Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [18]
It was done. He had buried the gateway in the fiery heart of the planet. And he had managed to return home at the same time. He couldn’t stop grinning. “Welcome to Earth!”
Commodore Enwright and the other Starfleet officials eventually let Luz go after she and Kirk were fully debriefed. She didn’t know much more than Kirk had already figured out during his visit to the Petraw birthing world. Luz claimed that it was against Petraw laws when Tasm had made them pose as Kalandans to steal the gateway. Kirk didn’t believe a word of her testimony, knowing that Luz would say whatever it took to get her way. But Starfleet was satisfied.
On the last day, when the Enterprise was finally due to enter orbit, Kirk went to say good-bye to Luz at the orbital space station.
She was subdued to suddenly find herself alone without any of her people. Kirk hadn’t heard a word about how stupid they were since they had passed through the gateway.
“Do you plan to try to return to the Petraw?” he asked. “It’s a long way back.”
“No,” Luz said flatly. “The Petraw would never accept me. I’m heading out on my own now.”
Kirk was sure she would be fine. After all, she had almost succeeded in getting everything she wanted. “The Alpha Quadrant is a remarkable place. It may offer more opportunities than you think.” Kirk had to shake his head. “There’s a lot to admire in your people, but I don’t see how their totalitarian regime could satisfy your needs.”
She looked at him oddly. “You never did understand the Petraw, did you? Our unity is what makes us magnificent.”
“You violated that unity,” Kirk pointed out.
Luz finally smiled. “Well you heard the matriarchs. I’m defective.”
“Lucky for me.”
Luz gazed out the observation window, looking toward the core of the galaxy. “But the other Petraw are strong. And they’re coming, I know it. We haven’t seen the last of my people yet.”
STAR TREK CHALLENGER
EXODUS
Diane Carey
The free dancer was dying. Its enormous lunglike body inflated one final time, but not enough. The creature wailed as its microbrain struggled to remember the path to the skies.
Where would it land?
Alarms rang through the city trails. Despite the danger, steel shutters clanked open on the north side of many domed huts. Brutish winds scraped by, unable to get a grip on the oystershell domes. Slowly the giant descended from the biohaze in a shroud of parasitic life-forms. The parasites puffed outward from the free dancer and raced upward to the stormy atmosphere, their abandonment clear proof of the animal’s doom. The free dancer twisted its long tendrils of shock floss upward as if beseeching its little riders to come back.
When they didn’t, the free dancer almost seemed to understand. It gave off a last sad crackle, buckled like an accordion bellows, and quite sharply dropped the last fifty feet to the ground.
Tanggg! Tang-tang! Tangggg shutters closed all over the quarter, just in time. The harsh sound echoed and continued longer than any reasonable echo, into the city, onto the plain, to the mountains, and rang there awhile.
Like a cattleprod touching flesh, the planet came up to meet the dying free dancer with a sharp slap. At the first inch of contact the creature heaved, then flattened to the trail’s surface and there gushed out its life. Electric-blue neon crackles engulfed the corpse in a violent coccoon.
Again Nick Keller found himself reminded of old newsreels the crash of the dirigible Hindenburg a giant lung collapsing into a single great mercurial transfer of matter to energy, as all the animal’s stored power shot directly into the planet.
What a waste.
“Close the shutter! You’ll be burned by the blast wave!”
“I need to see it.”
Raw energy strobed between the huts. The uncontrolled natural death of a free dancer could take