Ice Trap Page 18

  "Take it easy, Bones. I think you're having a normal reaction."

  "I only hope that's what it is." McCoy straightened his shoulders and tried on a brave smile for his captain.

  Kirk clapped him soundly on the shoulder in mute thanks. "Let's take a look inside." He eased open the unlatched door.

  Except for several inches of water on the floor, the room and its machinery seemed at first examination to be undamaged. No motion or hum broke the stillness, and the air already tasted stale, mute evidence of something being very wrong, despite appearances.

  McCoy slouched against the wall and hung his head. "Where's Scotty when you need him?"

  Kirk paced back and forth, eyes pensive. "Up on the Enterprise, preparing a shuttle. We've got to do it without him."

  "In case you haven't noticed, neither of us is Scotty. I flunked engineering, and, as I recall, you"

  "Come on, Bones," Kirk cut him off. "Ready to walk in the steps of the miracle worker?"

  McCoy grimaced. "Do I have a choice?"

  Chapter Twelve

  "I DON'T THINK we're getting any closer, sir."

  Uhura peered through the icy mist shrouding Nordstral's polar sea, trying to make out the dim blue line of ice cliffs in the distance. "Is the shore curving toward us, Mr. Howard?"

  "No, sir. It's straight as a phaser shot." By balancing at the sharp ridge of the ice floe, the tall security guard could just see over the sea-hugging mist. His voice sounded grim. "No chance of hitting it by accident."

  "Then we'll just have to hit it by design." Uhura turned back toward the red splash of their tent, barely visible through the glittering arctic fog. The gravsled was a dim gleam of ice-coated metal beside it. "Can you think of some way we can maneuver this floe through the water?"

  Howard followed her down the slope, boots crunching on the mist-glazed ice. "Not really, sir," he admitted. "I didn't do too well in my engineering classes at the Academy."

  "Well, I did." Uhura gnawed on her lip, trying to decide what Scotty would do if he were there. Actually, she knew what he'd dohe'd tell everyone what an impossible job it was and then he'd proceed to do it anyway. The question was, how? "The gravsled hasn't got internal propulsion, so it wouldn't do us any good. We don't have any other large motors with us, do we?"

  "No, sir." Howard skidded to a stop in front of the tent and bent to unseal it. Looking in on Chekov had become a standard half-hour ritual between them since they'd gotten up that morning. By now, several long hours later, they'd done it so often that they only needed to exchange a few words.

  "Still unconscious?" Uhura asked from outside the tent.

  "Aye, sir." She heard the sleeping bag rustle as Howard zipped it closed again. "He seems to be breathing a little easier, but his color's still not too good."

  "At least he's staying warm." Uhura stamped her feet to loosen the crystalline rind of ice that the fog kept depositing on her boots. "Mr. Howard, could you get me a canister of soup while you're in there? I think it's getting colder."

  "Here you go, sir." Howard emerged with the self-warmed container already steaming in his hand. Uhura took it from him gratefully, snapping her breath filter off to drink it. The hot broth tasted more like vitamin supplements than the vegetables it was supposed to be made from, but it spread a pleasant warmth through her once it was down. Uhura crumpled the empty carton, then tossed it toward one of the gravsled's waste holders. It missed by half a meter.

  "Wind!" She spun around, stretching her hands out to either side. Misty air poured over them, a flowing stream too slow to be felt through her insulation suit. "The wind is blowing!" She scraped away the glaze of ice over the watch embedded in her insulation suit sleeve. "And it's not even 1400 hours yet. Come on, we need to get ready."

  Howard followed obediently as she motioned him toward the gravsled, but his voice sounded puzzled. "Get ready for what, sir?"

  "The boreal winds." Uhura began stacking equipment back on the sled, forcing herself to be careful despite the urgency sizzling through her. "Try to keep the sled packed as flat as you can, even if it means leaving something off. We'll have to put Chekov on top when we take down the tent. If we put him back in his insulation suit and bundle him in a sleeping bag, he should stay warm enough."

  "Sir, wait." Howard caught her hands as she reached for another carton of food. "I don't understand. Why are we taking down the tent? Once the winds come, won't we want to be inside it?"

  "Not if we want to get this iceberg to shore." Uhura lifted her trapped hands and thumped him on the chest impatiently. "Think, Ensign. We'll have a steady wind overhead and a floating raft underfoot. Haven't you ever gone sailing?"

  The young security guard ducked his head and let her go. "I grew up in Calgary, sir," he said apologetically. "We didn't see many sailboats up there."

  "Well, you'll get a close-up view of one now." Uhura pulled a coil of rope out from their climbing gear and handed it to him. "If I can't find anything taller, Mr. Howard, you're going to be the mast."

  * * *

  Wind blasted over the polar sea, embroidering its dark surface with a rippling lace of foam. Uhura glanced across the whitecapped water to the icy shore, much nearer and clearly visible now that the morning's mist had blown away. She frowned as she saw the looming wall of blue-green cliffs, shot through with glitters of reflected sunlight.

  "Mr. Howard!" She bent her head, trying to see her companion past the bulge of their tent-turned-sail. "Have you found us a place to land?"

  "I think so, sirbear a little more to the right!" The security guard had a better view of their forward progress than she did, stationed as he was beside the makeshift mast they'd fashioned out of tent supports.

  "Acknowledged." Uhura knelt beside the crude block and tackle she'd made from their climbing winch, bracing herself against the tug of the wind. The winch whirred into motion with reassuring quickness, reeling in the mainstay and hauling the sail several points to starboard. The tough nylon tent fabric shivered as the wind caught it at a new angle, then pulled taut again with a startlingly loud crack. The mast swayed, straining at the rope rigging she'd pitoned into the ice around it, but nothing broke or fell over.

  Uhura sighed in relief, feeling the ice floe rock uneasily beneath her as it shifted direction in the water. Caught between the drag of ocean current and the driving force of the boreal winds, the crude raft steered a wavering and uncertain path toward the shore. Uhura only hoped the wind would last long enough to get it there.

  She fastened the rope mainstay to its piton again, then glanced up at the gravsled, floating just beyond the edge of the sail. Bundled inside his sleeping bag, Chekov's limp body made a barely visible mound at the top of the equipment. Uhura regretted having to abandon so much of their bulky medical equipment, but knew bringing Chekov mattered more.

  "Almost there, Commander!" Howard's voice sounded suddenly eager. "Just a little bit more to the right "

  Uhura reached out for the winch, but never touched it. The ice floe shuddered to a plowing stop beneath her, slamming her forward into the sail just as the overstrained mast snapped and toppled over. She struggled to free herself from the settling fabric, terrified that it would take her with it into the ocean when it fell.

  "Commander!" Hands yanked at the sail, unraveling its tangled folds enough for Uhura to see sunlight glinting between them. She dove through the opening and was hauled to her feet just as the sail splashed down into the sea.

  "What happened?" Uhura stepped out of Howard's grip and turned to glance at the shore, baffled by their abrupt stop. The iceberg had jammed into a jutting pinnacle of ice with its blunt end firmly lodged against the shore. The waterlogged sail trailed in the water behind it, like the tail on a tree-caught kite. Uhura glanced down at Howard, biting her lip to keep from laughing. "So much for our careful navigating."

  "Yes, sir." The security guard sounded as if he were smiling. "We're not going to tell the chief about this, either, right?"

  "Rig
ht," Uhura said firmly. She glanced up, gauging the short, snow-covered slope that led to the ice sheet above them. "We'd better start climbing. Now that we've lost the tent, we're going to have to make some kind of shelter by nightfall."

  "Aye, sir." Howard picked up the tow bar of the gravsled and started up the hill, punching footprints into the snow with each step. Uhura followed him, stretching her legs to use the same set of tracks. "What kind of shelter did you have in mind, sir?"

  "I don't know," Uhura admitted. The snow crust got deeper as they made their way upward, making her breath puff out around her mask as she struggled through it. "I don't suppose that Nordstral manual you read told you how to make igloos?"

  "Afraid not." Howard leaned into the steepening slope, his own breath shortening with effort. "We could try to dig under the ice like the Kitka."

  Uhura shook her head vehemently. "Not a good plan. Spock said there might be more tectonic disturbances as Nordstral's magnetic field got worse. I think that means more icequakes."

  "Well, at least they didn't happen while we were floating out on our iceberg," Howard said cheerfully. He gave the gravsled a final heave that pushed it up over the icy crest of the hill ahead of him. "Maybe our luck's finally starting to turn, sir."

  "Maybe." Uhura hauled herself up over the lip of the ice sheet, eyes widening as she looked around. Only a few meters away from them the ice was split by an unexpected vertical slash of rock, its black crystalline surface shattered with frost cracks. It wasn't the stone island that startled Uhura, thoughit was the unmistakable shadow of a Kitka-small doorway, carved into its ice-scraped side. "And then again, Mr. Howard, maybe not."

  McCoy sat back and pressed the heels of his hands against his tired eyes, uncertain of just whenand by whomthe heavy-grit sandpaper under his eyelids had been replaced by gravel and shards of glass. A headache thumped insistently across the bridge of his nose and behind his left eye. His wounded hand kept time beneath its soiled coil of bandage. He couldn't remember if he'd taken any antibiotics, and couldn't recall the last time he'd eaten or slept.

  Wearily, but proudly, he watched Kirk prowl the room like a watchful, hunting catchecking and rechecking linkages, running the process through in his mind, and no doubt bestowing a beneficent prayer wherever he deemed appropriate.

  That mind. McCoy hadn't been kidding when he said he was no match for Montgomery Scott, but Kirk Tenacious as a terrier, the Enterprise captain stuck to their task, approaching the problem from every angle, until it began to release its secrets to him. McCoy was surprised to find that, after all these years, there were still depths he'd yet to discover in James Kirk.

  "Windisch showed me the ship's plans," Kirk had said when he and McCoy first began to survey the damage. He pointed at a machine squatting in several inches of water in the center of the room. "That's the oxygen generator. Saltwater infiltration has left it inoperable, not to mention that the ventiliation drive unit was located in the turret, and that's long gone. We've got to come up with another way to run the system."

  "That's a tall order, Jim." McCoy pursed his lips. "I know it sounds primitive, but "

  "Any suggestion is better than no suggestion at all. What's on your mind, Bones?"

  "Well, we've got a lot of manpower here. How about a treadmill system? That shouldn't be too awfully difficult to rig up."

  "You're not thinking like an engineer, Bones," Kirk prodded. "Whoever's on the treadmill will use more oxygen than they produce. We have to come up with something better than that."

  McCoy knew that tone in Kirk's voice from long experience. Not only did they have to come up with something better, they would come up with something better. Kirk would accept nothing less, not from McCoy, and particularly not from himself.

  The doctor stared around the room. Machinery was not his forte. He was more comfortable with the workings of a living organism than he was with the alloyed flesh and bone of the Soroya. He'd never quite been able to understand someone like Scotty or Spockespecially Spockwho could sit for hours tinkering with some busted piece of equipment, happy as a pig in

  He made his mind veer away, and instead watched Kirk out of the corner of his eye. The captain scowled at the oxygen generator as though it was a misbehaved intern. The mass of machinery was little more than a metal lung, once it was under way. And what did it take to power a lung?

  Kirk stamped his feet, splashing. "Stinks in here, doesn't it, Bones? I wonder if this is what the plankton holds smell like? No wonder they have a good ventilation system " His voice trailed off and he stared down, swishing at something in the water with the toe of one boot. His head slowly came up and he turned toward McCoy. "Plankton "

  "What about it, Jim?"

  Kirk gestured sharply with one hand, eyes focused into the middle distance as he fought to grasp whatever thought had flitted through his mind. He spoke slowly, measuring his words. "Spock said the biota on Nordstral acts just like earth plankton, except that it uses energy from the planet's magnetic field. That means it takes in carbon dioxide and water, manufactures carbohydrates, and discharges " His eyebrows rose and he stared at McCoy.

  "Oxygen! Do you think we can do it, Jim?"

  "We have to, Bones! It's our only chance. Soroya cleared her tanks when she picked us up, but she's collected more plankton since then. We should have enough to use."

  "Providing the tsunami didn't rupture the tanks."

  "You always look on the bright side of things," Kirk complained. "Nuie will be able to find out. That only leaves us with two problems."

  "Which are?" McCoy slid off the pipe he'd been sitting on and splashed down beside Kirk.

  "How to extract the oxygen from the plankton holds, and once we do, how to ventilate it through the ship."

  "Well, I haven't got the faintest clue for the first, but I know a way we might be able to do the second. When Nuie took me on tour of the ship, he showed me the drive unit. If that's still functionaland we'd better hope to the kraken it is or we're not going anywhere fastthere must be a way we can patch into it to jerry-rig a drive for the ventilation system."

  Kirk's smile was pure appreciation. "Bones, that's amazing! Sometimes you remind me of Spock."

  "There's no need to get insulting, Jim."

  The captain's smile widened into a toothy grin. "It's a great idea. Let's get to it."

  Nuie was left in control of the bridge, with a warning that every crewman not doing mandatory work should return to their bunk and try to relax, thereby using as little oxygen as possible. Kirk and McCoy commandeered a Kitka crewman and presented him with the problem.

  Watching the Kitka work, glad to take a backseat to his engineering expertise, McCoy was reminded unwillingly of Spock. The Kitka was coolly logical, his tools spread around him on the floor, his hand reaching unerringly for whatever he needed without his having to look up from his task. McCoy and Kirk lent a hand wherever necessary, be it hauling pipe from cannibalized sections of the ship, securing fixtures, or passing tools.

  The scariest part for McCoy was hooking it all together, drive unit to filtration system, and waiting to see if it worked. The ship listed even more dangerously when the engines were shut down to allow the linkup; McCoy, left with Kirk near the plankton tanks, was afraid they'd roll. They heard the Kitka over the repaired intercom, working in a near-silent fever. Still, he shouted with relief when the last bolt tightened. "Fire her up!"

  "Now, Nuie." Kirk spoke quietly into the intercom, voice laced with tension. They edged closer to the door in case the entire makeshift workings split.

  The initial hum of the engines at the other end of the ship built slowly, under command of Nuie's voice coming gently over the intercom, and McCoy held his breath.

  "Captain Kirk?" Nuie's voice over the comlink. "Hold your hand over the vent."

  Kirk raised a hand above his head and in front of the screening. A delicate breeze moved the hair on his wrist, and he smiled with such relief, McCoy finally relaxed. "Well done," Kirk said.
"Nuie, you've got quite a crew here."

  "I know this, Captain," the Kitka replied from the bridge, his voice counterpointed by a ragged cheer from the rest of the crew.

  "I'm certain you do. Oxygen roomhow's it look from your end?"

  "We've got a few tiny leaks we're pinning down, Captain, but other than that, I think we've got a go-ahead." The Kitka engineer sounded very satisfied, and with good reason.

  "All right. Keep monitoring. I want someone by the drive unit at all times."

  "Aye-aye, sir."

  And no rest for the weary at their end, either. Here it was, better than an hour later, and Kirk still roamed the tiny room outside the storage tanks, checking and rechecking their handiwork.

  McCoy realized he'd almost been asleep. He forced his eyes open and shrugged away from the wall, hunching deeper in the warmth of the seaman's sweater. He was about to suggest that one of them catch some shut-eye when Nuie's voice came over the intercom. "Captain, would you come to the bridge, please."

  Kirk exchanged looks with McCoy, his arched brows over weary eyes more than clearly conveying Now what? "What's the problem, Nuie?"

  "I'd rather speak to you here, sir."

  The captain sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm on my way." He winked tiredly at McCoy. "It's your baby, Bones."

  "I've never been that fond of kids, Jim. Besides, I'm not the babysitter Scotty is."

  Kirk nodded in understanding. His hand on McCoy's arm stopped the doctor from following him. "I have utmost faith in you."

  McCoy glowered. "I hate emotional blackmail." With a disgruntled sigh, he straddled a length of piping. "Don't be long."

  "Depends on the nature of the latest catastrophe." With a sardonic wave, Kirk was gone.

  McCoy swung his legs on either side of the pipe, swishing the water that covered the floor. He stuffed his gloved hands into his armpits and hunched his shoulders. When he got back aboard the Enterprise, the first thing he was going to do was take a hot shower. A long, hot shower. Maybe one that would last until they reached a starbase. And after that