Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (78 page)

“The cloaking device has strained the power system,” Spock said. “The dilithium recrystallization may have reversed.”

“Mister Chekov, put everything you can into the transporter charge.”

“Aye, sir.”

The lights dimmed and the sounds on the bridge faded.

“Any better, Scotty?”

“A bit, sir. I willna let this alien bucket o’ bolts gi’ ou’ on me now, or I’ll see i’ in a scrap heap. And never mind that Mister Sulu likes to fly it.”

“Mister Scott!” Kirk said.

“Stay wi’ me, sir,” Scott replied. “I need a steeper power curve.”

“How long, Scotty?”

“Ten seconds, Admiral. Five…”

In the control room, as Mister Scott’s voice counted down the last seconds, Gillian clenched her fists and stared at the viewscreen as if her will could force everything to turn out all right.

“Four…”

In the sea below the
Bounty,
George and Gracie ceased their playing. They hovered just beneath the surface, watching, waiting, without fear.

“Three…”

Gillian wished she could tell the whales that the transporter beam was fun, that they would like it.

“Two…”

Perhaps Mister Spock had told them it was fun. But that did not seem very much in character for Mister Spock.

“One…”

The whales flickered and vanished in the glittery beam of the transporter. The surface of the ocean collapsed and a circular wave burst away as sea water rushed in to fill the space where they had been.

“Admiral,” Scott whispered, “there be whales here.”

The viewscreen shifted to show the two whales safely in their tank, massively beautiful, lying still in the cramped space. No one spoke. The eerie cry of a humpback’s song filled the ship, the first song George had sung in more than a year. Gillian blinked hard. She looked at Jim.

Jim felt the tension in him quivering, about to break. He wanted to leap up and shout with glee. But he sat motionless, showing no more emotion than Spock—less, perhaps, for the science officer watched the screen with one eyebrow expressively arched.

We’re not home free yet,
Jim thought.
Not by a long shot.

“Well done, Mister Scott,” he said. “How soon can we be ready for warp-speed?”

“I’ll have to reenergize.”

“Don’t take too long. We’re sitting ducks for their radar systems. Mister Sulu, impulse climb.”

“Aye, sir.”

The
Bounty
’s nose lifted toward the sky and the ship accelerated to the limit of its structural strength. Friction turned air to an ionized plasma. The bow of the ship glowed with heat.

“Unidentified aircraft,” Uhura said. “40,000 MSL, range fifty kilometers, bearing zero-one-zero.”

Jim swore softly to himself. It would be a fine mess if they returned home after all this, only to find that their presence here had caused the nuclear war that the twentieth century had avoided.

They blasted into the ionosphere. Uhura’s instruments showed the Earth aircraft still following, straining to catch them. The air grew thin enough for transition to warp speed to be only moderately dangerous, rather than suicidal.

“Mister Scott—how soon?”

“Stand by, sir. Miracle worker at work.”

“Mister Scott, don’t make jokes!” Jim snapped. “We are in danger of—”

“Full power, sir,” Scott said, in a slightly chiding tone.

Jim reined in his irritation. “Mister Sulu, if you please.”

“Aye, sir.”

The
Bounty
vanished into warp space.

Jim rose from his place, still keeping himself in complete control. “Mister Sulu, take the conn. Doctor Taylor, would you like to visit your whales?”

Gillian felt shaky with excitement. She did not understand half of what had just happened, but all she really cared about for the moment was that Gracie and George were safe. And she was with them. She grinned at Kirk. He smiled. He looked exhausted and on the brink of exultation. They started for the doors, but Kirk paused at Mister Spock’s station.

“Mister Spock, are you able to adjust for the changed variables in your time reentry program?”

“Mister Scott cannot give me exact mass change figures, Admiral,” Spock said. “So I will…” He hesitated. Gillian thought he looked a little embarrassed. “I will make a guess.”

“You?”
Kirk exclaimed. He gave a quick laugh of astonishment. “Spock, that’s extraordinary.” He clasped Spock’s hand, very briefly.

After Admiral Kirk and Doctor Taylor departed, Spock shook his head, thoroughly puzzled. Through their handshake, he had experienced Admiral Kirk’s astonishment and joy. He did not believe that he understood either emotion in the abstract, and he certainly did not comprehend why the admiral should react with joy to being told their survival rested on a guess.

“I do not think he understands,” Spock said.

McCoy chuckled. “No, Spock, he understands. He means he feels safer about your guesses than about most other people’s facts.”

Spock considered McCoy’s statement for some moments. “You are saying,” he said, offering a tentative conclusion for analysis, “that it is a compliment.”

“It is,” McCoy said. “It is indeed.”

Spock squared his shoulders. “I will, of course, try to make the best guess I can.”

Gillian walked with Kirk through the neck of the
Bounty
toward the cargo bay.

“Congratulations, Gillian,” he said.

“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you, Kirk?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I think I’ve got it right. But I’ve been meaning to tell you, it’s my family name that’s Kirk. James is my given name. Most of my friends call me Jim.”

“Oh.” She wondered why he had not said so before. “Gee. I’ve kind of got used to calling you Kirk.”

“You still can, if you want to. I’ve kind of got used to you calling me Kirk.”

Gillian stopped. The music of the humpback echoed through the
Bounty,
surrounding her with an eerie song of cries and clicks, wails and glissandos.

“If you go sailing around humpbacks, you can hear their song through the hull of your boat,” Gillian said. “When you’re lying at anchor, late at night, you can imagine how it must have sounded to sailors two or three thousand years ago, before anyone knew what the music was. They thought it was a siren song, calling men to their deaths.”

“But this siren song may call a whole planet back to life,” Jim said.

The cool salt tang of sea water filled the air. Gillian hurried ahead. She strode past Mister Scott, who stared fascinated at the whales. Gillian placed her hands flat against the cold, transparent plastic. George and Gracie, cramped but calm in the huge tank that for them was tiny, shifted to look at Gillian. The song filled the cargo bay.

Jim joined Gillian beside the tank.

“Ironic,” he said. “When human beings killed these creatures, they destroyed their own future.”

“The beasties seem happy to see ye, Doctor,” Scott said to Gillian. “I hope ye like our little aquarium.”

“A miracle, Mister Scott.”

Scott sighed and headed off to check the power supply. “The miracle is yet to come,” he said.

“What does he mean?” Gillian asked.

“He means our chances of getting home aren’t very good,” Jim said. “You might have lived a longer life if you’d stayed where you belong.”

“I belong here,” Gillian said.

Kirk’s skeptical glance made Gillian fear that he planned to try again to persuade her to remain in her own time, or even to send her back against her will.

“Listen, Kirk,” she said, “suppose you pull off this miracle and get them through. Who in the twenty-third century knows anything about humpback whales?”

He looked at the whales in silence. “I concede your point.”

The ship trembled around them. Gillian pressed her hand against the tank, trying to give the whales a confidence she did not entirely feel. Gracie and George flexed their massive bodies and blew bright spray into the air, no more afraid of anything in space than they were of anything in the sea.

Kirk touched Gillian’s hand in an equally comforting gesture. The irregular vibration continued.

“Ye’d better get forward, Admiral,” Scott said. “We’re having some power fall-off.”

“On my way.” Kirk squeezed Gillian’s hand, then hurried out.

“Buckle up, lassie,” Mister Scott said. “It gets bumpy from here.”

As Jim raced through the neck of the
Bounty,
the vibration increased. The Klingon ship had never been intended for such extreme gravitational stresses. A resonant frequency increased the intensity of the shudder and threatened to rip the
Bounty
apart. The control room doors opened. The ship bucked. Jim lunged for his chair, grabbed the back to steady himself, then sidled around to take his place.

On the viewscreen, the sun blazed in silent violence. The screen damped out the brightest central light, but left the corona brilliantly flaming.

Scott announced their increasing velocity. “Warp seven point five…seven point nine…Mister Sulu, that’s all I can gi’ ye!”

“Shields at maximum,” Chekov said.

Jim made his way to Spock’s station. “Can we make breakaway speed?”

“Hardly, Admiral, with such limited power. I cannot even guarantee we will escape the sun’s gravity. I will attempt to compensate by altering our trajectory. This will, however, place the ship at considerable risk.”

Jim essayed a smile. “A calculated one, I trust, Mister Spock.”

“No, Admiral,” Spock said without expression.

“Warp eight,” Sulu said. “Eight point one…” He waited, then glanced at Jim. “Maximum speed, sir.”

Spock straightened from his computer. “Admiral, I need thruster control.”

“Acceleration thrusters at Spock’s command,” Jim said without hesitation.

Spock gazed into the sensor. Its light rippled across his face and hands. He could hear the nearly imperceptible wash of the solar wind that penetrated the
Bounty
’s shields; he could feel the beginnings of the increase in temperature. The human beings would soon perceive the heat. If he made an error, they would succumb to it sooner than a Vulcan. If he made an error, he would live only a few more moments than they. The moments would not be pleasant.

The gravitational whirlpool around the sun pummeled the fragile starship. Spock gripped the console tightly to keep himself from shifting.

Spock could smell tension. He raised his head for an instant. Everyone on the bridge watched him intently.

He realized they were frightened. And he understood their fear.

“Steady,” he said. He bent over the console again. “Steady.”

His decision now meant the lives of all these people, his friends; and the future of all life on Earth.

“Now.”

Sulu blasted the thrusters on full.

Spock felt the jolt of additional acceleration. The sun’s face touched the edges of the viewscreen, then filled it completely. A sunspot expanded rapidly as the
Bounty
plunged downward.

The viewscreen flickered and died, its receptors burned dead by the radiation of Sol. Spock’s eyes adapted to the change in the light level. Around him, the human beings blinked and squinted, trying to see. Gravity and acceleration buffeted the ship, brutally wrenching its structure. The sun’s heat and radiation penetrated the
Bounty
’s shields.

Spock recalled an earlier, similar death, heat and radiation blasting around him as he struggled to save the
Enterprise.
That time he had succeeded. This time he feared he must have failed. He glanced for an instant at each of the people in the control room, at each of his friends.

Only Leonard McCoy returned his gaze. The doctor looked at him for a long moment. Sweat glistened on his face. The ship plunged obliquely and McCoy had to snatch at the railing to keep his feet. He straightened again. He was frightened, but he showed no evidence of terror or panic.

To Spock’s astonishment, he smiled.

Spock had no idea how to respond.

Abruptly, impossibly, the
Bounty
’s torture ceased. Silence gripped the starship, a silence of such intensity that even a breath would seem an intrusion.

The viewscreen remained dark and Spock’s sensor readings hummed in useless monotone.

“Spock…” James Kirk’s voice broke the hypnotic stasis. “Did braking thrusters fire?”

Spock collected himself quickly. “They did, Admiral.”

“Then where the hell are we?”

Spock had no answer.

In the silence, the humpback’s song whispered through the ship.

The quiet threat of the probe’s wail answered.