"The official report begins here," Kirk said to the recorder. "Five days out from Starbase Eleven, on approach to a planet that had been empty for twenty years."
He let that stand a moment before he went on.
"It was empty. Every instrument we had said so. Then Mr. Spock found the house."
* * *
Five days earlier
Altair IV was still too distant to show detail when Spock found the house.
The Enterprise had been decelerating for an hour, dropping out of warp at the outer edge of the system while the planet ahead brightened on the main viewscreen. At first it was one more point of light among thousands. Then the computer resolved a disk, green at its edges, broad red-brown land masses turning under thin bands of cloud.
Ostrow had been on the bridge since they entered the system and in all that time had said almost nothing. He stood behind Spock at the science station with one hand on the rail, watching the data move across the secondary display. Kirk had read his file on the way out from the starbase, and found himself watching the hand rather than the screen. It was perfectly steady.
Spock adjusted the sensor resolution. "Current orbital conditions are consistent with those recorded by the final search mission. Atmospheric composition unchanged within measurable tolerances. No artificial emissions. No active communications."
Kirk sat with one elbow on the arm of the command chair. "Life?"
"Insufficient resolution at this distance."
McCoy had come up to the bridge rail, ostensibly to look at the planet. "That's got to be disappointing," he said to Ostrow.
Ostrow did not turn. "What?"
"Six years of work to get here, and so far the place is doing absolutely nothing."
"That is preferable to several of the alternatives."
McCoy considered this. "You're going to get along with Spock just fine."
Spock ignored him. Ostrow almost managed to.
Sulu glanced back from the helm. "Forty-seven minutes to standard orbit, Captain."
"Maintain approach speed."
Kirk looked at the viewscreen again. The planet did not look forbidden, and that bothered him more than he had expected.
Starfleet had hung that designation on a handful of worlds, and most of them announced their reasons from millions of kilometers out: radiation, atmospheric instability, hostile installations, biological contamination. Altair IV showed none of it. It turned peacefully under its green atmosphere, a world that had swallowed a survey expedition and then spent twenty years behaving as though nothing had happened.
Spock straightened slightly. "Captain."
Kirk heard the change in his voice and was on his feet before he had decided to be. "What have you got?"
"I am comparing our scans with those of the third search vessel."
Ostrow moved closer to the science console.
Spock enlarged a section of the southern hemisphere. The image sharpened in stages until a plateau came up, bordered by ridges and broken ground. Near the edge of it sat a small geometric shape that the terrain had no business producing.
"A structure?" Kirk said.
"Yes."
"From the Bellerophon?"
"No."
Spock brought the archived scan up beside the current one. The older record showed the same plateau, the same ridges, the same shadows. Nothing stood on it.
Kirk came down from the command level. "You're certain that's the same ground?"
"The coordinates are identical."
Ostrow leaned over the display, and his attention became absolute. "Increase magnification."
Spock did. The structure came clearer, low and angular, wings spreading from a central section. Whatever else it was, no weather and no geology had made it.
McCoy came closer and looked at it for a while. "It looks like a house."
"That," said Spock, "is a reasonable description."
Kirk looked from one image to the other. "When was the older scan taken?"
"Seventeen years ago."
"And nothing was there."
"Correct."
Ostrow had come as close to the console as the station allowed. "Captain, Starfleet authorized a surface research settlement on this planet eleven weeks before the Bellerophon was lost. The expedition carried prefabricated housing, and the authorization is in the file. What is not in the file is any confirmation of what was completed, or where it stood."
"And the search missions?"
"I have examined every scan the three of them returned, individually, more than once. There is no structure on that plateau in any of them." Ostrow did not take his eyes off the screen. "Either that residence was never finished, or it was finished and three Starfleet vessels flew over it without seeing it. I would not care to say which."
Spock shifted the scan angle. "The structure appears to be constructed of conventional materials."
"Human?"
"Possibly. I cannot yet determine that."
McCoy folded his arms. "So somebody built himself a house on a planet where nobody survived."
"That's one interpretation," Kirk said.
"You got another?"
"Not yet."
Spock widened the scan. "There are no additional structures of comparable size within sensor range."
That interested Kirk more than the house did. One residence. No settlement around it, no roads running anywhere, no power grid, no city, nothing but empty plateau in every direction as far as the sensors reached. Somebody down there had built a home and had never needed a neighbor.
He went back to the command chair. "Uhura."
She was already working. "I've been transmitting standard identification since we crossed into the system, Captain. No response."
"Try again. Directional, aimed at the structure."
"Aye, sir." Uhura adjusted her board and leaned into the call. "Altair IV, this is the USS Enterprise, Federation starship approaching under the authority of Starfleet Command. Any station receiving, please acknowledge."
The bridge listened to its own instruments. Uhura repeated the call, and the instruments went on talking to themselves.
Ostrow's eyes had not left the house.
Kirk watched him a moment longer, then looked toward the science station. "Any sign that thing is occupied?"
"Not yet."
"Power?"
"Minimal. There are localized readings, but the interference is considerable."
"The same interference the search missions reported?"
"In part."
Ostrow turned his head. "In part?"
Spock bent to the viewer again. "There are readings below the plateau that I cannot resolve."
Ostrow reacted, and it was not dramatic. He did not lean forward and he did not raise his voice. His attention simply left the house, as though it had stopped mattering.
"Subsurface," Ostrow said.
"Yes."
"Depth?"
"Indeterminate."
McCoy looked from one of them to the other. "Meaning?"
"Meaning we don't know what's down there," Kirk said.
"Precisely," said Spock.
Uhura's hand went to her receiver, and every head on the bridge turned toward her.
"Captain. I have something."
"A transmission?"
"Yes, sir." She listened another moment. "From the surface."
Ostrow went perfectly still.
Kirk stood. "Put it through."
Static filled the bridge, low and uneven, a signal that had come a long way through something unfriendly. Then a man's voice came out of it, distant and clear.
"Starship approaching Altair IV. Identify yourself."
"This is Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise."
A pause followed, longer than the distance accounted for.
"Doctor Edward Morbius."
Kirk was watching Ostrow when the name came through, and for a second the years went off him. What stood at the rail was not the scholar who had argued his way through the Vulcan Science Academy. It was a young man who had found a stranger's handwriting in the margin of four pages and built the rest of his life around it.
Kirk gave him no time to speak. "Doctor Morbius, we're very glad to find you alive."
The static went on under the silence.
"Captain, I warn you. Do not come down here."
There was nothing casual in it. The voice was controlled and almost courteous, and under the courtesy it was immovable.
Kirk glanced at Spock, whose expression had not changed, and at Ostrow, whose had.
"Doctor, Starfleet's records show the Bellerophon expedition lost with all hands twenty years ago. Finding you alive changes our understanding of what happened here."
"It need not."
"We were sent to investigate that loss."
"I am aware of why you have come."
"Then you understand why we need to speak with you."
"There is no need for you to come down here."
Kirk's eyes narrowed a fraction. "Doctor, if there's a danger to my ship or my crew, tell me what it is."
Another pause. "You must accept my warning."
"That's difficult to do without knowing what I'm being warned about."
This answer came faster. "You are in danger if you come down here."
McCoy looked at Kirk. Ostrow had not moved.
Kirk rested a hand on the back of the command chair. "What kind of danger?"
"I cannot explain it to you over this channel."
Kirk let the silence run. "Then we'll come down, and you can explain it in person."
"No."
That one word carried more force than everything Morbius had said before it.
"Doctor, we've come a long way."
"I strongly advise you to reverse course and leave this system."
Kirk was reaching for the arm of his chair when the voice came back, and there was something different in it. Not courtesy, and not warning. For the first time, Morbius wanted something.
"Captain. Before you go further. How were you able to see the house?"
Kirk stopped.
"There is a defensive field over this installation," Morbius said, "and a screen that renders it invisible to instruments of the kind your vessel carries. Both have functioned without interruption for a very long time. You should not have been able to detect that structure at all. I want to know how you did."
Kirk looked at Spock, who stayed over his hood a moment, and when he came up his face gave nothing to the open channel.
"There is no field," Spock said, quietly. "We are reading the structure on standard sensors at this range, Captain, in the visible spectrum and in four others. It is unshielded. If a screen of the kind the doctor describes were operating, I would register it. I register nothing whatever." His voice dropped further. "It would, however, account for the search missions. A screen of that description would explain why three vessels passed over that plateau and recorded bare ground. It does not explain why we are looking at a house."
"Captain?" said the voice from the surface. "I asked you a question."
Kirk let it lie where it was. "I have one of my own, Doctor. This field of yours. How far out does it reach, when it's working?"
The pause that followed was the longest of the conversation.
"Approximately two and a half kilometers from the house."
"Two and a half kilometers." Kirk looked at the viewscreen, where the planet had grown large enough to show weather. "Then we'll come down outside it. Well outside it. Whatever your field is or isn't doing, my people won't be standing in it."
"That is not the danger."
"Then tell me what is."
"Captain Kirk." The voice had gone flat and final. "If you come down here, I cannot be responsible for what happens to you, or to your men."
Kirk had been spoken to in that tone before, by men who wanted the record to show they had said it. He looked at Uhura and moved two fingers, and she cut the channel.
For several seconds nobody on the bridge said anything. Then McCoy let out a slow breath. "Friendly fellow."
"He was told he had a shield," Kirk said. "He believes he still has one." He turned toward the science station. "Mr. Spock, keep a sensor on that house. If anything at all comes up around it, I want to know inside of a second."
"I have already assigned it, Captain."
"Then give me an assessment."
"Doctor Morbius appears sincere."
"That's not what I asked."
"It is nonetheless relevant." Spock straightened from the viewer. "He has survived on that planet for approximately twenty years. His warning is consistent with the recommendation Captain Adams transmitted before the Bellerophon was lost."
Ostrow spoke for the first time since the name had come over the channel. "Then we should treat it seriously."
McCoy turned on him. "You spent six years getting us here."
"That does not make the warning less credible."
"No," Kirk said. "But it doesn't make it complete, either."
He looked toward Spock. "Put the house back on the screen."
The two images came up side by side on the main viewer, blown large enough for the whole bridge to see: empty plateau on the left, house on the right, the same ground seventeen years apart.
"Morbius survived," Kirk said.
Nobody answered him.
"He survived, and that house is standing on ground that three separate search missions recorded as bare. And when a Federation starship finally comes back, the first thing he does is tell us to leave."
"He may have reason," Ostrow said.
"I'm sure he does. I intend to hear it."
McCoy came down beside the command chair and lowered his voice, which with McCoy meant he was serious. "Jim, Adams told Starfleet not to land. Now Morbius is telling us the same thing. At some point two warnings start sounding like a pattern."
"They do."
"And?"
"And forty-two people disappeared down there."
"Forty-one," Spock said quietly.
Kirk looked at him.
"If Doctor Morbius survived."
The correction hung there. Twenty years of Starfleet records, and one voice out of the static had made them wrong.
"Forty-one," Kirk agreed.
Ostrow turned from the display. "Captain."
Kirk waited.
"I asked for this mission because no one ever went back to the surface. I still believe that was an error." He paused. "But if you judge the risk unacceptable, I will not argue with you."
Six years of work, a world he had never seen now filling the viewscreen, and the man was prepared to stop within sight of it if the evidence said so. It was the least self-interested thing Kirk had heard all day, and it made him trust the Vulcan's wish to go down there more rather than less.
"Spock. Can we determine whether that house is occupied?"
"Not at this range. From orbit, possibly."
"Weapons signatures?"
"None."
"Anything at all threatening this ship?"
"Nothing detectable."
Kirk looked at the planet a moment longer. Adams had been a careful man and had died anyway, and the safest thing available was to log the contact, transmit it to Starfleet, and take his ship home. Forty-one people had gone down to that plateau and never come back, and one man was alive on it who would not say why.
"Uhura, reopen the channel."
Morbius answered almost at once. "Captain?"
"Doctor, I've considered your warning."
"I hope you intend to act on it."
"I do."
A pause. "Then you are leaving."
"No."
McCoy briefly closed his eyes.
"We're taking up orbit," Kirk said. "I'm bringing down a small party. We won't interfere with anything we don't have to, but we are coming down."
The voice from the surface turned cold. "Captain Kirk, you do not understand what you are doing."
"That's why I want to talk to you."
"You are taking a grave risk."
"Understood."
The silence stretched out several seconds. When Morbius spoke again, it was with great reluctance. "If you are determined to come down, I will send coordinates. Beyond the perimeter, as you asked. You will have to be met and brought in."
"We'll expect your man," Kirk said, and wondered, as he said it, what kind of man that would turn out to be.
"I advise you once more to reconsider."
"I'll keep it in mind."
The channel closed. A moment later Uhura's board chirped. "Coordinates received, Captain."
"Feed them to navigation."
"Aye, sir."
Sulu looked back from the helm. "Coming up on orbital insertion."
Kirk sat down in the command chair. "Take us in."
The Enterprise came gently about toward the planet, and Altair IV spread across the viewscreen until its atmosphere burned green along the rim against the stars.
Behind him, Ostrow had gone back to the science station and said nothing at all.
For six years Edward Morbius had been a name on an old crew manifest and one word written in a margin. Now he was alive, there was a house standing on a world that was supposed to be empty, and the first thing the man had done was tell them not to come down.
