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.
Once they’d materialized, Kirk went to the platform and, without explaining the situation, pointed out DeGuerrin’s wound to Dr. Mowry. Together, Kirk and Ketchum lifted the security officer and lowered her to the floor, where the doctor took the medkit hanging at his side and began examining her. Kirk then returned to the transporter controls and scanned for all life signs. He saw only the four in this room and understood that the sensors clearly hadn’t been calibrated for Tholians. “Doctor,” he called back over his shoulder, “this transporter doesn’t recognize Tholian life-forms. I need to know distinguishing characteristics I can scan for.” Mowry didn’t respond right away, no doubt continuing to minister to DeGuerrin. “Doctor,” Kirk said, “I need to know now or we’re all going to die.”
“They have two arms and six legs,” Mowry said. “They have an exoskeleton. They- “
“I need something I can scan for easily,” Kirk said.
Mowry did not respond for a moment, but then said, “They have body temperatures of over two hundred degrees.”
“Now that I can scan for,” Kirk said, more to himself than to the doctor. He did so, and found not the sixteen Tholians that DeGuerrin had estimated, but twenty-one. He started to adjust the sensors to target their plasma pistols, intending to transport the weapons here, but then something else occurred to him: even unarmed, twenty-one Tholians might be able to overwhelm just four Starfleet personnel. “Doctor Mowry,” he asked, “can Tholians survive in normal human temperature ranges? At say twenty or twenty-five?” It couldn’t be any warmer than that within the complex.
“No,” Mowry said. “At one hundred, a Tholian’s exoskeleton will begin to crack.”
Kirk operated the targeting sensors again, fine-tuning his goals. He hesitated to take the action he’d planned, though, reluctant to cause such loss of life. The Tholians invaded this complex, Kirk reminded himself. They killed the twelve personnel stationed here, and they’re trying to kill us too.
As though providing corroboration of his thoughts, weapons fire suddenly battered the door through which Kirk had entered the lab. He reached forward and triggered the transporter. Kirk heard the familiar whine of the materialization sequence, and he turned to see the green environmental suits of the Tholians appear on the platform, along with any other equipment they’d been holding, including their plasma weapons. The suits hung in the air as they formed, holding the shapes of their wearers, then with the other equipment fell in a clatter to the platform.
From the neighboring lab rose a horrible shriek and a series of frantic chirps and clicks. Kirk didn’t need to understand the language of the Tholians to differentiate their cries of pain. He took no pleasure in what he’d done, but he accepted the necessity of it.