check to be sure they’re set on low-intensitystun. We may have to beam down for a rescue operation, and I want a minimum amount of force.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Pulaski replied, switching off.
“Do you think that will be necessary, Jim?” McCoy asked.
“I hope not, Bones, I hope not,” Kirk replied.
Kirk forced himself to relax as he waited for word of his science officer. McCoy placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Jim. Old Spock’s indestructible. He’s never walked into a situation he couldn’t handle.”
“Captain!” It was the transporter room again.
“Yes?”
“I have Lieutenant Dawson on, but I think you’d better speak to him directly. Mr. Spock wasn’t where he was supposed to be.”
“Put him on the main visual monitor, Lieutenant,” Kirk said. He turned to Uhura. “Pick up Dawson’s transmission and patch into the visual on his tricorder.”
The communications officer nodded. Pressing several buttons, she picked the transmission up from Kyros. The graph of the radiation storm that was bearing down on the Enterprise with increasing intensity disappeared from the screen. There was a flicker and a picture of the inn room below (that served as a rendezvous point and transporter pick-up location for the survey party) appeared. In the center of the picture was a weirdly masked figure. Underneath the mask, Kirk knew, was a young dark-haired lieutenant. He was dressed as a hillman of Kyros.
The most arresting aspect of his costume of leather vest and short cape was the hood, which fitted over the wearer’s shaven head. Dawson’s was dark blue-dyed leather with white, slanting lines under narrow eye slits. Only his lips were exposed between similar slits. Two small holes let air into his nostrils. A thicker leather cap was sewn onto the hood and slotted, triangular flaps extended below Dawson’s nape. Small strings dangled where the hood was laced together along the temples.
“Report,” snapped Kirk.
“I must have been given the wrong coordinates, sir,” Dawson began. “On our grid map of the city, according to the bearings I was given, Mr. Spock, or at least his communicator, was in a small square not far from here. We went there, but it was completely deserted. I took a chance and called the transporter room to check the coordinates. Rogers gave me the same coordinates but, sir, Mr. Spock wasn’t there. What should we do now?”
“Send the others out to search for him,” Kirk said. “His hood is green and yellow, isn’t it?”
“Aye, sir,” Dawson replied.
“He should be easy to spot, then. You stay at the inn as liaison. I’m going to the transporter room to see if something is wrong with the locator board. If it’s not malfunctioning, I’ll be down shortly to direct search operations. Kirk out.”
Dawson faded off the main screen. Kirk’s inner worry didn’t show on his face as he rose swiftly from his command chair. He strained to keep his emotional responses bottled up at all times; so, for the benefit of those around him, he seemed to meet even the most desperate situation with an air of confident composure. That’s why Kirk so enjoyed his occasional hours with Dr. McCoy, when he could unbend and become a mere human.
“Sulu, take the con. I’ll be in Transporter Room One, if you need me. McCoy, come with me.”
When Kirk and McCoy entered the transporter room, it seemed empty. The circular transporter stage with its six personnel plates was on his left. The main control console was to his right and ahead of him. From a door in a niche next to the transporter stage, he heard a familiar Scots’ burr.
“Itcannabe!”
“What can’t, Scotty?” Kirk asked, stepping up to the compartment where much of the transporter’s equipment was.
Scott and Rogers looked up from a partially disassembled electronic module.
“Look,” Scott said, pointing to a junction box. “Someone has tinkered with the locator circuit tuned to Mr. Spock’s communicator in such a way that the readout on the board seems perfectly normal. That shunt, there, and the one right next to it,” he pointed to two tiny connections with his synchronic meter, “give a coordinate readout on the board that looks perfectly normal, but actually the tight beam connection between the ship and the communicator has been cut. It’s a braw piece o’ work. We’d have had nae reason to suspect anything was wrong if Mr. Dawson hadnae checked the coordinates and found nae’an there. But why would anybody want us to think Mr. Spock was in one place when actually he was someplace else?”
“I wonder if…” The transporter officer’s voice trailed off and he shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense, either.”
“What?” Kirk demanded.
“Yeoman Jenkins was on duty here the night before last. He mentioned that Mr. Spock came in about oh- two-hundred, and sent him to check something in the Jeffries tube—the tight beam antenna, that was it. Anyway, when Jenkins came back, about a half-hour later, he found Mr. Spock gone. It seemed strange to him that Mr. Spock would leave the station unmanned, even though no one was down at Kyros at the time. He was bothered by it and by Mr. Spock’s manner. He said there was something almost furtive about it.” Rogers fell silent.
“Well, whatever his problem is, we’ve got to get him up here at once,” Kirk said. “But before we can do that, we have to find out where he is. Scotty, how long before you can straighten out the locator circuit and get Spock’s coordinates?”
For an answer, Scott put down the synchronic meter, removed a small disassembler from a repair kit, and removed the shunt.
“Ready now, sir,” he said. “We’ll snap this module back in the locator board an’ have the answer in a second.” He picked up the component gently, carried it to the transporter room console, crawled underneath the console, and replaced the unit. He replaced the inspection plate, came out from under, pressed a button for a circuit tester and nodded in satisfaction as green lights appeared.
“Now we’ll find him,” Scott said. He checked a display for the communicator frequency assigned to Spock. “If it were anyone else but our Vulcan friend, I’d guess he had a lassie down there and didna want us to ken where he was, during his more loving moments. It must be sair hard to mate once every seven years. Whatever his reasons were for his tinkering, if it was he, they weren’t the usual ones.”
“The coordinates, if you please, Mr. Scott,” Kirk demanded impatiently.
“Coming up, sir,” Scott said. He pressed a button.
The locator board remained black.
“I thought you had the circuit straightened out!” Kirk said.
Scott swore softly and his fingers punched button after button. The green lights continued to come on. Finally, the engineer threw up his hands in baffled discouragement.
“Well, Scotty?” Kirk asked.
“It’s no good, sir. The circuits are all right, but Mr. Spock has vanished!”
CHAPTER THREE
“That tears it,” Scott murmured. “You can see for yourself, sir, Mr. Spock is gone. Where, I dinna ken, but gone he is.”
“At the least, the locator circuit on his “communicator isn’t responding to our signal,” Kirk said. He thought for a moment. “I wonder if that radiation front could be interfering with our locating frequencies?”
“I’ll check,” Scott said. “We’ll see if Dawson’s communicator is responding.” He fed its frequency into the locator and pressed a button. Instantly, a series of bright green numerals appeared on the screen set in the face of the console.
“We’re getting through, at least,” Kirk said. “Check those against Dawson’s location.”
Scott nodded and bent over the console. A second later, a map of the city of Andros appeared on the viewing screen, a grid superimposed on it. When Dawson’s coordinates were compared against where the board said he
