Star Trek II: Distress Call Read online

  The tunnel continued, but now deeply cut symbols were seen in the polished stone walls: circles with centered dots, triangles, and spirals, wavy lines, and clusters of tiny diamond shapes. Obviously some kind of alien language—but what did it mean?

  The softly echoing sounds ahead grew louder. Was it friend or foe?

  Admiral Kirk took a tight grip on his phaser and continued moving down the passageway, deep within the strange alien building. Then he received a call on the communicator from Mister Spock.

  Turn to page 66.

  Page 33

  From page 22.

  Once they entered the left-hand passage, Admiral Kirk saw the differences at once. Here, for the first time, were a large number of rooms. They appeared to be storage rooms, and could be entered through doorless arches. Inside were strange objects indeed.

  The first rooms they investigated had tags from the Luna University research group, each carefully numbered. But it was the many strange objects that captured the attention of Kirk and the Enterprise members.

  The first room contained heaps of eight-sided cubes, glowing a faint light blue. Ensign Gottlieb picked one up, and at once the color changed, darkening into violet, then into a deep red. When it started to pulse, she dropped it at once and it gradually faded back to the featureless blue.

  The young officer, on her first mission, looked at Admiral Kirk with wide eyes. “It, it seemed to be a part of me, sir. It…”

  “Take it easy, Ensign. Are you harmed?”

  “No, sir, but…but it brought back memories, very early memories—childhood memories I thought I’d forgotten…”

  “Very well, Ensign.” He gestured for the team to continue. “We must find Chekov and the archaeologists.”

  If you continue to investigate the storage rooms, proceed to page 51.

  If you hurry on, go to page 52.

  Page 34

  From page 16.

  Nakashima put his phaser in his other hand, then wiped his wet palm on his uniform before transferring it back. He peered into the dimness of the corridor ahead, trying to make believe this was some kind of elaborate game simulation where all the senses were involved. But he couldn’t quite do that; it was too real, too harsh, with too many possibilities around each turning of the corridor.

  Am I afraid? he wondered. Of course I’m afraid. Any sensible entity should be afraid. But that does not mean I’m ready to panic. He remembered something Mister Spock had said: “Whenever fear drives you to panic, remember that that is the worst possible time to panic. Think of the options.”

  What do we fear most? Nakashima thought. The unknown, of course. Our own imagination works against us.

  The young officer grinned. But the familiar never excited anyone like the unknown, he thought. He moved ahead, into the unknown.

  To follow Lieutenant Nakashima more closely, go to page 53.

  To stay at Spock’s heels, proceed to page 54.

  Page 35

  From page 17.

  The cool, dark stone passageways inside the great complex of star-shaped buildings made them all feel the weight of time and the alien-ness of their situation. It also made them all nervous.

  Admiral Kirk pushed them ahead. Time, he knew, could be of the utmost consequence. Better an hour early than one second too late, was his belief.

  They came to a section of the passage that had collapsed. Crumbling stone had fallen from the ceiling, shattering a large section of the floor, collapsing it all into a dark chamber beneath.

  “Mister Chekov!” Kirk called out, but there was no answer. Only a few specks of wandering dust noted that something had happened recently. Kirk ordered the team to descend, which they did gingerly and cautiously, not wanting to cause any further collapse.

  Ensign Larek pointed, at a few spots of drying blood. “Someone was injured here.” She held her tricorder to the red droplets. “It’s human blood, Captain.”

  “That way,” Kirk ordered. Their lights swung into the dimness of the great cavern, and they started forward. A security man cleared his throat, and the sound echoed eerily in the darkness.

  Proceed to page 73.

  Page 36

  From page 17.

  Ensign Larek moved cautiously ahead of the rest of the team, keenly alert to every noise and stone around her. The place was much too cold for her, far from the comfortable 125 degrees Fahrenheit of a pleasant Vulcan day. She had long ago learned to endure the bone-chilling temperatures humans considered temperate, and to wear the skin-hugging heating garment most Vulcans wore off their native planet.

  She thought about what Mister Spock might do under these circumstances. Even though he was only half Vulcan, he had achieved considerable credit in the vast area of space dominated by the human race. There were Vulcans who thought participation in the human society was unworthy work, but Larek thought they were wrong.

  The human sphere of influence was where the action was. She had spent all too much time in contemplation on Vulcan. She did not approve of either the Klingon or Romulan societies, and they, with the human society, were most of the galaxy. If you had to choose, she thought, the human society, with all its flaws and distressing tides of raw emotion, was the most interesting and certainly the freest.

  Continue on next page.

  Page 37

  From page 36.

  Proof of that, she thought, was that she was here, as a serving officer in the Federation fleet, the lancepoint in the thrust of human intelligence into the unknown.

  It excited her, and few things did. Starfleet Academy had not been particularly difficult. The insolent hazing by humans had been annoying, but only because it had distracted her from her studies. Her contempt for the level of emotional maturity of human beings had deepened the more they revealed their intolerance. Only a few of the humans had ever offered a hand in friendship. She had eventually come to prize those few shaky friendships. It was one of those friendships that had led her to work to get selected to the crew of the Enterprise, a famous ship.

  She had been tempered in the incredible voyage into the interior of the vast entity that was V’ger and had been pleased to be selected to stay aboard the Enterprise, although, of course, it was only logical to retain efficient officers.

  The young Vulcan edged up to a side passage, then carefully peered around. Her eyes widened.

  Proceed to page 75.

  Page 38

  From page 23.

  Chekov tumbled over and over, carried along by the flood of red. He hit himself several times on the walls, then the soft red blobs seemed to surround him more tightly, protecting him from the cutting edges of the stone.

  The flood slowed, then stopped, and the balls seemed to ooze away reluctantly. Chekov looked around in bewilderment. Where he was was in a very ancient chamber, with stones worn by time. A kind of luminous lichen blotched the walls but gave enough light to see.

  What he saw were all of his team, shaking loose from the last of the soft red blobs, but all apparently safe. The red objects rolled and inched and oozed away, back down the corridor, leaving them alone.

  “What happened?” Narva Moktar asked in a shaky voice.

  “You were dealt with,” a voice said, and a tall, gray-bearded man stepped into the room wearing the tattered remnants of a stock Federation jumpsuit. “You were infection. So were we. I’m Galen Tripp.” He indicated the other humans coming through the door behind him. “These are the rest of my group from Luna University.”

  Continue on next page.

  Page 39

  From page 38.

  “The blobs,” Chekov said. “They are like antibodies?”

  Tripp nodded. “We were dealt with just as you were.” He gestured around at the bleak stone walls. “We had no way to escape, no transporter. They just fill the passages and carry us back.”

  Chekov grinned and flipped open his communicator. “Transporter room, lock on these coordinates.”

  END

  Page 40

>   From page 23.

  The red tide carried them roughly along a passageway, smothering them with their soft warm bodies. Chekov fought, but it was like punching clouds.

  After a rough ride he found himself dumped on a stone floor. His sight was returned as the red balls rolled and oozed and crept away into fist-sized holes in the floor, and disappeared.

  Chekov looked around, seeing by the blotched light from patches of luminous lichen on the old stone walls. Seated in the lotus position were a number of humans wearing tattered Luna University jumpsuits. One of them opened his eyes slowly and stared at them a moment before speaking.

  “I am Galen Tripp. You must be our rescuers. Please pardon us, we’ll be with you in a moment.” Then he closed his eyes again.

  Chekov looked at Narva Moktar, and she shrugged. “Are any of you hurt?” Chekov asked. The team members shook their heads, looking warily about for more red blobs. The young Russian officer got to his feet and looked around. There was one opening out of the room, and Chekov strode over to it. The corridor beyond was dimly lit with glowing lichen, and he started to walk down it.

  The red blobs came up out of the holes and gathered around his feet. With a horrified cry, Chekov toppled over and fell. The red blobs flowed over him.

  Proceed to page 56.

  Page 41

  From page 25.

  Chekov’s team proceeded slowly into the dark stone passages of the immense star-shaped building. He nervously gripped his phaser, his palms sweaty.

  Am I going insane? he wondered. I saw what I saw, yet the others did not.

  They turned a corner, and Chekov saw the soft light of a window in the stone wall. Ordering the others to stay back, he approached it with a dry mouth.

  The window looked out upon the snow-covered housetops of his beloved Moscow. Chekov blinked. It was not a model, nor a projection. He was looking out a window at his hometown. There were the aged minarets and fantasy onion-domes of St. Basil’s and the dull stone walls of the Kremlin. On the edge of the old city he saw the magnificent new archaeological structures, the monoliths that housed a million people each: Red Star, Leningora, Spirit of Tomorrow, and Kaliningrad.

  People walked the snowy streets, aircars flitted through the tall buildings as they had all his life. He could see a sign for a department store, a patriotic projection on a low-lying cloud, a surface car with engine trouble.

  “A trick,” he muttered. “Some kind of trick.”

  Proceed to page 59.

  Page 42

  From page 25.

  Chekov was sweating. It was too cold for him to be sweating, and he shot nervous glimpses at Moktar and the rest of his team. They seemed to be eyeing him secretly.

  They think I’m mad, he thought. He walked quickly ahead of them so that none of them could see his face. Maybe I am going mad, he thought.

  He rounded a turning in the passage and stopped. Ahead of him was an arrogant Cossack on a horse, sword at his side, a sneer on his bearded face. Without a moment’s hesitation the Cossack dug heels into his war-horse and charged right at Chekov, his long, curved sword barely missing the stone ceiling as he waved the blade.

  Chekov fired instinctively, his hand pointing the phaser straight at the hated Cossack. The horse whinnied and tumbled, the sword striking sparks from the stone as he fell.

  Chekov dodged, his head striking the wall, filling his mind with pain and light.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Moktar said, bending over him.

  Chekov looked around. No horse, no Cossack. “I, I tripped,” he muttered. I’m not setting a good leadership example, he thought bitterly to himself.

  It must be an illusion, he thought. But it seemed so real!

  Proceed to page 59.

  Page 43

  From page 24.

  “Go into that passage,” Chekov said, pointing after the rabbit. His team moved quickly, their lights still probing the darkness.

  Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor, and their whispered comments were blurred by the echoes. “Keep quiet,” Chekov ordered. He moved to the head of the team, all his senses alert, but his heart pounding.

  They came to a door, a rather ordinary wooden door made of planks with a close grain, and with hinges of excellent craftsmanship. It creaked open, and Chekov’s eyes grew large.

  The passage opened into a large formal garden. The ceiling was barely seen as wispy clouds of mist drifted across. Below, in a formal garden, sat a haughty queen and a phalanx of stiff-backed guards. They were humanoid, except that their faces were caricatures of the type they represented: haughty and arrogant; crafty and bitter; humble and plain; evil and treacherous.

  “Come here!” the queen beckoned. “Come at once!” she said impatiently.

  Proceed to page 57.

  Page 44

  From page 24.

  Chekov ordered his team after the rabbit, and they moved quickly along until they came to a thick wooden door. It opened with a creak, and Chekov blinked.

  Beyond the door was a room so vast that clouds of mist blurred the ceiling. A formal garden filled the room, and there was the smell of newly mown grass. In the center of the garden in an ornate white gazebo, sat a haughty queen and her bizarrely garbed court.

  “Come here!” she ordered. “You! Come this moment!”

  Proceed to page 57.

  Page 45

  From page 27.

  “Don’t move,” the Klingon said. The second Klingon took the weapons Chekov’s team had. “Now let’s just go to the bridge, shall we, human?”

  “What happened?” Chekov asked Moktar.

  “The transporter beam must have nullified the stasis,” she said.

  “Shut up,” the Klingon said. With both Klingons armed and the Enterprise crewmen helpless, there was nothing Chekov could do as the Klingon thumbed the phaser to “stun” and dropped everyone but Chekov and his fellow Klingon.

  “Now, human,” the Klingon said, gesturing with the weapon. “Your captain will be glad to see us, I imagine.”

  Proceed to page 62.

  Page 46

  From page 26.

  In the transporter room of the Federation ship, medics took the last of the Luna University scientists off to sick bay. Dr. McCoy thumbed a wall communicator.

  “Admiral Kirk.”

  “Kirk here. What’s the prognosis, Bones?”

  “A simple stasis I can break down with neuroallozine, Captain, but what put them into it?”

  “I’m going down to find out.”

  “Be careful, Jim,” McCoy said.

  “I’m always careful,” Admiral Kirk said, with a smile in his voice.

  McCoy punched the communicator and grumbled noisily. “Oh, sure, all the time. He loves that bridge and he hates not being where the action is. He’ll be the death of me.”

  Proceed to page 63.

  Page 47

  From page 15.

  “This structure, sir,” Moktar said. “Maybe there is some kind of life here still, some kind of…guardian.”

  Chekov frowned. “We’ve seen nothing. And it’s a very old building, older than recorded human history, I imagine.”

  “Pardon me, sir, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something still here. Something put all these creatures in stasis.”

  Chekov nodded. “See about getting them transported aboard. Have guards ready for the Klingons and that Romulan. I’ll look farther along.”

  Moktar nodded, and Chekov gestured for a security man to accompany him. They flashed their lights over some furry anthropoids he couldn’t identify, a single, rather battered human in an early spacesuit, and a dolphinlike creature in a liquid-filled spacesuit. Then there were some empty niches, then just the plain walls.

  “That’s it, sir,” the security man said. “Nothing more.”

  “No,” Chekov said. “There’s more. There is also whatever put those people into stasis.”

  The security man looked nervous. “Are we, uh, going to look for it
, sir?”

  Chekov smiled faintly. “No need; it will find us.” The security man paled.

  Chekov was right. They were found.

  Proceed to page 60.

  Page 48

  From page 29.

  Leonard McCoy came slowly to consciousness. His head throbbed, and there was a lump on the side of his head. A flashlight beam angled oddly at the ceiling from a pile of rubble. McCoy staggered to his feet, calling out to his men and women.

  One by one they sat up, shook dust and debris from their bodies. McCoy went from one injured member to another, administering first aid.

  “What happened?” a security man with a bleeding shoulder asked.

  “This is a very old building,” McCoy said, looking around warily as he sprayed on a bandage. “It’s unsafe. Part of it fell on us.”

  “What about Mister Chekov?” Lieutenant Castora asked, wincing at a sprained wrist.

  “We’ll find him,” McCoy said grimly. “The Enterprise never abandons its people, of that you can be certain.”

  “Sir!” called out a security man. “Over here! I’ve found something!”

  Turn to page 64.

  Page 49

  From page 29.