“And he hasn’t shot his bolt yet, either. Well, Doc, make sure you report this in full to Scotty.”
“Oh,” the surgeon said, “I already have it on tape for him. I was only delaying transmission until I’d gotten your reaction.”
“Very good; you have that. Now — any guesses as to where Spock One might have holed up?”
“Not the slightest. His psychology must be completely reversed, too, and I never did understand that when it was going in what I laughingly called its normal direction.”
Kirk grinned tiredly. “You’ve pulled off a miracle already,” he said. “I can’t very well ask for two in the same day. Congratulations, Doc.”
“Many thanks. What are you going to do now, Jim, if I may ask?”
“I,” Kirk said, “am going to my quarters and get some shut-eye. I think the Enterprise will be better off for a while if I’m asleep on my back — instead of on my feet.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so,” McCoy said soberly. “Otherwise I was going to tell you that myself — and damn well make it stick, too.”
Kirk had had perhaps three hours’ sleep — certainly no more — when the general alarm brought him bolt upright in his bunk.
“Mr. Chekov!” he snapped. “What’s up?”
“Spock One, Captain,” said the intercom. “He has just been spotted in the stores deck, very briefly. I’ve ordered all available security hands to converge on the area.”
“Cancel that,” Kirk said, coming fully awake for what seemed to him to be the first time in weeks. “Use only security hands in the engineering section proper; order full viewer scan of stores and monitor it from the bridge. All other security details to remain at their posts. Lock all stores exits with new codes.”
“Right. Will you be assuming the bridge, Captain?”
“Directly.”
But Spock One had obviously chosen his striking hour with great care, and his timing was perfect. Evidently his fleeting appearance in the stores area had been only a feint, for the search of stores had just gotten into full swing when the main board on the bridge signaled that the huge exit doors to the hangar deck — the doubled doors that led into space at the rear of the ship — were being rolled open, on manual override. Before the override could be interdicted from the bridge, the doors had parted enough to allow a shuttlecraft to get out, and flick away at top acceleration into the glare of the Organian sun.
“Tractors!” Kirk snapped.
“Sorry, Captain,” Chekov said. “He has just gone into warp drive.”
We have no shuttlecraft with warp drive, Kirk thought grayly; and then, Well, we do now.
“And good riddance,” said McCoy, who had arrived on the bridge just in time to see the end of the fiasco.
“Do you really think we’re rid of him, Doctor?” Kirk said icily. “I think that nothing could be more unlikely.”
“And so,” said Spock Two, “do I.”
“Communications, track that shuttlecraft and monitor for any attempt on its part to get in touch with the Klingons. If it tries within range, jam it. Helmsman, put a homing missile on its tail, but don’t arm its warhead until further orders. All security forces, resume search of the Enterprise as before, and this time include the interiors of all remaining shuttlecraft. Mr. Spock, attempt to gain remote control of the runaway shuttle and return it to the ship — but if you do get it back, don’t let it in.”
He paused for a moment to let the orders sink in, along with their implications. Then he added, “This has been a fearfully lax operation on everyone’s part, not excluding my own, and from now on it is going to be taut. Does everyone understand that?”
Though there were no answers, it was clear that everyone did.
Chapter Ten — A SCOTCH VERDICT
From the Captain’s Log, Star Date 4196.2:
Hindsight is seldom a useful commodity, as all history seems to show; but it now seems almost inevitable, all the same, that Spock One should have chosen the hangar deck as his second hiding place. Not only is the area as big as a college playing field, and relatively poorly lit even when in use, but we almost never have any need for a shuttlecraft which can’t be filled better and faster by the transporter. Furthermore, even so small a ship as a seven-man reaction-drive shuttle offers abundant crannies in which to hole up, plus drinking water supplies (and Dr. McCoy tells me that Spock One could safely eat the carbohydrates from the shuttle’s food stores, too, since carbohydrates don’t have alternate molecular forms); and we have (or had) six such craft — not one of which we could scan inside from the main bridge, visually or with any other sensor, except for its control room and its power storage level. But none of this occurred to any of us until too late. Having a Spock for an enemy is a supernally dangerous situation.
In the meantime, our tracking missile’s trace seems to show that Spock One, if he is in fact aboard the runaway shuttlecraft, is heading straight for what used to be Organia, for reasons we can only guess at. Another mystery is how Spock One managed to convert the shuttlecraft’s engines to warp drive in so short a time, and without a supply of anti-matter or any way of handling it. But this is a puzzle for Mr. Scott; it may some day be a matter of vast importance for Federation technology, but under present circumstances I judge it distinctly minor.
“I’ve got an answer, Captain,” Scott said.
He was in Kirk’s quarters, together with Dr. McCoy and the remaining first officer. The Enterprise was still in Organia’s orbit, on the opposite side of Organia’s star from what had used to be the planet. She was still on full battle alert; no new Klingon ships had showed up yet, but their arrival could not be long delayed — and this time, Kirk expected at least one Star Class battleship to be among them. Against such a force, the Enterprise could put up a brave fight, but the outcome was foreordained.
And nothing had been heard from Starfleet Command — not in Eurish, nor in any more conventional code or language.
“An answer? To the miniaturized warp-drive problem? Just record it, Scotty; we’ve got more important fish to fry at the moment.”
“Och aye. Captain, that’s only a leetle puzzle, though I’ve nat solved it the floe. What I meant was, I think I’ve figured out what happened to Organia — and to Mr. Spock here.”
“Now that’s a different matter entirely. Fire away, Gridley.”
“Weel, Captain, it isna simple…”
“I never expected it to be. Spit it out, man!”
“All right. At least this answer does seem to tie in with all the others, as my confreres here seem to agree. Tae begin with: in ordinary common sense, if you’re going to have to be dealing with a mirror image, you’ll expect there to be a mirror somewhere in the vicinity. And Dr. McCoy has proven, as I think we also agree, that the replicate Spock is the most perfect of mirror images, all the way down to the molecular level.”
The engineering officer’s accent faded and vanished; suddenly, his English was as high, white and cold as his terminology. He went on, precisely.
“After I got the report from Dr. McCoy about the amino acids, I took the assumption one radical step further. I assumed that the mirroring went all the way down to the elementary particles of which space — time and energy — matter are made. Why not? The universe is complicated, but it is consistent. After all, parity — handedness — is not conserved on that level, either; the extremely fine structure of the universe has, in fact, a distinct right-hand thread, to put the matter crudely. If it didn’t, a phenomenon like polarization would be impossible, and even our phasers wouldn’t work.”