Star Trek 04 Read Online Free PDF

tunnels."
    "I don't think well need to, Mr. Appel. Mr. Spock, I'll want a complete computer evaluation, with interviews from everyone who knows anything about the events here. Mr. Vanderberg, have you a complete subsurface chart of all drifts, tunnels, galleries and so on?"
    "Of course."
    Spock had been inspecting the dark-gray sphere on the desk. He stepped forward and touched it. "This, Mr. Vanderberg. What is it?"
    "It's a silicon nodule. There's a million of them down there. No commercial value."
    "But a geological oddity, to say the least, especially in igneous rocks. Pure silicon?"
    "A light oxide layer on the outside, a few trace elements below. Look, we didn't call you here so you could collect rocks."
    "Mr. Spock collects information, and it's often useful," Kirk said. "We'll need your complete cooperation."
    "You'll get it. Just find this creature, whatever it is. I'm dead sick of losing my men—and I've got a quota to meet, too."
    "Your order of priorities," Kirk said, "is the same as mine."

    They worked in a room just off Vanderberg's office, feeding data to the Enterprise's computer and getting evaluations back by communicator. The charts with which Vanderberg supplied them turned out to be immensely involved—thousands of serpentine lines crossing and recrossing. Their number was incredible, even after allowing for fifty years of tunneling with completely automated equipment. The network extended throughout the entire crust of the planet, and perhaps even deeper.
    "Not man-made," Spock agreed. "They may be lava tubes, but if so, they are unique in my experience."
    "They won't make hunting any easier," Kirk said. "Bones, what's the word on the autopsy?"
    "The plant's physician and the chemists were right, Jim. Schmitter wasn't burned to death. He was flooded or sprayed with that acid mixture."
    "Could it eat away machinery, too?"
    "Aqua regia will dissolve even gold. What puzzles me is the trace of hydrofluoric acid. It's a very weak acid, but there are two things it attacks strongly. One of them is glass—you have to keep it in wax bottles, or, as Spock suggested, teflon."
    "And the other thing?"
    "Human flesh."
    "Hmm. It sounds like a mixture somebody calculated very carefully. Mr. Spock, do you think this monster story could be a blind for some kind of sabotage?"
    "Possibly, Captain. For example, Mr. Vanderberg thinks that the creature uses the network of tubes to move through. But if you plot the deaths and the acts of destruction, and their times, you find that the creature cannot possibly have appeared at all these points as rapidly as indicated."
    "How recent are those tunnel charts?"
    "They were made last year—before the first appearance of the alleged monster, but not long before. Moreover, Captain, a sensor check indicates no life under the surface of Janus but the accountable human residents of the colony. We are confronted with two alternatives: either to patrol thousands of miles of tunnels, on foot, in the faint hope of encountering the alleged monster; or to find a plausible human suspect who has managed to manufacture and hide an almost inexhaustible supply of this intractable corrosive, and who has a portable, innocuous-looking carrier for it with a capacity of at least thirty liters."
    "I rather prefer the monster theory," McCoy said. "If we catch a man behind these murders, I think we ought to lower him into his own acid vat a quarter of an inch at a time."
    "If," Spock said, "is the operative word in either case . . ."
    He was interrupted by a distant, heavy boom. The room shuddered, the lights flickered, and then an alarm bell was clanging. A moment later, Vanderberg burst in from his office.
    "Something's happened in the main reactor room!" he shouted.
    They left at a dead run, Vanderberg leading the way, McCoy bringing up the rear. The trail wound up in a tunnel elaborately posted with signs reading CAUTION: RADIATION—MAIN REACTOR CHAMBER—ONLY AUTHORISED PERSONS BEYOND THIS POINT.