“What are you getting on them? Who are we dealing with here, Spock?”
“A moment, please, Captain. Give me a little time. The information I have thus far obtained does not permit a reasonable answer yet.” He made an adjustment to the tricorder.
Meanwhile the five aliens had moved to surround the unmoving Sulu. The leader, Agmar, bent over the unconscious helmsman—a smooth, supple movement, like a reed bending with the wind.
Jointless, that explained it. Agmar and his companions moved without the stiffness of human joints.
Hovering motionless over Sulu, the eyestalks studied the prone form for several seconds. Then one of the free-hanging limblike extensions moved out from Agmar’s side to extend over the body. A drop of some viscous liquid was extruded from the green tip.
McCoy, who’d kept a watchful eye on the whole sequence, now felt obliged to step in.
“Just a minute. I can’t let you… whatever you are… inject him with some—” he hesitated, momentarily flustered, “—alien tree sap!”
Agmar’s reply took no notice of the implied insult. “To wait is to assure your friend’s death.” A single eyestalk swiveled independently, like a chameleon’s, to stare at McCoy. “I must proceed.”
“Bones—” Kirk put a restraining hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Let them help.”
“All right, Jim. But I don’t like the whole idea.” He turned away and strolled over to where Spock was still working with his tricorder.
“An interesting discovery, Doctor. These beings are of botanical origin.”
“Intelligent plants?”
“So it would seem.”
The loose tentacle dipped lower. With a gentle touch, Agmar applied the drop of golden liquid to the side of Sulu’s neck. Now both eyestalks turned to observe the watching humans.
“It is a powerful antidote, quickly absorbed. He should begin to respond momentarily.”
“Of course,” suggested McCoy, still a little miffed, “it’s of a completely alien nature and may not have any effect on him at all.”
“True, Doctor,” Spock agreed, “yet the same could be said of the poison which has so obviously affected him. I see no reason why the antidote should be rejected.”
“Thanks,” was all Kirk could think of to say to the creature. It rose, repeating the same supple movement.
“Welcome to the planet Phylos.”
They certainly seemed friendly enough. A fraternal greeting and a badly needed helping hand, all in the first moments of contact. Still, he wasn’t quite ready to fall all over himself in an orgy of backslapping. He’d been on too many worlds where the obviously black had turned out at the last moment to be white, to the detriment of the unfortunate caught in the color change.
But until given a reason why, he would treat the Phylosians as friends.
“I’m Captain James Kirk. This is Mr. Spock, my first officer; Dr. McCoy…” He went on to identify the rest of the landing party, including the motionless Sulu.
“You seem to have been expecting us, Agmar.”
A tentacle (limb?) fluttered in the direction of the laboratory building.
“Our instruments have scanned and tracked you since your vessel first entered our space, Captain. We had reasons for not revealing ourselves immediately to you. But the injury to your companion compelled us to shed our hiding.
“We are a peaceful people, and we have a fear of aliens.” The Phylosian spokesman seemed to hesitate. “We have had unfortunate meetings with such in the past.” Kirk nodded understandingly, glanced over at Spock.
Role reversal was always difficult. They were the aliens, not the Phylosians.
There was a movement on the ground, and he found his attention drawn back to Sulu. The helmsman was still prone, but no longer motionless. He was starting to squirm like a man waking from a long sleep.
“What happened to him, anyway?” His touch of professional jealousy now long forgotten, a curious McCoy spoke while kneeling near Sulu and running his medical tricorder over the helmsman’s chest. Scientific interest had taken over.
“He was bitten by the Retlaw plant. It is deadly only if the wound is left unattended.”
“Mobile plants seem to be the rule on this world, rather than animals,” Kirk observed, hoping he wasn’t treading on someone’s religion. But Agmar took no offense.
“That is so.”
“Your medication worked quickly.”
Agmar didn’t shrug—he couldn’t, having no shoulders—but Kirk felt he could sense the equivalent.
“A minor achievement.”
“Minor achievement!” blurted McCoy, looking up in disbelief from his tricorder readings. “I never saw an antitoxin work so fast. I don’t know anything about your other sciences, but if this is a ‘minor’ sample of your medical capabilities, I’d like to chat with some of your doctors.”
“Doctors?”
“Physicians—healers.”
“Ah,” Agmar exclaimed. “Yes, Doctor McCoy. I understand now. But you must realize that healing is not a specialized function among my people.”
“Not special—” McCoy looked incredulous. “You mean you’re all doctors?”
“Not in the way you mean, Doctor McCoy. But each has the ability to… to repair a number of damaged bodily functions. We will talk of this more, later, if you wish.”
“I wish, I wish!” McCoy looked rather like the little boy about to be let loose in the candy store. A low moan from Sulu precluded further conversation.
The helmsman’s eyes were open, and he appeared to be making motions of getting up. McCoy made another pass with the tricorder. Then he looked up and nodded. Amazement still tinged his words.
“Something’s destroying the poison left in his bloodstream, all right. Body functions are running up to normal. And I mean running.” He glanced at the Phylosian leader.
“Look, Agmar. Agreed, if the poison affects humans, a local antidote conceivably might. Clearly does, in fact. But how could you be so sure it would work?”
“We could not be sure,” the Phylosian replied softly. “But there have been humanoid aliens on Phylos before. Besides, it was the only chance left for your friend.”
“Humanoid aliens who spoke our language?” asked Spock.
“Ah, you are curious as to our method of translation and communication. The voder, a mechanical translator.” He reached into the folds of his central body area. For a fleeting moment Kirk expected him to remove a mouth.
Instead, Agmar produced a small, round, flat disk of metal. When he “spoke,” his voice came from the center of the disk.
“Our natural organs of verbal communication are quite small. They require a great deal of artificial amplification to be effective any distance. The voder is completely self-contained and most efficient for this purpose.”
“Most,” agreed Spock, hoping for a chance to take one of the unbelievably compact instruments apart.
Such charming exchanges of mutual admiration were fine, Kirk reflected, but right now other things concerned him more.
“I like puzzles, Agmar, but I also like answers. We were pretty convinced when we first set down in your city that there was no one here. Then we find you—or rather, you find us. Yet I find it hard to believe that the few of you are the sole inhabitants of this metropolis. We’re not exactly standing in the middle of a local desert. Where are the rest of your people?”
“Your curiosity does your profession credit, Captain Kirk, and it shall be satisfied. Come with us and we will show you.”
Kirk looked down at Sulu. With McCoy’s help, he was struggling to his feet.
“How do you feel, Mr. Sulu.”
The helmsman blinked. “I’m… I’m all right now, Captain… I think. One moment I was sucking my finger and the next—wham!” His voice was that of a man waking from a dream and finding it reality. “I felt like an incendiary grenade had gone off inside me.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes. I’m o
kay, sir.” Sulu straightened himself.
“All right, then.” Kirk turned back to Agmar. “Let’s go.”
The Phylosian turned—perhaps pivoted would be more accurate—and ambled off in the direction of the building next to the laboratory. His companions, none of whom had yet ventured a word, turned with him. Kirk and the other bipeds followed.
“You sure you’re all right, Sulu?” pressed McCoy.
“Fine, Doctor.” The navigation officer even managed a slight smile. “Hard to believe now that there was ever anything wrong with me.”
McCoy shook his head and muttered to himself. “Remarkable… crazy and remarkable…”
“Yes,” added Spock softly. “How fortunate for us that Agmar and his fellows were so close by.”
“You said it!” agreed McCoy fervently. Something scratched at his mind, and he gave Spock an uncertain glance. But the science officer gave no sign that his words meant anything but what they said. He speeded up to come alongside Kirk.
They entered the building, turning first through another of the unbarred but mazelike entrances. Inside they found themselves in a hall of titanic proportions stretching endlessly into the distance. The metal walls rose to form a domed ceiling high overhead. A skylight running the whole length of the enormous corridor was set into the curving roof.
Agmar stopped. Kirk slowly turned a full circle before returning his attention to the alien.
“Well, where are your people, Agmar?”
Instead of answering, Agmar went to a panel set in one wall and depressed several hidden switches. There was the slightest hissing sound. One security guard reached instinctively for his phaser and looked properly abashed when no threat materialized.
A tall, high door slid aside in the nearest section of wall. Row upon row of glasslike cases, looking like so many rectangular diamonds, filled the revealed section.
No one noticed Sulu put a hand to his head, and he covered the gesture of weakness quickly. McCoy and Spock moved down the ranked glass caskets while Kirk followed curiously. Agmar and his four companions remained in place, watching. Presumably this necrophilic display held no surprises for them.
The leader of the aliens gestured with a limb. There was a hint of sadness in his voice.
“Our people, Captain Kirk.”
Each individual sarcophagus was nearly ten meters high. A single gigantic body filled every crystal coffin. And each of the immobile forms was covered from head to root with a covering of thick green bristle.
They had no recognizable heads, not even of the kind Agmar and his friends had. Instead, at the top end of each shape was a mass that looked something like an artichoke. But under the bristle, Kirk and the other crewmen could see that the actual bodies were composed of the same furry ropelike extensions, also bunching up tightly near the base and spreading out into footlike protrusions. In this respect they were identical to Agmar. And there were other resemblances between the living Phylosians and these embalmed giants.
It was an impressive and rather chilling sight.
Eventually Spock looked up from his tricorder. “Nerve tissue mass is exceptionally high. Readings indicate these beings utilized almost seventy percent of their brain capacity—a very high ratio.”
Kirk turned and looked back at Agmar. “Your early ancestors.”
“No,” replied the Phylosian, “only the generation before us.” He bowed slightly.
“Then what happened?” Kirk prodded. “I never heard of such enormous physiological changes taking place in such a short span of time.”
Agmar’s voice was matter-of-fact.
“A human came to Phylos.”
X
Kirk hesitated. It was too late to back out of the question now. “You mean a humanoid?”
The eyestalks were angled directly at him. “No, a human—like you, Captain. You remarked on the reaction of humans to the poisons and antidotes of our world. Such things can operate both ways, Captain James Kirk.
“The human, quite unintentionally, brought sickness and death with him—mostly death. But instead of running away, of taking flight and leaving us, he remained and worked to try and save us from the very disease he had carried.”
McCoy gestured with his medical ’corder. “It adds up, Jim.” He nodded at the silent sarcophagi. “The bodies all show evidence of gram-positive bacteria. It’s carried by humanoids without ill effect, but preliminary readings taken when we first landed indicate that Staphylococcus strains aren’t native to this world. It must have been like the worst plague imaginable.”
“We had no way of knowing what was destroying us,” confirmed Agmar. “That, I think, was the most horrible thing of all to our forebears.”
“Was,” McCoy echoed. “You were alive then?”
“Very young we were and barely formed, but yes, we remember that time.”
“Then how?…” Kirk paused. There was a new sound in the room. He thought he’d heard it before, somewhere. Something like wings flapping.
There was a louder sound, and he looked upwards. A rush of air slammed at his face and he ducked instinctively. He got the impression of something streaking past just in front of his nose.
The creature didn’t fly away. It remained hovering overhead, circling in the still air of the corridor. The intruder was a good twelve feet long. It’s segmented body was hinged in the middle and the upper half would swing awkwardly from side to side.
Despite the flapping sound, the beast had no wings. In place of them, a pair of thick coils protruded from the body. The creature dipped slightly and the coils contracted, kicking the floating monster powerfully upwards once more. It repeated this maneuver regularly.
The constant contractions produced the flapping sounds. Those coils looked taut as steel and reminded Kirk of something much less benign than a bird’s wings.
“Plant life, Captain,” Spock informed him. “If there are animals here they are surely scarce. These creatures appear both primitive and aggressive.”
Abruptly, the whooshing sound was repeated as the thing dove again at Kirk. He took a couple of halting steps to one side and dodged just in time. Out came his phaser, down went the trigger, and…
Nothing happened.
He tried again. Nothing. The phaser wasn’t putting out enough heat to warm a piece of old toast.
“Your phasers!” Spock, Sulu, McCoy, and the two security men tried their own weapons.
“They won’t work on any setting, sir!” said Sulu nervously.
“To insure the preservation of the forebears there is a weapons deactivator in effect here,” Agmar told them. “Your destructive devices will not work.”
McCoy yelled a warning. “It seems to be after you, Jim!”
“Weapons deactivator,” Kirk murmured, keeping a careful eye on the darting movements of the, well, swooper was an apt term. “Then this should work.” He pulled out his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise… Kirk to…”
It might as well have been an invitation. Suddenly the hall was filled with the big creatures. They didn’t appear out of the walls, but they seemed to.
Half a dozen of them immediately ensnarled Kirk, before he could complete the call. He struggled, and the communicator bounced to the floor.
“Captain!” Sulu shouted. The others moved toward him and drew their own attackers.
Spock was enveloped quickly. Something fell from his pocket—the tape cassette he’d picked up earlier. No one saw it fall—certainly not Digard and Ush, who were busy with attackers of their own.
Meanwhile Kirk was fighting back with plenty of vim, and absolutely no effect. Something knocked his legs out from under him and he found himself pinned to the floor like a trapped butterfly. He struck out with a hand, contacted nothing. The darn things were quick as well as strong.
It was over as soon as it had begun. Kirk, Sulu, and the others lay motionless on the ground, held tightly in the grasp of dozens of swoopers.
Sulu, who appeared to have recovered
from one attack just in time to succumb to another, looked over at Kirk.
“What to you think they have in mind for us, sir?” Kirk didn’t answer his helmsman. Instead, his attention was riveted on action overhead.
“Something tells me we’ve just been the prize suckers for a diversionary assault. Look!” Other eyes went upward, to see Spock, totally enmeshed in swooper coils, being flown ’round the bend near the building’s entrance.
Another shape intruded on Kirk’s vision and stared down at him quietly. If anything, Agmar’s attitude was apologetic.
“I am sorry for this deception, Captain Kirk. But there was no other way.”
It was Kirk’s task to remain patient and understanding of alien mores. Right now, however, he’d have taken considerable pleasure in soaking Agmar and his fellows in oil and vinegar and tossing them to death.
He wrenched with all his strength at the bar on his right arm, but the swooper coil encircling his upper torso was as unyielding as an anaconda.
“What are you babbling about, Agmar? What are those things going to do with Spock?”
“He has been chosen to serve a great cause,” the Phylosian intoned reverently. “The Master has waited many years, searched many visitors, studied many nearby worlds in hopes of finding a specimen like Spock. It is good.” Agmar raised a loose fold of himself skyward.
The swoopers immediately released Kirk and his companions—reluctantly, it seemed—and took off at top speed down the big hall, melting away into hidden corridors and side panels like a cloud of bats in a cathedral.
“And now,” continued Agmar, “all the worlds of the galaxy will share in total peace and harmony!”
There was, of course, a time and a place for anything… including a little educative violence. At the moment Kirk felt like sharing peace and harmony about as much as he did partying with the Phylosians.
He climbed slowly to his feet and approached Agmar with just such unharmonizing thoughts in mind. The eyestalks would be a good place to begin, he decided.
“So help me, Agmar, if you don’t tell me where Spock is, I’ll…”
He broke off as an enormous shadow spread across the room. It wasn’t a swooper. Kirk looked up. The sight was at once more familiar and more alien than any they had yet encountered on this greenhouse world.