Spock Must Die

Chapter Two — BEHIND THE LINES

From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4011.8:

This arm of the galaxy has never been visited by human beings, nor by any of the nonhuman races known to us. Our primary mission here was to establish benchmarks for warp-drive flight, and secondarily, of course, to report anything we encountered that might be worth’ scientific investigation. But now, it would appear, we cannot report at all.

As Kirk entered the bridge, Spock arose from the command chair and moved silently to his own library-computer station. Sulu was at the helm, Lieutenant Uhura at the communications console. The viewing screen showed nothing but stars; the Enterprise was in a standard orbit around one of them — Kirk didn’t need to care which. All deceptively normal.

“All right, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said, sitting down. “The details, please.”

“Very sparse, Captain, and more seem impossible to come by,” the first officer said. “What little I have is all public knowledge — I have refrained from calling Starfleet Command for obvious reasons. There have been no ‘incidents’ with the Klingon Empire for over a year, but it now appears that they have mounted a major attack on the Federation along a very broad front — without any prior declaration, naturally. The reports Lieutenant Uhura has received state that Federation forces are holding, but I suggest that we place little confidence in that. Public announcements under such circumstances are always primarily intended to be reassuring, secondarily to mislead the enemy, and may contain only a small residuum of fact.”

“Of course,” Kirk said. “But such an outbreak was supposed to have been made impossible under the Organian Peace Treaty. We should know; we were on Organia when the treaty was imposed, and we saw the Organians immobilize both parties in what would otherwise have been a major naval engagement.”

“That is true, of course. However, Captain, not only have the Organians failed to intervene this time, but no contact whatsoever can be made with the planet. It seems virtually to have disappeared from the face of the universe. In the absence of any more data, I think we must assume it is destroyed.”

Sulu turned partially in his helmsman’s chair. “Now how is that possible?” he said. “The Organians were creatures of pure thought. They couldn’t be destroyed. And it wasn’t just one battle they stopped — they simultaneously immobilized fleets all over the galaxy.”

“The Organians themselves were thought-creatures,” Spock said, “and no doubt much of what we ‘saw’ on their planet was the result of hypnotism. But we have no real reason to suppose that the planet itself was an illusion; and if it was not, it could be destroyed. What effect that would have on the Organians, we have no idea. All we know is that they have not intervened in the present war, nor does there seem to be any way to find out what has happened to them.”

“Well,” Kirk said, “let’s see what our problem is. We’ve got the whole Klingon Empire between the Enterprise and the Federation — including all seventeen Star bases. On the other hand, the Klingons don’t know we’re here, on their blind side; we might make some capital out of that. Lieutenant Uhura, what are the chances of getting some sort of instructions from Starfleet Command without giving our presence away?”

“Practically nil, Captain,” the Bantu girl said. “Even if we send a query as a microsecond squirt, we’d have to send it repeatedly and at high gain in order to have any hope of one such pip being picked up. We’ve got the whole of Shapley Center, the heart of the galaxy, between us and home, and the stellar concentration is so high there that it makes a considerable energy bulge even in subspace. To get through all that static, we’d have to punch out the pips regularly to attract their attention — and that would attract the Klingons as well. They wouldn’t be able to read the message, but they’d be able to pinpoint out location all too easily.”

“All right,” Kirk said. “Send out such a pip irregularly; Mr. Spock, please give Lieutenant Uhura a table of random numbers from the computer that she can use as a timetable. Probably it won’t work, but we should try it. In the meantime, we have to assume that whatever we do is entirely up to us — and that if we’re to be of any help at all to the Federation, we’ll have to do it fast. I assume to begin with that we can rule out trying to circumnavigate the whole Klingon Empire.”

“I would certainly agree,” Spock said. “By the time we completed such a trip, or even got within safe hailing distance of the Federation or any Starbase, the war would probably be over.”

“We could try to smash our way directly through,” Sulu said. “We do have a lot of fire-power, plus the advantage of surprise. And on this side, the Empire is hardly fortified at all — think what a mess we could make of their supply bases, their communications, their whole rear echelon. It would be all out of proportion to the amount of damage a starship could do in a conventional battle situation, against matched enemy forces.”

“It would also,” Kirk said grimly, “get us ambushed, eventually.”

“Maybe not for a long while,” Sulu said. “We could do it hit-and-run. I could plot us a course — maybe using a random-number table again — I’d defy any computer to predict.”

“You couldn’t do that and hit important targets at the same time,” Kirk said, “or work closer to the Federation; and if the course isn’t truly random, it can be predicted. And the closer we got to the Federation the closer we’d get to the battle front on the wrong side. We’d be blown out of space before we could cross.”

“The damage we might do,” Spock said, “might well be worth the price to the Federation. Mr. Sulu’s suggestion has considerable merit from a strategic point of view.”

“And I’m willing to entertain the idea if I have to,” Kirk said. “But it’s clearly a suicidal tactic. My responsibility is to the ship and the crew, as well as to the Federation. I’m not about to lose the Enterprise and everybody aboard her on such a venture, without direct orders from the Federation to do so. If I receive such orders, I’ll obey them; without such orders, I veto the scheme. Has anybody another notion?”

“There exists what I would call an intermediate possibility, Captain,” Spock said. “It depends from a rather shaky chain of logic, but it may be the best we can manage.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Very well. We can safely assume, first of all, that the Klingons would not have risked starting the war without feeling some assurance that they had the Federation outmatched both in fire-power and fire-control. No one but a berserker would start a war under any other circumstances, and the Klingons, while warlike in the extreme, are not berserkers.

“Subpoint one: We may assume that the Klingons have new weapons, as well as what they believe to be preponderance of familiar ones. But we do not know what these might be.

“Main point two: Since the Organians have forbidden any such war and had the power to stop it, it follows that the Klingons would not have started it unless they had advance knowledge that the Organians were out of commission.

“Subpoint two: This knowledge may be in itself the most important of the new weapons in the Klingons’ hands. However…

“Conclusion: At least a forty per cent probability that the Klingons have used a new weapon which caused the immobilization or destruction of Organia.”

“Whew,” Sulu said. “I was following you, Mr. Spock, but I sure didn’t suspect that that was where you were going.”

“Where do you get your probability figure?” Uhura asked. “I didn’t hear any such parameters in your premises.”

“One may diagram an argument of this type as a series of overlapping circles,” Spock said. “When you eliminate those parts of the circles which lie outside the area they have in common…”

“Never mind that,” Kirk said. “What you’ve given us thus far is only the logical chain you mentioned. Do you have a course of action to recommend?”

“Certainly.”

“All right. Uhura, call Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott up here. I don’t want to go any farther until they’ve been filled in.”

This was not very time-consuming, since Spock had recorded the whole conversation, as he routinely did any discussion preliminary to a Command decision. Scott and the surgeon listened to the recording intently.

“All clear, Doc? Scotty? Any questions? All right, Mr. Spock; what is your proposed course of action?”

The first officer said, “Why not go to Organia, instead of to any Starbase, and try to find out what exactly has happened there? Such a course has almost all of the tactical advantages invoked by Mr. Sulu — it would vastly disorganize the Klingons’ rear echelon, through sheer surprise and the military weakness of this side of the Empire. Furthermore, we would be going in an unexpected direction; once the Klingons detected us, they would naturally expect us to be bent upon rejoining the Fleet, or getting under the protection of the heavy guns of a Starbase. That Organia was our actual destination would probably be their third guess, and it might well be their fifth or sixth. Finally, the possible strategic advantage can hardly be overestimated: should we succeed in finding out what happened to Organia, and doing something about it, the war would be ended.”

“Unless,” McCoy added, “what happened to Organia turns out to be irreparable except by God.”

“I offer no guarantees,” Spock said evenly. “Only possibilities.”

“I rather like the proposal,” Kirk said slowly. “The risk is still enormous, of course, but at least the scheme isn’t outright suicidal. Mr. Spock, I need two computations: first, transit time to Organia from our present coordinates at Warp Six; and second, transit time to territorial space of the Empire on the same line of flight.”

Spock turned to his hooded station, and said after a moment, “We would officially enter Klingon space in two months, and the remaining transit time to Organia would be four months more. Of course, there is always the chance that the Klingons may be patrolling beyond their own territory, but I estimate the probability as low on this side of the Empire.”

It could be worse, Kirk realized. Here was one Command decision which was actually going to allow him the luxury of reflection; only a partial decision was required right now, on the spot. He had, apparently, a minimum of a whole month in which to change his mind.

But all he said was, “Mr. Sulu, lay course for Organia at Warp Six. Lieutenant Uhura, extend all sensors to maximum range, beginning now, and tie in an automatic full battle alert to anything that might indicate another ship. Also, call me at once should anything come through from Starfleet Command.”

“Of course, Captain,” the communications officer said.

But in fact nothing did come through, which was scarcely surprising. Though it was normal for a starship to be out of touch with the Federation hierarchy for long periods, the sheer volume of messages which came in daily to Starfleet Command was nevertheless vast, and the chances of picking up an unscheduled message in a microsecond pip — a message, furthermore, which did not dare to call attention to itself — correspondingly tiny. As was also usual. Kirk was going to have to play this one on his own judgment alone.

He observed, however, that there was some unusual activity going on in the ship’s computation section. Scotty evidently had a problem of considerable complexity; for nearly a week he was in earnest conference with Spock, armed with sheafs of, to begin with, equations, and later, rough engineering specs. Kirk left them to themselves. Whatever they were doing, they were not wasting their time, that was certain; and he would hear about it in good order.

And at the end of the week, Scott in fact requested an interview with Kirk in the Captain’s working quarters.

“Captain, d’ye recall our chatter with Doc about the transporter, an’ his various misgivin’s?”

“Yes, Scotty, though I can’t say it has been losing me any sleep.”

“Weel, ah dinna been fashin’ mysel’ over the moral part of it, either. But I got to thinkin’ it was a vurra pretty technical problem, an’ what I’ve come up with the noo seems to have a bearin’ on our present situation.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Kirk said. “Tell me about it.”

“D’ye ken what tachyons are?”

“I was told about them in school. As I recall, they’re particles that travel faster than light — for which nobody’s ever found any use.”

“An’ that’s the truth, but only part of it. Tachyons canna travel any slower than light, and what their top speed might be has nae been determined. They exist in what’s called Hilbert space, which has as many dimensions as ye need to assume for the solvin’ of any particular problem. An’ for every particle in normal space — be it proton, electron, positron, neutron, nae matter what — there’s an equivalent tachyon.”

“That,” Kirk said, “is already a lot more than my instructor seemed to know about them.”

“A lot has been discovered since then. I had to have a refresher course from Mr. Spock mysel’, believe me. But it’s aye important. Suppose we were to redesign the transporter so that, instead of scannin’ a man an’ replicatin’ him at destination in his normal state, it replicated him in tachyons, at this end of the process? That would solve the moral problem, because the original subject wouldna go anywhere — while the tachyon creature, which canna exist in the everyday universe with us, would go on to destination and revert to normal there. No murder, if such be in fact the problem, ever occurs.”

“Hmm. It seems to me…”

“Wait, Captain, there’s more. The method vastly extends the range of the transporter. I canna tell you exactly how far, but our present sixteen-thousand-mile limit would be the flight of a gnat by comparison.

“Result? We send a man to Organia from here. He gathers the data we need; when he returns to the ship, we hold him in the tachyon state for as long as is needed to yield up the material. Then we let the field go, and poof! The replica becomes so much tachyon plasma in another universe, and our original has never even left the ship!”

“Obviously,” Kirk said slowly, “you wouldn’t be bringing this to me if you weren’t sure you had the mechanics solved.”

“That’s the fact, Captain, and it’s aye proud of oursel’ we are, too,” Scott said. “Geniuses we are, an’ you may gi’e us medals at your convenience. But seriously, it will work, an’ we can do it. To modify the machine itself is the work of a week — an’ we needn’t travel another inch closer to the Klingon Empire than we are by then.”

“We’ll go on traveling anyhow,” Kirk said. “I like to have choices open.”

“To be sure — my hyperbole was showin’.”

Kirk clicked on the intercom. “Kirk here. Mr. Spock, place the ship on full automatic control. All department heads to the briefing room at zero point seven this day. Kirk out.” The intercom went off. “Mr. Scott, proceed with your alterations of the transporter — making sure in the process that they’re not permanent.”

“Vurra good,” Scott said, getting up. Kirk raised his hand.

“But,” he added, “if I were you, I wouldn’t tell Dr. McCoy that I’d solved his moral problem.”

“No?”

“No. You see, Scotty, he’s likely to ask you if the tachyon replicate has an immortal soul — and somehow I don’t think you’d be in a position to answer.”