"All of it, sir?"
"All of it."
There was a moment's rush of activity as Sulu hurried to comply with the order. It left them uncomfortably vulnerable to anything that might choose to sneak up on the ship from any direction but ahead. But what could be sneaking around, out here on the galaxy's rim?
The screen flickered. The vector-grid vanished. Extending from the left side of the screen two-thirds of the way across now was the outermost arm of the Milky Way. A distant, ethereal packing of rainbow-hued dust. The other third, except for a few scattered, lonely spots of brilliance, was black with the blackness of the intergalactic abyss.
But in the center of the screen...
In the center, something was taking a smooth, crescent-shaped bite out of the glowing star-mist that formed the arm. Something spherical, small - but growing. A globe of nothingness that was obscuring star after star.
No, not entirely nothing, now. As they moved nearer, a distant, faint glint gave evidence of a solid surface. Fascinated, Kirk and the rest of the bridge personnel stared at the unknown, dark wanderer. They tried to define, pin down, regularize its maddeningly elusive silhouette.
Uhura finally broke the silence.
"Captain, that's definitely the source of the emissions. They've changed considerably since I first detected them. And they've also grown much stronger since we've moved close."
"Pipe them over the communicators, Uhura. Don't keep it a secret."
She hit a single control. Immediately the bridge was filled with a shrill, piercing electronic hum. She smiled apologetically and reduced the deafening volume. As the sound became bearable one thing was instantly obvious to the lowliest ensign. That whine was too wild, too powerful to come from an artificial source. It was as natural an extrusion of the object ahead as a solar prominence or a man's arm. It was definitely not the product of a constructed beacon or station.
Everyone listened to the alien hum as the outline on the viewscreen continued to grow, eating away at the distant star-field.
"Mr. Scott, ready your engineers for a maximum effort."
"Aye, sir." Scott turned to his direct line back to engineering.
"Davis, Gradner, get off your duffs! The captain's going to be wantin' some work out 'o ye in a moment -"
"Mr. Sulu," Kirk continued, "stay on these back engines."
"Yes, sir."
"Mr. Spock," and Kirk tried not to sound desperate, "anything yet?"
"Sir, I've had the computers working since we first entered the peculiar gravity-well, but I hesitated to offer an opinion on preliminary sensor data alone. Now that we have achieved visual confirmation, I no longer hesitate."
Spock's eyebrows shot way up, which surprised Kirk. For Spock that was an expression of astonishment equivalent to an audible gasp from a human. Something unique was surely in the offing.
"It is a negative star-mass, Captain, Spectroanalysis confirms finally ninety-seven point eight percent probability that the object ahead of us is composed of imploded matter. Every reading on material composition records in the negative."
"Great! That means we're headed toward an immensely powerful aggregation of nothing?"
"That is rather more colloquial than I should put it, Captain, but it is effectively descriptive."
Sulu chose that moment to interrupt with additional happy news. "Captain, our speed is increasing again!"
That did it. "All engines, full reverse thrust!"
There was a long pause as another jar and a following rumble ran through the Enterprise. Then Sulu looked up from the helm. He didn't appear panicked - he was too good an officer for that - but he was clearly worried.
"It's no good, sir, we're still falling toward it."
"Mr. Scott," said Kirk tightly, "what's the matter with those engines of yours?"
"There's nothin' wrong with the engines, sir," the chief engineer replied evenly. "They're doin' their best, sir, but they're badly overmatched. They're designed to push ... not pull against a gravity-well as deep as this! I'm not sure we could pull free now if we had ten times the power."
Kirk looked back at the screen, where the negative stellar mass now all but filled the forward view, blotting out the last visible stars. With the decreased distance, more of the surface had become visible. Dull black in color, it was pockmarked with ancient craters - uneven and clearly, inarguably dead. Occasionally a startlingly bright bolt of electrical energy would arc between high points on the surface, leaping from crag to crag like a stone skipping over a pond.
To be visible at such a distance the bolts must have been enormous.
"How much time do we have?"
Spock replied easily, evenly, without looking away from his viewer. "Impact in ninety-three seconds, Captain. Ninety-two ... ninety-one ..."
Stunned silence suddenly filled the bridge. It had all happened so fast. One minute they were in minor difficulty, experiencing some strange, slight course deflection, and then -
No one saw the strange expression come over Uhura's face. She flicked a long nail against one earphone, then the other. No, the instruments were working properly, all right.
"Captain, I'm picking up a new signal. Listen." She moved delicate fingers over the console.
The drone of the dead star filled the bridge. But sounding over it now was a second, distinct whine, almost a wailing cry. More importantly, the sound was clearly modulated, obviously emanating from an artificial source. It faded in and out at lonely, regular intervals.
"Forty seconds, Captain," intoned Spock. For all the excitement he exhibited he might as well have been reciting the time left on a baking cake.
"Thirty-nine ... thirty-eight..."
Inside, Kirk was fuming. Time, time...! They couldn't go forward and they couldn't go back. That left...
"Mr. Sulu!" he barked abruptly. "Flank speed ahead! Declension thirty degrees."
"Ahead, sir?"
"MOVE IT, MR. SULU!" The helmsman moved. Maybe the hyper-gravity helped.
"We've got one chance at this point. That's to make a safe orbit. After that, we can figure out a way to break away at our leisure. I need more than thirty seconds for that."
Sulu moved rapidly at the controls. His body became a soft, fleshy extension of the Enterprise's navigation system. Like Aladdin, he had only to present his wishes in comprehensible form and the electronic genie would handle the details.
But would it have enough ability to counter the titanic black demon sucking them forward to destruction?
Kirk stared at the screen, now wholly occupied by the shape of the dead star. If their bid for orbit failed, no one would ever know it. The death of the Enterprise wouldn't even be recorded by an idle astronomer on some distant planet as a tiny flash in far space. The massive gravity-well of the negative mass would swallow light as well as life.
"Nine seconds," came Spock's calm voice. Only a slight rise in pitch betrayed any hint of anxiety, excitement. "Eight....seven...."
It was absurd Kirk thought, holding tightly to the command chair! That wouldn't prolong his life by the minutest fraction of a second. But his hands continued to grip the unyielding metal nonetheless.
An electrical discharge thousands of kilometers in length lit the screen for an instant, impossibly close. Then, it was gone - and so was the blackness. Ahead once again lay the friendly, fluorescing mists of the galaxy, and the honest darkness of open space.
But Kirk knew this vision of escape was illusory. A second later Sulu confirmed it.
"No breakaway, Captain, but insertion accomplished." He sighed in visible relief. "Details of orbit to follow. We'll have a low perigee, damn low, but -" he smiled, "not low enough to drop us out of orbit."
"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!" called Scott.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Scott?"
"Nothin', Spock, nothin'."
"I beg your pardon again, Mr. Scott, but you definitely said something, not nothing." Scott gave him a pained look, and Spock sudden
ly comprehended.
"Ah, I see. The use of nonreferential archaic terminology served to audibilize the otherwise inexpressible emotions you felt at the moment."
"So would a punch in the snoot, pointy-ears!" warned the chief engineer.
"Is that a further audibilization?"
Kirk looked away so they wouldn't see the broad grin spreading across his face.
"Give up, Mr. Scott, you're fighting a losing battle."
"Aye, Captain," acknowledged Scott disgustedly. "I've an easier time communicatin' with a number-four automatic welder!" Then he too smiled, but only briefly. Current thoughts were too serious.
"Speakin' of which, Captain, if we don't need the power right now, it'd be a good thing for the engines to go on minimum, after all the time they spent puttin' out maximum reverse thrust."
"Yes, of course, Scotty. Mr. Sulu, compute the minimum drive we need to hold this orbit without falling and feed the data to Mr. Scott for issuance to engineering."
"Yes, sir." Moments later, "Ready, sir."
"Fine, Lieutenant. Now activate rear scanners and put our stern towards the mass."
There was a wait while the view in the big screen seemed to rotate. Actually it was the ship that was changing position and not the universe. The star-field was gradually replaced by a fresh picture, a view of the ebony sphere turning slowly below them.
"Mr. Spock, final orbit confirmation?"
"We are holding this orbital configuration easily, Captain. Effectively standoff has been achieved."
"Good. Steady as she goes, then, Mr. Sulu."
"Aye, aye, sir." The lieutenant couldn't keep an admiring tone from creeping into his voice. Kirk glanced away, slightly embarrassed.
Dr. McCoy observed the captain's reaction and grinned. No one had noticed his arrival on the bridge. They had all been, to say the least, otherwise occupied. For his part, McCoy had kept quiet. He had had nothing to say that could have been of any help, and the situation when he had arrived called for anything but a dose of his dry wit.
Now, however, some idle conversation might have its therapeutic values. He had a degree in that, as well as in medicine.
"If its pull is so strong, Jim, how do we ever break out of its grip?"
"What? Oh, hello, Bones." Kirk turned his chair a little. "One thing at a time. If we'd known what we were heading for soon enough, I'd have at least tried a cometary orbit. But by the time we knew for sure what we were up against, it was too late." He looked over at the library console.
"But you're right - it's a question we'll have to deal with eventually. How about a slingshot effect, Mr. Spock? Have we got enough power to break out at the last second? We can run on maximum overdrive for the necessary time. We'll have to dive as close as possible to the surface before pulling out, to make maximum use of the gravity-well's catapulting power. If we don't make it, we'll end up so many odd-sized blobs on the surface. Don't forget, Bones, it's attractive force increases exponentially as we near the actual surface."
Spock didn't answer the opening query right away, instead stayed bent over the viewer and continued to work.
"I'll need some time for the computations to go through, Captain. Power, orbit, proper distance from the stellar surface, angle of descent, crucial altitude. Information is still coming in through our sensors at a tremendous rate. Our knowledge of hyper-gravity is woefully slim. This is the first time a starship has been so close to a negative stellar mass. At least, the first time one has been this close and survived.
"There are too many variables at this point for hasty calculation. I can't give you an answer yet."
"All right, Spock. Set the computer on the problem. We'll learn as we orbit. We've nothing else to do, anyway. Starfleet will go crazy over the data."
As if on cue, Uhura broke in. "Excuse me, Captain, but I'm picking up that secondary signal again. We lost it temporarily when we powered into orbit, but I've got it back." She paused. "Or else it's got us back. Nine seconds north inclination, dead ahead and closing fast."
"Is it...?" he began, but Uhura guessed the question.
"No, Captain. We're coming up on it, not vice-versa. Still, I wonder."
"The universe is full of coincidences, Lieutenant. How soon till sensor contact?"
"It should be on the screens in a minute, Captain."
Everyone on the bridge turned full attention to the shifting view in the main screen. For long moments there was little change in the picture. Then a faintly luminous jumble of tiny lines appeared. It began to increase rapidly in size.
Even at this distance it was easy to see that the object was an artificial construct and not a natural body. But there must be something wrong with the sensors. It was too far away to appear so large.
"Can we slow enough to match orbits, Mr. Sulu, without dropping beyond the safe range?"
Sulu fumbled with the navigation computer. "Have the answer in a second, sir." He paused. "Yes sir, no difficulty, sir. We have a respectable margin."
"Then put us alongside as we come up on it."
The object grew speedily until it dominated the viewscreen as the dead sun had before. Sulu had to reduce perspective twice to keep the entire shape in full view. Suddenly there was silence on the bridge when it became apparent what the shape was.
II
The starship was beautiful.
All the more so in contrast to the stark dead giant that held them trapped in this isolated corner of the universe. The huge Enterprise was an insignificant spot, a parasitic white shape alongside it.
"A thousand cathedrals all thrown together and then they added star-drive," whispered an awed McCoy. "Tossed all together and lit like a Christmas tree."
"Can it really be a starship?" murmured Uhura softly.
Spock's reply was equally hushed. "The probability is ... considerable."
Vast arches and flying buttresses of multicolored metal and plastic soared up and out, racing in and around metallic spirals and pyramids. Here and there, gracefully designed yet massive metal pods nestled at regular intervals amid cradling arms of silver and gold and iridescent blue. Faery arms of spun alloy.
The race that had built this vessel was a race of artisans as well as engineers, poets as well as shipwrights.
"Bring us in, Mr. Sulu. Mr. Sulu?"
The lieutenant seemed to shake himself awake. "Aye, sir." He touched controls, and the Enterprise responded. The intricate gleaming tapestry began to move closer and then past them.
Under Sulu's skillful hands, the Enterprise drifted deeper into the tangle of alien crossbeams and spars. He adjusted speed and they drifted towards what seemed to be a major pod.
"It's got to be a starship!" McCoy muttered. "But, Aesculapius, the size of it!"
"True, Bones," Kirk agreed and then gestured, "but it seems that neither size nor beauty renders it invulnerable. Or maybe to something else, it wasn't so beautiful. Look!"
As they continued their inspection, it became clear that despite its massive bulk, some time in the past the alien ship had undergone stresses and strains of as yet unknown but undeniably powerful origin.
Arches and soaring spans of binding metal were torn and scorched - bent unnaturally in some places, sliced in half in others. The huge pods exhibited the most obvious, ominous signs of disaster. They were lined with rows of odd, hexagonal-shaped ports. All were cold, dark.
Dead.
Every pod was damaged. There were no exceptions. The metal floated easily in space, bloated with ruptures and tears. Deep gashes split one pod like a chrome grape.
"She was probably pulled in like we were," murmured Kirk. He didn't voice the attendant thought. Had this total destruction taken place before the alien starship was gathered in by the negative sun's gravity - or after?
And if the latter, why? More importantly, how?
Two surprises from outside were enough for any one station, but Uhura was destined to get yet a third. Idly adjusting receivers and amplifiers, she suddenly threw th
e sound of the secondary signal - the signal that came from this dead enigma - into the bridge again.
But it was different now. More of a stutter than a moan. And while there were no reasons, no facts to support it, everyone sensed that the strange call was now more urgent, more insistent than before.
"Confirmation, sir, final," she said excitedly. "I thought that signal was coming from the alien. Not only is there no longer any question about it, but somehow the transmitter, at least, has reacted to our presence! That's the only reason I can think of to explain this sudden change in broadcast pattern."
"I have secondary confirmation, Captain," added Spock, his eyebrows rising again, "and I should agree. But - it isn't possible. That ship is utterly, unequivocably, dead. All life-support sensors read negative. All ship-support sensors read the same. No energy is present. Temperature on board the alien is identical to that of open space - absolute zero. I have no reason to even faintly support the contention that there is life aboard ... biological or mechanical."
"Also, there is no evidence of any stored energy capable of generating these radio emissions. I read only a slight magnetic flux - probably normal for the vessel's metal."
"Yet you reconfirm Uhura's readings - that the signal is coming from the ship?"
Spock seemed reluctant to restate his position, but, "I have no choice, Captain. That is likewise what the sensors read."
"That doesn't make sense, Mr. Spock."
The science officer's reply was drier than usual. "We find ourselves in complete agreement, Captain. Yet," he paused briefly, "that is the case."
"You're positive?"
"Probability ninety-nine point seven, Captain."
"Ummmm." Kirk leaned back, drumming a mildly obscene ditty with his fingers on one arm of the command chair. Pursuing a confessed paradox was going to get them nowhere. Better try another tack.
"Can you identify the design of the ship or its composition, Mr. Spock?"
"Negative to both, Captain," Spock replied after a glance at the computer readout. "The readings I have so far on the alloy itself - barring actual analytical confirmation from a specimen of same - indicate a material both harder and lighter than any registered in the ship's library. As for the design, it is not a recorded type." He hesitated, glanced back at the readout.