same time?”
“Surely—ye dinna think Mr. Spock is involved in the captain’s death!”
“I think something extremely peculiar is going on. You encountered it, and so did I. If Captain Kirk had paid attention to you yesterday, it’s possible he’d still be alive. Mr. Scott, I don’t pretend to understand what’s happened, not yet. All I’ve got is suppositions, which I don’t want to throw around. Without proof, they’re slander, for one thing, but more important, suspicion’s hard to take back once you’ve cast it.”
“Aye, that’s true,” Scott said, impressed despite himself, for he had been unable to talk over his worries with anyone—even in the hopes that they would show him some simple, undeniable reason why he was wrong—for just that reason. “And hard to take it out of one’s own mind ...” He stopped, not wanting to say any more, wishing he had not said as much.
The trailed-off phrase tantalized Ian, but it was too soon to follow it up directly. He asked a question that seemed to change the subject but actually did not.
“Mr. Scott, did Mr. Spock ever offer any explanation for his being in the transporter room? Any reason at all?”
“Ye heard all he ha’ said to me on the subject. And right after that, Captain Kirk...”
“Yes, of course.” Ian rubbed his temples: the headache had never really gone away, and now it had begun to intensify.
“Are ye all right? Do ye need some water?”
“Yes, please.” Braithewaite blinked to try to dispel the double vision. He closed his eyes tight for a
moment; that was better. He wondered what the early symptoms of hypermorphic botulism were. Scott handed him a glass of water and he drank it gratefully.
“Ye dinna look at all well,” Scott said.
“I’m not feeling too well, but I’m upset and I’m angry and that’s making it worse. Mr. Scott, could a person be beamed from some spot on the Enterprise to some other spot?”
“Well... one could beam from one place, to the transporter room, then to another place. Ye’d have to materialize on the platform in between. ‘Twould be a most lazy and energy-intensive thing to do. Verra wasteful”
“But it could be done.”
“Aye.”
“Mr. Scott, suppose someone beamed Dr. Mordreaux out of his cell to the transporter ...”
The engineer did not alter his expression as Ian spoke, but involuntarily he turned dead white.
‘The possibility does exist,” Ian said.
“Well...”
“Your objections are—?”
“The cabin was shielded, alarms were set. If someone tried it, we’d know. And it shouldna be possible to push a transporter beam through the energy-field.”
“The shields must have been put in place around the cabin specifically for this trip. They might not be completely secure. Or perhaps the beam was boosted, and the alarms turned off.”
“That would be a verra complicated business.”
“But it could be done?”
“Perhaps. But only by a few people.”
Ian waited.
“I could ha’ done it.”
“Only you?”
“Mr. Spock...”
Braithewaite started to speak, but Scott was shaking his head.
“Nae,” Scott said. “This is all wrong. It isna possible.”
Braithewaite rubbed his knuckles in frustration. It had seemed so workable: beam Mordreaux out of his
cell, then beam him to the empty turbo lift waiting at the bridge; he would get out, fire at the captain, and enter the lift again. His accomplice would beam him back to the transporter room, thence to his cell. But unless Scott were covering for someone—and Ian did not believe he was—his expertise would have to be a guide away from a tempting but inaccurate path.
“Nay,” Scott said. “That isna quite what happened.” He paused, and drew a deep breath. “The shields are designed to scramble any transporter beam, it’s no’ possible to power through them whatever the strength.” He looked at Ian, resignation and betrayal in his expression. “Someone who knows the security systems of this ship verra well, who knows how they all interrelate, cut the alarm webs and the shields for an instant, and then, before either could reform—they take a few seconds—that was when the beaming could be done. It could be done several times, and no one would be likely to notice.”
“Who would be able to arrange it?”
“The captain could ha’ done it, or the security commander. I could ha’ done it.”
“The security commander. That’s interesting.” Ian had been told Flynn was ambitious, but she was poorly educated and she was stateless as well; it did not seem to him that she had much chance of advancing any farther. His suspicions intensified. “Anyone else, Mr. Scott?”
“Or... Mr. Spock.” Scott said the last reluctantly, all too aware of what that meant in terms of his altercation with the science officer.
“Someone else could ha’ learned, somehow,” he said abruptly.
“But you saw Mr. Spock in the transporter room only a few minutes before the attack. And he denied being there.”
“Aye,” Scott said miserably. “I canna believe it... I couldna believe it if I hadna seen Mr. Spock wi’ my verra own eyes, and talked wi’ him.” As always under severe stress, his accent grew stronger. “I canna believe it. There must be another explanation. There must be.”
Ian Braithewaite gazed down at his long-fingered hands. Not quite enough: better to get more evidence, more witnesses.
“Mr. Scott, we’d best not speak of this to anyone else, for the time being. It’s all circumstantial, and of course you’re right. There could be another explanation. It could be some dreadful accident.” He stood up.
“Ye dinna believe that, do ye?”
“I wish I did.” He clapped Scott gently on the shoulder and started away.
“Mr. Braithewaite,” Scott said, a little too loudly.
Braithewaite turned back.
“There is another explanation, ye know.”
“Please tell me.”
“I’m making it all up, about Mr. Spock. To protect myself and divert suspicion to him.”
Braithewaite looked at him for several seconds. “Mr. Scott, I hope that if I’m ever in an uncomfortable position, I have a friend around who’s half as loyal as you.”
In the records office, Dr. McCoy requested from the computer the wills of James T. Kirk and Mandala Flynn.
Flynn’s will was a cold, impersonal document, written, not even audio-taped, and stored in the ship’s memory in facsimile. It said no more than to use whatever pay she might have accrued for a wake—McCoy managed to smile a little, at that, for his own will reserved a small portion of his estate for the same purpose—and to bury her on a world, it did not matter which one, so long as it was living.
Flynn’s will was unusual, for she had bequeathed nothing and mentioned no one. Half by accident, most ship people acquired souvenirs of the places they had visited, exotic, alien artifacts to keep or to give to friends and family back home. But according to boarding records the security commander had arrived with very few possessions, and according to her personnel file she not only had no living relatives, she had no official home world, either. She had been born in deep space, in transit between two out-of-the-way star systems; neither of her parents was a native of either. They had been members of a trading vessel,Mitra , which sailed under a flag of convenience; Flynn’s mother had been evacuated as a child from a world now deserted, part of a buffer zone between Federation and Romulan space, and her father was born in an artificial colony that went bankrupt and
