KIRK FROWNED. "You're saying we have to pass through some kind of—of connecting tunnel to get through the gate? That it has, in effect, a front door and a back door?"
"I have no knowledge of its shape or nature, Captain. I only know that something—possibly a physical space, possibly something else—appears to separate the entry and exit points of the gate."
"And what led you to this conclusion, Mr. Spock? If it's not violating your ethics to reveal this information," Kirk added, a touch of sarcasm edging his words.
"It has nothing to do with ethics, Captain, only with a reluctance to advance theories that are not logically supportable."
"Then explain the basis for your hunch, Mr. Spock. I won't hold it against you if you make an occasional intuitive leap." Kirk sat down again.
"As you wish, Captain. As you will recall, for the brief periods of our passage through the gate, the sensors registered nothing. It was as if not only the external universe but the Enterprise itself ceased to exist for those moments. Time, however, apparently continued for us at its normal rate. Our chronometers registered the time we entered the gate and the time we left it. The transit time determined from these readings was markedly different for our two passages. In the first instance, it was on the order of microseconds, whereas during our return, it was well over a millisecond. It was only when I thought to compare the speeds we were traveling during the transits that I discovered that they bore an inverse linear relationship to the transit times. One reason for this relationship could be the presence of a physical space through which the Enterprise passed during those transits. If that is indeed the case, my calculations indicate that the distance traveled during each transit would be approximately one hundred thirty-seven kilometers. With the shuttlecraft, I hope to confirm—or disprove—the existence of that space."
"Why not with another probe?"
"As I'm sure you're aware, Captain, the speed of a probe, once launched, is fixed, and its maneuverability is severely limited. During the ninety-seven milliseconds it would take for a probe to execute a hundred-and-eighty-degree course change, it would exit the far side of the gate. A shuttlecraft, on the other hand, can travel at virtually any speed. It can be guided to the gate and be sent through it as slowly as if it were coming in for a landing on the hangar deck. The advantages for our purposes are obvious. Ideally, of course, I would prefer to pilot the shuttlecraft and observe the phenomenon directly myself, but at this point, such action could be considered premature."
Kirk nodded. "Very well, Mr. Spock. Make the necessary preparations."
It took Spock, Commander Scott, and a half-dozen Engineering personnel two hours to install one of the Aragos-modified sensors in the shuttlecraft and to jury-rig a link that allowed Spock to control the shuttlecraft through the Enterprise helm. During that time, whatever it was that hovered invisibly over everyone in the Enterprise grew weaker, despite their proximity to the gate, and by the time the shuttlecraft was ready for launch, there was little more than what could be considered "normal" tension anywhere among the crew. Only Spock insisted that he could still sense the to-him-unmistakable signature of its alien presence, but it had no discernible effect on him as he maneuvered the shuttlecraft out of the hangar deck and brought it to a stop less than a kilometer from the gate.
At that distance, the view of the gate through the shuttlecraft sensors was even more spectacular than it was from the thousand-kilometer-distant Enterprise. Kirk and dozens of others were reminded of the tapes of the first ship to not just orbit Jupiter but to descend directly into the center of that massive, millennia-spanning storm still known as the Great Red Spot. The vibrant colors shifted wildly and continuously, sometimes vanishing into momentary blackness or a blinding flash of white. Shapes like kaleidoscopic Rorschach tests appeared and disappeared seemingly at random, sometimes bursting out from a single point, sometimes snapping into view, appearing fully formed in an instant, sometimes emerging slowly, like an approaching dawn.
"Quiescent phase due to begin in three minutes," Spock announced as he slowly and meticulously began to move the modified shuttlecraft forward. Chekov, at the navigator's station next to him, alternately watched the viewscreen and his own controls, while at the science station, Sulu's intensity as he watched its readouts almost matched Spock's.
On the main screen, the ever-shifting fabric of the gate continued to expand until, only yards short of its goal, the shuttlecraft halted. For a moment, then, Spock switched to the visible image being transmitted from a camera mounted near the rear of the shuttle. Instantly, the pyrotechnics of the gate vanished, leaving only the stars and the distant Shapley center and, in the foreground, the forward ninety percent of the exterior of the shuttlecraft. Satisfied, he switched back to the view from the sensors and waited.
Abruptly, the image on the viewscreen changed as the gate entered its supposedly quiescent state. The vibrant, computer-generated colors, representing whatever unknown energies the Aragos-modified sensors detected, vanished in an instant, replaced by a uniform gray. Even at this distance, no more than a dozen yards, no detail was visible. Through the eyes of the sensors and the computer, the gate looked like nothing more than an impossibly massive fogbank.
"Moving forward to contact," Spock announced impassively.
On the screen, nothing seemed to change. The only motion was the clock display in one corner of the screen, flickering as it counted down the seconds that remained in the quiescent cycle.
"One meter to contact," Spock said, observing not the screen but one of the jury-rigged readouts. Chekov only nodded. His readings indicated that the Enterprise remained motionless with respect to the gate.
"Contact … now," Spock said.
The clock display brightened as it passed the nine minute mark, but that was all that happened. The "fog" on the viewscreen remained unchanged.
"According to the instruments," Spock said, "the forward one point five meters of the shuttlecraft are within the gate. I am holding at that point."
For a good fifteen seconds, there was only silence and motionlessness, both on the screen and on the bridge, as Spock waited and watched.
Finally, he tapped a switch, once more bringing up the camera image from the rear of the shuttlecraft. As before, the bulk of the craft itself filled the bottom of the screen, while the rest of the screen held only the star field and the distant, deadly glow of the Shapley center. To visible light, even at this distance, the gate did not exist. The forward meter and a half of the shuttlecraft, supposedly within the boundary of the gate, appeared unaffected.
Glancing at the clock display, Spock nudged the shuttlecraft forward another meter, then two.
Still there was no change, either in the visible image or in the one provided by the sensors, although the sensors, mounted in the front bulkhead of the shuttlecraft, were theoretically within the gate.
"Fascinating," Spock murmured, and he nudged the shuttlecraft forward again.
Abruptly, approximately as the midpoint of the shuttlecraft crossed the theoretical boundary, everything changed.
The shuttlecraft vanished instantaneously from the Enterprise sensors, including the Aragos-modified ones.
Simultaneously, all signals from the shuttlecraft were cut off, as if the shuttlecraft itself had ceased to exist.
The gate itself, still visible through the Enterprise sensors, shimmered for a fraction of a second.
Then, without warning, the signals from the shuttlecraft returned. The visible image the signals brought, however, showed nothing, only total blackness without even the faintest star in the background. The sensors showed little more, only a dull, all enveloping grayness, not unlike what they had shown from just outside the gate.
Suddenly, the gate shrank. Still visible on an auxiliary screen through the Enterprise sensors, the chaos of colors and shapes resumed their mad dance. Despite the clock display's insistence that there were another seven point eight minutes left in the quiescent state, the gate had resumed its cycle.
From the shuttlecraft signals, however, there was no indication of any change. It still hung in a featureless limbo.
Experimentally, Spock operated the control that would turn the shuttlecraft and bring it back out.
On his instruments, there was no feedback, no indication whether the shuttlecraft had responded or not.
And the shuttlecraft did not emerge from the gate.
"It appears," Spock said slowly, "that it would have been advantageous for me to have piloted the shuttlecraft personally after all."
Kirk shook his head. "I'd sooner lose a dozen shuttlecraft than one first officer, Mr. Spock. Besides, it could still—"
Suddenly, without warning, the Enterprise shuddered violently, as if caught in the grip of a massive tractor beam, and, an instant later, began to plunge helplessly forward toward the heart of the gate.