THIS TIME the pain was, if anything, more intense, but it was also much more brief. To Kirk, it felt like little more than a second before it vanished.
Almost simultaneously, the bridge reappeared around him. Once more, the Enterprise was hurtling out of the gate, directly toward the cluster of ships it had so narrowly avoided the first time.
But this time, perhaps because they had suffered through the experience before, perhaps because of the briefer duration, recovery was quicker.
Sulu, after only a single shuddering gasp, reversed impulse power and brought the Enterprise to a halt well before the ships ahead of them presented any danger.
Three more times, they reentered the gate. Once, they maneuvered around it and approached from the opposite direction. The final time, they entered it under full computer control at near warp speed.
The results were virtually identical each time: a moment of nothingness followed by a moment of intense pain followed by forced ejection into the lightless heart of the same intergalactic graveyard.
Following the fourth attempt, Spock leaned more closely over his instruments.
"Captain," he said as the bridge returned to normal around him. "During our last approach, the sensors detected a phenomenon I had not noted during our lower-velocity approaches. The Enterprise appears to be enclosed in—in something."
"'Something,' Mr. Spock?" Kirk asked, frowning. "That's a bit imprecise. What is it, a force field of some kind?"
"Negative, Captain. This is something I have never encountered before. It appears to be totally immaterial, totally without energy, and yet it reflects a minuscule percentage of the sensor beams' energy. The phenomenon was much more pronounced during our last, more rapid approach to the gate, but it is still detectable." He looked up at Kirk. "It surrounds us at a distance of approximately eight hundred seventy-three point one kilometers—the same distance at which the sensors apparently cease to function."
"Spock, could this 'something' be what's limiting the range of our sensors?"
"It would appear likely, Captain."
"But you say the sensors don't tell us anything about whatever it is that surrounds us?"
"No, sir. They indicate its existence and its distance, but that is all."
"And it moves with us? Keeps us as its center?"
"As far as I have been able to determine, Captain."
Kirk grimaced, looking again at the screen and the ghostly hulks that floated there. "Whatever it is, it has to have a source. One of these ships? One that isn't as dead as the others? One that doesn't want us to find it?"
"That is, of course, a possibility, Captain," Spock said as Lieutenant Woida, still at the navigator's station, unsuccessfully tried to suppress a shiver.
"A possibility that we can at least check out," Kirk said briskly. "Mr. Sulu, take us on a tour, impulse power. Take us within sensor range—which is apparently now approximately eight hundred seventy kilometers—of every ship out there, one at a time if necessary. And keep the deflectors up."
Sulu acknowledged, and a moment later the Enterprise surged ahead, the first cluster of ships beginning instantly to grow larger.
"Mr. Spock, the instant you detect any life-form or any functioning power source—"
"Of course, Captain."
One hour and one hundred thirty-five lifeless hulks later, Spock announced that the sphere surrounding the Enterprise had begun to shrink.
"You're positive?" Ansfield asked, still hovering near Spock, reading most of the displays over his shoulder.
"Quite positive now, Commander. Its radius is approximately eight hundred seventy-two point two kilometers, a decrease of—"
"Then we had better get a move on before we lose the use of the sensors entirely," Kirk said. "Mr. Sulu, all deliberate speed."
"Aye-aye, sir."
Another hour, and another two hundred forty-one ships later, Spock looked up from his readouts. "Functioning antimatter power source and a form of deflector screen and primitive sensor probe, Captain," he announced. "And a life-form reading."
Kirk, his attention wandering after nearly four hundred negative announcements from his first officer, was instantly alert, his eyes snapping to the viewscreen. "Which ship?"
"The ship at the lower right of the screen is the probable source, Captain."
The image Spock indicated was even fuzzier than the others, literally a three-hundred-meter-diameter blur. No features other than its irregular spherical shape were distinguishable.
"Keep moving, Mr. Sulu," Kirk snapped. "Continue the search pattern for the moment, but don't lose sight of that ship. Mr. Spock, have we found the source of whatever's affecting the sensors?"
"Unknown, Captain. However, all sensor readings pertaining to the alien ship appear decidedly erratic. In addition, the radius of the sphere surrounding the Enterprise decreased rapidly during the eleven point two seconds the ship in question was within sensor range. And the image on the viewscreen is not of the ship itself but of its deflector screens. Those screens are apparently designed not only to protect the ship but to modify its radiation pattern in such a way that its true surface temperature is not readily apparent through observations made in the standard electromagnetic spectrum."
"In other words, Mr. Spock, it's lying in the weeds."
"If I correctly perceive the meaning of that peculiar figure of speech, Captain—"
"It's been trying to hide from us. Or from someone."
"Almost certainly, Captain."
"And based on the way the field that's affecting our sensors suddenly shrank the moment that ship came within range, it's obvious there's a relationship of some kind between the ship and the field, whether or not the ship is actually the source."
"That would also seem likely, Captain."
"And the life-form readings?"
"One life-form aboard, Captain, but the readings regarding its nature are ambiguous. It is carbon-based, but there are contradictory indications regarding its physical form. Certain metabolic peculiarities point toward humanoid, but others are incompatible with that form."
"Drive?"
"Functional impulse power, Captain. Indications of nonfunctional warp drive."
"Weapons?"
"Nothing that could be identified as such by our sensors, Captain." Spock studied his console closely. "However, the sensors modified by the Aragos indicated a device capable of omnidirectional projection of massive amounts of energy that appear to be similar to that generated by the gates themselves."
A sudden hope stabbed through Kirk. Could this be someone who knew the secrets of the gates? One of the race that constructed them, even? But if so, what was it doing here? And could it—or would it—help them?
Or was it here only to destroy them, to add them to the already well-populated cosmic graveyard?
The image of a spider hovering hungrily in its web forced itself into Kirk's mind. There were dozens of shipboard theories regarding the gates, but the one that had generated the most discussion and spawned the most variations was that the entire gate system was a massive trap. The entities themselves, in that theory, were not the creators of the gate system but a form of poison that adhered to anyone passing through.
But perhaps the entities were more than a simple poison. Perhaps they were some form of artificial predator, programmed to capture those beings they failed to kill, programmed to capture them and bring them back into the limbo between the gates, to where those survivors could be hooked and dragged, like struggling fish, to where, on the end of a billion-parsec fishing line, the fisherman—the exterminator?—lay waiting.
Remembering the agony they had all experienced each time they had been spit out here, he realized uneasily that the hook analogy was certainly apt enough. And of the hundreds—thousands?—of ships that had been deposited in this intergalactic graveyard over the millennia, this one they had just discovered was the only one that showed any signs of life.
"What about that alien ship itself, Spock? What does it look like behind the camouflage its screens are putting out?"
"Like this, Captain," Spock said, tapping a code into the science station controls and indicating one of the auxiliary screens.
Kirk frowned. Small and utilitarian, vaguely resembling two shuttlecraft welded together side by side, the ship Spock had put on the auxiliary screen looked more like a personal craft than anything military. There were no markings of any kind visible. Nor were there any immediately obvious openings. The only breaks in the regularity of the surface were an antennalike device that could have been a sensor array and, next to it, a solid oval-shaped ring mounted on four stubby legs.
"Lieutenant Uhura?" he said, still watching the tiny ship, puzzled. "Any activity on any frequency?"
"None, sir."
"And the range of our sensors, Mr. Spock?"
"Decreasing at approximately ninety-two point three kilometers per hour, Captain."
"How much time do we have?"
"At the current rate, approximately three hours and seventeen minutes, Captain."
Frowning, Kirk glanced around the bridge. "I'm open for comments. Anybody?"
"Now that we've found something alive," Ansfield said quickly, "I recommend we take a shot at communicating. Before whatever it is out there decides to take a more lethal kind of shot at us. And before the sensors quit working altogether."
"Opinion, Mr. Spock?"
"It is impossible to calculate the odds for or against the advisability of such a move, Captain. It is, therefore, a decision that must be made by human intuition rather than by logic."
"But you see no logical reason not to follow Commander Ansfield's suggestion?"
"On the contrary, Captain, there are a number of logical reasons to attempt to avoid all contact with the alien ship. However, there are equally as many logical reasons to do precisely as she suggests. The validity of those mutually contradictory reasons depends entirely on the intentions of the alien and the power of its ship, and we currently have no reliable information regarding either. It is, therefore, impossible to determine an optimum course of action by the use of logic alone."
"In other words," Ansfield interjected impatiently, "flip a coin. I can supply one if it will help get this show on the road."
Spock arched one eyebrow a fraction as he looked toward Ansfield. "Is it your belief, then, Commander, that the results of decisions made on the basis of intuition are no better than the results of those made by pure chance? I have often been given to understand, particularly by the captain and Dr. McCoy, that human intuition—"
"Mr. Sulu," Kirk interrupted, speaking rapidly and not waiting for individual acknowledgments, "return us to within sensor range. Lieutenant Uhura, transmit our peaceful intentions, all frequencies, all languages. Mr. Spock, monitor that ship with everything that's working, no matter how erratic the readings. Pay particular attention to the device that's putting out energy similar to that emitted by the gate."
Ansfield nodded her approval as she renewed her scrutiny of Spock's readouts.
But there was no response from the tiny ship, other than a marked increase in the metabolic rate of the seemingly paradoxical life-form aboard it.
And another quantum decrease in the range of the sensors, down to less than seven hundred kilometers in less than a second.
Kirk's frown deepened at Spock's announcement of the newly shortened sensor range, and he turned to Uhura. "Any indication that our transmissions are being received, Lieutenant?"
"Indications, yes, Captain. There is increased absorption at certain standard frequencies, but it is impossible to be certain without—"
Suddenly, an urgent voice erupted from the speakers.
"I must speak with the leader of this ship!" the computer translated immediately.
It was not the translation, however, that sent a shock through everyone on the bridge and sent Spock's fingers darting across the science station controls to confirm the life-form readings he had scanned only minutes before.
It was the voice itself, audible beneath the computer's translation. Despite a singsong intonation and a heavy but identifiable accent, it spoke in what they all recognized as a Klingon dialect.