Corona

  Mason glanced between the two females, her jaw muscles clenched to still a scream. Moaning sounds came from her throat. Her fingers dug into the fabric of her pants and the flesh beneath.

  Grake and Anauk picked up Spock's limp form and carried him toward the hatchway. T'Raus touched Mason's elbow.

  "Come with us," she said.

  Mason didn't move.

  "We mean you no harm."

  It was an effort to push one foot forward. Something was rising behind the fear, however—something even more irrational and stubborn. What would Vulcans think if she acted like a coward? What would the Spock within her think? T'Kosa took her by the arm and she shrugged the hand away. "Leave me alone!" she growled.

  "You cannot stay here," T'Kosa said calmly. "The boarding tube emergency seal is defective. Air is leaking out. We must close off this dome." Mason turned and saw the hatch to the landing pad tube. A small crack in one corner was rimed with white; the hissing was quite loud.

  Then Spock's voice returned—gentle, unobtrusive.

  —You must touch T'Raus. She must be given the discipline of ka nifoor.

  "All right! All right!" Mason said.—All right …

  T'Prylla took Radak by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet. She was neither rough nor gentle; she simply handled her defiant son in the most efficient manner possible. Radak did not resist. She spoke to him in Vulcan. The boy did not answer.

  McCoy entered the cell and was about to speak when Kirk held up a hand. T'Prylla pulled the boy forward and grasped him just under his left ear. "Grake was to have administered ka nifoor to his son when he turned twelve," T'Prylla said in Federation English. "He could not. Now he is not here, nor is Spock, so I must do it myself. That is irregular, but not unheard of." She had not taken her eyes from Radak's face.

  "Pstha na sochya olojhica, sfisth inoor Gracka?" she asked. "Are you not blood of my blood, searching for the peace of maturity?"

  Radak tried to turn his head away, but she grabbed his chin with her other hand and held him steady. Otherwise, he did not resist.

  "Ages past, Vulcans bore the mark of heat, the scar of blowing sand and burning sun. The ground opened to eat us, the wind danced on our crops and leveled our cities. We wept for the pain, and we fought—"

  Quick as a snake, Mason struck T'Kosa between her shoulders with knurled knuckles, instructed by the Spock within. T'Kosa went down as hard as the planetoid's light gravity allowed. Mason spun on the balls of her feet and administered a similar blow to T'Raus, who was not much better prepared to receive it. Then, she bent over the prone girl and placed her hand under her left ear. T'Raus was aware, but paralyzed temporarily. Mason suddenly found herself speaking Vulcan:

  "Pstha na sochya olojhica, sfisth noor numkwa Gracka?" She listened to herself, fascinated. T'Raus's eyes widened. Mason wondered if the girl would suddenly just disappear. In the corridor ahead, there was the sound of scuffling. "None of your blood may administer, but are you not ready for the peace of maturity?"

  —The question, Spock explained, may not be ignored by any Vulcan who knows how to speak our language. It is the signal for the activation of years of prior training, begun just after birth.

  Mason began to intone more Vulcan words. "Ages past, Vulcans bore the mark of heat, the scar of blowing sand and burning sun. The ground opened to eat us—"

  It took less than a minute. Radak's resistance seemed to melt as his mother progressed through the ritual. For a moment, Kirk thought the boy was going to cry—or scream with anguish—but T'Prylla continued, invoking all the ingrained responses subtly built in by Vulcan upbringing, eliminating—with the tacit consent of the child—the last vestiges of childish attitudes.

  When she was done, she released Radak. The boy took a step backward, faltering, then sat down in his chair and rubbed his temples. "All that allowed Corona to move into you with such ease—all that is now gone," T'Prylla said. "There is very little time. What is it Corona plans to do, and how can we stop it?"

  Kirk motioned for McCoy to turn on the translator recorder. Radak's eyes were the eyes of a very young Vulcan now, but with something more in them—the experience of ten years of Corona's presence. He seemed confused for a moment, but as T'Prylla sat across from him, he stammered and began to speak. He used Vulcan, but not a child's Vulcan. Kirk thought he sounded very much like Spock, though he hesitated now and then and scowled at the difficulty of expressing some of the concepts.

  "Corona's universe was at nearly perfect thermal equilibrium," Radak began "and in that respect, it was very similar to the interior of a star. All was light and energy, extremely dense, and time was not as we know it today. Corona has a way to make this galaxy, at least—and perhaps the universe itself—as it was in the past, by altering local geometry. He wishes to shrink all matter down to where it will return to energy, and to re-create the monobloc—the fireball at the beginning. Then his kind can arise again, and the universe will become a place of life and activity, rather than the empty deadness of cold matter and stretched radiation."

  "What's he talking about?" McCoy asked softly.

  It took a moment for the meaning to sink in to Kirk. "He's describing the creation," Kirk said. "Corona wants to make our universe like it was in the first few minutes of creation."

  "But what's he mean by 'empty deadness?'"

  Radak heard and turned to McCoy and Kirk. "In the first three minutes of creation, there were more events, more complexity, than in the entire fifteen billion years since. Corona was a being of those times, and to its kind, the first three minutes seemed like an eternity. But the eternity came to an end, and they had to struggle to survive. The fireball cooled as it expanded, particles began to form into atoms, and all of Corona's kind perished. Only Corona remained, for it had discovered a way to 'echo' itself into existence wherever conditions were favorable. For the first few billion years after creation, Corona was able to appear frequently. The average temperature of the universe was much hotter than now, and the galaxies were forming. He was able to perform many experiments, some taking millions of years, and not succeeding.

  "When the galaxies had formed and the universe had cooled, Corona appeared much less frequently. Where mass anomalies in subspace disturbed the formations of young stars, it could resume its experiments. But only when it located our station did it find a way to work reliably with matter itself. Through us, it built machines to alter the structure of space-time, to expand the qualities of the very small into the very large."

  "What will happen to us if he succeeds?" McCoy asked.

  T'Prylla answered. "We are products of the 'dead' universe. We are like germs in a corpse. If the corpse comes back to life, the germs will be destroyed. We cannot survive in the world of Corona. The experiments which failed in the distant past—and which Corona tracked down with the Eye-to-Stars—involved the destruction of entire young galaxies. The results are quite familiar to us, though still mysterious.

  "We call them quasars."

  Mason wasn't sure what she had done, but she sat on an unresisting T'Raus. T'Kosa stood to one side like a mannequin. The sounds of struggle between Spock, Anauk and Grake had stopped. She got to her feet, uncertain what to do next.

  —The ritual is finished. Now T'Raus must choose … Corona cannot impose its will on her.

  Spock himself came down the corridor toward them. His face was bruised, and there was a cut over his right eye, but otherwise he was unhurt. As soon as she saw him, the Spock within her melted away like a flake of snow landing on a fingertip.

  "You have administered ka nifoor?" he asked, bending over T'Raus.

  "You have," she said. Spock touched the young female's face and she turned toward him.

  "Is Corona within you?" Spock asked. The girl shook her head.

  "It was a bad thing," she said. "It trapped mother and father." She touched Spock's hand and Spock nodded his understanding.

  "T'Raus is once again a young Vulcan," he said to Mason. "She does not
have the experience, though she is mature. Corona must have concentrated on Radak, working first through him, then through his sister, then through his parents and Anauk and T'Kosa." He helped T'Raus to her feet. "Captain Kirk will have to make a decision. We must communicate with him soon, or we may not survive."

  Mason felt a calm numbness. "Why?" she asked. "Corona isn't in charge now—" And suddenly she knew why. The "stolen" part of Corona was still inside her, and what it wanted to do became clear almost as soon as she asked. She didn't know whether to be awed or horrified.

  "The process has already begun," Spock said. "The machinery in the research dome will soon begin altering the local structure of our universe. We must find a way to stop it, and to communicate with the Enterprise, before Kirk has to destroy the machinery, the station, perhaps the entire planetoid."

  Chapter Twenty

  Kirk sat in his chair on the bridge and ordered Sulu to bring the Enterprise to a new heading. "Ready phasers, full power. Load photon torpedoes."

  Uhura repeatedly tried to contact the station, but received no reply. Kirk looked at her hopefully, but she had to shake her head. Veblen and McCoy came onto the bridge and without a word Veblen sat at the computer station. He checked the monitors and found them vigilant; Kirk had already fed them Radak's information. McCoy stood near the railing, knowing better than to say anything; knowing the decision Kirk now had to make.

  Kirk leaned forward in his chair, watching the displays on the forward screen. The planetoid rotated slowly beneath them, a dead gray stretch of agglomerated rock. "Full mag on the station," he said. The screen image shifted several times in rapid succession and the Enterprise sensors tracked the station on multiple frequencies, displaying visible light. The two domes—research and storage—showed up clearly. He could even make out the wreckage of the Galileo II on the landing platform. "Mr. Veblen, are there bodies in the shuttlecraft?"

  Veblen swiveled his chair to the science console and keyed certain questions to the computers interpreting sensor data. "No, sir," he said.

  "How many people within the station?"

  "We can't scan the station interior, sir. Too much interference."

  "Any idea what's happening inside the research dome?" Kirk asked, knowing the question was futile.

  "No, sir," Veblen replied.

  Kirk tapped his fingers on the chair arm edge. "Lieutenant Uhura, maintain open channels on all frequencies Spock might use to contact us. Mr. Veblen, what can we do about Corona itself?"

  Veblen pursed his lips and shook his head. "The only manifestation is the radiation field and its extension around the planetoid, Captain. We cannot hope to shield anywhere near the area required to cut off its contact with the station."

  "How about photon torpedoes applied along the extension of the field?"

  "They would have no effect, sir. Photon torpedoes are not destructive on the level of fraction spaces."

  "Then what in hell can we do?"

  Veblen did not answer; the question was obviously rhetorical. The monitors knew what had to be done, however.

  Kirk resumed tapping his fingers. He could not believe Spock was dead; somehow, he still sensed the reassuring presence of the Vulcan. He was certain Spock was alive and doing everything he could from within the station. Corona simply wasn't allowing them to communicate.

  Communication—that was what was needed, and not just between the Enterprise and the station.

  They had to find some way to communicate again with Corona. "Release T'Prylla and Radak and bring them to the bridge, Devereaux," Kirk said. "Under guard."

  "Without the Ybakra shield, sir?"

  "Without the shield."

  The security guard, standing at his station to the right of the elevator door, nodded and left the bridge.

  Corona felt blind and deaf. After contact with the material intelligences, and so many years spent in their scale of time, observing through their sense organs, it took a while for Corona to adjust. There were still machines whose functioning it could monitor; but it had not planned for the loss of its Vulcan extensions, and so it could not immediately change what the machines were already doing.

  This did not disturb Corona. The machines were working smoothly, expanding the foamlike space of the extreme basement of this dead universe. Corona felt as if it existed among the bones of its old universe, seeing hints of the distant past, but little more. It would be glad to have all things collapse through the expanded wormholes and singularities the machines would soon create; there would be a kind of joy in witnessing the sudden shrinking of the galaxy, from the viewpoint of Corona's fraction-space consciousness. And if the machines did succeed in creating a self-replicating singularity, weaving through all dimensions and subdimensions, Corona would gladly accept its own destruction. There would always be the final satisfaction of knowing that the universe had been rejuvenated.

  And yet … there was a touch of regret. Strange as they were, the material intelligences had been quite interesting. Corona had never expected to find such complex beings in the bones of the old universe. If it was impossible to regard them with the same respect and affection Corona would have felt for its own kind, at least it acknowledged their usefulness. And they had shown remarkable flexibility in fighting back, ultimately wresting themselves from its control. That, too, was interesting.

  But they would not survive if Corona succeeded. Nothing remotely like them would survive.

  Tentatively, almost nostalgically, Corona extended tendrils of radiation to see if any of the Vulcans or the human had been made available to its touch again. And, somewhat to its surprise, it found Radak and T'Raus waiting.

  It sensed a trap, but could not conceive of any way the material intelligences could harm it. They only had minutes, on their time scale, to prevent the machinery from completing its work.

  "Corona is here," Radak announced. The boy looked to T'Prylla for guidance.

  "Allow it in, give it a voice, but do not let it control you. You can resist it now."

  "—Welcome," Radak said.

  Corona did not reply, staring through the boy's eyes at the bridge of the Enterprise, at the human called Kirk and his companions. Simultaneously, on the planetoid, it touched T'Raus. She could not be controlled, either. To Corona, then, conversation was merely a matter of amusement until the final transform began.

  "Mother," Radak said. "I can feel T'Raus. Corona links us."

  "Who's with them?" Kirk asked.

  "Our colleagues, your science officer and the human woman Mason."

  "I need to speak with Corona," Kirk said. "And to know what is happening on the planetoid."

  Radak reached out to touch T'Prylla. T'Prylla felt Corona's presence again, and steeled herself for the flood of undesired emotions—fear, resentment, hatred—but they did not come. Corona was undemanding, relaxed. Then, through Corona, she joined with T'Raus and saw through her eyes. "I am T'Raus," T'Prylla said.

  "Spock!" Kirk demanded. "I need to speak with my science officer. Corona must stop the interference with our communications."

  Radak spoke slowly and precisely—the voice of Corona. "I no longer interfere with your communications. There is disruption at the smallest levels of space-time between your ship and the planetoid. This I cannot stop."

  In the background, Veblen checked the ship's most sensitive scientific equipment and ran diagnostics that could tell him more. He was particularly interested in certain peculiarities in the spectrum of excited hydrogen atoms; such a test was part of the warp drive diagnostics built into the ship's engines.

  "Spock wishes to speak," T'Raus/T'Prylla said. "He will also accept Corona's touch now." T'Prylla's voice altered. "Captain, Spock here. Corona has succeeded. We cannot communicate because the machinery in the research dome has already begun altering the local continuum."

  "Confirmed, Captain," Veblen said. "Ship's instrumentation is being affected."

  "We must convince Corona of our worth," Spock said. "We have only
minutes to spare, and there is nothing I can do here to stop the process."

  A bright red light flashed on Kirk's command console—the monitors' warning signal. "What's that, Mr. Veblen?"

  "The monitors are about to take over, Captain. You haven't acted quickly enough to destroy the station."

  "Hold them off, Mr. Veblen!" He turned to Radak. "Corona! You must listen to me. We have the means to destroy everything you've tried to accomplish here. I won't be able to hold back the destruction for long. We must … come to an understanding. If we don't …" His face was anguished. "Good people will die. Friends, fellow workers, brilliant scientists. Do you know the meaning of friends?"

  "All of my … friends … are eons dead," Corona/Radak said. "The universe is dead, and I will bring it back to life."

  "No!" Kirk said. "The universe is not dead. We are here … and millions of other types of beings, occupying planets around the stars of this galaxy, and presumably all the other galaxies. There are even beings like yourself, not made of matter—beings like gods in comparison to Vulcans and humans. We have seen so little of what you call this dead universe, but we have seen enough to know … it is filled with life! With thought, and action, and hope … with the potential to grow, and develop. Your time is past … but ours has just barely begun. To try and bring back the past—"

  "Captain!" Veblen cried out. The red light on Kirk's command console glowed steadily. "The monitors—"

  Had taken over. "Mr. Sulu, bring the ship into firing position," their distinctive voice ordered. Sulu glanced at his captain, and in that moment of hesitation, the monitors assumed control of his post and the weapons console.

  "No!" Kirk shouted, standing before his chair, holding out his arms.

  The weapons console beeped, and below the bridge, the distant, shuddering bellow of emptying photon torpedo bays announced the Enterprise's final course of action.