A valley of utter desolation, then, no different from dozens the Enterprise had already passed over...
From an area to the north of a portion of rugged basalt, a beam of intense light suddenly leaped across the valley floor. Instead of a shard of broken, twisted stone, it struck a hemispheric, concave dish studded with curvilinear projections.
The dish was camouflaged, hidden, but the polished metal was clearly the work of something other than nature. Seconds, and then the twisted protuberances began to glow brightly. Slight motion and the dish readjusted itself. From the omphalos a powerful beam probed the ash-laden sky.
Simultaneously, the dish generated another beam, a twin of the one still locked on from across the valley. It disappeared into the distance. Kilometers away, another sky beam replied immediately. Another, and yet again as a webwork of light sprang up across the valley.
Soon the blasted landscape was a bouquet of cloud-piercing beams, all entwined in the atmosphere in a mysterious, purposeful pattern - a photonic macrame.
All the while, the lava fountains played on in more substantial counterpoint to the sudden eruption of light.
***
Kirk relaxed and turned, bored, from the viewscreen. He had orbited over plutonic landscapes before, over hell-worlds far more spectacular than the one below. He had toured with an Academy class through the Nix Olympica thermal power station on Mars. No, there was nothing here to hold them. The survey would take but a few minutes more.
"Let me know when we've completed initial orbit, Mr. Sulu. A single circuit should be enough."
"Aye, sir." Sulu studied instrument readouts, announced moments later: "Coming up on primary termination, sir."
Involved in winding up their scan, no one noticed the unusual frown that came slowly over Spock's face. Nor the even more unusual gesture that followed. He squinted. His attention was focused on a small readout set just above the main computer screen at the science station.
A gently weaving line there had abruptly produced a violent visual hiccup which sent the line shooting off the top of the screen. Spock jabbed a switch and the moving line froze instantly. Another dial was gently turned and the monitoring gauge ran the readout backwards.
Undeniably, something had given the scanner involved a severe jolt. A powerful jab, as if something had kicked into it from below.
He allowed the dial to snap all the way back. Once again the screen showed a pattern of standard wave disturbances, the easy flowing line. Spock touched another control and a still picture of the violent distortion appeared on the main screen. Isolated, but just possibly....
"Captain, I have registered a prodigious wave-disturbance. An electronic impulse of some sort has just passed through the ship."
All hint of relaxation or lassitude gone, Kirk sat up straight in his chair. "Type and source?"
"Unidentified, unknown," the science officer replied tersely, still studying the readout. "It was a single brief burst, very sharp. If the source is still active, it's extremely faint and diffuse. Too much so to pinpoint while we continue orbit." He looked away from the viewer.
"I suggest we synchronize orbit with the surface at the impulse reception point, Captain, until the effects can be analyzed. Though there is no evidence of damage." He exchanged glances with his fellow officers.
"Bridge reports?"
Sulu made a quick check of the helm monitors. "All instruments functioning. Ship's condition is normal. All status lights green. No damage calls from any sections."
"Warning sensors stable," Uhura said, and Arex added, "External scans detect nothing abnormal, sir."
Kirk drummed fingers on the arm of his chair. It was a definitive rhythm which Sulu had been trying to identify ever since he had joined the Enterprise. Some day he would get it.
"You're sure it passed through the ship, Mr. Spock?"
Spock appeared mildly miffed. "Absolutely, Captain. A rapid burst of an unknown type of energy. It is the apparent generative power behind it which impels my concern."
Kirk grunted, hit a switch on the chair arm. "Bridge to Engineering." A wait, then, "Scotty, we just took an energy impulse of unknown type. How are your engines?"
"A moment, Cap'n." A longer wait while everyone on the bridge visualized Scott hurriedly checking half a hundred lights and gauges. The chief engineer's voice came over the bridge as he worked the intercom multiple.
"Davis?" he asked, talking to an unseen subordinate.
"Chief?"
"Any problems?"
"Problems, Chief? What kind of problems?"
"Thanks, Davis .... that's what I wanted to know." Back on the main com, now. "Purrin' like kittens, Cap'n. Why, what's going on?"
"Probably nothing, Scotty, but keep a close eye on your telltales just the same."
Scott sounded confused, but willing. "Will do, sir."
Kirk tried a final possibility. After the inanimate machinery, there was one other component that required checking.
"Bridge to Sick Bay. Bones?"
"Here, Jim."
"We've just taken an unidentified energy impulse. Any effect on the lab animals or crew?"
"No sudden sicknesses, if that's what you mean, Jim. Just a second and we'll check the lab animals. Christine?" He looked around for his assistant.
"Doctor?" She responded from her station.
"Time to check the guineas."
Leaving her station, Nurse Chapel followed McCoy into one of the interconnecting lab rooms. This particular chamber boasted a double thick door. It was designed for holding both alien and domestic life-forms, from beings the size of a horse down to new viral strains. The present population was starship standard, small, and quietly spectacular.
To doctor and nurse, however, the flashy experimental animals were everyday acquaintances. McCoy went first to the modest aquarium.
Nothing could look more ordinary. Small stones, waving water plants and even a few decorative bits of coral offered naught to tease the eye. One had to look much closer to see that the sole occupant was most definitely not ordinary.
Rather like a cross between the tropical trumpet and angelfish of the warm Terran ocean, the single fish was beautiful enough. What turned it from beauteous to breath-taking was the extraordinary ring of rainbow light that encircled it completely from top to bottom, floating centimeters away from the body proper.
No one had yet figured out how the halo fish produced its remarkable Saturnian ring. Its brilliance shaded the phosphorescence of Terran deep-sea dwellers into dullness.
The importance of the tiny swimmer derived not from its ornamental value, however, but from its touchy disposition. At the moment it swam placidly - and healthily - through its liquid abode.
McCoy examined the fish carefully while Chapel peered into several connecting cages filled with small creatures, paying particular attention to the large specimen in the far corner. The cages themselves were worthy of note, not just for their inhabitants, but because they were constructed entirely of black materials. Had they been of a lighter color, observation of any kind would be difficult if not impossible.
The little mammals inside were nearly transparent, to a far greater extent than the albino, sometimes translucent cave dwellers of Earth. Here was a true transparency, like fine quartz.
McCoy mumbled something at Chapel, and she shook her head. He pressed the lab intercom.
"McCoy again, Jim. Nothing in the experimental animals indicates anything out of the ordinary has happened. The gossamer mice show no signs of shock, and our halo fish..."
"Halo fish, Bones?"
"We acquired them two visits ago at Star Base Science Center. The ones that lose all color at the least environmental shift? They're as radiant and healthy looking as ever."
"You sure, Bones? Isn't it possible that something subtle could affect them without their showing any signs?"
"Not in these two species, Jim. But wait a second and I'll double-check." He beckoned to Chapel and indicated the aquar
ium. She walked over, rolling back one sleeve on her uniform.
Carefully, she slipped her hand into the water just above the slowly swimming fish. As soon as her fingers contacted the surface, the multicolored ring vanished and the zebraic array of colors on the body turned a pale white to blend in with the white sand bottom of the tank. When she pulled her arm from the water, both ring and colors returned.
"No, Jim. The animals are healthy. No sign of any disturbance."
"Good to hear. Thanks, Bones." He clicked off and turned to Spock, more relieved than he cared to show. "Your mystery wave seems harmless enough, Spock. You may as well continue your analysis while we conclude orbit. We'll hold here another few minutes.
"Mr. Arex, summarize sensor sweeps, please."
"Commencing condensation, sir. Condensation completed."
"Further detail on surface conditions?"
Arex studied his viewer, now linked to the Enterprises's elaborate system of computer cells. "Sensor scans show a far more unstable surface than the old drone probe reported, Captain. Activity appears to be increasing almost exponentially. We may have arrived in time to witness a major blowup, though we do not have enough information to know for certain whether such a cataclysm is cyclic or extraordinary.
"Both eruptive and steady-flow disturbances are present. Given the current rate of tectonic activity, the emission of subterranean noxious gases will render the oxy-nitrogen atmosphere unbreathable in a few decades."
McCoy had hurried to the bridge, curious as to what had prompted Kirk's tense check of their life-systems status. Now he studied the main viewscreen and commented, "Not that it looks very inviting right now."
"What about composition, Mr. Arex?" Kirk went on. Pronounced seismic activity often brought other, more interesting things to a planetary surface than poisonous gases. Heavy metals, for example.
"Composition appears normal, Captain," the navigator replied, turning his gaze back to the viewer. "As far as evidence of ore-bearing formations is concerned, I believe...," his voice changed unexpectedly, "Captain ... a light below. It appears to be shifting. I think..."
And then he was staggering back from his console, clutching at his narrow face. "My eyes...!"
The suddenness of the outburst had shocked everyone into immobility ... doubly shocked them, coming as it had from the near-whispering Arex. Then Sulu rose to help his friend. Grabbing at the steadying support of the helmsman with one hand, Arex kept his other two over his eyes.
Meanwhile, Spock's eyes had been affected, too. The reason Sulu had been first to Arex's aid was because the science officer had been stunned by the abrupt explosion of lines on the upper screen - lines similar to the one that had so troubled him when it first passed through the ship moments ago.
Now the sensor in question was receiving that subtle, powerful impulse at a steady, unwinking rate.
"Captain," Spock said anxiously, "we are now under a non-communications beam of some potency. It's effects cannot..."
"Sound red alert!" Kirk ordered before the first officer could finish. He had no access to Arex's viewer, no sight of Spock's gauges. But the reaction of his navigator coupled with Spock's sudden announcement was sufficient to tell him something was definitely wrong.
"Uhura...!"
The lieutenant was moving too rapidly to obey. Her hand shot toward the alarm switch, stopped before she could reach it. Something froze her in her seat. Froze Kirk in the command chair. Froze Arex and Sulu standing together, Spock at his station - froze everyone on the Enterprise.
Simultaneously the crew, their instruments, even the walls of the ship flared with a pale white luminescence. It was as if the ship were burning in the grasp of a cold white flame. They could hear a deep ringing sound, like the single toll of some great ancient bell.
Scott and Gabler were discussing the repair of a recalcitrant section of the ship's reclamation machinery when that awesome groan rolled through the ship. They stopped arguing - and moving.
In the main mess hall, hundreds of diners from the second shift were at mid-meal when all motion ceased and the light turned to creamy white.
It was the same from one end of the starship to the other - from Hydroponics to Astrophysics, from recreation rooms to sleeping quarters, from the salvage hold to the synaptic study center.
The Enterprise had been neatly pinned like a metal butterfly on a blackboard. It hung enveloped in an icy radiance produced by many beams erupting on the surface, forming an intricate webbing around the pinioned ship - a webbing woven by the multiple dish antennae that pockmarked the floor of a certain barren valley far below.
Trapped in that spectral radiance, the Enterprise drifted for long moments. Then the tired landscape below convulsed in a tremendous eruption. Several of the beams vanished as automatic antennae were thrown off their mounts. Others were buried by a steady avalanche of magmatic material.
With its interdependent, complex pattern broken, the rest of the beams shut down. On the Enterprise's bridge the last reverberations of that thunderous peal died away. There was a brief moment of uncertainty as the ship lights flickered and finally steadied. They were somewhat dimmer than normal, but showed no sign of weakening further.
In the absence of sound there was motion, as those on the bridge began the comforting routine of checking first themselves and then their instruments for internal malfunctioning. Even Arex, still blinking away streaks from his sensitive eyes, was back at his station, hunting for the source of the surprise assault on their senses.
A good conductor keeps an eye and ear on tempo and rhythm but lets his players play. Kirk waited until his people had had a little time to sort themselves out before asking formally, "Anyone hurt here?"
A stream of murmured "No, sirs" came back to him from various seats. Uhura, Sulu. Arex, McCoy, Spock. He considered, made one concerned inquiry.
"Are you sure, Lieutenant Arex?"
The navigator looked back over his shoulder, the assurance of a dozen years in the fleet showing in every syllable. "I'm quite all right now, sir. I was only temporarily stunned, and most of that was surprise. There appear to be no lingering effects."
"All right, Lieutenant. Just the same," he continued firmly, "as soon as we revert from alert status, I want you to report to Sick Bay for an eye check-up."
"I was just about to order that myself, Jim," McCoy added. He looked over at the navigator. "You're positive there are no aftereffects, Lieutenant? No blurring of vision, strong retinal images?"
"No, sir," Arex told him. "I think - evidence supports it - that if there were any dangerous radiations in whatever hit me, the scope's sensors automatically screened them out."
"Let's hope so," the doctor muttered. Behind him, Kirk could hear Uhura talking rapidly over the inter-ship com.
"All sections report in. Damage and casualties. All sections report in ... damage and cas..."
Kirk had a sudden thought, caught Sulu's attention. "Mr. Sulu, any deviation in our orbit?"
"No, sir. Maintaining standard elliptical orbit. All instruments functioning normally." He looked back worriedly. "But we've been operating on impulse power since that whatever it was hit us."
Uhura broke in before Kirk could pursue the power situation further. "I have first damage reports coming in, Captain."
"Put them over the main speaker, Lieutenant."
"Aye, sir." In a second the bridge was filled with the consecutive voices of various section chiefs, some confused, some slightly panicked, some admirably calm - all uniform.
"Mess section, no damage."
"Repair section intact."
"Cargo hold here, Captain, no damage observed."
And so on. Everyone had seen the white glow, recoiled under the ringing drone, been frozen in place. But there had not been any real damage. Not a broken eardrum or loosened plate seam. Odd.
Spock glanced up from his console, spoke quietly. "Captain, we are still receiving radiation from the surface, but it is greatly reduced
- and altered. A most peculiar type. Our deflector shields are proving ineffective."
Kirk nodded quickly. "We just had ample demonstration of that. Let me know the second there's any increase in the intensity, Mr. Spock."
"Very well, sir." Spock returned to his instruments.
Kirk considered. After making sure to his own satisfaction that Arex was at least temporarily fit, McCoy had headed back for Sick Bay. He ought to be there any minute. Kirk pressed the intercom switch.
"Nurse Chapel here, sir," came the instant reply. "The doctor ... he's coming in now, Captain." McCoy's deeper voice on the com, now.
"Sorry, Jim. Just finishing a quick check of my own. We've no casualties reported at all. Arex appears to have been the only one even slightly affected by the attack."
"Why 'attack,' Bones?" Kirk wondered. "We've suffered no damage and no casualties. It might have been a natural phenomenon."
"Call it my inherent pessimism, Jim. Anyhow, ineffectuality of method doesn't negate intent. Though I'll admit to the chance it was some random freak of tectonic activity. If that's what it was. I don't suppose..."
"As yet we've no idea what it was," Kirk told him.
"So then it wasn't completely harmless."
"Not hardly," Kirk observed. "Let me know if anyone walks in with any strange symptoms, Bones." A light was flashing on the arm console. "Scotty wants in. Kirk out."
"Sick Bay out."
McCoy flicked off the intercom and turned to Chapel.
"No one seems to have been injured, Christine. Let's hope it stays that way. Meanwhile, you can dig out the tape file on Arex for me. Also the ophthalmological standards and charts for adult Edoans."
"Yes, Doctor."
Engineer Scott turned and yelled instructions, liberally laced with suitable comments on certain probable ancestries, up at the four technicians who were running on the catwalk above him. Then he turned his attention back to the intercom as a beep told him it was clear.