Strangers From the Sky Read Online Free PDF

as likely to be burned as witches or blasted out of the cornfield with a 12-gauge as they would’ve been in any prior century. Neither Vulcan nor Earth wants to admit to that, but there it is. That’s why it’s been hushed up until now.”
    “Earth and Vulcan, joined in some—conspiracy—to keep this secret all these years?” Kirk mused, shook his head, rejected it. “Sorry, Bones, you’ve lost me there.”
    “The Vulcan Archives were sealed until the death of the last survivor,” McCoy explained patiently. “Nothing conspiratorial about it. By reason of her credentials, Dr. Jen-Saunor was the first person—and the only human, by the way—to have access to them. On the human side, on the other hand, all contemporary Earth accounts were mysteriously ‘misplaced.’ Government files chewed up by computers, witnesses gone to ground, the usual nonsense.”
    “That much I can accept,” Kirk said. “But not the sealing of the Vulcan Archives. It seems—uncharacteristic. Isn’t the truth supposed to be accessible to all?”
    “Not when it causes embarrassment to both sides,” McCoy reiterated. “With the exception of the few who tried to help, most humans came out of this looking like hysterics or spoiled children. And the Vulcans could hardly be pleased with having to be less than completely truthful about certain pertinent details of the event.”
    “Convenient for the author, though,” Kirk remarked dryly. “She’s the only one with access to the files, no one on Earth knows enough to refute her. No wonder the book’s so controversial. I’ll refrain from calling it an outright scam, but—let’s say it’s an ‘artful fabrication.’ Fiction passing itself off as history. Like those Ancient Astronaut books a few centuries back.”
    “Now wait a minute—” McCoy growled.
    “Another thing—” Kirk interrupted. “This novelistic style of hers. Reproducing dialogue as if she were actually in the room when it happened—”
    “What’s wrong with making history accessible?” McCoy wanted to know. “Anyone from a ten-year old to a Starfleet admiral can read this and understand it. And the dialogue, by the bye, was taken from the journals of one of the Vulcan survivors. As I’m certain you know from personal experience, once a Vulcan says something, he never forgets it.”
    “Sort of like studying Hannibal’s campaigns from the perspective of the elephants,” Kirk suggested. McCoy was not amused.
    “You don’t like your preconceived notions challenged, do you, you old dinosaur?” he badgered Kirk. “Don’t like your safe little textbook version of history threatened. You’re getting conservative in your old age, Admiral. Very bad business!”
    “You want some coffee?” Kirk asked innocently, stifling a yawn.
    “Not the kind you serve!” McCoy grumbled. “Closest it ever came to a coffee bean was in a dictionary. Right under ‘bilge water.’”
    “Well, don’t mind if I do.” Kirk meandered out to the kitchen, punched a single preset button on the synthesizer.
    “Curious,” McCoy heard him say.
    “What is?” the doctor asked, contemplating the harbor lights.
    “Assuming I believed any of it,” Kirk said, returning from the kitchen sipping something that at least was hot, “and I’m not saying I do—here you have two Vulcans stranded on Earth twenty years too soon. Their ship is beyond repair, and they’re totally at the mercy of humans and their primitive technology. How’d they get back home?”
    “I’m not saying they did,” McCoy replied.
    “You’re not going to tell me they spent the rest of their lives on Earth!”
    “No, I’m not going to tell you that, either. I’m not going to tell you a damn thing.”
    “I can just see them putting in a request for a sublight ship,” Kirk mused. “Or having to bob their ears and assimilate. I can’t imagine a worse fate for a first-generation Vulcan. Or doesn’t your highly acclaimed historian tell you?”
    McCoy