Nine

A groan escaped Saavik’s lips. Her head sagged, dipping forward, and she clutched the control panel before her to steady herself. She closed her eyes and bit down on her lip to keep from making another sound. Her uncharacteristic distress caught Kirk’s attention.

“Saavik?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

Copernicus was descending toward Varba II in a measured fashion, orbiting the planet at lower and lower altitudes as it gradually approached the upper atmosphere. So far their orbital sweeps had failed to yield any positive results. At best, they could pick up only a compromised version of the original warning beacon. Nothing from Galileo or the landing party.

“I am fine, Captain.” She lifted her head and sat up straighter. “Just a momentary weakness. I suddenly found myself feeling light-headed.”

Kirk eyed her with concern. “Are you ill? Do we need to turn back?”

He was reluctant to abandon the search when it had barely begun, but if Saavik needed to report to sickbay, he might not have any other choice. Funny, he thought, she seemed fine before.

“No, Captain. I am quite—” Her face paled and her head reeled atop her neck, as though she was suddenly stricken again. Her breathing grew ragged. White knuckles gripped the control panel.

That clinches it, Kirk thought. He had no idea what was wrong with Saavik, but it was obvious something was. He hit the comm button on the helm controls. “Kirk to Enterprise, we have a medical situation—”

“No!” Saavik reached over and cut off the transmission before Kirk could finish. She no longer seemed confused or disoriented. Her eyes were alight with clarity. “Wait! It’s not me. It’s Spock.”

Kirk didn’t understand. “Spock?”

She took a deep breath to regain her composure. Her face was still pale, but it was also filling with a new intensity and sense of purpose. She looked him squarely in the eyes.

“My apologies for interrupting, Captain, but I believe I understand now. The distress I was experiencing was not mine, but Spock’s.” Her voice was somber. “He is not well, sir. In fact, I fear he may be dying.”

Kirk tried to grasp what he was hearing. “You can sense that, Vulcan to Vulcan?” A memory came back to him of that time, decades before, when Spock had telepathically sensed the sudden deaths of an entire crew of Vulcans on the U.S.S. Intrepid. “All the way from orbit?”

She lowered her eyes, avoiding his gaze. She hesitated before speaking. “Spock and I share . . . a special bond . . . ever since our experiences on the Genesis Planet.”

Kirk felt a pang at the mention of that unnatural world, where his son had died, but he pushed away his private pain to focus on Saavik. He recalled that Saavik and Spock had been stranded alone on the Genesis Planet for a time, not long after Spock’s miraculous resurrection. It was Saavik who had cared for the reborn Spock during that tumultuous time, before Spock regained his memories.

But what kind of bond was Saavik talking about?

“A mind-meld?” he asked. He didn’t remember anything about that in Saavik’s report on the Genesis affair, but Vulcans tended to be very private about such matters, and with good reason. A mind-meld was, by its very nature, a deeply personal matter.

A hint of a blush added green to her cheeks. “Of a sort,” she said quietly, still avoiding his eyes.

The proverbial lightbulb clicked on above Kirk’s head.

Pon farr, he guessed, although he kept his supposition to himself to spare Saavik any further embarrassment. No wonder that particular detail hadn’t made it into the official accounts.

It made sense, though. He was no expert on the topic, but he gathered that pon farr was as much a joining of the mind and spirit as of the body. It was an intimacy much deeper than even an ordinary mind-meld, binding two souls on a profound level. If Saavik and Spock had indeed shared such a union only a few years before, wasn’t it possible that she could tell when he was suffering greatly, perhaps even at risk of dying?

I can believe it, Kirk thought. He’d seen stranger things in his voyages, and he had learned never to underestimate the power of the human—or Vulcan—mind. “And you think this . . . psychic connection,” he said delicately, “is allowing you to sense what Spock is going through down on the planet?”

“Only because he is in great extremity,” Saavik explained, meeting his eyes once more. “That I can feel his weakness acutely, Captain, is not encouraging. It means that he is most likely on the edge of death.”

“But it also means that he’s still alive,” Kirk said, choosing to look on the positive side. The dire implications of what Saavik was saying were not lost on him, but that only increased his determination to rescue Spock and the others before it was too late. “Which means that maybe the rest of the landing party has survived as well.”

“A logical extrapolation,” she said. “So how does this affect our strategy, Captain?”

Good question, Kirk thought, wondering if there was some way to turn this unexpected development to their advantage. “Can you communicate with Spock through your bond? Send him a message?”

She shook her head. “It is not a matter of simple telepathy, sir. I cannot speak to him mind to mind across distances. I can only feel his life-force slipping away.”

Although she spoke calmly and analytically, her dismay at the possibility of losing Spock again came through loud and clear. Kirk didn’t need a mind-meld to know how she felt—or share her fear that time was running out for their friend.

“I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy,” he said as another possibility occurred to him. “Forget talking to him, then. Can you sense his location? Can you use this telepathic bond of yours to guide us to him and the others?”

Saavik pondered the notion.

“Perhaps,” she said uncertainly. “If we can get close enough to the correct vicinity, and if I can achieve the proper meditative state . . .”

Kirk seized on the strategy. Maybe he was grasping at straws, but they had to try something. If what Saavik sensed about Spock’s condition was true, every minute counted. And in the absence of sensor data, they needed any edge they could get—even if that meant relying on something as imprecise and unquantifiable as a psychic bond between two souls. Certainly, it wouldn’t be the first time that the singular mysteries of the Vulcan mind had saved the day. Indeed, Spock owed his second life, at least in part, to the strange mental abilities of his people.

“I’ll get us closer,” he promised. “You do what you need to do.”

She nodded. “I will do my best, Captain.”

Kirk didn’t doubt it. He suspected that he was asking far more of her than he could truly comprehend, but if she was willing to reach out to Spock in this way—and possibly lead them to the lost landing party—he wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass by.

“Find them, Lieutenant. However you can.”