I am nevertheless quite certain of my facts.”
Kirk felt a faint stir of reborn suspicion, but he thrust it down. The evidence in favor of Spock Two was now overwhelming, and Kirk would just have to put up with whatever minor mysteries still remained in that sector.
“Very well. Then our present problems are, to fight the effect of the shield long enough for the three of us to locate the Organians and the Klingon generator down on the surface, and to give Mr. Scott whatever technical and logistic support he needs to knock the shield down, before Klingon reinforcements arrive, or Spock One can complete whatever plan he has in mind. Does that cover the ground to everyone’s satisfaction?”
Apparently it did, and a good thing too, for after that nonstop sentence Kirk was almost out of breath.
“Then I will put Sulu in command, with the same instructions I gave him during the first Organian expedition. His first duty will be to the ship, not to us, and if a Klingon fleet shows up in this quadrant, he’s to abandon us and get the Enterprise to safety — or anyhow, to Within useful distance of a Star base. But we shall have to move very fast.”
“Captain,” Spock Two said, “there is one further difficulty — potentially, at least.”
“What is it?”
“I mentioned that the emotional effects of being under the screen may be far worse than those we experienced outside it. It is by no means certain that any of us will be able to function in such a situation. We may not even be able to retain our sanity.”
“I understood that. And that’s why I want you along — in addition to the fact that only you and I know any of the Organians personally. The Vulcan half of your mind may resist the pressure long enough to complete the assignment if both Mr. Scott and I crack under the strain. Hence also the orders to Sulu; if the three of us don’t survive on Organia, he’s not to undertake any quixotic rescue missions…”
“Calling Captain Kirk,” Uhura’s voice said from the intercom.
“In quarters, Lieutenant; go ahead.”
“Sir, we have a reply in from Starfleet Command, finally. We are ordered to confine both our first officers to the brig until they can be studied by an Earthside team of experts. In the meantime, we are to attempt to rejoin the Fleet, causing as much depredation to the Klingon Empire along the way as you think consistent with the survival of the Enterprise.”
Well, it was nice of Command to leave him that much leeway, stale though the orders were otherwise. Orders, however, were orders — or were they?
“Lieutenant Uhura, in what code is the reply?”
“Eurish, sir. Very stiff Eurish — what’s called the Dalton recension.”
“What level of confidence do you place in your decoding?”
“I can’t give you a chi-square assessment, Captain. But I’d guess my translation of the surface meaning has a seventy-five per cent chance of being right, presuming that there were no garbles in transmission.”
“That doesn’t satisfy me. I don’t want to act on those orders until you are absolutely sure you know exactly what the message says. Do you follow me, Lieutenant?”
“I think, Captain,” Uhura said, with the ghost of a fat African chuckle, “that I get that message without any static. Communications out.”
“Kirk out…All right, Scotty go repair your transporter, line up your equipment and prepare to march.”
The engineering officer nodded and went out. Kirk added, “Doc, make whatever preparations you can think of to cushion us against the effects of orbiting about that shield. I think you’re safe to disassemble the construction in your lab and put that back in order too. But be sure you get a photographic record of it as it comes apart, for the benefit of any eventual court of inquiry.”
“Will do, Jim.”
He too left, leaving no one behind in Kirk’s quarters but the first officer. Kirk looked at him in some surprise.
“I thought my orders were clear. Transmit them to Mr. Sulu, and take all necessary steps to ready the mission for departure as soon as Mr. Scott has the transporter back in standard operating condition.”
“Very good, Captain.” But still the first officer hesitated. “Sir — may I ask why you persist in addressing me as ‘Spock Two’? Are you still in some doubt about my bona fides? Such a doubt would seriously compromise both our performances on the proposed Organian mission.”
“I am in no doubt at all,” Kirk said gently. “But there still exists another Spock, or rather a pseudo Spock, at large somewhere — and furthermore, he’s wearing my ring, which I would have given to no other man in the universe. As long as that man survives, I’m going to go on numbering both of you, in order to remind myself that the problem of the two Spocks is not yet completely solved — and that as long as it is not, and that we do not know what it is that Spock One intends, we continue to stand in the shadow of the unknown.”
“I see,” Spock Two said. “A useful mnemonic device.”
His face and his voice were as expressionless as ever, but something told Kirk nevertheless that he was faintly pleased.
Chapter Eleven — CUE FOR NIGHTMARE
From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4198.0:
The very close, cooperative analysis of our present situation by Messrs. Scott, McCoy and Spock Two, and Lieutenant Uhura’s instant understanding of the necessity for thorough, unambiguous decoding of the message from Starfleet Command, seems to indicate that both morale and performance among the department heads is returning to normal levels. This is none too soon, for we are still in serious danger from at least three known directions, and the burden of ending the war rests squarely on US; Starfleet Command has discounted Spock Two’s analysis of Klingon Strategy, it seems, because of the possibility (still real to them) that he might be the replicate — and in consequence is still losing battles.
Mr. Scott and his staff have reconverted the transporter and we are now preparing to embark to Organia, as planned. From this hour until my return, this log will be kept by Mr. Sulu.
It took less than two hours to put the Enterprise into a standard orbit around Organia; but even at the maximum range beyond which the transporter would not function — sixteen thousand miles — the emotional effect of the thought-shield on the officers and crew was so profound that it took another forty-eight before anyone was working at even half his usual efficiency. And even this much would not have been possible had not McCoy, in a vast breach of his usual preference, doled out huge quantities of tranquillizer and antidepressant pills. These Spock Two refused to take except upon direct order from the Captain, but for everyone else they were an absolute necessity.
There were no new Klingon ships in the vicinity yet. Harsh, clacking calls on subspace radio, however, made it clear that they were on the way.
Nevertheless, the transporter room, once more its old familiar self, shimmered out of existence on schedule around Kirk, Scott and Spock Two. The transporter officer had set up the same coordinates that had been used for the very first visit to Organia. Then, the arrival site had looked quite like a rural, fourteenth-century English village, complete with thatched cottages, oxcarts and people in homespun in the streets, and a lowering, ruined castle as massive as Caernarvon in the distance. The village had turned out, by no accident, to contain the chambers of the planet’s Council of Elders; all this had actually been an illusion arranged by the Organians for the accommodation of their visitors and the preservation of their own peace. But it had been completely convincing — until Commander Kor and his Klingon occupation force had shown up, polite, mail-clad and utterly ruthless.
But there was nothing like that village here now. Instead, the three Starship officers seemed to have materialized in the midst of a vast tumble of raw, broken rock, stretching away to the horizon in all directions. Overhead, the sky was an even gray, without even a brighter spot to show where Organia’s sun might stand; and the air, although nearly motionless, was thin and bitingly cold. To Kirk, this wasteland was overwhelmingly depressing, like that of a planet which had lost its last beetle and shred of lichen a million years before.
As indeed it might have, for Organia’s sun was a first-generation star and the Organians themselves had evolved beyond the need of bodies or other physical comforts well before the Earth had even been born. As for the
