McCoy stepped out into the Vulcan night. Above him the sky dazzled
with an alien configuration of stars, brighter for the absence of
clouds and moons. He tried to orient himself, but the myriad stars
made it impossible. A dry, chilling breeze swept the sand, and McCoy
shivered and rubbed his upper arms briskly. The nearest large body of
water lay more than a thousand kilometers to the south; without the
insulating properties of water or clouds, the desert surrendered its
heat quickly. He took a step forward and half stumbled; in spite of
the brilliance of the stars, his eyes were unaccustomed to the
darkness.
"Roughly five-point-six hours before dawn." Spock emerged from the
shuttlecraft behind him. "We should be able to reach the capital
before that, if we maintain a good pace."
"Why the urgency?" McCoy asked. "You aren't expecting anyone to be
looking for us, are you?"
"Doubtful," Spock said. "With communications on the Enterprise
sabotaged, there is no way for anyone
on Vulcan to know we're here. But I do not believe you would enjoy
crossing the desert during the day."
"I won't argue that with you, but I still don't see why we have to hike
five hours through the desert."
Spock sighed. "As I explained to you before, Doctor, secrecy is
essential. The closer we land to a civilized area, the greater the
risk of detection."
Anitra poked her head out the door and wrinkled her nose. "Chilly out
here," she said. "Any chance this craft is equipped with some thermal
suits?"
"Check the storage area in the back," McCoy suggested. "Of course, I
don't know how recently the ship was stocked. No one was expecting to
be taking it anywhere."
She came out a moment later carrying two thermal blankets and handed
them to Spock. "This is all I could find."
"Not the most elegant means of dealing with the cold," Spock said,
eyeing them, "but suitable." He handed one each to McCoy and Anitra.
"Just a minute," Anitra said, "what about you?"
"I am better equipped--"
"You're forgetting something .. . sir," she interrupted, tacking on the
"sir" as if the protocol of rank were an extreme irritation best
forgotten. "Females are far better equipped than males to handle
cold."
"You're forgetting one important thing," Spock said stiffly. "I am a
Vulcan. And more importantly, I am the ranking officer here;
therefore, I make the decisions."
Anitra blushed and closed her mouth; without a word, she pulled the
silver blanket tightly about her
shoulders. It was all McCoy could do not to express delight at her
success in insulting Spock, but he said nothing and put the blanket
around his shoulders.
"I'll go first," Spock continued, "as my night vision is better and I
am most familiar with the hazards of the desert." He and McCoy both
watched Anitra to see if she would also take issue with that statement;
McCoy felt almost disappointed when she remained silent.
The sand was soft and yielding, and the wind whispered it across the
tops of their boots. McCoy could not see where his feet were falling,
and found it a struggle just to keep pace behind Spock and Anitra. In
the distance, he heard a rasping, metallic scream, and shivered.
"What the hell was that?"
"Ale maty a." Spock turned his head so that the wind would not carry
his words away. "There is no cause for alarm. From the location of
its scream, I would say that we are downwind of it."
"Oh, great." McCoy's eyes widened and searched dubiously about, but
saw nothing but stars and darkness. After an hour, when no attack was
forthcoming, he gave himself completely to the task of keeping up.
They continued in this way for at least an hour, by which time McCoy
was huffing, while Anitra and Spock seemed quite unaffected.
stomach, "that anyone thought to bring anything to eat?"
Spock looked at him, but did not deign to reply.
A sudden, sharp force lashed itself about McCoy's lower leg and ankle,
yanking him to the ground with such force that he emitted a short, soft
yelp. It pulled
him backward with numbing speed, and he slid on his stomach, cursing
and sputtering sand, his fingers leaving a trail of furrows across the
desert. The blanket was left far behind.
McCoy was far too stunned to wonder what was happening to him; caught
up in the preocc upation of keeping his face out of the sand, he
scarcely registered the lightning glow of a phaser nearby. With a
sudden jolt, the pulling stopped. Gingerly, he raised himself to a
sitting position and examined the thick dark green vine spun tightly
around his ankle. Spock knelt next to him and gently began to unwind
it.
"What in God's name--" McCoy began shakily.
"A d'manu vine, Doctor." Spock held up the three foot length for McCoy
to inspect. "You're quite lucky I was watching when it attacked.
Otherwise, it would probably have been some time before we missed
you."
"Thanks a lot," McCoy muttered.
"Had you been dragged another few yards--"
"You should have seen it," Anitra volunteered enthusiastically. "It
had this huge, gaping mouth--"
McCoy shuddered. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."
"Actually, this attack comes at a most convenient time," Spock said.
"Didn't you just say you were hungry?" He broke off a piece of the
vine and proffered it to McCoy, ignoring the doctor's thunderstruck
expression.
McCoy paled. "Oh, no, now wait a minute." He held up his hands to
ward off the thing. "That thing just tried to eat me. I've heard of
getting even, but this is just too much."
The Vulcan bit into the refused morsel with a loud crunch and began
chewing with a decidedly whimsical expression.
"Spock, I'm surprised at you. You're supposed to be a vegetarian."
"It is a plant," Spock replied serenely. "Surely you aren't that
squeamish, Dr. McCoy. I have seen you eat things capable of far more
movement than a d'manu."
He snapped off another piece of the vine, not without a glimmer of
amusement, and handed it to McCoy. This time, logic and hunger won
out, and McCoy took it, though reluctantly. He bit into it and found
that it had very little taste--crunchy and slightly sweet. He began to
eat with more relish, and with a rather smug sensation of revenge.
"Can you stand, Doctor?" Spock asked.
"Of course." McCoy scrambled to his feet--and had to bite his lip to
keep from swearing. The d'manu had lost the battle, but it had managed
to inflict a few wounds the ankle was badly bruised. McCoy wobbled,
struggling to maintain his balance in the soft sand, and smiled
insincerely. "Just shook me up a bit, that's all."
"You're a terrible actor," Anitra said.
"You shouldn't walk on it," Spock said. "I can carry you without any
appreciable loss of time."
"Like hell you will." To prove his point, McCoy began walking
briskly
ahead.
Spock sighed. "That's all very well, Doctor. But ShanaiKahr lies that
way." He pointed in the opposite direction.
The sun rose at last, heating the air with alarming efficiency. Anitra
and McCoy had shed their blankets
almost at the first rays of sunrise. According to Spock, they were
still two hours from the outskirts of the capital; because of McCoy's
dogged insistence upon walking unaided, they had made little progress
during the night. Spock had at first kept up his rapid pace, only to
realize that McCoy was being left behind. And McCoy's vehement refusal
to be carried made it clear to Spock that invoking command privilege in
this instance would be futile; the doctor obviously found the idea of
court-martial preferable to that of being carried by the Vulcan.
Eridani climbed quickly in the sky and brought with it heat and
blinding brightness. McCoy had been unable to see the night before for
the darkness; now he could not see for the light. Spock turned to him,
concerned. "It's quite dangerous even for a Vulcan to stay long on the
desert, unprotected as we are from the heat. I suggest we alter our
course and head for shelter until evening."
"Shelter?" McCoy squinted about uncertainly. The desert stretched to
infinity in all directions. He raised his hand to his forehead to wipe
away a bead of sweat, but the dry heat had already evaporated it and he
touched dry, hot skin. His ankle was throbbing now to the point that
he no longer pretended it was not painful.
Spock studied his two companions. Anitra appeared to be in fair shape;
being young and female, she suffered from the heat far less than did
the doctor. She had walked uncomplaining the night before, with silent
determination. But Spock was definitely worried about McCoy. Exhausted
from the previous evening's trek, McCoy was shuffling at an ever-slower
pace, and
the heat had already turned his face pale gray. He also desperately
needed to stop and rest his ankle--but Spock knew that to lie down in
the desert sun was the sheerest form of idiocy.
"There is shelter," Spock said. "Forty minutes in that direction."
"Forty minutes?" McCoy rubbed his face wearily. "Why not just go the
two hours? At least we won't have to backtrack."
"Every minute spent in the sun," Spock said, "is a minute closer to
death." For humans, at least, that was true. Even a Vulcan equipped
with a desert soft suit and an ample supply of water would think twice
about a two-hour hike at midday.
"Whatever." McCoy was too weak to argue. Anitra and Spock stopped and
eyed him with concern as he slowly trudged forward. "Well, come on,"
he said irritably, looking back over his shoulder at them. "Every
minute in the sun .. ."
Anitra and Spock followed, but this time they walked on either side of
the doctor.
That way, when he collapsed twenty minutes later, they were easily able
to catch him.
Anitra lowered herself into the steaming water smoothly, slicing it
without a splash. After the heat of the desert, she was surprised at
how the hot water refreshed her. She sank down until it covered her
head, fanning her hair out behind her. The long copper strands floated
lazily to the surface. She was buoyant, so that she had to paddle to
stay beneath the water's surface, which smelled and tasted strongly,
but not unpleasantly, of mineral salts.
She opened her eyes and looked down into darkness except for the
shallow rock shelf near the shore, the pool was bottomless, so that
from a short distance away, the water appeared black. She let herself
drift back up to the surface, her hair clinging, soaked, to her scalp,
and began to swim.
After the past night's journey, it did not take her long to exhaust
herself. She closed her eyes and floated. The water supported her
softly, and she sighed as she attempted to forget the horror of the
past few days.
She had almost succeeded when something brushed, squirming, against her
arm. Startled, she pulled out of the float. A small water beetle was
skimming the surface of the water next to her; on the other side of the
pool, hundreds of beetles skated in a graceful aquatic ballet. She
pushed the water with a cupped hand and sent the insect riding a small
crest of wave toward its peers.
She floated again, this time with her eyes open. A hundred feet above
her, the ceiling of the great cavern hung with a thousand razor-sharp
stalactites, which seemed in imminent danger of falling, like a sword
of Damocles, upon the heads of whatever innocent swimmers happened to
be in the pool. No doubt they had appeared that way for millennia, but
Anitra chuckled silently at the irony--to come this far, only to be
done in by a stalactite--and amused herself by calculating the odds.
The immense silence of the cavern magnified sound, so that she started
at the sound of footsteps ringing against the hard stone floor. With a
downward-circling motion of her arms, she righted herself gracefully
in
the water. Spock had been so concerned with McCoy in the small cave
that she had expected to bathe in the spring with complete privacy. She
lowered herself in the clear water in a useless gesture of modesty
until it reached her collarbone.
The footsteps stopped at the edge of the pool, and Anitra started. A
young Vulcan male, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, knelt at
the edge, dressed in an ankle-length robe that made him look like a
monk. His striking features were perfectly composed, but his eyes were
wide.
"Who are you?" he asked in Vulcan. His voice was surprisingly deep.
Anitra stammered for a moment, trying to remember the few words she had
learned in Vulcan, failing entirely. "I don't speak Vulcan," she said,
feeling the warmth rush to her face. She folded her arms strategically
in front of her.
"I am Soltar," the Vulcan said in English. "Who are you?"
"Anitra." She was sorry as soon as she said it; after the paranoia of
the past few days, she feared leaving a trail that anyone from the
Enterprise could follow, but she had sensed no evil in the young man,
and there was no reason to mistrust him. She came closer to the edge
of the pool so that the rock at the edge would at least partially hide
her from Soltar's gaze.
"It is a very unusual name," he said. "Is it Terran?"
"Yes," she said. There was no point in lying about anything else.
"How have you come to be here? Terrans do not come to Gol."
"I might ask you the same thing," she said, and
Soltar digested the remark, wondering if it were meant to be taken
literally.
He was rescued from his dilemma by Spock, who emerged from the cave in
the rock wall, where he had been treating McCoy. He spoke to the young
Vulcan, and Anitra watched his manner change, become stiffer, more
formal, his face as masklike as Soltar's. He stood on the opposite
edge of the pool from Soltar, while Anitra stayed in the water between
the tw
o, more than a bit uncomfortable at being naked in the water
while the Vulcans conversed, apparently quite oblivious to her
discomfort.
"I am Spock," he said. "We require assistance. Our other companion is
in there--" he nodded toward the cave "--a human, who suffers from the
heat."
"I will take you to the High Master," said Soltar.
"I don't suppose I could dress fir st," Anitra said. The Vulcans looked
down at her, startled.
Soltar led them down a perfectly symmetrical staircase which had been
carved into the rock. Spock and Anitra followed at a distance that
allowed for some privacy of conversation.
"Amazing," Anitra said at the sight of the stairs.
"The mountains of Gol have been inhabited for thousands of years by the
masters," Spock said.
"The masters?"
"The ones who practice Kohlinahr, the perfect mastery of emotion, and
instruct others as to its attainment. From his robe, I would say our
guide is a postulant--new to the order. He has not yet attained
mastery."
"Seems close enough to me." She lowered her voice
even further. "Spock--I told him my name. Do you think it might be
dangerous?"
Spock shrugged. "It would be nearly impossible for anyone to trace us
here. And the masters lead a life completely isolated from