Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (16 page)

“Antigrav warning,” Kevin said suddenly. “Over
heating!”

Korsal saw the red light flashing, but he had no choice now—it was either up and out, or crash into
the river.

They were still climbing, but yawing and heaving
until he did not know which direction to steer. If he
leveled off too soon, they would crash into the canyon
wall; if he did
not
level off soon—

Its warning light ignored, the antigrav malfunction siren began to sound. “Altimeter relative to surface!”
Korsal ordered, eyed it as he urged the craft toward
the horizontal—they were safe, some two meters
above solid ground!

He leveled off, blind, intending to settle on the canyon lip and wait out the storm.

But he had not reckoned with the overheated
antigravs.

He heard the warning sizzle as they settled on layers
of snow and ice. “The thrusters!” he exclaimed. “They’ve melted through their insulation! Kevin
—jump! Run!”

Cold air swept into the tiny cabin as Kevin opened
the left-hand door and vaulted into the snow.

Korsal thrust open the door on his side—just as the
explosion came.

He was lifted, tossed through the air like just
another snow pellet, and slammed against something huge and hard. He heard ribs snap, then felt the pain,
but for a moment he was still able to think as his body
slid bonelessly to the ground.

Kevin!
He wanted to shout, but had no strength, no
breath. Had the boy jumped far enough from the
craft? Or had the explosion caught
him
too?

Korsal tried to move, but could not. He tried to shout, but produced only a muffled gurgle. Then
blackness and cold shut out all thought.

Chapter Fifteen

When Spock explained the new findings on the Nisus plague to Captain Kirk, he saw his friend’s face pale. But immediately the Human’s
natural optimism reas
serted itself. “It’s a clue, Spock. Medicine’s not my field, but it’s McCoy’s, and all these other experts’.
They’ll build on this information to find a vaccination
or a cure.”

“What security classification do you want placed on
the information?” asked Spock.

“Need to know,” Kirk replied, “and continue to
code all reports to Starfleet. Bones will brief everyone
on the medical mission, but there’s no point giving this information to the rest of the crew
…
or any of
the other passengers.”

“My parents—” Spock suggested, but Kirk cut him
off.

“There is no reason to worry them, Spock.
You
are not setting foot on that planet.”

Spock nodded wearily. Vulcans were realists, basing
their lives on facts and logic. Nevertheless, he found it
troublesome that his hybrid nature was now a physical liability. Many times in his life he had blamed illogic or emotion on his Human blood—but those things were still his choice, under his control. This mutating plague was not.

A puzzle like this plague was irresistible. Until the new information had come in last night, he had been
determined to find a “logical” way to beam down to
Nisus with McCoy.

As happened only too disconcertingly often, Kirk
had followed his train of thought. “I’m frustrated too,
Spock,” the captain said. “No, not over as serious a
matter, but I can’t beam down to Nisus, either—and
that means I have to deliver by viewscreen a message
I’d dearly love to deliver in person.”

“And what is that?” Spock responded.

“Seems there is a young man on Nisus who has just
pushed me out of the record books for youngest
admission to Starfleet Academy.” Kirk did not appear
at all unhappy to have his record broken.

“A Vulcan?” Spock suggested.

Kirk grinned. “Not unless Vulcans have changed
their pattern of naming. This young man’s name is
Kevin Katasai.”

Katasai! Spock felt his eyebrows rise involuntarily.

Kirk saw, and frowned. “What—you know him,
Spock?”

“No. However … the engineer who uncovered the
spread pattern of the plague is one Korsal Katasai,
presumably a relative of this successful candidate.”

Kirk’s frown grew even deeper. “Korsal? That
sounds like—” He broke off with a laugh. “Come on, Spock; it’s just a coincidence! Starfleet’s certainly not going to admit Klingons to the Academy!”

“You are probably right, Captain,” Spock replied. It
did seem a most unlikely thing for Starfleet to do.

They left the briefing room, but Kirk was in no
hurry to return to the bridge. He accompanied Spock
to the large mess hall, where most of their passengers
were having breakfast. There they joined Sarek and
Amanda, who were eating breakfast with Daniel
Corrigan and his wife, T’Mir.

Spock sat down with his tray just in time to hear his
mother say to T’Mir, “I have always found that there
is a far greater difference in ways of thinking between
male and female than between Vulcan and Human.”

Daniel gave his wife a grin that spoke volumes, but
T’Mir looked demurely down at her plate, then back
to Spock’s mother. “I am beginning to understand
that,” she said softly.

Sarek arched an eyebrow and said to Daniel,
“Mulier est hominis confusio.”

The Human doctor’s grin turned to helpless laugh
ter. T’Mir stared from her husband to Sarek and back.
“What did he say?” she demanded.

“Woman is man’s joy and all his bliss,” Daniel
choked out.

Amanda gave Sarek a look compounded of amuse
ment and annoyance.

T’Mir caught it, saw that her own husband could
not meet her eyes, and said, “Daniel, that is not what
it means!”

“It is,” he replied, “according to an ancient authori
ty from Earth, one Chauntecleer.”

With that Spock, whose Latin was good enough that
he had recognized the true meaning of the saying, remembered where it came from. Chaucer. Trust
Sarek to cast his jokes in literary obscurity! Glancing
at Kirk, he saw his captain smothering a grin, and
remembered Kirk’s passion for ancient books.

T’Mir cocked an eyebrow at Sarek and said, “I shall
have to look up that reference.”

“Precisely what you should do,” Spock’s father
replied, exactly as if he were speaking to one of his
students.

It had occasionally occurred to Spock, since he had
reached maturity, that possibly his adolescent deci
sion to apply to Starfleet Academy rather than the
Vulcan Academy of Sciences might have been influ
enced by a desire not to have either of his parents as a
teacher, especially his father. Sarek professed not to
understand the concept of humor, but was reputed
frequently to produce the same reaction in his non-
Vulcan students that he had just created in Dr.
Corrigan.

When the thought occurred, though, Spock quickly
suppressed it, as he did today.

As the small commotion at their table faded, Spock
became aware of something at the food console. A
young Vulcan woman was waiting for her choice to
appear in the cubicle when Sendet came up to her.
Spock could not hear their words, but he saw the
woman give a negative movement of her head.

The cubicle door slid open and the woman removed
her tray and started away. Sendet followed.

As they approached the table where Spock sat, he
could hear Sendet saying, “You must listen to me,
T’Pina. You have the strength, the intelligence to be
one of us. Let me show you what comes of practicing
this grand ideal of IDIC.”

“Sendet,” T’Pina said flatly, “I do not wish to speak
to you further. Please go away.”

By this time Kirk had noticed, but even as he
shoved his coffee aside and started to rise, another voice spoke loudly. “Sendet! Let the woman hear,
along with everyone else. Then she will have facts
with which to make her choice.”

Satat stood just inside the door, flanked by other
Followers of T’Vet. Now he strode forward, toward
Kirk.

The captain rose, and so did Spock, automatically
assuming a position behind him and to one side,
where he could defend his back if necessary. From the
other side of the room, Lieutenant Uhura, the only
other line officer there, got up and moved to a similar
position on Kirk’s other side.

Satat looked over the group at the table with a
sneer. “I take it you have not told them, Captain Kirk.
Surely these practitioners of IDIC”—he spoke the
words as if they tasted bad—”would not sit calmly
eating breakfast if they knew the secret data supplied
to your medical unit during the night.”

“What do you know about such data?” Kirk coun
tered.

“You are a fool, Captain. Do you think because we
practice the ancient philosophies that we are techno
logical savages? There are computer experts among
us. We have been monitoring all data relayed to the
Enterprise.”

Their monitoring had never been noticed because
no one had ever considered that the Followers of
T’Vet might do such a thing. Kirk looked to Spock for
an explanation. “Any computer technologist could program one of our standard monitors to interface
with the sickbay computer,” he said. “Why did you
do it, Satat? You gave your word not to interfere with
the operation of the
Enterprise.”

“Our monitoring did not interfere—but it gave us
the justification for all that we stand for. This un
named plague is irrefutable evidence of what happens
when Vulcans forget their true heritage, turn from
warriors into philosophers, and pollute their blood
lines with alien genes! Infinite diversity exists—no
one can dispute that. But infinite combination is
against nature. You see the results on Nisus!”

“Captain Kirk,” said Sarek, “do you know what
this man is talking about?”