Star Trek 04 Read Free

concealed by a snow mask out of which two eyes stared intently. After a moment the figure beckoned, unmistakably.
    Spock turned to McCoy, to find that he had fallen. He shook the medical officer, but there was no response. Spock put his ear to McCoy's chest; yes, heart still beating, but feebly.
    A shadow fell across them both. The figure was standing over them; and again it gestured, Follow me.
    "My companion is ill."
    Follow me.
    Logic dictated no better course. Slinging McCoy over his shoulder, Spock stood. The weight was not intolerable, though it threw him out of balance. The figure moved off among the rocks. Spock followed.
    The way eventually took them underground, as Spock had already deduced that it would; where else, after all, could there be shelter in this wilderness? There were two rooms—caves, really—and one was a sleeping room, fairly small, windowless of necessity, furnished most simply. Near the door was a rude bed on which Spock placed McCoy.
    "Blankets," Spock said.
    The figure pointed, then helped him cover the sick man. Spock looked through McCoy's medical pouch, found his tricorder, and began checking. The figure sat at the foot of the bed, watching Spock, still silent, utterly enigmatic.
    "He cannot stand your weather. Unfortunately, he is the physician, not I. I'll not risk giving him medication at this point. If he is kept quiet and warm, he may recover naturally." He scrutinized the mysterious watcher. "It is quite agreeably warm in here. Have you a reason for continuing to wear that mask? Is there a taboo that prohibits my seeing your face?"
    From behind the mask there came a musical feminine laugh, and then a feminine voice. "I had forgotten I still had these things on."
    She took off the mask and parka, but her laughter died as she inspected Spock more closely. "Who are you?"
    "I am called Spock."
    "Even your name is strange. Forgive me—you are so unlike anyone I have ever seen."
    "That is not surprising. Please do not be alarmed."
    "Why are you here?" the woman asked hesitantly. "Are you prisoners too?"
    "Prisoners?"
    "This is one of the places—or rather, times—Zor Khan sends people when he wishes them to disappear. Didn't you come back through the time-portal?"
    "Yes, but not as prisoners. We were sent here by mistake; or such is my hypothesis."
    She considered this. "The Atavachron is far away," she said at last, "but I think you come from somewhere farther than that."
    'That is true," Spock said. He looked at her more closely. This face out of the past, eager yet reposeful, without trace of artifice, was—could it be what Earthmen called touching? "Yes—I am not from the world you know at all. My home is a planet many light-years away."
    "How wonderful! I've always loved the books about such possibilities." Her expression, though, darkened suddenly. "But they're only stories. This isn't real. I'm imagining all this. I'm going mad. I always thought I would."
    As she shrank from him, Spock reached out and took her hand. "I am firmly convinced that I do in fact exist. I am substantial. You are not imagining this."
    "I've been alone here for so long, longer than I want to remember," she said, with a weak smile. She was beginning to relax again. "When I saw you out there, I couldn't believe it."
    Spock was beginning to feel something very like compassion for her, which was so unusual that it confused him—which was more unusual still. He turned back to McCoy and checked the unconscious man with the tricorder; this added alarm to the complex.
    "I was wrong not to give him the coradrenaline," he said, taking the hypo out of the medical pouch and using it.
    "What's happening? Is he dying? I have a few medicines . . ."
    "Contra-indicated. Your physiology may be radically different. But I may have given him too much. Well, it's done now."
    The woman watched him. "You seem so very calm," she said, "but I sense that he is someone close to you."
    "We have gotten used to each other over the