Star Trek: The Original Series - 147 - Devil’s Bargain (8 page)

“And now those eggs have hatched, Captain,” Spock replied. “The rocky halls of Janus VI are crawling with young Horta who are working with the miners, with both species reaping the benefits. After all, what is a hard rock to us is merely food to a Horta.”

“Yes, but—”

“I have performed the calculations. Janus VI is in the Omega sector, albeit near the other end. At maximum warp, a six-day journey will get us there.”

“Warp eight, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Scotty will kill me. Go on.”

“Once there, we will, of course, have to negotiate with the Horta.”

“Convince a sufficient number of them to return with us?”

“Correct.”

“However many that may be.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“But Spock, you’re forgetting one thing,” Kirk said.

“Am I?”

“The Horta, they’re still babies. Who knows how fast they mature? We didn’t even know they were sentient.”

Spock set down his tricorder and closed it up. “I believe I said it was a rather unformed plan, Captain.”

Kirk nodded. “Yes, I believe you did. And if we get them here, you think we have time?”

“Unknown, Captain,” Spock said. “The Horta are master miners, after all. We would have to ask them. However, I do believe the task will be made sufficiently easier by the composition of the asteroid they are asked to dig through. It is an accreted comet surrounded by a shell of rock and ice, the passage of which will be to the Horta a snack.”

Kirk considered. “If I offer an alternate plan in the Council meeting tomorrow, perhaps I can convince them to prepare for full-scale evacuation as a fallback. Surely we can find some way to ‘de-engineer’ this genetic tinkering they’ve been doing to their genome.”

“Unlikely, Jim.” It was the voice of a tired McCoy. He stumbled into the room with mussed-up hair and plunked himself down at the central table.

“I thought you were asleep, Doctor.”

“I thought I was too, but with you both squawking up a storm in here like Tellurian genta bats,
there was no way I could keep that up. So I started listening. You do realize how unlikely this plan is, don’t you?”

“I don’t have a lot of options at the moment, Bones.”

“Well, I hope it works, because I’ve had a good look at the engineering these people have done to their genome while I was treating my patients today. They’ve made changes that are irreversible. I think most of them are as much as five to ten percent native, sharing this planet’s odd triple-helix gene structure. In comparison, humans and chimpanzees are ninety-eight percent similar. Let me tell you, there are many unknowns about that kind of genetic structure, but there is one
known
: That stuff is not very human, and neither are the structures it expresses. In fact, I don’t know what most of those genes
do
. I’m going to get a great paper out of mapping them after all this is over. But the one thing you cannot achieve with any current methodology is to deconstruct those genes in every cell and then remake a human out of the remains. These people are Vesbians now, and they’re going to remain Vesbians, for better or worse.”

“Then it would seem that Spock’s idea is our only one.”

“That doesn’t improve its chances,” McCoy mumbled.

Kirk had to agree. But he had to admire his first
officer. When backed into a corner, he had come up with a brilliant plan that just
might
succeed. Of course, its very success depended upon Spock and his mind melding ability.

And the Horta.

What were they like? Were they as crusty and acidic in personality as they were on the outside? Would they help?

Kirk finally fell into an exhausted sleep, and his dreams were filled with Horta.

He awoke the next morning to the urgent bleating of his communicator. He struggled up in bed and reached for the device, which lay on the nightstand nearby, and flipped it open. “Scotty, I was hoping to get a couple more hours sleep after the day we had yesterday.”

“Sorry, sir,”
came Scotty’s cheerful voice. He sounded as if he’d just awakened, eaten a large breakfast, and was eager to face a new day. It turned out that Scotty had spent much of the night scanning the planet surface.

“After that second cache of bombs was discovered,”
said the chief engineer
, “I knew what to look for, Captain. They were pretty primitive devices—fertilizer bombs, if you can believe it—even though they packed quite a wallop.”
Scotty chuckled.
“But it makes sense if you’re short on bomb-making material and it makes sense if you want to hide them. The entire planet is an agricultural center, after all.”

“Scotty, I haven’t had any coffee yet,” said Kirk. “Could you get to the point?”

“Aye, Captain,”
said Scotty.
“Well, since we did have those unexploded bombs, we were able to analyze the exact chemical composition. I’ve been running scanner sweeps looking for those chemical signatures.”

“And you found something?”

“Captain,”
said Scotty, concern seeping into his voice
, “a whole lot of something. Bombs. Lots of them. And they’re all planted under the Council chamber in that complex you’re staying in.”

Realization dawned on Kirk. “No doubt they’re set to go off this afternoon at the Council meeting.”

“You’d be knowing that better than I, Captain,”
replied Scotty.
“We’ve got locks on the position of all of the planted bombs. We were able to analyze the triggering mechanism. They’ve learned from their mistakes. These babies are shielded from EMP. Just give the command, Captain, and I’ll beam them into space and blast them with the phasers just for good measure.”

“Do it, Scotty. Get rid of them all. And continue those sensor scans.”

“I’ll get on with it, then,”
said Mister Scott.
“And sorry about the rude wake-up call.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kirk said while locating a boot to pull on. “You saved a lot of lives. Kirk out.”

This was going to be interesting information to take before the Council. Interesting indeed.

•   •   •

Montgomery Scott turned to Chekov, who was at the bridge science station, and asked him to verify the positions of the bombs.

“We have them all logged and verified,” Chekov replied in his Russian accent, having trouble, as always, with the
v
sound. Scott sometimes wondered what his own Scottish brogue sounded like to Chekov. He supposed it must be as odd to Chekov as Chekov’s was to him. The truth was, to Scotty it was everyone else who had an accent, not him. To Scotty’s ears, his way of speaking sounded just perfect. To each his own.

“All right then, let’s beam them out, as many as we can at a time.” Scotty touched the key on the captain’s chair and opened communication to the transporter room. “Stand by to transport bombs to deep space. Is the security and science team ready in case there’s the slightest glitch when those things appear on the transporter platform?”

“Both are standing by,”
reported Transporter Chief Bynum.
“They won’t be here longer than a millisecond, sir.”

“Aye, but it’s best to be on the safe side,” said Scotty. “Energize when ready.”

“Energizing.”

In the transporter room the bombs materialized one by one on the platform and were almost instantaneously beamed away to the same region in space—a distance as far from the
Enterprise
as the transporter beam could put them. After about two minutes of steady beaming, the job was done, and the transporter chief reported in to the bridge.

“Bombs transported, sir.”

“Very good.” Scott turned to the helm. “Weapons locked on target.”

“Phasers locked,” said Sulu. “Standing by to fire.”

“All right, let’s make those things go away permanently,” said Scott. “Fire phasers.”

Sulu activated the phasers, and there was the familiar power whine of discharge. To Scotty, it was a beautiful sound, the sound of energy being properly directed, and a problem being solved.

On the viewscreen, the bombs erupted in an expanding fireball of pure energy. If they had gone off on the planet surface, they would not have had nearly this much explosive potential. The phasers were effectively transforming the bomb material into plasma. There was no need for oxygen to ignite them here in space, not with a starship’s phasers blasting through the matter of which they were composed.

The chief engineer watched as the last of the explosive streamers trailed away into space and all was empty again against the backdrop of stars.

Scotty realized that he hadn’t slept for nearly eighteen hours. He’d been working overtime to track down those bombs. He hoped that he had them all. He and Chekov had developed a search algorithm that served as a very effective net. He couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but Scotty felt he could finally rest confident that the crew of the
Enterprise
had saved a lot of lives.

“Let’s call it a day,” Scott said. “At least I will. Mister Sulu, you have the conn.” Scotty turned to Chekov. He could see the excitement of having fulfilled his duty still lingering on the ensign’s face. He could also detect the weariness of the task starting to take its toll. “Ensign Chekov, that was some good work you did. I know you’re young, but it’s time to take a wee little breather.”

“I don’t know if I could close my eyes if I tried,” said Chekov.

“I know how you feel, laddy,” Mister Scott replied, “I do. But that’s an order. I have a feeling our services will be needed soon enough.”

Six

Captain James Kirk looked over the faces of the Planetary Council assembled before him. They appeared careworn, and not like people open to a last-minute idea that would severely challenge the direction they’d taken to save themselves.

Hannah sat nearby. He’d seen her the night before, and if anything their coming together had been even more passionate than the first time. Kirk enjoyed the company of women, but she was proving to be something different. The captain realized he was falling in love. The impossibility of the situation only made the feeling stronger. He had always had an ability to live in the moment. He did not forget the past, nor stop caring about the future, but both became integrated into his subconscious mind and did not weigh upon him. In fact, he felt sorry for Spock, for the Vulcan could never know what it was like to experience a moment unconnected from reason, and yet not illogical or irrational. Such was Kirk’s feeling for Hannah. When he was with her, he truly did not think about the future. If this was
what love meant, Kirk was glad that he was open to it, even if it would mean heartbreak in the end.

Kirk turned his attention back to the Council, and to Chancellor Faber, who was speaking. “Now I would like to introduce our esteemed visitor from the Federation, Captain James T. Kirk, along with his first officer, Commander Spock, and the chief medical officer, Doctor Leonard McCoy, of the
Starship Enterprise
. They’ve come to offer their assistance to us, and they
have
been of great help. Only yesterday, with the aid of an alert
Enterprise
crew, a bomb plot was discovered and eliminated. Many lives were saved.”

For some in the Council, the new bomb plot was news, and assorted gasps and other signs of surprise and alarm arose from the chamber. The Council members—there were fifteen of them—sat in a semicircle on a raised dais across from Kirk. He and the chancellor and the chancellor’s staff were sitting at a long table that faced the Council dais and was slightly below it. The Council members were, in effect, looking down upon him and he up at them, although the effect was subtle. Also at the table sat Spock and Doctor McCoy on either side of Kirk.

“It is for this reason that I have approved Captain Kirk’s request to speak to this chamber,” said Chancellor Faber. “He has a plan he wishes us to consider, and while I remain unconvinced as to its efficacy, I believe we owe him our every attention,
and we ought to hear him out. He has earned the right to be heard on Vesbius.” The chancellor motioned for Kirk to begin, and the captain stood up.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Planetary Council,” Kirk began. “I wish to express to you my great admiration for your accomplishments in surviving and prospering on this world. I am also very much impressed by the preparations you have begun in order to survive the oncoming asteroid strike. When I first arrived, I did not understand why you would not have already evacuated the planet surface, perhaps relocating to a moon or even to another planet where you could start again. But now that I understand more about Vesbian physiology, it is clear to me why you made the decision you made. But I must say, you are relying upon a very distant hope. Your underground shelters are masterfully built chambers, but you saw from the bomb blasts of yesterday that they might not withstand the kind of devastation that is coming upon you. And even if they do, even if your engineering holds, you will emerge upon a destroyed world.

“And yet I understand why you cannot leave. At least, I understand why you cannot leave and remain in your present form. It may seem that people as clever as you have been in adapting to this planet may be able to come up with a solution to adapt to another. Some would say that, barring a miracle, this is the only rational course you could take. You
will not survive the coming storm, but some will say that you may, possibly, find a way to adapt yet again. I know this is a delicate matter, but it is time to speak frankly if ever there was such a time. I have no doubt you also are aware of the dangers of genetic manipulation. Perhaps what has been done, can somehow be undone.”

“What makes you think we have not tried to do this before?” A voice creaking with age rose up from the chamber, a woman’s voice. Kirk located the source in a silver-haired matron, who was sitting to the left on the dais. Kirk noted that her timeworn expression was belied by the softness of her speech. “If I understand you correctly, Captain,” the Council member said, “you say some might wish us to remove the very autoimmune defense which we engineered into our genetic structure to save ourselves here on Vesbius?”