Star Trek: The Original Series - 084 - Traitor Winds by L. A. Graf

Author:L. A. Graf
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Video Game Adaptations, Science Fiction & Fantasy, TV, Movie, Star Trek, United States, Science Fiction, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 0671869132
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2000-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Starfleet Academy

San Francisco, North America

Terrestrial Date: December 24, 2269

1130 hours PST

THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE transmitted to Starfleet’s main transporter facility had been simple: the word “peace” in New Esperanto, repeated fifty times. It had come back transformed into a nightmare gibberish of letters, all meaning lost and no pattern discernible in it. Uhura scanned the flimsy printout twice, then shook her head.

“I can see why this confused you, Ensign.” She drew a dark finger across one line of text, noting the total lack of gaps between the letters. “Did you check this output against the Communications Library’s records of planetary interference?”

Ensign Cercone nodded. “The library computer couldn’t figure it out at all. That’s why I came to you, sir.”

“Hmm.” Uhura glanced across her desk at her student’s expectantly alight face, and couldn’t bring herself to say that she couldn’t figure it out, either. In any case, she reminded herself tartly, puzzling over a communications problem was far more productive than sitting here wondering how Admiral Kirk could possibly find proof of his crew’s innocence in time to save them. Which was how she’d spent most of her time since she’d finished grading the exams.

“Do you think it could be neutrino interference, Commander?” Cercone asked. “From solar flares?”

Uhura found herself shaking her head before she’d even thought about the question. She had to stop and search her mind to find out what made her so sure.

“I don’t think it can be any kind of natural interference, Ensign,” she said slowly. She traced a finger down the flimsy again. Every garbled line was completely filled with English letters, just as the original message had been. “You used Federation standard transmission code to send this, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know how many bits of information are needed to correctly identify a single letter in Federation standard?”

“Sixty-four,” Cercone said promptly. “The minimum number needed to transmit the seven major alphabets and pictographs of Earth, plus the five Vulcan alphabets, the six branches of Andorian letters, and the entire Tellarite trading symbology.”

“Very good.” Uhura hid a smile, remembering when she had been just as quick to spill out everything she knew in response to a simple question. Admiral Kirk had cured everyone in his crew of that habit—except, perhaps, for Mr. Spock. “Now, if natural interference was randomly altering some of the individual bits of code you sent, do you think all the altered packets would still code out as English letters?”

The ensign’s mouth opened to reply, but what actually came out was a yelp of surprise and dawning comprehension. “No, of course not!” She skated her fingers accusingly over the all-English letters on her printout. “Some of these should be Russian shcha’s, or Arabic qãf’s, or Vulcan iluzal’s . . .”

“Precisely.” Uhura tapped at the flimsy. “What we have here, Ensign, is a deliberately miscoded message.”

Cercone looked stunned. “You mean someone’s trying to sabotage my senior honors thesis, sir?”

Uhura paused in surprise. She was so used to encountering coded messages in distant and unfriendly parts of the galaxy that it hadn’t occurred to her how odd it was to find one here on Earth.

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