Mitosis Broadcast Week beginning Sat 10th 1970
Mission date 1231.7 the
Erebus has entered the Sabaroff system. A survey done in the early days of the Commonwealth indicated that there was a civilisation on Sabaroff III that was on the cusp of discovering jump technology. The Commonwealth decided to leave them alone to make first contact but no such contact has been made. So the
Erebus has been ordered to make a surreptitious survey of the system to see what is happening. The newly promoted Lieutenant Colt receives a garbled distress call, but all she can make out that billions of people are dying for no apparent reason on Pevnee (what the inhabitants call Sabaroff III). Suddenly, the signal is gone and there seems to be no signs of life on Pevnee.
Smith comes to the bridge just as Colt announces she has lost contact with the Fleet and the Navy. Russell has Smith scan a dark ominous form that appears on the main view screen near Pevnee. Smith reports it is some kind of energy turbulence; probably responsible for the death of the local inhabitants. Russell launches a sensor probe into the void. Suddenly a painful, high pitched noise fills the ship that renders half the crew sickened or faint.
Sensor scans from the probe reveal nothing, so Russell orders the ship to get in closer. When it does, the piercing sound returns and all the stars disappear from the main view screen. The ship is now in a desolate void of nothingness. Dr. S’tarr then reports that the crew are getting worse and it appears everyone seems to be dying. Smith surmises that the ship has crossed some kind of negative energy boundary where their physical properties cannot exist. All ship's energy, as well as the crew's life force, is beginning to be slowly drained away.
Russell orders full reverse, but the ship moves forward deeper into the void. If forward thrust is applied the ship slows down. Scotty frantically tinkers with controls to give the ship the power it needs, but nothing seems to respond.
The huge expenditure of ship's energy attracts what appears to be a 1,000-mile wide amoeba, which appears on the main screen. Russell launches another sensor probe which reveals the creature is protoplasmic in nature. S’tarr believes it is a massive single-celled entity that feeds off raw energy but he needs more data to confirm this.
Sanford decides to get the information S’tarr needs and requests to pilot a shuttlecraft in closer to the creature. Russell reluctantly accepts Sanford's request and allows him to launch. He pilots the shuttle up to the creature and penetrates the outer skin, then makes his way toward the cell's nucleus. Sanford transmits data and keeps a log of his progress during the journey. He believes the creature may be ready to reproduce and suggests it can be destroyed from the inside, but his details become garbled and then cuts off.
Smith and S’tarr determine that if the creature begins to reproduce, it will spread rapidly and pose a serious threat to the galaxy. They must do something now, but the
Erebus only has an hour left until all energy is expended. As Russell, Smith and S’tarr meet together to discuss various strategies, Russell suddenly realizes that if various activities in the zone have an opposite effect, then using antimatter on the organism should kill it, but realizes the
Erebus will have to journey into the creature.
Russell takes the
Erebus into the cell's body to plant a bomb within the creature that will destroy it. Since the thing has negative energy, Russell orders Scotty to prepare an antimatter bomb with a timer set for a seven-minute delay. The bomb is fired into the cell's nucleus and the
Erebus backs out using what little power remains. With seconds remaining, Sanford's shuttle is finally located and Russell tells Scotty to retrieve it in a tractor beam. With power levels nearly exhausted, the ship makes its way out of the creature just as the bomb explodes. The creature is annihilated, and the shock throws both the
Erebus and the shuttle back into normal space. Both ships survive with only slight damage and Sanford returns his craft to the ship.
NOTE: Yes this is TTL's version of "The Immunity Syndrome". Some things stay the same