Джеймс Блиш - Spock Must Die

After three months, too, there was a spurious atmosphere of routine on the bridge, as though it were perfectly normal to have one Spock at the library console and one taking his meals behind a barricade in McCoy’s laboratory. (An attempt to starve him out had come to nothing; he had, as he had promptly announced, simply put himself on iron rations from among McCoy’s supplies — a diet which would have brought down any ordinary human being eventually with half a dozen deficiency diseases at once, but which could sustain his half-Vulcan constitution indefinitely.)

Kirk was just as well pleased to have his department heads adjusted to the situation. It was further evidence of their resiliency — not that he needed that, at this late date — and besides, nobody could afford to be distracted under present circumstances. McCoy and Scott, of course, continued to work doggedly at the problem of the replication whenever possible, but only one further clue had emerged: all of the experimental animals Scott had sent “out,” in imitation of Spock’s ill-fated non-journey, also “returned” as duplicates, but the duplicates all died within a few days thereafter. The surgeon could find no reason for their deaths, but even had he been able to do so, it seemed unlikely that the explanation would have been helpful, since it very obviously could not apply to the very much alive replicate Spock (whichever he was). Like all of the few other clues, it seemed to point nowhere in particular.

Gradually, however, the tension began to grow again as the Enterprise drew near to 11872 dy. by 85746 K, the arbitrary point in space-time where she would have to break out of warp drive in order to scan for Organia — and for something utterly unknown.

“Thus far,” Kirk told his watch, “we’ve no reason to suppose that the Klingons think we’re anywhere in the vicinity. But we’ll take no chances. Mr. Sulu, I want you to engage ship’s phasers with Lieutenant Uhura’s sensor alarms, so that if we get a lock-on even the instant we come out of warp, we get a proximity explosion one nano-jiffy later. There’s a faint chance that we may blow up a friend that way, but in this sector I think it can be discounted.”

Sulu’s hands flew over his board. Uhura watched hers like a cat, occasionally pouncing as she secured the sensor circuits to his navigation aids. The telltales for the phaser rooms came on, one after the other, as the hulking, deadly machines reached readiness.

“All primed, Captain,” Sulu said.

“What is our breakout time?”

“Fourteen thirty-five twenty.”

“Lieutenant Uhura, how long will you need for a minimum scan for Organia?”

“I can get one complete spherical atlas of the skies in ten seconds, Captain.”

“Very well. Mr. Sulu, give us ten seconds in normal space, then turn to a heading of forty-eight Mark zero-six-nine at Warp One. Better set it into the computer, Mr. Spock.”

Spock Two nodded, but Sulu asked, “Wouldn’t it be easier to clock it from my board?”

“I want it both ways, as a fail-safe.”

“Do you wish a countdown, Captain?” Spock Two said.

“I see no reason for it when we’re on automatic. It just creates tension unnecessarily. Steady as you go, and stand by.”

The minutes trickled away. Then, with the usual suddenness, the Enterprise was in normal space.

And with equal suddenness, nothing else was normal.

Though he could not tell how he sensed it, Kirk felt the presence of a huge maw, a wound, a vortex in the very fabric of space-time itself. It was as if some unimaginable force had torn open the underlying metrical frame of the universe, leaving absolute and utter Nothingness, the ultimate blankness which had preceded even the creation of Chaos. And the Enterprise was plunging straight into it.

The sensation was one of pure horror. Although the ten seconds seemed to stretch out into hours, Kirk was completely paralyzed, and around him his companions were as rigid as statues.

Then it was gone, as if it had never been. The Enterprise was back on Warp Drive.

The bell from the engineering deck jammered.

“What in bloody blue blazes was that?”

“Don’t know, Scotty, get off the blower till we figure it out and I’ll pass you the word. I assume the rest of your crew felt it too?”

There was a brief silence. “Aye, that they did.”

“Mr. Sulu, do we have our new heading?”

“Yes, sir,” said the helmsman, white-lipped.

“Did you get your pictures, Lieutenant? Good, let’s have a look at them. And open a line to Spock One — I have a hunch we’re going to need all the brains we can muster to crack this nut.”

The distorted stars of subspace vanished from the viewing screen, to be replaced by a normal-looking starfield. At its center, however, was a gently glowing, spherical object, fuzzy of appearance and with a peculiar silvery sheen.

“That,” said Uhura, “is at the coordinates for Organia. Unless my own memory is playing me tricks, it hasn’t the faintest resemblance to the images of Organia we have stored in the log from our first visit. Organia has pronounced surface markings and is a Class M planet. This thing looks like a gas giant, insofar as it looks like anything at all.”

“In addition to the fact,” Kirk said, “that we were heading straight for it when we came out of warp drive, and my mental and emotional impression was that there was nothing there at all — NOTHING in great quivering capital letters. Did anybody have a different impression?”

All shook their heads. Spock Two said, “Captain, we know the Organians are masters of hypnotism, and can manipulate other energy flows as well with great virtuosity. They are quite capable of giving their planet any apparent aspect that they like, even to the camera.”

“In ten seconds?” Kirk said. “I’ll grant that the emotional effect could be a part of some sort of general mental broadcast, but I doubt that even the Organians. could jump aboard a ship and scramble its camera circuits that precisely on that short notice.”

“Besides, my cameras aren’t standard; I’ve rewired them a lot from time to time,” Uhura said. “In order to know the circuits well enough to tinker with them, they’d have to read my mind, or get the altered wiring diagrams out of the computer.”

“The full extent of their capabilities is quite unknown,” Spock Two said.

“I’m not arguing about that,” Kirk said. “But why should they give one impression to us and a quite different one to the cameras? Either they want us to think that Organia’s not there, or that it has been drastically transformed — but why both? They know the contradiction would arouse our curiosity — though both appearances seem designed to discourage it, taken singly. And that seems to indicate that the camera appearance was not their work, and that the pictures show the real situation — whatever that is.”

“If so,” Spock Two said, “it is logically economical to suppose that there is a common explanation: that the Organians have surrounded their planet with some kind of an energy screen, which is what the cameras see, and whose effects are what we felt.”

“That’s reasonable,” Kirk said. “But if true, it throws a large wooden shoe into our original plan. To put it mildly, I have the distinct feeling that the Organians do not want to be visited. And if we were to go down there anyhow, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to stand up under the pressure of that field for more than a minute. Do I hear any volunteers who think they might?”

Nobody volunteered. At length Kirk said, “Spock One, we’ve heard nothing from you thus far. Have you any thoughts on this problem?”

“Yes, Captain,” the intercom said in Spock’s voice. “Though I have not seen the pictures in question, your discussions have been complete enough to permit analysis. It seems evident that you are all off on the wrong track. The answer is in fact quite simple, though far from obvious.”