It was like being attacked by a ball of loose cotton. The long streamers entwined themselves gently about the Enterprise. Then, warp-eight or no warp-eight, space-twisting engines or no space-twisting engines, the ship began to retract steadily back into the cloud.
"Full reverse thrust," ordered Kirk, more hopeful than sanguine.
"Full back engines, sir," Sulu confirmed. The bridge shuddered under the strain.
Except for computer-field compensation, the Enterprise would have been torn apart by the titanic conflicting stresses suddenly imposed on it. But the immense power of her engines was insufficient to pull her free.
"Not enough—it's not enough," McCoy said tightly, verbalizing the obvious.
"Some sort of antiplasma," Spock informed them, as if he were analyzing the composition of a candy bar. He looked up from the viewer. "It generates an unusually powerful attractive force. Not gravity as we know it, but similar." Kirk hardly heard him.
"Prepare to fire all phasers into the cloud mass. If possible, aim at where these tendrils connect with the mass itself."
"Locked on," said Sulu mere seconds later.
"Phasers ready," added Arex.
"Fire!"
"Firing phasers."
Ravening, destroying beams of pure force lanced out from the Enterprise—only to vanish with no visible effect into the cloud mass. They might as well have been beaming at the sun.
"Nothing, Captain," reported Sulu. Spock supplied an answer for the incredible.
"The cloud appears to have the ability to absorb energy, Captain. This is not surprising in view of what we already know about it. The beams of our phasers were not reflected by any sort of shield. Of course, anything that can manage the breakdown of a planet's molten core—"
There was no need to finish the thought. Try to harpoon a whale with toothpicks!
The streamers continued to pull the Enterprise closer to the cloud. Sulu was the first to notice the rippling in the surface of the roiling mass. A small opening appeared, expanded.
Its warp-drive engines still fighting in reverse, the star-ship disappeared into the cloud.
Kirk's stomach, on the other hand, was moving upwards and any minute now he was sure it would pop right out his mouth. The lights on the bridge fluttered, dimmed, and fluctuated wildly. Uhura was thrown out of her chair by an especially violent concussion.
Sulu was tossed a meter into the air before being slammed down to the deck, while Kirk and Spock held onto their respective chairs for dear life.
Only Lt. Arex, with his three arms and legs, managed to retain anything like a stable position.
Fortunately, the severe shaking lasted only a few seconds. Buffeting became rapidly less and less violent. In a little while the ship had completely recovered its normal equilibrium.
"Uhura?"
She scrambled back into her seat, grimacing at the lingering pain, and started checking her console for breakage.
"Sore backside, Captain, that's all. Nothing vital damaged."
"That's a matter of opinion," McCoy disputed. Everyone was too tense for a really honest laugh, but the sortie took the edge off their initial shock. Kirk even managed to smile. As usual, Spock stared blankly at his chuckling comrades.
"Mr. Sulu?" Kirk called when the stifled laughter had stilled, "are you operational?" He tried to make a joke of it. The navigation officer was in obvious pain and just as obviously trying to hide it.
"I believe—there is a possibility my left leg is broken, Captain."
"Report to Sick Bay, Lieutenant." But Sulu showed no signs of leaving.
"If you don't mind, Captain," he replied, already checking his computer to establish their position, "I'd like to stay at the helm." Another flash of pain showed on his face, but he turned away from the others and Kirk had only a glimpse of it.
McCoy objected loudly, heading in Sulu's direction. "Lieutenant, I order you to—" Then he paused. Now more than ever Kirk was going to need the senior navigation officer's abilities. "All right, Mr. Sulu, you can remain at station as long as I can put that leg in a temporary splint."
McCoy set about his task.
Sulu Watched his viewscreen, wincing only now and then.
"All right, Mr. Sulu," Kirk called. The viewscreen had gone blank. "See what you can get on the scanners." Sulu worked several controls.
Nothing happened.
"Emergency backup, Mr. Sulu." Immediately Sulu was manipulating an alternate set of switches. The screen started to clear, a picture to form—and there was a concerted gasp from the bridge.
The scene in the main screen was weird and beautiful. They appeared to be floating in a misty fog over a wavering, fantastic landscape of muted grey and brown. Huge, monolithic icebergs—shards of the planet Alondra—drifted with them in the mist. Many of the fragments were the size of large asteroids. They dwarfed the Enterprise whenever they moved close.
McCoy found further reason for amazement.
"We're still intact," he mused wonderingly, "but we must be inside the cloud!"
Uhura checked in. "All decks report considerable shaking up, Captain, but only slight damage." Sulu looked up from his station.
"Captain, objects approaching off the bow. Coordinates, well," he gestured at the viewscreen, "there they are."
A moment later a pair of huge, irregularly shaped blobs hove into view. Kirk didn't need sensor readings to tell him that they were heading towards the Enterprise. They were moving with impressive speed. Their size increased to threatening proportions as the distance between them and the trapped starship decreased.
"Deflector shields up and operating," informed Arex. He'd initiated deflector operation without Kirk's command—in this case, the sign of a good officer. There was a time and place for protocol—and a time and place to ignore it.
"More objects approaching aft!" added Sulu excitedly.
Kirk studied the clumsy, growing shapes intently. There was nothing to mark them as belligerent. They were utterly devoid of stinger, claw, fang, or for that matter, any other surface feature. It was the deliberateness of their approach, the indication of clear purpose in the way they moved towards the Enterprise that hinted at unfriendly intentions.
The cloud was also devoid of surface features.
"Analysis, Spock?"
"Nothing elusive or concealed about these, Captain," the science officer responded. "They are some organized form of highly charged antimatter."
At that point the highly charged voice of Chief Engineer Scott filtered over an intercom.
"Engineering to Captain Kirk." Kirk hit the broadcast switch on the arm of his chair.
"Kirk here. What's up, Scotty?"
"Captain," answered Scott ominously, "this drain on the deflector shields is too great for them to hold for any length of time."
"I know, Scotty." Kirk took another quick glance at the screen. Now the distinctive bright red of the blobs was pulsing visibly. As their color heightened in brilliance, one couldn't escape the impression that they were readying—something.
"Scotty, prepare the shields to deliver an antimatter charge. I can't tell you how strong it has to be, but you can be ready to give more than a tickle."
There was a brief pause, as though Scott was thinking about saying something. But only a firm, "Aye, Captain," came from the speaker.
Sulu shifted his eyes from the screen, kept them glued to the console until a rarely activated light winked on.
"Antimatter charge ready, sir." The gigantic blobs were almost on top of the ship.
"Discharge!" Sulu jammed in the switch.
Instantly, although there was no visible explosion, no blinding flare of light, the two amorphous masses fell back from the Enterprise. There was an isolated cheer from Uhura, but it died quickly. Their relief from the alien assault was only temporary.
A short distance away the blobs slowed, paused, and stopped. Everyone on the bridge waited breathlessly. Then they began to advance on the starship once again. B
ut there were hopeful signs. The powerful antimatter charge the Enterprise's engines had delivered had had some effect. The bright crimson color of the two aggressive forms had faded, the sharp pulsing seemed weaker. Now both were a light shade of pink.
"Double the charge, Mr. Sulu."
"Sir?" Sulu looked doubtful. Kirk's reply was not.
"I said double the charge."
Sulu did things with the console. "Ready, sir."
Kirk watched, waited until the two monstrous shapes seemed ready to envelop the ship, then, "Discharge!"
The blobs hesitated, shuddered—and began to fall away from the Enterprise. As they did so their color shifted from pink to light pink, to white. Then the massive shapes started to break up, to dissolve into smaller and smaller pieces which then vanished into nothingness.
Nervous conversation filled the bridge. Everyone seemed to have something to say, except Spock. His mind was obviously elsewhere.
"Well, Spock, any conclusions?"
"Only the beginning of a theory, Captain. A hint of a hypothesis." He dropped the bombshell with maddening calm. "It is possible that this cloud in which we are entrapped is a living thing. A conscious, animate entity. It is my considered opinion, barring future data to the contrary, that it is alive."
Arex whistled. There were similar exclamations of surprise and shock from the others.
"That's a sweet one, Spock." Kirk's initial impulse was to reject the incredible statement out of hand. A living being eight hundred thousand kilometers across! Insane!
Yet Spock, while unshockable himself, would be fully cognizant of the effect such a pronouncement would have on the rest of them. He might call it a theory, he might call it mere hypothesis, but he wouldn't mention it unless he felt pretty damn sure of his supportive evidence. So Kirk swallowed his natural reactions and instead turned calmly to Bones. Such caution had saved him embarrassment more than once.
"How about you, Bones? Any opinions?" McCoy, he noticed, had been using the library-computer annex to run some questions of his own.
"There's certainly some resemblance, Jim. I don't know how much we can depend on that. But I can tell you one thing. We have to get out of this area. Those mists out there," and he nodded in the direction of the screen, which showed only a thin grey fog, "have, according to the latest readouts from our chemical sensors, many of the characteristics of macromorphase enzymes.
"If the shields should fail—and they won't stay up forever, not under this pressure—the hull will be rapidly corroded through and we'll all be broken down into nice, bite-sized, digestible particles."
"I am inclined to agree with the doctor, Captain," said Spock, staring into the computer viewer. "I have been running continual checks on the planet Alondra. Its ruptured mass has been steadily growing smaller ever since we entered the cloud. Energy levels, concurrently, are up. The obvious analogy is inescapable."
"It's converting mass into energy, of course," Kirk agreed, startled at how easily the stunning words came. "Even so, we—"
Everyone glanced up in alarm at a loud, raucous blast of sound. It came from Uhura's station. She recovered from her initial surprise, checked her station, and hastily lowered the volume.
"Captain, I have a subspace message from Governor Wesley on Mantilles." She paused, looked away in mild embarrassment. "I forgot. I was able to initiate the requested call to him before we were—pulled in."
Kirk considered. He could take the call right here, of course. But the fewer people who knew of the ultimate decisions taken with regard to the doomed world, the better. Word could always slip out somehow, and there might be personnel on board the Enterprise with relatives or close friends on the outpost planet. He had enough crises to handle.
He rose. "I'll take the call in my quarters, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir."
"Mr. Sulu, Mr. Spock—utilize our scanners to assemble a chart of the cloud's composition and interior structure. Then give it to the library for analysis and preparation of initial diagrams. It's time we knew where we were." He turned and was on his way to his cabin before the two "yes, sirs" reached him.
X
The short walk from the elevator to his quarters gave him a few precious seconds to think. The number of options open to him now was severely limited, and growing smaller by the minute. It didn't take much time to examine them all.
Eighty-two million souls.
Poof.
He shook his head and cursed the vilest curses he could think of. There were times when he wanted to take the old, antique projectile weapon out of its protective case in the officer's lounge and blast away at everything fragile and delicate in sight. That was the trouble with modern weapons. Phasers had no recoil, made no more noise than a door buzzer. Their destructive capabilities were considerable; their psychological value to the wielder, nil.
Eighty-two million. The death of ten or twenty intelligent beings at one time he could grasp, could comprehend. But this—it was too overwhelming, too enormous a figure to terrify. An entire world reduced to a loose mathematical abstraction.
Only the people who lived on it were real.
Bob Wesley was only slightly older than Kirk. His manner as he stared out from Kirk's private screen was calm, steady, competent. His face held a few more lines and his hair was greyer. The subtle assassins of politics could be harder on a man than all the terrors of space.
Now he looked even older than his years. He made no attempt to conceal the burden he was feeling, to hide the agony he felt. When the image first materialized on the tiny screen, Kirk was shocked. Kirk tersely gave Wesley the facts.
"Three and a half hours, Jim," said Wesley slowly, each word rolling and booming like the clang of a great bell. "It's not enough. Not nearly enough. Even if I had the ships available to really evacuate." Kirk tried to think of something encouraging to say, could only come up with honesty.
"You have time to save some people, Bob."
Wesley mumbled a reply. "If the word gets out—and it will, no matter how hard we try to keep it secret—it will only start the panic sooner." He coughed softly. "But you're right, of course. We must do what little we can."
Kirk had never seen a man look so helpless. He wondered how he'd be standing up to the pressure if their positions were reversed. Strong men had committed suicide out of inability to cope with far less crushing situations.
Self-destruction, at least, was not Bob Wesley's way.
"How—," Kirk found himself choking on the words, "how are you going to choose?" Wesley's answer was expected.
"There is no choice, Jim. We'll save some of the children." He made a tired gesture of dismissal.
"And now if you'll excuse me, Jim. I'd like to talk—it's been a long time—but I've many things to do. There's not much time left."
"Sure, Bob." Kirk strove to sound cheerful. It came out false. "I'll talk to you later, if there's anything new." Wesley shrugged slightly.
"If you want." He sounded like a dead man already. Composed and resigned to an inevitable fate. The screen abruptly went dark. Kirk stared at it for long minutes, thinking. Gradually his brows drew together, and his teeth ground against one another in silent anger.
By the time he'd reached the bridge again the cloud of depression that had begun to overtake him, too, had been thrown aside by an invincible determination, a resolve to do something.
But how?
In three hours and twenty minutes the cloud would reach Mantilles. If that were permitted to happen millions of people would die. The elevator reached the bridge, and he stepped through the doors.
Very well—it must not be permitted to happen.
It was as simple as that.
He stopped, returned the stares of each and every one of the officers present. When he finally resumed his seat again and spoke, the words were directed at Spock and McCoy.
"Come on, gentlemen. I need your help. Your analyses, evaluations, opinions—no matter how wild, how outrageous. Exercise your mind
s, dammit! We're going to find a solution—and no one on Mantilles is going to die."
To an outsider familiar with the situation, it would have sounded futile. But somehow, at that point in time on the bridge, it didn't. In fact, it seemed almost reasonable.
"Start with basics," he finished. There was silence on the bridge.
"If we assume the cloud is a living being," said Spock slowly, "then it must follow that it requires some form of continual nourishment to sustain itself."
Kirk nodded. "And we have postulated that the cloud lives on the energy it converts from the mass of the planets it consumes—in this case, the planet Alondra. Though as yet we have no firm proof of this."
"Quite so," Spock added. "But it is apparently like some huge animal grazing here and there in the pasture of the universe."
That poetic phraseology caused Doctor McCoy to miss twelve full lines of computer biological analysis. He had to back up the tape and rerun the information.
"All right," agreed Kirk, hand caressing chin. "Let's follow that line of thought through. Bones, what about those antagonistic blobs?"
"Offhand, judging from the way they reacted to our presence, I'd say they perform essentially the same function as teeth, Jim. They break up the largest chunks of matter for easier digestion. Maybe they sensed us as being larger than we were, because compared to those chunks of planet floating around in here, we're digestible-size already. Possibly our engines give off enough energy to fool them into thinking we're more nutritious than we really are."
Kirk nodded, turned to face Sulu.
"Lieutenant, the computer scanners should have come up with something on the cloud's internal composition and makeup by now. Let's see it."
"Yes, sir." Sulu turned to his console. "Computer schematic readied. Coming on."
He hit a switch. On the screen, for the first time, they had an overall view of the interior of their massive host.
In shape it was rather like a fat pair of disembodied human lungs, joined directly together. Instead of a trachea or esophagus there was a bottle-shaped bulge in its middle. Rising from the top of this pear-shape was another long, narrower cavity.