tuning, then continued, “… on course 114, mark 31.”
“Intensity reading?” Kirk asked levelly.
“Intensity two at the moment, but a narrow scan indicates the beginning of a build-up.”
Kirk stepped briskly to the science console on the raised deck. “Mr. Helman, verify please,” he ordered, now all starship commander rather than bantering superior. As Helman bent over his instruments, Scott moved back to the engineering console and began to perform his own operations.
Moments later, Helman straightened up and said, “Something’s coming in, all right. How do you read, Mr. Scott?”
“I can verify Chekov’s readings, too, but there’s nae to worrie aboot. The hull shielding’s good to intensity twenty. If the front builds beyond that, we can put up the deflector screens. Except for a nova’s blast, they’ll stop anything long enou’ for us to leave the vicinity.”
“Mr. Helman, if you please,” Kirk said as he stepped to the science console. His strong fingers moved over the colored controls pressing and switching. He studied the results displayed in a small viewing screen.
“I thought so… Mr. Helman, do you see it?” Kirk asked the science officer. “I thought it looked a little odd.” Helman murmured agreement. Turning, Kirk said, “Mr. Sulu, tie the science scanners in with the navigation computer. I want a time factor on that.”
“Aye, sir,” the officer responded and turned with brisk attention to his console.
Kirk remained standing at the science station, but he could see Sulu’s slim fingers dance across the double board. Scott followed suit, running a parallel check.
Sulu suddenly let out a low whistle.
“Problem?” Kirk asked.
“Could be, sir. I’ll recheck,” Sulu replied.
“Ye don’t have to,” Scott said. “My readout checks with yours.” His thick, blunt fingers pressed several switches and a spectrographic image of Kyros’ sun appeared on the forward visual monitor blanking out the image of the planet.
Kirk looked at the picture and heard Scott mutter, ‘That dinna make sense.”
“Explain,” Kirk ordered. He glanced back at the screen as Scott began to talk.
“That radiation front shows a Doppler shift to the violet; a primary sign o’ a star gaein’ nova. But yon spectrograph shows Kyr as quiet an’ calm as a sleepin’ babe. It’s still a placid G5.”
“Are there any novae or supernovae in this quadrant?” Kirk asked Helman.
The science officer replied, frowning, “None detectable, sir. The only possible candidate is a blue Class B main sequence star about nine parsecs away, out of range of our longest range scanners. However, assuming it did blow thirty years ago, the front just reaching us now wouldn’t be much beyond point oh-oh-one because of the square of the distance and all.”
“It has me worried, too, Commander,” Kirk said, noting the frown. “If we don’t know where it is, we can’t be sure of which direction to run in order to avoid it.”
“To run, sir?” Uhura asked from the communications console.
“It’s a possibility right now, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. He turned back to study the peaceful spectrograph still on the monitor. “All right, gentlemen, keep after it I want to know as much about that front as we can learn in the shortest possible time. If you haven’t licked it by the time Spock and the others beam up, I’ll detail him to help you.” Kirk’s voice took on a small note of worry. “If he’s feeling up to it”
Uhura spoke up again, concern in her voice. “What’s wrong with Mr.. Spock?” Her deep respect for both the captain and the half-human first officer sometimes manifested itself in a maternal fashion.
“He’s been feeling the effects of his implant a little more strongly than the others on the survey detail, though he’s assured me he can control it,” Kirk replied. “If he’s still acting as strangely as he did the night before last, I’ll have to order McCoy to remove it. It seems that Mr. Speck’s dop is giving him a real migraine.”
“Dop?” Scott asked as he walked from the engineering console to the gap in the rail which ran around the inner edge of the upper deck. “What the divil is a dop?”
“Dop is from an old German word—doppleganger—meaning the ghostly double of a living person. Ensign George made it up,” Kirk replied.
He peered at the monitor screen a final time. “I’ll be in my quarters until the team is beamed up. Keep on that front and call me if there’s any change.” He turned to Scott. “Coming, Mr. Scott?”
Once in his cabin. Kirk lay down on his bunk. Behind him, and built into the bulkhead, was a cabinet. Kirk reached back, rolling over onto his stomach as he did so. From a small shelf of real books, rather than microtapes, he took a dog-eared copy of Xenophon’s Anabasis. He flopped onto his back, opened the book, and began to read for the hundredth time that ancient Greek’s account of being trapped in hostile territory a thousand miles from home, and of the months of battles, marches, and countermarches until, at long last, the small army of mercenaries arrived safely home. Unstated in the matter-of-fact account, but apparent behind the scenes, was the loneliness of command, the agonizing decisions that tune and again had saved the isolated band from certain destruction. Kirk approved of Xenophon. Born a few millennia later, that worthy would have made a brilliant starship commander.
The captain had just reached the point in the battle of Cunaxa where the Persian commander Cyrus was killed, when the intraship communicator bleeped.
“Kirk here.”
“Transporter Room One, Lieutenant Rogers, sir. Lieutenant Dawson requests permission to have Ensign George and Lieutenant Peters beamed up ahead of schedule. He says they’re both having dop trouble.”
“What kind?”
“The beggar Peters is linked with also picks pockets. Peters says that if he gets preoccupied and forgets to override his dop’s normal behavioral patterns, his hands keep sliding into other people’s pockets. He finds it so distracting that he can’t concentrate on his duties.”
“And Ensign George?”
“She can’t seem to keep her hands off men, sir—and vice versa.”
Kirk sighed. Every time he decided to allow himself the luxury of spending a few hours with his nose in a book, something came along to spoil it.
“Permission granted. Beam them up and tell them to report to Dr. McCoy. Are the rest of the party having any similar problems?”
“Nothing they can’t handle, sir.”
“How about Commander Spock?”
“I don’t know, sir. He hasn’t reported in since he beamed down yesterday morning. That’s not like him.”
“He’s probably on the trail of something ‘fascinating,’” Kirk said. “We’ll hear all about it when he beams up tonight. Kirk out.”
He cut communication, looked longingly at his book, closed it reluctantly, and put it to one side. He switched on the intraship communicator again and called the sickbay.
The voice that answered belonged to the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. Leonard McCoy, the only member of the crew with whom the captain could associate on terms of human friendship rather than command.
“Evening, Bones. We’ve got problems,” Kirk began.
“Anything serious?” McCoy asked.
“The dop links,” Kirk continued. “Drawing on a native’s brain for language and other behavior is great in theory, especially when the native isn’t aware of it. But too much is coming across in some cases. Two of
Dawson’s party are having trouble controlling the dop input and he’s asked to have them beamed up early. I’ve given permission and told them to report to you, but I’d rather you put someone else on it and come up to my quarters. I’d like to discuss this whole thing.”
“Sure thing, Jim,” McCoy replied amiably. “I’ll have Mbenga handle it, he helped with the original surgery. I’ll also bring along a little something to help lubricate our thinking.”
It was going to be a long evening. Kirk stripped, stepped into a shower cabinet set in one bulkhead, and set it for frigid needle spray. He gasped as the high pressure jets buffeted his taut, muscular body, massaging and cleansing at the same time. The water cut off abruptly and was replaced by a blast of hot air which dried him in seconds. He stepped out of the cabinet and pulled on a fresh uniform.
“Good timing, Bones,” he said as his cabin door hissed open and McCoy stepped in. The doctor carried a
