"Something else, Mr. Spock?"
"Also, Captain, silicon dating or the vessel's spectra indicates that it has been floating in orbit here for..." he checked the computer figures one last time, "...for slightly more and not less than three hundred million terran years."
There was a concerted gasp from the bridge personnel. Everyone's attention was drawn back to the screen. Back to the delicate arches, to the dreamlike design - alien in both pattern and function to the solid, prosaic shape of the Enterprise.
"I should think, then, that that precludes our chances of finding any survivors aboard," Kirk murmured.
"I couldn't have put it better myself, Captain," agreed Spock.
"I just know that it's beautiful," put in Uhura, half-defiantly. "To have put such grace and perfection of form into something as functional as a starship - I wish I could have known the race that built it."
"Beauty may have nothing to do with it, Lieutenant," suggested Spock conversationally. "The design may merely conform to their own conceptions of spatial dynamics."
She turned back to her instruments, an expression of distaste coming over her perfect features.
"I might have guessed you'd say something like that, Spock."
"Don't give it a thought, Uhura," chipped in McCoy quickly. "According to his own system of spatial dynamics, Spock probably finds your form purely functional, too. Don't you, Spock?"
Sulu grinned, and even Kirk was distracted enough to smile.
Spock's reply barely hinted at mild distress. "It is very easy to tell when you are joking, Doctor - which is most of the time. It is when your statements make absolutely no sense - which is most of the time."
While the byplay continued behind him, Kirk let his attention drift back to the picture of the alien starship. He envied the long-dead commander. And yet there was a hint of unease back of all the admiration.
What could have happened to so totally destroy such a magnificent vessel, with all its unknown potentialities and abilities? Certainly it must have possessed defensive powers commensurate with its size. "A civilization advanced enough to build such a craft - three hundred million years ago! Man wasn't even an idea then in the mind of nature," he murmured.
"A second or two in the span of eternity, Jim," McCoy commented, switching abruptly from the silly to the sublime.
Sometimes McCoy's comments grew wearisome, even annoying. But when he was right, he was the rightest person on the ship.
Kirk sighed. "All right, Spock. There's got to be an answer to this. You read no power from the vessel now. Any indication what its power source might have been?"
"No, Captain. There is apparently something new and undetectable at work here, capable of avoiding even the most delicate sensor pickup. But this far from any star with a planetary system, it goes without saying that they possessed some form of warp-drive. A most efficient one, beyond doubt, judging from the size of the craft."
Kirk continued to study the vast alien ship. As usual, the sudden flash of insight that would solve all and make him appear the most brilliant spacer since O'Morion didn't occur.
He had no business ordering what he was about to order. Every second should have been devoted to extricating the Enterprise from its present perilous position. Still, the lure of the incredible vessel was too strong to ignore. He hesitated. At least he could make one last check.
"Mr. Spock, how is the computer coming on the computation for a slingshot course?"
Spock consulted his viewer. "It appears it will take some time yet, Captain, for all the variables to be considered and an optimum program to be devised."
That settled it. He rose and spoke firmly.
"We'll board her, then. Scotty, Bones - you'll come with us. Life-support belts, of course. Lieutenant Uhura, you're in command. Sulu, have the transporter room stand by."
"Yes, sir," Sulu replied as he moved to notify the transporter chief. The four officers were already heading for the elevator.
"Captain," said Spock, "may I inquire as to your reasons for boarding the alien?"
"Nothing extraordinary, Mr. Spock. We have the time. Curiosity. Plain old ordinary human curiosity."
"That is what I thought. However, if that expression of exclusivity is intended for my benefit, Captain, you ought to know by now that it's misplaced."
"Why, Spock!" McCoy exclaimed, rising to the challenge, "don't tell me that you're subject to an emotion like curiosity!"
"Your evaluation of the phenomenon is typically inaccurate, Doctor. Curiosity is a natural, logical function of the higher mind - not one of the baser emotions."
"That all depends on how you choose to interpret it," McCoy countered. "Now..."
***
The argument was continuing full force as they entered the transporter room. Transporter Chief Kyle was at the console, waiting for them. The console itself emitted a barely audible hum, an indication that it was prepared and ready to perform its usual functions.
Kyle had also removed and checked four life-support belts from the nearby lockers. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scott buckled them on, each double-checking his own and then throwing the activating switches. Each passed before Kyle's console for a last, mechanical check. Kyle's voice read out the results.
"Captain ... check. Commander Spock ... check. Lt. Commander Scott ... okay. Lt. Commander McCoy ... check." He looked up. "All belts operational, Captain."
"Thank you, Mr. Kyle."
"If you'll take your places, sirs...." A lime-yellow aura now surrounded each man - a comforting, vital field put out by the life-support belts. They stepped up into the transporter alcove and took their places on four separate transporter disks.
"Ready, Captain," warned Kyle.
"Ready, Chief," Kirk replied, then grinned. "Try not to materialize us inside any solid objects, hmmm?"
Kyle essayed a slight grin at the old joke. Safety overrides on all transporters made such occurrences quite impossible.
"Energize, Chief," instructed Kirk.
Kyle carefully brought the necessary levers up, keeping a watchful eye on the vast array of monitoring instrumentation. A familiar, part-musical, tinkling hum filled the transporter room as the alcove was energized. The bodies of the four men slowly diffused, as if seen through squinted eyes in early morning ... until they became four cylinders of multicolored particles glowing on the platforms.
Kyle hit a switch, drew the four levers rapidly down.
He was alone in the transporter room.
***
Four pillars of speckled fire appeared on the cold surface of the largest pod of the alien starship. The pillars faded quickly, to be replaced by the frighteningly fragile figures of three humans and a Vulcan. Each stood bathed in soft lime-yellow light.
Spock was the first to survey their harsh surroundings. They were standing next to one of the huge, dark, hexagonal ports. Just beyond the port, was an enormous, gaping hole, a black pit fringed with torn, twisted metal clawing at empty space. Clear indication that whatever cataclysm had ruptured the skin of the pod had come from within.
As soon as everyone had recovered fully from the effects of transporter dislocation, they began to move toward the forced opening. All paused briefly by the dark port. Spock ran the thin force-field of the life-support system under his heel over the black, glassy surface.
"The six-sided shape of the port suggests a similarity to the natural designs of certain terran insects. The honeycombs of bees, for example, where the individual bee cells possess a similar shape. Such a similarity is, naturally, purely superficial. To read any possibilities into it would be unreasonable."
Kirk knelt and tried to peer through the thick glass - which wasn't necessarily glass, or thick. In any case, it was like staring at an onyx mirror. If anything remained inside the pod, they'd never get a look at it this way.
Engineer Scott was standing near one of the torn flanges of metal, running his hands over it. He had his face so close to it that the force-field over
his nose was nearly touching.
"Would ye look at this, now!" he whistled in surprise. His lifebelt radio carried the eerie disembodied sound to his companions.
"What is it, Scotty?" Kirk rose and moved toward him from the unrevealing port.
"It's this metal, sir. I don't know much about terran insects, but I do know metal. This stuff wasn't cast or rolled or flextruded. And it's got a faint but definite grain, like fine grains in good wood." He looked disbelievingly at Kirk.
"I'm willin' to bet, sir, that this metal was made by being drawn out into long, very thin filaments and then formed into required shapes. There's layer on layer on layer of 'em right here in this one small section. Like laminating in plastics, only on a much finer scale." He tapped the metal silently.
"The way a spider spins its web," Kirk mused.
"If you will, sir," continued Scott. "Such a method of metal formin' - even with our own alloys - would make for material far stronger than anything known."
Spock had his phaser out. The brilliant beam of the tiny weapon lanced across space and sliced free a small segment of the metal. Spock caught the sample before momentum imparted by the phaser could shove it away, examined it closely.
"Lighter and stronger than anything we have now," he whispered, echoing an earlier reading. Then he looked in turn at McCoy, Scott, Kirk. "If this can be analyzed, Captain -"
"And duplicated," Scott added.
"I know, I know," Kirk admitted. He didn't want to put a damper on their enthusiasm - he felt pretty much the same - but they were in no position to get carried away by any discovery.
"Providing, however, that we're not trapped here ourselves, for some other unfortunate starship crew to stumble across a hundred million years from now."
Stepping back along the graceful metal beam that emerged from this section of the torn pod, he moved to get a better view of the rest of the alien vessel. Staring upwards he scanned the fronds of the metal jungle, eyed the other shredded and shattered pod-shapes.
Nearby, one thin soaring arch, as delicate as the finest sample of the wood-carver's art, dangled crookedly, distorted by unimaginable stresses in the far-distant past.
"Look," he instructed the others. "Every pod - every one. Notice any similarity?"
For a change, McCoy was the first to reply.
"They've all been burst open, Jim. Funny - there doesn't seem to be an intact one on the entire ship. Maybe on the other side, but..."
"Aye," acknowledged Scott, "and all from the inside, too. But we already saw that."
"Must have been some accident," the doctor added, "to get every pod."
Spock replied without looking, choosing instead to speak while studying the ruins of the ship.
"Accidents seldom operate according to a system, Dr. McCoy. The destruction here is too regular, too obviously managed for 'accident' to be given as cause. No, I believe we must give serious consideration to the alternative possibility that the crew of this vessel voluntarily destroyed her - and, incidentally, perhaps, themselves."
Leave it to Spock, thought Kirk, to voice what all of them were thinking but none could say.
They stood there - four insignificant animate forms, on the skin of a starship tens of millions of years in advance of anything their own civilization could produce - and considered what threat might be serious enough to prompt her crew to suicide.
Dwelling on morbidity brought no answers. Kirk started off toward the beckoning black cave and the others followed, striding with the aid of belt-gravity across the smooth hull. Without breaking stride he brought out his communicator, flipped the cover back.
"Kirk to Enterprise."
"Enterprise," came the prompt reply. Kirk was gratified. That gal would make a fine captain someday. "Uhura speaking."
"Lieutenant, are you still receiving radio emissions from this vessel?"
"When did you develop telepathy, Captain?" came the startled reply. "I was about to call down when you checked in. It ceased broadcasting the moment you stepped aboard."
Kirk considered this.
"Whatever machinery is still somehow operating on board this craft, Captain," theorized Spock, "is also sensitive." Kirk nodded agreement, spoke into the communicator again.
"Thank you, Uhura. Inform Chief Kyle to lock on with the transporter and be ready to yank us out of here on a second's notice."
There was a pause while Uhura relayed the necessary information.
"Expecting trouble, sir?"
"No, Lieutenant. But we're going to try and enter the ship. There may be surprises other than finicky radio transmissions, something of a less indifferent nature."
Another pause, and then a second voice came over the compact speaker.
"Kyle here. Don't worry, Captain, I've got all four of you right on frequency. And I'm not budging from this console until you're all back on board."
Kirk smiled, closed the communicator.
"Sounds like the chief," smiled McCoy. Another few steps had brought them to the edge of the gaping, metal-fringed cavern.
Kirk spent a long moment examining the dim, shadowy interior. Clearly nothing was alive here. He swung lightly over the edge. Scott followed. McCoy stepped aside and gestured inward.
"After you, Spock."
"Why, Doctor, don't tell me that you, a man of science, are afraid of the dark?"
"Very funny, Spock - say, that wasn't intended to be - no, that's impossible. Vulcans don't joke."
"Joke, Doctor?" Spock's expression was unreadable.
"Oh, well," McCoy sighed. "Hope springs eternal." He followed the science officer into the abyss.
They moved slowly, carefully down the wide passageway. If necessary, the glow of their life-support belts would have been sufficient to see one another by. As it developed, that glow wasn't needed.
Faint light issued from long panels of translucent, polyethylenelike material inlaid in the walls of the airlock - for such it clearly was. Or had once been. Both air and at least the outer lock had long since departed - the air by natural forces, the lock by apparently unnatural ones.
Spock studied one of the luminescent panels. He couldn't see a tube, a bulb, or a strip beneath it. The light seemed to come from the plastic material itself, but he couldn't be sure.
"Something in the ship is still, somehow, generating power that our sensors were unable to record, Captain. Or else there are other devices that somehow generate their own power - as these light panels seem to do."
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Spock. It's a damnsight easier than moving with only belt-light to see by."
They continued deeper into the tunnel. Eventually they came up short against what appeared to be a solid wall of metal. It blocked further passage very thoroughly. Initial inspection produced nothing but disappointment.
It was Scott, who first noticed the slightly brighter stream of light up near the "ceiling." Sure enough, the metal there was bent. Some titanic force had wrenched at the very structure of this inner lock.
"Some kind of emergency shutoff seems to have been in action here," Scott guessed. "Energy was operating on a tremendous scale. It would have had to be, to bend this alloy like that." He nodded up at the revealing gap.
"This passage is big enough for one of the Enterprise's shuttlecraft to fit in."
Kirk put out a hand and touched the dull metal. He couldn't feel it, of course - the force-field blocked the sense of touch - which was just as well, since the metal was as cold as open space. His hand would have frozen to it.
He knew the door was solid because something halted the progress of his palm. The gesture was more hopeful than anticipatory. As expected, nothing happened when he shoved. The enormous lock didn't budge.
"Let's try up near where the top buckled," he suggested. "If it's only jammed and not really locked, we might be able to jar it loose."
He and Scott took out their hand phasers. Two beams of incandescence began to play about the top of the lock.
 
; Two minutes of concentrated beaming, however, produced nothing more than a slight red glow in the affected area.
"Useless," he murmured, watching the red glow fade along With all hopes of entering the ship.
"Captain."
The two men put their phasers away.
"What is it, Mr. Spock?" Kirk squinted. Spock was off on the other side of the passageway.
"I believe I may have had some luck, Captain."
"I hope so, Spock. We haven't. We may have to bring the Enterprise's main phasers to bear in here. I'd hate to do that. Either we'll surely damage whatever's inside - the main batteries aren't as delicate as Bones' cutters - or else we won't be able to cut through at all."
They moved over to where Spock was waiting. He said nothing, only pointed upward.
About three meters off the floor was a large square panel, recessed into the wall of the tunnel. Three hexagonal-shaped plastic plates were set into the recess.
"I think, Captain, that that may be a key. Probability would suggest some form of manual backup system to operate any airlock."
"I agree, Spock." Kirk studied the panel, made an experimental jump. "There's only one problem - artificial gravity seems to be in full operation here. For the moment, our key is out of reach. Someone can beam back aboard and bring back a..."
"I do not believe that will be necessary, Captain." Spock moved to the curving wall and braced himself against the metal. "If you will climb onto my shoulders, you should be able to reach the panel."
"Isn't science wonderful?" murmured McCoy.
It took Kirk, a trained gymnast and tumbler, only a second or two. Then he was securely braced on the Vulcan's shoulders. Even so, the recessed panel was still over his head. But by straining his arm he could manage to reach all three hexagonal plates.
"I always said you were a supportive influence, Spock," ventured McCoy.
"And I've always felt your humor was in execrable taste, Doctor." Spock's voice barely hinted at the strain of keeping Kirk's weight on his shoulders. "However I feel that in all honesty I must revise my opinion of your puns."