Star Trek: The Original Series: Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages Read Free Page B

etc., etc., etc. However, even Spock has admitted to me privately that he looks forward to solving this problem and moving on to something a little more challenging. His captain agrees with him. His captain is bored stiff. My mother didn’t raise me to compile weather reports, either.
    “However, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good…or however that goes. At least things have been quiet around here.
    “Now why is it that, when I say that, my hands begin to sweat?…”

    “Jim?”
    “Now now, Bones.”
    “Medical matter, Captain.”
    James T. Kirk looked up from the 4D chesscubic at his chief surgeon. “What is it?”
    “If you make that move,” said Dr. McCoy, “you’ll live to regret it.”
    “Doctor,” said the calm voice from across the chesscubic, “kibitzing is as annoying to the victims in chess as it is in medicine…which is doubtless why you practice it so assiduously.”
    “Oh, stick it in your ear, Spock,” said McCoy, peering over Jim’s shoulder to get a better view of the cubic. “No, I take that back: in your case it would only make matters worse.”
    “Doctor—”
    “No, Spock, it’s all right,” Jim said. “This’ll be a lesson to me, Bones. Look at this mess.”
    Bones looked, and Jim took the opportunity to stretch and gaze around the great recreation deck of the Enterprise . The place was lively as usual with crewpeople eating and drinking and talking and playing games and socializing and generally goofing off. There was a merrily homicidal game of water polo taking place in the main pool: amphibians against drylanders, Jim judged, as he saw Amekentra from dietary break surface in a glittering, green-scaled arc, tackle poor Ensign London amidships, and drag Robbie under with her in a flash and splash of water. Closer to Jim, in the middle of the room, a quieter but equally deadly game of contract bridge was going on: a Terran-looking male and a short, round Tellarite lady sat frowning at their cards, while the broad-shouldered Elaasian member of the foursome peered at his hand, and his partner, a gossamer-haired Andorian, watched him with cool interest and waited for him to bid. Nearest to Jim, some forty or fifty yards away, a Sulamid crewman leaned against the baby grand, with a drink held coiled in one violet tentacle, and most of his other tendrils and tentacles draped gracefully over the Steinway. Various of those tentacles wreathed gently, keeping time, and the Sulamid’s eight stalked eyes gazed off into various distances, as the pianist—someone in Fleet nursing whites—wove her way through the sweetly melancholy complexities of a Chopin nocturne. That was appropriate enough, for it was “evening” for Jim, and for about a fourth of the Enterprise ’s crew; delta shift was about to go on duty, alpha shift’s day was drawing to a quiet close, and all was right with the world.
    Except here, Jim thought, glancing at the chesscubic again, and then, with wry resignation, back up at Spock. The Vulcan sat in his characteristic chess-pose, leaning on his elbows, hands folded, the first two fingers steepled—gazing back at Jim with an expression of carefully veiled compassion, and with what Jim’s practiced eye identified as the slightest trace of mischievous enjoyment.
    Jim became aware of another presence at his side, to the left. He looked up and found Harb Tanzer, the chief of recreation, standing there—a short, stocky, silver-haired man with eyes that usually crinkled at the corners with laughter…as, at the sight of the chesscubic, they were beginning to do now. Jim was not amused. “Mister,” he said to Harb, “you are in deep trouble.”
    “Why, Captain? Something wrong with the cube?”
    With some difficulty Jim restrained himself from groaning out loud, for the whole thing was his own fault. He had mentioned to Harb some time back that 3D chess, much as he loved it, had been getting a little boring. Harb had gone quietly away to talk to Moira, the