Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity (2 page)

From behind him, Spock heard the turbolift doors slide open. Determining with a ninety-nine
point thirty-nine percent certainty that this was Captain Kirk come to relieve him,
Spock vacated the captain’s chair. “Captain,” he said in greeting, and as Kirk stepped
down into the command well, Spock moved to relieve Chekov from his temporary post.

“Spock,” Kirk returned the acknowledgment. “Report.”

“We are approximately three billion kilometers from the Nystrom Anomaly,” Spock said
as he took his first survey of the science station’s readings. “Unfortunately, the
information being gathered by our sensors is woefully lacking.”

“So, we can’t chalk the mystery up to poor quality equipment on the old probes,” Kirk
noted as he assumed his place in the captain’s chair. Turning his full attention to
the viewscreen, he asked, “Is this the best resolution we can manage?”

“Yes, sir,” Chekov said as he slipped into the navigator’s seat, next to Lieutenant
Hikaru Sulu at the helm. “Whatever the anomaly is, it’s almost impervious to all our
scans. It’s like they used to say about Vladivostok: there is no there there.”

“What about that subspace turbulence we hit earlier?” Kirk asked. “That was something
new.”

“Yes, sir,” Sulu reported, without turning his attention from his console. “We’re
still encountering a good deal of subspace distortion, but I’m compensating.”

“Well done, Mister Sulu; I don’t feel a thing,” Kirk praised the helmsman with a smile.
The captain then turned to his first officer. “Shouldn’t the old probes have detected
subspace distortions in the vicinity, even at their ranges? For that matter, shouldn’t
we have?”

“One would have expected so, sir,” Spock answered, looking up from his console. “The
pattern of the subspace distortion we are currently encountering would appear to indicate
that the Nystrom Anomaly is bending local space-time and subspace, as stars and other
high-mass objects do. And yet, there is not a concomitant gravitational effect.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Kirk said thoughtfully as he turned back to the enigmatic
object showing in the forward viewscreen. “Mister Sulu, how bad are these subspace
distortions?”

“Not very, sir,” Sulu replied. “Just a bit unpredictable.”

Kirk nodded and asked, “Current speed of approach?”

“One-quarter impulse.”

“Let’s strap in and take her up to half impulse.”

“Aye, sir,” Sulu said as he keyed the commands into his console. “Half impulse.”

The deck began to shudder perceptibly as the ship accelerated through a series of
subspace resonance waves that should not have been present. As Spock analyzed the
subspace readings that were now being relayed to his station at a steady rate, the
beginnings of a hypothesis began to take shape. As the science officer continued to
collate data and extrapolate the possible conclusions to be drawn, his focus was drawn
away by the captain, who had moved from his seat over to the red rail that separated
the raised stations from the center of the
bridge. “Spock . . . is it just me . . . or is the center of the anomaly getting brighter?”

Spock turned and looked at the main viewer. His left eyebrow lifted above the right,
and he told the captain, “You would appear to be correct.” He turned back to his monitors
and referred to the older readings, comparing them to the current ones. “Peak luminosity
in that specific area of the anomaly has increased fifteen point eight percent since
we began our approach.”

“But what we are looking at here is a computer-generated and -enhanced visual interpretation
of our stellar sensor array,” Kirk said.

“You are correct, sir,” Spock answered. “The sensor array’s subroutines are programmed
to compensate for subjective distance and make any corrections necessary for the accuracy
of scientific study. Likewise, such variations in areas of luminosity should not be
affected by proximity.”

Turning back to the main viewer with a thoughtful expression on his face, Kirk observed,
“This is the same way the probes studied the Nystrom Anomaly. What if we were to look
at this just in the visible light spectrum?”

Spock, knowing that the captain’s remark was not an invitation to speculation, reached
for his console controls and deactivated the sensor display protocols. When he turned
back, the difference was minor, but still marked. The bulk of the anomaly
now appeared as a translucent field surrounding a single, large light-emitting source
at its center.

“A star,” Kirk said. “A star system, surrounded by . . . something.”

The science officer shook his head. “We are not picking up any gravimetric readings,
or other associated readings which would be expected in a star system. It could simply
be an illusion.”

Kirk shrugged. “What is the old Vulcan saying, Spock? ‘The evidence of the eyes is
often immune to logic.’ ”

Spock, impressed by the captain’s knowledge, let one corner of his mouth bend upward
slightly. “Yes. Or, as the human aphorism has it, ‘Seeing is believing.’ ”

Kirk smiled and asked, “And if what we are seeing here is a star system whose gravitational
field is being restrained by some sort of shield? We need to take a much closer look.”
The captain turned to Sulu, ordering, “Helm, full impulse. Bring us right up to the
edge of the anomaly.”

*   *   *

The journey in was a rough one, or at least it was rougher than Sulu would have liked.
He prided himself on his abilities as a starship pilot, and he considered every slightest
bit of turbulence as a shortcoming on his part. He winced silently as the ship momentarily
lurched, its impulse engines
reacting to an unanticipated subspace energy wave. But he made the needed compensations
on the fly, bringing the
Enterprise
quickly back to an even keel. It was a challenge, to say the least, to guide a starship
into a system that did not follow any of the established rules. He had been able to
smooth their ride to a large degree by determining—from the small amount of sensor
readings they were able to gather from the Nystrom Anomaly—that the star at its center
was likely a type M1 subdwarf and plotting his helm corrections accordingly. It was
very much how he imagined his long-ago ancestors had navigated their way across the
Pacific Ocean, guided only by the North Star, a small degree of meteorological information,
and pure intuition.

As the
Enterprise
drew closer to the perceived edge of the phenomenon, the anomaly began to resolve
itself on the ship’s main viewscreen, from a fuzzy and indistinct haze of light into
what looked like a shimmering field of trillions of sparkling gemstones. However,
the forward sensors detected only visible light, even as those gems steadily grew
into gigantic onyx-hued crystalline asteroids refracting the light from what was now
unmistakably a star at the heart of the anomaly. “Captain, I’m not able to get an
accurate reading on our distance,” Sulu said, as the proximity alerts remained unsettlingly
quiet. If his eyes were to be trusted, the largest of the objects were at least triple
the size of the
Enterprise
.

“Full stop, Mister Sulu,” the captain ordered. For a moment, no one on the bridge
spoke a word, all silently taking in the display.

It was Lieutenant Uhura, turned forward in her seat at the communications station,
who finally broke the silence. “It’s beautiful.”

“And fascinating,” Spock added, looking from his readouts to the viewscreen. “Sensor
scans are still not returning any readings. It would appear that the field is absorbing
all the energies directed toward it, from our sensors as well as the majority of the
stellar emissions.”

“Except for visible light,” Kirk noted.

“Yes,” Spock said. “Extremely curious.” After years of serving with the Vulcan science
officer, Sulu was able to detect the tiniest hint of annoyance underneath his otherwise
emotionless tone. “And none of our standard analytical protocols are yielding any
information about the nature or composition of the objects.”

“Could we beam one aboard,” the captain suggested, “for more hands-on testing?”

But Spock replied, “Impossible. The transporter would be unable to get a coordinate
lock without effectual targeting scanners.”

“Tractor beam?” Kirk asked, and when Spock did not immediately shoot down that idea,
the captain said, “Mister Sulu, try pulling in one of the smaller ones.”

“Aye, sir.” The helmsman had to manually target the tractor emitters, but still managed
to accurately project a beam and make contact with one of the strange crystals. But
it had no effect whatsoever on its trajectory. “It looks like they absorb gravitons,
too.”

Kirk rubbed his chin as he considered that, then said, “Well, let’s try approaching
this the old-fashioned way, then.” He turned back to his command chair and hit a button
on the armrest. “Kirk to engineering.”

The distinctive brogue of the chief engineer replied over the companel speaker.
“Scott here, Captain.”

“Correct me if I’m mistaken, Scotty,” Kirk said, resuming his seat, “but don’t we
have an old-style grappler assembly in ship’s stores?”

“Aye, that we do.”

“Is it in good working order?”

“Sir!”
Scotty sounded genuinely indignant.
“You’re not suggesting that I would let any piece of equipment aboard my ship fall
into disrepair, are you?”

“Heaven forfend, Scotty,” Kirk answered, successfully keeping the smile he wore from
his voice. “How long to get it set up for use in the cargo loading bay?”

“An hour, sir,”
Scotty said, then added,
“May I ask why, sir?”

“Of course, Scotty,” Kirk told him. “We’re going fishing.”

*   *   *

The longer Scotty prodded at the inner workings of the old grappler assembly, the
more he worried that his quadrupled estimate would not be time enough.

He lay flat on his stomach on the deck of the large bay in the aft section of the
ship, aiming a light into the open panel on the side of the bulky gray apparatus.
With his other hand, he poked at the outdated circuitry with a probe. To one side
lay one of the loading bay’s tractor beam emitters, which was used for the ingress
and egress of supply pallets through the exterior cargo hatch, which was situated
a deck below the shuttle hangar at the ship’s stern. The power supply and control
cable from the tractor emitter was now plugged into the older contraption, but it
was stubbornly refusing to activate for some reason. Or, as Scotty now realized, for
a whole myriad of reasons.

“Ach,” the engineer grunted through his teeth, between which he clenched a microlaser
refuser. He swapped that tool for the one in his hand, and then reached back into
the machine’s guts to fix another failed connection. If he didn’t know better, he
would have suspected this ancient piece of machinery might actually have been salvaged
off the pre-Federation
Enterprise
. Grapplers like this one were
part of the standard equipment on nearly all space vessels of that era, and up through
the early part of the current century. But as tractor beam technology improved and
became more sophisticated, the older devices had fallen out of use. Scotty himself
had not actually seen an operational grappler since his first Academy training cruise,
and had been surprised to discover this one during an inventory conducted shortly
after his assignment to this ship. As best he could determine, it had been added to
the
Enterprise
’s stores when she was initially launched, at the insistence of Captain April’s executive
officer, but had sat unused the entire time since.

Finally, Scotty completed his diagnostic. As he was bolting the cover panel back onto
the grappler’s side, the doors to the bay slid open, admitting Captain Kirk. “How’s
it coming, Scotty?”

“All set, sir,” Scott said as he pushed himself up and latched the lid of his tool
kit shut. He stood, taking his tools in one hand and with the other grabbing one of
the handles of the antigrav unit clamped to the disconnected tractor beam emitter.
Kirk took the other, and together they moved out of the loading bay into the small
control room forward of it, opposite the space doors. Once sealed inside, Scotty seated
himself at the primary control panel, set before the transparent aluminum bulkhead
that looked out onto the wide, empty deck. “I’ll be honest with you, sir,” Scotty
said as he ran a
final check of his handiwork. “I’ve never been much of a fisherman, and I’ve never
used this type of reel.” It had taken a bit of jury-rigging and creative computer
programming to coordinate the cargo bay’s tractor control with the grappler, and the
engineer could only hope it would work in practice the way he thought it would in
theory.

“Fishing is a sport of patience, Scotty,” Kirk answered with one of his easy smiles.
Scott nodded back, appreciative of the captain’s sentiment, but hoping he wouldn’t
let him down.

Satisfied with what he saw on his board, Scott then pressed a sequence of controls,
beginning the depressurization process. Warning alarms sounded as the atmosphere was
evacuated, and once the air had been cycled out and the alarms had fallen silent,
Scotty keyed in another command. Looking up from the console through the transparency
as the large exterior hatch slid open, he got his first glimpse at what lay beyond
the ship.

The
Enterprise
had reoriented itself so that, from their vantage at the ship’s stern, Scott and
Kirk could look directly into the vast field of crystalline shards, tumbling slowly
in their orbits. As they moved, their black surfaces reflected back an oddly muted
yet stunning prism of colors, like an oil slick on the surface of a shallow puddle.
“Oh, my, but that is a pretty sight,” Scotty said in an awed whisper. It seemed unbelievable
that they were all
but invisible to sensors yet so beautiful to the naked eye.