CAPTAIN JAMES KIRK paused by one of the Johnston Observatory's sloping walls. He pressed both hands to the transparent aluminum as he stood on tiptoe to see a little farther across the horizon. Skaftar wasn't the strangest moon Kirk had ever been on, but long-dead volcanoes and kilometer-wide basalt basins certainly made it one of the least inviting. Some Lunar natives he'd met claimed that moonscapes from any system were more beautiful than planets, once you knew how to look at them. Kirk had been trying to learn how for years. He had yet to find anything to like about fractured rock, changeless dust, and a day-night terminus that sliced across the landscape like a phaser cut.
Someone came up close on his right, and Kirk knew it was Uhura even before she stepped into his peripheral vision to add her own handprints to the much touched and leaned-upon window. Kirk had long ago accepted the fact that he kept track of his landing parties' movements without consciously realizing it. McCoy said it was what made him a good commander. Kirk had a feeling it just made him tense.
"Not much like home, is it?" Uhura rose up on her toes to peer across the moonscape after Kirk. The motion only brought her head as high as the captain's shoulder, though, and she sank flat-footed again with a little sigh.
"Don't worry, Commander," Kirk reassured her with a smile. "There isn't that much to see."
She shrugged, but didn't turn away from the bleakness outside. "Not here, anyway." She drew Kirk's attention to the planet, huge and blue, just rising above Skaftar's broken horizon. "At least Rakatan has an atmosphere."
Kirk couldn't help laughing a little. Uhura raised a questioning eyebrow, and he amended, "Such as it is." As clear and crystalline as Rakatan's oceans looked from here, word from the observatory was that they were chilly and empty of life above the microscopic, the atmosphere that blanketed them high in carbon dioxide and natural volcanic pollution. Even as they watched, one of the planet's tiny landmasses seemed to bleed like wet ink into the water all around it, billowing gray in all directions. A readout farther down the transparent wall from Uhura came to life and caught the captain's attention: VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN PROGRESS.
Kirk shook his head in wonderment, turning back toward where the roiling black mass was quickly obscuring a large swath of the planet's dayside. From orbit, he thought, incredulous. We're seeing it in this much detail from here! "That must be Rakatan Mons."
A woman's crusty old voice startled Kirk. "Not quite, Captain."
Kirk turned a bit more abruptly than he'd intended, nearly running into the wizened, white-haired geologist behind him. She elbowed past him, oblivious of his surprise, and squinted up at Rakatan—as Spock, following her, took his place at Kirk's shoulder with arms folded. "Rakatan Mons isn't the only volcano on this planet, you know," she said.
Kirk cocked an amused look at his first officer. "Dr. Bascomb, I presume?" he asked the Vulcan.
Spock nodded once, unperturbed. "Indeed."
Indeed. Then Spock and Bascomb must be finished reviewing the geologists' records; for all that work, it hadn't taken very long.
"That's Mazama Mons," Bascomb announced, tapping one gnarled finger on the window. "Six thousand meters high and one hundred and twenty kilometers in diameter at her base." As Uhura adjusted her position, Bascomb took hold of Uhura's wrist and unceremoniously pulled the lieutenant commander to stand in front of her, the way a teacher would handle a first grader who'd complained about not having a perfect view. Bascomb continued without a pause, "Mazama's active almost continually, with a cataclysmic eruption every"—the geologist shrugged—"oh, six months or so. One of the most frequent patterns on the planet, really. In comparison, Rakatan Mons hasn't done more than rumble for the last fifteen thousand years."
Far from resentful of the scientist's audacity, Uhura seemed charmed by the older woman. She tipped her head back, dark brows curiously knit. "You know all that just by watching these volcanoes from orbit for the last twenty years?"
Bascomb glanced down and seemed to really notice the small officer for the first time. "Not entirely from orbit," she allowed, releasing Uhura and stepping a little away. "We make shuttle trips to the surface every now and again, for samples or to repair monitoring equipment. Rakatan is one of the most geologically active environments in the Federation." She tossed a frown back at Spock. "A lot like Vulcan four or five billion years ago, as I recall. Anyway, we can't stay planetside for very long."
A deep note, like the song of a starship's impulse engines, interrupted, and Bascomb's weathered face brightened. It took Kirk a moment to realize that the sound came from the observatory's own intercom system. By then, the geologist had snatched the shoulder of his jacket and pulled him around to face the planet again. "Dr. Bascomb, I—"
"There, Captain," she said, taking his chin to direct his gaze to the left. "Coming up on morningside now." The pride and pleasure in her voice were unmistakable. "That's Rakatan Mons."
Kirk almost forgave her irreverent handling when the snow-mantled peak slipped from night into morning and burst into sun-splashed brilliance. "My God …" All he could think of was how much damage Rakatan Mons could do if it ever decided to be active. "That's almost the size of a small continent!"
"Five-eighths the base surface of Australia," Spock confirmed politely.
"And the quietest mountain on the planet," Bascomb added. She gave a little snort of amusement and shrugged. "Go figure."
Kirk tried to imagine Mount Everest on Earth as a volcano, its flanks burning with ash and steaming mud. Or Mount Selaya on Vulcan on the day ten thousand years ago when it destroyed its peak with such force that it cratered moons several light-minutes away. He was suddenly very appreciative of Iowa, with its occasional tornadoes and a tendency toward seasonal floods.
"Dr. Bascomb …" Uhura turned to lean her shoulder against the window, frowning thoughtfully upward at the older scientist. "Are you sure the intelligent signals you're receiving—"
"Allegedly intelligent, Commander."
She acknowledged Spock's correction with a little nod, but didn't take her attention away from Bascomb. "Are you sure they're coming from the volcano itself?" She waved a graceful hand toward the planet. "Surely there's enough landmass around the base to support a small civilization."
Bascomb turned her back on the distant volcano and motioned for them to follow when she started into the main observatory. "So far, Commander, the highest form of life we've found on Rakatan is a colonial slime mold that turns a lovely pink when exposed to too much sunlight." She pressed her hand against a print lock outside a windowless door. "There isn't even grass or algae on the planet, much less anything with a nervous system."
The door irised open onto a small, rock-strewn lab littered with workstations and sample slides. A young blond woman—just the right age to be a graduate student or a new Ph.D.—glanced away from her microscopy work long enough to flick blue eyes across their uniforms and frown with worry. Kirk tried smiling to make her feel at ease, but only gained a startled blush in reply. Her eyes flashed to Spock as the first officer continued his conversation with Uhura.
"All of the records Dr. Bascomb has shown me have been taken from the seismic stations located on Rakatan Mons." Spock shot a keen look at the terminal closest to him without interrupting his speaking. "These seismic devices register earthquake and volcanic activity only, and beam the data directly to the observatory via satellite. It is highly unlikely any surface-dwelling life on a planet as young as Rakatan could possess the capability to alter such a signal."
"Unless that life could actually cause the earthquakes."
Spock lifted a disdainful eyebrow at the blond lab worker, and Kirk gave the girl credit for not flinching beneath the Vulcan's chill stare. It was all Kirk could do to suppress a smile.
Bascomb didn't feel so compelled. "Wendy Metcalfe," she introduced the girl, leaning over Kirk's shoulder with a crooked grin. "One of my students."
"And the one who filed the original report to the Federation." Kirk recognized her name from the files he'd read on their way in the night before. He stepped around a lab table to offer her his hand. "Life inside a volcano."
Metcalfe stood, a little hesitantly, and shook Kirk's hand while still stealing glances at the officers behind him. "The seismic reports are very compelling," she began.
Spock cut her off before she could go on. "On the contrary, Ms. Metcalfe. The records themselves are fragmentary and complicated, the identified periodic anomaly not inconsistent with convective circulation inside a large magma chamber."
"But that could be part of the life-form's behavior," Metcalfe jumped in, cheeks pink with excitement. "Any creature living in magma at higher than eight hundred fifty degrees Celsius would have to be made of molten silicate—"
"—and therefore lack the structural integrity necessary to conduct bioelectric or biochemical signals."
"Not necessarily. In magma this viscous, incipient crystal lattices could function as a primitive nervous system—"
"That assumes a residence time sufficient to foster crystal variation and natural selection, which I calculate would require at least—"
"Spock?"
The Vulcan paused in mid-jargon to cock his head at the captain.
"Do we need to know this for our mission?" Kirk asked.
Spock seemed to consider the point for a moment, then blinked and admitted, "In a strictly practical sense, no, Captain, we do not."
Kirk had suspected as much. "Then let's skip to the next question." He offered Metcalfe an apologetic nod, and was disappointed when she pursed her lips and returned stiffly to her work. He knew you never did get used to having your ideas ignored just because you were the graduate student, even if you understood why it had to be that way. "Is there any chance the signals are originating as a malfunction in the seismic system itself? Could it simply be transmitting its data incorrectly?"
Spock lifted both eyebrows—a Vulcan shrug. "That is always a possibility. But I would rather defer to Commander Uhura's greater expertise in such matters."
The communications officer frowned thoughtfully when the others turned to her. "I'll have to look at the specs on the equipment." She glanced a question up at Bascomb. "And it would help if I could examine all the planetside stations, too."
Bascomb snorted and hiked herself onto the nearest lab table. "Well, that is the problem, isn't it?"
Kirk exchanged looks with Uhura, who only lifted one shoulder in confusion. He turned to Bascomb. "Doctor?"
"Listen, Captain," the geologist proclaimed with expansive good humor, "if you can get to the seismic stations, you're welcome to them. But nobody from up here's been able to get close enough to adjust their telemetry, much less verify their readings, for almost two months now."
"Volcanic activity?" Spock asked.
Bascomb looked at him as though he were crazy. "Of course not. Elasians."
"Elasians?" Kirk felt as if he'd walked into a different conversation than the one he thought he'd started. "Where?"
"Here." Bascomb laughed aloud at his expression of blank surprise. "Didn't Starfleet tell you?" Kirk found that a particularly irritating question, considering that they obviously had not. "The Elasians barged in here seven weeks ago and set up a mining camp on the slopes of Rakatan Mons." She leaned back on her elbows and scowled with a pent-up disgust that Kirk could all too well understand. "They're shooting down every probe we send into the area."
Kirk shook his head. "But why?"
"Because they claim they own the planet," Bascomb told him. "And we figured Starfleet had a better chance than we do of telling them otherwise."
As often as Uhura told herself it was an illusion born of heightened adrenaline, she remained secretly convinced that the turbolift doors opened faster when Captain Kirk was in a hurry. It seemed as if the rest of the crew knew that, too—all eyes turned eagerly to meet them as they emerged onto the bridge. Or perhaps, Uhura thought wryly, the crew looked up like that at every turbolift when they knew the captain was due back.
"Reports," Kirk said crisply. He hadn't waited to get back to the ship to begin dealing with the unexpected problem of the Elasians. Orders for priority hailing, planetary scans, background reports, and inquiries to Starfleet Headquarters had volleyed through his communicator before he'd finally given Scott the command to transport them back from the Johnston Observatory. The results greeted them now in a disciplined cascade of information.
"No reply from the Elasians to our priority hail, Captain." Commander Scott willingly surrendered the captain's chair. The ice-crowned bulk of Rakatan Mons sprawled across the main viewscreen behind him, dwarfing the big chief engineer as he crossed back to his normal bridge station. "If you ask me, I think they're ignoring us."
Kirk made an irritated noise. "Keep hailing them, Uhura, until they respond."
"Aye, sir." Uhura took over the communications station, accepting the output monitor from the young ensign she'd left in charge. Ashcraft silently showed her the subspace message he'd sent to Starfleet, and she nodded approval of the code he'd used. With a sigh of relief, he headed for the turbolift, and Uhura turned her attention to the familiar problem of making contact with a proud and stubborn alien race.
Kirk had already gone on to the next problem. "Have we located the Elasian base yet?"
It was Sulu's turn to reply. "Long-range scanners report only one manned installation on the planet, Captain. It's about a third of the way up that big volcano—"
"At an altitude of two thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven meters, to be precise." As usual, Spock had wasted no time in reclaiming his science station from the young ensign who'd held it. Cobalt reflections scrolled across the Vulcan's face as he read through the sensor output at a rate no human could have matched. "The planetary coordinates are—"
"Never mind that, Spock." Kirk swung his chair to face the security station. "Defense status of the Elasian base, Mr. Chekov?"
"Their main defense is a class-two force shield, Captain. Able to disrupt transporter beams, but not strong enough to withstand orbital phaser fire." Chekov keyed in a different output screen, and the light on his face shifted from amber to green. "Our weapons sensors detect no active phaser batteries on the planet. There is one warp-capable flyer at the Elasian base, but it's armed only with light photon weapons."
Kirk's eyebrows gathered in a scowl. "One warp-capable flyer?"
"Aye, sir." Chekov slanted the captain an uncertain look. "I can scan again for confirmation."
"No, Mr. Chekov. I don't think the problem's with your sensors." Kirk swung around to face Spock again. "Mr. Spock, do we have that background report on Elas yet?"
"The computer is compiling it now, Captain." The science officer consulted his screen. "Completion expected in nine point four minutes."
"See if you can hurry that up." Kirk sprang from his chair and began restlessly prowling the bridge. As he passed her, Uhura answered his inquiring look with a wordless shake of her head. All frequencies had stayed stubbornly silent, including the ones reserved for Starfleet use.
The turbolift doors whistled open again, at a normal speed this time, and let Dr. McCoy through. One look at the quiet bridge must have told the chief medical officer that nothing urgent was in progress. He gave Uhura a friendly smile as he passed her, then strolled down toward the captain.
"So, Jim," he drawled. "What's this I hear about us running into some Elasians?"
Kirk gave the doctor an exasperated look. "Is there a subspace rumor generator aboard this ship?"
McCoy grinned. "Nope, just a computer that accessed my old medical files while I happened to be in them." McCoy leaned over Spock's shoulder, audaciously reading his input lines. "Why are you looking up Elasian mining technology, Spock? Even Elasians wouldn't be stupid enough to try mining a planet that's barely cool enough to walk on."
Spock straightened and lifted one quelling eyebrow at the doctor. "If Rakatan's crust were as hot as you suggest, Dr. McCoy, the planet would not possess the extensive oceans you see on the viewscreen behind you. And I would like to point out that humans have settled several far less hospitable worlds—"
"Not any that might blow up under their feet at a moment's notice!" McCoy retorted. "Only Vulcans think of volcanoes as normal backyard scenery."
Whatever response Spock would have made to that comment was cut off by a quick chirp from his science station. "A preliminary version of the Elasian background report has now been compiled, Captain." The science officer took the opportunity to turn his shoulder to McCoy. "Do you wish to read it in its entirety, or do you have specific questions?"
"Questions," Kirk said briefly. "First of all, Mr. Spock, I want to know how the hell the Elasians got here."
Spock frowned. "I believe you will have to be more specific than that, Captain."
Kirk gestured the Vulcan's attention toward the volcanoscape on the viewscreen. "Rakatan and the rest of the Ordover system lie half a quadrant away from the Tellun system, correct?"
Spock nodded. "Fifteen point six nine light-years, to be exact."
"But the last time we saw the Elasians—" Kirk paused briefly, and Uhura wondered if he was remembering the Elasian woman they'd carried on that memorable voyage across the Tellun system all those years ago. In Uhura's opinion, Elaan, the Dohlman of Elas and queen of Troyius, wasn't the kind of person anyone could forget. "—they had fission-powered ships. With that technology, it should have taken them eighty years to get here, and Starfleet would have known about it. How did they do it?"
"The obvious answer," replied Spock calmly, "is that they did not come in fission-powered ships."
Kirk frowned across at him. "Do you know that for sure, or are you just guessing?"
The Vulcan lifted both eyebrows, looking as close to offended as Uhura had ever seen him. "I am making a surmise, Captain—"
"He's guessing," McCoy said.
"—based on all available facts, including Lieutenant Chekov's scan of the planet. Do not forget that the Elasians' sister planet, Troyius, holds one of the richest dilithium deposits in the galaxy. With wealth like that available—"
"—almost anyone would be willing to supply them with black-market warp technology," Kirk acknowledged. "But it would help to know exactly who their supplier was. This is a fringe system, after all."
Spock bowed his head in agreement. "I will consult the background report and endeavor to supply you with that information, Captain."
"Good." Kirk swung away from him and prowled back toward Uhura. "Still no reply from the Elasians?"
"No, sir." Uhura paused; then, prompted more by instinct than thought, she turned off the automatic priority hail. "Captain, may I have your permission to try a different approach?"
Kirk blinked at her in surprise. "What could be more effective than a priority hail?"
"But a priority hail is so—" Uhura paused, searching for the right words. "—so imperative, Captain. The Elasians might consider it disrespectful." She guessed from the amused quirk of his mouth that Kirk was remembering the same Elasian temper tantrums she was. "Perhaps if I asked them in person and more politely, they might respond."
Kirk's face lit with an unexpectedly boyish grin. "Well, my mother always told me that it doesn't cost anything to be polite. Give it a try, Commander."
Uhura turned back to her board. It took her only a minute to compose her message and key the universal translator to broadcast on all frequencies. "Planet Rakatan, this is the Starship Enterprise," she said in her most courteous voice. "We respectfully request permission to speak to the leader of your expedition, at her convenience."
From the corner of her eye, when she paused to allow the Elasians time to respond, Uhura saw Kirk's gesture for silence. She turned her transmitter off, keeping her monitor at her ear. "Is there a problem, sir?"
Kirk lifted an inquiring eyebrow. "Her convenience?"
"In case there was a Dohlman with them," Uhura explained. "I didn't want to insult her by assuming their leader was a man."
"A logical precaution, Commander," Spock agreed. Uhura felt her cheeks warm with pleasure at that rare compliment, even though McCoy snorted at it. "However, I must inform you that there is very little probability that an Elasian female warlord would accompany a simple mining expedition."
"I know that, Mr. Spock, but—" Uhura broke off, hearing a dim but familiar buzz in her monitor. "Signal coming through from the planet, Captain."
"Put it on the main screen." Kirk swung around and vaulted down to the lower level of the bridge as Uhura tightened her fix on the wavering signal and fed it to the viewscreen. The icy slopes of Rakatan Mons vanished, replaced by a determined young face. The smooth dark skin and strong jaw could have belonged to either a boy or a girl, but the gold-braided hair and arrogant, dark-eyed stare told Uhura that this teenager belonged to the dominant sex on Elas.
"For once, Spock, probability theory has failed you." Kirk inclined his head politely at the screen. "I presume I'm speaking to a Dohlman of Elas?"
"Not a Dohlman of Elas." The young girl thrust back her gilt-edged cloak to show him the ruby-hilted gold knife she wore strapped to her thigh. "The Dohlman of Elas."