agrostation some fifty kilometers off their port
bow. The kelp farmers were the only other
inhabitants of this stretch of ocean; Delphinus
had been en route to mem with supplies when the
Priority One call had come in.
Sawyer whistled quietly. She was quite fond of
Yoshi and Tatya; she and Jason and
members of their ten-person crew had spent some
wonderful long midocean evenings in the company of the
two young agronomists. But if civilians were going
to get mixed up in this kind of thing, especially
civilians with their own communications station and contacts
on the mainland
"As soon as we're in range, put a tracer
on Agro IlI's 43
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
comm band," Nyere said as if reading her mind.
"Close-monitor it yourself. Let's see what's
new in their little corner of the world."
"Yes sun, Captain sub!" Sawyer said with a
bit too much alacrity.
The scanner tech's footsteps on the
metal stair treads curtailed further conversation.
"Sol system entry 24.01 minutes,
Commander," Helm t'Preth had reported, her
voice barely louder than the impulse engines whose
control was at her fingertips.
(these were Vulcan minutes, based upon the beating
of the Vulcan heart and the logic of units of ten,
hence one hundred Vulcan
heartbeats equaled one Vulcan minute. In
human terms, based on standard time
measurement, a Vulcan's heart beat 240
times per minute, therefore a Vulcan minute
equaled twentyfive standard seconds, and
twenty-four Vulcan minutes equalled ten standard
ones. But the need for such conversion calculations did not
yet exist. At present T'Preth's
announcement signified only that their craft would
cross the orbit of Sol IX, outermost planet
and the one humans called Pluto, in the equivalent
of ten Earth minutes.)
"Acknowledged," Commander T'Lera said from the cone,
her voice almost as soft as T'Preth's, though it
never lost its cutting edge. "All: duty stations,
twenty minutes mark."
Those already at station acknowledged with their
silence. There was no extraneous talk aboard this
or any Vulcan vessel. While every Vulcan
appreciates the value of silence, perhaps nothing
reinforces that appreciation better than the proximity
of six other beings of varying temperaments within the
confines of a scoutcraft on a lore space
voyage.
In the early years before warp drive, those who
kept watch in two-year shifts on this
decade-long journey,
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
while their fellows lay aft in cryogenic
suspension, often reduced their conversation to nothing more
than the relaying of essential data. Even now the
ancient Savar, perhaps conditioned by those times, had not
spoken for days.
The only one not at his station was the navigator.
At his mother's command and well before the requisite time,
Sorahl left off the private study he had been
engaged in at one of the library screens and took his
place at the navcon, though a trace of
puzzlement on his face indicated a lingering
preoccupation with what he had been studying. His mother and
his commander took note, but said nothing.
Instead she devoted these waiting, interim moments
to contemplating the faces of her crew' convinced from
long observation that intense concentration upon that which one
did best evoked a certain ethereal beauty in any
face. As always, her crew did not disappoint her.
Truly her crew was a marvel to behold: a
single unit of seven minds, seven distinct
personalities and a multiplicity of gifts
intermeshed and working together toward a single goal. They
were seven and they were one, unity and diversity, the
Vuican ideal. T'Lera beheld them, and
marveled.
Foremost was Selik,
astrocartographer tireless, methodical, his
universe contained in his work as his work contained a
universe. Veteran of several similar voyages,
he was at present absorbed in plotting the course
of a rogue comet that had altered the gravimetry of this
hunch of his narrow shoulders, the particular slant of
his silvered head, evinced the degree of his
absorption.
Beside him at her communications console and equally
intent upon her work was the
pale-eyed T'Syra, genetic rarity,
Selik's consort, T'Lera's contemporary and
cherished
companion on all her voyages save the
earliest. T'Syra's responsibility was the
monitoring and recording of every radio wave that
emanated from 45
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Earth even at this distance, and her listening posture
would vary lithe in the hours ahead.
The comet's trail created a great deal of
static, disrupting the frequencies T'Syra had
been monitoring. Before Selik could inform her of the
cause of the disturbance, T'Syra acknowledged with a
gesture. Communication between these two required no
words.
It had been Prefect Savar's thought from the
beginning that consort should accompany
consort on long space voyages, not for human
reasons of shared physical intimacy such was
impossible with any degree of privacy under
conditions of scoutcraft travel and the Vulcan
required it with far less frequency than
humans tilde ut because two minds locked together
since childhood could all the more readily intermesh
with the minds of others within command structure.
Hence Selik and T'Syra were paired, as were the
Bomber helmsman
T'Preth and the robust musicianst sociologist
Stell, who, sight unseen from the living quarters,
offered the contemplative strains of his
ka'athy tilde a for the diversion of his
crewmates.
Irons, T'Lera Fought, that both me
initiator of the consort principle and his offspring should
themselves always journey alone. What had estranged
Savar from her who was her mother was not her concem, and as for
her own
divorcement from Sotir, it was something she no
longer permitted to enter her thoughts. And Sorahl was
too young to concern himself with his duties toward his
betrothed for some time.
Sorahl. His mild expression, his mower knew,
masked a fiercely contained excitement as, his
studies forgotten, he sought the first blue glimmer of
Earth on me forward screen.
His hair wants cutting, T'Lera thought, seeing
it curl over his collar. But were these a commander's
thoughts or a mother's?
"tilde me, Helm?" T'Lera thought, not because
she
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
&nb
sp; needed to know, but to distract herself from her distraction.
"Five minute tilde markeaCommander,"
T'Preth
replied.
"Acknowledged."
Running on impulse engines, their craft would not
reach Earth for hours yet. Officially T'Lera
shouWill have been midway into her requisite
five-hour sleep cycle, but she had never yet
missed this crossing and would not do so now. She could have
left the canter chair at any time since they'd
stopped down from warp speed just outside the system,
could have given the conn to Stell who was rotation crew
for this ten-day stint, or to any crewmember for that
matter. All of their roles were interchangeable; any
of the seven coup run the duty stations in an
emergency, and each had specialised gifts as
well.
T'Syra was a registered healer and
xenobiologist. Both Stell and Sorahl held
engineering degrees and coukl literally
dismantle and rebuild the entire vessel.
T'Preth was linguist, artist, and artisan,
though the Vulcan made no distinction between the latter
categories. Selik was third-ranked
navigator in the entire Offworld Service and a
member of the High Council; should this be the vessel that
made first cordact with humans, he would act as
spokesman. And T'Lera, their commander, who would
give no order she herself would not obey, was to some
degree all of these things.
This too had been part of Savar's thinking from the
first. If scoutcraft crews were to be the first other
worlds saw of the Vulcan, they must also be the best.
"Crossover effected, Commander," T'Preth
an- nounced softly.
"Acknowledged," T'Lera said again, and, though as
commander she need not say it,
added: "My gratitude."
There was no other acknowledgment. A human crew
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
might have cheered. A Vulcan crew went on about
its work.
At last T'Lera rose from her chair and entered
the privacy-screened living quarters. Here in one
of the sleeping niches whether meditating or only
asleep, only those who knew him well could
be certain; the old One seldom closed his eyes for
any reason now lay the ancient Savar, point of
origin of all aboard this vessel, of all who
journeyed from Vulcan to the stars. His eyes,
obsidian and glittering, gazed unblinking into that
same nameless realm he had
bequeathed his daughter.
""My father?" that daughter said now, kneeling beside
his sleeping niche; the musician Stell had set
aside his ka'athyra and gone to take the cone, leaving
the two to their privacy. "We have made the
crossover. I wanted you to know."
The ancient one raised himself slowly to a sitting
position.
"My gratitude, Commander," he said, his voice
rusty with many days" silence, insisting upon the formality
as he had when their roles had been reversed. "It
wlil be good to see Earth once more."
First Mate Sawyer ran the hand-held
chemanalyzer over the suspect portion of the
barrier weir surrounding the westernmost kelp
fields of the Agro 111 station.
"Cables're tangled," she muttered as if
to herself. "And they're frayed here, and here. As if
something heavy got itself caught, then pulled
or slid off. Moy, keep this baby steady, can't
you?"
Young eager Ensign Moy, falling all over
himself on his first real sea voyage, struggled
mightily with the small skiff in what was proving to be
a choppy sea.
"Sorry, sir," he said by reflex; it seemed
he was always apologising for something.
"MeteorCom says we're in for heavy
weather."
His baby face shone with expectation as he tried
to
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
read the analyser Sawyer's shoulder. "Whatcha
got, sir? Anything interesting?"
"Could be, Moy," Sawyer muttered,
preoccupied. "Could be real interesting."
It had been pure fluke that she'd been the first
to notice something. Nyere had ordered the day watch
to cruise the perimeter of Agro 111 before going
inside, and Sawyer just happened to be taking a turn
on the forward deck after hours bending over her
instruments when the damaged cables hove into view.
She'd
persuaded the captain to let her lower the skiff and
have a closer look.
"Those white patches are not paint," she said
emphatically. "Not that I know what they are. Best
we rub off a sample and take it back upstairs
for a full analysis."
"You think it was a satellite like the captain said,
sir?" Moy's words tumbled out in his exciterr
tilde nt. "Or you think there's more to it? He's
been real snappish since he got the word. I hear
it was Priority One. You don't suppose his
"Button it, Moy. Let's get back before
my breakfast comes up. I'm not used to being this
close to the water."
"Aye, sir," Moy said glumly, steering the
skiff back to where Delphinus lay brooding behind
them.
"K is not paint, Captain sub," Melody
reported conclusively, the report printout in her
hand. "It's a rhodinium-silica-based coating
compound."
"So?" Nyere was studiously unimpressed.
"You've heard Yoshi gripe about pleasure craft
Flowing up his acreage. Another slap-happy
Sunday driver, that's all."
"I don't think so. Analyzer says its
closest analogue is the kind of
temperature-resistant sealant they spray on
spacecraft."
Her particular choice of words was intended to catch
Nyere's attention. It do so.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"What do you mean "closest analogue"?"
"According to the analyser, it contains trace elements
not native to this solar system. They can be synthesised
under lab conditions, but his
"Then maybe it's something new the Space
Service has come up with," Nyere said, grasping
at straws. "i wouldn't call your findings
conclusive, Sawyer. Not on this much evidence."
A long moment of silence hung between
them. Nyere's heel dragging had begun to grate
on Sawyer about as much as her impatience did on
him.
"Jason, something fell out of the sky last night and
got snarled up in that cable. It's my guess it's
sitting on the bottom waiting for us right now."
Nyere said nothing. "What I want to know is what
the hell, in light of your orders, you intend
to do about that, sub?"
"That will do, Sawyer!" He glared until she
backed down. "Recommendations?"
"One, we go for a dive just where that cable's in such a
mess and start scooping the bottom for little green
men."
"Negative," Nyere sai
d. "Weather's getting
heavier, and we're losing the light. It can wait
until morning."
"We can work under infrared, Captain," Melody
stated the obvious.
"Not this close to the Mayabi Fault we
don't," Nyere countered. "I'm not going to go glowing
around down comthere in the dark with sand in our faces and end
up falling down a crevasse. Tomorrow, when the wind's
died and the sun's up. Tomorrow and not before."
Melody nodded, not satisfied. His argument
might have made sense, except that he'd taken such
risks before. How long did he think he could keep
stalling?
"What else, Melody?" Jason asked,
reading the expression on her face, not liking it.
"Recommend we go pay our farmer friends a
visit."
Their eyes locked. She was calling his
bluff and they both knew it.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"You've been listening on their comm band?"
"I have."
"And?"
"No outgoing calls all day," Sawyer
reported. "No reports of anything unusual,
no distress calls. Also no chat with the neighbors,
no ringing up Mom on the mainland. Nothing."
"Maybe they're out doing their job. Or were
until the swells started up."
"Except for one thing, Captain." Melody
dropped it like a bombshell. "They've had the
incoming on all day. As if they're just sitting there
listening. Waiting for something to happen."
"You're fishing, Melody," Nyere said, though
he didn't believe it himself. "It's a lax time of
year. Maybe there's a good movie on."
"Jason, for Pete's sake his
"Look, maybe they're making love in the
middle of the day and they need it on for background
musicl" Nyere exploded. "Go find something else
to do besides peeking through keyholes, will you? Very
backslash 4'aa be there at 1400 tomorrow
anyway. It'll keep."
"If you say so, Captain sub," Melody said
watchfully. "So long as you realize it ain't
gonna go away by itself."
The door to the penthouse scanned Jim Kirk and
shushed open, letting him in without a word. That was good.
He'd listened to enough words, spoken enough words in a
single afternoon to last a lifetime.
Damn staff meetings! he thought. Damn the
life of the chairbound paper pusher who brought it on
himself! What was I thinking of? The one thing I always
hated most about a field command was the paperwork afterward.
Locking horns with a Trelane or a Rojan could