At first they walked side by side, Kirk steadying Spock
when he swayed or seemed to loose his bearings. When it
became evident that the Vulcan was having increasing
difficulty retaining his feet, Kirk pulled one of his arms over
his shoulder and took as much of Spock's weight as he could.
When that no longer sufficed, he found the strength to
heave Spock over one shoulder and carry him. When he
could no longer carry him, he took hold of his friend by the
shoulders and on his knees he dragged him onwards.
The world narrowed to the corridor. Kirk had to believe
that Spock was still the mind in charge of the body he
dragged onward. They had not been hindered in any
specific way, no flying furniture or animated corpses or
walls of flame, and that had to prove - something.
It was hot, though. Atmospheric controls would never
normally permit the temperature to get this high, the air
this dry. Even Spock's skin felt burning to the touch - or
perhaps, Kirk thought, the Starbase was taking its
temperature from the fever that burned his friend.
Or maybe the Starbase was readjusting its atmospheric
norms to accord with Vulcan: the gravity seemed to be far
higher than Terran normal. The heat, and the weight,
made a difficult task nearly impossible.
He struggled on. How long until the torpedoes were ready
aboard the Enterprise? How long did he have to get Spock to
shuttle-bay?
What if what he rescued was no longer Spock?
~I'm still alive,~ he told himself grimly. ~Spock has to be
restraining it somehow. If he wasn't, I'd be
dead. If he wasn't, gravity would be the least of my
problems.~
Shuffle, drag, shuffle, drag. ~We must be nearly half-way
there by now. That means there are fourteen corridors left.
At the end of this corridor that'll be only thirteen left.
Shuffle, drag. If there are only thirteen left then that's
thirteen 28ths, which is - dot one carry the four - forty six
percent. Forty six percent at the end of this corridor.~
Shuffle, drag.
~Say it takes me two hundred steps on my knees like this to
cover one corridor.~ Shuffle, drag. ~That's two hundred
times thirteen, which is two thousand six hundred. Take
away fifty for how far I've come down this corridor ~ -
shuffle, drag - ~two thousand five hundred and fifty more.~
Shuffle, drag.
His sweaty hands slipped and he just managed to catch
Spock's head before it hit the decking.
~He's still in there. He's still in there.~
Shuffle, drag.
"Captain!"
There was no-one left on the Starbase but him and Spock,
he knew that, and so at the voice he flung himself around,
crouching defensively over Spock.
"Captain, it's me. Larssen."
Leaning on the wall, she came down the corridor from the
direction of the core.
"Stop there." he said, and she did. "What are you doing
here?"
"There was a decompression in shuttle-bay, I got locked
out, the others are gone."
She seemed normal. Well, she seemed to have been run
through a mechanical harvester - one that hadn't been
cleaned recently - but she wasn't reciting nursery rhymes,
or talking in the first person plural, and as far as Kirk was
concerned that was all that mattered right now.
"Is there a shuttle left?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. Two, but the one from the Enterprise is pretty
badly damaged." She came forward to help him and
together they began to make better time.
"The one from - the Enterprise?" Kirk panted.
"Whittaker and Pateman came on it."
"Whittaker and Pateman are *here*?" Kirk asked.
"They were, sir. They're both dead now. I think."
"What happened?"
"Whittaker was shooting at me. Pateman tried to push him
into a processing pit down in environmental and they both
went over."
"We'd better get a move on, then." Kirk said. "How long
do you think it would take them to climb out of the pit?"
"Climb -? Captain," she said, "No-one could survive that
fall. They're *dead*."
"So was Drysden." Kirk said grimly.
Larssen made a small sickened sound and increased her
pace.
They reached the shuttle-bay eventually, got across it,
manhandled Spock's limp body into an acceleration couch
and strapped him down.
"Larssen, have you ever taken a shuttle out of bay?"
"No, sir. Sir, my license -"
"Is third class, I know." Kirk took the emergency medikit
from the shuttle locker. "I'll talk you through power-up.
First, look and see what status is showing in the display on
the top right hand board."
"Green, sir."
"Good." Kirk said. "We won't need to do a hot or cold
restart, then." Adrenalese, hypocaine, corisol, tri-ox - what
the hell was he supposed to use for a Vulcan in shock
while mind-melded with an alien entity? Medical
tricorder, aha! He pounced on it and hit the on button.
"Instruct the computer to power up and give your
command codes as authorisation."
As he ran the tricorder over Spock Kirk could hear
Larssen doing so.
"Authorisation complete." the computer said sweetly, and
lights and power came on with a whomph! that Kirk
usually barely noticed. Today he thought it was his
favourite sound of all time.
Temperature - whoah! That was *not* normal, Vulcan or
not. Icepacks seemed like a good idea. Kirk searched the
medikit for the transportable instachills as Larssen sealed
the door and then settled herself in the co-pilot's chair.
"Open bay doors." Kirk said.
"Computer, open bay doors." Larssen said, and blinked as
the computer did so.
"Decompress bay."
"Computer, decompress bay."
"Bay is decompressing. Bay will decompress in five, four,
three, two, one. Decompression complete."
"Lower containment field."
"Computer, lower containment field."
"Containment field lowered."
"Uh, Captain." Larssen said. "We have a problem."
Kirk finished packing the instachills against Spock's pulse
points and checked the tricorder for further suggestions.
"What problem?"
"I can still see the containment field on visual."
He double checked the straps that held Spock securely to
the acceleration couch and went forward. Larssen was
right. The computer believed that the containment field
was down but its gauzy sparkle was still visible across the
open bay doors.
"Must have been damage to the remotes - maybe the
relay." Kirk said. "Lord knows, there's been
enough going on."
"There's a hard-suit in the locker." Larssen said. "If it is
the relays, I can probably -"
"Negative, Lieutenant, apart from the risk I don't think we
can afford the time." Kirk said. He touched the keys to
bring the engines up to full. "Belt in."
Hastily she did so, and then took a white-knuckled grip on
the console. Kirk checked the indicators one last time,
fastened his own belt, and used the jets to jockey the
shuttle into a nose-on position with the bay doors.
He took one shallow breath and pushed the throttle up to
full.