Worlds in Collision (14 page)

The only thing that had made their separation possible was that, among all the things they shared, their sense of duty and their questing souls had been the strongest. They could not give up the lives they led. They did not even ask the other to do what each alone could not.

For a few months, they had exchanged messages. But the words that could be sent through subspace, open to the eyes and ears of others, only heightened the loneliness, the sense of loss. In the end, it had been best to close the file and remember what had been, instead of vainly struggling to keep a doomed ghost alive.

Mira Romaine was now chief technician at the facility that was the
Enterprise'
s next port of call—a well-publicized port of call.

His work at hand completed, Scott finally lost himself in the agony of asking
what if?
and
why?
because he knew there was no way Mira Romaine could fail to know that soon their paths would cross again. But
she hadn't sent a message.
Almost as if she no longer cared.

Salman Nensi stood behind the lectern on the stage of the main amphitheater and watched four associates roll among the empty audience seats, slipping printed programs into the pocket on each chair back. He tried to imagine how the theater would look tomorrow morning at eight hundred hours, when almost two thousand beings would gather for the opening ceremonies before the scientists went off to begin the long, drawn-out voting procedures. At least another six hundred scientists would watch the presentation in the comfort of their own particular gravitational and atmospheric conditions in the special environmentally detached visitors' domes of Prime. With the scientists' companions, media, politicians, and the at-liberty crews of at least eight Fleet vessels, Prime was going to be filled to overflowing. Already the lineups in the cafeterias and restaurants were numbing. And now Farl and his blue-skinned troopers were cordoning off sections, creating choke points for crowd control, and making things three times as bad. Each hour that passed made it less likely that these prize ceremonies were going to be the best ever held. They were threatening to become an utter fiasco.

But at least I don't have an interface slowdown to contend with, Nensi thought gratefully as he checked off items on the “to do” list displayed on the portable office terminal he had opened on the lectern. Garold and a few others of the interface team had been seen wandering around their quarters in the main domes, so he presumed that relations between them and the Pathfinders were back to normal. Whatever normal might mean in those circumstances. As for the Pathfinders' excess capacity, that had apparently been going on for at least a year and he couldn't see how a few more days could affect anything.

An associate hummed to a stop beside Nensi, opened a panel on its side, and rotated a viewscreen out and up to Nensi's eye level.

“Request for communication,” the associate announced. “From Chief Technician Romaine.”

Nensi gave leave for the machine to proceed. Romaine appeared and immediately apologized for bothering him.

“I'm so far behind now,” Nensi said, “another few minutes won't make any difference. What's up?”

“The
Enterprise
has arrived and the last delegation of nominees will be ready to beam down in a few minutes. You want to be part of the welcoming committee again?”

Nensi had greeted all of the other delegations, didn't see why he shouldn't go for a complete record, and said so.

“Main transporter chamber, then,” Romaine said, and quickly glanced offscreen. “Fourteen-twenty hours.”

“I'll be there,” Nensi acknowledged, concluding the call. But he noticed that Romaine didn't sign off. “Anything else?” he asked.

Romaine wrinkled her brow. “Did you try confirming any of Farl's authorization for this ‘emergency' of his?” she asked.

Nensi shook his head. “I'm a civilian appointee attached to a Starfleet outpost. Nothing to confirm. Besides, I've seen flaps like this a hundred times. Everyone's nervous about all this scientific talent gathering on one little rock. That's all.”

“This little flap has three of my best people incommunicado in the military brig,” Romaine said, perturbed. “You can bet
I
tried to confirm it.”

“Tried?” Nensi repeated. He didn't like the sound of that. “What was the response?”

“Coded military garbage. I mean
nothing's
coming out of Command except for acronyms and abbreviations and keyword responses we have to open sealed message wafers to decode.”

Nensi rubbed at his chin. “That only means they're taking this flap seriously and quite properly assuming that subspace is no longer secure for unencrypted Command messages.”

“Off the record, Sal, did you have
any
indication at all that something like this was in the works?”

“An associate comm link is not the best place to be asking for something off the record,” he cautioned. “But, no, I had no idea. If I had, then presumably someone else would have, too, and we wouldn't be going through all this right now.” He could see that her face was still drawn and tight. “I really wouldn't worry about it. Concentrate on your engineer, instead.” That brought a smile.

“I wish,” Romaine said, then, “Thanks, Uncle Sal. See you in the main chamber.” She broke the link and the screen twisted back into the associate.

“This module has other duties,” it announced politely when the panel clicked shut.

Nensi gave it permission to proceed and picked up his portable office terminal from the lectern. He'd delegated so much authority to organize the ceremonies that he supposed he might as well let his staff take responsibility for the headaches, too. He walked across the stage and hopped down to the floor, feeling his back twinge with the impact. It would be good to leave behind the painful chauvinism of Earth standard gravity and get back home to the normal gravity of Mars, he thought, and hurried on his way.

 

The welcoming delegation was already in position when Nensi arrived at Prime's main transporter chamber. Romaine and two aides waited with twelve others, including representatives of the prize committee, accreditation officials, two holo recorders from the combined newsweb pool, and Commander Farl's sublieutenant of the guards.

Nensi crossed quickly to stand by Romaine as the forward platform pad began to glow and a small, squat, angular shape appeared.

Nensi leaned over to Romaine. “I didn't know the
Enterprise
was bringing any more Medusans,” he said.

The transporter technician at the console overheard.

“It's just a calibration module, Mr. Nensi,” she explained, flicking her eyes back and forth from the pad to her controls.

“Ah,” Nensi said as the ghost image solidified into the familiar form of the most transported piece of equipment in the Federation.

The sides of the box-shaped calibration module were made from incredibly thin sheets of alignment alloy. Only four molecules thick, the surface of the substance sparkled with a rainbow effect resulting from the geometric diffraction patterns formed by its constituent atoms. The slightest molecular misalignment of the transporter effect, even on the order of half an atomic diameter, would immediately disrupt the colorful light reflections and turn the surface to a dull, tarnished, blue black.

Any ship or installation that had a transporter unit kept hundreds of square meters of the alloy on hand for test beamings. Its durability, as long as it was properly reassembled, was as impressive as its availability, and Nensi had seen sheets of it fashioned into everything from serving trays to wall plaques in handicraft shops on dozens of worlds. As long as the ends were carefully rolled over to guard against the wickedly sharp edges, Nensi found alignment alloy artifacts attractive, if somewhat garish.

“Are they having trouble with their system?” Nensi asked, after the technician had confirmed the module's arrival and the
Enterprise
beamed it back up.

“They're just being cautious, I think,” the technician said. “Their operator was saying the ship's transporter target sensors are so sensitive that they were picking up ghost coordinates from all the portable combat pads Farl's deployed. Rather than step down their sensors and then spend a day recalibrating when they leave, the operator just wanted to go to a higher beam path.”

“Successfully, I take it?” Nensi said as the transporter effect appeared above five of the twenty-two pads in the chamber.

“Going to be an awful mess if it wasn't,” the technician said cheerfully.

The first group all wore Fleet uniforms, and the first one off the platform had captain's stripes on his sleeve and a face too young with eyes too old.
The legendary James T. Kirk,
Nensi thought as he stepped out to introduce himself and greet the man.

Kirk smiled winningly and gave the impression that he had traveled halfway across the galaxy just to meet and talk with Salman Nensi. The chief administrator had never met a being with such a warm, yet forceful personality.
Gods,
Nensi thought,
if Kirk's like this just to say hello to, what must it be like to serve with him?
Nensi had an image of a starship hurtling into a black hole with Kirk at the helm and a thousand loyal crew eager to follow. Then the captain saw something interesting over Nensi's shoulder.

“Mira?” Kirk said with a surprised smile. “Mira Romaine?”

“Hello, Captain.” Romaine extended her hand to Kirk's. Nensi, because he knew her well, could see her smile was tense and forced. “Didn't Mr. Scott tell you?” She tried to say it lightly, but Nensi immediately knew what had caused her disappointment.

“Not a word,” Kirk said, and then, incredibly, Nensi saw it was almost as if the captain could read Romaine's face and body language as well as anyone else who had known her since she was a child. “But then Scotty's been working nonstop since the dilithium burnout. I didn't get a chance to review the personnel list for Memory Prime and I bet he didn't either.” Kirk stepped back from Romaine for a moment.
Probably comparing her to the nervous, inexperienced specialist lieutenant she had been on the mission to Alpha,
Nensi thought. He watched Kirk assess the change the years had brought to Mira, and realized that Kirk had lied when he said he didn't get a chance to review the personnel list. That man probably never left anything to chance in his entire career.

Kirk arranged to meet Romaine for a drink when the day's business was concluded and then he dutifully endured the rest of the introductions. Wouldn't be surprised to see him run for council president someday, Nensi thought as he watched Kirk work the room. The others who had beamed down with him seemed to share some of their captain's inner fire and charm as well.

Nensi had made it a hobby to try and identify people's origins by their accents and turned his ear to the voices of Kirk's accompanying crew. He immediately gave up trying to place the beautiful woman in services red who was talking to the transporter technician in the technician's own colony dialect. A moment ago she had been speaking in Greater Andorian to Farl's sublieutenant. Both tongues, including Standard, she had managed with perfect tones, inflections, and in the sublieutenant's case, whistles and clicks. The woman's facility with language was far beyond Nensi's.

The other crew members were easier. An older man in sciences blue was delighting everyone with a friendly drawl that Nensi recognized as coming either from the old Lunar Freehomes or, perhaps, the North American southern regions. The two younger men in command gold, who were paying particular attention to the women in the welcoming delegation, without being objectionable about it, were also fairly simple. The younger one was from either Martian Colony One or, even more likely, the Grand Soviet regions on Earth. The older one with the blinding smile carried a unique hint of Old Earth combined with the colonists' dialect of Ginjitsu. A true child of the Federation, Nensi concluded.

As the first round of greetings came to an end, six more pads produced six more materializations. Nensi was surprised to see a commodore and five troopers. Troopers were not considered regular crew for a starship except under extraordinary conditions, and the protocol liaison in Romaine's office had mentioned no need to prepare for a person of the commodore's rank. He wondered if her presence had any connection with Farl's emergency, and the commodore answered him by heading straight for the sublieutenant.

Beside him, Nensi heard one of the prize committee members, apparently annoyed at the arrival of so many nonessential beings, ask pointedly if there might be any scientists on board the
Enterprise.

Again, the transporter pads chimed and the first of the nominee delegation arrived with their luggage and equipment.

Nensi found himself shaking hands with the older officer with the drawl as the accreditation officials escorted the scientists to the identification stalls. His name, he said, was Leonard McCoy, ship's surgeon. Nensi returned the introduction.

“A good voyage?” the chief administrator asked.

“Except for the last part,” McCoy answered with enough of an edge in his voice that Nensi knew things weren't going well on his ship. “I'm sorry, Mr. Nensi, I don't mean to complain. I always get cranky after beaming. I hate those things.”

Nensi had heard about people like this man, though he had never personally met anyone else who shared the doctor's groundless aversion to being broken down into his elementary particles, tunneled through beam space, then reassembled. “I understand,” Nensi lied politely.

“Especially putting through that calibration module first,” McCoy continued. “As if they expected the whole system to fail any second. Probably with me in transit, too.” McCoy looked around the chamber, as if searching for something. “What the blazes are those portable pads they kept talking about up there?” he asked.

“Those would be the portable combat pads our security troopers have deployed around the facility,” Nensi said. He saw an eyebrow shoot up at the word
combat.
“Part of a very thorough drill procedure, I assure you. Nothing drastic.”