But this time, as he twisted in the sand, the scales that had formed momentarily on his face and hands began to fade, the bulge on his back disappeared and was reabsorbed.
The kicking and tumbling slowed, stopped. As he lay still on the bottom the yellow tinge vanished from his skin, followed soon thereafter by the amber. McCoy drifted over to the limp form. Again the tiny tricorder did its work.
When McCoy looked up again there was a note of satisfaction in his voice. "He's starting to breathe steadily again. Quick, we must get him out of the tank."
Together, the three of them wrestled the motionless body into the airlock. Spock remained inside. While McCoy supported Kirk, Chapel manipulated the controls. Both watched Kirk's face nervously as the drains in the floor rapidly sucked the water from the lock.
Kirk started to choke, flailing at the water with both arms. McCoy didn't wait for the water to leave completely. Instead, he slammed a palm down on the red button on the console labeled Emergency Cycle.
They nearly fell as a gush of water half-carried them from the airlock. Together they laid the captain on the floor. He stopped kicking almost immediately, coughed a couple of times, water dribbling from one side of his mouth.
Then he rolled over, still wheezing, but with less force now. The coughing finally died and then he was breathing deeply again—and for the first time in a long while, normally.
"Easy, Jim, how do you feel?"
Kirk continued to take long draughts of air, eyed McCoy as if the doctor were a little unbalanced. "Tired, a bit dizzy . . . otherwise fine."
Chapel reappeared with a large thermal blanket. She draped it around Kirk's shoulders as he got to his feet.
"Better make dry clothes your first priority, Jim," McCoy advised him. "Along with the metamorphosis of your respiratory and circulatory systems, there've been some extensive changes in your epidermal layers. I half anticipated them, from what the old records said. But so help me, I didn't think they'd come color-coded!" He grinned. "After what you've just been through, it would be damned silly for you to catch a cold."
Kirk nodded, then McCoy turned his attention to the water room's remaining occupant. "You're turn next, Spock, if after watching, you still want to go through with it."
Spock's gaze remained on Kirk. Only when the captain finally gave him an "everything's okay" smile did he reply, "I await the procedure with a modicum of impatience, Doctor." That was just Spock's way of saying the waiting was driving him up the walls.
Kirk sat down in the command chair . . . slowly, enjoying the use of his legs for something other than horizontal locomotion, luxuriating in the chair's dryness more than anything else.
He looked left, to where Spock and Scott were explaining the various functions of the bridge's instrumentation to the goggling Domar and Rela.
Both Tribunes wore body suits and transparent, water-filled masks. Their tanks rested on the back of the wheelchairs that Scott's people had improvised.
It had taken all Scott's persuasive powers to convince even the adventurous Rela that the strange attire would keep them alive and healthy out of the water. But it was Domar who had agreed to the trial visit to the Enterprise first.
The qualities which had made him High Tribune dictated that he not appear craven before mere air-breathers, nor allow a Junior Tribune to seem the braver. Actually, he resented the powered chairs more than the water-suits. But while his legs were immensely powerful, they would tire rapidly under the steady pull of gravity in a waterless environment—and his flippers were not designed for walking.
So it was necessary for him and Rela to tour the Enterprise from the self-contained chairs. In the shadow of many wonders, however, he rapidly lost all sense of indignity.
Just now he was staring at a large rectangle of light in the middle of which a multicolored globe hung poised against speckled blackness. The air-breather next to him, the one called Scott, had assured him that what he was looking at was his own world—all of it.
Normally, he would not even have deigned to laugh at the air-breather. But he had seen enough of this magical vessel to convince him that anything might be true. Why, he was still trying to recover from the claim that there was neither water nor air outside this ship!
The one called Kirk, Tribune-equal, was gesturing at the screen. From his chest, a small machine carried mechanical-sounding words to the High Tribune, who struggled to fathom their meaning and glimpsed it dimly. Many of the air-breather's words translated poorly, while others, he was afraid, would remain forever only noises to him.
"Careful placement of a few large photon torpedoes, combined with a selective bombardment of fault areas with phaser beams, should shift the epicenter of the quake sufficiently northward for your city to survive with minimal damage," Kirk was saying.
"That's what the theory claims, anyway. It's a technique we planned to try. Now we have something more than an abstract reason to attempt it for. We think it has an excellent chance of working."
"Ninety-four point seven percent," Spock qualified.
Comprehension of what these people were about to try was enough to finally overcome Domar's aloofness.
"I did not believe such knowledge existed." For the first time he permited himself an open stare of amazement, taking in the entire sweep of the bridge.
"It is incredible . . . all of this."
"Approximately three minutes to the first significant fault shift, Captain." Kirk glanced back to the engineering station.
"Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Spock, confirm coordinates for torpedo strike to effect re-alignment of epicenter."
Spock bent over his hooded viewer. "Confirmed, sir." He looked up. "The results should prove most interesting. To my knowledge, this will be the first time in Federation history that a starship's offensive armament has been deployed according to the instructions of the geology section."
Kirk turned his attention to the helm-navigation console. "Mr. Arex, Mr. Sulu, I know that the coordinates and firepower required has all been precalculated and preprogramed. Hold yourselves in readiness, however, for any last minute adjustments. They have a way of cropping up at the most awkward times."
"Aye, sir" . . . "Aye, Captain," came the dual acknowledgment.
Kirk nodded once. "Fire torpedoes, first phasers."
Both men initiated the sequence of computer-directed firepower that would alter the internal heavings of a planet.
Far to the north of the submerged Aquan city, several super-fast objects dropped through the amber-hued atmosphere and vanished beneath the surface of the roiling sea. So fast did they travel that there was no towering fountain of water, no great splash where they entered.
Nor was there any sound. But far, far below the waves the multiple detonations of the precisely spaced photon torpedoes created a shock wave felt for hundreds of kilometers around.
Seconds later, while the deep-water creatures and bottom ooze were still settling back into ages-old quiescence, twin beams of light brighter than a sun lit the underwater abyssal plain with a radiance that illumined simple-minded crawlers for the first and last time of their primitive lives.
"Report, Mr. Spock:"
"Too early yet to tell, Captain," Spock declared without looking up from the viewer. "Another minute or so before the major shift is due."
Domar still did not entirely comprehend what was taking place around him. Nor did he understand the process by which certain things were being altered. He knew only that these strange people, these air-breathers from (was it possible?) another world, were presently engaged in some obscure activity that would decide one way or another the fate of his beloved city.
Domar did not for a moment think that whatever the outcome of that activity he, at least, was safe from impending destruction. He was aware that the motives of these beings were not wholly altruistic. From what he had been told they had a world of their own much like his on which some day in the future a similar crisis was likely to occur. If proven successful, t
he methods now being employed to save his people would someday be utilized to save their own.
He mentioned nothing of this. For one thing, everyone in this chamber of miracles was silent and expectant now, in a way that suggested they were hardly indifferent to the outcome of their efforts. For another, voicing his dark suspicions would have been undiplomatic.
Spock's voice, when he finally elected to break the silence, was no higher, no louder, no more expressively modulated than ever. But it resounded on the tense bridge like the brass section of an orchestra.
"Sensors indicate," he announced, "that the epicenter of the just-concluded quake was in the north polar seas, Captain . . . a totally uninhabited area, according to Domar's people."
The interpretation was a bit much for even the usually omnipotent translators to manage. Domar looked at once relieved and confused.
"This means, then, that my people are safe?"
"That's right, Tribune," Kirk said happily, turning from the screen to face him. "It doesn't mean, though, that your city won't be subject to such dangers in the future. We can't make the ground around your city more stable. All we can do is bleed the instability to a region where no one will be endangered."
"What the captain is saying, Tribune Domar," Spock elucidated, "is that the technique we have used is effective, if not constructive."
"When can we beam down, Spock?"
"The section of sub-continent on which the Aquan city is built has been subjected to a considerable if not violent realignment of the substrata, Captain. This will stabilize fully within a few hours . . ."
"Where would you like to be set down, sir?"
Kirk took up his position in the transporter alcove, next to Spock. Domar and Rela sat in their chairs by the transporter console, looked on in fascination. They had expressed a desire to see the process by which they'd been brought aboard and would beam down later.
He eyed Chief Kyle thoughtfully. "You have the coordinates of the spot where Dr. McCoy and Chief Scott first found us after we'd been changed?"
Kyle punched appropriate switches, checked a readout and nodded.
"I think that will do, Chief."
"All right, sir. Energizing."
"Perhaps someday, Mr. Spock," Kirk began, as he felt the familiar disorienting caress of the transporter, "they'll take this danged whine out of the transporter mechanism."
Spock didn't have time to reply.
Just before a person winked out for elsewhere the whine rose to an unbearable pitch and for a split second he felt like his teeth were coming apart. Not that they weren't, of course, but the sensation of dental disintegration was distressingly convincing.
The ocean of Argo was as softly amber and calm as Kirk remembered it, with wave-crests the hue of cream chiffon. The memory of the transporter computer was also accurate. They were standing on a pile of jumbled rocks and dead coral, just slightly above sea-level. But something was wrong, something had changed.
The shallow pool where Scott and McCoy had discovered their water-breathing forms lay just below and to their left, all right . . . but now it was only a low sand-filled depression scooped out of the rocks. And the little island seemed much increased in area. He looked to the other side, saw jagged bits of metal and plastic. The remains of the long-ruined underwater shuttle.
No, this was their proper pile of stone . . . only it had been raised high above the water. Spock noticed Kirk's uncertainty, explained.
"Sensors indicated considerable subsidence of the sea bottom near the quake's epicenter, Captain. It was apparently accompanied by a corresponding rise of the ocean bed in this area."
He pointed behind them.
The basalt fortress which had dominated their attention when they had first set down on Argo now towered even further into the azure sky. The shift here hadn't been unduly violent, for the wreaths of moss drooped undisturbed from unbroken crags and spires. But there was clear evidence of change nonetheless. Instead of dropping sheer into crashing waves, the island was now ringed by a broad beach of dark sand, until recently part of the bottom.
Kirk sniffed, wrinkled his nose and found ample olfactory hints of change, too. Fish and other ocean dwellers, too slow or stupid to flee the slow rise, had been trapped by the receding waters in small pools, now evaporated. Decay had set in with a vengeance and generated a miasma in sharp contrast to the visual splendor of the scene.
But the most spectacular sight of all lay hidden from view until they rounded the crest of the island. It took Kirk only seconds to place that graveyard of toppled towers, imploded domes, tumbled rocks and alabaster walls and foundation stones. Despite the upheaval, the sunken city of the Aquans' air-breathing ancestors had risen once more into the light fairly intact. Now it lay exposed and naked, drying in the bright sun of midday like some massive pressed flower.
"Argo appears to have a new city, Captain," Spock observed, "or rather, one reborn."
"Well put, Mr. Spock," a new voice agreed. They turned.
Domar spoke as he and Rela struggled from the water, masks and tanks still in place. They moved better on the soft sand than they had on the Enterprise, but Kirk and Spock walked politely down to meet them at water's edge, nonetheless.
"We did not entirely escape the effects of the quake," Rela informed them, indicating that she and Domar had beamed down to the city, "but our people survived with minimal damage—and less injury—thanks to your help. If we had remained near what you call the epicenter, we surely would have been destroyed."
"We owe you and your companions much gratitude, Captain Kirk," Domar said gravely. There was an odd emphasis on the word "gratitude," as if the translator had been unable to reflect the Aquan's meaning exactly and had selected only the closest analog.
"Is there nothing we can do for you?"
"The ability to transform us into water-breathers," Kirk explained, "is something on which our scientists have labored for many hundreds of years, with only the most limited success. If we might have permission to make copies of those and other medical records of your ancestors . . .?"
"All will be placed at your disposal, Captain Kirk." assured Domar. "What we have left, of life as well as knowledge, you have given us. It is yours by right."
Such adulatory obeisance made Kirk acutely uncomfortable. There were many times when Spock's directness was welcome. Now he relieved Kirk by changing the subject.
"The technique of utilizing starship firepower to alter stress patterns in fault systems has been proven effective. By permitting us to do this you have enabled us to test a method which will mean much to threatened Federation worlds with similar problems."
Domar made the Aquan equivalent of a smile. "It takes a consummate diplomat to make salvation come out like an apology, Mr. Spock."
"So bright, so warm it is here!" Rela purred, stretching lazily. "I will be glad when the surface places can be inhabited."
"It will have to be done slowly, carefully," Kirk admonished her. "You'll need more than the ability to breathe air. There's the problem of your skin, for example."
"What's wrong with my skin?"
"As it stands, nothing," Kirk dead-panned. "But it's adapted to a perpetually moist environment. It will dry out, crack, and blister unless given some form of protection . . . such as the body suit you're currently wearing."
He frowned abruptly.
"What do you mean, 'inhabited?' "
Domar gestured toward the risen city of the ancients. "The young among us have decided to rebuild the great shelters of our forebears."
"Only the young?" Kirk queried. Domar sounded apologetic.
"Mature Aquans cannot adjust to the thought of becoming air-breathers. There are no formulas in the old records for altering one's outlook on such things. So most of us will remain in the world we know. Air-life is for the pioneers among us."
"Don't lose contact with each other like your ancestors did, in case of another continental adjustment."
"We will pass ordainmen
ts to forbid this."
"And this time we won't ignore them," Rela finished impishly.
"It is always the psychological and not physiological differences that are the real dangers," Spock pointed out. He nodded at Kirk. "The history of Captain Kirk's own world is especially revealing in this respect."
Rela stared at Kirk in surprise. "You have water-breathers on your home world too, Captain?"
"No." The young Tribune looked disappointed. "Mr. Spock is referring to the fact that in my people's past, great conflicts took place which supposedly had their root causes in small physical differences, but which were actually centered in the mind. Small minds seize upon such differences to exploit their own mental deficiencies . . . apparently a universal trait."
A faint fog began to form in front of his eyes, and he saw that a familiar glow was beginning to distort his view of Spock.
"What happened to the others?" Rela asked quickly. "Were they exterminated?"
"Others?" Kirk's mind reaced. "Oh, you mean the ones who were different? As I said, the bodily differences meant nothing. In the end, the ones with the mental imbalances found themselves pitied into extinction."
"I don't understand, Captain Kirk," came the final confused words of the Aquan, of Rela, the water-sprite.
A mild stab of nausea shook him as his perception of the universe went blotto. "Neither did they," he finished.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" said a puzzled Chief Kyle. Kirk blinked. They were back on board the Enterprise. "Did you say something about extinction, sir?"
Kirk noticed Spock was watching him with mild interest "No, Mr. Kyle . . . nothing at all. Execution . . . I was complimenting you on the execution of your duties."
"Thank you, sir," Kyle replied uncertainly.
Kirk stepped out of the transporter alcove, with Spock following right behind. Spock noticed the smile spreading slowly over the Captain's face.
"You find something amusing, Captain?"
"The timing of certain demands made by the human body, Spock."
"Now that is a subject for considerable amusement," Spock agreed drily. "What particular aberration of your unfortunate self strikes you as humorous at the moment?"