"Suggestions." Kirk snapped, turning from the briefing room visual display to look at his Section Heads. Iyen touched a key, and the screen of numbers behind the captain changed to a visual of the storm wrapped world below them.
"Don't look at me," McCoy said, "I'm a doctor, not a weatherman."
"As a doctor, what's your professional opinion of the situation?"
"The conditions down there are extreme," McCoy said, "but survivable,
once the shelters are factored in. All landing party members were wearing standard cold weather gear, including cold suits with waste reclamation units, and while the shelters don't raise temperatures to comfortable levels, combined with their clothing and with the added fact that it keeps them out of the wind, they should do fine. There's food for a long stay - not tasty food, mind you. As long as they sit tight and don't do anything too energetic, there's nothing to worry about."
"And why would they be doing anything energetic, Doctor?" Scotty asked.
"With Spock in charge, they could run out into the snow to escape the relentless onslaught of pure logic!" McCoy retorted. "Just a qualification. Moving around, exposed to the weather, they'd chill faster and burn more calories - calories they need to stay warm. Most of the landing party are human, and they could get frostbite or a whole range of interesting problems if they spend too much time exposed."
"We'll presume they have the sense to stay put." Kirk said. "How long before their supplies become a problem?"
The quartermaster leaned forward. "They'll be peckish in two months,
hungry in three. They could do four without too much trouble. The heating units in the shelters would keep each shelter heated for four months continuous use without burning out, assuming minimal entry and exit to keep the heat inside."
"The snow melts to potable water." McCoy added.
"Glad it's good for something," Kirk muttered and turned to Iyen.
"What avenues are you exploring to get them out of there?"
"Sir, while engineering attempts to develop a way to defeat the interference, we are attempting to end it. It may be possible to alter the weather patterns sufficiently to bring the storm to an end."
"It doesn't look like ending at all at the moment." McCoy was looking at the display of the planet. "It's covered more than half the planet."
"If we could even induce it to move enough for the landing party location to be out from under it..."
"Any progress?"
"Ideas only, at this stage, sir."
"Alright, all of you, good work, let's get this solved. We're far too close to the Neutral Zone as it is. I'd rather not hang around here while it snows for forty days and forty nights."
Murmurs of agreement, the meeting ended, the others filed out. Only McCoy lingered, as Kirk glared at the display of the planet.
"Spock shouldn't have any unusual trouble with the temperature, if that's what eating you." he told Kirk.
"I suppose that was part of it," Kirk admitted with a sigh. "Vulcans are adapted to searing heat, not searing cold..."
"He's not a pure Vulcan, remember, although his physiology is pretty damn close. Actually, although he'll find the cold more uncomfortable than the others, his higher body temperature combined with the cold suit will serve him well down there. Even a full Vulcan would be just fine. They're actually less prone to frostbite than humans are. They might be evolved for heat, but they're all around tough as nails."
McCoy studied his friend for a moment. "Jim ... they'll be fine.
Spock will take care of them."
"Spock's a damn good officer, but relations with the crew are not his strong point." Turning back to the display, Kirk shook his head.
"That's usually no liability, but if they're stuck down there any length of time, in confined quarters... They'll have trouble dealing with it. Two of them are only ensigns. How will Spock handle that?"
"In his own way." McCoy said. "With logic. He might be second cousin to an adding machine, but the crew down there know and trust him. You have to trust him, too."
Kirk nodded wearily. "I know. I know, Bones, but I don't have to like it. Who knows what else this planet is waiting to spring on them?"
Erecting the shelter after the first day of traveling was, as Larssen put it, "Rather less fun than a barrel of monkeys." When Spock inquired as to the relation between a container of terran simians and the construction of an emergency survival shelter, Ensign Grenwood turned aside with what seemed to be laughter, and so Spock simply filed the matter as one which would bear further investigation. When Larssen greeted the emergence of her favourite flavour of ration pack from the supplies they carried with "Well, I'll be a Tumerok temple dancer!" and Spock took it as an invitation to inquire as to her belief in reincarnation, Grenwood was again forced to study his feet,
shoulders shaking.
"How far did we travel today, sir?" Larssen asked sweetly.
"Twenty four miles." Spock said. He was about to add We must increase our pace when he was interrupted.
"Powder my nose and call me Petunia!" said Larssen.
Spock gave her a level gaze, one eyebrow raised to its limit.
"Lieutenant, if that is an instruction, I am afraid I am unable to comply."
"Mmph!" said Grenwood, and became desperately busy with something at the other end of the tent. Larssen flushed under Spock's scrutiny,
but did not look away.
"Yes sir." she said. "Sorry, sir." She tilted her head a little in Grenwood's direction. "I'll try not to let it happen again."
Spock looked from her to the ensign, who had completely forgotten the struggle of the day in his current struggle not to let Spock see his laughter.
"See that it does not." he said severely, but he nodded slightly to Larssen. She was welcome to use esoteric human idioms if they raised morale, and he was willing to take them literally if that, too, raised Grenwood's spirits. "I am still waiting," he added even more sternly,
"for an explanation of the unnecessary confinement of simian primates in a round wooden container."
"You're a good sport, sir." Larssen said later, after Grenwood had fallen into the deep sleep of exhaustion.
"Morale is a serious issue, Lieutenant. You seem ... well able ... to attend to Ensign Grenwood's morale."
"Yes, sir." She said, correctly reading the order beneath the compliment. "How much faster do we need to go tomorrow?"
"We need to cover 30 miles a day, at least." Spock said. "If we cannot travel faster, we must travel longer."
Larssen sighed. The day had been a torture of cold, treacherous footing, unending effort. Fifty-nine more days of the same was not something she was going to contemplate. "Since our visibility is so poor anyway," she suggested, "perhaps we should start earlier, rest in the middle of the day, and travel later each night. We could possibly manage twelve or thirteen hours each day if we put up the shelter half way and had a few hours to warm up and rest."
Spock, who had called a halt today when his human companions had begun to stumble with exhaustion, considered it. "We will try that tomorrow." he said. "I am unsure whether frequency or duration of recovery time is the most critical factor in these conditions."
"We'll be in trouble if it's both!" she said dryly.
"Indeed. Lieutenant, I have been awaiting a chance to ask you about the reasoning behind your recommendations on the composition of the expeditionary party. I believe you ruled out Yeoman Shimona on physical reasons."
"Yes, sir. She's tough as they come but she could never pull the travois all day." Then she remembered that in fact Spock had been the only one to pull the travois all day, the two human crew members taking turns at the other handle. "I mean, even as much as Bob -
Ensign Grenwood - and I."
"I am aware that the Ensign's first name is Robert, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir. What I'm trying to say - Bai'tin and Brand ... they're strong, sir. But they've seen more than Grenwood, they can imagine what this trip could be like. Bob is too raw to take today's travel and multiply it by sixty, he doesn't know how bad things can get.
That gives him an advantage, he won't be weighed down by dreading it the whole way. With luck, we'll be there before it really sinks in."
"And yourself?"
"The only one left, sir." she said promptly. "Quaking with abject terror, but ready to serve."
"I observe no 'quaking'."
"I'm Enterprise crew, sir, everyone knows we only quake on the inside." Spock could not imagine a demeanour less indicative of terror than that Larssen displayed as she sat by the heating unit, running a comb through her long brown hair. She glanced up and grinned at him.
"Besides which, I don't have enough imagination. It's not valued where I come from, which makes me less effective as a officer, but it's a decided bonus when you have to walk fifteen hundred miles in a blizzard."
Spock regarded her until she looked away. "Do you consider me less effective as an officer because I lack imagination?"
"No sir! That would be insubordinate - and untrue. You are a very imaginative officer."
"On Vulcan, that would not be considered a compliment."
"Sir, I've served with several Vulcans, and I've found they all have imagination to spare. I don't mean fancy, or fantasy, or fiction. I mean the kind of imagination that lets people see where they want to go and imagine the steps they need to take. In humans, hope and despair are both dependant on having that kind of imagination. In Vulcans, I'm not sure. I've been told Vulcans don't hope. But they also don't ever seem to give up, which looks like hope to an outsider."
"Some Vulcans hope," he said, "and some even despair. But I think you are talking about something Vulcans call tal'ath'at. It means 'forward reaching of the mind.'"
Larssen looked up at him, replaiting her hair. "Vulcan is an admirably precise language." she said. "That would seem to be exactly what I mean." She smiled again. "Goodnight, sir. I'll try to keep the idioms down to the minimum necessary tomorrow."
"I would be grateful, Lieutenant." he said in his driest tone. His curiosity stirred, he would have liked to ask her what culture she came from, where tal'ath'at was so unvalued children did not develop it, but they had only a limited time to rest, and it would be inconsiderate - and irresponsible - to keep her from hers simply to satisfy his curiosity about the diversity of the universe.
Captain's Log, Stardate 3894.2
Lieutenant Commander Iyen, in his capacity as acting science officer,
has put forward a plan to affect the weather patterns interfering with our communications, sensors, and transporters. Although ending the storm does not seem possible, Mr Iyen has proposed "seeding" the storm clouds with modified photon torpedos at carefully selected points. We hope that the changes in barometric pressure this will produce will encourage the storm to move towards the southern hemisphere of Ser Etta Six, away from the landing party. I have ordered that his plan be put into effect.
"Everything's ready, sir." Iyen said from the science station. He was fidgeting with tension, and Kirk made the automatic comparison with Spock's unbreakable calm, and then chided himself for doing so.
He would not make Iyen's duty easier by being hard on him just because he wasn't Spock. He had done an excellent job and a lion's share of the workload bringing her plan to the point of implementation, and as an Andorrian he could hardly be expected to show emotional restraint.
Andorrians were well known for their trait of expressing every emotion they felt, usually loudly, as soon as they felt it. On an Andorrian ship, even the bridge crew might burst into tears on a reversal of fortune, or leap in excitement at good news. Indeed, Iyen's feelers were flickering with apprehension, his skin an ever deeper hue of blue than usual.
"Good job, Mr Iyen," Kirk made a point of saying.
"Targeting transmitted to tactical." he reported, his voice a little easier. "Ready for your word, captain."
"Mr Chekov, fire when ready." Kirk said.
"Aye, sir!" Chekov checked his console just to be sure the trajectories were set, and pressed the fire commands. "First three torpedoes away, sir. Second three away. Last torpedos away, sir."
Unconsciously, everyone on the bridge leaned towards the viewscreen,
as if that would somehow give a better view. McCoy, standing by the captain's chair, even took a step forward. For a tryingly long moment, nothing at all happened, and then there was a spark of light among the clouds, followed by another, and another.
"Detonation complete, sir." Iyen said unnecessarily. "Seeding commencing." Alone of all the bridge crew, his eyes were on his console, not the screen. "Sensors indicate break-up in the upper level of cloud at detonation points. Barometric pressure lowering."
A long pause. "Break-up continuing, sir, although at a slower rate than anticipated. Pressure is drawing surrounding cloud into the detonation locations, stabilising the fall."
Kirk could see the thinning of the storm at the detonation points now,
and the inrush of surrounding cloud. He held his breath. If a chain reaction would only start... He willed the movement of the storm to become a rush, to carry the whole lot off with it.
Iyen spoke again, and his voice was dull. "Break-up is stabilising,
sir. Pressure has stopped falling. Barometric pressure at detonation points steady, pressure rising now, sir."
Kirk turned fiercely. "Send another barrage." he ordered. "Keep it going!"
"It would take six days to modify another 9 torpedos, sir." Iyen said,
though he looked petrified to refuse the captain. "Twelve days to set up a second barrage of double the strength. And," he swallowed hard,
"my calculations indicate - based on the data we have gathered from this attempt - that in order to successfully divert the storm, sir..."
He stopped, wringing his hands.
"Yes?" Kirk said. 'in order to successfully affect the storm WHAT?"
"We'd need four hundred photon torpedoes, sir." he said faintly, with his eyes closed.
Four hundred! That was the entire complement the Enterprise had aboard! It would take an enormous effort of time and labour to modify all of them with the seeding adjustments Iyen had designed, and it would leave the Enterprise without one half of her firepower if they came under attack. Kirk bit his lip.
"Well?" McCoy asked impatiently. "He's waiting for your order,
Captain."
"Consider alternate plans." he told Iyen at last.
"What?" McCoy spluttered.
"In my ready room, doctor." Kirk said, trying to head off yet another confrontation with Bones in the middle of the bridge.
"In your ready room my left testi - err, tentacle!" snapped the doctor. "You're not going to LEAVE them there, are you? So what if it costs a lot in photon torpedos? Last time I looked, you didn't worry about the cost when you were blowing people up with them!"
"Bones." said Kirk softly. Careful, old friend, his hazel eyes warned.
"Don't you 'Bones' me, damnit! Well? ARE you going to leave them down there?"
"We might need the photon torpedos." Kirk explained with great, and obvious, patience. "If someone attacks us, for instance. Like the Romulans, for instance. We are only a day's travel from the Neutral Zone. I haven't heard you complaining when using photon torpedos on enemy ships have kept THIS ship, and this crew, and YOU, alive."
"Then get our people out of there and let's be on our way!" McCoy retorted. "I know the Captain's chair has a bad effect on thinking,
but I never thought I'd see the day when you -"
"That's enough, doctor!" Kirk's voice echoed around the bridge and crewmembers who had been unobtrusively listening bent to their stations with a will. "I am doing and I will do everything possible to get out people back on this ship, but I will not endanger the rest of the crew to do so! That is my decision, and my order, is that understood?"
McCoy glared at him for a moment, unwilling to admit he'd gone too far. "You're the captain, Captain." he muttered at last. Kirk recognised McCoy's worst insult.
"My god, doctor, recognition of the chain of command at last? What is the world coming to?" Kirk didn't wait for McCoy to come up with another reply. "I believe you have duties in sickbay, doctor, and not on the bridge. SEE TO THEM!"
Even Sulu jumped at the roar. McCoy found himself at the turbolift doors without having made a decision to move. He drew breath to retort as he stepped in to the lift, and then looked at Kirk's face and thought better of it.
Safely in the lift, he said: "Sickbay," and as the lift dropped and he was sure he was out of earshot of the bridge, added, "Yes, captain."
with a bitter emphasis on the second word.
Spock, Larssen and Grenwood managed quite well for the first twenty days or so. Spock varied the pattern of travel and rest, so that on some days they began early and finished late, with one or more breaks in the shelter during the day and on some they travelled in one persistent effort with longer to recover when they day ended. Larssen maintained her air of calm cheerfulness, though there were shadows beneath her eyes and the bones of her face were growing sharper beneath the skin. She cajoled and encouraged Grenwood at every opportunity, telling jokes which grew more and more risqué as Grenwood grew harder to distract.
Spock noted that Grenwood's strength seemed to be ebbing faster than Larssen's: the young man was losing weight more quickly, as well,
though all three of them were thinner than they had been. One night in the third week Spock was awakened by the Ensign crying in his sleep, and sat up to see Larssen kneeling beside him, murmuring soothing phrases and stroking his hair. When Grenwood grew quiet and slipped back into deeper sleep, she looked up.
"It's the cold." she said softly to Spock. "He can't rest properly because of the cold." She pulled her own sleeping bag over to Grenwood and curled up beside him, trying to give him some of her body heat. Spock noted that she did the same on each night after that, and Grenwood's sleep grew easier. He still dreamed, though, and muttered and tossed until Larssen woke and calmed him.
"Lieutenant," Spock said to her one morning, "You need to get adequate rest yourself."
"I can always sleep, sir." she said disingenuously, though there were black stains of fatigue beneath her eyes. "I'm famous for it." And then, quietly, "Trust me on this, Commander. I may have been wrong about Grenwood."
By the beginning of the second month, it was obvious to Spock that Grenwood was in considerable distress. His face was haggard, he fell more and more often, and even without taking a turn pulling the travois he had trouble keeping up with them.
Their periods of travel grew shorter, the rests longer. Spock began to consider the possibility that they could not reach the base in anything like time. Without the shelter, he could not attempt the trip alone, but without the shelter Larssen and Grenwood would not survive.
The ensign's worsening condition made it possible that they would have to stop altogether and abandon the attempt to reach the base, or at least delay it for an unacceptable amount of time. Spock was aware that the time was approaching when he would have to make such a decision, and it seemed there was no way out of the dilemma. If he took the shelter and its heat-source, he could easily reach the base and inform the enterprise of the importance of the Realgar system.
Thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of lives would be saved. On the other hand, Larssen and Grenwood would certainly die. He sensed that Larssen was also aware of the situation, and perplexingly, the decision he had to make was made more difficult by the knowledge that she would accept a death sentence with a calm "Yes, sir." and a smile.
As they trudged through the snow side by side, Grenwood hanging on to the edge of the travois for support as he stumbled behind them, Spock also contemplated the equanimity that Larssen claimed sprang from lack of tal'ath'at. Perhaps humans would benefit from rather less tal'ath'at in general. Larssen certainly behaved more rationally without it.
While he was still considering the choice he must make, the decision was taken out of his hands.