Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic (19 page)

She sighed. “I will probably get a book and a promotion out of it. To tell the truth, Captain, I’d have been far happier with just the original mono
graph!”

“I understand,” he said. “Another question: how
did you come to recommend a Klingon for admission
to Starfleet Academy?”

“Kevin’s mother is Commodore Catherine Patemchek. But I’d recommend Kevin solely on his
own merits. He’s brilliant, clever—”

“How about loyal?” Kirk asked. “What happens if
he comes up against Klingons in battle?”

“Captain, I recommended Kevin because I believe
the Academy will give him the best education possible
—and he has a mind deserving of such education.
Yes, he will eventually face taking the oath of loyalty
to the Federation if he continues to graduation and a
commission. I hope he will choose the Federation. As
I understand it, the Klingon Empire will force a
choice on him anyway in the next couple of years; if
he does not enter
their
required military training,
they’ll disown him.”

“I see,” said Kirk. “You view him as a prize worth
fighting for, then.”

Even through the viewscreen, Kirk saw Smythe struggle to curb annoyance. “Kevin is not a piece of equipment. He is a young man who is going to
contribute technological advances to someone—and
I prefer that the someone be the Federation. Kevin’s no more the career military type than his father is. The whole family are thinkers and dreamers. Kevin
will
design
starships, not command them.”

“They don’t sound like any Klingons I’ve ever
met.”

“Of course not—because in Starfleet we only meet
the soldiers. And whom do the Klingons meet?
Our
soldiers. Captain Kirk, we always say that starship
crews represent the best the Federation has to offer.
But surely you would not say that you and your crew are average Federation citizens?”

“No.”

“There you are,” she said. “I hope you’ll have a
chance to get to know Kevin and Korsal. Except for
their scientific brilliance, they are average citizens of the Klingon Empire. Or at least Korsal is; Kevin has
never been there. Anyway, you’ll find them quite
different from the warriors we’re accustomed to confronting.”

“Captain!” Scotty’s voice intruded on their conver
sation.

“Are you ready to beam our guests aboard?” Kirk
asked.

“Not yet—but we’ve located the beacon. We’re
scanning. But Captain, I just discovered something in
the transporter room. The controls have been reset.”

“What do you mean?”

“I left them not half an hour since, set to Nisus
Transporter Central. When I came back, they were set
to beam down—but to a point somewhere out on the
ocean. As if someone had changed them at random, perhaps to cover an unauthorized beaming.”

“Check last transporter use!” said Kirk. It wouldn’t
tell them much except which direction it had gone.
Had something really been beamed down into the
ocean?

There was silence for a few moments. Then Scotty’s
voice again. “Captain
…
I canna tell where it came
from, but the last transporter function was
to
the
Enterprise.
In spite of your orders, someone or some
thing has been beamed aboard from Nisus.”

Chapter Eighteen

Korsal
held his son in his arms and watched the last
of the wood Kevin had gathered go up in flames.
When it sputtered and went out, the little warmth the
fire had given disappeared as if it had never been.

Twice more since they had crashed, Kevin had
foraged for wood during brief breaks in the blizzard.
The second time he had had to dig for it, and returned
with frostbitten hands and a pitiful supply of twigs.

His son had fought well. If the storm had lasted
only the night, they would have survived to be res
cued. But now it was well into its second day. Their
situation was hopeless.

The snow continued until it was shoulder high,
covering their shelter, providing insulation as long as
they could maintain a fire. But they had no shovel, no
snowshoes, and even if they had, and both had been
uninjured, the storm showed no sign of abating.

The mountains cut off transmissions between here
and the city; people would have to search for them
with hoverers or other craft, rising above the cliffs and canyons before they could home in on the emergency
beacon of the crashed hoverer. If it was transmitting.

And of course they would search the hoverer first,
before they discovered that there were no bodies in it.
If they were dead and frozen, infrared scanners would
not reveal their location. They wouldn’t be found
until the next thaw.

They still lay huddled together to conserve body heat, but now there was little to conserve. Korsal could not feel his hands or his feet, but at least his broken ribs had stopped hurting. When Kevin fell asleep, his father didn’t try to wake him. Let him go
peacefully; Korsal would not be long in following.

“Kai Katasai,” he whispered defiantly to the ap
proaching darkness … and watched it swirl and dis
integrate dizzyingly before his weary eyes.

Korsal blinked.

Of all his senses, only sight was working. He felt
nothing. He was lying on the floor of a small gray room. Before him was some kind of console, and
behind that a Human male in a red uniform. Beside
the console stood a man and a woman in red, with
phasers trained on Kevin and Korsal.

Humans in the Black Fleet?
Korsal’s mind ques
tioned crazily. Then other Humans in blue pushed past the security guards, hurrying toward him with
blankets and medscanners, prying Kevin gently from
his arms.

“They’re both alive, Mr. Scott,” said a young
woman in blue.

“Ya hear that, Captain?” the man at the console said, and a disembodied voice replied, “Good work,
Scotty!”

“Where … ?” Korsal tried to ask.

“Lie still!” said a short, brisk woman with graying
hair and kind eyes. “Mr. Scott, inform the captain
that these men need immediate emergency treatment.
Frostbite, hypothermia, broken ribs, exhaustion, shock—”

“Take them to sickbay,” came the order. “If they’re
carrying the disease, you’ve all been exposed anyway.
Stay there, in isolation, until we’re certain Dr. Smythe
is right.”

Korsal realized that he and Kevin had been beamed
aboard a starship. “This is
…
Enterprise?”
he whis
pered as he was lifted onto a gurney. He was still
numb; he felt no pain.

“Yes,” said the woman. “I’m Dr. Gardens, tempo
rary CMO. You’ll be all right if we get you into treatment before there’s any tissue loss. Mr. Scott,
please clear the halls between here and sickbay—just
in case the captain’s information was wrong.”

“Aye, lass,” Scott replied. Korsal could hear the announcement echoing from speakers in the halls
ahead.

The passage was swift. In sickbay Korsal and Kevin
were placed on diagnostic beds, which promptly
began to sound alarms. “Arthur!” shouted Dr. Gar
dens. “I told you to recalibrate these units for
Klingons!”

“I’m lookin’ it up, ma’am,” came a voice from the
next room. Then a thin young man with curly auburn
hair came in with a computer printout sheet. “Sorry,
Doctor—never set them for Klingons before, have I?”

Reading from the printout, he quickly made adjust
ments to the controls, and Korsal’s unit stopped
bleeping. Dr. Gardens turned to Kevin with a frown.
“My son,” Korsal told her. “He’s half Human. Higher
iron and hemoglobin; heart rate normal at eighty per
minute, body temperature—” He told them all he
knew of his son’s normal vital signs, while the techni
cian made the adjustments. Finally the alarm
stopped.

“So far as I can tell,” said Dr. Gardens, “your son is
suffering from exhaustion more than anything else. Both of you have severe frostbite, but his hands are
worse than yours. Arthur, regeneration units, stat.”

Then she turned to Korsal. “The nurses are going to
help you undress, and then we’ll repair those broken
ribs. The scanners show that you had some internal
bleeding, but it stopped of its own accord. That’s why
you’re still alive.”

“Kevin did all the work,” Korsal replied. “That’s
why he’s exhausted—he wouldn’t let me move.”

“Good thing,” said the doctor as one male and one
female nurse efficiently stripped him. “Otherwise you
probably would have bled to death.”

Korsal gave an involuntary moan as the nurses slid
his shirt out from under him.

“Pain?” Dr. Gardens asked quickly.

“Good pain,” Korsal replied. “It means I’m still
alive.”

She smiled. “Well, let’s see if we can keep you alive
but take the pain away.”

Korsal was accustomed to Federation medical tech
niques, and so was not surprised when Gardens and
Arthur positioned a surgical unit over his right side
and the dull ache disappeared. He could not see what
they were doing, or feel that area of his body, but when Gardens picked up a bone-knitter, he grinned.
“Did you know that’s a Klingon design?” he asked.

She held it up. “This? The principle goes back to twentieth-century Earth.”

“Perhaps, but
that
design, miniaturized and concentrated, was one of the first trade-offs when the
Klingon scientific mission came to Nisus. Believe me,
we got plenty in return.”

“Good horse traders, eh?” asked Arthur.

“You know what they say,” Korsal replied, “sharp
er traders than Vulcans bargaining over the price of
kevas
and
trillium!”

In the midst of Korsal’s surgery, Kevin woke up.
“Father?” he cried out, sitting up and looking around
blindly.

Korsal could not move, but he said, “It’s all right,
Kevin. We’re both safe. Lie still.”