female in slapping him to lighten his coma had
unwittingly given him the means to cure his own
concussion. She had also dressed his burns, cutting
away the
charred tunic lest the fabric become embedded in
the wounds. Barechested, Sorahl shivered. It was
cold on this human planet; Selik's
instruments had recorded remarkable extremes in
temperature pole-to-pole.
Selik, my best teacher, Sorahl thought with a
sudden flash of memory, seeing the stark face over
his shoulder, instructing him. Circumstance has taken
your life and spared me mine.
Whatever I do henceforward must honor the memory
of those whose lives were lost. 69
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Again he shivered. The burns, residual shock,
lack of sustenance, the lingering traces of concussion,
exacted their toll. Sorahl wondered if it would be
a breach of propriety to take the brightly patterned
afghan thrown carelessly over a chair and wrap it
around his shoulders.
Instead he put aside his own needs and went
to his mother. Carefully he touched his fingers to the reach
canters of her ravaged face. He was no healer,
but if he could start her on the healing trance and stand
by until she needed him to bring her out
Mother, he thought to her knowing it was the one word that would
tell her the most, bring her back through memories
of the crisis, the
abortive selfdestruct sequence, the plummet
to Earth, let her know that he was here and whole and
required her presence. If she thought him dead, her
mission would be complete; she
would have no reason to preserve her own life.
Mother, he thought, searching for her through eddies of
trauma and recent memory . . .
"Malfunction Retro One, Commander," Helm
T'Preth had reported in her usual
imperturbable tone. No matter that an irreparable
malfunction of their retro-rockets could
mean death for all of them this far from home.
"Compensate," T'Lera ordered with equal
calm. "Are you in need of assistance?"
The others were already on alert: Stell leaning over
Sorahl at the navcon to provide a third pair
of hands should two prove insufficient, Selik and
T'Syra coordinating readouts as they scanned for
some external factor responsible for the
malfunction. The ancient Savar had moved
without sound to the airlock; it would be he who led the
self-destruct if it came to that.
"Negative, Commander," T'Preth replied,
nimble
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
fingers flying across her console.
"Compensation adequate at present."
"Affirm," FL-ERA said as the others returned
to station as if the alert had been just another drill.
"All stations, causative scan."
Silently all complied.
They had circled Earth for forty-seven of Its
days, pursuing their research and watching a thousand
sunsets, undetected by the most
sophisticated of Earth's scanning
systems. Under Selik's tutelage, Sorahl
had devised a remarkably flexible and intricate
navigational pattern that brought them in under
satellite tracking stations and maneuvered them around
ground-based observatories, bringing them closer to the
planet surface than any scoutcraft had dared
venture before. Their impulse
engines, recharging on solar while they were on
dayside, allotted them fifty days of such
observation, and then they must return home.
"Compensation insufficient, Commander," Helm
T'Preth reported some moments later. "Retro
Three now indicating variable instability."
Silently each resumed alert status.
"Causative, Science?" T'Lera addressed
Selik crisply, pivoting her chair in his
direction.
"Unknown, Commander," Selik replied at
once. "No external damage. Calibrating
for internal malfunction now."
T'Lera swung her chair forward again.
"Bring us up, Helm," she said sharply.
"Twenty thousand perigee. Navigator, oblique
angle. We must not be seen."
"Affirm, Commander," T'Preth and
Sorahl said in the same breath, but T'Lera was
already out of her chair and under the engineering con with
Stell.
"Scanning Two and Four as well," Stell
reported, and T'Lera merely nodded. She was
listening to something else, sensing something.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"Status, Helm?"
"Retro One shutdown, Commander," TP-RETH
barely whispered even as it happened. "Three on
blue line. Temporary hold at fourteen
perigee. Downspiral estimated nineteen
seconds mark."
And the rest was nightmare.
Mother! Sorahl thought to her, drawing her away from
such thoughts lest the healing trance prove impossible.
Mother!
still am here, Sorahl-kam, T'Lera replied
at last, and engaged the healing trance as he took his
hand away.
Outside the wind was howling now, whitecaps
churning, thunderheads roiling on the horkon. It was
typhoon season, and someone was getting a lot of
rain.
Several kilometers distant, along the
bottomless rift known as the Mayabi Fault,
the ocean floor slipped slightly, and a
spacecraft of no known Earth design slid
grating across the bottom. Under the silent silver
stare of a thousand sea creatures it teetered and
vanished over the edge of the crevasse in a churning of
sand and was gone.
In the sleeping room of the agrostation, a young and
shivering Vulcan wrapped a
human-made afghan about his naked shoulders,
keeping watch over his mother and looking out over the heaving
sea.
And in the other room, two humans continued
to argue.
"dis . . don't even know what they eat.
Suppose they need some kind of special
environment? We may be endangering them by keeping them
here, doing nothing his
"You just don't want the responsibility!"
Tatya nearly shouted. "Shrug it off like you always
do, dump it on someone else. You know what the
bureaucrats will do to a find like this. Turn them
into zoo specimens, destroy them. Over my dead
body!"
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"I beg your pardon his
His voice was very soft, accustomed to
speaking to more acute ears, but it brought them both
to an instantaneous, electrified silence. Yoshi
felt the hair on his neck start to prickle again.
"I mean no intrusion. It is obvious that we have
caused considerable disruption in your lives. We ask
forgiveness."
Tatya moved toward him like a sleepwalker,
reached out a hand, and almost touched him, exotic
apparition like a genie from a lamp, except for the
burn plasters on his chest and arms, then stopped
herself.
"You're awake," she said unnecessarily, the
paramedic in her taking charge, holding at bay the
wonder, the incredulity. "H-how do you feel?"
"I am well. Some physiological damage,
but functional. As T'Lera will be, in time. Your
concern for our physical well-being is no longer
necessary."
He looked from one stunned face to the other. Was it
possible they did not understand him? Or was it the
incongruity of his speaking their language?
"But you had a concussion," Tatya blurted.
"At least, I thought his
"It is no longer a factor," Sorahl said.
Studies indicated humans had no telepathy,
no
self-healing. There was no purpose in broaching
such subjects now. It would serve only to confuse and
frighten them. And in his hurry he had neglected the
most basic of amenities. "Forgive me. I am
called Sorahl. The other" he gestured toward the
sleeping room "is T'Lera. My mother, and commander
of our vessel."
It was Yoshi's turn to move forward.
Instinctively he held out his hand in a typical
human gesture. Sorahl, recalling the record
tapes, extended his own hand and, the
reluctance of the touch-telepath held firmly in
check by the student of IDIC, made actual the first
humanalien handshake.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"So-rail," Yoshi said carefully, sensing the
reluctance, releasing the warm, dry hand; truth
to tell, the moment terrified him. "And Talera?"
Sorahl assented. Inaccurate, but it
would suffice. Yoshi seemed pleased.
"My name's Yoshi. Yoshiomi Nakamura,
actually. But Yoshi's fine. And this is his
"Tatya," she said firmly, waving Yoshi
aside. Tatiana Georgevna Bilash was someone
she'd left behind on the mainland, along with three younger
sisters and an inordinate number of bossy female
relatives. She went to shake Sorahl's hand as
well, was surprised to see him hesitate, seemed
to shrink back slightly. "I'm sorryl Did I
do something wrong?"
"No." Sorahl extended his hand a second
time, touching hers briefly. How explain that among
his kind a betrothed male did not . . . "It is
simply not our way."
"I guess we have a lot to learn about each
other," Yosh' said quickly, covering their varying
degrees of embarrassment.
"Indeed," Sorahl said, and fell silent.
"You must be starved!" Tatya said suddenly,
remembering the practicalities. "You just sit right
here and I'll get you something to eat."
Halfway to the kitchen area, she stopped.
"I'm sorry, That is, we don't know his
"We are vegetarian
by philosophical choice," Sorahl explained
carefully, remembering his amazement that other
intelligent species could eat meat. "We will eat
neither animal flesh nor the products of
animals. Anything else is acceptable."
"I see," Tatya said slowly, temporarily
nonplussed. H was an awesome responsibility,
serving the first meal to an alien guest. What was
appropriate?
"There's some tofu In the fridge," Yoshi
supplied helpfully. He was consumed with
curiosity, wished Tatya would stop fussing and
give him a chance to ask a few of his thousand questions.
"Dried fruit, brown
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
rice. Look around." He turned toward
Sorahl. "We're due for supplies shortly.
Tomorrow, in fact." He shook his head. Tomorrow. Oh,
gods, tomorrow! "The joke is, of course, that we're
sitting on one of the staple foods of the planet,
only it's not as H you can step out onto the porch and
clip a few leaves for salad. What we grow is
industrial-grade kelp. It has to be
reprocessed."
"I quite understand," Sorahl said patiently.
Food production had been Stell's area of
expertise, and he had instructed his young pupil
well. Yet another ghostly face, this one strong and
benevolent, swam before the young
Vulcan's vision.
"Tofu, then," Tatya was muttering to herself,
clattering around in the kitchen area.
"You said, "we,"" Yoshi said intently, taking
the chair beside Sorahl's, marveling at the sight of
an alien occupying his beanbag chair. He must not
stare. If it weren't for those ears . . . "Who
exactly are you? And how did you get here?"
"We are the Vulcan," Sorahl began, and
proceeded to explain.
act
The Vulcan captain of a human crew continued
the age-old tradition of his kind, asking nothing of
those he commanded that he would not do himself.
The young cadet stood stiffly at attention as
Captain Spock signed the end-of-shift status
report. Spock allowed him a moment more of this
posture, as good for the soul as it was for the spine, before
favoring him with a mild glance.
"Stand at ease, Lieutenant. Is
there anything else?"
The young human relaxed his stocky frame, though
his spirit was still beset with the trials of serving under a
Vulcan commander. Spock saw this in his eyes and
addressed it.
"No sir, only his
"Only what?"
morning
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
you've been on the bridge since alpha shift.
I was wondering if you planned to give over to anyone
else for gamma, sir."
"As I read the duty roster," Spock said without
having to look at it, "all who have requested gamma
shift are currently at their posts. To have someone
relieve me would necessitate awakening or
otherwise intruding upon the offshift time of someone on
alpha or beta. I see no logic in this."
"Only the logic that a commander shouldn't have to take
a triple shift, sir," the young lieutenant
suggested softly; he was met with a raised eyebrow.
"Begging the captain's pardon, but it seems to me
even Vulcans must get tired sometimes."
A quiet bemusement tugged at the corners of
Spock's mouth.
"Mr. Mathee, are you offering to relieve me?"
"I would, sir," the young human said sincerely.
"If I didn't think you'd think it was
presumptuous."
"Thoughtfulness is never presumptuous,
Lieutenant," Spock said, compounding the young
man's confusion. "Nevertheless, I might point out that
you would have to pull a double shift were I to take you up
on your offer. his
"Due respect, sir," the human said, finding
ground at last to anchor on. "Logic suggests that
if you can handle a triple, I can handle a double.
Sir."
Spock nodded, pleased, and rose from the center
seat.
"Very well, Mr. Mathee
. The ship is yours for the
next 7.94 hours. I shall be in my quarters."
Though far from sleep, the Vulcan thought as the
turbolift brought him down the levels. There is
something I must do.
He entered the dark cabin, deactivating the body
scanner to keep the lights from coming on. His night
76
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
vision and the precise placement of every item in the
room carried his body around petty concrete
obstacles like furniture to where his mind had begun
its journey while he was still in the lift.
In the briefest of moments he had discarded the
Starfleet uniform (did it arrange itself so
precisely in its place in the cabinet or were his
hands so deft they conducted the busyness of mere things
in such a way that they only seemed to move by themselves?)
for the black meditation robe with its Kohlinahr
glyphs, as easily as he exchanged the day's
cares, concerns and
calculations for the level of tranquility he
desired.
As he knelt in the loshiraq, the "open
posture," his hands formed in the double ta'al of
Focus, his mind had already passed the purifying
ritual, his heart rate slowed almost to human
languor, his breathing almost to nil. His mind floated
down, down, down, searching.
What he searched for was the answer to a most
illogical question: how was it possible to remember that which
had not taken place?
There is no true forgetting. Locked
within the convolutions of every sentient mind is the exact
recollection of every event that has transpired in the
presence of that mind. Yet few humans would
desire such total recall, and the human animal
is notorious for its ability to forget, its memory
lapses willed or unwilled. Not so the Vulcan.
The Vulcan memory is actively eidetic,
unforgetting. Within the reaches of certain levels of
meditation any past moment can be recollected in its
entirety. It was this Spock sought to do.
His was not the realm of daydream, of
preoccupation with things past. Yet something from that past
had of late intruded upon his consciousness. Ever since
he had read Strangers from the Sky. Tracing it
back, he found no background, no event
to surround it. Yet the memory remained, an
indication to the logical mind 77
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
that such memory was faulty. Ever intolerant of
flaw in his own logic, Spock sought to correct the
error.