finished, the lift doors slid open and Flynn stepped out onto the bridge.
“Yes, Mr. Spock?”
He turned toward her. “Commander Flynn, our mission here involves your section. Tomorrow morning Dr. Georges Mordreaux will board and we will convey him to Rehabilitation Colony Seven.”
She frowned very slightly. Rehab Seven was in this system; it was in opposition to Aleph Prime right now, but still that meant it was only about two astronomical units away: a trivial distance for a starship, almost an insult, and she must realize that.
“If he were a V.I.P. you wouldn’t have called me,” Flynn said. “I take it that means he’ll be in custody.”
“That is correct.” He knew she was waiting for more information, but he had none to offer. However, Captain Kirk’s statement to Ian Braithewaite, that security would have to prepare for Dr. Mordreaux’s arrival, suited his plans, and he saw no reason not to make the statement true in retrospect. “We have our orders, Commander Flynn,” he said. “Please secure the V.I.P. cabin for Dr. Mordreaux’s use.”
Spock waited for the stream of questions and objections that would have come from the previous security commander, when he was asked for performance out of the ordinary, but the new commander behaved in quite a different manner.
“All right, Mr. Spock,” she said. “What’s Dr. Mordreaux been convicted of?”
Spock found it difficult to tell her, because he disbelieved the accusations so strongly. “Unethical research on self-aware subjects,” he finally said. “And ... murder.”
“Mr. Spock,” Flynn said carefully, in a tone that offered information rather than criticism, “the detention
cells are considerably more secure than my people can make a cabin by tomorrow. And the cells aren’t dungeons; they’re fairly comfortable.”
“I am aware of the security problem, Commander Flynn, as is Captain Kirk. I am putting my trust in your abilities. The prisoner will be confined in the V.I.P. cabin.”
“Then I will have the cabin secured, Mr. Spock.”
“I have posted a liberty schedule for all the crew except your section. I leave that arrangement to your judgment.”
She glanced at the terminal, where the screen held the security roster ready for assignment. She picked out several officers with electronics background: four people, as many as could work efficiently on the energy screens.
“Everyone else can go down to Aleph,” she said. “Since we aren’t responding to a system-wide emergency.”
“No, the orders are simply to transport Dr. Mordreaux. Thank you for your cooperation, Commander Flynn. If I can be of any help to you in making the preparations—”
“My people can handle it, Mr. Spock, but thanks.”
He nodded, and the security commander left the bridge.
By the time Mandala Flynn got off the turbo lift she could hear the whoops of delight as the liberty schedule went up on all the ship’s general communication terminals. She was as glad as the others that a call to a disaster had turned instead into a few hours of freedom. She had to admit, though, that in two months on the Enterprise she had sometimes wished for some incident, some conflict, that was real instead of only practice.
You could have stayed in the border patrol, she told herself, flying back and forth and up and down the same limiting plane of space, fighting the occasional skirmish, risking your life and getting shot up, until they retired you to a backwater Starbase somewhere.
Her ambitions aimed higher than that. She was not satisfied with what was known; the unknown fascinated her. That was one reason she had grabbed for the unexpected opportunity to transfer to the Enterprise : not for cross-system detours like the current bit of bureaucratic nonsense, but exploration, new worlds, the real thing. Even if once in a while it meant spending six weeks staring down into a naked singularity.
Flynn wanted experience on this ship because, in time, she intended to command it or one like it herself. The limits of Federation worlds were far too narrow for her. She was a child of interstellar space, comfortable with it, attuned to it. She belonged in the vanguard of discovery.
And if you ever find what you’re looking for, she thought, if you ever even figure out what it is you’re looking for—what will you do then?
She pushed her musings aside as she entered the security duty room, where the four officers she had chosen were already waiting for her.
When Spock was alone, he opened a communications channel to the station and began his real task, that of obtaining as much information about Dr. Mordreaux’s recent past as he could find.
First he requested the records on the professor’s trial from Aleph Prime’s housekeeping computer.
The request bounced back: NO INFORMATION. The tape should be a matter of public record.
Spock tried again, appending his security clearance, which should have been sufficient to overcome almost every level of classification. His request was refused.
He tried several other possible repositories of criminal records, and found nothing. The news services carried no notices whatever in their indices of Dr. Mordreaux’s arrest, conviction, or sentencing; he held no listing in the station directory. Spock pushed himself away from the information terminal and considered what to do next.
Perhaps the professor had been living under an alias, but that did not explain his disappearance from judicial records, which would have used his real name. Spock considered possibilities, made a decision, and proceeded to deceive the Aleph computers without mercy. Their defenses were adequate for normal purposes—they were not, after all, ordinarily concerned with any particularly sensitive matters—but insubstantial compared to Spock’s ability to break them.
And still he could find no useful information. The trial tapes simply did not exist, at least in the computer’s data banks. Whoever had classified Dr. Mordreaux’s case had done an extremely efficient job of it. Either the records had been wiped out—a breach of the constitution of the Federation—or they still existed but no longer interfaced with the information network at all.
Mandala met Hikaru in the gym. He smiled when he saw her, and sealed the collar and shoulder fastenings of his fencing jacket.
“I didn’t know if this lesson was still on,” she said.
“It’d take a lot more disruption of the schedule for me to cancel it,” Hikaru said. “But I didn’t know if you’d be able to come.”
“I have to check the new shields when they’re up,” she said, “but till then all I could do would be watch over everybody’s shoulders and make them nervous. They’ll be finished about the same time you and I are. Then we’re all going down to Aleph for some fun. It’s on my tab. Want to come?”
“Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
Mandala tossed him a book. He caught the small cassette.
“What’s this?”
“What do you think of old Earth novels? Pre-spaceflight, I mean?”
“I love them,” he said. “I think The Three Musketeers is my favorite.”
“My favorite Dumas is The Count of Monte Cristo .” “Have you read The Virginian ?”
“Sure—it’s most fun in Ancient Modern English. How about The Time Machine ?”
“That’s a good one.Frankenstein ?”
“Sure.Islandia ?”
“Uh-huh. I read someplace they’re finally planning to bring out the unedited facsimile edition.”
Mandala laughed. “How long have they been saying that? I wish they would, though.”
Hikaru glanced curiously at the cassette she had given him; she gestured toward it with her foil.
“That one’s Babel-17,” she said. “It’s just about my favorite. Delany’s great.”
“I never heard of it. When was it published?”
“Old calendar, nineteen sixty-six.”
“That doesn’t count as pre-space-flight.”
“Sure it does.”
“Oh—you must start at the first moon landing. I start from Sputnik I.”
“Traditionalist. Hey—that means you haven’t read Sibyl Sue Blue , either. Are you going to turn down terrific books because we disagree about twelve years?”
