Corona (9 page)

Mason stepped up to the door of the computer control center and braced herself. The door opened, and she was vastly relieved to find Veblen inside; Spock was not present. "The captain says I can find all the debriefing materials in the open log."

Veblen looked at her blankly, then leaned his head back and opened his mouth in an O. "You can access the open log through your quarters terminal. You don't have to come down here."

"I do," she said, "if I want to find out what's really going on. Is there anything not being put in the open log?"

Veblen smiled and shook his head. "I'm not the one to ask, Miss Mason."

She sat down in the console chair across from him and sighed deeply. "Thank God for someone who's willing to call me Miss instead of Mister. The captain did it once, but I'm sure he was being tactical. Why shouldn't I ask you?"

Veblen looked away, still smiling. "No comment to the press. But it should be obvious."

"I shouldn't come to you just because you're the odd man out, that's what you're saying?"

He nodded. "It's only natural. I bring the bad news. Since I'm staff instead of line, I don't get to do much else
but
bring bad news. And the bad news this time is in the open log; the captain put it there himself."

"Save me the trouble. I have to file a dispatch soon and I can't afford the luxury of deep research."

"The monitors are refusing to revive the frozen station personnel."

"In God's name, why?"

"Because they are legally dead."

"That's nonsense. If they can be revived, they aren't dead!"

"I only bring the news, I don't justify it."

Mason leaned forward. "Are the monitors questioning Kirk's ability to command?"

This took Veblen aback. "Not at all," he said. "The captain has satisfied the monitors completely."

"And Dr. McCoy?'

"Dr. McCoy hasn't done anything but ask the monitors to make a judgment."

"There's no possibility Dr. McCoy is doing something wrong, and the monitors are balking because of that?"

"No possibility at all," Veblen said. He finished typing a series of commands into his console and pushed his chair back. "I think we should go … what's the phrase … off the record now."

"Certainly," Mason said.

The door opened and Spock entered. Mason sat straight up in the chair and avoided Spock's eyes. "Thank you, Mr. Veblen," she said, her voice higher pitched than before. "We'll talk later."

After she had left, Veblen prepared the screen for Spock's file work. "I don't think she's used to you, Mr. Spock," Veblen said.

Spock did not react. "Mr. Veblen, Dr. McCoy requests a list of the monitors' medical reference files."

"Yes, sir. I've finished processing the station data on Ybakra. As soon as I've made a hard copy for the doctor, I'll take a rest, unless you have further need of me."

"Thank you, Mr. Veblen, no."

Veblen caught up with Mason at a crew reference terminal outside the non-commissioned officers' lounge. "Could we talk for a moment?" he asked.

"Off the record, or on?"

"Off. About you, and about what I said just a few minutes ago."

"Sure." They took the elevator to Area 39, the all-crew recreation room, and found a seat at an empty games table in an isolated corner.

"First," Veblen said, "I don't appreciate your coming to me as if I were the weak point in the
Enterprise
crew."

"That wasn't my intention at all—"

"Second, I think you're on the wrong track, and I think you have some problems of your own to solve."

"Where do you get off—"

"Wait a minute. You said you'd hear me out." He stared at her with an intensity which cut off any further protest. "I'll tell you why I'm angry all of a sudden. Sure, I wear my uniforms a little out of regulation, and I'm not in the best shape compared to the rest of the crew. And I'm staff, the only staff officer aboard this ship. But I am no weak point, and my work proceeds no matter what anyone else's attitude to me is."

"It wasn't my intention—I mean, I've never thought of you as a weak point."

"Good. Then maybe my next shot will be more on target. I'm in charge of maintaining and testing the monitors. Incidentally, I work with Mr. Spock on all the ship's computers, because the monitors interface with virtually every system on the
Enterprise.
And I work with the captain because the monitors are very complex, and no command officer should be expected to be completely familiar with such a new and difficult system."

"Yes," Mason said, watching Veblen closely.

"If you think there's a story in the captain's problems adjusting to the monitors, that's fine. We may be uncomfortable with that kind of coverage, but that's the way things are; it's a legitimate story. But if you think you're going to find material proving that Captain Kirk is trying to frustrate the monitors, to somehow get around them, I'm here to tell you that's a dead end. I've had the captain question me, even harangue me, about some point or other, but not once has he suggested I was at fault, or that I am not a part of the
Enterprise.
Any alienation you see is largely due to me, not to the captain or the crew."

"I have to follow my instincts, Mr. Veblen."

"We're in a very tough situation here. Even tougher than you know." Veblen looked down at the table. "I'm sorry if I've been angry with you. What I say next has to be doubly confidential …"

To Mason, it was obvious that despite everything he had just said, Veblen needed to let his hair down with someone. "We've been off the record. I keep my word."

"The monitors—aren't perfect. They're only as good as the people who programmed them, and the laws they follow are not perfect. Dr. McCoy is up against a brick wall. I'm not going to say why, just yet, but I want you to understand. I want
somebody
to understand. They're going to have to do something, and if worse comes to worse, they're going to have to find a way around the monitors. And I am going to have to oppose them. I don't want to, but I will."

Mason regarded him with new understanding and respect. Veblen was deeply troubled; Why, she thought, he's probably as enamored of Captain Kirk as the rest of the crew!

"So maybe that's where your story should be. If the Federation wants to keep track of every little thing a starship does, perhaps we should find ways to monitor those who make the laws and expect us to carry them out. It should work both ways."

"What's the doctor going to do?"

"I don't know. I don't want to know. What I don't know won't hurt me, right?"

She nodded "So we're both outcasts here," she said. "By occupation, if nothing else."

"I hope you'll excuse me," Veblen said, flushing now. "But I believe you're having some problems, too."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I believe you're having difficulty facing up to Mr. Spock, perhaps even to Mr. Yimasa."

"What gives you that impression?" It was Mason's turn to redden.

"When I joined Starfleet, I came from an allhuman enclave on Titan."

"Where's that?"

"Saturn's largest moon. My folks were among the terraformers. They were great people, but they fed me a lot of nonsense about Vulcans and Andorrans and all the others—not those who don't have human shape; we hadn't even met any—but humanoids. I had a lot of garbage in my head to overcome. From the way you avoid Mr. Spock, and—" He paused. "Well, I've read parts of the file FNS sent up from Yalbo."

"My file?"

He nodded. "I think you have some of the same garbage to throw out. If it proves to be a problem, perhaps I can help."

"Thank you for the offer," Mason said, standing. "And I hope I've helped by being a sounding board."

Veblen shrugged.

"But from here on in, I think I'll want our interviews on the record. I have to get down to the station. I can't file reports when I haven't even been on the scene." She nodded curtly at him and left Area 39.

Chekov briefed his replacements, ensigns Pauli and Wah Ching, then called the
Enterprise
to be beamed back on board. As the transporter effect began, he saw Radak watching from the storage dome hatch. Parallel red lines crossed his vision as the beam disassembled his visual cortex; there was nothing unusual in that. But the expected reverse effect, and the appearance of the transporter room on the
Enterprise,
did not follow. Instead, Ensign Pavel Chekov found himself in a very dark, very lonely place, filled with a multitude of precisely phrased questions …

"Transporter interrupt!" Shallert punched the engineering alert button and immediately brought the backup systems on line. The transporter hummed a deep bass tone, which began to rise in frequency until it was a sweet, high whistle. Then the bass tone repeated.

"What is it, Mr. Shallert?" Scotty asked from the main engineering control deck.

"There's a delay in Ensign Chekov's assembly," Shallert said. "I have the backups—"

"Is he in form memory?" Scotty asked.

"I don't know, sir. The transporter isn't reporting anything."

"I'm on my way."

Just as Scott left the com, a single transporter effect began on the assigned disk. Shallert watched in amazement as Ensign Chekov assembled on the transporter deck—precisely forty seconds after he had been disintegrated on Station One.

* * *

"There's nothing wrong with the equipment," Scott repeated. He stood between McCoy and Kirk in the transporter room, his short black hair hanging in strands across his forehead, his uniform smudged and his hands clutching a pair of engineering diagnostic tricorders.

"Well, until you find out what
is
wrong," McCoy said, "I'm decertifying that monster." Scott turned to Kirk, his face betraying the most extreme anguish.

"Sir, if there had been ennathin wrong, Chekov wouldna' ha' come back at all!"

"Scotty, there was a delay. He wasn't beaming through solid steel, he was coming up through vacuum. There has to be some explanation. I believe the transporter is operating correctly, but I must go along with Dr. McCoy. Until we find out what caused the anomalies, we will take the shuttle and avoid transporting personnel."

Scotty agreed with a nod, but his shoulders slumped. "I'll take enna suggestions you have, gentlemen."

Chekov surveyed his quarters with wide-eyed interest. He picked up the glass artifact he had purchased from an Andorran crewmember two years before; it scintillated in his hands, appearing as spiky as a sea-urchin, but feeling like a smooth sphere to the touch. "Glass with the same index of refraction as air," he said to himself, in his own voice, though he did not do the talking. He turned to the screen and touched the keyboard beneath hesitantly.

"Perhaps I should speak to the ceptain," he said. "This does not feel right. I should not feel like this." He forced himself to reach out to the wall com, but his hand slowly withdrew before touching the button. Sweat broke out on his forehead. "I only wish to be left alone, and to feel well," he said. The presence interfering with his actions, and using his voice, did not respond.

Mason finished composing her dispatch and handed the data pack to Uhura on the bridge. Uhura plugged it into her console and asked, "Are we making the grade?"

"It's a very tame report, if that's what you mean," Mason said. "I can't get close enough to the action."

Kirk and Spock came on the bridge. "Rowena, we're taking a shuttle to the station," Kirk said. She stared at him expectantly.

"Dr. McCoy doesn't like the idea, but you're invited."

"I'll go," she said firmly. "I'll go, and thank you."

Very early in his life, McCoy had learned to disguise his deepest emotions. He had reached the conclusion that most other people did not feel as he did, or hid themselves even more effectively; either way, it was best not to demonstrate the extremes he often felt. The best disguise, he had discovered, was camouflage—hence, the brusque exterior he showed to even his oldest friends.

He was deeply romantic, even chivalrous, constantly feeling the urge to protect the "fair sex"; yet one couldn't treat female co-workers with such deference. The solution? Be brusque. And when his passionate respect for all living things became too painful to bear, he even hid from himself. In centuries past, he knew, he probably would have become an alcoholic; the stresses and strains would have produced an unbearable hormonal mix, and he would have turned to drink. Now, by tightly controlling his diet, taking adjustment drugs and engaging in various meditative therapies, he managed to keep the most destructive parts of himself under control.

He ragged Spock so unmercifully because he found himself dismayingly similar to the Vulcan.

McCoy's colleagues and friends—and one was very seldom not the other—soon came to accept the contradictions, and intuit the reasons behind them. They did not tender advice; it would have been useless. And, as Kirk well knew, however distressing McCoy's characteristics were to himself, they resulted in a damned fine doctor. What McCoy lacked in heady brilliance, he more than made up for in insight and compassion.

Even Spock respected the doctor's courtly bedside manner, since it was so effective, and not just on his human patients. Spock well remembered the healing of the silicon-based Horta, years before, accomplished by tenderness and the application of methods better suited to the building trades than formal medicine.

Now, McCoy faced a dilemma which put more than usual strain upon him. He had thirty patients which he had the technical means to save from living death, and yet he was being prevented from doing so. To circumvent those barriers, he had already hinted to Kirk, one of his finest friends, that they would have to bend or break the law. ("Shatter" would probably describe it best.) For Kirk to do so could mean the end of his career. And of course, it could mean the end of McCoy's career as well.

While McCoy focused on this problem, he could not avoid the other problems they were facing: the erratic functioning of the transporter, the peculiar situation on Station One, and the presence of a civilian journalist ready and waiting to record it all for public posterity.

McCoy sat in the shadowy darkness of his quarters, making notes on a piece of paper with an antique fountain pen beneath the concentrated beam of a small lamp. "With the transporter decommissioned until further testing, all the patients on Station One will have to be ferried to the
Enterprise
by shuttle. The shuttle is being outfitted for this job right now, but I'm not happy with the arrangements. Moving people in cold storage is risky business. The usual vibrations associated with travel in a small vehicle could be hazardous to those in deep cold. Even with special field suspension on each hibernaculum, there's risk. And rigging the shuttle with the special equipment means we can only carry two hibernacula at a time. Spock says the conditions in the nebula cloud are not ideal for small craft; the shuttle can't produce as strong a shield against radiation as the
Enterprise
…"

He rubbed his face with both hands and decided to put off his worries about the transfer. "How to get around the monitors …" He began his list of choices, none of which he was sure would work. "I've been considering some crazy scheme to rig a false message from the Federation, conveying new rule changes … a new definition of death. To that end, I've had a hard copy made of all the medical references in the monitors. But I'm certain Jim would veto any such scheme. And if Veblen found out about it … not good form to antagonize shipmates. Similar objections to finding a way to temporarily deactivate the medical monitoring functions. But now Spock—"

He lifted his fountain pen and stared off at a hologram of the salt marshes of Chincoteague Island. "Good old Spock," he resumed. "Spock has been laying hints all around about a way to get even deeper into the monitors, legitimately. The command monitors contain the experience-memories of six command-rank Starfleet officers. And in the medical monitors, there are six more—all ship's doctors …"

What was Spock's motivation in passing clues to McCoy? The doctor knew the answer immediately. As a Vulcan, Spock was primarily obedient to his duty, then to his commander, then to the mission. Spock's motivation was to eliminate a dilemma which could wreck not only their mission, but his commanding officer as well. Vulcan duty required no great respect for laws, especially human laws, that were self-defeating.

Trust a Vulcan to find a legitimate way to get around human inadequacies.

McCoy smiled. If all else failed, Spock would arrange for him to have a direct dialogue with the experience-memories in the medical monitors. There were no guarantees …

"But it's smarter to avoid taking the bull by the horns, when you can lead him around by the tail."

He put the paper away in his loose-leaf diary and screwed the pen back into its cap. Before he could proceed with Spock's help, he had to make sure they had the means to shuttle the hibernacula in the first place. He had long since learned to tackle problems in order of increasing difficulty; that way, if any problem was insoluble, no time was wasted on the next, tougher step.

Chekov jack-knifed abruptly in his bed and stared around the cabin, wide-eyed as if from some nightmare. Then, slowly, his eyes narrowed and he sank back onto the pillow. "Time," he requested.

"1207 hours," the console replied. In twenty minutes, he would be returning to the planetoid on the shuttle. He had slept very poorly, trying to resist the growing insanity—or so he interpreted the feelings of loss of will and unmotivated activity. He had tried to resist going to the console and doing what the new Voice requested, and had so far succeeded. But now it was too insistent. He knew he would stand up—

—He stood.

And go to the console.

—He went to the console.

He would call up a chart with the interior of the
Enterprise
laid out in graphic detail.

—He typed on the keyboard, trying to make mistakes and failing.

He would ask questions of the library computer—questions pertaining to specific details of the ship's engines, the matter-antimatter drives, with which he was not familiar.

—He typed more instructions. He made a hard copy of all the information he had called up. He inserted the copy card into his pouch. Then he went to the lavatory and made himself look presentable, ready for duty, though he could not eliminate the shadows around his eyes.

Thank you, said the Voice.

You are not in the least welcome, Chekov replied.

Chekov smiled and held out his arm, ushering Mason into the interior of the shuttle. Kirk and Spock were already inside, along with Chapel and McCoy. McCoy was carefully inspecting all the equipment newly installed to ferry the hibernacula. Chapel checked off items on her notepad as McCoy ran through all the crucial points. He stood up, pushing on his knees with his hands, and nodded to Kirk. "They're as good as they'll ever be," he said. "Who's going planetside with us?"

"Spock and presumably Rowena," Kirk said.

"I'd like to stay down there and file my reports from the station," Mason said.

"We'll need as much room as we can get on the return trip," McCoy said. "I'd like to bring up two hibernacula each trip."

Kirk looked around the group, then nodded. "Prepare for shuttle launch," he said. They took their seats—which had been rearranged around the area the hibernacula would occupy—and strapped themselves in. Mason turned around to watch the shuttle cargo doors being sealed, then attached the recorder to an equipment grip overhead, making sure the visual scanner could see out her port. Chekov, seated next to her, observed closely but said nothing.

Outside the shuttle walls, the roar of air being evacuated from the shuttle hangar gradually reduced to a whisper, then a faint hiss. The deep grumble of the hangar doors opening was communicated to the shuttle through its landing supports, and ceased abruptly as the shuttle lifted off.

They exited the hangar on a reverse tractor beam, then switched on the impulse engines and descended to the planetoid.

T'Raus and T'Prylla dematerialized and crossed the space between the station and the Eye-to-Stars. It felt a bit like flying; unlike the transporter beam, their particular form of travel involved sensation and memory. T'Prylla enjoyed the journey much less than T'Raus; she could never quite be sure where they were going, or what would happen when they arrived.

The Voice she had heard so often inside her head—associated with the outburst of Ybakra from the triple stars—was familiar enough for her to give it a name:
Pau
, or in Federation English, "Corona." Corona never explained; all she had learned in the past nine years, she had deduced. She suspected her children were more privy to Corona's secrets.

They stood on the airless surface of the planetoid without suits, surrounded by a faint green envelope. T'Raus stretched out her hand and touched a meteoroid-scarred rock. Overhead, the constant purple glow of the nebula—very bright on the night side of the planetoid—seemed to bubble and distort. Gradually the distortion became perfectly round, and the Eye-to-Stars opened like a great black disk. T'Raus smiled and clapped her hands once. T'Prylla held out the astronomy tricorder, as she was willed to do, and let it record what the Eye-to-Stars saw.

When they were done—when the curiosity of Corona had been satisfied—T'Raus took the tricorder and played its information back. "This is very fine," she said. "Soon the work will be done." Then she frowned. "We cannot return to the precise position from which we left. There are more visitors. It is very
orniaga.
"

T'Prylla had to think hard to remember what the Vulcan word T'Raus had used meant. It meant "irritated." She hadn't heard the word for decades; it was virtually never used in polite Vulcan conversation. She said nothing; she had no power to say anything. Her opinion was not wanted; only her scientific abilities, and her labor.

Her arm itched abominably, and she could not even scratch it …