STAR TREK - TOS - Spock, Messiah
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Spock Messiah CHAPTER ONE
Captain's log. Stardate 6720.8.
This is our eighth day in orbit around the Class M planet, Kyros. Dr. McCoy has reported that initial
trials of the telescan cephalic implants devised by Star-fleet Cultural Survey Bureau have been generally
successful. Though some survey team members complained of disorientation on first being linked with the
Kyrosian minds, Dr. McCoy is confident that once each team member realizes he can consciously
control the feelings of personality intrusion caused by the link, present complaints of feeling like two
different people simultaneously will cease.
Successful completion of our mission on Kyros will mean the acceptance of the telescan implant as a
routine survey tool.
Captain James T. Kirk, commanding the United Starship Enterprise , pressed his forefinger against a
button on the log computer's control panel, shutting it off.
He yawned and stretched. The survey team had been beamed down for its third day on Kyros early that
morning while he was still asleep. His watch had been strictly routine and a bit boring. He was looking
forward to a long drink, a good meal, and an hour or so of solitude before the debriefing later that
evening when the survey team was beamed up for the night.
He leaned back in his thickly padded black command chair and gazed around the bridge of the great
starship, nodding his approval of the quiet efficiency with which the bridge crew went about the complex
and demanding business of running the Enterprise .
The bridge was a circular chamber located on the top deck of the huge, saucer-shaped, detachable
primary hull. It began to his left with the main engineering console, currently manned by Lt. Comdr.
Montgomery Scott, and continued around to the ship's environmental control console, engineering
sub-systems monitor station, the visual display monitora viewing screen which could show any part of the
ship's exterior, but which now showed cloud-wreathed Kyros turning in its orbit some sixteen hundred
kilometers belowthen on to the defense sub-systems monitor, defense and weapons console, navigation,
main computer and science station, now manned by the second science officer, Lt. Comdr. Helman, and
lastly communications, where Lt. Uhura, a lovely woman of Bantu descent, was setting up another
scanning program for the normal light and infra-red cameras trained on Kyros.
Directly in front of Kirk was a double console containing the navigator's station on the right and the
helmsman's on the left.
Kirk raised his brown eyes from the twin console and studied the view of Kyros on the visual monitor.
As he watched the televised image, he heard the turbo-lift's doors hiss open behind him.
Navigator Vitali and Helmsman Shaffer swiveled in their seats and nodded to the entering officers.
Kirk turned and waved a greeting at the approaching pair.
"Lieutenant Suluhellip;" began one.
"Ensign Chekovhellip;" chimed in the other.
"hellip; reporting for duty, sir," they finished simultaneously.
Kirk smiled. "Carry on, gentlemen, and a good evening to you both."
The two officersLt. Sulu, an Oriental of mixed ancestry but with Japanese predominating, born on Alpha
Mensa Five; and Ensign Pavel Chekov, a terrestrial Russian with bushy black hair and a round, youthful
facetook their seats at the combined console hi front of the captain, as their off-duty counterparts stood
and stretched luxuriously.
"A long watch, Ensign Shaffer?" Kirk asked the young man.
Shaffer nodded and said, "Aye, sir." He gestured toward the image of Kyros on the monitor screen.
"The first few days aren't too bad; a new planet's always sort of interesting, but after a while it can be a
drag." The ensign quickly added, "hellip; sir."
"After the long run out here, just sitting with nothing to do is pleasant," the female navigator said. "Some
of the courses I had to plot were a little hairy. Opening up star routes in an uncharted sector of the galaxy
can put wrinkles on a girl."
"We were lucky, Lieutenant," Kirk said. "Finding life in only the third system we visited was like throwing
ten sevens in a row."
"Well," said Sulu, "a routine one-on and two-off schedule with no problems for three hundred parsecs is
infinitely preferable to spending the rest of your life as, for instance, the plaything of a superpowerful alien
juvenile delinquent."*
*See " The Squire of Gothos ," STAR TREK 2, Bantam Books, 1968
"Small chance of that happening here, Mr. Sulu," Kirk said with a chuckle. "The Kyrosians have a D+
rating on the Richter Cultural Scale, at least the city-dwelling lowlanders do. The hill clans are fairly
primitive nomadic herdsmen, as far as we have determined. When Spock and the rest of the survey party
beam up tonight, we should be able to fill in the blanks. But you can relax, Sulu; we've picked up enough
to know that there's nothing down there that's a threat to the Enterprise ."
"In that case, sir," Shaffer said, "Lieutenant Vitali and I are going to devote the first part of the evening to
the pursuit of a thick pair of Terran beefsteaks." Turning to the woman, he asked, "Care to chart a course
in that direction, Navigator?"
As the pair stepped up a short flight of stairs to the upper part of the deck and entered the turbo-lift, Kirk
gave the bridge a last quick glance.
"Everything seems to be in order," Kirk said. "Mr. Sulu, you'll take the con this watch." He glanced to his
left and saw Engineering Officer Scott stretching. "Ready to call it a day, Scotty?"
The big, bluff, red-haired Scotsman nodded and his relief, Lt. Leslie, slipped into the padded black
swivel seat at the console.
"But, Captain," Scott began in a thick burr, which somehow disappeared completely when he was under
stress, "d'ye think it's a gude idea to leave the Enterprise in the hands of sic a wee lad as Sulu?" He
flicked his left eyelid at Kirk.
Kirk caught the wink, and fell in with the jovial feud between Scott and Sulu, which had been underway
ever since a debate over the merits of hot saki, as opposed to Scotch.
"As helm officer," Scott added lugubriously, "the bairn may be able to hold orbitgie'en the proper
supervision o'coursebut the con, now; I think it's a bit more o' a load than those young shoulders can
bear."
Kirk gave a mock frown. "You've a good point there, Scotty."
Sulu swung partway around in his seat to gaze in astonishment at the muscular captain who stood staring
at him, hands on hips.
"But, if Chekov could just keep an eye on thingshellip;" Kirk went on. "How about it, Navigator? If Sulu
should start pushing the wrong buttons and send the Enterprise out of orbit and into a nose dive, do you
think you could show him how to get back?"
Chekov glanced at Sulu, then looked away. Helman snickered.
"I'll do my best, Captain," he said in a Russian accent so thick the last word sounded like "kyptin."
"But would you straighten me out one more timehellip; Do I push the green button for Up or the red
one?"
"Don't tell him, sir," Scott said. "Let him find out the hard way."
Laughing, the two officers turned and mounted the stairs to the raised deck, the engineering officer slightly
ahead. As they were about to enter the turbo-lift, Chekov leaned forward, studying the screens on his
console intently.
"Captain!"
Kirk swung around. "What is it, Mr. Chekov?"
"The scanners have picked up a radiation front coming toward us on coursehellip;" Chekov paused, did
some fine tuning, then continued, "hellip; on course 114, mark 31."
"Intensity reading?" Kirk asked levelly.
"Intensity two at the moment, but a narrow scan indicates the beginning of a build-up."
Kirk stepped briskly to the science console on the raised deck. "Mr. Helman, verify please," he ordered,
now all starship commander rather than bantering superior. As Helman bent over his instruments, Scott
moved back to the engineering console and began to perform his own operations.
Moments later, Helman straightened up and said, "Something's coming in, all right. How do you read,
Mr. Scott?"
"I can verify Chekov's readings, too, but there's nae to worrie aboot. The hull shielding's good to intensity
twenty. If the front builds beyond that, we can put up the deflector screens. Except for a nova's blast,
they'll stop anything long enou' for us to leave the vicinity."
"Mr. Helman, if you please," Kirk said as he stepped to the science console. His strong fingers moved
over the colored controls pressing and switching. He studied the results displayed in a small viewing
screen.
"I thought sohellip; Mr. Helman, do you see it?" Kirk asked the science officer. "I thought it looked a little
odd." Helman murmured agreement. Turning, Kirk said, "Mr. Sulu, tie the science scanners in with the
navigation computer. I want a time factor on that."
"Aye, sir," the officer responded and turned with brisk attention to his console.
Kirk remained standing at the science station, but he could see Sulu's slim fingers dance across the
double board. Scott followed suit, running a parallel check.
Sulu suddenly let out a low whistle.
"Problem?" Kirk asked.
"Could be, sir. I'll recheck," Sulu replied.
"Ye don't have to," Scott said. "My readout checks with yours." His thick, blunt fingers pressed several
switches and a spectrographic image of Kyros' sun appeared on the forward visual monitor blanking out
the image of the planet.
Kirk looked at the picture and heard Scott mutter, 'That dinna make sense."
"Explain," Kirk ordered. He glanced back at the screen as Scott began to talk.
"That radiation front shows a Doppler shift to the violet; a primary sign o' a star gaein' nova. But yon
spectrograph shows Kyr as quiet an' calm as a sleepin' babe. It's still a placid G5."
"Are there any novae or supernovae in this quadrant?" Kirk asked Helman.
The science officer replied, frowning, "None detectable, sir. The only possible candidate is a blue Class
B main sequence star about nine parsecs away, out of range of our longest range scanners. However,
assuming it did blow thirty years ago, the front just reaching us now wouldn't be much beyond point
oh-oh-one because of the square of the distance and all."
"It has me worried, too, Commander," Kirk said, noting the frown. "If we don't know where it is, we
can't be sure of which direction to run in order to avoid it."
"To run, sir?" Uhura asked from the communications console.
"It's a possibility right now, Lieutenant," Kirk said. He turned back to study the peaceful spectrograph
still on the monitor. "All right, gentlemen, keep after it I want to know as much about that front as we can
learn in the shortest possible time. If you haven't licked it by the time Spock and the others beam up, I'll
detail him to help you." Kirk's voice took on a small note of worry. "If he's feeling up to it"
Uhura spoke up again, concern in her voice. "What's wrong with Mr.. Spock?" Her deep respect for
both the captain and the half-human first officer sometimes manifested itself in a maternal fashion.
"He's been feeling the effects of his implant a little more strongly than the others on the survey detail,
though he's assured me he can control it," Kirk replied. "If he's still acting as strangely as he did the night
before last, I'll have to order McCoy to remove it. It seems that Mr. Speck's dop is giving him a real
migraine."
"Dop?" Scott asked as he walked from the engineering console to the gap in the rail which ran around the
inner edge of the upper deck. "What the divil is a dop?"
"Dop is from an old German word doppleganger meaning the ghostly double of a living person. Ensign
George made it up," Kirk replied.
He peered at the monitor screen a final time. "I'll be in my quarters until the team is beamed up. Keep on
that front and call me if there's any change." He turned to Scott. "Coming, Mr. Scott?"
Once hi his cabin. Kirk lay down on his bunk. Behind him, and built into the bulkhead, was a cabinet.
Kirk reached back, rolling over onto his stomach as he did so. From a small shelf of real books, rather
than microtapes, he took a dog-eared copy of Xenophon's Anabasis . He flopped onto his back, opened
the book, and began to read for the hundredth time that ancient Greek's account of being trapped hi
hostile territory a thousand miles from home, and of the months of battles, marches, and countermarches
until, at long last, the small army of mercenaries arrived safely home. Unstated in the matter-of-fact
account, but apparent behind the scenes, was the loneliness of command, the agonizing decisions that
tune and again had saved the isolated band from certain destruction. Kirk approved of Xenophon. Born
a few millennia later, that worthy would have made a brilliant starship commander.
The captain had just reached the point hi the battle of Cunaxa where the Persian commander Cyrus was
killed, when the intraship communicator bleeped.
"Kirk here."
"Transporter Room One, Lieutenant Rogers, sir. Lieutenant Dawson requests permission to have Ensign
George and Lieutenant Peters beamed up ahead of schedule. He says they're both having dop trouble."
"What kind?"
"The beggar Peters is linked with also picks pockets. Peters says that if he gets preoccupied and forgets
to override his dop's normal behavioral patterns, his hands keep sliding into other people's pockets. He
finds it so distracting that he can't concentrate on his duties."
"And Ensign George?"
"She can't seem to keep her hands off men, sirand vice versa."
Kirk sighed. Every time he decided to allow himself the luxury of spending a few hours with his nose in a
book, something came along to spoil it.
"Permission granted. Beam them up and tell them to report to Dr. McCoy. Are the rest of the party
having any similar problems?"
"Nothing they can't handle, sir."
"How about Commander Spock?"
"I don't know, sir. He hasn't reported in since he beamed down yesterday morning. That's not like him."
"He's probably on the trail of something 'fascinating,'" Kirk said. "We'll hear all about it when he beams
up tonight. Kirk out."
He cut communication, looked longingly at his book, closed it reluctantly, and put it to one side. He
switched on the intraship communicator again and called the sickbay.
The voice that answered belonged to the ship's chief medical officer, Dr. Leonard McCoy, the only
member of the crew with whom the captain could associate on terms of human friendship rather than
command.
"Evening, Bones. We've got problems," Kirk began.
"Anything serious?" McCoy asked.
"The dop links," Kirk continued. "Drawing on a native's brain for language and other behavior is great in
theory, especially when the native isn't aware of it. But too much is coming across in some cases. Two of
Dawson's party are having trouble controlling the dop input and he's asked to have them beamed up
early. I've given permission and told them to report to you, but I'd rather you put someone else on it and
come up to my quarters. I'd like to discuss this whole thing."
"Sure thing, Jim," McCoy replied amiably. "I'll have Mbenga handle it, he helped with the original surgery.
I'll also bring along a little something to help lubricate our thinking."
It was going to be a long evening. Kirk stripped, stepped into a shower cabinet set in one bulkhead, and
set it for frigid needle spray. He gasped as the high pressure jets buffeted his taut, muscular body,
massaging and cleansing at the same time. The water cut off abruptly and was replaced by a blast of hot
air which dried him in seconds. He stepped out of the cabinet and pulled on a fresh uniform.
"Good timing, Bones," he said as his cabin door hissed open and McCoy stepped in. The doctor carried
a peculiarly shaped flask of an amber-colored drink, Canopian brandy, Kirk's favorite.
He set the curved flask down on Kirk's desk, took two snifter glasses from the wainscot cabinet which
ran along the inner bulkhead, and filled each glass halfway. He handed one to Kirk, and the two stood
silently for a moment, sipping the potent brandy slowly and appreciatively.
McCoy's seamed, leathery face peered at Kirk over the rim of the glass he held, his dark blue eyes fixed
on his captain, waiting for him to speak.
"Ahhh, lovely! Much better than that green Saurian stuff you like, eh, Bones?" Kirk said. He held out his
glass. "A little more."
"I'm an equal opportunity drinker, Jim," McCoy remarked. "Here you are." The doctor refilled Kirk's
glass, then his own.
The two men sat and began to discuss the malfunctioning of the telescan implants. McCoy frowned as
Kirk described the reasons for the early return of two of the survey team members.
McCoy let out a sudden, startled whistle when Kirk relayed Dawson's report on Ensign George's
problem.
"Sara did that?" he said incredulously. "Jim, she couldn't have. She's the starchiest female I've run into in
years. I gave her a friendly pat one day and she almost took my head off. It's a shame such a lovely
woman should have such anachronistic beliefs about the human body." McCoy shook his head, then
asked Kirk, "Have you had much of a chance to talk with her?"
Kirk shook his head.
"She's on special assignment from Cultural Survey to evaluate the effectiveness of the cephalic implants as
a survey tool," McCoy began. "One of her jobs has been selecting likely native matches for survey team
linkages. It looks as if she didn't do such a good job on her own. Come to think of it, she was giving
Spock the eye when they were getting ready to beam down the day before yesterday."
"Oh, no," groaned Kirk. "Not another one! Why does nearly every woman assigned to the Enterprise set
her cap for that walking computer? Doesn't she understand Vulcans?"
"I imagine so. She must be aware that Vulcans only have the mating urgethe pon farrevery seven years."
McCoy shrugged. "But be that as it may, we're going to have to tune Sara's implant to a new dop. She
doesn't seem to be able to handle the one she's linked to now. With all the profiles she had to choose
from, I'm surprised she didn't pick one whose personality was more like her own."
"How many Kyrosian profiles do we have?" Kirk asked.
"Over two hundred. Sara did the collecting herself. We picked up enough information by tight-beam scan
to be able to outfit her in native dress. She was transported down just outside the city gates at night with
a personality scanner hidden in a pouch. When the gates opened in the morning, she pretended to be a
mute. Through sign language, she found an inn at the center of town, rented the rooms we're using as a
transporter terminal, locked the door, set up the scanner, and began recording natives."
McCoy paused a moment and sipped from his glass. "She beamed up with quite a collectiontown
people, hill people, even a couple of Beshwa."
"Beshwa?"
"Kyrosian gypsies. Anyway," McCoy continued, "the native neural patterns she recorded on magcards
give detailed personality profiles as distinctive as fingerprints.
"The next step was to select the profile that would be most useful to a particular survey party member in
his particular mission, tune a telescan implant to it, and insert it surgically behind his right ear. Once it was
turned on, a telepathic link was established with the selected native that gives the investigator an
immediate command of idiomatic Kyrosian and the ability to react behaviorally in any situation exactly as
his dop would."
Kirk gave a wry grin. "And that, as George and Peters found out, can create problems."
"But don't worry, Jim, we'll get the bugs worked out. Even with the minor problems we've encountered
so far, the implant is the best survey device the bureau has come up with yet. We picked up more
information, so Dobshansky tells me, on how Kyrosian society works in the last few days, than we could
have in a month using the old system. Of course we're lucky that the natives are humanoid enough that,
except for colored contact lenses that duplicate their unusual eye pigmentation, little is needed in the way
of disguise. The links make it possible for our people to go almost anyplace with complete acceptance.
Within limits," McCoy added, waving his glass for emphasis. "If you're linked to a street beggar, you're
going to behave and talk like one. And that means you won't be able to pass yourself off as a Kyrosian
aristocrat. But as I said, we've been rather successful in matching profile to mission, though I should have
checked on Ensign George more closely. I'll get her on the operating table tonight and tune her implant to
one which isn't sohellip; so friendly. I'll see if I can dig up a man-hater so she'll stop pestering Spock."
"I've a better idea," Kirk said. "Why don't we pull her off the survey detail and put her to work with you
on the whole problem? And by the way I'd like to see the circuit diagrams for the implant. I think I'd
better find out what makes that thing tick."
"I've programmed them into the computer already, so I can show you right now," McCoy said, sliding
from his perch on the desk. He turned around and pulled a vision screen erect from the surface of the
desk and pressed the intraship communicator button.
"Computerhellip;"
"Recording," replied the flat, feminine voice of the starship's main computer.
"Display the circuitry of the telescan implant on the captain's visual monitor."
"Working," the computer replied, and a moment later a glowing hologram appeared on the vision screen.
The diagram was color-coded. Kirk saw what appeared to be thousands of dots strung on layered
spiders' webs. The three-level display turned as McCoy made an adjustment.
"Here it is," the doctor said. "The first section, once tuned to a profile of a native, establishes the
telepathic link. This second section acts as a feedback shunt to keep the dop from being aware that his
brain has been tapped." McCoy traced a path with his finger. "Next is an input filter stage which passes
behavioral information but cuts out thoughts of the moment. Having the constant mental chatter that goes
on inside everyone's head coming across would be too distracting."
"I know," said Kirk, nodding sober agreement "That's one of the reasons Spock, like others with
telepathic ability, rarely uses his talent. He finds mind-melding an extremely distasteful process."
"Hah!" McCoy snorted. "The real reason is that he doesn't want his pristine computer banks
contaminated with a lot of emotionally tainted and questionable data."
"I think you may be right." Kirk laughed. "But, Bones, you know how infernally curious Spock is. I
couldn't keep him from this survey with tractor beams!"
McCoy snorted again and turned back to the diagram. "As I was saying, the implant is a honey of a job
of psychoelectronic engineering, especially when you consider that all of its circuitry is encapsulated in a
half-centimeter sphere."
"This is where the problems must be," McCoy continued, stabbing a forefinger at the input filter stage. "It
looks as if this section isn't working as well as the lab tests predicted. Too much of their dops'
personalities are leaking into Sara's and Ensign Peters' brains.
"I think I have an idea." McCoy peered at the diagram with pursed lips. "If you do take Ensign George
off the detail, she can help me get to work on it at once. Microminiaturized circuitry is tricky to work on,
but with a little technical assistance from the engineering department, we shouldn't really have too much
trouble ironing out the problem."
"Good," Kirk said approvingly. He held out his empty glass for another refill, then thought better of it.
"Guess I'd better hold off," he murmured regretfully. "They'll be beaming up the rest of the survey team
soon and I'll have to be at the debriefing. I'm curious as to what Spock has been up to for the last couple
of days."
"Me, too," McCoy agreed and looked into his glass. "Maybe I'd better cut off also, if I'm going to be
doing surgery tonight."
Kirk pushed the visual monitor back into his desk as McCoy rinsed the glasses in the cubicle provided in
the bathroom. He replaced them in the wainscot cabinet and turned to Kirk.
"Come to think of it, if you've got no objection, I'd like to remove Spock's implant as soon as he gets
back. He's not essential down there, and I didn't like the idea of implanting him in the first place.
Kyrosian emotional makeup is pretty much like ours, and even if Spock was linked to a cold fish, he has
enough trouble keeping his human side under control without having things complicated by leakage from
his dop."
"Sounds good," Kirk said. "I'd want him to get to work on the source of that radiation front, anyway. The
only reason I let him go down was that he insisted so strongly. Sometimes I think his only purpose hi life
is to keep feeding a new supply of esoteric data into that logical brain. But he did behave oddlyhellip;"
"I've always thought Spock was odd," McCoy muttered.
'*hellip; after he was transported up last night," Kirk went on, not hearing McCoy's remark. "He had
nothing to say at the debriefing and took off by himself when it was over. I've had reports that he spent
most of the night wandering around the ship by himself."
Kirk faced the doctor. "Bones, could anything have gone wrong during his operation?"
McCoy considered for a moment. "I doubt it," he replied. "It was a routine insertion; he was the last one
done, anyway. When he was linked, I ran a language test. Without having to think about it, he replied in
flawless, idiomatic Kyrosian. There was the expected period of disorientation because of such intimate
contact with an alien personality, but Spock seemed in control of the situation. If I'd thought the linkage
would have caused him harm, I'd never have let him beam down.
"But," McCoy went on, "I must admit to feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing, hi spite of all the
information we've acquired. The bright boys at Star-fleet are always cooking up gadgets that violate a
person's physical integrity. Having my atoms scrambled every tune I go through that damn transporter is
bad enough, but hooking one man's nervous system to another's with electronic widgetshellip;" He
grimaced his distaste. "Be only a matter of time before we're all literally worshipping a transistor, or some
bloody thinghellip;"
Kirk slapped his medical officer on the shoulder. "Bones, transistors were old stuff two hundred years
ago."
"You know what I mean," McCoy grumbled.
"Can't fight progress. If man hadn't kept trying to find ways to do things better, we'd never have climbed
down from the trees. We'd still be in them, scratching for fleas and swinging from limb to limb."
"So, now we're swinging from star to star," McCoy said sardonically. "And still scratching. We're as
much the slaves of our glands as our ancestors were, and most of our behavior makes as much sense. I
hope poor Spock hasn't caught the itch. In spite of his dop's low EQ, I'm concerned about permanent
effects on that finely tuned Vulcan brain of his."
"Stop fretting," Kirk said. "Spock's used to that sort of thing. It's been a struggle at times, but he's always
managed to keep what he considers his illogical side under tight control. Being exposed to a little added
irrationality may make him uncomfortable, but Spock's too smart to let it run riot."
The captain grinned slyly at his medical officer.
"You are fond of our Vulcan iceberg, aren't you, Bones?"
McCoy stared at Kirk, harrumphed crustily, and got to his feet.
"I'd better get down to surgery and set up for the removal of Ensign George's implant," he said, unwilling
to continue a conversation which might force him to reveal his true feelings for the half-alien first officer.
"I'll try to be at the debriefing."
"Hey, Bones," Kirk called.
"Yes?"
"You forgot your bottle."
"Tell you what," McCoy replied. "Keep it. Tomorrow night, put Spock on second watch and we'll lock
the door, cut off the communicator, and kill the rest of. the bottle. Call it doctor's orders."
Kirk grinned and McCoy stepped toward the cabin's door. He turned suddenly, raising an admonitory
finger. "But don't go nipping. That jug punched a nice hole in my budget." McCoy lowered his finger,
grinned, and stepped into the corridor.
As the door hissed shut, Kirk lay back down and picked up his Xenophon. With luck, he could get in a .
couple of chapters before the survey party came aboard. He had just found his place when the
communicator bleeped again.
Kirk dropped the book onto the bunk and went to his desk.
"Kirk here. What is it?" he said, trying to keep annoyance out of his voice.
"Lieutenant Commander Helman, sir," came a worried voice. "We are in condition yellowhellip;"
"Specify!" Kirk snapped.
"The radiation front is building. The science computer has projected a geometrical progression on the
intensity scale. There's a point 72 probability that the front will pass intensity twenty in the next few days."
Kirk swore silently to himself. That would mean putting up the deflector screens, which would make it
impossible to operate the transporters. "Do you have a duration estimate?"
"It's still too early for an accurate prediction, sir," Helman went on. "The computer says that it could die
down in a week or two, or go on more than a month. Its configuration is unlike anything in the data
banks."
Kirk sighed. "Very good, Commander, thank you. Ill be right up."
He glanced at his book. Scooping both it and his dirty uniform up, he put the book away and tossed the
uniform into the autowash chute.
He strode to the door of his quarters wondering when he would finish Xenophon. Then he exited and
walked quickly down the corridor to the turbo-lift.
CHAPTER TWO
As the turbo-lift doors hissed open, Kirk stepped onto the bridge. Sulu, vacating the command chair,
reseated himself at his helmsman's position.
"Report," Kirk ordered as he sat.
Helman, a tall, thin officer with close-cropped blond hair and a protuberant Adam's apple, straightened
from the science console and turned toward the star-ship's captain.
"The radiation front has jumped to intensity 2.4 in the last hour, sir. At first the increase looked like a
random fluctuation; but when the computer had enough data to run a curve, it reported a possible
condition red, which is when I recommended a yellow alert to Mr. Sulu." Helman gestured at the science
console upon which glowed several red lights. "The front has all the characteristics of a nova, but the
local sun is still perfectly normal."
Captain Kirk frowned. "You can't have a radiation front without a source. Have you backtracked along
its course?"
"Aye, sir," Helman replied. "The only star the coordinates fit is Epsilon lonis, the black-hole binary we
checked out last month. But how a nova shell could increase in intensity so rapidlyhellip; It's got me
stumped, Captain, and there isn't enough applicable data in the computer to come up with a working
hypothesis."
"You will continue to try to pin down that source, but right now I'm more concerned about the possible
danger to this ship. We've got to get a more precise reading on the projected radiation increase.
"Lieutenant Leslie," Kirk said, swinging his chair around to face the stocky engineer.
"Sir?"
"You and Mr. Sulu will tie hi your banks with the science console. I want exact data on the nature of that
front."
A chorus of "aye, ayes" sounded, and the officers turned to their consoles to feed in requests, collate
incoming data, and to co-ordinate the operations of their stations.
"Ready, sir," Helman said finally.
"Project," Kirk ordered.
The image of Kyros disappeared from the great screen and was replaced by a grid on which each
radiational component of the strange shell of energy was plotted on the ordinate against the abscissa of
time.
Helman touched a button and, like glowing worms, the component projection lines began to creep across
the screen, crawling forward through tune and upward in intensity.
"What a hash," Sulu muttered. "It's almost as if we're running into a solar prominence."
Kirk watched intently as the ship's computers continued the projection.
"That readout is getting too complicated," he said. "Blank everything but the hard radiation and
high-energy particles, and give me a horizontal on hull shielding safety limits."
The second science officer made a few adjustments and the confusion of the screen began to clear as,
one by one, the lines representing the lower frequencies and slower moving particles began to disappear
leaving only those charting lethal radiation, high energy protons, alpha particles, and heavy nuclei.
The narrow red line marking the maximum limits of the shields' tolerance flashed on the screen. There
was a dead silence on the bridge as the projection track of each component continued an unbroken climb
toward the red line.
Suddenly, each of the lines bent sharply and shot upward vertically, slashing the red line hi dozens of
places and continuing almost to the very top of the grid before peaking and beginning an equally sharp
decline.
The ship computer chimed softly and the emotionless voice began to speak to the silent crew. "Deflector
shield activation necessary in eight days, thirteen hours, and twenty-four minutes or radiation penetration
will exceed 100 rad."
"And that's enough to put half the crew down with radiation sickness," Kirk muttered.
"At the rate those curves peak," Helman said, nodding agreement with Kirk. "A few more hours'
exposure would kill us all, right?"
"Is a response required?" the computer asked.
"We aren't going to be here long enough to make the answer more than academic," Kirk said. "But as
long as you have one, let's hear it."
"Data indicates that, unless corrective measures are taken, all crew members, with one exception, will
receive a lethal dosage by twenty-three hundred hours, stardate 6728.5."
"Who might be the exception?" Kirk asked. "As if I couldn't guess."
"Commander Spock," said the computer. "Vulcans are twice as resistant to radiation as humans. If an
exact prediction of Commander Spock's resistance is desired, a tissue sample must be secured for
molecular analyzation."
"That figures," said a familiar voice sardonically. "While the rest of us are heaving and watching our hair
fall out, Spock and the computer will be playing three-dimensional chess."
Kirk swung his chair about.
"Bones," he asked, "what are you doing up here? I thought you had our sexpot in surgery."
Dr. McCoy laughed. "I had her on the table, just ready to give her a local when the yellow alert came
through. I thought I'd better report to the bridge to see if I was needed, so I told her to report back in the
morning. I imagine she's hanging around the transporter room on the odd chance she might get lucky
when Spock is beamed up."
He paused and gestured at the visual monitor dominating the front of the bridge.
"Looks like some nasty stuff is on the way in."
"'Nasty' is an understatement," the captain said. He gazed at the screen thoughtfully for a moment. "In
order to weather what will be coming in a few days from now, we'd have to put the shields up, and at the
rate that storm is peaking, we'd have to put them on maximum before too long. Twenty hours of that, and
the power reserves would be exhausted. If we didn't pull out before then, we'd fry. Buying a few more
hours would be pointless anyway. The transporters won't operate while the shields are up, and we've
already gathered all the data on Kyros that can be obtained from orbit. There's nothing urgent about the
survey, it's mainly a field test for the implants."
Kirk swung his command chair to his right. "Lieutenant Uhura, we're getting out of here. Open a channel
to Starfleet, give them our situation, and tell them we're leaving Kyros until things quiet down."
"Aye, sir," Uhura replied. She placed a hypertronic earphone in one ear and turned toward her console.
"In the meantime," Kirk was saying to McCoy, "Spock and his department can pin down the reason for
that intensity increasehellip;"
Suddenly, he was interrupted by an exclamation from the communications officer.
"Captain, I've lost contact with Starfleet," Uhura said. "I sent out the standard signal, but when I listened
for their recognition call, a blast of QRM nearly blew out my eardrum."
"Malfunction, Lieutenant?" Kirk asked.
"Checking now, sir," she replied. Hesitantly, she replaced the earphone and bent over her panel. After a
full five minutes of rapid checking, she straightened. "Negative, sir. Everything is in order, but there is
something interfering on the sub-space bands."
"That's impossible," Kirk said. "Helman, scan sub-space."
The tall science officer bent over his console and moments later snapped upright with a look of surprise.
"Computer!" he snapped, "check antenna and sensor circuits for malfunction." He swung toward Kirk
who had come out of his chair at Helman's order to the computer. "Captain, you won't believe thishellip;"
"All sub-space sensors fully operational," the computer said after a small pause.
"Put it on the main screen," Kirk ordered.
As Helman complied, it was Kirk's turn to feel surprise. The main screen showed a cloud-like formation,
vast, pulsing, and ominous. It seemed to swell visibly toward Kirk, expanding outward evenly in all
directions. Throughout it, hot spots and radiation peak points flared with rapidity and in close proximity
to one another; it seemed as if the bridge crew was peering into the heart of an exploding sun.
"What is that?" Kirk asked.
Helman, looking puzzled, tried to answer. "It's radiation, sir, and it must be a sub-space aspect of the
front we've been tracking, but what it's doing down there is beyond me."
"Captain," Chekov said, "it's moving toward us at Warp Ten!"
Kirk stared at Chekov for a moment. "Warp Ten?" He glanced back at the visual monitor. "Whatever it
is, Mr. Helman, it's beyond me, too." Looking at Chekov, Kirk said, "Prepare a course, Ensign, 246,
Mark 347. Mr. Sulu, we'll move out at Warp Factor Six as soon as the survey party is aboard. Uhura,
once we're out of this hash, contact Starfleet, give them a position report, and transmit full information on
this radiation."
As the navigator and the helmsman began laying in the course necessary to take the Enterprise out of
harm's way, Kirk stabbed a button on the arm of the command chair.
"Transporter room," someone replied.
"This is the captain. Has the survey party been beamed up yet?"
"No sir," the transporter officer replied. "They're waiting for Commander Spock. Lieutenant Dawson just
checked in and said he's had no word from Mr. Spock all day. I was about to call you, sir."
Kirk frowned at the news. Such behavior was completely uncharacteristic for the precise, punctual
science officer. Kirk immediately was afraid something had happened to his Vulcan friend.
"Activate his tingler circuit. Send him the emergency recall signal," Kirk ordered. "I'll keep the
communicator open. Let me know as soon as he acknowledges."
"Tingler circuit?" Uhura asked curiously. "What's that?"
"Another idea of the Cultural Bureau," Kirk replied. "An audible signal on the communicators might
create a problem in a crowded place, so they came up with a tiny implant that's hooked into a branch of
the wearer's sciatic nerve. When activated, it causes a tingling sensation. The wearer then finds a private
place and answers the call. If that would take time, the communicator also includes a new circuit. By
pushing a button, the wearer can at least acknowledge receiving the signal. But so far Spock has done
neither," Kirk finished on a worried note.
"Gadgets in the head, gadgets in the body," grumbled Dr. McCoy. "By the time Survey gets through
tucking gadgets inside of us, we'll all be walking machines. I thinkhellip;"
The surgeon was interrupted by the urgent voice of the transporter officer.
"Rogers, again, sir," the officer said. "There's been no reply from Mr. Spock."
Kirk glanced at McCoy. The doctor's eyes were wide. "Home in on his communicator, Lieutenant," Kirk
ordered tightly. "Then notify Dawson of the co-ordinates. I want him to get his party to wherever Spock
is on the double."
Kirk punched another button, not even acknowledging Rogers' "Aye, sir."
"Security, Kirk here."
"Commander Pulaski, sir," replied the security officer.
"Get a security team to exosociology. Have them outfitted in Kyrosian clothing and issue phasers.
Double-check to be sure they're set on low-intensitystun. We may have to beam down for a rescue
operation, and I want a minimum amount of force."
"Aye, aye, Captain," Pulaski replied, switching off.
"Do you think that will be necessary, Jim?" McCoy asked.
"I hope not, Bones, I hope not," Kirk replied.
Kirk forced himself to relax as he waited for word of his science officer. McCoy placed a reassuring
hand on his shoulder.
"Don't worry, Jim. Old Spock's indestructible. He's never walked into a situation he couldn't handle."
"Captain!" It was the transporter room again.
"Yes?"
"I have Lieutenant Dawson on, but I think you'd better speak to him directly. Mr. Spock wasn't where he
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SpockMessiahCHAPTERONECaptain'slog.Stardate6720.8.ThisisoureighthdayinorbitaroundtheClassMplanet,Kyros.Dr.McCoyhasreportedthatinitialtrialsofthetelescancephalicimplantsdevisedbyStar-fleetCulturalSurveyBureauhavebeengenerallysuccessful.Thoughsomesurveyteammemberscomplainedofdisorientationonfirstbeing...
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