“That would give Captain Garrovick enough time to realize that we’re overdue and bring the Farragut here,” DeGuerrin said.
“And stop the Tholians,” Kirk concluded.
DeGuerrin peered around the lab. “Do you think they would have put dome monitors and controls in here?” she asked.
“My guess is that if they did, the panels are through there,” Kirk said, pointing to a pair of closed doors to their left, perhaps ten strides away. “That’s the hub of the complex. Besides having controls out by the life support equipment, I think the support personnel would want to be able to check and operate those systems from a secondary, centrally located area.”
“Makes sense,” DeGuerrin said. Kirk also knew that it didn’t much matter whether it did or not. The Tholians had allowed the four of them to reach the heart of the complex before closing ranks around them. Completely contained now, the Farragut crewmembers could realistically only attempt to hold their ground or move farther inward.
DeGuerrin looked directly ahead, and Kirk followed her gaze to an open doorway. The two had left Dr. Mowry and Ensign Ketchum in the adjoining lab, giving them a respite while Kirk and DeGuerrin had returned here to reengage the Tholians. “Can you get back to them?” asked the lieutenant commander. “Tell them what I’m going to attempt?”
Kirk nodded. He did not relish the idea of informing two of his crewmates that they would shortly die, but he understood that he had to tell them. About to make the sacrifice they knew might be required of them when they had joined Starfleet, they deserved to be treated with honesty and respect. “I’ll make it,” Kirk said. “I’ll tell them.”
“All right,” DeGuerrin said. She rose up onto her haunches, obviously preparing to break for the inner labs to their left. “Cover me,” she said. “And wish me luck.”
“Luck,” Kirk said as he set himself at the edge of the smashed equipment behind which he and DeGuerrin hid. He raised his laser pistol and asked, “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then here I go,” Kirk said. Low to the floor, he looked out toward the positions from which the Tholians had been firing-two open entryways into the room-and saw the shimmer of their green environmental suits from just beyond. He opened fire. He saw one of the Tholians duck away, but another returned a spate of plasma bolts in Kirk’s direction. The heap of wrecked equipment shook as the shots rocked it.
Kirk continued to fire, but glanced over toward DeGuerrin. He saw her sprinting across the room toward the doors, which opened at her approach, but then a plasma bolt slammed into her shoulder. Kirk heard her cry out briefly. Her momentum carried her forward as her body spun around from the force of the shot. DeGuerrin made it into the next room, but just past the threshold, she collapsed. The doors slid shut behind her.
Kirk stopped firing and took cover once more. He looked to his left again and saw two more blasts from the Tholian weapons, these hammering into the doors. He didn’t know what he should do. Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin had been hit, he’d seen that, he’d seen her go down, but if she’d only been wounded, she still might be able to carry out the actions she’d intended.
But she might not be, Kirk told himself, and the thought made his decision easy. He quickly made his way to the other side of the shattered equipment, then prepared to follow DeGuerrin. As he did so, he spotted her laser pistol lying on the floor two-thirds of the way to the doors. She must’ve dropped it when she’d been hit. Kirk thought that the lost weapon might just allow him to safely navigate his way to the hub of the lab complex.
Reaching out quickly, Kirk fired blindly toward the Tholians, then raced out from his cover and toward the doors. After three steps, he stopped abruptly, waited for an instant, then resumed running again. He heard, felt, and saw plasma bolts all about him. Five strides along, Kirk lunged forward, bringing his right shoulder down toward the floor. He saw DeGuerrin’s laser at close range as he flew over it, but he did not reach for it. As his shoulder struck the floor and he rolled, he saw a blast of plasma surge into the weapon and send it flying.
Amid the salvo of the Tholian weapons, a small squeak reached Kirk’s ears: the doors to the inner labs opening. He soared past the jamb and came to rest on his back. As the doors glided closed behind him, he quickly pushed himself up. Beside him lay Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin, her eyes closed, smoke rising from a charred wound in her shoulder, the stench of her seared flesh sickeningly strong. Kirk reached two fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. He found one, weak but present.
Knowing that he didn’t have long, that the Tholians would close in soon enough, Kirk rose, touched a control beside the doors to lock them, then examined his new environs. He stood in a large room shaped like one quarter of a circle, having entered it through the outer, arcing wall. Consoles lined the periphery of the room, and several large machines he did not recognize filled the interior of the space. Dashing from one panel to the next, he searched for anything that resembled environmental controls for the dome.
He found nothing.
Weapons fire pounded into the doors, and Kirk looked back in that direction, over at DeGuerrin. If the Tholians penetrated this lab, he knew that they would immediately kill her, and so he felt the temptation to return to her and move her to a safer place. The thought made no sense, though, for if Kirk succeeded in bringing down the pressure dome, they would all die anyway. Saving Lieutenant Commander DeGuerrin now would be a foolish waste of time.
Another pulse struck the door, the percussive sound pushing Kirk back into motion. He rushed across the room and through a single door, this in one of the two straight walls. He found himself in a lab shaped identically to the last one, but oriented and equipped differently. Various stations lined the walls, but two very large machines sat in the middle of the room, their purposes a mystery to Kirk. Bordering one of them, a low platform contained an enormous slab of metallic rock, at least five meters long, five meters wide, and two deep. It had obviously been carved out of the planet’s surface and brought here for study.
As he had in the previous lab, Kirk locked the doors, then hied from panel to panel, hunting for the controls of the pressure dome. He’d only checked two consoles, though, before he stopped and turned back to regard the mass of native stone. Then he peered at all three entrances into the room, a single door in each of the two straight walls and a set of double doors in the curved wall. The great rock would have fit through none of them, he realized; it must have been beamed here.
Kirk returned his attention to the panels, but now he began looking for transporter controls. He knew that the planet’s atmosphere inhibited transport through it, but within the Pelfrey Complex itself, within the pressure dome, it must have been possible. The scientists must have employed a workpod to drag the mammoth stone into the hangar, and then from there beamed it into the lab.
At the fifth console he came to, Kirk saw a symbol composed of two outward-pointing arrows on either side of a square. A series of dots formed the bottom half of the square, as though the shape was dematerializing. Kirk scrutinized the controls and saw that they did indeed conform to those of a transporter.
Activating it, he found the targeting sensors and scanned for human life signs. Four sets of coordinates appeared on the display, confirming that sensors, useless within the planet’s atmosphere, still functioned within the pressure dome. As quickly as he could, Kirk beamed the colossal stone from atop the platform and onto the floor of the lab. Once he’d done so, he locked onto the other three Farragut crewmembers and transported them here.