get you killed, but it was the reports after the fact that
busted your
Jim Kirk sighed. Now Spock had his
Enterprise and all he had left was the paperwork.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
He'd started fiddling with the closures on his
uniform tunic while he was still in the
turbolift.now he threw its stiff red newness
(almost the color of drying humanoid blood, he
thought, as if noticing it for the first time. Whose
brilliant idea was that?) over a chair,
admiral's bars clanking disconsolately. He
dumped his carrycase on top of it pompous,
silly thing with his name and rank holoscribed in one
corner, hermetically sealed against all environmental
conditions, equipped with a security lock that would
implode and destroy the contents if it was tampered
with.
Your tax dollars at work, Kirk thought. All
it contained at the moment was a couple of
medium-security tapes supplementary to this
afternoon's meetings, which he would return unread in the
morning, and The Book.
The book. He'd made a great to-do about having
it made up in bound form, though it had cost him a
bundle and sent the Troyian bookseller into a
spasm over the inconvenience. "Surely the
admiral has a speed-read degree!" the
Troyian had clucked, fluttering his aquamarine
fingers disconsolately over the order form for such an
anachronism as a book with paper pages. "Why,
a tome of this size can be scanned in an evening with
comm-enhance. We even carry a "read while you
sleep" version. Such a waste of valuable time
turning pages, reading words instead of scanning
paragraphs . . ."
"One of the reasons God gave man eyes and
fingers, Purdi," Jim Kirk had said softly, but
as if to suggest that the subject was closed.
Troyians talked too much.
"Coffee-table book!" Purdi sniffed. "At
least that's what they used to call them. That's why you
want the antique version part of your
collection!"
Kirk had left him with his misconception.
"Over a Billion Copies in Scan!"
raved holo-ads and vidvertising every time Kirk
switched on Prolificom for a weather report.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Not only was everyone buying Strangers, everyone
actually seemed to be reading it. Kirk caught
Heihachiro Nogura scanning it on his office
screen the morning after three civilian friends had
tried to press their copies on him at a party.
Even his students, whose tastes usually ran
to Astromance and Warmongor tilde a, were
debating its merits in the corridors between
classes. When they asked the admiral his views
on its merit, Kirk waived comment on the basis that
he was still weighing it in the context of his ahem
personal experience in diplomatic matters.
The final straw was when he thought he'd managed
to escape it for a day by attending to some business up at
TerraMain Spacedock, about as far offplanet as
one could go without leaving orbit. He'd stopped by the
commissary for a cup of coffee and the latest gossip
when he caught sight of Nyota Uhura and
"Admiral, you remember Cleante
alFaisal."
Silly question. Remember her? He'd once been
madly in love with her, for nearly five minutes.
Enterpr tilde se had been on a rescue
mission,
retrieving the two survivors, human and
Vulcan, of a bit of Romulan nastiness at the
edge of the quadrant. There'd been a moment's peace
and respite beside a lotus pool, and this sad,
beautiful creature with Byzantine eyes . . .
"Hello, Jim."
"Cleanse."
He kissed her hand now as he had then.
Uhura's eyes danced as she watched the two of
them.
"Join us," she invited Jim Kirk, and he
did.
"What brings you to these parts?" he asked Cleante
pleasantly.
"Coincidence," she replied. Her voice was as
Iyrical as he'd remembered. "T'Shael had
an appointment with Dr. M'Benga in Old
Frisco and I tagged along to do some window-shopping.
I ran into Nyota and she invited me up for lunch.
I'd never been to Spacedock before."
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"I see." Kirk nodded. T'Shaelwas the
Vulcan survivor, genetically prone to some
blood disorder that required periodic monitoring;
Vulcan healers were hard to come by on Earth, and
M'Benga was still the best of the humans. "Well,
don't let me interrupt your conversation his
"Cleanse was just telling me the most
fascinating thing," Uhura said brightly. "She's
discovered a longlost relative."
"Really? Something to do with your archaeology work?"
Cleante shook her head, her masses of dark
hair an aura about her face.
"Surprisingly enough," she said, "he turned up
as a rather mysterious character in a history book. Have you
read Strangers from the Sky yet?"
Inwardly Kirk groaned, defeated. "No, not
yet."
"Well, I'm sure you're familiar with the
premise. Here you have the entire
military-intelligence community of Earth with its
knickers in a knot trying to figure out what to do with
two misplaced Vulcans, when this tilde
haracter by the name of Mahmoud Gamal al-Parneb
Nezaj, if you can believe all that . . ."
That very afternoon, Jim Kirk beamed down from
TerraMain and stopped by Purdi's Book
Emporium, waving a white flag.
He'd had his copy of Strangers sent to the
Admiralty on purpose, to pique the curiosity
of the younger generation onstaff, most of whom wouldn't know
what a book was if they fell over it. He'd sat
at his desk holding the thing, still in the plain brown
wrapper Purdi had so discreetly provided,
delighting in the feel of it, the heft of it in his
hands. There was something vaguely obscene about owning a
copy of War and Peace or Bleak House complete
and entire on a little plastic disk that could be read
to you by a computer.
Aides and junior officers passed in and out of his
54
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
office all day, eyeing this audacious
anachronism sitting plunk in the middle of Jim
Kirk's desk, utterly mystified. Kirk did
not bother to enlighten them, locked the book in a
drawer while he locked himself into an endlessness of
staff meetings, then smuggled it out of the Admiralty
as if it might have been Klingon aphrodisiacs,
instead of what it was.
Alone at last in the penthouse, he still didn't
take it out of the carrycase. The longer he waited,
the greater the pleasure when at last he took it out,
settled himself by the fire with his feet up, and began
turning pages, losing himself in ano
ther time, another
place. He kept himself in suspense, poured himself
a drink, and woke his computer.
"Computer?"
"Yes, Jim?" it answered sleepily; it had
had the apartment to itself all day.
Kirk stopped himself from snapping at it for
familiarity; he had requested a
personality-specific model for home use.
"Read me tomorrow's sked, please. One item at
a time."
"Of course, Admiral," it said more
formally. "Beginning 0800: Quadrant Three
commandants' tie-in briefing."
More talk, Kirk thought, complicated by time lags
across an entire quadrant.
"Confirmed. Next?"
"Approximately 0930: workout with kendo
instructor.
Kirk groaned; his arm was still sore from last
week's session.
"Is that a confirm, Admiral?"
"What? Yes, continue."
"Ten hundred to 1200: Visiting Firemen."
"Say again?"
"Only notation you gave me, Admiral," the
computer responded primly. "I took the liberty
of tracing the 55
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
etymology through Linguistics and can report that the
term originated on Earth in the then-United
States of America circa his
"Never mind!" Kirk snapped. Had Spock
been tinkering with this thing behind his back? Some sort of
Vulcan practical joke?
Of course, Vulcans did not engage in the
employment of jokes, practical or
otherwise, Kirk reminded himself. He could almost
hear Spock saying it. There didn't seem to be a
profound statement on any subject that Spock
hadn't already uttered. Or was it just his manner that lent
whatever he said an aura of profundity?
"Jim?" the computer intruded gently into his
woolgathering. "Was it something I said?"
"What? Yes no! I remember now. Visiting
firemen. Means the command staff from Starbase 16
is in town and I have to give them the Cooks' tour."
"Cooks' tour? Shall I check Linguistics for that
also?"
"On your own time!" Kirk said testily. It
Has ragging him, Spock's influence or no.
"Continue schedule."
"Very well; 1200 to 1400: lunch with
Admiral Nogura, his office."
Ulcer territory, Kirk thought. Heihachiro
only schedules lunch with me when he wants something
done yesterday.
"Next?"
"Fourteen hundred to 1600: tactics seminar,
Blue and Gold groups."
Boredom, Kirk thought. How to keep myself
awake so I don't put the cadets
to sleep.
"Confirm."
"Sixteen hundred: Kobayashi Maru, Green
group his
was and debriefing at 1700? Assuming they
haven't incinerated themselves?"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"Would you care to do this for me?" the computer demanded,
touchy about interruptions.
"No, continue." Kirk knocked back half his
drink without tasting it, rubbed his eyes. "Sorry if
I disrupted your train of thought."
"Not possible," the computer responded, literal-
minded. "Seventeen hundred: Kobayashi Maru
debriefing, Green group. 1800: Cocktail
reception for his
"Stop!" Kirk had clearly had enough. There was
a cumulative unifommity to his days that was
terrifying in its implications. He turned his thoughts
toward the one thing he really cared about. "Computer,
present position and status of Enterprise?"
"One moment." Pretty kaleidoscopic
patterns played across the small screen. Kirk
swirled the ice cubes in the bottom of his
glass, waited. The rest of him might be parked behind
a desk, but his heart was always with his ship. "Ready."
"Go ahead."
"Position and status USS Enterprise,
NCC-1701: Stardate 8083.6. Crew
complement comprising engineering officer and thirty-seven
trainees: bridge crew comprising seven cadets,
Captain Spock in command. Presently engaged in
training patrol two parsecs off Llingri Star
Cluster, to continue approximately three solar
days.
Employing Regulation 14-B standard
maneuvers with accepted Vulcan variant. As of
last report, all is well."
"I see," Kirk mused. Accepted Vulcan
variant, indeed. That meant Spock was working their little
human tails off under Vulcan regimen. Good for
him! "Estimated return date?"
"Captain Spock had logged return date of
8097.4. Precisely."
Precisely. He would do it, too. Bring her
into spacedock trim and unscathed and down to the minute
by his calculations ion storms,
intervening interplane
57
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
tary conflicts, and Scotty's lamentations about his
engines notwithstanding. Good old Spock.
Enterprise couldn't be in better hands.
Dammit.
Kirk ran himself through the sonic shower in record
time, and slipped into an old sweat-quit. He
padded into the kitchen and punched up a salad
McCoy had been on him about his weight again then
settled back by the fire, and lovingly turned the
crisp new pages of his anachronistic book.
THREE
In the dying light of a stormy afternoon, Yoshi sat
screen, neither hearing nor seeing it.
They had always called this the "other room."
There was the sleeping room and there was this room
tilde iving room, kitchen, den, workroom,
office, storage area, library, gym,
entertainment canter. The comm screen dominating one
wall was combination computer, holovision,
ship-to-shore, mail service their only
contact, except for Delphinus's monthly
supply runs, with the rest of the world.
What Yoshi really wanted to do was to cut himself
themselves off entirely from that world, pretend nothing had
happened, retreat, hide out, wish it all away.
But he kept the screen on, kept staring at its
melange of images though most of them made no
sense in his
present state of high agitation. He seemed
to think he ought to be watching for something specific, but
whets er or not he would recognise it when he saw
it . . .
Did he actually expect MediaComm to
announce that an alien spacecraft was being
hunted in the South Pacific?
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
He'd thought of tapping into the Aeroationav band.
He was a good enough hacker to make it work, but figured
their equipment was
sophisticated enough to detect a tap and
abandoned the idea. Instead he sat flipping from
one news channel to another, mesmerised.
"dis . . following his attempted assassination
by pseudo-religious factions calling themselves the
Alliance for the Twelfth of November . . ."
Flip.
"dis . . threatening their mutual nonaggression
pact with a renewal of hostilities unless . . ."
Flip.
"dis . . when a riot, believed to have been
instigated by spectators for the Southern Hemisphere
team, resulted in twenty-three deaths . . ."
Good old Earth, Yoshi thought. Half a
century since the last world war and we still can't keep
from cutting each other up for anything from the rights of the
persecuted to a disputed soccer score. Any aliens
in their right minds would have taken a quick look around and
kept right on going. Those poor souls we fished out
of the water this morning must have been lost but good.
Flip.
"dis . . trading was active, the price of mixed
SeaSources shares plummeting in the wake of
reports that fungus infestations first noted in the
mid-Pacific region continue to spread
unchecked . . ."
Uh-oh, Yoshi thought, coming back from
wherever he'd been with a bump. This one
piece of local news was the only thing that could
make him sit up and pay attention.
Word of a new and particularly resistant strain of
kelpwilt had been rampant up north for
months. None of the usual treatments worked, and the
disease had been spreading inexorably in Agro
IlI's direction. Stations to their north and east had
already reported losses of up to a quarter of their
acreage.
Yoshi shook his head, incredulous. Until this
mom
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
ing his most pressing task had been scooting up
and down the access lanes in the hydrofoil examining
random samples of the weed for
possible infestation. Now he could sit content in the
middle of his acreage and happily let it rot out
from under them, as long as no one came near him and
demanded he hand over the
aliens.
He asked himself the same question Tatya had asked
herself. What was he afraid of?
Nothing terrible would happen to him and Tatya. At
most they might need some outside "help" to forget
what they'd discovered. Their ilves would resume their
normal course, and it would be as if they had never
discovered the aliens, or as if there had been no
aliens at all. Wasn't that what he
wanted?
But if he let them do what they wanted, what would
Aeroationav and the intelligence networks and the
PentaKrem and the powers-that-were do to the ailens? And
why did he care?