Theodore R. Cogswell - Spock Messiah

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 in life is to keep feeding a new supply of esoteric data into that logical brain. But he did behave oddly…”

“I’ve always thought Spock was odd,” McCoy muttered.

‘… 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, in spite of all the information we’ve acquired. The bright boys at Starfleet 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 widgets…” He grimaced his distaste. “Be only a matter of time before we’re all literally worshipping a transistor, or some bloody thing…”

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 yellow…”

“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. I’ll 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.

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 starship’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.”