Ice Trap Page 9

  "Tail blubber." The young Kitka smiled at her brilliantly. "Very best part of sea mammal!"

  Uhura's nose wrinkled despite herself. She heard Tenzing choke over what sounded like a laugh and knew if she refused to eat, Chekov would never let her hear the end of it. She took a deep breath and lifted one quivering bundle.

  "Lieutenant Commander Uhura!" The shout came muffled through the skin curtains, but it still sounded urgent. "Lieutenant Commander Uhura, where are you?"

  "Here!" She dropped the food and headed for the door, ignoring the fluting cries of the Kitka. Tenzing was already ahead of her, scanning the outside tunnel warily. A pale green insulation suit glimmered at one end. "What's the matter?"

  One of Steno's men scuttled toward her, obviously trying to hurry despite the cramped space. "We're getting some kind of signal on the monitor, but Mr. Steno can't make any contact. He wants to know if you can help us."

  "Of course I can." Uhura turned back to the alcove and found Nhym already sliding out after her. "I have to go away now." The girl's disappointment showed in her dark blue eyes. "For a little while," Uhura added quickly. "May I come back later?"

  "Yes!" The Kitka's answering trill was emphatic.

  "Nhym comes with you to show the way back."

  "All right." Uhura didn't have time to explain that Tenzing's tricorder could have guided them just as easily. She followed the Nordstral guard back to the junction of tunnels where Steno sat glowering at the communications console.

  "If you don't mind, Mr. Steno " Uhura pushed past him without waiting for a response and crouched in front of the console. A familiar contact code flickered across the screen and sang in her ear like a mother's call when she picked up the transceiver. "No wonder you couldn't make contact! That's not the shuttle party, that's the Enterprise."

  Steno looked disgruntled. "What would your starship be calling us about?"

  "I don't know." Her fingers ran across the control panel, automatically adjusting their output from wide surface band to a narrow skyward beam. "Enterprise, this is Lieutenant Commander Uhura. Do you read me?"

  There was a pause before a familiar calm voice came through the console's falling howl of interference. "We read you clearly, Lieutenant Commander Uhura," said Spock. "And it is gratifying to know that you are still alive."

  For some strange reason, the static behind him sounded like Sulu cheering.

  "The shuttle exploded?"

  When Chekov asked the question, it was in the desperate hope Uhura would laugh and tell him that wasn't what she'd said at all.

  Instead, she stood in the open doorway of their dome tent with her hands on a young native girl's shoulders and nodded miserably. "I just got the message from Spock."

  Publicker, sitting on the edge of the gravsled next to Howard, looked up from his half-finished dinner with blond brows knit in confusion. "You mean the shuttle we're looking for, don't you?" He had the top of his insulation suit unsealed and peeled back, just like the other men in the tent, and the bright white of his suit's body slip highlighted the muscle tension in his shoulders and neck. "Not our shuttle."

  Chekov crumpled together the remainder of his own rations and paced across the tent to jam them into the disposal unit. "She means our shuttle."

  "But " Publicker glanced anxiously at Howard, at Uhura, up again at Chekov. "But that means we're stranded."

  "Yes, Mr. Publicker." Sighing, Chekov ran both hands through his hair. "We're stranded."

  "Only temporarily."

  Chekov turned, hands locked behind his neck, and frowned at Uhura. "How temporarily?" He'd allotted a certain amount of extra rations and gear, but not enough to survive on Nordstral indefinitelynot even to attempt a hike to the equator, if the situation came to that.

  "Mr. Scott's working on modifications to one of our shuttles," Uhura explained, making a point, Chekov noticed, to turn a reassuring smile on Publicker. "He thinks we can look forward to a pickup within thirty-two hours."

  Howard looked up from policing his own dinner area. "I thought the company shuttles were already modified specifically for use here on Nordstral." He reached over and gathered Publicker's things together with his own. "What's to keep our shuttles from having the same problems?"

  Old navigator knowledge filtered to the surface even as Chekov paced the four-stride width of their tent, tallying their options. "Our shuttles have to tolerate warp speeds, so they're better shielded. Nordstral's magnetic disturbances are less likely to disrupt their engines." Not that those magnetic disturbances hadn't already disrupted plenty. Chekov wondered how Steno had reacted to this news, and if the planetary official intended to abort their rescue mission now that his own skin could be in danger. Chekov wouldn't put it past him, and, in fact, more than half expected word to come up at any moment.

  "The magnetic fluxes have been a lot worse in the past couple months." One of Steno's young retainers ducked his head past Uhura's so he could look into the tent from where he waited behind her, out in the snow. Pushing his visor away from his face, he glanced among the Starfleet occupants until he caught sight of Chekov to his left, then continued earnestly to the lieutenant, "The Kitka say it's their god, raging in his sleep about some sacrilege. All I know is, the pilots say it didn't used to be this bad. And now, losing two shuttles so close together " He shrugged apologetically, as though the rest were obvious.

  Chekov paused in his pacing to look at the boy. He was half as dark as Uhura, maybe all of nineteen, with a narrow face and huge, soulful brown eyes. He was also the first Nordstral employee to speak civilly to the Starfleet contingent. That in and of itself made him noteworthy. "What's your name?"

  "Jimenez, sir. Emilio Jimenez."

  He waved the boy inside, catching Uhura's eye to nod her in as well. "Well, there's no sense standing there with the door open, Jimenez. We may not have a shuttle, but we can at least hold onto our heat."

  Publicker gave a half-hearted grunt. "Such as it is."

  Chekov ignored the ensign's comment. He and Publicker had already had their discussion about what temperature they would keep the tent's interior. Chekov's memories of poorly insulated houses sunk into quagmires of melted permafrost had finally prevailed over Publicker's loving reminiscences of his native California, so the automatic thermal units were set to maintain the tent's air temperature at no higher than ten degrees centigrade. That was positively tropical by Nordstral standards, and less likely to melt them through to the bottom of the ice sheet by morning.

  Little native girl still clinging to one hand, Uhura stepped out of Jimenez's way when he turned to seal the doorway. Chekov stood behind Uhura's shoulder to look down at the girl, with her mass of silver hair and curious violet eyes, and found himself suddenly uncomfortable with how the other Kitka might react to one of their children being locked up in a tent filled with unfamiliar human men.

  Leaning over Uhura's shoulder, Chekov said quietly into her ear, "Maybe your friend had better wait outside."

  Uhura turned to look at him in surprise, her lips pursed in disapproval and annoyance. "Chekov, she's just a little girl, and she's as cold as the rest of us. She's not going to do anything."

  He started to protest that what the little girl might do wasn't his concern, but stopped himself with a sigh. Uhura had spent hours before planetfall studying the Kitka culture, and she'd already been walking among them down below for at least an hour. If there were anything about this situation that might upset the native elders, she was in a better position to know than he. He nodded, smiling down at the little girl when she tipped her head back to blink up at him.

  "All right," he said softly to Uhura, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound that way."

  Uhura reached back to squeeze his arm, smiling to prove he'd been forgiven.

  Officers shifted and gear was shoved aside as everyone congregated toward the center of the now-crowded tent, where the automatic thermal put off its soothing waves of gentle warmth. Uhura took a seat on the gravsled bet
ween Howard and Publicker, her native companion squatting comfortably at her feet. Jimenez settled himself on their stacked sleeping gear across the thermal from the others, and Chekovfeeling oddly like the family watch dogsat on the floor to Howard's left, more or less between his people and Jimenez. Warmth from the silent thermal felt good as it soaked through the open front of his insulation suit and into the body slip beneath.

  Without being told, Publicker dug out an extra ration pack and tossed it across to Jimenez. The Nordstral employee caught it between both hands with a grin and a sincere, "Gracias. The food here isn't exactly what I'm used to."

  Uhura only made a little sound of amusement, but the Enterprise security force laughed aloud. "We brought extra," Chekov assured Jimenez, and the young man thanked them again.

  Howard, meanwhile, had slipped out one of his breakfast packs and liberated a honey compress to dangle in front of the native girl's nose. She sniffed at it, a bit cautiously, then furrowed her brow with concern when no scent reached her past the airtight seal. Fumbling inside his pushed-back hood, Howard activated his translator and said slowly, "Go aheadyou can eat it."

  Chekov watched the girl cross her hands on the flooring between her feet, cocking her head to half watch Howard while his translator struggled with the alien phrasing. Although she tried to keep her wide face expressionless, the lieutenant recognized the sharp brightness of fear in her twilight eyes and felt a pang of regret. The price of eternal vigilance, he thought while Uhura coaxed the girl to take Howard's offeringhaving native children be as frightened of us as we are distrustful of their elders. He wished they'd have longer to stay with the Kitka, time to learn from them and learn with them so that no side would have to be afraid of the other. Wouldn't Uhura just laugh to hear him thinking that.

  A shrill Kitka whistle and the sound of humans laughing called Chekov's attention back to the doings in the tent. Uhura's native friend had apparently divined the workings of the ration air seal and now sat, eyes wide and lips pulled into an amazed smile, while she chewed the first bite off her honey compress.

  "See?" Howard reached behind Uhura to swat at Publicker's shoulder, inciting another round of laughter. "Love of sweets is universal. I told you."

  Apparently responding to whatever Howard's translator made of his remark, the little girl broke a fingerful off the compress and passed it over her head to Publicker. He accepted it with a blink of surprise and a short, untranslated, "Thanks." Pieces followed for Uhura and Howard, but when the girl stretched her hand out to offer a clump to Chekov, he only grinned and shook his head. "No, thank you. I'm not hungry."

  Chekov saw Uhura roll her eyes, as usual. Apparently, she didn't care whether he'd just finished his dinner, she believed hunger had nothing to do with eating, as far as Chekov could tell.

  Reaching around the back of his collar to locate the unit in his hood, he depressed the button with his thumb. "I'm not hungry," he said again, waiting this time for the slow, stilted translator to finish its wailing. "I don't need to eatyou can keep that."

  That only seemed to reassure the girl marginally. She sank back against Uhura's legs, retaining what remained of her honey compress but frowning at Chekov in that way children do when they suspect they're being made fun of. Laughing, Uhura stroked her hair and leaned over to report, "Don't feel bad, honeyhe does the same thing to me all the time."

  Chekov snorted. "You just don't give up so easily." Propping his elbows on his knees, he folded his hands between them and leaned his chin on his fists. "Thirty-two hours?" He sighed, his mind sliding quickly back to their predicament.

  Uhura shrugged. "Maybe sooner. You know how Scotty is."

  Chekov nodded. Careful but quick, and the best chance they had of safe rescue, even hoping for some sort of Nordstral ground transport.

  "Is this going to keep us from bringing in that shuttle crew?" Howard asked.

  Chekov glanced up at him, shook his head with a frown. "No. We came down with everything we need to locate the survivors." All the same, his brain started sorting through mental lists of equipment and supplies, pondering how far they could stretch all of it. "They still need to be found, even if we can't lift them off-planet immediately."

  "The Kitka tunnels are warm, at least." Even mentioning the native race prompted Uhura to unconsciously brush the little girl's hair. "If all else fails, I'd think the company could send a harvester north for us."

  Jimenez shook his head emphatically, struggling to swallow a mouthful of food before speaking. "The ice sheet's almost five hundred meters thick around here. Even if they wanted to, I don't think they've got a ship that can crack through."

  "Ground transport, then," Publicker suggested, looking hopeful, and Jimenez nodded.

  "It takes a while," the Nordstral man admitted, "but, yessir, they've got sledges that could make the trip."

  "A while?" Chekov prompted.

  Jimenez shrugged. "A week, sir. Maybe two."

  They wouldn't starve or freeze to death, then, although they might have to cut back to two meager meals a day. Uhura would hate that, Chekov thought. "All right." He glanced around at them, trying to seem decisive and sure. "Come first light, we'll set out looking as we originally planned." He cocked a questioning look at Jimenez. "Has Mr. Steno had any luck contacting the survivors?"

  "No, sir. And that's not good." Jimenez sounded genuinely apologetic, and Chekov felt a surge of annoyance with Steno that the man could make his own people feel guilty about something none of them had any control over. "We've found in the past that if we don't locate missing personnel on the ice sheets within twenty-four hours, we usually don't find them at all. That's why we depend so much on sending up flares for the local Kitka." He cast helpless eyes toward the food in his lap. "Dr. Stehle's group has been missing almost four days."

  "We'll find them."

  Jimenez looked up at Chekov, face open and hopeful, and relaxed without even seeming to realize he did so. The lieutenant fought off a faint, uncomfortable twinge. This must be how Kirk did it, he realized. You say the words as though nothing made by God or man could make you break them, then worry later about whether or not you can make them come true. "We'll find them," he said again, as though repetition would help.

  "Not if our children continue to bother you while you're working."

  The words over Chekov's translator startled him, but not nearly so much as they did the young Kitka girl at Uhura's feet. Leaping upright, Nhym stuffed the remainder of Howard's treat into Uhura's hands and spun to face the doorway. The seal whisked open and fluttered aside, and a broad, unmasked Kitka face appeared in the opening, surrounded by brilliant feathers and swirls of windblown snow.

  "Go back, Nhym, to your grandparents. These people don't want you here."

  Chekov recognized the arrogance of the Kitka's words even though he couldn't recognize the face. "We asked her to be here, Alion. She may stay."

  Alion kept his stare fixed steadily on Nhym. "She may do as I tell her, and I tell her not to bother you. Go, Nhym."

  Uhura rose, keeping one hand on the girl's shoulder as she fitted her insulation suit hood back over her head. The young girl was obviously scared. "I'll go with you, honey," she offered. Her voice was comforting, but Chekov could read the flashes of anger in Uhura's eyes. "You promised me I could come back."

  "Oh, yes!" Nhym reached up to tug at Uhura's hand. "Yes!"

  Chekov flicked a glance at Tenzing. She nodded silent understanding, an overnight pack already tucked beneath one arm.

  "I'd better get back down, too." Jimenez stood, looking awkwardly about with the empty ration pack in both hands. Howard leaned across to take it from him, passed it to Publicker for disposal. "Mr. Steno said he didn't want us spending time with you, either," Jimenez explained with a shrug as he followed Uhura toward the door. "I guess he's afraid we'll get smart or something." He bobbed a nod to the security force. "Thanks for the food."

  Chekov acknowledged him with a wave. "No problem."


  "I'll be back up before morning," Uhura promised from the doorway.

  Chekov caught her eyes with his, knowing he didn't have the authority to stop her, but wanting her to see his displeasure with her decision. She conceded his feelings with a nod, but still slipped out past Alion, with Nhym and Tenzing in tow. The hiss of gusting wind drowned out even the crunching of their footsteps on the frozen snow.

  Alion stepped a little to one side when Jimenez moved to squeeze past him, but didn't relinquish the doorway. The Kitka's persistent lingering bothered Chekov, made him uneasy about being down on the floor with an entire tent between the two of them. He pushed to his feet to join Alion at the doorway. "Can I help you with something?"

  The Kitka's round, flat face was slit by a narrow smile. His weird eyesa white-ice green in contrast to Nhym's brilliant indigodanced in what might have been either laughter or secret malice. "No one here needs help, Lieutenanteither from you or your Federation. I am in control here."

  Hearing the native's voice come straight from his mouth in fluid English snatched Chekov's breath like a sudden slap. So much for the northern natives not being able to speak human language. Alion must have learned English during the time he claimed to have spent at the equator. When one of the men rose restlessly behind him, Chekov thrust a hand back without turning to keep the crewman in his place. "I'm glad you chose to come to us this way," he told Alion in a tone held carefully neutral. "In fact, I rather prefer it."

  "Yes." The native glanced over Chekov's shoulder at whoever stood toward the back of the tent. "So do I. It grants one a great deal of insight." His eyes darted back to Chekov's, and he commented dryly, "For exampleamong my people, dark eyes are considered a sign of youth and stupidity."

  Even Publickerthe only blue-eyed human in the tentuttered an indignant protest to that.

  "Among my people," Chekov told Alion without responding to Publicker's grumble, "your value isn't judged by the color of your eyes."

  Alion's smile twisted wryly. "Then you'll be the ones at a disadvantage here, won't you?"