Nobody volunteered. At length Kirk said, “Spock One, we’ve heard nothing from you thus far. Have you any thoughts on this problem?”
“Yes, Captain,” the intercom said in Spock’s voice. “Though I have not seen the pictures in question, your discussions have been complete enough to permit analysis. It seems evident that you are all off on the wrong track. The answer is in fact quite simple, though far from obvious.”
“All right, what is it? Spit it out, man.”
“Only on receipt of my guarantees, Captain.”
“That,” Kirk said grimly, “is blackmail.”
“The term is accurate, and therefore neither offends nor persuades.”
“And what about the security of the ship?”
“My analysis of the situation,” the intercom said, “leads me to conclude that the presence of the replicate first officer is a greater danger to the security of the ship than is the inaccessibility of Organia. I therefore continue to insist upon my terms.”
Kirk turned angrily to the simulacrum of the first officer who was on the bridge. “Spock Two, do you have any idea of what he might be hinting at?”
“None whatsoever, I regret to say. Our thought processes are now markedly different, as I predicted from the start that they would become. From the data available, I believe your present view of the Organian situation to be the correct one, though necessarily incomplete.”
That was superficially reassuring, Kirk thought, but actually no help at all. If Spock One did indeed have the answer, it might be worth giving him the guarantees he demanded (what was it that Shylock kept saying in The Merchant of Venice? “I’ll have my bond!”) to get it — which Spock Two, especially if he was the replicate, would resist to protect his own life. But if Spock One was the replicate, his claim to have a solution might simple be a ruse to insure the destruction of the original. If his solution turned out to be wrong, well, he could always plead inadequate data; Kirk had never required his first officer to be infallible, much though Spock himself disliked finding himself in error.
“We’ll proceed on our present assumption,” Kirk said finally. “Working from those, the only chance we have of rescuing any part of our original plan is to find some way of getting past that screen, shielding ourselves from its effects, or neutralizing it entirely. I’ll throw that little gem to Mr. Scott, but he’ll have to have detailed sensor readings from the screen to analyze — which, I’m sorry to say, means another pass through the sector off warp drive. Orders:
“Lieutenant Uhura, find out from Mr. Scott what sensor setup he thinks would be most likely to be helpful to him, and what is the shortest possible time in which he could get sufficient readings. And once Mr. Sulu has set up a flight plan for the pass, make sure the entire crew is forewarned to expect another one of those emotional shocks, and how long it will last.
“Spock Two, have the computer print out a complete rundown of anything that might be known about any screen even vaguely like this one — including conjectures — and turn it over to Mr. Scott.” He stood up tiredly. “I’m going to the rec room for a sandwich. If I’m not back by the time the pass is set up, call me. All other arrangements for the pass are to be as they were before.”
“You are making a serious mistake, Captain,” said the voice of Spock One.
“You leave me no choice, Mr. Spock. All hands, execute!”
Kirk was more or less braced for the impact of the terror when the next moment of breakout came, but the preparation did not seem to do him much good. The experience was in fact worse this time, for it had to be longer — Scott had insisted upon a run of forty-five interminable seconds, during which the Enterprise and all her crew seemed to be falling straight into the Pit. And during the last ten seconds, there was a flash of intense white flame off to one side — the burst of a proximity explosion from one of the ship’s phasers. Three seconds later, there was still another.
“Heels, Sulu!” Uhura cried. “The place is swarming with Klingons!”
Chapter Seven — THE ATTACK
From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4181.6:
Apparently six Klingon battlecraft locked onto us during our second pass at Organia — or whatever it is where Organia ought to be. If they were in the vicinity during our first pass, which I think almost certain, only the briefness of our breakout can have saved us from being detected then. It is also possible, of course, that we would not have been detected the second time had it not been for our own automatic phaser fire, depending upon whether the Klingon force was a garrison or an ambush. If it was the latter, the proximity setting on the phasers did us a favor, for our hits must have disabled two of them; only four are following on warp drive. With another enemy I would expect someone to stay behind as a reserve, out of ordinary tactical common sense, but no Klingon would avoid a fight unless physically pinned down in one way or another.
Most battles in space are either over almost the instant they begin — as had evidently been the case with the two surprised Klingon vessels — or became very protracted affairs, because of the immense distances involved. (The first sentence of Starfleet Academy’s Fundamentals of Naval Engagement reads: “The chief obstacle facing a Starship Captain who wishes to join battle is that battle is almost impossible to join.”)
This one showed every sign of going on forever. None of the four surviving Klingon ships was as large as their quarry, whose phasers outranged theirs sufficiently to keep them at a respectful distance, while her deflectors easily swept aside the occasional Klingon torpedo. In short, a standoff.
Kirk knew from experience, however, that the standoff could not be a stalemate; the blasts of code being emitted steadily on subspace radio by the small Klingon vessels — three of them seemed to be corvettes, the other was perhaps as large as a cruiser — were obviously urgent calls for more high-powered help. Nor was there any further reason for the Enterprise to preserve radio silence.
“Inform Starfleet Command of our whereabouts,” he told Lieutenant Uhura. “Include a description of the Organian situation and a hologram of your best plate of the body in Organia’s orbit. Tell them we’re under attack and ask for orders. Second, as a separate message, send them Spock Two’s conclusions on current Klingon strategy. Third, route a flash Urgent straight through to the Scientific Advisory Board describing our superfluity of Spocks and exactly how it happened — with hard, full particulars from Mr. Scott — and ask them for analysis and advice…- By the way, how old is our most recent code?”
“Just a year old, Captain.”
“The Klingons will have broken that six ways from Sunday by now. Well, you’ll have to use it — but put the clear in Swahili and ask to get the answers the same way. That ought to give the Klingons pause.”
“It will indeed,” Uhura said, grinning. “But even modem Swahili lacks some of Scotty’s technical terms, Captain. There are Indo-European borrowings in every Earthly language — and the Klingons may be able to infer the rest of the message using them as contexts.”
“Blast and damn. Leaving the technicalities out will throw us right back on our own resources, and I can’t say we’ve done too well with those.”
“There’s an alternative, Captain, though it’s risky; we can translate the clear into Eurish.”