Kirk knew before he finished materializing that something had changed, and nothing in the transporter reading said so.
The beam had been clean. The Enterprise had held a steady orbit all night at fourteen thousand kilometers, and nothing had come near her. Spock's instruments had recorded none of the navigational errors that had twice reported the ship as lying below the surface of the planet, and the signal from under the plateau had not come back. By every measurement available to him, Altair IV had spent the night behaving itself.
Kirk trusted that about as far as he could have thrown the planet.
The transporter set him down on the four stones beside the house with the morning already clear over the plateau. The air was cool enough that he could smell wet ground under the garden and something flowering down the western slope. Spock arrived behind him with the tricorder already open. Then McCoy. Then Ostrow, who had brought two instruments and no breakfast.
The tiger was lying beside Alta at the edge of the terrace. It raised its head when they appeared, which meant nothing at all, because the animal had done that at every arrival since they came. It had never cared for the effect and had never entirely settled the question of whether people who appeared out of nothing ought to count as prey.
What bothered him was Robby.
The android was standing behind Alta and a little to one side. Not at his usual distance, which was the width of a terrace and the length of a conversation. Close.
Alta got up when she saw them.
"Good morning."
"Morning."
She had not slept. Her hair was tied back badly, which Kirk took for confirmation, and there was a cup on the wall beside her that had not been touched.
"Your father?"
"In his study."
"Since last night?"
"No. He came out at dawn and asked whether I had reconsidered."
Kirk waited.
"I had not."
"How did that go?"
"He said we would discuss it when I was thinking clearly."
McCoy made a sound.
Spock turned to him. "I said nothing."
"You made a sound, Doctor."
"That is not the same thing."
Alta almost smiled. Kirk did not.
"Where is he now?"
"Waiting for you."
That interested him more than anything else she had said. Morbius had spent two days wishing them off his planet. A man did not begin waiting for James Kirk unless he had decided something overnight.
"Robby."
The android turned.
"You all right?"
"Yes."
"You're closer to her than usual."
"Yes."
Kirk waited. Robby did not go on.
"Why?"
The android's eyes went briefly to the house and came back.
"I prefer to be here."
Not that he had been instructed. Not that Alta had asked. I prefer.
Spock's tricorder had stopped moving. Kirk looked at him and got the smallest shake of the head. Nothing. That was beginning to be a reading in its own right.
* *
Morbius came out into the doorway dressed as he had been on the first morning, the high collar, the dark clothes, everything so exactly ordered that Kirk found himself wondering whether the man had slept in them or had got up early enough to make sure it did not look as though he had.
"Captain."
"Doctor."
Morbius looked past him at the other three. "I had expected you alone."
"You've known me three days. You should know better."
"I am learning."
It might have been humor. Kirk did not think so.
Morbius came out onto the terrace. "We should settle this."
Alta turned toward him. He would not look at her, and Kirk marked it.
"Settle what, exactly?"
"My daughter."
"No."
Morbius's eyes came back to him. "No?"
"Alta isn't a question for you and me to settle."
"Captain, she has lived nineteen years on this planet."
"That makes her nineteen."
"You know nothing whatever about her."
"Enough to know she can answer for herself."
"Father," said Alta.
"Not now."
The tiger lifted its head.
Kirk caught it. So did Robby.
"She has no conception of what she is asking for," Morbius said. "Five hours aboard your vessel and a few conversations with strangers do not constitute preparation for life in the Federation."
"No," said Kirk. "They don't."
Morbius had braced for an argument and been handed agreement, and it took him a moment. "Then you understand."
"I understand she isn't prepared. Neither was I, the first time I left Iowa."
McCoy looked at the stones.
"That is hardly comparable."
"No. I had people around me. Teachers. Friends. More than one road out of town. She has had you."
Morbius looked at his daughter then, and the trouble with the look was the love in it.
Kirk had seen possessiveness wearing love's clothes often enough to know the difference, and this was not that. Everything he had seen in three days said the man loved her. The difficulty was that somewhere in twenty years Morbius had decided that loving her gave him jurisdiction over her.
"I kept her alive," he said.
Alta flinched.
"Yes," said Kirk. "You did."
"On a world where forty people died."
"Yes."
"Where her mother died."
The terrace went quiet.
"Father."
Morbius heard himself a half second after the rest of them did. His voice changed slightly, and it would have been better if it had not.
"I did not mean."
"I know what you meant."
"No. You do not."
"I think I do."
The tiger stood up.
Kirk turned his head, because the movement had been too fast. The animal was on its feet beside Alta with its body angled toward her father, tail low, ears forward.
She put a hand against its shoulder. "Easy."
It did not respond to her at all.
Robby took one step.
"Robby," said Morbius.
The android stopped.
Kirk looked between the two of them. "What was that?"
"I do not understand the question."
"You stopped him."
"I said his name."
"You stopped him."
"I did nothing of the kind."
"He did not," said Robby.
That should have settled it. It did not.
Alta's hand was moving slowly through the fur at the animal's shoulder. "He is upset."
McCoy had gone very still. "Alta. Move away from him."
The tiger's head turned. Not toward McCoy.
Toward Alta.
Something cold went down the back of Kirk's neck, and her face said she had felt it too. The animal had known her since it was born. It had slept outside her door when she was ill. It had followed her through the garden every morning of her life and let her put both arms around its neck while three armed strangers stood ten meters off and watched.
It was looking directly at her. Not past her. At her.
"Robby," said Kirk.
The android moved, and the tiger growled.
Alta froze.
It was a different sound from the one Kirk had heard the day before, when the animal had stared at empty air beyond the garden wall and would not stop. That one had been a warning.
This one had already decided something.
Morbius took a step. "Alta."
The tiger's lips came back off its teeth.
"Don't," said Kirk.
Morbius stopped.
Alta's hand came away from the animal's shoulder very slowly. "Easy. Easy, now."
Its eyes followed her hand.
"He has never."
"I know," said Kirk.
Robby was two meters off and closing. Spock had the tricorder up.
"No anomalous energy reading."
"Forget the tricorder."
"I have not forgotten it, Captain."
The tiger crouched.
Kirk knew that movement. He had seen it on a dozen worlds in animals that shared no common ancestor and had nevertheless arrived at the same arithmetic. Weight going forward. Hindquarters gathering. A distance being solved.
"Alta," he said quietly. "Don't run."
She did not.
Morbius whispered her name.
The tiger sprang, and Kirk fired.
The beam caught it across the shoulder in midair and the animal came apart out of its own leap, twisting, and struck the terrace stones hard enough to slide. For a moment it lay there with one foreleg folded under it.
Then it got up.
It should not have been able to. Kirk had put a full stun charge into it at four meters, enough to drop a man for an hour and more than enough for anything with a nervous system, and the animal came off the stones with its hindquarters still working and turned toward Alta.
Not toward Kirk. Not toward the man who had shot it.
Alta.
Kirk's thumb moved on the setting.
Morbius saw his hand. "No."
The tiger gathered.
"Captain, do not."
Kirk fired.
The second beam was brighter and it did not knock the animal anywhere. The tiger simply stopped being there. There was an outline of light where it had been, holding its shape for perhaps a quarter of a second, long enough for every person on that terrace to see the position of the legs, and then there was the far wall of the garden and the morning behind it, and nothing on the stones at all.
Alta screamed.
Robby reached her before the sound had finished and put himself between her and a place where there was nothing to be between her and.
Nobody moved for several seconds.
*
Kirk lowered the phaser.
The sun had come up another degree through all of it and the light had moved across the terrace, and there was nothing on the stones. No mark. No scoring. Not so much as the dust an animal leaves where it has lain all morning.
Alta came out from behind Robby and stopped at the place.
"No."
"Alta," said McCoy.
"No."
She did not kneel, because there was nothing to kneel beside. She stood where her tiger had been and looked at an empty square meter of her father's terrace with her hands open and nothing in them.
Morbius crossed to her.
He did not touch her. Kirk watched him not do it.
"I raised him," Alta said. Her voice had gone very small.
"I know."
"He was born here."
"I know."
"He never hurt me."
"I know."
Kirk heard the man say it three times, the same two words with nothing behind them, and something in his own mind turned over and did not come to rest.
Spock had come up on his other side. "Captain."
"Not now."
"I believe it must be now."
Kirk followed the Vulcan's eyes.
Morbius was no longer looking at the empty stones. He was looking at his daughter, and what was in his face was not grief by itself.
It was horror. Not at what had happened. At when it had happened.
Kirk knew it because he had seen it once already, on this same terrace, when a garden path bent like a spoon in water and a nineteen year old ensign went six meters through the air, and Edward Morbius had said he had seen nothing rather too quickly.
Now the man was looking at his own daughter as though something impossible had just turned out not to be.
Kirk stepped toward him. "Doctor."
Morbius looked up.
"When did that animal last attack her?"
"Never."
"Anyone?"
"No."
"Threaten her?"
"No."
"Show aggression toward her, ever, in nineteen years?"
"No."
"Captain," said Alta.
Kirk kept his eyes where they were. "What happened last night?"
"You know what happened."
"I know your daughter told you she was leaving."
The change in Morbius's face was very small, and it was there.
"And so?"
"And so twelve hours later an animal that has loved her since the day it was born tried to tear her apart on this terrace."
"Do not."
"Do not what?"
"Use this."
Kirk looked at him for a moment. "I don't know yet what this is."
"Then stop behaving as though you do."
"I'm not behaving as anything."
"You are standing on the spot where an animal my daughter loved ceased to exist, and you are turning it into evidence against me."
Alta turned her head. "Evidence of what?"
Morbius said nothing at all.
"That," said Kirk, "is what I would like to know."
*
Robby had not moved from where he had put himself.
"Robby."
"Yes."
"What happened to that animal?"
"I do not know."
"Could something have been controlling it?"
"I do not know."
"Could one of the Krell systems?"
The pause ran a beat too long, and Morbius turned sharply. "Do not answer that."
Robby looked at him.
"Why not?" said Kirk.
"Because he cannot know."
"I asked him."
"And I am telling you that the question is beyond him."
"That is correct," said Robby.
Something went out of Morbius's shoulders, and Kirk watched the man begin to be relieved.
"But that is not the same as impossible," said Robby.
Morbius's face emptied.
Ostrow came forward for the first time since he had materialized. "What is possible?"
Robby looked toward the ridge. "I do not know."
"You keep saying that."
"Yes."
"You were built by them."
"Yes."
"You have access to their systems."
"Some."
"You read their language."
"Some."
"You recognize their machines."
"Some."
Ostrow stopped. Robby waited, which he did better than anything else alive.
The Vulcan took a breath that Kirk was fairly sure had been a Vulcan deciding not to raise his voice.
"Then tell me what you do know."
Robby looked at Alta, who was still standing at the empty place.
"I know that something below us changed last night."
Morbius went completely still.
"When?" said Kirk.
"After Alta told her father that she intended to leave."
Nobody moved. Kirk felt the pieces come onto the table. Not into any order. Onto the table.
"Changed how?"
"I cannot describe it in your language."
"Try."
Robby considered it for some time.
"A connection became available."
Ostrow came another step. "Between what?"
"I do not know."
"Enough," said Morbius.
"No," said Kirk, and it came out harder than he had meant it to.
Morbius met it. "This is my home."
"And that was my officer who went six meters through the air yesterday."
"Which has nothing whatever to do with this."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you."
"No. But I know that something happened underneath us within an hour of your daughter telling you she was leaving, and I know that this morning the animal that has protected her all its life tried to kill her, and I am finished treating those as two separate facts."
Alta said, "Captain."
He looked up at her.
She was standing where the tiger had been, with her hands open and perfectly clean, and that was somehow worse than blood would have been. There had been something there four minutes ago that she had raised from a cub, and now there was nothing on her hands or on the stones or anywhere else, and she had not even been left something to bury.
He stopped. This was not an interrogation room, and she was standing in the place where the thing she loved had stopped existing, and he had been the one holding the phaser.
He put it away.
"I'm sorry."
She looked up at him for a long moment. "I know."
Kirk glanced at McCoy, who understood him and went to her without touching her.
"Come inside."
"Not yet."
"All right."
* *
Spock had gone to the edge of the terrace with the tricorder aimed down at the ground. Kirk joined him.
"Anything?"
"No."
"That's getting less comforting every time you say it."
"Agreed."
Kirk looked at him, because Spock did not hand out agreement at that speed.
"Say it."
"The sequence is of concern."
"Which sequence?"
"The inquiry beneath the plateau. The transient distortion. Ensign Rivera. The change Robby describes. Now the animal."
"You think they're connected."
"I think we no longer have sufficient justification to assume they are not."
Behind them Ostrow said, "Captain."
He had yesterday's record open on his tricorder again.
"The signal. I told you that three of the relationships violated every rule I had derived in six years."
"I remember."
"I was wrong."
Spock came away from the wall.
"Not about the relationships," said Ostrow, looking at the instrument as though it had misled him on purpose. "About why they were impossible. I assumed the grammar was malformed."
"And now?"
"Now I believe it was not written for a reader like me."
Spock understood before Kirk did. "A cognitive limitation."
"The relationships are not contradictory. They require a reader able to hold more than one relational state in the same position at the same time."
"English," said McCoy.
Ostrow did not react to the tone. "A human mind cannot do it."
"A Vulcan mind?" said Kirk.
Ostrow hesitated, which Kirk had not seen him do before.
"No."
Kirk thought about a machine in a sitting room, and a man who could look at an engineer's mathematics and give the answer without doing the work.
"Morbius."
Ostrow studied him. "Possibly."
Morbius laughed once, and there was nothing in it. "You are constructing an absurdity out of a dead animal."
"No," said Kirk.
He looked at the bare stones, and then at Alta standing beside them, and then at the house.
"We're constructing it out of everything."
The argument was coming. He could see it gathering in the older man's face, and he cut it off before it arrived.
"Doctor, from this moment nobody enters the lower installation alone. Nobody operates a Krell system without Mr. Spock present. And Alta comes aboard the Enterprise if she chooses to."
"You have no authority."
"I have enough."
"You presume."
"I have an injured officer, a hostile phenomenon my instruments cannot find, a planet that has twice interfered with my ship, and now an animal that behaved in a way every person standing here tells me is impossible. I am finished presuming this is safe."
Morbius stared at him.
Alta spoke from behind them. "I am going."
Her father turned. She was not looking at Kirk at all.
"I am going with them."
Something moved across Morbius's face. Kirk saw pain, and then anger, and then something underneath both of them that was gone too quickly to be named.
The ground moved.
Not much. A tremor through the soles of their boots, no more than a heavy door closing somewhere in a large building. The terrace lights flickered. Spock's tricorder began to sound and Ostrow's answered it a half second later.
Robby turned toward the ridge.
Morbius did not move at all.
"Doctor," said Kirk.
The tremor stopped. So did both instruments. The silence that came after it was larger than the one that had come before.
Morbius looked at his daughter.
"I would never hurt you."
Alta's face changed. "I know."
And the hair came up on the back of Kirk's neck, because nobody on that terrace had accused him of it.
Not yet.
