"Leastwise, that's what I tell myself to explain why I'm here instead of them and their supposed super-science. I don't know what you tell yourself, Vulcan."
Spock glanced up at the toothed jaws but was unable to read any expression there. However much the facts argued against the reptile's words, there were some odd points to consider about this entire undertaking.
Looking at it from a purely rational standpoint, now . . .
There was a last little sand dune. Kirk and Lara topped it. The fortress loomed over them, barely a hundred meters away. It was surrounded by a field of black gravel.
"That's it." He grinned at her. "End of one long hard journey I've no desire to repeat."
"Ah, but we still have to go back, James." She moved close and this time he didn't edge away. It was not because he was too tired to.
"I'll tell you something true," she began, staring into his eyes. "I find you one of the most attractive men I've ever met. If we were . . ." she hesitated, "together, the rest of this would be easier. And if anything happened, why," she shrugged, "we'd have some green memories."
"I already have a lot of green memories," he told her gently. "I sometimes think too many."
Lara didn't try to hide her disappointment. "Oh." He put a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
"Maybe some other time, Lara. If it means anything, I think it would be one of the greenest of the green." He pulled his hand away as she reached for it. "But not now—we still have work to do."
She brightened. "At least you're willing to argue the point."
"I'm always open to logical persuasion."
The enormous, nearly perfect cube of metallic black was even more impressive when one stood at its immediate base. Nowhere could Kirk detect a hint of a sealed joint, bolt, or riveting of any sort. It was almost as if the monolith had been created in one piece, complete and perfect.
Nor was there any sign of an entrance. An awesome bit of engineering. It would have been dominating in a city. Here, on the bare sandy plain ringed by its black gravel border, it was awesome.
When nothing appeared to blast them from the earth, Kirk waved twice—behind and above. Sord, Spock, Em-three-green and Tchar joined him and Lara at the base.
"Is this not the shape," Spock asked the Skorr, "of the more primitive temples of your people?"
"Yes," Tchar admitted in surprise. "I had not known your knowledge extended so far, Mr. Spock." He stared upward. "Though there has never been anything as grand and beautiful as this. It is the work of some familiar with the Skorr, yet with an ability and single-mindedness of purpose my people have never known." He pointed to the right.
"If it is true to the old schematics, the entrance should be there." He flew toward the corner and they followed.
The carved door was cut just inside the corner, as Tchar had indicated. The complex motif engraved in the door itself probably meant something to the bird-man, but he didn't find it worthy of explanation and no one inquired.
"Truly, it is the same as the old temples," Tchar announced. "But the inscription is different. I cannot make it out, wholly. Much of it appears to consist of a warning, which is to be expected."
"Can you open it?" Kirk asked.
"No." Tchar looked distraught. "It is a familiar door—but it has no lock."
Kirk's gaze, followed soon by everyone else's, turned to rest on the shivering form of Em-three-green. He looked better now, though. Obviously the rest and shelter he had enjoyed while riding Sord had done him much good. Not that he felt any different about this craziness. He still wanted out at the first opportunity. But he was studying the door in spite of himself, professional curiosity being about the only thing capable of distracting him from his fright.
"There's a lock on my oculars," he declaimed firmly. "I recognize the type—rare, subtle and expensive."
Kirk stared hard at the door, tried to spot the mechanism Em-three-green was talking about and saw nothing but designs and inscriptions in an alien hand.
"I'll take your word for it—I have to," he admitted. "Can you open it?"
"There's no lock, seal, jam, portal, crawlway or door in the Galaxy I can't open," the picklock announced.
As Em-three-green unslung the small pack from his back, Kirk studied the overhanging brow of the doorway and wondered at the motivation behind it. There was a brooding, fanatical malevolence behind all this. A cunning madness that sought only the deaths of millions of innocent beings.
The key question now was—how much confidence did these extremists place in their hiding place? Was it sufficient in their eyes, or were there less passive forms of argument awaiting their entrance?
The pack produced a belt of flexible dark plastic equipped with a multitude of tiny compartments. Em-three-green laid it neatly on the ground, revealing a tool kit of gleaming, exquisitely handicrafted devices that would not have been out of place in a surgery.
The picklock's gaze studied a series of depressions which formed a regular, roughly diamond-shaped pattern in the approximate center of the door. Kirk wouldn't have recognized them in a million years as being apart from their neighboring carvings or as constituting a lock. Em-three-green selected a number of the tools with an assurance which Kirk found remarkably comforting. Having thus armed himself, he walked to the door and began work, his body shielding most of his actions from sight.
Kirk only hoped the alien's skill matched his confidence.
Something moved above them. He glanced upward sharply, saw nothing. Easy, James, watch out or the boojums'll get you. He returned his attention to Em-three-green.
Abruptly, an anticlimactic click sounded from somewhere inside the door. This initiated a steady hum.
Em-three-green's reaction was anything but relieved. Instead, his cilia moved more rapidly than ever. He seemed to be working twice as hard, and he looked frightened—which might not mean anything at all, since that was his normal mental state. But still—
"Anything the matter? Can't you do it?"
"I'm doing it, I'm doing it," the picklock muttered tightly, nervously.
"That's wonderful," Lara complimented him.
"No, you don't understand," he told her. "This lock is keyed with a timed series of irregular pulsations. If I don't cut the combination—eliminate the pulses in the proper sequence and within a certain time—it explodes."
Lara looked uncertain. "Does it matter whether we force the door neatly or otherwise?" She took a couple of wary steps backward, spoke to Kirk. "Why not let it blow itself open?"
Em-three-green supplied the answer—which pleased Kirk, because he didn't have one. "Such an explosion is designed to melt the metal of the door and any tunnel beyond, sealing it against unauthorized visitors—sometimes permanently."
"Spock, what's your opinion?" Kirk asked. Spock ignored him. The captain noticed his first officer was staring upward. "Spock?"
The science officer's warning shout sounded even as Kirk was turning his gaze toward the top of the cube.
Wings in wind—
Kirk ate sand as one of the cube sentinels swooped down at him, wicked hooked talons barely scraping his back. In unnatural silence the flying gargoyle banked and started in for another pass. There were two of the monsters—huge, threatening, not particularly swift, but immensely powerful-looking.
Kirk rolled to get his back against the cube, reaching for his phaser. Out of the corner of an eye he saw that Lara had her chemical gun out. She crouched just inside the entranceway. Em-three-green couldn't be seen, but his terrified moans could be heard from behind Sord. The big reptile had moved to block the entrance.
"Keep working," he rumbled over his shoulder. "I'll cover you."
Em-three-green was too busy working at the lock to offer a reply. In any case, he was in no position to argue with Sord, The big carnivore might possibly survive the threatened explosion, but Em-three-green would be reduced to scattered hunks of fur.
A shrill keening sounded directly above. Tchar
charged into the two sentinels, breaking their formation and disrupting their attack. If one of the dark guardians got its claws on him, Kirk thought, the dogfight would be over instantly. But Tchar was clearly much faster. And he seemed to have the uncanny ability to dodge at the last second, before wing or claw could strike. It was almost as if he knew what his attacker was going to do before he did it.
The Skorr occupied the full attention of one of the sentinels, The other, the one that had just missed Kirk, was coming on again. Kirk fired. A second beam passed over his left shoulder—Spock was firing simultaneously.
Both beams made contact—and reflected off the polished throat of the gargoyle. It neither slowed nor swerved. A rapid series of explosions sounded from near the door. Lara was firing her out-dated but lethal-looking pistol.
Maybe the explosive pellets did more damage than the phasers, or perhaps the monster was distracted by the noise. Whatever the reason, it shifted course in mid-dive and angled for the exposed huntress.
Kirk bit his lip, forced himself to keep a steady stream of energy trained on the sentinel, which was taking both phaser beams broadside, now. Lara dropped to one knee, tried to hit its underside.
They couldn't tell whether it was the concentrated phaser fire, the explosive shells, or both, but suddenly the creature came apart in mid-flight. The explosion wasn't particularly impressive—but the amount of debris and the size of the area it was strewn over was. Also the composition of that debris.
Kirk kicked at a fragment of it, heard the slight ring as it went tumbling across the gravel.
"Mechanicals," Spock observed interestedly. "Sord felt he might have seen something watching us, back along our path. And you too, Captain." He looked satisfied. "The Vedala were right. There are no living creatures here—only mechanized protectors."
A cry from above reminded them the battle wasn't over. Tchar had gotten a grip on the back of the remaining sentinel. Unable to strike a significant blow at the irritation on its back, the mechanical wheeled and fluttered in frustration. But neither could Tchar effectively incapacitate the armored flier.
It shook free. Then, as though directed by outside authority, it suddenly changed its mind. Folding its wings, it dove toward the door. Sord tried to edge even tighter into the slight indentation of the doorway.
"Hurry, small one," he rumbled. Again Em-three-green had no time to answer.
Kirk and Spock shifted their phasers to cover the second mechanical—then hesitated as Tchar charged straight down in pursuit.
"Don't fire!" the Skorr screamed.
Moving incredibly fast, Tchar slammed across the skull of the monster. A low grinding noise came from it. Either the distraction was effective, or else the creature had decided it wasn't going to be able to get past Sord. It spread ponderous wings and soared skyward again.
Tchar closed with it once more near the top rim of the cube. They locked together and vanished over the edge. Eyes human and otherwise locked there for long moments.
Distantly, the cough of an explosion. They waited a long time. Tchar did not reappear.
"No way to tell what happened up there," Kirk murmured. "Can't even be sure the mechanical blew up." He ran a hand over the slick-smooth wall. "Tchar may be up there, wounded, unable to fly. We can't reach the roof from the outside—maybe there's a way up from the interior. We can damn well look for—"
A soprano cry of exhaustion and triumph came from his right. It was followed by a jerky, piping laugh. Sord backed away.
A deep protest of stone against metal sounded briefly, and then the door began to twist open, moving smoothly on unseen gears. They crowded around the entrance.
A driving, icy rain began to fall from a sky that had been clear and warm minutes before. Even so, the tunnel revealed was anything but inviting, dark as the pit and just as empty.
Kirk looked around at the rest of them, hunching his shoulders against the pelting rain. "We could rest here awhile."
"No," objected Lara firmly. "We've come this far without stopping. If I sit down and rest I don't think I'll feel much like getting up again."
"Let's finish it," Sord snorted, "or give this deadfall a chance to finish us." He grinned, displaying a wicked set of customized cutlery.
"I too, would prefer to press on, Captain," admitted Spock. "There may be other mechanicals on guard. We still have the advantage of some surprise, I think. The faster we move the more off-balance any enemy will be. He will be forced to improvise instead of prepare."
"All right, that's what I want, too. But this is nominally a democratic expedition," Kirk told them, matching Sord's grin in spirit if not in flash. Turning, he led the way into the cube.
Spock and Kirk both had belt lights, which they used to advantage. No automatic lights brightened their way, but neither were they challenged by cousins of the metal gargoyles.
After a short jog, they reached a spot where the tunnel opened into a vast open space. Spock turned his light on each of them in turn as Kirk took a brief roll call. No one had disappeared through a hidden door.
Man and Vulcan increased the intensity of their beams, playing them around the interior. They stood in one immense open space which the two lights could barely illuminate. The walls were a mirror of the outside. They had a slick look, possibly due to internal condensation, and were devoid of markings or features of any kind.
Which starkness made the discovery of the soul all the more dramatic.
Spock's beam flashed on something overhead. The science officer searched carefully with the light—and then he had it. A scintillating lacework of three golden mobius strips floating in free air. It was beautiful—but to the little knot of beings below, hardly awesome enough to inspire fanatical devotion in an entire race. The knowledge of that power, however, outshone any physical trappings and gave it impressiveness to spare.
"Pretty bauble," Sord ventured, breaking the silence, "but how do we reach it?"
By way of reply, Spock turned his light on the wall behind them, played the beam up, down and sideways on it. He ran his palm over the metal.
"Unusual alloy—it would take a warfleet to penetrate this. Using the door was preferable—the Vedalan way. There is not the slightest indentation, nothing that would permit climbing. A remarkable piece of engineering, executed with devotion and care."
"I'm sure the builders would be flattered," Kirk snapped drily. "How do we get up? The walls aren't climbable without special equipment, which we don't have." He ran a bootheel along the floor. The soft squeaking sound echoed dimly in the vastness.
"Either we find a way to reach it," and he nodded in the direction of the soul, agonizingly near yet infinitely out of touch, "or we've come all this way for nothing."
A vaguely familiar rumble then—the sound of the door twisting back into place. It closed with a dull boom.
At which a pale white light began to fill the chamber.
Em-three-green was the first one to the closed door. He had to hunt to find the barely perceptible hairline crack it formed with the wall.
"No lock on the inside," he observed professionally. "No evidence of pressure easement." He looked at them helplessly. "I can't open solid metal. We're prisoners."
"So we are," Kirk agreed. Spock turned to stare at the captain in confusion. His response wasn't quite what he expected.
"You don't seem very surprised, Captain." Kirk was walking back toward the now well-lit chamber, examining the walls thoughtfully.
"Three previous expeditions tried to recover the soul and were lost. Admittedly, this world is unrelentingly hostile—but any forewarned team prepared as we were should have been able to survive as we have." He surveyed the room.
"I see no bones or anything else. No sign of the previous expeditions. Their remains should be here if they got this far. That not one of them did so I find too hard to believe."
"You are suggesting, then, Captain . . .?"
"I'm suggesting nothing, Spock—yet. Only that we've been luck
ier than we think, so far." He turned from Spock's inquiring stare to look back up at the soul.
"Still, we've no evidence anyone else did make it this far." He lowered his gaze and pointed. "Look there, on the far wall."
The ledge was barely a meter and a half wide and the same color and composition as the walls. It curled gently around the interior of the building, circling upward. It wasn't surprising the ledge had escaped Spock's probing beam. Without the interior illumination that had come on at the door's closing, they might never have spotted it.
They approached the ledge. It started two meters up. Kirk took a short run, leaped, grabbed the edge and started to muscle himself onto it.
A second later he fairly exploded upward. Getting his balance, he looked backward as Sord let out one of his now familiar rumbling laughs. Their reptilian strongman handed Spock up, then Lara and, despite frantic protests, Em-three-green.
"I'm terribly afraid of heights," the picklock sniffled, hugging the wall and shaking.
"You are terribly afraid of everything, Em-three-green," Spock commented. "There is no need to constantly apologize for your natural condition."
"I'm not apologizing!" Em-three-green shot back defiantly; then he sank in on himself in embarrassment "Please forgive me for yelling, but . . ."
"Later," Kirk instructed him. He stared across at their massive companion, but Sord stepped back, shaking his shovel-like head.
"No, I'm not built for that sort of thing." Kirk kicked at the metal ledge with one boot.
"It'll hold you, Sord. It's an extrusion of the wall itself."
But Sord replied reluctantly, "Maybe it'll hold me. No, you'd better go on without me. I'd crowd you and I'd look funny walking on tiptoes. I'll wait for you down here."
They climbed slowly and patiently. The ledge wasn't dangerously narrow, but neither was it the broad boulevard Kirk wished for, and there was no railing.
It was remarkable, he reflected, how one could float in a suit, free and weightless, outside the Enterprise and feel perfectly calm and relaxed, and still grow nauseated and dizzy on a climb like this.