FOR THE FIRST TIME since she had entered Starfleet Academy, Commander Esther Rebecca Ansfield was having trouble sleeping. Despite the comforting sight—and aroma—of the shelves of ancient books Kirk had allowed her to beam over from her cabin on the Cochise, despite the fact that there was very little physical difference between her old cabin and the one she now occupied, she hadn't gotten an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep since she had come aboard the Enterprise. Worse, when sleep wouldn't come, she hadn't been able to concentrate on her books, not even the romances or adventures. On the Cochise, no matter what the situation, she had always been able to lose herself in those perfectly preserved volumes with their always exaggerated, often idealized pictures of what nineteenth- and twentieth-century Earth had been like and their sometimes bizarre imaginings of what the future held.
But now …
Was it, she had wondered a dozen times in the last three days, some remnant of that thing that had invaded Micah's mind and then died—ostensibly—when Andros Stepanovich had killed himself? Were the suspicions Kirk and the others voiced right? Had some small part of it survived? And attached itself to her? Worse, had the creature survived intact? Had it learned of its limitations from its experiences with Micah and the ensign? Was it now simply biding its time, exercising more restraint, more cunning?
Could another creature have found its way onto the ship when the Enterprise had paused in the vicinity of the Eddington?
Or was her problem the result of something much more commonplace—a nervous reaction to the fact that she was on the legendary Enterprise? Perhaps Micah was right, she thought ruefully. Perhaps she should have beamed over to the Eddington with him and the rest of the Cochise's crew, to wait—hope, really—for the quarantine to be lifted, instead of traipsing off on the Enterprise, halfway across the galaxy. She was not, as the cliché had it, getting any younger.
But that, she thought with a mental snort, was precisely the reason she had jumped at the chance when Kirk had requested that at least one officer of the Cochise accompany the Enterprise on its return to the gate three thousand parsecs away in the Sagittarius arm. She was well into her fifties, and a chance like this would not likely come again.
Or was her constant state of tension caused simply by the fact that she was now working with the man who had been responsible, albeit in a very indirect way, for her having switched careers in midlife? That situation was, depending on her mood, either icing on the cake or an embarrassment. So far, she had not mentioned it to him, although she'd had a dozen opportunities. Micah, in fact, was the only one she had ever told. There were times when she regretted telling even him.
Even during the hours between the evacuation of the Cochise and the transfer of all its personnel to the Eddington, she had been half afraid that, over a meal or during one of the captain-to-captain tête-à-têtes, Micah would casually remark, "You know, Kirk, you were Essie's inspiration for entering the Academy."
To Micah, it had always been "interesting," and he had never understood why she wanted it kept quiet. The trouble was, she had never been able to explain her reluctance rationally, even to herself. The closest she had ever come was the uncharacteristically fuzzy thought that making a decision of that magnitude based on what some, including her son, Paul, would consider a rebellious whim was "silly." The fact that the decision had been long in coming and had turned out to be the right decision, that her years in the Academy had been even better than her university days decades earlier, almost as good as her early years in teaching, her years of marriage to Vernon, didn't make any difference.
She could smile to herself when she thought about how it had come about, even about the disbelieving looks Paul, then twenty-four, had given her when she had first mentioned the possibility. However, the arguments between that first mention and her final decision had stretched over a dozen months and were difficult to smile about. And the prospect of talking about them, particularly to the man who, unknowingly, had figured in her final decision, still made her uncomfortable.
"Mother," Paul had protested a hundred times. "You've got a guaranteed lifetime job—a job that you've always loved. You can't seriously be thinking of throwing it over for something as insane as trying to get into Starfleet Academy at your age! If you want a little adventure, there are lots of easier, safer ways to get it."
He had almost convinced her—despite her growing conviction that, since Vernon's death, teaching had somehow lost its magic. Before, each new day in class had been fresh, a new challenge. But after his death, the faces in her classes started looking the same, the problems the same, the courses and the theses to be graded the same.
Still, Paul's constant objections, his overwhelming appeals to practicality, kept her from acting, kept her from, as he said repeatedly, "making a fool of yourself."
Until one day.
Her classes had seemed particularly repetitious—even pointless—that day, and during her weekly evening out with Paul and his new wife, Claudette, she had said so.
"Oh, Mother," he had said after an eye-rolling sideways look at Claudette. "Don't tell me you're going to start up that Starfleet Academy nonsense again!"
From there it had only gotten worse, until Paul, shaking his head condescendingly, said, "Mother, you're fifty years old! What do you want to do, go into the record books as the oldest Starfleet ensign in the history of the Academy?"
And that was when she remembered the story she had seen a half-dozen times in the last week, the story about how one James T. Kirk was about to become "the youngest starship captain in Starfleet history." And she remembered thinking, the first time she had seen it, Why are they making such a big deal out of it? Someone has to be the youngest.
Suddenly, she had grinned, earning an uncertain smile from Claudette and a puzzled frown from Paul. "Someone has to be the oldest," she said, wondering why it had taken her so long to realize it. "So why shouldn't it be me?"
From that point on, she had never looked back. With Micah, already a commander, as her sponsor, she was accepted into the Academy. She had graduated near the top of her class and managed, with a little help from her near-eidetic memory, to do it in a year less than standard. And once in space, her years of teaching, her ability to work with people, and her no-nonsense way of almost instantly cutting to the heart of any matter enabled her to move up so rapidly that, had she graduated at a "normal" age, she might have been in the running for "youngest commander in Starfleet history."
And now the "oldest ensign" and the "youngest captain"—neither record had been surpassed in the intervening years—were on the same ship.
And the oldest ensign, unfortunately, really was acting like a fool this time. She could imagine what Paul would say if he—
And then, in an instant, she realized what her problem was. Indecision. Plain and simple indecision!
And why the devil had that realization been so ridiculously long in coming? The last time she had had similar symptoms had been during the year she was struggling with her decision to enter the Academy—a decision she had delayed again and again simply because of Paul and his patronizing objections. The instant she had made the decision, the symptoms had gone away, and her sleeping habits had returned to normal.
She would tell Kirk. From what she had seen, he was a nice enough young man. And, as she had repeatedly told Paul, there was no big deal about being the oldest or the youngest. So they were now both on the same ship. So what? Everybody had to be somewhere.
Laughing, she felt the knot of tension begin to unravel.
Within minutes, she was sound asleep.
The stars of the Sagittarius arm lay spread out before the Enterprise. Beyond them hovered the deadly, shrouded mass of the Shapley center. In the center of the viewscreen, driven by the Aragos-modified sensors and a specially designed computer link, the gate flickered in and out of existence, expanding and contracting in milliseconds, like a mammoth, spaceborne ghost of the neon signs that had once lured travelers into twentieth-century gambling casinos.
Which, Kirk couldn't help but think, was not an inappropriate image. To even approach this or any other gate was purely a gamble, even more now than it had been before, when all one had had to worry about was where, if anywhere, the gate would transport you once you entered it. Even Spock had been unwilling to quote odds on what might happen this time.
The Enterprise had passed through this particular gate twice before. The first time, it had deposited them in a corner of the universe so remote that no one had been able to even guess at its distance from the Milky Way galaxy. The second time, it had returned them to the spot in the Sagittarius arm from which it had snatched them in the first place. But neither time had there been any evidence of the sort of "entity" that had taken over Chandler and Ensign Stepanovich and, in all likelihood, countless others down through the millennia.
But what would they find when they approached it this time? Would such an entity be waiting for them? In the days since they had verified the existence of the Eddington's gate and then sped out of the Federation toward the Sagittarius arm at warp seven, they had received a half-dozen messages from Starfleet Headquarters, each one bringing the unwelcome news that another suspected gate had appeared somewhere in the Federation or the surrounding Treaty Exploration Territory. Because of the warnings Starfleet had issued repeatedly, only one ship, another private scout, had approached a gate once the gravitational bursts that seemed to announce their birth had been noted. All other ships had maintained their distance or backed away. None had approached more closely than a billion kilometers, the same distance the Enterprise now maintained from the Sagittarius arm gate.
As a result of this caution—or perhaps as a result of sheer luck—only the one scout had been "infected," and it had destroyed itself in a successful version of the cold-start suicide that Ensign Stepanovich had tried to perform on the Cochise.
A program to modify the sensors on all Starfleet vessels to match those of the Enterprise was under way and being accelerated daily. Once every ship was modified, the gates could be detected with or without the trademark gravitational burst. This would at least prevent more ships from blundering into a quiescent gate, one whose gravitational birth throes had gone unobserved. It would not, however, do anything at all to allay Starfleet Command's most immediate fear—that a gate would appear within range of a populated planet.
"Computer analysis indicates the cyclic pattern of expansions and contractions has been altered, Captain," Spock said, not looking up from the science station readouts he had been observing almost continuously since the Enterprise had emerged from warp drive more than ten hours earlier. Already he had determined that every one of the smaller gates—the "gravitational anomalies" the Enterprise had originally come to the Sagittarius arm to investigate—was similar to the gates that had appeared in Federation territory: small, constant in size, and jaggedly irregular. And three of the original group had vanished.
"Altered?" Kirk turned from the viewscreen and moved toward Spock and the science station. "In what way?"
"Each cycle is still eight point six nine three hours in duration, but now there are periods of up to ten point two one minutes during which the gate remains at what appears to be its maximum diameter of nearly one million kilometers."
Kirk frowned. Based on what they had learned—guessed—earlier, the distance the gate transmitted an object appeared to be inversely proportional to the gate's size at the moment of transmission. When the Enterprise had passed through, it had been at its smallest, less than a kilometer in diameter. Its energy density had been incredibly high, and it had thrown them millions, possibly billions, of parsecs.
"At that diameter," Kirk said, "its destination must be very nearby."
"Perhaps, Captain. However, because it previously reached that maximum diameter only once each cycle and remained so for approximately forty-four seconds, six times longer than it remained at any other size, I surmise that this maximum expansion may represent its quiescent state, during which it is not capable of transmitting an object anywhere. The forty-four-second interval could have simply marked the beginning of each new cycle."
"A dead spot between cycles, Mr. Spock? Or a malfunction? Like a tooth missing from a cogwheel? The beginning of the larger dead spots—malfunctions—that exist now?"
"Both are of course possible, Captain."
"And the smaller, irregular gates, both here and elsewhere—could they be some kind of … malfunction of the gate system?"
"There is no way to accurately assess the odds, Captain, but I would consider it quite within the realm of possibility. Even the Federation's fear that the lesser gates are precursors of a larger one is not totally without merit. If, that is, we assume that all these gates are indeed part of a single, seemingly universe-wide system. However, there is as yet no firm evidence to indicate either the validity or the invalidity of such an assumption. We have not, in fact, even established beyond doubt that the phenomena that have begun appearing in Federation space are truly gates."
Kirk thought a moment. "They showed up as gates on the sensors. Badly misshapen gates, but gates nonetheless, and no more misshapen than the cluster of gates here in the Sagittarius arm. In any event, the probes we sent through went somewhere."
"True, Captain, but the fact that the probes disappeared does not prove that they reappeared—anywhere. During our previous investigation here in the Sagittarius arm, the probes did, with some exceptions, reappear at varying distances, thereby proving that the phenomena were indeed some form of gate."
"But some did disappear altogether," Kirk said, nodding. "What about those? Were they destroyed? Transmitted beyond the range of our sensors?"
"Those are, of course, two possibilities, Captain. There are, however, far too many unknowns to allow even preliminary conclusions at this point."
Kirk stood silently behind Spock for a long moment. Then he turned and walked thoughtfully back to the command chair, his eyes on the viewscreen and the gate that flickered there.
"It's about time," he said, "that we started narrowing things down, one way or another. Ahead, Mr. Sulu, quarter impulse power. Mr. Chekov, deflectors up."
Both men acknowledged, and the Enterprise crept ahead, sublight.
Commander Ansfield emerged onto the bridge a few minutes later. For several seconds, she stood just to one side of the turbolift doors, watching the flickering gate. Of late, she had spent much of her time on the bridge, figuratively looking over Spock's shoulder, even taking the station on occasion when Spock was called away. Though she was not as quick or precise as Spock, her memory and analytical instincts made Kirk realize that Chandler had been lucky to have her as his science officer. There were times when her human "intuition" made her more than an overall match for Spock.
"You're taking us in for a closer look," she said finally. "I wondered how long it would take you to get around to it."
Kirk smiled faintly. In more and more ways, especially since she had revealed her "secret" to him, Ansfield reminded him of Dr. McCoy. Their directness and occasional sarcasm were similar, as was the inner vulnerability they both tried to hide under a sometimes bristly exterior. She even seemed to share some of McCoy's reservations concerning dependency on machines. Her library of ancient books, transported with her from the Cochise, was of continuous fascination to the doctor, although the fact that they were mostly fiction rather than nonfiction dampened his enthusiasm at times, particularly when she would laughingly point out some character—usually a courtly or straitlaced minor character in the romances—that reminded her of him.
"Five hundred million kilometers, sir," Sulu called out.
"Hold at that distance," Kirk said. Then, punching the button that would send his voice throughout the ship, he continued, "We are now a half-billion kilometers from the Sagittarius gate and holding. We will resume our sublight approach in another minute."
Kirk paused, his eyes once again darting briefly toward the viewscreen and the flickering gate. "Everyone," he resumed, "remember the drill. From this point on, no one, absolutely no one, is to be left alone at any time. Groups of three or more are to be maintained whenever feasible. All personnel must—repeat, must—carry phasers, set and locked on medium stun. If anyone—and that emphatically includes myself and all senior officers—displays any of the symptoms previously displayed by Captain Chandler or Ensign Stepanovich and appears to be losing control, whoever notes those symptoms is to act immediately."
Turning back to the viewscreen, he watched it another long moment and then said, "Resume approach, Mr. Sulu."
Even more slowly, the Enterprise began again to inch forward. McCoy, looking annoyed at the orderly who had insisted on accompanying him, stepped onto the bridge as Sulu announced the three-hundred million-kilometer mark.
At approximately two hundred fifty million kilometers, Spock looked up sharply from the science station instruments. For a moment, he stood perfectly motionless, expressionless. Then he turned to face Kirk.
"Captain, the manifestation I experienced upon the release of Captain Chandler has returned."
All eyes focused abruptly on Spock. "All stop, Mr. Sulu," Kirk snapped. "Ready to reverse power on my command."
"Aye-aye, sir. Ready."
"Mr. Spock. Evaluation. Is it the same as before?"
For another five seconds, Spock stood motionless, his head cocked slightly, as if trying to listen to something only he could hear. Kirk could not keep a chill from settling on his spine, and he noticed that the others were as motionless as Spock.
"It is similar, Captain," Spock said finally, "but not identical in a number of ways. For one, this manifestation is more powerful. For another, although the sensations that I am experiencing arise from within myself, and within myself alone, there is a sense of another being, totally alien, somehow touching me."
A barely perceptible shiver ran through the Vulcan's body, the first time Kirk could remember seeing such a thing.
"I feel it, too, sir." Uhura spoke from the communications station, and as she did, Kirk realized that he, too, was experiencing something similar.
A mild, very mild, version of Chandler's description fit the feeling to some extent. Kirk had a strong and very distinct feeling that something was hovering in the air around him, something elusive and, as Spock had said, alien. He had the uneasy feeling that if he could turn his head quickly enough, he could catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye.
"Reverse power, Mr. Sulu, slowly. Let's see if this thing has a limit to its range."
For a moment, Sulu didn't move, but then, as if suddenly released from invisible restraints, his hands darted to the control board. "Reverse power, sir," he said, his voice loud in what was now an almost breathless silence.
Once again, Kirk spoke on the shipwide intercom. "Contact has apparently been made," he said. "We have experienced sensations indicating the phenomenon associated with the gates is present. Impulse power has been reversed. We are pulling away from the gate and will continue to—"
Abruptly, Kirk stopped, his mind and body almost literally frozen by a sudden, irresistible wave of sheer terror. In the fraction of a second between one word and the next, unreasoning fear swept out of the darkness of space and closed over him like the icy waters of a lightless, bottomless sea.