But what if Bones was right and they were under attack? What kind of an enemy were they up against—and why? What could their tormentors want. There had been no attempt to contact the Enterprise. The only explanation that seemed logical was that the world below held a low-population race—living underground, perhaps—that was inherently inimical to all outsiders. They are other than us, therefore they are to be destroyed was the usual rationale of such races.
Yet how could they know that the Enterprise contained creatures different from themselves? A problem, he reflected, that had plagued mankind throughout much of his own history. If they were under assault by an intelligent civilization, its founders must have a philosophical orientation radically different from the Federation's. Kirk watched the surface they hovered over, watched it trying to tear itself to pieces, watched and tried to visualize what kind of beings it could support.
What must they look like.
Sulu's voice roused him from contemplation. "New parameters established, sir." The helmsman sounded pleased with himself. Considering the miniscule amount of power he'd had to draw upon and the effect he'd achieved with it, he had reason to be.
"Our perigee has been raised by a significant amount."
Kirk made a positive gesture. At least they didn't have to worry about losing altitude until they crashed into the boiling crust below.
They could sit up here and rot.
Uhura's report was less encouraging. "No reply to our universal mayday, sir. I don't believe we have enough power left to push a signal to Star Base Twenty-three. And there's no reason to expect any other ships to be in this region."
Kirk nodded somberly. "All right. Keep trying, Lieutenant." He glanced to the library. "Spock, anything new on the wave bombardment we're taking?"
The first officer looked up and shrugged slightly. "Only that it is complex beyond anything in my scientific experience. As a weapon it would appear to be not only extraordinarily effective, but the product of a devious mass mind. And yet, there are psychological overtones that make me wonder . . ."
"It's the physical ones I'm concerned with at the moment, Mr. Spock."
Scott's voice came over the ship com.
"Engineering to Captain Kirk."
"Kirk here," he acknowledged. "How are you doing back there, Mr. Scott?"
The chief engineer didn't try to hide the exhaustion in his voice. "We've replaced all the damaged circuitry, and bypassed what we can't replace or repair."
"Will they hold up if we have to press them, Scotty?"
"Well enough, Captain. That's not the problem. We can only run so long on impulse power before the emergency cells go. Then it's restart the reaction chambers or . . . The well will run dry soon enough, sir."
"I know, Scotty. You've done what you can. Kirk out." He considered. Somehow they had to conserve even more power. They might have to try a last breakout, Spock's warning notwithstanding. Then they would need every erg the reserve cells could muster.
"Uhura, reduce mayday signal repetition. One broadcast per ten-minute cycle."
"Reduce range, too, Captain?"
"No." Frequency would have to do. "Maximum signal strength for the isolated broadcasts . . . otherwise they'll be worse than useless."
"Yes, sir."
"Mr. Arex, cut down on all sensor sweeps of the planet."
"Visual sweeps are already impossible, Captain," the navigator told him. He gestured at his finder—up at his finder. "My eyes no longer properly fit the optical pickups."
"And I can't reach the dial I turned five minutes ago," added Uhura, a rising note of alarm in her voice. She was reaching for the control in question, stretching on tiptoe and still falling short
Damnation! If they didn't shrink much more they could cope. But if they continued to lose height? He had had no compunctions about having the deflector shields turned off—they had proven useless anyway. If they couldn't break out of orbit and remained under the influence of the mysterious radiation, would they contract to the point where they could no longer operate the controls?
He was hunting for a miracle in a fog. What do you do in a fog first? Stay in one place, he reminded himself, and establish some reference points.
He hit the intercom again. "Kirk to Sick Bay."
"Sick Bay," came the familiar response, worried now. "Sick Bay . . . McCoy here, Jim."
"Bones, I've got to have some answers. I know what's happening to us—what I must know is how, and why."
"Come down to the lab, Jim. Spock too. I was just going to call you. I may have something . . ."
Despite the fact that they ran, Kirk and Spock took much longer than usual to reach the lab. Not that they moved any more awkwardly, or that their strength was sapped, but they were now less than a meter tall. Sheer distance was making it more time consuming simply to get around the ship.
McCoy had to call out before they spotted him. The doctor was standing part way up a metal stepping stool, necessary now if he was to reach the instruments on the counter above. The cabinets above the counter proper were as much out of his reach now as the planetary surface.
He gestured at the laser scope on the counter, then stepped down to make room for Kirk. Fortunately, the device had a swivel eyepiece which could be tilted down as well as up. Kirk glanced in, feeling uncomfortable at the unnatural size of the scope lenspiece.
The slide was a hybrid, two sections joined side by side. The difference between the healthy stable tissue and the radiation-poisoned tissue was obvious.
Nonetheless, McCoy explained helpfully: "That's the test tissue I've been using on the right, Jim. From my arm, not that it matters. The stabilized normal tissue is on the left."
Kirk studied the accusing slide a moment longer before muttering, "Then Spock's theory is confirmed." He didn't look away from the scope. "We're contracting."
"No question about it, Jim. That's why our weight remains about the same, and why we haven't gone floating up to the ceiling with every step. The number of atoms remains the same. The wave bombardment is simply causing them to tighten, reducing the diameter of electron orbits. Just like the dilithium. Not to the shattering point, though—I guess organic structures have more resilience. Otherwise we would start breaking up like glass figurines. At least, I don't think the shrinkage will get that extreme." He looked uncertainly to Spock.
"Though I can't really make any assurances about an effect that's never been observed before."
"Agreed," the first officer said. "A most unique phenomenon. It is quite interesting. I should like to study it at more leisure . . ."
"Except that we haven't got any leisure time left," McCoy finished grimly.
"An accurate if not particularly scientific description, Doctor. I believe the process is accelerating."
Kirk finally turned away from the depressing evidence displayed by the scope. Obvious perversions of nature held a horrible inevitability about them that no amount of rationalizing could dispel.
"How long could it keep on?"
Spock stared around the lab as he reflected on the captain's question, the lab which had assumed the proportions of a coliseum.
"Perhaps infinitely. Considering that the distance between electron orbits and nuclei is relatively as great as the distances between suns, even if the rate of reduction continues to increase it should take some time before we . . . disappear entirely."
There was numbed silence in the lab.
"Dr. McCoy."
They turned as Nurse Chapel appeared from behind a row of cages. "It's the experimental animals, doctor. They're getting too small to be contained by some of the cages, the ones with wire mesh walls. All the gossamers are out already."
She held up one of the transparent quasi-rodents for them to stare at. It was perfectly proportioned and the proper size compared to the rest of them.
"Look how tiny they've gotten," she went on. "Just like the halo fish. It's tadpole size now." She looked back and pointed up toward the aquarium. They
could still discern the sensitive swimmer, spectacularly colored as always, its satellite circlet fluorescing brightly—though now it was barely the size of a finger ring.
"And that," noted McCoy sarcastically, "is supposed to be a creature sensitive to the tiniest changes in environment." He snorted. "So much for the confident dictates of Starfleet Medical Center."
"Don't be too hard on them, Doctor," Spock advised. "No one could have foreseen our present remarkable situation."
McCoy took several deep breaths and eyed Spock significantly. The science officer's attention had been diverted elsewhere, however. He was staring at a large band of metal which dangled from nurse Chapel's arm. He fingered the double twist of shiny alloy curiously.
"Christine, what is the composition of this decoration?"
Chapel blinked, looked down at her arm. "it was made for me by the Knight Smiths of Libra IV. It's a common piece of costume jewelry." She lowered her arm and the now greatly oversized circle of metal slid off easily. The arm bracelet was more like a necklace now.
"What about it, Spock?" queried McCoy. "I didn't know you were interested in jewelry of any kind."
"A moment please, Doctor. It is not its aesthetic qualities which intrigue me at the moment. Knight metal alloy," he repeated cryptically. "An artificial construct. Yet the uniform on which it rested fits as well as ever. Your uniform, all of our uniforms, is woven from algae-based xenylon, I believe."
"Naturally. All regular Starfleet-issue work uniforms are made of xenylon," McCoy observed, still not seeing what the first officer was driving at. But Kirk was only a couple of steps behind Spock and catching up rapidly.
"I think I see what you mean, Spock. They've all been shrinking proportionately with us, so . . ."
"Exactly, Captain. I would be assured my theory is fact . . ." He was staring up at the aquarium, suddenly started towards the table it sat on. "One more example, I think."
Then he was climbing up the stool. Stretching, he reached into the water and brought out a small piece of floating coral which had become detached from the main mass. He examined it briefly before nodding to the others.
"The animals, the living corals, have contracted along with us—and so have their organically based limestone homes. Yet the rest of the material in the aquarium, the rocks on the bottom, remain unchanged and normal sized."
"I see. So that confirms it, then—only organic matter is affected," McCoy said. "But then how . . .?"
"Remember, Doctor," Spock went on, climbing down from the stool, "the wave impulses cause only spiral molecules to wind tight. The only inorganic spiral molecular chains we know of are those which form crystalline dilithium. Which is actually analogous in structure to one we are quite close to."
"The doubled DNA helix in the nucleus of every cell in our bodies," Kirk recited, echoing a line from Academy biology. The remembrance was small comfort. He frowned. "I suppose we ought to consider ourselves lucky, Bones. Some of the dilithium crystals self-destructed when their internal structure unwound instead of contracting. If we were subjected to the same stresses we would all be puddles of jelly on the deck by now."
McCoy shrugged. "It's all the same in the end, Jim. I'm not sure that I wouldn't prefer that to being a candidate for a flea circus."
Kirk had a thought, hiked over to the computer console. "Bones, what happens when DNA is compacted to its ultimate limits?"
"I don't think the strands would break, Jim, as Spock says." He walked over to stand next to the Captain. "I guess they just stop winding."
"Well then, if that's the case, we can calculate the limits of our shrinkage. It shouldn't be infinite."
"It is possible," conceded Spock. "I'll feed the question to the library."
Kirk and McCoy wrestled with the stool set near the scope until it was set close to the computer console. Spock climbed up, carefully walked out onto the sensitive keyboard. The keys were now hand instead of thumb size. But he had no trouble depressing them.
"Something else that we had better calculate just occurred to me," Kirk yelled upward. "How long can we expect to maintain effective control of the ship?"
"I have considered that question also, Captain. The computer will project a point beyond which the systems switches and controls will be beyond our ability to operate efficiently.
"I might also add, Captain, that we had better take care where and how we walk. Remember, our weight remains approximately the same despite our smaller size. It is therefore concentrated on a smaller supportive surface. It would be dangerous to walk out on a glass surface, for example. We would tend to go right through it.
"It appears the calculations will take some time."
"Stick with it, Spock. I'm going back to the bridge."
"And I think I'd better make some preparations, Jim," McCoy told him. "At the rate we're contracting there're going to be some accidents soon. Maybe not quite the kind Spock is thinking of, but related."
"Check, Bones. Spock, report the moment you have some results."
"Yes, Captain."
The walk back to the bridge felt like a hike of kilometers, even though Kirk was expecting it. He was also expecting a new view of the bridge. Even so, his first glimpse of what had become a giant's playground was shocking. He walked slowly toward the towering command chair, thinking furiously . . .
While minutes and centimeters continued to tick away, the entire scientific complement of the Enterprise worked overtime trying to find a way to reverse, or at least halt the contraction that was literally taking their mastery of the ship away from them.
They knew the cause . . . the strange faint radiation from the surface they could not run away from. They could now calculate their rate of shrinkage. But no solution offered itself. They couldn't even identify the type of radiation.
The intercom buzzed insistently for attention. Kirk reached over to acknowledge the call, missed and had to readjust his reach. His arms had grown shorter in the last hour. That was the most frustrating aspect of the shrinkage effect. You had to constantly readjust your senses to a new size. A few crewmembers were reacting so badly to the constant change they had to be sent to McCoy for sedation.
"Spock here, Captain," came the voice at the other end. It was totally unreasonable to hope that the science officer had found any miracle solutions, but Spock had done it before. Unfortunately, this didn't look to be one of those times. The report was consistent only in its pessimism.
"Not only does our rate of contraction show no sign of halting, Captain, but it appears it may continue beyond our ability to adapt to it."
Still thinking about missing the intercom switch a moment ago, Kirk shot back, "How long can we anticipate retaining ship control, Mr. Spock?"
"I would say," the thoughtful reply went on, "that even with our most intensive miniaturizing measures and ability to design new compact backup systems, we will lose effective control of this vessel at the point when we become approximately one centimeter tall." There was a pause, then, "My present height is something like a third of a meter, Captain.
"I am coming forward to utilize the fuller resources of the library computer station . . . for as long as I can continue to operate it. Spock out."
"Kirk out."
IV
The next hour was a hectic race against rapidly increasing odds—reducing odds, actually—as the Enterprise's construction engineers worked frantically to fashion an endless stream of ingenious, yet ultimately useless miniaturized apparatus.
Ladders mounted on wheels and built of metal strips; long clamp poles and flex tubes for manipulating simultaneous dials and switches now far out of reach—a host of intricate devices.
It was, expectedly, a losing battle. Eventually all operations and energies above bare life-support maintenance were directed toward retaining control in two sections . . . the bridge and Engineering.
Kirk leaned back and stared up at the cliff of the library computer station where Spock was running back and forth manipulatin
g controls with tireless energy. But even with adroit manipulation of the new, miniature handling tools, Kirk could see that the first officer could not keep it up much longer.
Eventually he would grow so small he wouldn't be able to read the gargantuan printouts. He was minutes from losing the ability to use the hooded viewer.
"You said one centimeter was the critical point, Spock?"
Spock came to the edge, leaned over carefully and shouted down, "I beg your pardon, Captain?"
"When will we reach, the critical one centimeter point?"
"At the present rate of compaction I should estimate in thirty-two minutes, Captain."
Kirk nodded, acknowledging the inevitable, then remembered an as yet unanswered question.
"How small will we ultimately shrink, Mr. Spock?"
"One moment, Captain." Spock turned his attention back to the instrument panel. Surveying the angular field of levers and switches, he mapped out a plan of attack. Starting with a red triangle close by he hop-scotched his way across the controls. His only real worry was that his concentrated weight might shatter them, but fortunately the high-impact styrene remained intact.
Seconds passed. Then a billboard-sized series of figures appeared on the first screen in front of him. Spock studied them briefly, then marched back to the edge of the console. It wasn't the kind of answer he liked to give.
"There is not sufficient information to calculate our final reduction limit with any precision, Captain. I do have a projection on the time required for full analysis of the spiroid wave phenomenon, though, which could lead to a solution and method for reversing the process."
"That's great, Spock . . . follow it up!"
"I would, Captain, but there is one difficulty. The time required for such analysis is estimated at between seven and eight years. As we have perhaps several hours remaining to us . . ."
Across the vast valley of the bridge deck, Sulu heard Spock's fatal pronouncement and clenched his fists in helpless frustration. Sulu turned back to the helm console on which he now walked, the controls growing more and more difficult to manipulate. He stared up at the main viewscreen. It still showed the same quarter of fractured land below them.