so damned defensive.
Maybe it was because of the sinking feeling that the doctor was right.
Adams looked like a walking corpse.
Kirk repressed a shudder. Adams lay on a diagnostic bed inside the pitch-black isolation chamber while
the captain stood outside. It was small comfort that the sick man probably could not see him, was
probably blinded even by the dimmed light outside the chamber. Kirk could see Adams perfectly well,
thanks to the infrared visor McCoy had given him, although at the moment, he wasn't sure that
constituted an advantage. The man's face was a death mask: pale skin stretched tight over jutting
cheekbones, sunken eyes glittering above dark circles. He looked thin and wasted, as if he had been ill
for months instead of the week or so McCoy suggested. The deep gray tones of infrared only added to
the ghoulish effect. Kirk was uncomfortably reminded of Spock's vampire legend.
He reached out and pressed the intercom. At the sound of it, Adams struggled as if trying to get to his
feet.
"Don't get up." Kirk gestured for him to sit, before he remembered that he was invisible.
The man squinted in Kirk's general direction. Around Adams' scrawny, corded neck was a chain, and he
clutched the locket in his palm as if trying to draw strength from it. "Jeff Adams," he answered. The voice
was warm and affable, the antithesis of shadow. Kirk found that he was smiling, and attempted to
counter the effect by reminding himself that the man was quite likely a murderer, and even if not, at the
very least was working on something the Federation looked on with revulsion.
"Captain James Kirk. I assume you were told you're aboard the starship Enterprise. " "Yes, I spoke with
Dr. McCoy earlier. Where are we? Still orbiting Tanis?" "At the moment, but we'll be leaving shortly.
Your signal pulled us out of our way. We were mapping in the Sagittarian arm a few parsecs out. Dr.
McCoy's been taking care of you, but I presume we'll be receiving orders shortly to drop you at Star
Base Thirteen." "I'm very lucky you happened by." "I can't say we expected to find anyone out here. It's
Doctor Adams, isn't it? Are you a physician?" "A microbiologist. Botanical diseases." "Is that the type of
work you're doing down there?"
"Yes, of course." Adams seemed puzzled. "Is there some sort of problem about the base?" "As a matter
of fact, yes. Dr. McCoy reported that you were using some sort of isolation method-- "Containment
procedures, yes." Adams nodded congenially. "I see. You probably thought we're doing work with
life-form pathogens. I assure you we aren't. If you check Federation records, you'll find there was a
tragic case of contamination from a base like ours near Deneb. A worker leaving the facility spread a
plant disease that virtually wiped out agriculture in that system. Since then, containment procedures such
as ours have been the law." Kirk made a mental note to check it out, then said, "I see." He let the
disbelief show in his voice to see what kind of effect it would have on his prisoner, but Adams only
smiled, his eyes focused on a spot about six inches to the right of Kirk's ear. "Dr. Adams, Dr. McCoy
tells me you've been unwell for some time." Adams nodded. "I've never been robust, if that's what he was
referring to, Captain. Shuttle accident. I suffered some internal damage-had most of it replaced without
much problem, although the doctors had a devil of a time getting the small intestine to absorb nutrients....
Feel free to check that out with Dr. McCoy." "Actually, I was referring to the infection." Adams dropped
the locket. "Infection?" Kirk shifted guiltily. "You mean you weren't told?" "No, I wasn't." "McCoy says
that the organism causing the infection seems to be very rare-the computer knows nothing about it." "I
don't understand," Adams said softly.
"I'd like to hear your explanation of how you could have become infected.
You've been isolated for some time on that base. How could you have been exposed to a rare disease?"
Adams shook his head. "I'm not sure.... It's extremely unlikely that one of the organisms could mutate into
something that could affect humans. And containment was never broken-that is, unless..
"Unless?" "One of the researchers down there-Yoshi Takhumara. He... he went insane." "Why?" Adams
became suddenly irritable. "How should I know? Sometimes it happens, for God's sake. You obviously
don't trust me." "Sorry," Kirk said shortly, without trying to sound as if he meant it.
"Keep talking." "He murdered the other researcher there with us-" He stopped, as if unable to say the
name, and then hurried past the thought. "I think it was a case of unrequited love. It would have been
possible for him to sabotage the alarm and the instant seal-off of the lab that would occur in the case of a
break in containment." He paused briefly, considering. "Yes, that would make sense. After all, he
sabotaged the lighting system." "I heard about that. No lights. Why would he want to do that?" "So he
could stalk us more easily, I suppose." Adams turned his head toward the wall. "Don't ask me what
happened to him, Captain, because I don't understand it myself." "The other researcher-" "I assume
Yoshi killed her. I stumbled over her body in the dark." He looked back quickly, his voice stronger and
more passionate. "If you don't believe me, if you want to arrest me, go ahead." "There's hardly any need
for me to do that," Kirk answered. He had already decided that McCoy was right: the man seemed too
lucid to be a murderer, but not too lucid to be involved in something illegal. "After all, you're confined to
isolation until McCoy can figure out what's wrong with you." He paused. "What I'd really like to hear is
your explanation of why your colleague suddenly decided to take leave of his sanity." "How am I
supposed to know?" Adams' voice rose in sudden anger, but he continued. "After I found Lara's body-"
"Another microbiologist?"
摘要：

StarTrek-TOS037-BloodthirstBYJ.M.DILLARDPrologueYOSHIAWOKEKNOWINGthatsometimeinhissleep,hehadmadethedecisiontokill.Hiseyesopenedtotheflickeringyellowlightofthehalf-meltedcandleinthehurricanelamp,andafterasecondofdisorientationinwhichhefearedhehadawaktnedtothewrongcentury,herememberedhewasinLara'squa...

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