“Aye, aye, sir,” Sulu replied crisply, and punched in the command.
“Mr. Spock—” Kirk turned toward the science officer.
“Have you ever thought of going on the stage?”
“No, sir. Why?”
“Your performance last night was superb: all the emotional nuances were just right. You played the role of Chag Gara so convincingly that I had no reason not to continue to believe you were Spock.”
“But I was, Captain,” Spock said blandly.
“I mean Messiah Spock.”
“But I wasn’t. Chag Gara was the Messiah.”
“I know that now,” Kirk said defensively. “All I was trying to say was… Oh, to hell with it. I’m glad you’re back and everything finally got ironed out, though I’ll admit that I got confused when the messiah on horseback—or neelot-back as the case may be—rode up alongside the messiah driving the caravan.”
The turbo-lift doors hissed open and McCoy stepped out. Kirk broke off his conversation with his first officer with a distinct feeling of relief.
“That was a little too close for comfort, Jim,” he said.
Kirk nodded. “But we beat radiation redline by several hours. Once we’re out of the storm area we’ll contact Starfleet and feed them our data. Maybe they can figure out where it’s coming from.”
“That won’t be necessary, Captain. The answer is quite obvious.”
Kirk turned and looked at his science officer. “Is it, Mr. Spock? Would you enlighten us, please?”
“I believe that is my usual function,” Spock said, cocking an eyebrow. “The storm is corning from Epsilon lonis, a black-hole binary.”
“We considered that, but it’s impossible. That double is thirty light years away. If the companion star has novaed since we checked it out last month, it will still be three decades before radiation from the explosion could reach Kyros. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light.”
“That’s interesting, Captain,” Spock said. “I was under the impression that we were exceeding that by two hundred and sixteen times at this very moment.”
“I was talking about normal space, Mr. Spock. Sub-space is quite a different matter.”
“Indeed it is,” the Vulcan replied, “and the storm is coming through it from lonis at Warp Ten.”
“But how?”
“We have a fascinating situation here, sir,” Spock explained. “With lonis we have a black hole going around a recent nova in a highly elliptical orbit. During the last several weeks it’s been rushing toward perihelion, scooping up more and more radiation as it accelerates hi. Since the gravitational field of a black hole is so intense that radiation cannot escape, internal pressure built up to the point where the space-time continuum itself warped and the energy pouring in from the nova primary is spouting into sub-space like water from a giant fire hose. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the other side of the warp is in the area around Kyr. It’s really quite simple, Captain—if, of course, you stop to think about it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “I’m happy to see that your recent messianic activities haven’t impaired your analytical ability. One more question: how long before that black hole will be far enough along from perihelion so that its energy output will no longer be a problem?”
“Not more than two weeks, sir,” Spock replied.
“Good. We’ll return to Kyros then and complete our survey.” He turned to McCoy and said in a voice loud enough to be heard by Spock, “I understand that Mr. Spock has withdrawn from the survey team. Pity. For a while there he seemed almost human.”
Not giving the first officer a chance to reply, Kirk went on, “By the time we get back, Bones, you should have all of Gara’s paranoid kinks straightened out We’ll block all memory of what happened up here. When he goes back to preaching, he’ll be able to use that power of his to heal wounds instead of making them.” He stretched luxuriously. “You know, Bones, I think before we leave Kyros for good, you and I have a bit of shore leave coming after our hair grows back.” Kirk brushed his fingers along the Beshwa cut he still had.
“Sounds good,” McCoy said. “I’d like to see how Ker Kaseme is getting along.”
“That isn’t quite what I had in mind,” Kirk said.
“It surely isn’t vris—is it? I’ve had enough of that—”
Kirk replied loudly in a vigorous negative, cutting the doctor off.
“But why else would you want to visit? Sara’s dop couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it?”
“Why, Bones, you know me better than that.”
McCoy grinned. “Do I, Jim?” He turned to go and then paused. “Shall I drop by your quarters a little later? We still have some unfinished business—namely, an almost full bottle of Canopian brandy.”
Kirk nodded. It was going to be a good evening—an hour or so with an old friend, and then to bed, to march once again through the mountains of Persia with Xenophon and his beleaguered hoplitcs.
“Would you care to join us, Mr. Spock?”
The Vulcan looked up from the science console, lifted an eyebrow, and said, “If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I already have my evening scheduled. My inside look at the depths of emotion has merely added another datum to my conviction that the Vulcan way of programming leisure time is much more logical.”
“Three-dimensional chess, Mr. Spock?”
“Of course, Captain.”
“With Ensign George, perhaps, Mr. Spock?”
“With the ship’s computer, sir. I prefer an opponent who can keep its mind on the game.”
