"REVERSE POWER, Mr. Spock!" Kirk snapped.
"It has already been done by the computer, Captain," Spock said, but even as he spoke, his fingers were stabbing at the controls, overriding the computer. As he had assumed, it did no good. Maximum impulse power was already being applied.
"Mr. Spock! What's happening?"
"Unknown, Captain. It appears that we are being drawn toward the gate by gravitational turbulence of unprecedented magnitude. Only a neutron star or a black hole—"
Abruptly, Spock stopped speaking, his eyes on the visible image on the auxiliary viewscreen. Directly in the path of their headlong flight, the shuttlecraft had reappeared, emerging from the gate. His attempt to reverse its course had apparently been effective after all.
Silently, his fingers darted across the controls, and two things happened virtually simultaneously. The shuttlecraft vanished, once again swallowed up by the gate, presumably drawn back in by the same wave of gravitational turbulence that gripped the Enterprise. A split second later, the impulse engines shifted out of full reverse and instead directed all their power at ninety degrees to the ship's path in a desperate attempt to change that path, to steer the Enterprise not directly away from the gate but away from that point in the gate where, in all likelihood, the shuttlecraft lay waiting for collision.
Kirk and Chekov and the others on the bridge, realizing what Spock was attempting, could only brace themselves.
For a moment, the visible image of the star field on the auxiliary screen shifted, telling Spock that some minuscule course change had been accomplished. But was it enough?
Even as the question formed in the Vulcan's mind, the Enterprise slewed into the gate.
And the universe vanished.
The Enterprise bridge was gone.
The stars beyond it were gone.
Spock's own body and all the associated physical sensations were gone.
Only his mind, fully functional and fully rational, remained.
This was the "nothingness" that the Enterprise sensors had registered—or, more accurately, had been unable to register—during its two previous passages through the gate. There had been no time—less than a millisecond—for this limbo to register on human or Vulcan senses.
But now—
How fast had the gravitational turbulence been dragging them? How much had the impulse engines been able to slow them? Were the impulse engines still operating, as the shuttlecraft engines apparently had continued to operate? Were they having any effect if they were? Did this "space" inside the gate have the same dimensions at all times, or did it vary as the gate went through its cycle?
Spock had no way of knowing the answers to any of these questions. He could not even be positive that, here, anything physical existed.
He thought.
Obviously, he still existed. He could not feel his body, nor could he see anything around him, but he—the thinking, reasoning entity that was Spock—obviously still existed.
Twice before, he, and everyone else on the Enterprise, had passed through this gate and returned to normal space, physically whole and mentally unimpaired. Admittedly, those previous exposures to this environment had been much briefer, but there was no reason to believe they would not be whole when they returned from this longer stay.
If they returned.
If they were not trapped here forever.
But even if they were trapped here—
Suddenly, an eagerness gripped Spock, an anticipation he could not remember having felt—could not remember having allowed himself to feel—in the whole of his rigidly controlled adult life. He was, literally, in a whole new world, a whole new universe perhaps, all aspects of which were unknown to him.
He had a whole new universe to learn about. He had only to determine how that learning could be accomplished.
Perhaps he would someday return to normal space, to the body whose sometimes illogical requirements had made it a burden far more often than it had been a help. Perhaps he would bring with him the knowledge he had gained here. That, he suspected, would be preferable, but it was far from essential.
To gain knowledge, that was the one essential. And now, with no body to weigh him down, with no external responsibilities to fulfill, he could devote himself to that purpose and that purpose alone.
For what could have been a minute, or an hour, or an eternity, he simply existed, anticipating the beginning of that leisurely pursuit, reveling in the pleasures he knew it would bring, pleasures he had until now denied himself.
Finally, he stirred.
He reached out with his mind and found—nothing.
The first stirrings of uneasiness brushed at the edges of his thoughts.
He reached out again.
Still there was nothing, and the uneasiness edged higher.
Surely—
Abruptly, Spock's thoughts turned inside out. The anticipation he had allowed himself to feel turned to a dread he could not control. To have an eternity of time before him, to have nothing to fill that time, to have nothing to learn—
Desperately, he reached out yet again, bringing to bear all the mental discipline at his command. Surely there must be something besides himself in this limbo. The others aboard the Enterprise—their minds must certainly have survived the same as his.
And as their remembered images formed in his mind, he felt their presence.
Somewhere in this seeming nothingness around him, they still existed, each as alone as he himself.
More alone, for they did not have the mental training and discipline he had been subjected to. Nor did they have the inherent ability to voluntarily touch the mind of another directly, without the need for physical contact.
And with that thought came another: he did have responsibilities here.
He had allowed himself to forget, but his responsibilities were, in fact, even greater than they had been in that other, physical universe. In this seemingly nonphysical environment, he was better suited to survive with his sanity intact than were any of the others; therefore, it was his responsibility to help them if he could. His first thoughts—illusions, really—of total freedom from all things physical had been mere rationalizations, reactions to a lifetime of discipline and responsibility. Somewhere deep within him, no matter how sternly repressed, no matter how illogical, a desire for release—for escape from reality—existed, must have always existed. That had been the source of those feelings.
But now that he was consciously aware of its existence, this desire could be dealt with, as had all the other, shallower emotions that his human half had threatened him with over the decades.
Once again, he reached out, searching for the minds of the captain, Dr. McCoy, and the others.
But even as he did, even as he felt the first glimmerings of contact, he felt something else.
Fear. The same fear he had observed so dispassionately on the bridge of the Enterprise.
But here there was more.
There was another being hovering about him.
A sapient being, as capable of thought as Spock himself.
It was not attacking or even threatening him, but it was, without doubt, associated with the fear.
He did not know how he knew, yet he accepted this illogical knowledge and treated it as real.
Whatever had touched his mind on the bridge of the Enterprise, in normal space, was here, in this limbo within the gate.
But there was a difference. Though the fear was present, it was a fine, chilling mist, not the heavy, waterlogged dread it had been in that other, now-distant world.
And the contact that Spock sensed was unlike any he had ever experienced. Paradoxically, fascinatingly, it was both delicate and powerful, like a moonlit spider web held rigidly in place by an invisible force field.
Did it somehow reflect the mind behind it? he found himself wondering. A powerful mind capable of the most intricate patterns of thought? Or was it simply the effect of this place that he found himself in?
Before he could attempt to speculate further, a new thought appeared in his mind. The being, whatever it was, wanted something.
There were no words, no images, only an impression so strong that it amounted to a firm conviction.
It wanted something.
And it was not leaving—could not leave—until it obtained that something.
Suddenly, with shocking unexpectedness, a sense of motion gripped Spock, a swirling, dizzying motion.
Still there was no sense of his own physical body, and yet there was an overwhelming sensation of spinning wildly, as if his very mind were being drawn into a deadly, silent whirlpool.
For an instant, he tried to resist, but his efforts were as useless as the raging outputs of the impulse engines had been against the impossible spurt of gravity that had dragged the Enterprise here.
Then, as quickly as it had vanished, the universe returned.
As if a light had suddenly been turned on, Spock found himself once again on the bridge of the Enterprise.
His fingers still hovered over the controls he had pressed to divert the Enterprise from the path that would have sent it smashing into the shuttlecraft, though it surely must have been hours since that action. In an act that was as much instinct as logic, he killed the impulse engines.
According to the chronometer, less than five seconds had passed.
Chekov, his hands reaching for the same controls they had been reaching for before, was still next to him at the navigator's station. The captain, still seated in the command chair, was still turning toward Sulu at the science station.
Chekov's hands faltered and stopped. His eyes were wide with surprise. The captain brought the chair to a lurching stop and swung it back to face the viewscreen.
"Spock, what the devil have you—" McCoy began angrily.
Kirk cut him off with a terse, "Later, Bones!"
All eyes were on the viewscreen. The universe, Spock and the others saw instantly, had not fully returned after all. There were no stars, no blackness of space. There was only an indistinct grayness, like the surface of the gate during its supposedly quiescent period.
And, in the foreground, the shuttlecraft.
"Can I assume, Mr. Spock," Kirk said quietly, "that this is the space you wanted to explore?"
"At least a portion of it, Captain." He nodded.
"And the reason for the gravity wave that dragged us in?"
"I can only speculate, Captain, but it is logical to assume that it was triggered in some way by the shuttlecraft's activities, perhaps its reemergence, which was virtually simultaneous with the start of the gravity wave."
"But the complete Enterprise emerged from it before, and nothing similar happened."
"Possibly the effect is related to the velocity with which the entrance or exit is made, Captain. Doubtless, the gate was designed for ships to pass through rapidly. The extreme slowness with which the shuttlecraft entered and exited may have strained the system in some way or caused a malfunction. Remember that massive gravitational turbulence has been associated with most of the other gates we have encountered."
"All of which is academic," Kirk said abruptly, "if we can't find our way back out of here. For a start, let's see if we still have any control over the shuttlecraft."
Experimentally, Spock sent a command.
The shuttlecraft obeyed, turning its bow toward the Enterprise.
In quick succession, then, he put the views from the shuttlecraft on the screen. The one provided by the Aragos-modified sensors showed only chaos, as if they were being overloaded or were receiving only static. The image from the shuttlecraft camera showed essentially the same scene that the Enterprise viewscreen had shown, except that the Enterprise itself, not the shuttlecraft, floated in the midst of the diffuse grayness that obscured everything else—if, indeed, there was anything out there to obscure.
Kirk punched the button for the engineering deck. "Status report, Mr. Scott."
"All systems fully operational, Captain," Scott replied, a touch of pride mixed even then with the tense uneasiness in his voice. "If no' for what I see on the screen, there'd be no way o' telling we'd been taken on this wee detour."
"It's nice to know that something is working the way it's supposed to. Thank you, Mr. Scott."
Switching off, Kirk glanced around the bridge. The two security guards still stood flanking the turbolift door. McCoy and the orderly were near the unoccupied engineering station. Commander Ansfield was watching Chekov at the science station. Lieutenant Uhura flicked a final switch and turned to Kirk.
"No activity on any frequency, Captain, subspace or otherwise."
"I can't say that I expected any in here. Wherever 'in here' is. Mr. Sulu? Do our sensors show anything?"
"Only the shuttlecraft, sir."
"Mr. Spock? You're the one who suggested the existence of this space. You also suggested it might be the home of whatever it is we've been dealing with."
"I cannot, of course, be positive, Captain, but I have reason to believe that is true."
Almost everyone on the bridge glanced around uneasily. "What reason, Mr. Spock?" Kirk asked.
"It is difficult to explain logically, Captain."
"Then do it illogically," Kirk said, a touch of irritation edging his voice. "But do explain it."
"As you wish, Captain." His voice as impassive as ever, Spock recounted his experience between the moment the ship had entered the gate and the moment "reality" had returned. Except for uneasy glances toward the viewscreen and the featureless fog it displayed, there were no reactions. Even McCoy only grimaced, saying nothing.
For several seconds after Spock finished, there was only silence.
Finally, Kirk glanced at the others. "My own impression of the time we spent in—in limbo was more on the order of minutes. Dr. McCoy? Sulu?"
"Only seconds, Jim," McCoy said.
"A minute, possibly two," Sulu added, and the others chimed in with other estimates. No estimate approached that of Spock himself.
"As you would say, Mr. Spock, fascinating," Kirk said. "Analysis? Comments?"
"Fascinating indeed, Captain. It has often been proven that, without external physical cues, one's perception of time is extremely subjective. It would seem logical that if even those cues provided by one's physical body—heartbeat and respiration, for example—are removed as well, the degree of subjectivity would increase even more. Our experiences would appear to bear that out."
Kirk nodded. "And this 'entity' you encountered—"
"I could not say that I encountered it, Captain, only that I was aware of its existence, as, to a much lesser degree, I am still aware of its existence. I did not encounter it in the sense that you and Captain Chandler encountered it."
"But you said it wanted something? But you had no idea what?"
"Correct, Captain."
"And there was no evidence, no feeling, of hostility?"
"None, Captain, nor of friendship. There was only a feeling of—perhaps need would be an appropriate description."
McCoy, listening silently until now, snorted. "What it probably 'needs' is another meal, the kind it got from Ensign Stepanovich!"
"Meal, Dr. McCoy?" One eyebrow angling slightly upward, Spock turned to the doctor.
"It's plain as the points on your ears, Spock. This thing, whatever the blazes it is, gets its jollies by scaring people to death. You must remember that—that obscenity on Argelius 2!"
"Of course, Doctor. That entity, similarly incorporeal, obtained its sustenance from the emotional emanations of humans that it frightened and killed, as it had done previously, while inhabiting a human body on your nineteenth-century Earth."
"The body of a bloodthirsty killer named Jack the Ripper!" McCoy snapped.
"Who was also, if I'm not mistaken, a physician," Spock pointed out.
"Before that thing took him over, yes!" McCoy sputtered. "After that, he was nothing but a butcher!"
"I was merely stating a fact, Doctor. I did not mean it to be taken personally."
"Bones," Kirk said warningly, cutting off another retort. "Spock."
McCoy scowled silently for a moment, then shook his head. "Sorry, Jim."
"Any opinion on Dr. McCoy's suggestion, Mr. Spock?"
"Only that it would appear to be invalid, Captain."
"Why, Mr. Spock?"
"There are too many dissimilarities, Captain. The being we encountered on Argelius 2 took over a body and then used that body to commit atrocities against other people. It absorbed the emotional emanations from its victims, not from its host. The present being appears to induce terror in its host simply by its presence."
"Terror that results in suicide or in attack on others," Kirk said. "I see your point. However, just because this being operates differently from the one on Argelius 2 doesn't mean that they can't be similar. Perhaps this one employs mental rather than physical means to induce the emotions it feeds on."
"I cannot logically deny that possibility, Captain. I can only say that, based on my own experience, there is no evidence that it feeds on these emotions."
"All right, then …" Kirk thought for a moment. "Do you find any of the other theories more acceptable? What about the suggestion that the gates are the cosmic equivalent of a rat warren, and the entities are the equivalent of rat poison, something to keep us lower life-forms under control?"
"That could be a more tenable theory, Captain. The entity or entities, with their ability to inspire fear and trigger suicidal wars, would appear to be a rather effective poison to virtually anyone using or even approaching the gates. That theory, however, would still not account for my distinct impression that the entity needs something from us."
"And since when have you Vulcans begun to believe in anything as illogical as impressions?" McCoy asked with a snort.
"Impressions are neither logical nor illogical, Doctor. They simply exist. It is only what one does in response to impressions that could be considered in those terms. If I were to—"
"And you have no theory of your own," Kirk broke in, "to account for this supposed need?"
"I do not have enough facts to justify the formulation of a theory, Captain. I can only state that, though the sensation I experienced could be described as fear, I experienced no accompanying sense of either malice or menace."
McCoy snorted again. "You're not saying this thing is harmless, are you, Spock?"
"Of course not, Doctor. I am merely saying that I sensed no intention to harm."
"Then I'm sure we can all die happy, knowing our killer didn't intend to kill us!" Turning, McCoy stalked off the bridge. The orderly who had accompanied him had barely enough time to dart into the turbolift before the doors hissed shut.
For a moment, Kirk frowned after the doctor, wondering uneasily if McCoy's sharp reactions were solely the result of his own rough-edged personality and the natural tension of the situation they found themselves in or if he had been influenced by the entity that Spock indicated was still nearby. For another moment, he searched his own feelings, looking for some trace of the terror he had felt and fought before.
But if it was there, it was too weak to be discovered by such a purely intellectual search through the welter of other emotions—tensions—that, though under control, were nevertheless a constant pressure. Whether his uneasiness over their present situation was any more intense than it would normally be, he couldn't tell.
"Mr. Spock," he said. "Bring the shuttlecraft in. I think it's about time we started looking into the possibility of getting out of here. It is possible, isn't it?"
"I have no way of being positive, Captain," Spock said as he began maneuvering the shuttlecraft toward the rear of the Enterprise and the hangar deck doors. "But we have no reason to assume it is not. As you know, we have apparently passed through this space twice before, only at a much more rapid pace. The obvious difficulty lies in determining the direction in which the entrance to the gate lies."
"And the difficulty of determining just when to go back through, assuming we can find it in the first place?"
"That may not be a problem, Captain, if what I suspect is true."
"And that is?"
Spock paused a moment, devoting his full attention to bringing the shuttlecraft in for a landing on the hangar deck. As the massive doors clamshelled shut behind it, he resumed.
"I suspect, Captain, that this particular space is permanently linked to the entrance we were drawn through. Do not forget that the gate had already begun its cycling when we entered. The shuttlecraft had entered during the so-called quiescent phase, whereas we entered approximately forty-seven seconds later, during an active part of its cycle. Even so, both the Enterprise and the shuttlecraft are here, together."
Kirk was silent a moment, glancing at the screen. "Very well, Mr. Spock," he said. "That's one difficulty we may not have to deal with. However—"
"Captain!" Uhura cut in sharply. "Something's out there! Something is trying to communicate with us!"