“Ready now, sir,” he said. “We’ll snap this module back in the locator board an’ have the answer in a second.” He picked up the component gently, carried it to the transporter room console, crawled underneath the console, and replaced the unit. He replaced the inspection plate, came out from under, pressed a button for a circuit tester and nodded in satisfaction as green lights appeared.
“Now we’ll find him,” Scott said. He checked a display for the communicator frequency assigned to Spock. “If it were anyone else but our Vulcan friend, I’d guess he had a lassie down there and didna want us to ken where he was, during his more loving moments. It must be sair hard to mate once every seven years. Whatever his reasons were for his tinkering, if it was he, they weren’t the usual ones.”
“The coordinates, if you please, Mr. Scott,” Kirk demanded impatiently.
“Coming up, sir,” Scott said. He pressed a button.
The locator board remained black.
“I thought you had the circuit straightened out!” Kirk said.
Scott swore softly and his fingers punched button after button. The green lights continued to come on. Finally, the engineer threw up his hands in baffled discouragement.
“Well, Scotty?” Kirk asked.
“It’s no good, sir. The circuits are all right, but Mr. Spock has vanished!”
CHAPTER THREE
“That tears it,” Scott murmured. “You can see for yourself, sir, Mr. Spock is gone. Where, I dinna ken, but gone he is.”
“At the least, the locator circuit on his “communicator isn’t responding to our signal,” Kirk said. He thought for a moment. “I wonder if that radiation front could be interfering with our locating frequencies?”
“I’ll check,” Scott said. “We’ll see if Dawson’s communicator is responding.” He fed its frequency into the locator and pressed a button. Instantly, a series of bright green numerals appeared on the screen set in the face of the console.
“We’re getting through, at least,” Kirk said. “Check those against Dawson’s location.”
Scott nodded and bent over the console. A second later, a map of the city of Andros appeared on the viewing screen, a grid superimposed on it. When Dawson’s coordinates were compared against where the board said he was, a bright blip appeared in the exact center of a circled location.
“They check, sir,” Scott said. “That readout shows that Dawson is at the inn, and that’s where he’s supposed to be.”
Kirk took a long moment before replying. When he did, he spoke carefully. “Since the locator is working properly, Spock is either dead, unconscious, or he’s tampered with the communicator’s locator circuit. Considering the tinkering that was done up here, it seems likely he’s modified his communicator. But… why?”
“Now, Captain,” Scott said. “We’re not sure he altered the board. And what’s mair, it’s humanly impossible for a communicator to be tampered with, with what Mr. Spock has available to him down there.”
“He could have done it up here,” McCoy said.
“But, Doctor, a man’s communicator is his only link with the ship when he’s planet-side. It’d be crazy to disable the locator circuit.”
“Spock isn’t human,” Kirk observed dryly. “He can do almost anything he wants to and, in this case, it seems as though he doesn’t want us to find him.” He turned to McCoy. “Bones, why? That’s your department. Do you have any idea why Spock wouldn’t want his location known?”
“It might 4iave something to do with his not beaming up with the rest last night,” McCoy answered. “And then again, it might not. I should give up trying to figure out what makes Spock tick, I’ve tried long enough. He’s always taken care to keep the human side he inherited from his mother suppressed. It’s true that he always acts logically, but it’s usually such an alien logic that much of the time I don’t understand why he does what he does—unless he cares to explain, that is. When he does, his actions always make perfect sense. When he doesn’t, the man’s an enigma. Maybe that’s what makes him so attractive to women. They find him ‘fascinating,’ ” McCoy finished.
“Could his implant have anything to do with this?”
McCoy shook his head. “I don’t see how. When Spock came to sickbay to get his implant, Ensign George and I checked the profiles carefully and picked the one with the lowest emotional quotient. Even though he knew some of his dop’s emotion would come through the link, Spock said it was no problem.”
“Couldn’t you have altered the device to screen out all emotional input?” Kirk asked.
“Sure,” McCoy replied, “but then we would have defeated one of the most important purposes for using it, perfect mimicry of native behavior. Vulcans always react logically to events. With humans and Kyrosians, there’s an inevitable emotional component. Eliminate that, and you’ll start to call attention to yourself as someone odd and different—which is the last thing we want to happen to a survey party member who’s trying to pass as a native!”
McCoy went on, “Speck’s dop is a very proper, very respectable, and very unemotional merchant who owns a small pottery shop. There’s absolutely nothing in his profile to explain Spock’s present behavior. I picked it myself and Sara fed it in.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to assume that we have a normal Spock who has some good reason for getting himself lost,” Kirk said. “But when he returns, he’d better have a very logical explanation for his behavior. We can’t wait around here indefinitely. At the rate that radiation is peaking, I’ve got to get the Enterprise out of here before too long. I won’t endanger this ship because of some private whim of my first officer.”
Kirk paced the floor of the transporter room. “He knows something has happened to make us send out an emergency recall.” He paused suddenly. “Or does he? Bones, what if the tingler doesn’t work on a Vulcan? If he never received our message, he’d have no way of knowing that he’d have to cut short whatever he’s up to. He’d never disobey a direct order, no matter how important his project was.”
“It’s as you said before, Jim,” McCoy said grimly. “If he’s dead… but if he’s alive, he got the signal. There may be a lot of anatomical differences between humans and Vulcans—Spock’s heart being where his liver ought to be, among others—but a nerve is a nerve to both of us.”
“He could be a prisoner…” Scott said.
“We’ve got to know for sure,” Kirk said. “Scotty, is there anyway you could lock onto Spock’s tricorder? He took it with him.”
“Negative, sir,” replied the engineering officer. “A tricorder is too well shielded. There’s nae enou’ energy leakage to get a fix.”
“There has to be a way…” Kirk muttered, clenching his fists and resuming his anxious pacing of the transporter room.
As if on cue, the communicator on the transporter console bleeped, signaling a call from the survey party. Scott reached toward the board, but Kirk, who was a bit closer, jabbed down a finger.
“Kirk here. Any word of Spock?”
“Yes, sir.” Dawson’s voice sounded strained. “I think you’d better beam us up at once.”
“Is he with you?”
“No, sir, he—”
“Then do you know where he is?” Kirk interrupted.
“No, sir, but he sent a message. It’s addressed to you, Captain.”
“Well, he’s alive anyway. Bring ‘em up, Scotty.”
The engineer stepped to the board and placed his thick fingers on the phase controls. Moving them gently, he pushed them along the runner slots. A deep hum of power filled the transporter room, and, after a few seconds, as the hum built up, the shimmering effect of the transporter’s carrier wave appeared over five of the six circular plates on the stage. Five figures in Kyrosian dress stepped down. One of them approached Kirk and handed him a scroll tied with a brightly colored ribbon,