Star Trek: The Original Series - 147 - Devil’s Bargain (12 page)

“I hope it’s
very
shortly,” said Kirk. “Time is one thing we don’t have very much of.”

“I believe the Horta understand this as well,” answered Spock.

Five minutes later, Slider Dan inched toward Spock and signaled, with the bright glow on his carapace that resembled the flow of magma underneath a rocky crust, that he was ready to reestablish the mind meld. When Spock did so, there was only one sentence communicated.

We wish to show you something, and we wish to ask you a question.

Come with you? Where?

To the place that only Speaker from the Stars may know. The other humans will have to remain. Only you may accompany us to this place.

I will need to consult with my captain,
answered Spock.

Of course,
replied the Horta.

Spock pulled back from the mind meld long enough to address Kirk. “Captain, Slider Dan wishes me to accompany him deeper under the planet surface. Furthermore, he does not wish anyone but me to come along with him.”

Kirk did not look pleased.

“Spock, do you sense any danger?”

“I do not,” Spock answered. “I believe he wants to show me something important to the Horta, and doing so may further our mission.”

“All right,” Kirk said. “Go. But be careful, Spock.”

“Understood, Captain.”

•   •   •

Spock wondered if his following the Horta away might seem a bit zombie-like to those who were watching. While he was aware of what his body was doing, he was distracted by maintaining the link and could not achieve a fluid physical motion. Spock walked after the Horta into one of the tunnel entrances. It seemed a random tunnel, not unlike the other ones, but he knew from the Horta’s thoughts that this was a special passageway that
led somewhere important, somewhere no man had gone before.

After he had entered the top tunnel and walked ninety-one meters, Spock turned to get a glimpse of where he had come from. A group of Horta had moved in behind them and, to Spock’s puzzlement, they closed the tunnel up entirely, forming it back into solid rock. He would not be coming back this way.

You will now need to leave your communicator here in the tunnel,
said Slider Dan.
We know this device might be traced, and we do not wish to reveal where we are taking you.

Very well,
Spock answered. He dropped his communicator and followed the Horta onward, into the darkness.

Eight

Captain’s log, Stardate 6408.6. On the mining outpost of Janus VI, Mister Spock, after having mind melded with the Horta, has disappeared into a tunnel of the planetoid. I expected Spock to return shortly, but he has been gone for over two hours. Meanwhile, the Vesbian ambassadors and I have been waiting for word. Time is not on our side. With no sign of Spock, I have determined to venture into the depths to seek him out. If the operation to save Vesbius is to succeed, we must be on our way soon. If we do not, it won’t matter whether we are able to recruit the Horta’s help. The colony will be doomed.

Kirk paced around the Horta egg chamber in consternation. After Spock had stepped into the tunnel, the Horta had begun to retreat from the area. Several dozen of them went down the tunnel after Spock and then suddenly its entrance had been closed. This surprised Kirk, and it seemed ominous. Spock had followed the Horta peacefully, but the captain had to ask himself now how much of that
had been Spock and how much might have been the effect of being submerged in a group mind. There was no way he would be able to find Spock unaided. They could only hope to be able to trace his communicator.

Five minutes passed. Ten, then twenty. Still no Spock. Then, as if on cue, the remainder of the Horta—hundreds of them—began to leave the room. At first this was in dribs and drabs, and finally it became a mass exodus. They left through every tunnel available, and within a half hour, the only beings that were in the room were the humans.

“I’ve never seen
that
before,” said Weisskopf. “They sure seem restive.”

Kirk agreed. He opened his communicator. “
Enterprise,
this is Kirk. Get Sulu and Chekov beamed down here immediately with a tricorder.” Kirk considered. Was this an act of aggression? A misunderstanding? He fervently hoped that it was the latter. “Scotty, can you lock on to this signal?”

“Maximum range, sir, but we have a good lock. But if you go any farther under that rock, you’ll be out of transporter range.”

“Understood. Tell them to arrive unarmed,” Kirk said. He hoped he was making the right decision. For Spock’s sake, and the sake of Vesbius. “Lock on to our four Vesbians.”

Hannah had come along with them, as had Merling, but Kirk did not want to take them with
him when he went to search for Spock. Merling had obviously disliked the Horta on sight. He wouldn’t be useful. Hannah had not fared well on the descent and was clearly in some pain. Her face was drawn and she looked feverish.

“I want the entire Vesbius party back on the ship,” Kirk said. “I have to look for Spock, and having you along will slow me down.”

Merling nodded. He was obviously quite content to get out of the confines of the mine and away from the Horta.

Hannah turned to Kirk with fire in her eyes.

“But I must go with you, Jim,” she said to him. “This is the reason you brought me here.” She turned to the bodyguards, Hox and Ferlein. “They will return.” She addressed them with a smile: “I do not think there is much you can do to protect me in this situation.”

Hox seemed disturbed by his surroundings, and he quickly agreed. He was ready to go. But Ferlein protested. “I have direct orders from your father, Chief Advisor.”

“To guard me from the factions of Vesbius,” said Hannah. “That has always been your mandate. Not to accompany me into tunnels looking for aliens. Besides, you are obviously suffering from the separation sickness.”

“We’re both natives, ma’am,” said Ferlein. “You know it’s going to strike you as well, and soon. I
demand that you let me do my job. Your father will kill me if I let you—”

“Simon, I order you to go back to the ship,” Hannah said.

“No, I will not,” he said. “I will stay with you! It’s my duty to you and your father after the good you did for my family, you must—”

The strain was too much. The man fainted. Kirk and Hannah moved to catch him before he hit the cavern floor. Kirk motioned to Hox and Merling to come over and help. The other men had been watching with morbid fascination. Hox obviously wanted to get the hell out of this place.

Hox took Hannah’s place and held the other bodyguard under the shoulder, and Kirk allowed Merling to take his load. After a moment, Ferlein came to and tried to stand. He groggily looked up at Hannah. “Must come . . . with . . . duty . . .”

“You are going to bed,” Hannah said. She looked to Merling and Hox. “Get him to Doctor McCoy, please.”

“Of course, Chief Advisor,” said Merling. “The sooner we can get him away from these lifeless halls, the better.”

Hannah turned to Kirk. “I’m coming with you, Jim.”

“And what if your own rejection sickness suddenly strikes? What am I to do with you?”

“The immunosuppressant vaccine is working for the moment,” she replied. “I’ll be all right, Captain.”

Kirk nodded, but he wasn’t nearly as sure about this as Hannah seemed to be. Nevertheless, she had a point. She was the emissary from a world in distress. This was the reason she’d journeyed to Janus VI, to personally ask for help for her people.

That Kirk worried that he might be harming Hannah should not have been part of his decision. She had grown weaker by the day, and Ferlein’s collapse had alarmed him. The rejection sickness seemed to come on quickly and was completely debilitating.

He could order her beamed aboard. One word to Scotty, and there would be little she could do about it.

Except hate him forever for treating her like a child.

No, this was her decision.

“All right,” he said, and he flipped open his communicator. Kirk modified his transport order. Merling, Hox and the still groggy Ferlein dematerialized, to be quickly replaced by Sulu and Chekov.

•   •   •

The captain led the search party, which also included two expert miners Director Weisskopf had insisted accompany them, down into the depths after the Horta. Each was issued a hover light, a small but powerful personal headlamp that got its name from the way it hovered just off the shoulder and keyed off
eye movement to cast a diode-generated light in a useful direction.

Kirk’s instinct told him to avoid all side tunnels and to go as deep as possible. The miners brought along phosphorescent markers that allowed them to blaze the trail back should the search party become disoriented or lost, and they were busy marking the walls as the party descended. The problem was, it wasn’t always obvious which paths would lead deeper.

Chekov solved the problem by using his tricorder to ping the rock with sonic sensors and detect the best route. After a while, the side tunnels gave out, and it was obvious which way to go. They were deeper into the planetary crust of Janus VI than any human had ever been before.

Down and down they went. After what seemed an age of continuous stooped-over walking, the tunnel they were in grew larger. There were fresh signs—pointed out by the miners, who knew what to look for—that the Horta had recently passed this way. The miners were as confused as Kirk about the lack of Horta in the vicinity. They had never experienced a complete withdrawal of the Horta clans before this.

“They been underfoot since I came out to this rock to work,” said one. “Used to irritate me you couldn’t get away from a Horta. Now I kind of miss the buggers. Tunnels are lonely without ’em.”

And then the passageway in which they were traveling led out into a larger chamber—and there were Horta here. These were not normal-sized Horta, but smaller, about the size of large dogs. They were arrayed against the wall opposite Kirk and the search party, and they seemed to be blocking the only visible exit to the chamber.

“These Horta seem somehow . . . friendly,” said Sulu.

“Are they a variant species? Some kind of specialized caste?”

“Never seen anything like them before,” one of the miners answered.

“Captain, my readings on these Horta correlate with what we have in the xenobiology database,” said Chekov, gazing down at his tricorder readout. “They have the same internal structure, only smaller, sir. The same . . . everything. I believe this is the exact same species, sir.”

“It’s a nursery,” said Hannah. “Or a daycare center.”

Kirk nodded slowly. “Could be. Maybe they don’t all mature at the same rate. Maybe some eggs hatched later than others.”

“Baby Horta,” said Sulu. “Cute.”

“You may be right,” said Kirk. “But these children are blocking the entrance to that tunnel on the opposite side of the chamber. Let’s get through them.”

Kirk walked in the direction of the line of small Horta. When he got to them, they did not move, and he stopped the party’s forward motion.

“We have to get past you,” he said to them, knowing the futility of saying it.

Kirk looked over the crowd of little ones. They weren’t exactly side-by-side. If he turned sideways, he might be able to shuffle through them.

“All right, stay here,” he told the team, and he made the move to go forward himself. After his first couple of steps, the crowd of small Horta parted and formed a gap for Kirk. As he walked forward, so did the gap. Hannah followed behind him and she was also allowed through. But when Sulu tried it, the Horta would not budge. The same for Chekov and the others.

“I guess they just want us to pass,” Kirk called back to the stranded party. “Wait here. Mister Sulu, you’re in charge. If we’re not back in an hour, use whatever means you can to get past these . . . kindergartners . . . and come looking for us.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Sulu. “Be careful.”

“I don’t think they want to hurt us,” Kirk said. “But they do seem to be picky about whom they want to deal with at the moment. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. But you have your orders.”

With that Kirk turned and entered into the exit tunnel of the nursery chamber (if that’s what the cavern was). Hannah Faber was behind him.

Kirk allowed the baby Horta to shuffle along with him as he walked deeper and even farther down into the depths of Janus VI. And, as with the last chamber, the tunnel began to widen out and to gain a higher and higher ceiling until Kirk found himself walking into a vast cathedral of rock. Light was provided by magma flow that shot through the rock surface in tiny veins. It gave a beautiful, eerie, reddish caste to the chamber. Kirk and Hannah turned off their hover lights. The temperature inside the chamber was quite hot and Kirk was sweating, but the heat wasn’t intolerable to humans, at least not yet.

There were more Horta. Big and small. Horta were everywhere, filling every nook and cranny on the sides of the rocky cathedral.

Ahead of him across the chamber, Kirk saw a blue speck. As he drew closer, dodging around boulders and following the very smooth, winding path through the center of the chamber, the blue dot became the blue of Spock’s science officer’s uniform shirt. Closer still, and there was Spock standing, waiting for him to arrive.

“Greetings, Captain. Greetings, Chief Advisor Faber,” Spock called out. “Welcome to the Great Chamber of the Horta.”

“Spock, report,” Kirk said as soon as he was within speaking distance of his first officer. He and Hannah came to join Spock on a rise that revealed
crowds of even more Horta in the back half of the cavern.

“I have received a most interesting proposition, Captain,” said Spock. “But before I go into that, I would like to reintroduce you to a Horta you have met before.”

Spock led them to a corner of the chamber where, against a crystalline stalactite, a creature rested. It was smoother and less bumpy than the other Horta.

Like stone that has served as a walkway for centuries,
Kirk thought.
Worn smooth.