From Chapter Ten:
Captain's log, U.S.S. Enterprise, stardate 7412.3. Per Admiralty orders included herein, Enterprise is now ready to depart orbital dock on my command. This is being accomplished approximately one hour ahead of the revised emergency schedule, and appended to this log are appropriate commendations listing exceptional efforts by both Enterprise and dockyard personnel. Also per Admiralty orders, I, James T. Kirk, do now accept and take operational command of this vessel.
Stardate 7412.3 is given as the date whereupon the
Enterprise leaves the yards. Unfortunately, as there is no known conventional date (aside from the year 2271) wherewith to compare this, no further determination of the meaning of a stardate is readily possible.
Outside, along the girders, they were watched by tiny human figures in workpods and others in spacesuits. Some of the dry dock technicians waved; others merely watched with what seemed weary satisfaction. No, the others were waving, too. It would have been hard to be out there and not be moved by the sight of Enterprise emerging majestically from her orbital chrysalis.
Starfleet has and uses spacesuits suitable for work in a dock yard. Are these the same types as seen later in the film?
Earth was a gigantic darkening shape, dominating the full half of the sky above them -- the sun was just now completely disappearing behind the planet, and a last atmosphere-flare of sunlight reflected for an instant against the white-blue of the starship's tritanium exterior.
The
Enterprise's outermost hull is composed of tritanium.
Although he had never served aboard a vessel with Kirk, he had wanted it badly enough as a young officer. Not even the memory of his own famous father, Commodore Matt Decker, could change the fact that Kirk was likely the finest ship commander in Starfleet's history. At least, he had been the finest. Despite everything, Decker found himself hoping that it was still true.
Commander Decker has never served aboard a ship with Admiral Kirk. If this is so, then in what sense is he Admiral Kirk's "protégé"?
[...] Scott made another scan of the impulse engine board. Kirk would order power from there soon. The chief engineer's ship status viewers showed that the maneuvering thrusters had taken Enterprise well clear of the orbital dry dock now.
Scott could see a familiar flicker of power barely visible in the great intermix chamber – he was also aware of a lower, throbbing sound like tightly leashed thunder. At this power setting, only microscopic amounts of anti-matter and matter were entering the intermix chamber, but the annihilation of even a pinhead of matter was sufficient for the impulse power which the captain would soon request – and which Scotty would grant. Even this barest of intermix setting would thrust the Enterprise forward as though a thousand of the old hydrogen-fed rockets had been fired in unison up there.
Decker's intercom voice: "Status, Engineer?"
"Intermix reads 'go.' Impulse power at your discretion, bridge."
On his status viewers, Scott could see Sulu shutting down maneuvering thrusters. And then he heard Kirks's order to the helm:
"Impulse power, Mr. Sulu," it said. "Ahead warp point five."
At the trailing edge of the Enterprise saucer section, the two great impulse power throats glared star-white. Scott's thousand hydrogen-fed rockets would not have come near to the explosion of power really happening there. No murmur of it could be heard inside the starship; her inertia dampeners also kept the explosive acceleration from being noticed, except on the bridge readouts.
Interestingly, manoeuvring thrusters do not operate on impulse power. What, exactly, are the manoeuvring thrusters?
Furthermore, the annihilation of "microscopic" amounts of matter and antimatter is sufficient to accelerate the
Enterprise to "warp point five", which is explicitly said to be "impulse power".
Also, at least in this configuration, one cannot feel acceleration to "warp point five" aboard the
Enterprise.
Behind them was a breathtaking panorama of the old orbital dockyard of San Francisco –- but that installation was rapidly receding in size now, and Earth's huge dark sphere began to dominate the center image as it showed a last sliver of atmosphere halo from the now-hidden sun.
Admiral Kirk's "Navy yards" do indeed appear to be the San Francisco Shipyards.
From Chapter Eleven:
Christine Chapel, M.D., had been a Ph.D. in biomedical research when she had volunteered seven years ago to serve on the Enterprise as its head nurse. During those years, her admiration for McCoy's medical ability had reached near to professional worship. She had learned more from him than from her more formal study and recent internship which had added M.D. to her titles.
The current system of degrees is indeed still in place, as Dr Chapel holds the degrees of
philosophiae doctor and
medicinae doctor.
Despite more sounds of annoyance, McCoy could not take his eye off the improved body-scan table with its remarkable capacity to render any part of a patient transparent, as if the body were constructed of layered glass. It was also capable of scanning a patient so thoroughly that it could measure even molecule pattern changes within a single cell of the body. Chapel could see he was also secretly pleased that Starfleet had provided Daystrom equipment which used some of the Fabrini medical symbols which McCoy had found and Spock had translated from the writings of a ten-thousand-year-dead civilization.
A brief description of some of the new equipment in the sickbay.
During all those years of working with McCoy, she had come to understand the importance of the relationship between a starship's captain and chief medical officer. At the heart of this relationship was the fact that a ship's doctor was charged with grave responsibilities concerning the captain's physical, emotional, and mental health, plus the authority to relieve the ship's captain from duty under certain circumstances. It could not be otherwise in a service where exploration was reaching so far into the galaxy now that a starship captain might go a year or longer without any contact without the Admiralty.
An interesting remark regarding the state of Starfleet's exploration programme. How much of the fleet is tied up at a given time in such long-range explorations? Is this why there are no forces available to intercept Vejur?
She had been helped by the fact that the medical perscan device had become routine in starships –- it was a tiny scanner-transceiver which was now worn by all crew members, permitting the body's vital signs to be monitored from sickbay at all times. (In the new full dress and duty uniforms, it was part of the belt ornament, this center-abdomen position being the ideal location for a medical scanner.) This information, of course, was kept as confidential as all other medical records,* but it did have the considerable advantage of providing the ship's medical department with a continuous, all-conditions physical status report on everyone aboard the starship.
"These anagram conversions on the captain mean what?" asked McCoy. "Do you see them as stress indications?"
"Definitely. Don't you?" Her firm tone elicited a quick glance from McCoy; he could see that she was cautioning him that this represented no casual medical analysis of Kirk's present physical condition. Although it represented only fifteen hours of perscan records (since Kirk arrived aboard), Chapel had also obtained other recent medical records on Kirk from Starfleet, and her comparisons of the two showed definite indications of recent strong emotional stress of some sort.
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* The perscan device transmits its readings code-scrambled and directly into the medical computer, where a previously authorized voiceprint is necessary for any unscrambled readout. Any such data concerning the ship's captain can be obtained only by the ship's doctor.
Another rather interesting feature of the
Enterprise's sickbay. At least the
perscan device is not surgically implanted, like the senceiver. Does Starfleet of the XXIV century continue to use the device?
"...and in this case," Chapel continued, "starship command fitted his psychological needs so perfectly that deprivation of it produced physical and emotional symptoms remarkably like those associated with narcotic withdrawal."
It would seem that Dr McCoy's concerns regarding Captain Kirk's acceptance of "Admiral's stars" on psychological and physiological grounds were subsequently validated.
Jupiter was coming up fast, massive, its colorflow patterns looking as artificial as always. Kirk had not been so close to this immense planet in eight years, and he marvelled how the great red spot, with its dark center now larger than ever, seemed like a great eye looking out toward them. Several of Jupiter's moons were in view, Io and Ganymede particularly, reminding Kirk that the movement of these moons seen through Galileo's telescope had been one of humanity's first proofs that Earth was not the center of the universe. The so-called mutant-farm civilizations of pre-history had known this, of course, but their information had been a gift and not the result of human labor and growth.
"Mutant-farm civilisations of pre-history"?
"Jupiter comcon has been advised of intended warp speed plot," reported Decker.
There is a Starfleet facility on or in orbit of Jupiter comparable in function to that at Gibraltar, on Earth.
In the last few centuries mankind had pyramided Galileo's discoveries into knowledge and feats which few early scientists could have ever imagined. Was it Einstein or Clarke who had foreseen the scattered necklace of energy collectors linking Sol and Earth? Kirk remembered reading of an O'Neill who had predicted the delightful range of planettes which humans had eventually constructed, the latest and largest of which had been made possible by the useful combinations of materials and chemicals abundant here in Jupiter's mini-solar system.
The moon Io had held some shocks for the first Earth scientists to land there, although not nearly as shattering as the earlier discovery that Earth's own moon had once served as a base for space voyagers (their identity still a mystery) who had conducted genetic experiments with Earth's early life forms a million or more years before human history had begun.
O subtlety, thy name is not Gene Roddenberry.
Chapter Eleven to be finished at a later date.
