TOS 67 - The Great Starship Race by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek [Star Trek]
Language: deu
Format: epub
Tags: \Star Trek
Published: 2011-01-02T07:58:56.006000+00:00

Chapter Ten

“Time for a calculated risk.”

Good bait.

Everybody—Spock, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, the bridge duty engineers, Tom, Royenne—turned to look at him. He was sure that down on the engineering level, Chief Engineer Scott was looking at the ceiling.

It was that now-we’re-in-trouble look.

Now that he had their attention, he fixed his gaze on the forward screen and made sure his voice was just loud enough to make it to all points on the bridge.

“The best way to keep ahead of them,” he said, “is to keep ahead of them.”

He knew Spock was staring at him, understanding that he was talking about the Romulans. If the others understood that—fine. If not, then they thought he was just talking about the other race contestants and no harm done.

His own crew knew what he meant, but Tom and Royenne—how would they react, as representatives of Gullrey, to see that a Starfleet captain was preoccupied by what to them was just another contestant? Would he lose the edge that the Federation might someday need in this sector?

“Who cares,” he muttered. “Mr. Chekov, plot a course z-plus ninety degrees to the galactic plane. Let me hear the course when you get it.”

Silence fell, except for the sound of Chekov’s sweating.

By the time he spoke again, his dark hair was plastered to his forehead like a line of belaying pins against a painted gunwale.

“Bearing, one five, mark zero… range, twelve parsecs,” Chekov offered. He turned to Kirk, his terse accent clipping the words. “Will that be sufficient, sir?”

“If not, we’ll go out farther. Mr. Sulu, implement at warp factor three.”

Sulu didn’t make any comment, but his voice was a rasp as he said, “Z-plus one five to the galactic plane, sir… warp factor three.”

On the forward viewer, the growling dark cloud of residue from a millions-year-old explosion suddenly fell away to the bottom of the screen as the ship turned upward and vaulted for the galaxy’s sky.

Kirk counted off the seconds, hoping that—

“Captain?”

Somebody would give him a chance to explain it out loud.

“Yes, Tom? Something I can do for you?”

“Would you mind… should I ask Mr. Spock?”

“No, no. I’d be happy to tell you. You see, most of the interference is in line with the racecourse, moving with the galaxy’s natural spiral flow. We’re going to rise above all that, go at a z-plus angle away from the course, ”up“’ in the common idea of up and down from where you’re standing. By going above the sweep of the distortions thrown off by that cloud, we might be able to find a frequency window.”

For what seemed like a shy and enthusiastic breed of people, the Rey would stomp right over their shyness for a thimbleful of new information.

Kirk figured that out when Tom appeared at his side, right next to the command chair, as if he’d been invited down there and had been there before. Nobody did that.

Well, nobody but McCoy, but that was different.

And Spock, but that was really different.

“How far ‘above’ will we go?” Tom asked.

“You’re watching, but you’re not paying attention,” Kirk told him gently.

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