CHAPTER 3

“MR. MAYWEATHER, don’t stand too close to that contraption, please, lest we lose a bit of you.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Reed. I’ll be tending all the bits of me.”

“Mmm ... to be sure. New technology is always perfect from the start.”

Malcolm Reed held his concern in check, but was quite prepared to drop his Lord Nelson persona and knock Travis Mayweather right off that platform if any bit began to sparkle. Such a nightmarish miracle, this. “All right, now you really must stand clear. We’re receiving a clearance to—what’s the word they decided upon? Ream?”

“Beam.” Mayweather’s cocoa complexion glowed a little in the overhead prism lights that would soon show themselves as more than conveniences.

“Amazing, the group dynamics assessments they undertake to select descriptive terms for the unimaginable.”

“I heard they went through ‘scramble,’ ‘heat,’ ‘dissemble’ and ‘spear,’ before they found one that wouldn’t scare people. ‘Beam’ sounds so peaceful and sunny—”

“Not quite what’s going on here, is it?” Reed sighed at the awesome complexity of this contraption.

Travis Mayweather, though, was giddy with pleasure at the new might of their science. He had just come aboard, and the glaze of awe had yet to take a scuff. It would be his privilege to be the first command watch helmsman of this ship, and he knew his name would probably go down in a few history books. Reed contained his approval with proper British reins, but was secretly pleased at a shipmate’s delight and fulfillment.

Mayweather looked particularly stylish in the Starfleet dark-blue jumpsuit, with its geometrically drawn shoulder piping. Reed liked the uniform design. Simple, comfortable, easy on the eye, yet just military enough to make everyone stand properly. He wished they would bring back hats.

In any case, soon they would all be fulfilled, for they were all privileged. As armory officer, Reed’s duties would be rather less glamorous than Mayweather’s, but had the potential to be more satisfying in the large picture. Ah, well, time would tell whose stories might live on. Until then, it was their charge to make this interesting gadget functional to their purposes.

He stepped to the control island and flipped a toggle.

“Very well, dockmaster, we’re ready for you to engage the transporter.”

“Roger, shipboard. Are you standing clear of the platform?”

Reed glanced at Mayweather, who backed up two more steps and shrugged. “That’s affirmative.” He, too, stepped back, but commented, “Either this gentleman is paranoid or psychic. Both useful traits, I should imagine.”

The hairs on his skin began to shiver even before the lights on the platform changed. The transporter chamber quickly became a receptacle of patterns and flashes that made Reed wish there were some kind of partition to protect them. This thing must be giving off some kind of ray or contaminants. How else could it work? So much scrambling energy simply had to radiate.

But they said it didn’t. The royal “They.”

He and Mayweather watched, each guarding his expression, as containers of various sizes formed inside the chamber, bathed in glitter and fanfared by an earsplitting whine.

“Let’s hope something’s done about that squawk,” Mayweather commented over the noise,

“I shall send a memo.” Reed glanced about and scanned the control island after the whine had stopped and the lights had faded. He didn’t really believe it was completely safe to stand up there. What if someone hit the wrong button on the other end?

He controlled his apprehensions and led the way onto the platform, which now contained a clutter of cargo kegs that moments ago had been miles away. Despite the skittishness of the contraption and the doubtful nature of its methods, the transporter was indeed a magical gift from humanity to itself, a fulfillment of dreams from travelers from ages untold. To wish to be there ... then to be there ...

“I heard this platform’s been approved for biotransport,” Mayweather said as he pushed the receiving authorizations on the side of each container.

“I presume you mean fruits and vegetables,” Reed drawled.

“I mean armory officers and helmsmen!”

Reed accommodated him by touching his own uniform front with an expression that said Moi? “I don’t think I’m quite ready to have my molecules compressed into a data stream.”

“They claim it’s safe.”

“Do they indeed ... well, I certainly hope the captain doesn’t plan on making us use it.”

“Don’t worry. From what I’m told, he wouldn’t even put his dog through that thing.”

Reed opened a canister and was engulfed in frustration that changed the subject. “This is ridiculous. I asked for plasma coils. They sent me a case of valve sealant. There’s no chance I can have the weapons on-line in three days.”

“We’re just taking a sick man back to his homeworld. Why do we need weapons?”

“Didn’t you read the profile on these Klingons? Apparently they sharpen their teeth before they go into battle.”

Mayweather shrugged. “Then don’t let them get close enough to bite you.”

“Personally,” Reed opined, “I suspect it’s all rubbish and lore. After all, with whom do they do all this battling they speak of? And who supports this constant tactical front? Someone must do the sewing, cooking, construction, repair, and run a supply line, correct? Someone must cobble the soldiers’ boots, as they say. One should think they must have some other flammable race which also prefers to battle constantly, or they would have to simply battle with everyone they meet. Sooner or later, someone will have shown them their own heads.”

“You really think it’s a myth?”

“Oh, yes. One simply can’t behave that way without ultimately coming up against a bigger dog, sharpened teeth or no.”

“And a more disciplined dog, sir?”

“Why, of course. Discipline ultimately beats all Celts and Huns. It’s the British way.”

Mayweather rewarded him with a stream of laughter as they exited the mystical transporter room and hurried down the corridor, through a scaffold of working crewmen engaged in the hustle of making the ship ready in record time. No one had been ready for the captain’s morning muster. Three days? They wouldn’t be ready, but there would be a passable pretense of readiness.

“No doubt Mr. Tucker will reassure me that my equipment will be here tomorrow,” Reed went on, satisfied with his performance for the day. He continued, imitating Trip Tucker’s Southern drawl. “Keep your shirt on, looo-tenant.”

Mayweather wasn’t listening. “Is it me or does the artificial gravity seem heavy?”

Reed took a few measured steps. “Feels all right ... Earth sea level.”

“My father always kept it at point-eight G. He thought it put a little spring in his step.”

“After being raised on cargo ships, it must’ve felt like you had lead in your boots when you got to Earth.”

“Took some getting used to—”

“Excuse me.” Though Mayweather took a breath to say more, Reed was on to something else, for he had spotted a crewman about to tune the power conduits to the lower levels with his magnetic coil reader. “You may find that if you rebalance the polarities, you’ll get that done quite a bit faster, crewman.”

The midshipman glanced at him.

“Thank you, sir,” the young lady said, not meaning it.

“Very well. Come along, Mr. Mayweather.”

As the two men continued hurrying down the corridor, Mayweather cast a glance back and chided, “What was that all about? She didn’t need the help, y’know. Did you enjoy a little venture into superiorizing?”

“Yes, I did. Of course, it also helps that everyone in earshot got a little jab that we are indeed in a genuine hurry.”

“Ulterior motives. Sneaky.”

“Anything for king and country.”

“Listen, Malcolm,” Mayweather began, more quietly, “If I didn’t thank you for recommending me for this assignment, let me do it right now.”

“Oh, all I did was drop a syllable or two into the captain’s ear. Your record spoke for itself. All your life aboard spaceships, able to fly nearly any make or model—”

“There’s no model like this one.”

“No, there isn’t. So take heart, for there’s nothing against which to compare you. No one will know whether you’re mucking up at the helm or not. Wait—engineering is this way. Always bear to starboard below deck eight.”

“Starboard, aye. But thanks anyway.”

Reed nodded. “We shall see.”

 

“Okay, Alex, give it some juice!”

Trip Tucker danced his own kind of ballet through the outcroppings and knotholes of the cramped engineering deck, a complex scaffold made to support experimental technology of the most skittish kind. This was the red-light nerve center of the new ship, busy and tightly fitted, a place where a thousand adjustments had been bolted on where they were needed, from circuit breakers to flow quenchers, some just to see if they helped at all. Tucker swung and dropped, hooked and monkeyed through the arrangement rather like a child on playground equipment or a zoo monkey on the run. Malcolm Reed winced as Tucker’s foot slid on a rung, but the engineer succeeded in barely keeping a heel-hold with the other foot and hovered in place to check whatever he was doing.

“Beautiful!” he cried to someone among the many crewmen rushing around this area. “Lock it off right there!”

His voice, so high against the chamber’s ceiling, carried an echo. Reed, with Mayweather at his side, stood watching Tucker in his engineering flight suit dance about the ladders and support structures for the mighty and prelegendary warp core. Yes, the massive shipborne power plant already was a legend across space—the clever, useful, and somewhat shocking development, all-human, in spite of holdbacks from other races who already had faster-than-light speed. Apparently humanity had surprised everybody, coming up with warp power on their own, then developing it so quickly. For other cultures, it had taken centuries to get from point A to point B in this technology, but once humans had seen what others could do and knew they could do it, they wouldn’t be left behind now that they had a grip on the possibility. When the Vulcans held back, humans had surged forward with even harsher relentlessness. Spite? Perhaps, and wasn’t it joyfully irritating?

“Look at him,” Reed commented. “The very embodiment of glee.”

“I would be, too,” Mayweather sighed, “if this baby were all mine the way it belongs to its chief engineer.”

“Oh, or its primary watch helmsman, I dare say. Don’t sell your role short. You are the first, after all.”

“You’re determined to make me self-aware at the wheel.” A bright smile broke within Mayweather’s face. “But you’re right—it’s giving me butterflies to realize what I am, and where I am. Do you think all the men who came before us on ships felt like this?”

“Unless they were shanghaied.” Reed muttered his comment, then realized he had failed to fan the mystique. “Ah,” he added, “but each age has its Enterprise ... and always has. This is ours, for all our own people, and any other who wishes our friendly hand.”

Mayweather accepted the heartfelt sentiment. “Or our firm fist.”

“Amen to that.”

The two stood together, in their ship, among shipmates, and embraced this moment of charm.

A dash of spritely humanity came as Trip Tucker swung downward toward them, finally to slide down the handrail of the last ladder and land with a thunk on the deck not ten steps away, proudly eyeing the warp core. At last he pulled out an engineer’s cloth and relieved a smudge of its misery.

“I believe you missed a spot,” Reed charged.

Tucker turned, and seemed immediately proud, then eyed Mayweather.

“Commander Tucker,” Reed introduced, “Ensign Travis Mayweather.”

Tucker stuck out his hand eagerly. “Our space boomer!”

Mayweather seized the hand and tried to return the enthusiasm—helmsman and engineer, the right and left hands of any ship—but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the stunning warp core.

“How fast have you gotten her?” he asked, finding a compromise that excited them both.

“Warp four! We’ll be going to four point five as soon as we clear Jupiter. Think you can handle it?”

Reed buried a grin at the two children who had found each other in the midst of fantasyland, each wanting to do the other’s job, just for a few minutes.

“Four point five ...” Mayweather gazed hungrily at the power source, openly awed and not ashamed to show it. Unthinkable speed, indescribable power, soon to be in his hands.

“Pardon me,” Reed interrupted, “but if I don’t realign the deflector, the first grain of space dust we come across will blow a hole through this ship the size of your fist.”

Tucker snapped back to business. “Keep your shirt on, Lieutenant. Your equipment will be here in the morning.”

“What’s taking so long?”

“There was some problem at central dispatch with Spacecrate Incorporated’s shipment manifest. The crate with your stuff in it got waylaid in transit, and it’s being rerouted.”

“By whom? Who signed that reroute order?”

“Some guy at the dockmaster’s office.”

“Seems odd ...”

“That’s what we get for trying to hurry things up—they get more late.”

“But the shipment was confirmed for this afternoon,” Reed protested. “I got the bill of lading. How do these things occur? Inefficiency?”

Tucker shrugged. “We’ve had six foul-ups already, and it’s not even breakfast. You’re not the only one.”

“All involving shipments?” Travis Mayweather asked.

“All but two, which were misinstallations of critical parts for the motive power system. I’m having to watch my engineers like a mama lion.”

Reed frowned. “Who made these misinstallations?”

“Don’t know. We’re trying to trace them, but nobody seems to know where the work orders are coming from. Just confusion, is what I think.”

“Well, I don’t care for that at all ... where’s the captain?”

“Oh, him?” Tucker shrugged again. “Where would you be if you had just ordered your ship fitted out with a seventy-two-hour readiness deadline and you didn’t even have a deflector or a command staff? He’s in Brazil. Where else?”

 

“Ghlungit! tak nekleet.”

“Very good. Again.”

“Ghlungit! tak nekleet.”

Ah, the sound of learning. Jonathan Archer came up on the doorway of his target classroom and noticed that he’d been doing a lot of eavesdropping lately. Gotten a lot of information out of it, too. He paused for a couple of moments and listened, trying to pick out which language the students were repeating to their teacher. The process was heartwarming, but quickly becoming obsolete, as most of the races humanity met as it moved into space had learned English just as quickly. They were probably more accustomed to dealing with foreign languages—but, on the other hand, Earth has more than her share of languages, so humans had been used to this sort of thing, too, for eons. Of all the planets Archer had heard of, both rumors and confirmed, Earth had by far the widest range of cultures, races, dialects, and languages. Though the Vulcans and others liked to pretend otherwise, Earth was the most cosmopolitan and diverse planet in the charted galaxy.

But diversity didn’t suit Archer’s purpose at the moment. He needed one narrow thread of talent. It was in that room.

He heard her voice. A charmingly high—“small”—voice, almost a child’s voice, but strong and confident at leading the mumble of students through tedious repetitions of alien pronunciation.

“Tighten the back of your tongue,” the charming voice suggested.

Then somebody choked.

Oh, it wasn’t a choke. Probably alien poetry. Who knew?

Archer was looking forward to having Hoshi Sato’s spirit and cheer on his bridge. Good thing, because she would be there about half the time, and most command watches, as the ship’s communications officer. The station was a relatively new posting, never before located on the ship’s bridge itself, but this was a correction of a problem. The communications officer had turned out to be far more important to the moment-by-moment workings of a ship in space than anyone had expected, even when nobody was talking to anybody. It would be Hoshi’s responsibility not only to make sure the crew heard every command, but that all the systems in the ship were communicating with each other, from sensors to the red alert klaxons. Hoshi was also in the command line, simply because the com officer always had firsthand knowledge of exactly what was happening.

Then she spotted him lurking in the back of the room. Her youthful face screwed up with concern. The captain never showed up without a reason, and that meant she would be leaving with him. She knew it, he could tell, but he could also see protest rise in her almond eyes. She would try to talk him out of whatever was about to drag her away.

Archer watched her. She was already disappointed, upset, just from seeing him here. Her right eye got a little tighter.

He’d hoped to ease her distress a bit with his Hawaiian shirt, a kind of peace offering, but not much of a disguise. Was it working? Big flowers and uncaptain-like colors, jeans and tennis shoes? About as passive as wardrobe could get. Archer rubbed his hands and tried not to appear as self-conscious as he felt. The shirt he liked, but interrupting a class wasn’t so pleasant. He felt like a tardy kid.

“Keep trying,” the young lady said to her chanting pupils. She kept her eyes on Archer. “I’ll be right back.”

As if stepping through a looking glass, she came out of the classroom and skewered him with a pure glare. “You’re not here, are you, sir? Not here.”

Her voice was musical and happy despite her annoyance. Archer smiled. “Well,” he said, “you’re here, so I had to come ... here.”

“Outside, please.”

Outside was a jungle garden. For all its wildness, it was, in fact, artificial. Everything here was native to Brazil, but had been brought here and nurtured in this domed university under controlled environments. The eerie part was how real it all looked. The only telltale element was the smell. No rot.

“I need you,” he stated bluntly as she stepped out before him on the constructed pathway.

“You promised,” she moaned. “I took this job because you promised I could finish. There are two more weeks before exams. It’s impossible for me to leave now.”

Archer managed not to groan at her flimsy excuse. “You’ve got to have someone who can cover for you.” He avoided commenting that it was just a foreign language class and she might have to rearrange her priorities to a more galactic mentality. No, probably not the thing to say right now.

“If there were anyone else who could do what I do,” she said, “you wouldn’t be so eager to have me on your spaceship.”

She had him there.

“Hoshi,” he began, but didn’t finish quickly enough.

“Captain, I’m sorry. I owe it to these kids.”

He almost laughed, though managed to keep from it again. Kids? She was hardly a crone herself. And there were other things at work besides devotion to this particular cluster of students, who would be scattered far and wide in a matter of weeks.

“I could order you,” he attempted, just to see what kind of a rise this would get.

“I’m on leave from Starfleet, remember? You’d have to forcibly recall me, which would require a reprimand, which would disqualify me from serving on an active vessel.”

He shrugged. “I need someone with your ear.”

“And you’ll have her. In three weeks.”

This angle was all wrong and wouldn’t work, Archer knew. She was a sweet and benevolent person, intelligent and clever, but she was lousy at lying, and this was a lie. Nobody was quite this irreplaceable. There were plenty of teachers out there who could gargle in front of a group and get them to repeat it. This wasn’t the first time she’d put him off. She was afraid. They both knew she didn’t want to go out on an experimental ship on a mission that could turn dangerous on a whim. Hoshi wasn’t the pioneer type.

How could he broach the reality? Tell her she was right to hesitate? He wanted to open up and reassure her that being scared of scary things wasn’t the same as being a coward.

Except for one thing. She wanted to be out there speaking languages, not down here teaching them, and he knew it. Time for the heavy artillery.

From his breast pocket he took a small device and clicked it on, letting a stranger’s voice speak for him—a Klingon voice, speaking the garbled ancient language never heard on Earth before a few days ago.

The tension left Hoshi’s brow. Something else replaced it. “What’s that?”

“Klingon. Ambassador Soval gave us a sampling of their linguistic database.”

“I thought you said the Vulcans were opposed to this!”

“They are. But we agreed to a few compromises.”

Hoshi fell silent and listened to the recording gacking and gleching and k’tonking merrily in Archer’s hand. Archer kept his lips clamped on any encouragements. He had to give her something worth being scared for. She didn’t want to teach—she wanted to do. Teachers were always the last to use new information. Hoshi would want to be the first.

Yes, yes?

She was leaning a little closer to his hand. “What do you know about these Klingons?”

“Not much,” he tempted. “An empire of warriors with eighty polyguttural dialects constructed on an adaptive syntax—”

“Turn it up.”

The Klingon voice got louder. What a language. Sounded like this guy was throwing up.

“Think about it. You’d be the first human to talk to these people,” he trolled. He lowered his voice, hunched his shoulders, and leaned toward her. “Do you really want someone else to do it?”

Her eyes flickered like butterflies. She backed off a step, then two, and looked at him without turning again to the speaker in his hand. “Why are you rushing me?” she asked. “What do you really want?”

“I want people around me who I already trust,” he admitted.

“Because? The mission’s so simple ... deliver a sick man home. Why do you need to trust anybody the way you’re saying?”

He shifted on his feet, wobbling into a perfectly formed fern, and decided that if he could force her to be honest, then he should be, too.

“Because something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s happened yet,” she said. “What could be wrong?”

Archer gazed down at the little device, its alien voice of the unavoidable and complex future.

He clicked it off.

“I don’t know yet.”