Even as he did so, a familiar tingling started on his skin.
"No, no . . .! He repressed the shout. There wasn't a thing he could do. The ten-minute time period was up and the automatics were bringing him inexorably back to the Enterprise. And then he had a moment to consider a horrifying thought.
Was this pattern the one the transporter computer would retain? Or would he be rematerialized back aboard ship in his smaller size?
Too late to stop the action, too late to change, too late to worry. His vision blurred; he felt a second of total disorientation and nausea, and then the tingling left him and his vision returned. He was back on board.
Kirk looked down at himself, around the room. He was still his proper size. He stepped off the disk, danced around urgently.
"Scotty, Spock . . ." No answer, no gratified replies. Maybe they could not shout this far.
Moving rapidly to the transporter console, he examined the place where the crew of straining wire-pullers and pole-handlers had worked alongside the first officer and chief engineer only ten minutes before. No sign of them.
He took a moment to examine the whisker-thin wire still looped around the transporter lever, marveling from a new perspective at the ingenuity of Scott and his assistants. Dropping to all fours he commenced a detailed survey of the area, but found no sign of the crew.
Surely they could not have shrunken to microscopic size! That would be far beyond Spock's projected lower limit of a sixteenth of a centimeter.
Knowing the automatics would return him, they had probably gone to another part of the ship in need of their attention. The bridge, for example. He got to his feet.
After covering kilometers of scaled-down corridor, it was a pleasure to make it to the bridge at what seemed ike superhuman speed. The door was still locked open, the metal plate still taped over the sensor.
A quick look showed all panels and instrument consoles still operating. Impulse power was still keeping the basic functions of the ship operational, then. But still no sign of any of the crew.
There was plenty of evidence of their activities, though. Discarded remote handler poles, wires running to dials and levers, doubled-over cables attached to other controls in the same fashion used to manipulate the transporter lever, tiny ladders and stilts made of metal bands.
But an uncanny silence. Clicks and snaps of relays going over. The hum of still-powered machinery. And—he strained to hear it—something more?
High-pitched, barely audible, like the mewing of a small kitten tacked away in a drawer somewhere. Bending, he tried to follow the sound, finally saw the line of ant-sized figures emerging from behind one edge of the helm console.
Dropping to hands and knees, he looked closer. The figures took on familiar shapes and forms and even individual features. But they were so tiny, so incredibly tiny.
"Scotty, is that you?"
Scott was staring upward, past the towering peninsulas of Kirk's fingers, up into the monolith of his overhanging face. It hung in the sky like a great pink thundercloud.
He cupped his hands and shouted, "Aye, Captain, for the love of heaven, be careful where you step!"
Kirk nodded slowly, then dropped his face to the floor in an attempt to get as close as possible to eye level with his miniaturized crew. Scott and the others backed up nervously. It was like a mountain falling.
"IS EVERYONE SAFE?"
Scott staggered backward, hands clapped to his ears. "Easy Captain, you'll deafen us for sure."
Kirk dropped his voice to what he thought was a bare whisper. To the shrunken crew his voice still sounded like distant thunder. "Everyone accounted for?"
"All but the regular bridge complement, Captain!" Scott yelled back. "They were all at their posts, when according to the ensign who witnessed it, they were suddenly beamed away. Every living one of them. That's why I moved my people up here, to keep things runnin'.
"No warnin', no indication of what was comin'—and not a blessed hint of what did it! Only that something was using standard transporter technology."
That was the end, the final assassin of somnolent diplomacy. Now they would not deal so amiably with the inhabitants of the miniature city. Considering their attitude toward the Enterprise thus far, Kirk didn't think their treatment of the captured bridge staff would be very benign. Sulu would get his wish, if he were still alive.
Kirk put the tail end of that thought out of his mind.
Turning his head, he had another look at the main viewscreen. He could still see the same quadrant of tortured surface seething below. Transporter records would show precisely where he had been set down. He could pinpoint the city easily. He whispered downward again.
"All personnel away from the helm area. Move to the far bulkhead. I don't know if those people down there—I think I flatter them—have any kind of defense other than their compaction beam, but they might have a more physical way of jolting us. I'd hate to fall an anybody."
As the crew moved at top speed, with infinite slowness, to scatter across the floor, Kirk got to his feet and walked to the helm. His gaze went to certain boldly marked controls—controls which the now-vanished Sulu had pleaded to use before.
Kirk set the phaser control thoughtfully, pressed a couple of attendant switches, read the results of his request on the appropriate gauge.
Yes, the phasers were lined on his desired region. Yes, they still retained enough impulse power for a couple of mild bursts. But that was all it would take to melt the jewel-like little metropolis with its belligerent inhabitants into a shining puddle of metal slag.
Anyone else in Kirk's position might have done that immediately, on the chance of being whisked from the bridge by some irresistible transporter effect himself. Anyone else might, but they would not have been a starship captain.
Kirk's anger was moderated by one overriding factor—the chance that Sulu and the others might still be alive somewhere in that honeycomb of towers and roadways.
With the phaser controls set, he moved to Uhura's communications console, checking to make sure Scott and his companions were far from his path between there and the helm. After a second's thought, he selected the general interspecies frequency, composed his thoughts, and addressed himself to the pickup.
"Message to the inhabitants of the city on the planet below. I hope you can receive this frequency and understand my words. Your continued survival depends on it" He paused, gave any listener a chance to fine tune.
"All this ship's armament is locked in on the coordinates of your city. In case you doubt our ability to operate effectively, I've timed a demonstration." He checked his wrist chronometer, counted seconds, looked up at the screen.
The brilliant beam of the secondary phaser bank vanished into atmosphere. On the surface, another steep-walled valley appeared in the ground alongside the one which held the city. Reduced in strength as it was to a trickle of its usual self, the beam was still powerful enough to annihilate the entire city at one touch. The illumined towers and gilded rectangles trembled slightly from a new, artificial quake.
Kirk turned back to the pickup. "You have one minute to restore my bridge crew unharmed or you will receive a full barrage from my ship's armament."
Opening the speakers and setting part of the instrumentation to Receive, he moved back to the phaser controls, set one switch, and put his finger on the fire button. He had reversed the field effect in the fluid switch. Now, if he took his finger off the button—if he were suddenly beamed away—the phaser would fire.
He considered the possibility of destroying an entire city. He found it impossible to be objective, yet the situation had come to the point where someone below had to make the ultimate decision. It was no longer his responsibility. He told himself that, repeatedly. Sulu, Uhura, Arex, Spock—all might be dead already.
A glance at his wrist. Half a minute gone, forty seconds—and then a rapid series of high beeps and sputters filled the bridge, pouring over the main speakers. On the main viewscreen
the image of the surface fluttered, was consumed by static, and then suddenly sharpened
Kirk saw the interior of a huge room—huge on the screen—with a vaulting roof soaring far overhead. Highly intricate machinery was set nearby, and tunic-clad creatures were clustered around it.
One of the beings stepped suddenly into the visual pickup from the left side, blocking out most of the view behind. Kirk thought he had seen enough aliens to be prepared for the sight of almost any creature imaginable—any creature unimaginable.
This was unimaginable and shocking. Overpowering.
The alien was male, tall by the standards of its people, vigorous-looking and topped with gray hair. If it resembled anything Kirk had seen before, it was his own father.
Gulliver had been right all along—only his geography was inaccurate.
Kirk underwent some localized tremors of his own as he tried to readjust his thinking.
The man spoke in a high-pitched but nonetheless impressive voice, a voice filled with a dignity and earnestness that bespoke long experience as a leader of men living in desperate circumstances.
"In the name of the Terratin people," he said formally, "I forbid you to take offensive action against this city, Captain Kirk."
Kirk spoke into the helm pickup mike, trying to put as much sarcasm into his voice as possible. "You forbid me, after what you've done to my ship and to my friends?"
"I am Mandant of all this city," the figure told him with assurance, "superior in command to yourself."
"Sorry," Kirk informed the speaker grimly, his finger quivering on the fatal button, "Mandant is not a recognized Starfleet rank."
At this point the leader's tone softened noticeably.
"We are a people of considerable pride, Captain. Equal in pride to your own. We neither suffer insult, nor give apology, for actions we deem necessary, but . . ." and here he hesitated, obviously struggling with himself to find the words for something he was quite unused to saying, "I give apologies now for the inconvenience done your ship and crew."
Inconvenience!
"To make amends I may tell you that this world contains . . ."
"I'm not interested in what your world contains just now," Kirk replied angrily. "Where are Mr. Spock, Lieutenant Sulu, and the rest of my officers?"
"I order . . ." the Mandant began and then he stopped, glanced away. "No . . . no. Not order. Please try to understand, Captain Kirk. Our adopted world is dying, has been dying for many years. No ship of an intelligent race had passed this way until yours came exploring.
"We tried to tell you of our plight as you entered orbit, but our great communications antenna was buried too deep by sequential flows of lava and ash. We were, we are, desperate, Captain. We had to make some kind of contact with you. The only device we had remaining to us which conceivably could have made you take notice was our invasion defense system, and . . ."
"You still haven't answered my question," Kirk interrupted him. "Either you tell me what's happened to my people . . ."
The Mandant abruptly moved aside . . . to reveal a healthy Sulu and Arex. Both were carrying tools of unfamiliar design, yet vaguely familiar in outline. Neither showed any sign of mistreatment.
"Here we are, Captain." Arex speaking, normal, relaxed.
"We're in the capitol building of the Terratin city, sir," Sulu explained. "As you've probably guessed, they beamed us down with their transporters."
Now why didn't they just do that in the first place? Kirk found the answer immediately after the thought occurred. If the Terratins had tried to make contact by transporting down members of the Enterprise, even one person would have obliterated not only the transport station but probably half the city as well.
That's why they had to use their invasion defense system first, to reduce the crew sufficiently in size to where they could be brought into the city.
Kirk wondered if the Terratin engineers knew that the crew members would return to their normal size once transported back to the Enterprise. That was a question best side-stepped for the moment. The important thing was that Sulu and the others were all right.
But he didn't let himself relax until he had reset the phaser controls to normal and lifted his finger from the red button.
"What's going on down there, Lieutenant Sulu?"
"See for yourself, sir." He stepped out of view, favoring his injured leg. Arex and the Mandant did likewise.
As the pickup panned the great hall, Kirk saw McCoy and Chapel tending to a mass of people scattered on beds about the chamber. The room was jacked to overflowing with people. Normal, human-type people, except for their size. Many of them appeared to be burn victims. Kirk rubbed idly at a hole on the shoulder of his own shirt where one of the flying embers had burned through. He did not need to be told what the sufferers in that hall ware experiencing.
Even as he watched, the picture shook visibly and the people in the building reacted to the new quake. There was no panic, however, only a few gasps and the shushing of crying children. These people were used to such shocks by now, if not resigned to them.
Panning further, the pickup finally settled on Spock. The science officer was working with several Terratins. They appeared to be struggling to repair what resembled a video-broadcast unit of extremely ancient design. His anxiety over the condition of his companions now satisfied, Kirk permitted his curiosity full flow.
"Mr. Spock!" The first officer looked up. "Who are the Terratins? Where did they come from?"
The first officer of the Enterprise spoke toward the screen. Kirk could hear him clearly.
"An intriguing historical sidelight, Captain," he began, with typically scholarly reserve. "From the records I have had time to examine, they appear to be the descendants of an early lost colony ship. They are, despite differences in size, of the same Terran stock as yourself.
"Believing their colony to be the tenth to be founded, they named this world Terra Ten—which over the years has become the present corrupted form, Terratin."
"All very plausible, Mr. Spock, except for that slight difference in size. I doubt we would find any records of Earth ships carrying colonists a sixteenth of a centimeter tall."
"The original colonists were normal-sized humans," Spook continued. "The remarkable radiation which they have incorporated into their unique defensive system is present naturally in a transuranic element quite common on the surface here. This defensive system intensifies the compaction effect of that radiation tremendously.
"The naturally present wave effect took several hundred years to reduce the colonists and their descendants to their present size. Once aware of what was happening, they were able, as were we, to predict the ultimate dimensions of the compaction. And to plan far in advance for it, designing all the miniature machines and devices they would need for survival."
Suddenly the Mandant reappeared on the screen, now standing beside Spock. "The colony ship was well equipped, Captain. But even with many years to prepare for this, our current state, our ancestors were forced to direct all their energies to insure their descendants' survival.
"In concentrating on survival technology, many other abilities were lost or degenerated—our ability to build deep-space communications equipment, for example. Nor could we escape, since the material inherent in a colony ship's construction is designed to be incorporated into the colony itself. Colony vessels were designed for one-way trips only. Once our ancestors began to cannibalize it for material for the first city, there was no hope of using it for travel again.
"We had to build a new way of life on this world, Captain Kirk. We had to adjust to our changing size, create a new form of defense against any potential attackers, master this planet's unstable ways. We encountered no outsiders, had no help of anyone." The screen shook again, more violently this time. When the shaking had stopped and the cries of the children in the hall had faded once more the Mandant continued, his voice growing thick with emotion.
"But as you now see, Captain, we are
forced to seek outside help, for we are about to lose everything. The geologists of the original colony selected what they believed to be one of the most seismically stable regions on the surface. Yet even here we were never wholly immune to quakes and tremors. Their intensity has grown alarmingly in recent months.
"We began to hunt frantically for outside aid. And we began to despair of contacting another vessel. When your Enterprise went into orbit here we were hysterical with hope, despite the earlier destruction of our communications system. We are only able to contact you now," he made a gesture off screen to his left, "due to the knowledge of your Mr. Spock.
"We had to contact you and request if we could, compel if we must, your help. Many thousands look to me to preserve their lives, Captain Kirk. Even so, I hesitated before ordering the defense system brought into play. I apologize again if in gaining your attention we caused any anguish to you or your crew."
"Your actions all but lost us our ship," Kirk responded, his tone turning milder even as he spoke the words. "If I hadn't accidentally discovered that our transporters could return us to normal size, we would have lost total control of the Enterprise. That would have been the end of us and any help we could have given you."
"Again, I am sorry, Captain Kirk," the Mandant replied, torn between natural pride and the utter desperateness of his situation, "if in gaining your attention we utilized the first rule of politics—do that which is expedient rather than that which may be right. Really, we had no other choice." He paused, and all traces of arrogance vanished in a naked plea.
"I do not know how to beg, Captain Kirk. I can therefore only request, ask you to save as many of my people as you can. My counselors and I decided to use our defensive system to contact you. If you bear any grudge against us, we will submit whatever judgment you deem fit.
"In any case, we of course insist on being the last to be taken off."
"Don't be idiotic," Kirk found himself mumbling. He was vaguely aware that the Mandant was manipulating his emotions with a skill born of long practice, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. Not with the lives of a city at stake.