UHURA SLAPPED AT her console in frustration. "Mister Chekov! I really do not think the Sackers would have a word in their language for borscht."
"Oh? Vhy not?" Chekov asked in all innocence.
"You know perfectly well why not. Besides, there's no point in arguing about it—look at the screen."
The screen was blank.
Chekov screwed up his face in mock concentration. "Maybe thet is the Sackers' problem. Poor nutrition."
Uhura growled low in her throat. "Let's go on. And please don't say chicken Kiev."
"You are the vun who suggested ve try food."
"I meant food the Sackers might eat."
"I do not know vhat food the Sackers might eat."
"Excuse me, Chekov, but aren't you supposed to be helping me?"
"I am helping you. I chust do not know vhat the Sackers are heffing for dinner tonight."
Uhura sighed. "Maybe we'd do better to look for variations of the word 'fire'. When I tried 'fire', the screen showed eighty-six words. Imagine—they have eighty-six different ways of saying 'fire'."
"If you vish," said Chekov, all agreeable cooperation. He thumbed on the microphone. "Blaze."
Sixteen symbols showed on the screen.
"Well, that narrows it down some," Uhura murmured, keying them in. "I wish I had some way of knowing which of these words are nouns and which are verbs. Keep going."
"Conflagration."
Three words.
"Ha!" Uhura cried. "Now we're getting somewhere. Let's try—wait a minute, Chekov. I have an incoming message." She listened carefully, recording the message at the same time. "Enterprise here. We acknowledge." She switched over to an intraship channel. "Bridge to Captain Kirk."
"Kirk here," came the immediate response.
"A message from Starfleet Command, Captain. It's bad news. Two more stars have been destroyed by the advancing heat front, and—"
"Did they have planets?"
"One of the stars had two planets, but neither was life-sustaining, fortunately. But some of the outpost stations are beginning to register sharp rises in temperature." She paused. "And Captain, Starfleet says the Sackers on other worlds have all departed. No one knows where they've gone."
"Damn. That's ominous. Do I have new orders?"
"Yes, sir. You are ordered to … hurry up." There was a silence. "Captain?"
"I heard you. Kirk out."
Uhura broke the connection. She turned to Chekov, and the two exchanged a long, grim look.
The navigator picked up the microphone, all business. "Combustion." Uhura barely had time to key it in before he said, "Ignition." Then: "Incineration."
No more kidding around.
* * *
Captain Kirk turned away from the intercom in the chief surgeon's office to see McCoy standing in the doorway. "Did you hear that?"
The doctor nodded. "The heat's getting closer and the Sackers are in hiding. Which problem do you tackle first?"
"They may be the same problem, if the Sackers are responsible for letting the three-minute universe in."
"It's no longer only three minutes old, of course," McCoy said. "But it still has a few billion years to go."
"Don't remind me."
"Jim, how long has it been since you've had some sleep? You don't exactly look fresh and ready to go."
"Ah … I don't know. I lost track."
"Better find time for a nap, then. You can't put out a fire when you're dead on your feet."
"I'll find some time."
"You know, I've been thinking about that," McCoy said. "We must not be getting the full blast of the new universe. If it explodes outward in all directions …"
"Then we're getting only a part of the explosion. Spock suggested the same thing. Not that it matters—the amount of heat we're getting is enough to cook us good. Did you hear my new orders? Starfleet wants me to hurry up." He snorted. "Bones, I have got to talk to that Zirgosian woman!"
McCoy grinned broadly. "That's what I came in to tell you. She's awake. And she's in good condition. Her vital signs check out positive, and she's clearheaded and articulate." Then, as if he'd just thought of it: "Why don't you go in and see her, Jim? Might do you both good."
Kirk glared at him and charged in to where the Zirgosian woman was sitting up in bed. He halted abruptly, struck by the thought that he was going to have to find the words to tell this woman that her homeworld had been destroyed. He temporized. "How are you feeling?"
She managed to muster up a smile. "Much better, thanks to your Dr. McCoy. He tells me I'll be 'up and around' in another day or so." She tilted her head and looked at him closely. "I remember you. You were one of the people who found me."
"I'm Jim Kirk—I'm the captain of this vessel. You warned me about the Sackers, remember?"
Her smile disappeared. "Sackers."
"They're the ones who poisoned you." He pulled a chair up next to her bed and sat down. "They strong-armed three men into doing the job for them, but the Sackers are behind it. We caught one of the poisoners—do you know a man named Borkel Mershaya ev Symwid?"
"No. That's not a Zirgosian name."
"He's a Gelchenite. He was on Holox as part of a trade commission." Kirk explained how the Sackers had forced ev Symwid and two of his fellow commissioners to poison the Holox water supply.
"Are the Sackers still on Holox?"
"Unfortunately."
Her face was anguished. "You must stop them! You can't let them do it!"
"Do what? Can you tell me what's happened? What do you know about the Sackers?"
It took a while, but eventually the whole story came out. The woman said her name was Dorelian, and her home was Zirgos, not Holox. She'd come to the colony planet to oversee the installation of and instruction in the use of some new mining equipment Zirgos had developed. At the time she'd left home, Sackers had been on Zirgos and were involved in a controversy about something they'd commissioned to be built.
"Their ship," Kirk said.
Dorelian looked surprised. "How did you know?"
"Someone had to build it for them. Their homeworld is not within the range of Federation worlds, so wherever it is it's too far away to be of much use to them in practical matters such as shipbuilding."
She nodded. "The ship had not been fully tested, and the builders were not ready to turn it over to the Sackers. But the Sackers didn't want to wait, so they just took it. The ship was built in orbit, so all they had to do was beam over from their old ship. It's a very special kind of ship, Captain Kirk. For one thing, it can transform itself into different shapes."
"We've seen two of them."
"Ah, then you know. The compact form conserves power that's needed for their life-support system—the Sackers require a great deal of heat, you know. That's why they never stay overnight on most planets if they can help it—it's physically taxing for them."
"I didn't know that."
"The expanded forms of the ship are its combat and maneuvering modes, and they take a great deal of power to operate—power that must be diverted from life support."
"So they can't stay in combat mode for extended periods?" Kirk said. "They'll need to go back to the compact form to, er, warm up?"
"That's right. As I understand it, that was one of the areas the builders thought could be improved. But the Sackers were in a hurry. And right before I left Zirgos, we all found out why."
She paused, trying to get her thoughts in order. "Ships aren't the only thing built on Zirgos, Captain. To put it briefly, our scientists have made a tremendous breakthrough. They learned how to tap into the energy of adjoining universes."
Kirk caught his breath. "Go on."
"You understand what this means? It would be a limitless source of free energy, not only for Zirgos but for the entire Federation—if it could be controlled. For that purpose the scientists developed a device called a baryon reverter that's supposed to seal the breach between universes or limit its size, I'm not sure which. Perhaps both. Neither instrument has ever been tested, of course—how do you test something like that? Then the Sackers …" She stopped to swallow a couple of times.
"The Sackers stole both instruments," Kirk finished for her.
Dorelian pressed her fingertips against her eyes. "They're going to use them, Captain—I'm sure of it. Evidently they've been trying to find out the details of their operation ever since construction first began." She dropped her hands into her lap. "It may be the Sackers only want to keep all that nice free energy for themselves. But those instruments in the wrong hands would make an unstoppable weapon. And fire is the Sackers' natural weapon. So you see, you've got to stop them before they use it."
Every once in a while, a moment came along in which Captain James Kirk hated the things his job required him to do. This was one of those times when he would rather have been anywhere in the galaxy other than where he was at that moment. But someone had to tell her, and it looked as if he were elected. "You don't know how it distresses me to have to tell you this," he said to Dorelian as gently as he could, "but they've already used the first device."
Her face filled with horror. She opened and closed her mouth wordlessly a couple of times and then cried "No!" so loudly that Dr. McCoy came running. "Are you sure?"
"What's wrong?" McCoy asked.
"I'm sure," Kirk said sadly.
"Did they use the baryon reverter too? Did they stop it?"
Kirk slowly shook his head.
McCoy watched Dorelian closely, wondering if he was going to have another case of shock to treat.
"Where?" she whispered. "Where did they …?"
They were the hardest words Kirk had ever had to utter. "In the Beta Castelli system," he said, hating what he was doing to her. "I'm sorry … Zirgos is gone."
She stared at him a long time—and then she began to scream. Silently. Over and over she screamed, without making a sound. Kirk took her hand, wanting to comfort her. McCoy took the other and tried to soothe her. Her grip was like a metal vise.
"Sedative?" Kirk asked.
McCoy said no. "Her system's just been purged, Jim—it's too soon. Besides, she's doing the right thing. Let her get it out."
Kirk wondered what he would do if he'd just been told that Earth and all the people who lived there no longer existed. What must that feel like? He couldn't imagine it, and he doubted that he'd behave as well as Dorelian. Eventually the silent screaming stopped and the Zirgosian woman lay there sobbing, exhausted from her exertions.
"Dorelian," Kirk said, bending over her bed, "can you hear me? I want you to listen. I promise you right now that I'll find a way to stop them. They won't get away with what they did to Zirgos. I give you my promise. Do you hear?"
She looked at him with an unreadable expression, and then slowly nodded her head.
"I'll stay with her until she falls asleep," McCoy said. "Why don't you, uh." Get lost, his expression said.
Kirk took the hint and left them alone. In the corridor outside sickbay, he went to the nearest intercom. "Spock—where are you?"
"In my quarters, Captain."
E Deck. Kirk rode the turbolift up two levels and headed straight for the Vulcan's quarters.
Spock was seated at his library computer terminal studying the same material about the Sackers that Kirk had read earlier. "Jim—has something happened? You look distraught."
"I just told the Zirgosian woman she no longer had a homeworld to return to." Kirk plopped down in the nearest chair.
Spock frowned. "The Holox colonist we found in the administrative center?"
"She's not a colonist. She lived on Zirgos." Kirk went on to repeat everything Dorelian had told him, from the Sackers' premature occupation of their new ship to their stealing of the instruments that could open and close portals between universes. "I didn't tell her the universe the Sackers tapped into was a brand-new one—I figured she had enough grief. Anyway, now we know how it happened … but not why."
"More to the point, Jim, we also know there is a way to turn off the heat, so to speak. A baryon reverter. What a fascinating approach … if its name is a true indicator of the way it functions. I don't suppose the woman told you any of the details?"
"I don't think she knows them—she's a mining engineer of some sort. But figuring out how the reverter does what it does is a pleasure we'll have to postpone. Right now all we have to worry about is whether the damned thing works or not. It's never been tested."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "That's not quite all we have to worry about. There is only one baryon reverter in existence, and it is aboard a Sacker warship. We cannot attack, because we might damage or even destroy the reverter in the process."
"No, no—attack is out." Kirk didn't bother to explain he'd already decided against a direct assault. "They won't talk to us, they won't acknowledge our messages. If we try beaming a security force aboard, they'll simply roast us on sight. Dorelian said fire was their natural weapon, and they aren't going to hesitate to turn it on us." That reminded him. "Have you seen Franklin?"
"I visited him briefly. Nurse Chapel says his chances for recovery are good."
Kirk nodded. "What happened to Franklin—that's the kind of greeting we have to expect from the Sackers. Warm, to say the least. But we have to risk it, Spock. We simply must make contact with them."
"A rather formidable undertaking, I would say, since they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge our existence."
"Ah, but all the Sackers aren't in the ship. There's one other place where we might get at them."
"On Holox?"
"Right. In that blister dome that Scotty's team discovered." Once he'd mentioned Scotty's name, Kirk's whole body began to sag. He'd kept his worry over the chief engineer pent up too long, and now it all came spilling out. The two men had been together for so long … Kirk couldn't imagine the Enterprise without his old friend ruling over the engineering section like some benevolent laird of the manor. It was unthinkable.
Spock left his seat and crossed over to lay a gentle hand on the captain's shoulder. "We had better prepare ourselves, Jim. There's a very real possibility that he may be dead."
Kirk lifted his head. "From what we now know of the Sackers," he said heavily, "maybe we'd better pray that he is."
Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott felt his right cheek pressing against something hard, flat, and cool. He labored mightily and managed to get one eye open. He saw he was lying on the floor. Now why d'ye s'pose I'm sleepin' on the floor? he wondered vaguely. After a time he worked the other eye open and saw the floor didn't have the familiar carpeting that covered the deck of his quarters. He gravely considered the possibility that someone had stolen his carpet, but then rejected that surmise in favor of the more likely explanation that it was someone else's floor he was sleeping on. It must have been a hell of a party.
He'd struggled up to a sitting position before it all came flooding back. The Sackers. Holox. Ching and Franklin. He stood up too quickly; a pain shot through his head and he almost succumbed to a wave of dizziness and nausea. When his eyes could focus properly, he saw he was not alone. He knelt by the recumbent body of the blond security man called Hrolfson and shook him by the shoulder. "Laddie! Wake up! Are y'all right?"
Hrolfson opened his eyes and blinked, and then went through the same slow remembering process Scotty had just gone through. He sat up and held his head. "Where are we, Mr. Scott?"
Scotty looked around. "We're inside the Sacker blister. An' it looks as if they built a special little cell just for us."
The cell was a perfect cube made of some sort of transparent plastiform; one wall held a door. Inside the cell an old-fashioned generator-powered refrigeration unit chugged away in the corner under a gridded vent. Other than that, the cell was empty.
"What happened to Ching?" Hrolfson asked. "And Franklin?"
"I think they're dead, lad," Scotty said leadenly. "Heaven only knows why we're still alive."
When Scotty thought his stomach could stand it, he forced himself to look outside their cell. The cell's transparent walls were smoke-colored, of a shade that blurred outlines and cut down on details. For this small mercy Scott rendered thanks; without some sort of muting effect he would never have been able to look at the Sackers directly. Even so, he felt his stomach turn over when he picked out one Sacker and examined him (her?) closely.
He saw a semitransparent membranous sac that looked tougher than leather; it made him think of the mole rat, one of the most repugnant-looking life forms Earth had given rise to. The sac was wrinkled, lumpy, and loose, like a poorly fitted space suit. The Sackers all looked as if they were molting but still carrying their dead skins around with them; Scotty watched several of them walking but none of them left pieces of themselves behind on the floor. That molty, moldy look was their natural state, then. Scotty heard Hrolfson gag once or twice and hoped he could hold it in; their cell contained no cleanup facilities. "Y'are not goin' to be sick, are ye, lad?" he asked.
"I'm all right, Mr. Scott," Hrolfson replied greenly.
The chief engineer turned back to his examination of their captors. The sac fluids were all different colors. One color seemed to dominate in each individual Sacker, though, making it relatively easy to differentiate among them. Color-coded monsters, Scotty thought. It was hard to think of these creatures as men and women. They resembled human beings only superficially, primarily in their bifurcated structure; in all other respects they were as alien as any creepy-crawly Scott had ever encountered in all his travels in the galaxy.
"What are they doing, Mr. Scott?" Hrolfson asked. "What are those vats for?"
The two men from the Enterprise could see waves of heat rising outside their refrigerated cell; whatever the Sackers were doing, it took a lot of steamy heat to do it. Six huge plastiform-sided vats filled with a cloudy liquid were bubbling away. The Sackers kept checking the gauges on the outside of the vats; the Sackers were slow-moving, Scotty noted, although not clumsy. Once in a while one of them would add something to one of the vats—a nutrient? Scotty wondered. He squinted and tried to make out what those small forms were he could see floating in the cloudy liquid. They looked for all the world like … fetuses?
"I think," he said slowly, "I think they're growin' new Sackers."
Hrolfson drew in his breath sharply. "Baby Sackers? This is how they reproduce?"
Scott shrugged. "Why not? The males donate sperm, the females donate eggs, they come down here and … aye, now, why is that? Why not do all this on their ship?"
"Those vats are pretty big."
"But not so big that their monster of a ship couldna accommodate them. It might be the heat—but that shouldna be a problem either. Why do they need Holox?"
They watched a while longer until Hrolfson said, "Oh-oh. We've got company."
A seven-foot green Sacker was heading straight for their cell. He was followed by a gray Sacker and a brown one who were towing an antigrav carrier loaded with equipment of some sort. The green Sacker opened the door, letting in a blast of heat that drove Scotty and Hrolfson to the farthest corner of the cell. The Sacker took a few things off the antigrav carrier, tossed them inside, and closed the door.
On the floor lay two breathing masks attached to small air tanks and two pairs of smoky-lensed goggles. "I guess we're supposed to put those on," said Hrolfson.
Scotty sighed. "Brace yourself, laddie. I'm afraid we're in for a close encounter of the worst kind." They put on the masks and goggles and waited.
Outside the cell, the green Sacker was putting on a floor-length hooded robe. He pulled the hood forward to hide most of his face. "So we won't throw up all over him," Hrolfson commented dryly. The Sacker strapped a translator around his waist and slipped some kind of attached headpiece inside his hood. The other two Sackers unloaded a piece of equipment and a solid plastic cube and pushed them through the door. The hooded green Sacker stepped inside.
Even with the breathing mask on, Scotty still caught a whiff of the creature. He sternly ordered his stomach to stop churning.
The Sacker looked the two humans over and then indicated Hrolfson. "You," a mellow male voice said from the translator at the Sacker's waist. "Sit there." He pointed at the plastic cube.
Hrolfson hesitated. "What do I do, Mr. Scott?" he asked through his breathing mask.
Scotty took a step forward. "What d'ye plan to do with him?"
"I probe the memory. There is no pain, and no danger."
If that was the worst the Sackers had planned for them, they could survive that. "Do as he says, lad. But don't let him touch ye."
Hrolfson sat uncertainly on the cube. The Sacker used tongs to place a metal band bristling with electrodes on Hrolfson's head. Then he went around behind the instrument to read the results of the probe. He went on studying the results long after the probe was finished. Hrolfson took the metal band from his head.
Then without warning the Sacker moved over to the security man and grabbed his upper arm. Hrolfson screamed from the burning pain. The Sacker opened the door and thrust his human captive out. Scott let out a yell and started after him, but the green Sacker slammed the door shut and stood in front of it. "Get out o' the way!" Scott demanded, but the Sacker didn't move.
One of the two Sackers who'd stayed outside the refrigerated cell—the gray one—had a weapon in his hand. Without further ado he pointed it at Hrolfson … and set him on fire.
Scotty screamed and tried to push his way past the green Sacker, who wrapped his robe around one arm and used it to knock him away. Outside, a tongue of flame caught a passing Sacker in the arm; he jerked back and said something to the Sacker wielding the weapon. What would have destroyed a human arm merely made the Sacker wince.
But the human security man was now barely visible inside his coat of fire. Hrolfson was jerking spasmodically as the flames reached his nerve endings; finally all movement ceased as he collapsed into a heap that went on burning and burning. Scotty fell to his knees and beat against the plastiform wall with his fists, moaning as he watched the younger man die.
"You are connected?" The Sacker's pseudovoice sounded puzzled.
"Ye heathens! Why did y'do that?" Scotty cried in anguish. "Y'dinna have to kill him!"
"I do not comprehend your pain. Was he your kin? You do not share characteristics."
"No, he was not me kin! He was me shipmate—if that means anythin' to ye!"
"But if he was not your kin, his going should not cause distress."
"Oh, that's the way your so-called minds work, is it? If he's not a relative, kill him?" Scotty wiped his eyes. "Well, y'can kill yourselves off that way if y'like … an' the sooner the better! But y'have no right to be takin' our lives away from us. Y'have no right!"
"If I had let him go, he would have called your ship. We are vulnerable here."
Scotty got to his feet. "We're not all as bloodthirsty as ye, y'great green blitherin' blob! Y'dinna have to kill him!"
The Sacker was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "What is 'blitherinblob'?"
"Look in a mirror," Scotty snarled.
The Sacker thought that over, but instead of answering simply pointed to the plastic cube.
Scotty sat and snatched up the electrode headband. "I'll put it on meself." He did.
When the probe was finished, Scotty took off the headband and stood up. The Sacker said, "You are the chief engineer of the U.S.S. Enterprise?"
"I am. What about it?"
"You know much of the Enterprise engines?"
"Much? I know everythin' about 'em."
"Interesting similarities exist between your engines and ours. This information will be of much use."
"So glad to be of service," Scotty said sarcastically.
"Your willingness to cooperate will be noted."
Scotty threw up both arms. "Cooperate! Y'dinna give me a choice! Y'probed me mind, remember?"
"You are skilled in adapting engine functions to various alternate purposes as well as in maintaining and operating them?"
"Aye."
"I?"
"Yesssss," Scotty hissed. "Yes, I am skilled."
"In—"
"In anythin' you can name havin' to do with the Enterprise engines! Have I made meself clear?"
The Sacker considered a moment and then said, "Aye."
Scotty shot him a sharp look, wondering if he was being made fun of. The Sacker started pushing the memory probe machine toward the door. "Here, now, where'll ye be goin'?"
"This temperature distresses me. I must momentarily return to my own environment."
"Momentarily. That means ye'll be comin' back."
"Aye."
The green Sacker went out, taking the probe machine with him. The minute the door was closed, Scott ripped off his goggles and mask. He sat down on the plastic cube the Sacker had left behind and tried to think.
Clearly it was his technical expertise that was keeping him alive. If he could convince that green monster that one Montgomery Scott would be a valuable asset to have around, he just might hang on until Captain Kirk could think of a way to get him out. He didn't see there was much he could do to get himself out, locked in this now quite chilly cell as he was. A thought struck him. He got up and tried the door. Locked was right. The only other possible way out was through the gridded vent over the refrigeration unit, and he'd never get his shoulders through that small hole.
Poor Hrolfson. What a dreadful way to die—the lad didn't deserve such an ugly fate. No more did Ching or Franklin. Those two had gone down fighting, though; Ching had kept firing her phaser even after the Sackers had set her ablaze. Brave people; Scotty was proud to have known them, even though for so short a time. Now he was the only survivor of that ill-fated team, and his own future wasn't exactly what he would call secure. There he was, the only human being in this furnace of Sackers, creatures who killed easily and with no concern for the rights of others. What could one lone human do?
"I can do a lot," Scotty said out loud, in a tone of wonder. Why, what an opportunity this was! If he could just get that green beastie to talk to him, he might learn all sorts of things that could be useful later. And there would be a later, Scotty told himself firmly. He started planning his strategy.
Ten minutes later the Sacker came back to find the chief engineer of the Enterprise seated on the cube, begoggled and bemasked, hands resting on his thighs. "Well, now, Mr. Green—come in, come in," Scotty said expansively. "It's time the two o' us were havin' a nice friendly little chat, don't ye think?"