AUTOMATICALLY, SPOCK'S MIND retreated into the disciplines that allowed Vulcans to virtually isolate their conscious minds from their bodies whenever unbearable pains—or pleasures—descended on them.
But this time there was no body to retreat from!
There was only the same nothingness he had experienced before, but now it was filled with pain, more excruciating than any he had ever experienced, as if each and every nerve in his otherwise nonexistent body were being held to its own individual, searing flame. And it was heightened by his frustrating helplessness, by his inability to either pull away or strike back.
Finally, out of the ocean of pain, a logical thought emerged. In this state, his mind told him firmly, my body does not exist; therefore, it is suffering no real physical damage. The pain is, in that sense, only an illusion, and illusions are of no importance.
Suddenly, it was tolerable. Once the logic of the situation became clear to him, his mind could once more function almost normally.
And a thought came to him. What of the others, the humans, with their almost nonexistent tolerance for pain and their totally inadequate mental discipline?
Through the pain, he reached out to them, as he had before.
And, as he had before, he sensed their presence.
And touched them, feeling their own pain combine with his into one all-enveloping, molten nightmare, but a nightmare that was somehow easier to bear because of the sharing.
And the entity was there as well, still distant and withdrawn but experiencing the same agony. Not drinking it in or reveling in it, not even sharing it, but still experiencing it, even more intensely, Spock was certain, than himself or any of the others.
For the moment, the fear that had, until then, been the signature of its presence was gone, swallowed up by this new and different torment.
But the entity, Spock realized, was suffering yet another form of anguish. Before, in his first virtually timeless sojourn in limbo, he had sensed a need in the entity, a wordless, desperate need that had existed seemingly forever. And now, despite the pain the entity was suffering—or perhaps because of it—the need was even more intense.
And there was a form to that need.
A need to—absorb? To be absorbed? As Spock and the others, only moments before, had seemed to absorb each other, making the pain somehow more bearable for them all?
But there was more than a simple desire for the pain to fade.
It was a yearning, and for an instant it was as real as if it were his own, and the suppressed yearnings of his own childhood, the unacceptable yearning for love and closeness with his parents, suddenly gripped him and twisted at him with an emotional ache that was almost the equal of the seemingly physical agony that still ripped at his phantom body.
But then, in a fraction of a second, all the torments were gone.
And the universe returned.
Spock's mind, though relieved of the emotional anguish and the illusory pain, was once more weighted down by his physical body.
Around him, the bridge sprang into existence. The others—
Instinctively, he caught Commander Ansfield as, ashen-faced, she lurched, half falling.
The others, seated, did not fall, but neither, in those first split seconds, were they entirely aware of their surroundings.
Spock's eyes went instantly to the main viewscreen. For a moment, it was blank, showing only total darkness. Then, as if a shrouded light had been turned on, a dozen massive ships of alien design, their images dark and fuzzily indistinct, appeared and began to expand dizzyingly as the Enterprise careened toward them on a collision course.
Releasing Ansfield, leaving her to lean heavily against the science station console, Spock vaulted the handrail and lunged for the helm, where Sulu was only then showing signs of regaining control of his body. In the command chair, Kirk was lurching to his feet in his own rubber-kneed effort to reach the helm. Behind him, at the communications station, Lieutenant Uhura was grimacing as she tried to straighten in her chair.
Spock's fingers stabbed at the helm controls, bringing the impulse engines to surging life and surrounding the Enterprise with the invisible shield of the deflectors.
For an instant, the ghostly images continued to grow alarmingly, but then, as the impulse engines reversed and took hold, the images stabilized.
"Good work, Mr. Spock." Kirk's voice, beginning to steady, came from just behind the first officer. On his feet now, the captain was leaning against the handrail. "But what the devil happened? And where did those ships come from?"
Abruptly, as if the indistinct images were only now fully registering, Kirk shook his head sharply, frowning. "And what wavelength is the computer using for its images? And the stars—"
There were, Kirk realized even as he spoke, no stars on the screen. Only the ships, massive and darkly indistinct. Beyond them was only empty space.
"Full sensor scan, Mr. Spock," Kirk snapped. "Mr. Sulu, override the computer and go to visible-light images."
"Aye-aye, sir," Sulu said as Spock stepped wordlessly from the helm and returned to the science station.
The viewscreen went blank.
"Mr. Sulu—" Kirk began, but Sulu was already speaking.
"There is no visible light, Captain," he said, his voice hushed in surprise.
"No visible light? That's impossible, Mr. Sulu!"
"I know, sir, but—" Sulu broke off, rechecking his controls. "But that's what I'm getting, sir. There is no visible light."
"No stars?"
"None, sir. The images of the ships previously on the screen were being produced by wavelengths far beyond infrared."
Kirk frowned. "Mr. Spock, what do the sensors show?"
"Only one ship registers on the sensors, Captain."
"Only one? There were at least eight or ten, and they were far from Small!"
"I am aware of that, Captain. Nonetheless, the sensors show only one ship other than our own, and it is indeed quite large. Its mass, in fact, is approximately twice that of the Enterprise. In addition, its temperature is a uniform nineteen point six degrees Kelvin. That, of course, explains the extreme wavelengths the computer was forced to utilize to produce an image. The spectrum of black-body radiation at temperatures that close to absolute zero—"
"I remember my basic Academy physics, Mr. Spock," Kirk interrupted. "What else do the sensors show?"
"There are no indications of life or of functioning energy sources, Captain," Spock resumed, unperturbed, "although a mass of antimatter consistent with a warp-drive engine is present."
"And the other ships?"
Spock hesitated, his eyes flickering across the readouts, double-checking before replying. "As I have already stated, Captain, the sensors indicate the other ships do not exist."
Kirk shook his head disbelievingly. "Return control of the imaging to the computer, Mr. Sulu," he snapped. "Get those ships back on the screen. Lieutenant Uhura, are you picking up anything on any frequency, either subspace or standard?"
"Nothing, Captain, not even background static."
On the screen, a half-dozen ships appeared, and for a moment the images seemed to waver, as if they were reflections on the surface of a sea in whose hidden depths something silently patrolled.
"Which one registers on the sensors, Mr. Spock?"
Spock glanced at the screen, then returned to his instruments. "The largest, Captain, and presumably the nearest. It is the one in the upper left of the screen."
Kirk studied it briefly, intensely, then scanned the others. The ship in question was a massive pyramid, bulky and plodding-looking, probably a freighter of some kind. Of those the sensors insisted didn't exist, one had convoluted, menacing contours that reminded him of a Klingon scout ship magnified hundreds of times. Another resembled nothing he had ever seen before, lumpy and irregular, as if it had been grown rather than built from some purposeful design. Yet another was comparatively small and extremely sleek, its almost needlelike structure apparent even in the fuzzy long-wavelength image.
And one, almost as massive and blocky as the first, was dominated by a jagged hole over what may once have been a crew compartment.
Shaking his head again, Kirk turned from the main viewscreen toward the auxiliary screen that monitored the modified sensors.
Abruptly, a leaden tightness clutched at his stomach. The auxiliary screen, like the main screen moments before, was blank.
The kaleidoscopic energies of the gate should have filled half the sky—had filled it when the Enterprise had first emerged into this space, Kirk was positive but now there was nothing.
The gate had vanished.
For a long moment, Kirk scowled at the blank screen, as if by concentration he could cause the gate to reappear. "Spock," he began, but before he could say more, the intercom from sickbay crackled on.
"What the blazes did we get into now?" McCoy's irritated voice filled the bridge.
"I have no idea, Bones, but—"
"Whatever it was, it knocked half a dozen people down here completely off their feet, including myself! They don't appear to have any permanent damage, but I'd just as soon we didn't have to go through it again, at least without warning!"
"I'll do my best, Doctor," Kirk said, irritation beginning to show in his own voice. "But since I haven't the faintest idea what happened, I can't give you any guarantees."
Swearing under his breath, McCoy broke the connection as Kirk punched up engineering. "Scotty, are we still in operation? The sensors—"
"I'll let ye know, Captain." The reply came sharply. "As soon as I find out myself. For a minute there, I was no' sure I was still in operation. What did ye—"
"If I find out what happened, I'll let you know. All I know now is that we're back in what may be normal space, but it's obviously not the normal space we left a half-hour ago. We need everything in top working order, Scotty. We may be stuck here for a while," he finished, glancing again at the blank auxiliary screen that, by all rights, should have been displaying an image of the gate they had just come out of.
Another momentary silence, then an in drawn, slightly ragged breath. "Aye, Captain, I'll get back to ye."
Kirk swiveled in his chair. "Any evidence of the gate, Mr. Spock?"
"None, Captain," Spock said.
"Could it be the sensors?" Kirk asked into the silence that followed Spock's words. "Could that shakeup have knocked the sensors out?"
"Their circuits are still performing precisely as they were before," Spock said, his matter-of-fact tone fully restored. "However, because we do not yet fully understand the functions of the Aragos modifications, we cannot be positive that the diagnostic programs are monitoring all the essential parameters."
"Which means what? That the gate really is gone but that you can't be sure?"
"That is essentially what I said, Captain. However, sensor readings immediately after our emergence from the gate indicated it was present—until approximately the moment impulse power was reversed and the Enterprise began to decelerate."
"So it was there. I wasn't imagining things when I thought I saw it on the screen, at least those first few seconds." Kirk shook his head. "If it hadn't been, we couldn't have come here in the first place! Without a gate to come through—"
Kirk stopped abruptly as a possible—and decidedly unwelcome—thought popped into his mind.
"We obviously didn't come back out through the same gate we entered," he said. "Is it possible that we came out through a gate like those others? Like the ones that have been appearing—and disappearing—in the Federation? Could we have come out through one of those and had it simply vanish behind us?"
"That is a possibility, Captain," Spock admitted. "The record of sensor readings simply indicates that the gate was present those first few seconds. There is no indication of its shape. But if your hypothesis is true, it would tend to confirm our original theory that those unstable gates are indeed connected to the system as a whole."
Kirk nodded grimly. "Not the pleasantest method of confirmation, however. But considering the way those gates looked—jagged and uneven, like 'rips in space,' someone said. Perhaps they're rips in the gate system itself. The system may simply be breaking down, which wouldn't be that surprising after more than ninety thousand years. It's springing leaks, and we just now slipped out through one of those leaks."
"It is a logical possibility, Captain, but by itself it would not account for the pain we experienced."
"It might. If we made our exit through a leak in the system, not through a gate, it could be the equivalent of being dragged out of a house through a broken window instead of walking out through an open door."
"An intriguing analogy, Captain," Spock said thoughtfully.
"Or it could have been caused by this friend of yours, couldn't it?" Kirk resumed. "This entity? If it can stir up raw emotions just by its presence, who's to say it can't do the same with physical sensation—or, rather, with a mental version of a physical sensation?"
"That, too, is possible, Captain, but I would tend to think it unlikely."
"Unlikely? Why?"
"Primarily because, while I sensed the entity's presence, I also sensed that it was experiencing pain similar to our own, perhaps even more intense. In addition, during my last encounter with it, I sensed what I can only describe as an exceedingly powerful desire to join with, perhaps even be absorbed by, some other sentient creature or creatures."
"You're saying it's lonely?" Uhura asked.
"That particular term is highly inadequate to describe the feelings that I sensed, but there is a grain of truth in it."
"If you're through shooting all this theoretical breeze," Commander Ansfield's impatient voice broke in, "maybe we can start thinking about more practical matters, like, for instance, where we are and what we're going to do."
Kirk laughed sharply, as much a release of tension as anything else. "You're quite right, Commander," he said, turning toward the helm. "Mr. Sulu, give us a view in some other directions."
"Aye-aye, sir."
Sulu's fingers touched the controls, and the indistinct images began to shift across the screen as the field of view moved.
More ships appeared.
In every direction, there were ships, dozens of them, then hundreds, of all shapes, all sizes, even one that looked very much like a Federation cruiser, except that the lettering across the top of the primary hull bore not the least resemblance to any symbols stored in the library computer.
Roughly one in ten showed signs of massive damage, as if something had exploded inside the ships.
Not one registered on the sensors.
And not one showed any sign of activity, any lights, any life.
"It's like a graveyard, sir," Lieutenant Woida, Chekov's massive, blond replacement, said, unsuccessfully attempting to suppress a shudder as he watched the ships move somberly across the screen.
Kirk frowned but did not respond. "Mr. Sulu, find a spot that's clear of ships and use maximum magnification. Even if we're in intergalactic space, there has to be something out there."
But they found nothing on the first try.
Or the second.
On the seventh try, an almost invisible string of faint specks appeared.
Patches of similar specks were soon found in a dozen other directions.
Kirk was the first to find his voice. "How far?" he asked.
"Without a detailed spectral analysis, Captain, it would be impossible to make an accurate determination," Spock said.
"Never mind accurate, just give me a rough idea. A million parsecs? Ten million?"
"Fifty million would be more likely, sir," Sulu said. "If those are galaxies, not stars, maximum magnification would give us definite shapes at anything under ten million parsecs. These are simply points of light."
"He is correct, Captain," Spock said. "It would appear that we are in the approximate center of a void at least a hundred million parsecs in diameter."
The leaden feeling returned to Kirk's stomach and intensified as the extent of their isolation suddenly became clear. The existence of such voids had been known for more than two hundred years, since the late twentieth century, when astronomers had begun their first serious attempts at mapping the known universe. As a Starfleet Academy cadet, Kirk had been required to familiarize himself with holographic maps of the clusters and super clusters of galaxies that stretched out nearly ten billion parsecs in all directions from the Milky Way galaxy and the voids that existed among those galaxies—bubbles of sheer emptiness hundreds of millions of light-years in diameter, where no galaxies, no stars, no matter of any kind existed.
But knowing of them, even striding through the holographic projections themselves with million par sec steps, could not prepare a cadet—or the captain that he became—for the reality of suddenly finding himself more than a hundred million light years from the nearest star.
However, he told himself abruptly, prepared or not, that was where he was. That was where the Enterprise and all aboard it were.
And that was where they would stay, the way all these hundreds of other dead hulks had stayed, unless he did something about it.
"Mr. Woida," Kirk said sharply to the navigator. "Lay in a course that retraces the path we've followed since we emerged into this space. Even if we can't see the gate on the Aragos detectors, there's at least a chance that it's still right where we left it."
For a moment, there was only silence, but then Woida pulled his eyes from the viewscreen with a visible effort. "Right away, sir," he said briskly, his massive fingers darting across the controls. "Course laid in."
"Execute, Mr. Sulu. Impulse power and caution."
"Impulse power, sir."
Slowly, the Enterprise turned, reorienting itself for the attempt. When it had achieved the proper heading, a dozen ships of a dozen radically different designs were scattered across the viewscreen.
The Enterprise moved forward toward them.
"The one ship no longer registers on the sensors, Captain," Spock announced a moment later.
Kirk's eyes darted toward the science officer but then returned to the viewscreen and the eerily indistinct images of the ships that lay ahead. "Continue scanning, Mr. Spock. Mr. Sulu, continue on the laid-in course."
After a minute, one of the ships, an almost perfect sphere with no visible means of propulsion, began to drift ever more rapidly off the screen, its apparent motion indicating that it was the closest. Though Spock had not seen it on the screen when they had first emerged from the gate, it must have been within a few dozen kilometers of their flight path. On the return path, the Enterprise would pass directly beneath it at the same distance. The other ships on the screen, hundreds or perhaps thousands of kilometers distant, were in all likelihood beyond the gate. Or beyond where the gate had been.
Suddenly, new readings appeared on Spock's instruments.
"Captain," he reported instantly, "the sensors have picked up the spherical ship at a distance of eight hundred seventy-three kilometers. Mass, two hundred eighteen thousand tons, no indication of any functioning power source. No life readings. No—"
"What was the distance of the first ship when the sensors lost it?" Kirk interrupted.
"Eight hundred seventy-four kilometers, Captain," Spock said, not needing to check the readings.
"Coincidence, Mr. Spock?"
"Not likely, Captain. For whatever reason, it would appear that the range of our sensors—"
Suddenly, the auxiliary screen flared into kaleidoscopic life.
The gate was back.
"All stop, Mr. Sulu," Kirk snapped, relief flooding through him.
"All stop, sir," Sulu acknowledged.
"Distance at which the gate reappeared, Mr. Spock?"
"Eight hundred seventy-three kilometers, Captain."
"Which means," Kirk said, "it's been there all the time. But our sensors, including the ones the Aragos modified, now have a very limited range and couldn't detect it, any more than they could detect any of those derelicts out there."
"That would appear to be the case, Captain," Spock agreed.
For a moment, Kirk's eyes returned to the main screen and the dozen ships that hung there in the darkness, some little more than fuzzy outlines. Curiosity and apprehension gripped him. Curiosity about what incredible secrets, what knowledge, could be gained from an exploration of those hundreds of hulks. And apprehension, even fear, about why these ships were still here, thousands of years dead, drifting within a few thousand kilometers of the gate, within easy reach of any ship with even the most primitive of impulse drives.
Why had they not returned through the gate?
The entity? he wondered abruptly. Had it—or something like it—infected all these ships and maneuvered them here, as the Enterprise had been infected and maneuvered? And had it then kept them from returning through the gate? Had the ships' crews simply killed themselves, as that of the Cochise had almost done? As so many other crews—and civilizations—had done in the past?
It was time to find out.
"Ahead minimum impulse power, Mr. Sulu. Mr. Spock, get what information you can from the sensors as we proceed."
"Of course, Captain."
Ahead, the gate swirled and flickered with its unknown energies.
Two hundred kilometers from the gate, the sensors picked up another ship, this one not visible on the main viewscreen. "Temperature less than five degrees Kelvin, Captain," Spock said. "Too low for even the wavelengths the computer is currently utilizing in imaging the other ships. Primitive atomic drive, totally nonfunctional. No indication of life. Readings indicate an age of approximately twenty-nine thousand years."
Kirk shivered. "And your insubstantial friend—is it still around?"
"To the best of my knowledge, Captain, it is."
"And it's not trying to prevent us from returning to the gate," Kirk said thoughtfully. "Put the gate on the main screen."
A moment later, the ghostly images of the dead ships were replaced by the vivid, kaleidoscopic colors of the gate as seen by the Aragos-modified sensors. Punching up the shipwide intercom, Kirk told the crew briefly what had happened. "We will be attempting to reenter the gate within the minute. There are no guarantees, however, so be ready for anything—particularly for the reappearance of the entity."
Without cutting off the intercom, he pulled in a breath and fastened his eyes on the swirling crazy quilt on the screen. "Take us in, Mr. Sulu," he said.
"Aye-aye, sir."
Tensely, Kirk waited as Spock counted down the distance to the gate. If the entity was going to act, if it was going to try to force them to stay, it would have to act now. It would have to attempt once again to enter Kirk's mind and control it. Or perhaps Sulu's.
But whoever it tried to attach itself to—
Suddenly, everything vanished.
They had entered the gate.
They were going to make it!
No matter what the reasons those hundreds of other ships had been trapped or abandoned, the Enterprise was going to make it!
But then, just as the exultation was racing through Kirk's bodiless mind, every nerve in his imagined body once again erupted in agony.