KIRK TOOK A deep breath. "I am James T. Kirk, captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise," he said warily. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"I am Kremastor," the voice said. "You must return with me to the nexus!"
"Nexus?"
"The phenomenon that brought you here. You must return with me, now!"
"Can you help us get through it?"
"It is possible we can both reenter safely—if we waste no more time!"
"Our instruments tell us that you have a device on your ship that is capable of generating a form of energy similar to that generated by the gate—the nexus, as you call it. Is that—"
"It is something I must use later! There is another device which will allow you—us—to reenter the nexus unharmed."
"If you have such a device, why haven't you already used it? Why do you need our help?"
"It is too complicated to explain! There is no time! We must act now, while we have the chance!"
"The language you speak—"
"It is not my language!" the voice, verging on panic, broke in. "It was one of many contained in the computer of another ship that came through the nexus earlier. It is the only one that was also among those languages that your own ship was transmitting."
"The life-form readings are definitely not Klingon, Captain," Spock said quietly.
"In that case, Kirk," Ansfield snapped, "I respectfully suggest we do as the gentleman asks. I don't see that we have a lot to lose."
Kirk hesitated a moment, glancing at Spock and then at the image of the tiny ship on the viewscreen, then nodded abruptly.
"Agreed, Commander. Kremastor, how do we proceed?"
"I will bring my ship alongside yours. Together we will approach the nexus."
"And then?"
"When we are close enough, I will activate the device that will allow us to reenter the nexus. Once we have reentered safely, you may do as you wish."
"And if you and your device separate from us, will we be thrown back out here? I assume you've seen—"
"There is no time for this! The dead space around your ship has maintained itself longer than any I have ever seen, but it is still shrinking at an increasing rate!"
"What is—" Kirk shook his head. "Bring your ship alongside, but keep talking! What is this 'dead space'?"
Immediately, the tiny ship began to draw closer. "I do not know what the dead space is," Kremastor said, sounding almost plaintive now. "I only know that it surrounds each vessel as it emerges from the nexus, and that it normally blocks my own ship's instruments. But the dead space that surrounds your ship for some reason behaves differently. It helps the device that will allow us to reenter the nexus."
"And what device is that?"
"It is a device that nullifies the Trap—the thing that brought you—that brought us both here."
"And all these other ships?"
"Those, too, but it is too late to help any of them."
"How is it that you alone of all these hundreds survived?"
"Because I am alone! And because I have not been allowed to die!" Kremastor almost shouted, and then, as if struggling to regain control: "We must proceed to the nexus. There is no time—"
"Kirk," Ansfield broke in. "I think Spock's little friend is coming back."
"I was beginning to feel it myself," Kirk said with a grimace. "I was hoping it was my imagination. Kremastor, do you—"
But the connection had been broken.
"Lieutenant Uhura, what happened?"
"I don't know, sir. The signal was simply cut off."
"Get it back! Kremastor, whoever or whatever it is, may be our only chance to get out of here!"
"Trying, sir, but—"
"We're being scanned again, Captain," Spock broke in. "Additionally, there is evidence of some form of transporter activity originating in Kremastor's ship. It appears to be—"
Suddenly, Spock's voice was drowned out by a deafening mixture of hissing and crackling. For an instant, everyone looked around urgently, trying to find the source of the sound, wondering which piece of equipment had suddenly started to fry itself.
But then they realized it was not coming from any piece of equipment.
It was coming from the air all around them.
A moment later, a tingling numbness filled everyone's body, as if an electrical charge were being induced into every inch of flesh, inside and out.
Then it was gone, and in the instant the feeling vanished, the bridge was filled—literally filled—with a fog of pulsing light.
Squinting against the blinding brilliance, everyone on the Enterprise bridge looked dartingly for the source, but, as with the noise that still crackled around them, there was no single source. The light, too, was coming from everywhere, from the very air around them.
Slowly, the light began to coalesce, swirling like fog being drawn into a bottle, until it was a single column, less brilliant now, running from deck to ceiling directly in front of Kirk's command chair. At the same time, the crackling faded to a tolerable level.
But as the sound faded, the column of light began to sculpt itself into a surrealistic version of a humanoid body, swirled for a moment, then moved toward Kirk, extending an arm of light as it moved.
In the split second that the pulsing light reached out toward Kirk, Commander Ansfield made her decision. Three thoughts flashed through her mind virtually simultaneously, spurring her into immediate action.
Kremastor had spoken in a Klingon dialect.
Typically impatient, she herself had urged Kirk to go along with Kremastor's wishes.
And, finally and most importantly, Kirk was needed on the Enterprise. She was not.
Indeed, at times, Kirk seemed to virtually be the Enterprise. Around him, the crew functioned as smoothly as she had ever seen a starship crew function. Even McCoy, with his continual grousing, and Spock, with his encyclopedic knowledge and unsurpassed logic, respected Kirk and his odd mixture of intuition and courage. And it was not the empty, grudging respect that many captains received simply because they were captains. She had heard stories, often envious, of the remarkable rapport between captain and crew, but now, after her few days on the Enterprise, they were no longer stories. As far as she was concerned, they were fact.
Without hesitation, she darted down the steps from the science station.
Apparently aware of her sudden motion, the extended arm of light shifted toward her.
She collided with it, finding it not a solid object but a kind of resistance, like a force field.
"Ansfield!" Kirk yelled, reaching toward her.
Abruptly, a tingling numbness gripped her entire body, and an instant later the bridge vanished behind a fog of light.
Then the light intensified, forcing her to clamp her eyes tightly shut. The deck vanished from beneath her feet.
The column of light that had absorbed Commander Ansfield amid an even louder, harsher outburst of crackling flared out until all definition was lost, and then, for a moment, the entire bridge was once again filled with blinding light.
And then nothing.
Except for some faint static on the radio, the light and sound were gone, Commander Ansfield with them.
"Captain, the screen!"
It was Sulu's voice, and for the first time since the light had appeared on the bridge, everyone looked toward the main viewscreen, where the alien ship now stood out like a nova among the other ships. During the moments of chaos on the bridge, it had pulled back, almost to the limit of the still-shrinking sensor range, but it had also had to lower its deflectors to allow its transporter to operate.
"Don't lose it, Mr. Sulu," Kirk snapped, hoping against hope that the alien's transporter operation had been less deadly than the noise and the pyrotechnics accompanying it had indicated.
But even before the words were out, the glow of the alien ship vanished from the screen.
An instant later, the sensors lost it as well.