CHEKOV PULLED his attention away from the outside view to exchange a startled glance with Sulu. The helmsman paused in slipping into the pilot's seat, eyebrows and shoulders raised in a silent admission of ignorance.
"This is an unarmed passenger transport, Chief Underling Takcas." It never ceased to amaze Chekov that Uhura's voice could convey such calm and friendliness when every micrometer of her body exuded anger. "The only weapons we have on board are personal sidearms, used by my cohort to ensure my safety."
"Then it is Her Glory's command that you dispose of those sidearms," Takcas's icy voice replied. "Throw them clear of your craft and allow us to destroy them."
Chekov captured Uhura's attention with an urgent touch to her arm. No, he mouthed silently, frowning. She was nodding before he even finished the word.
"Chief Underling Takcas," she all but sighed, "I could not debase my cohort so by allowing you to endanger their purpose. Please tell Dohlman Israi that this arrangement is unacceptable."
There was a long moment of dead time on the radio, during which Chekov imagined a brawny Elasian male scurrying to the other end of the mining camp to grovel before his mistress with Uhura's unhappy news. He reached over the lieutenant commander's shoulder to thumb the audio mute for their side of the transmission. "This is ridiculous," he told her, crossing his arms and leaning back on the panel between the seats. "I thought the captain settled whatever their problem was already."
"That was when they were accusing us of spying on them," Uhura pointed out with a sigh. "As you heard, now we're arguing about hidden weaponry."
Chekov made a disgusted noise. "Nonsense. Even counting the power signatures from things like our hand phasers and Mutchler's laser ground-motion detector, there's no way the Elasians could mistake anything we have on board for a shipwide system. The readings are completely different."
Uhura sighed and sat back in her chair. "You would know that," she agreed wearily. "But would the Elasians?"
Chekov snorted. "If they're going to use black-market technology," he complained, "they should spend the extra money to learn how to use it."
Sulu smiled indulgently and leaned forward to give the lieutenant's arm a sympathetic pat. "Well, it's a nice sentiment, at least."
"Dohlman Uhura!"
They all jumped at Takcas's imperious summons from the radio. Uhura shot a hand out to answer with a speed that could only have been second nature. "I'm still here, Chief Underling Takcas. What is—"
"Her Glory commands that all power sources within your craft be deactivated so that we may scan your craft and verify that you have disarmed all systems."
"No!" Mutchler yelped from the main compartment. The geologist strained forward in his seat, eyes wide and liquid with alarm. "We'll lose the memory in the seismic equipment if we disconnect the power supply. Without it, I can't calibrate the surface equipment and this whole trip will have been for nothing!"
"Then Her Glory commands that you evacuate your shuttle so that we may search your compartments without interference."
Sulu shook his head with slow emphasis. Sabotage, he mouthed, and pantomimed an explosion with his hands.
Uhura responded with a hopeless toss of her hands, and Chekov reached across her shoulder to switch off the audio signal before speaking. "Tell him you'll do it."
Uhura stared up at him. "You've got to be joking."
"Tell him that they can search the ship," he continued, waving Sulu into silence when the helmsman would have interrupted, "but that you're leaving the leader of your cohort behind to supervise their behavior."
Uhura chewed her lip, considering. "I don't know how many they'll send."
"It won't matter," Chekov assured her. "They aren't interested in hurting anyone, just in making sure we know that they're serious about protecting their Dohlman." He felt heat come up into his cheeks, but admitted anyway, "I would do the same, if I were them."
"How come you get to be the chief underling of this cohort?" Sulu asked, feigning disappointment.
Chekov scowled at him. "Because it was my idea." He turned back to Uhura. "They'll agree to it. They know you have as much right to be cautious as do they."
"All right." Uhura reached for the comm switch in front of her. "When did you get to be such an expert on Elasian psychology?" she asked with a teasing smile.
"I don't have to be—I know how the cohort's job works, and that means I know how they think." He caught her wrist to stop her just before she reopened the channel. "Give me five minutes to secure our weapons and arm myself before you let them in."
She nodded, but didn't unknit her frown. "You said they wouldn't try to hurt you."
"Most likely," he amended. "But I'm not taking any chances." He was already running through a mental tally of what they had on board, and what he wanted to do with it all. He tossed a wry smile at Sulu on his way out of the cockpit. "I may not remember what Elasian women looked like, but I certainly remember Elasian men."
Uhura took a deep breath as she stepped out of the shuttle, trying to summon a Dohlman-imperious look for the squad of Elasian males waiting for them. The thin, cold air of Rakatan bit at her throat, dry with dust and sharp with ozone from the defense shield shimmering over the camp. She heard Ensign Murphy cough behind her.
"Dohlman Uhura." The familiar red-haired figure of the Dohlman's chief underling stepped away from the rest of the pack and gave her an almost imperceptible nod. "Her Glory, the Dohlman Israi, is no longer sure she wishes to speak to you. She has been insulted by your delay in arriving."
"Our delay?" Uhura allowed some of her annoyance with the Elasians to surface at last. "There wouldn't have been a delay, Chief Underling Takcas, if you had been willing to negotiate a reasonable landing agreement with us when we first arrived. You have not served your Dohlman well."
As a reprimand, it had been a shot in the dark, but it made the Elasian's young face darken with anger. His wordless growl brought both Sulu and Ensign Murphy a protective step closer, but Uhura refused to let herself be intimidated. She reached out and slapped a small hand against Takcas's broad chest, trying to mimic the fearlessly scornful manner she remembered from Dohlman Elaan of Troyius.
"Out of my way," she ordered. "I wish to see the Dohlman Israi at once."
The lash of her voice had the desired effect. Takcas scowled but backed away from her with instinctive obedience. He snapped his fingers, and a bearded older male stepped out from the rest of the guards.
"Oben, bring them to the doors of Her Glory's compound." Takcas's voice was sharp, as if he could take out on his subordinate the resentment he didn't dare show to Uhura. "Her Glory can decide then if she will allow them in."
"Yes, Kessh." Oben's pale green eyes swept over Uhura and her three companions, with an emotion that could have been either suspicion or scorn. "Follow," he said shortly, and turned away without looking to see if Uhura was behind him.
Stifling a sigh of relief at the success of her first confrontation, Uhura followed the older male toward the small, arched portal that pierced the shimmering defense shield. Sulu kept pace beside her, with Murphy alert and watchful an arm's length away. The geologist lagged several steps behind, casting a worried look back at the shuttle that contained his seismic equipment. The thud of booted feet told Uhura that Takcas and the remaining Elasians had boarded it for inspection.
"Lieutenant Chekov won't let them damage any of our equipment, will he?" Mutchler's hushed voice was anxious.
Sulu shook his head. "Not unless they damage him first." He quirked an eyebrow at Uhura while Oben exchanged salutes with the guards at the portal. "I don't remember the Elasians being this obnoxious the last time we met them."
"That's because their Dohlman didn't destroy your quarters," Uhura retorted. "I remember them being exactly this obnoxious."
Sulu grinned in rueful acknowledgment, but said nothing as the burly Elasian led them through the portal and into the mining compound.
Contrary to Uhura's expectations, it was not a luxurious settlement. A brief straggle of metal buildings crammed into the angle formed by a ridge of dark gray rock and the dusty gravel of a dry streambed, leaving just enough room for a furrowed track of road and scattered piles of rock. Away from the shuttle and the defense shield, Uhura noticed the bleak silence of Rakatan for the first time. There was no vegetation on this planet to rustle in the breeze, no small animals to chirp or whistle or hum. All she could hear, very far away and indistinct, was the rhythmic drumming of machinery.
Oben turned onto the equipment track, and they followed him up the dry streambed. From the upper part of the gully, Uhura could see barren mountain slopes converging into a distant, snowcapped peak. She glanced over her shoulder at Scott Mutchler. "Is that the top of Rakatan Mons?"
The geologist smiled and shook his head. "Just one of the parasitic volcanoes on the upper slope. The main crater's hidden behind those clouds." He pointed at the enormous stack of cumulus clouds towering far above the visible peak, almost halfway across the steel blue bowl of sky. Uhura blinked in astonishment. "You hardly ever see Rakatan Mons from the ground. It's so big, it makes its own weather."
Oben paused outside a metal building as raw and spartan as all the rest. "Wait here, until Her Glory decides whether she will see you." He disappeared inside the plasfoam door without pausing for their acknowledgment.
"Judging from his voice, this could be another long wait." Sulu eyed the big gray boulders outside the door, then settled cross-legged on the least jagged one. Uhura perched beside him, knowing that would make Ensign Murphy's job easier. The dark-skinned security guard prowled an invisible perimeter around the two of them, making it just wide enough to include Mutchler, as well. The geologist crouched beside another boulder, peering at it with a small glass hand lens.
"What are you looking at, Dr. Mutchler?" Uhura ran her fingers over the pale pink tracery of some primitive plant embroidered on the rock's sun-baked surface. "The lichen?"
"It's a slime mold," he said absently. "And I've seen it before." He dropped the hand lens into his pocket and swung around, slouching back against the rock with a frustrated sigh. "Dammit, I wish I could figure out exactly what it is they're mining here."
Uhura exchanged considering glances with Sulu. Because she was the commanding officer of the landing party, the decision to share classified information with non-Starfleet personnel was hers to make. She made it. "The Elasians say they're mining dilithium."
"Dilithium!" Mutchler jerked his head up to stare at her with wide gray eyes. After a moment, his astonishment melted into utter indignation. "No way!"
Uhura blinked at the old-fashioned phrase. "Excuse me?"
Mutchler slapped the rock beside him. "There is no way the Elasians or anybody else could be mining dilithium out of these rocks." He saw her doubtful look and bent down, scrabbling a broken shard from the smaller rocks at his feet and tossing it at Sulu. "Here, look at this. What do you see?"
The helmsman caught the rock fragment and held it up to the sunlight so it glittered. Close up, Uhura could see that it wasn't truly gray, but a fine-grained mesh of white and black. "Um—some little white crystals?"
Mutchler nodded approval. "Phenocrysts of plagioclase feldspar. What else?"
Sulu's dark eyes crinkled with amusement. "Some little dark crystals."
"Right. That's amphibole. Now do you see anything in there that looks clear, like quartz?" Both of them shook their heads, puzzled. "That's because there isn't any quartz, not in this kind of rock."
"So?" Sulu asked.
The geologist gave him a surprised look. "No quartz, no dilithium," he said simply. "I thought everybody knew that. One of the reasons we didn't discover dilithium until the twenty-second century was that it's crystallographically identical to quartz." He went on, obviously warming to his subject. "Not only does it have exactly the same lattice and spacing, dilithium forms in the exactly the same kinds of rocks as quartz. Pegmatite veins, mostly, in association with the true lithium minerals such as spodumene and—"
"Dr. Mutchler." Long experience with Spock had taught Uhura to recognize extraneous information when she heard it. "Are you saying that there are no rocks anywhere around here that could contain dilithium?"
The geologist hesitated, frowning. "I wouldn't go that far, I guess. After all, this is a supernova-remnant star system, just like Earth's, so there should be some dilithium in the crust. And Rakatan Mons is the closest thing this planet has to continental crust. If there are dilithium-bearing pegmatite veins anywhere—which I doubt—they're probably underneath it. But even if they were, they'd be buried way too deep to mine. At least five kilometers down, if not more." He sat up, his young face brightening with excitement. "Unless one got carried to the surface as a xenolith!"
"What's a xenolith?" Uhura demanded, surprised by his sudden flare of enthusiasm.
"A foreign rock that gets taken hostage by a volcanic eruption." Mutchler saw the dubious look Sulu slanted him and waved his arms in the air. "No, really, it can happen! The magma that erupts from Rakatan's volcanoes comes from deep in the mantle. All it has to do is break off a chunk of pegmatite from some underground vein it passes on its way up, then carry it up to the surface without melting it. When the magma hardens, you get a blob of dilithium-bearing pegmatite frozen inside."
Sulu cocked his head. "So you really think that the Elasians could be mining dilithium here?"
"No," Mutchler said flatly. "The odds are a thousand to one against there being dilithium pegmatites under Rakatan Mons to begin with. The odds against one of them getting picked up as a xenolith are probably astronomical." A quick grin split his scruff of beard. "But then, so are the odds against there being a volcano as big as Rakatan Mons in this kind of tectonic setting. If there's one thing I've learned about geology on this planet, it's not to play by the odds." He scrambled to his feet and looked around the mining camp. "Now, if I were a dilithium pegmatite ore, what building would I be hiding in?"
Ensign Murphy spun around from the far end of the circle he was pacing. "Sir, I'd rather you didn't—"
It was too late. Mutchler's long strides had taken him out into the road and down toward the last and largest of the metal buildings before the security guard's belated rush could catch him. Ducking around a corner, the geologist disappeared from view.
"Sir?" Quivering like a dog on a leash, Murphy looked over his shoulder at Uhura. "Should I go and bring him back?"
She glanced at the silent door of the Dohlman's residence, and nodded. "Hurry, before anyone else—"
A distant growl and thump interrupted her. Uhura gasped and sprang to her feet, hearing Mutchler's voice break off in midyelp. "Go!" she ordered Murphy, but the security guard was already in motion.
She sprang to her feet and bolted after him with Sulu at her heels. They rounded the corner of the large warehouse together, then nearly slammed into Murphy from behind. The security guard had come to an abrupt stop. Half-hidden as she was behind his broad shoulder, it took Uhura a moment to see why.
Scott Mutchler lay sprawled and groaning outside a doorway guarded by two grim Elasian males. Both of them were large, bare-armed and prodigiously muscled, but it wasn't their size or their scowls that had stopped Ensign Murphy in his tracks.
It was the Klingon disruptors they had leveled at the Enterprise crewman.