CAUGHT BETWEEN KLINGONS AND THE CHATALIA

 

Name: World Without End   

Author: Joe Haldeman  

Publication Date: 2/1979

Publisher: Bantam Books

Page Number: 150

Historian’s Note:  Sometime after Planet of Judgement

Cast of Characters:  Captain James T. Kirk       Commander Spock              Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”       Lieutenant Commander Andre Charvat           Lieutenant  Hikaru Sulu              Lieutenant Nyota Uhura              Lieutenant Martin Larousse                Lieutenant B. "Tuck" Wilson           Lieutenant Sydny          Lieutenant Gary              Nurse Christine Chapel          Ensign Pavel Chekov      Ensign Glak Sōn           Ensign Berry            Ensign Amstel         Ensign Parker Tinney              Ensign Fitzsimmons           Ensign Masters            Crewman Jakobs                      Captain Kulain                     Kal                          Karez                     W'Chaal                   T'Kyma        T'Lallis         T'oomi

Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, IKS Korezima, unnamed-crashed Klingon ship, Chatalia

Planets: none

My Spoiler filled summary and review: In their normal course of exploring space, the Enterprise comes across something that seems to resemble a generational ship.  Every now and again they find one of these relics that predates warp drive.  However, this one has not come from any Federation world but rather from a solar system that died thousands of years ago.  The vessel is huge, and sensors indicate there are millions of life forms living in a planet-like environment.  It has a problem with its current rate of deceleration, it should come to a complete stop nowhere near a star, and this will mean it will run out of energy to absorb and everyone will die.

The Enterprise finds something strange

Captain Kirk has always felt that extinction means a culture can’t develop anymore, therefore he decides the Prime Directive doesn’t apply and will mount a rescue.  He has a landing party organized under the banner of a “confrontation team” that consists of himself, McCoy, and a few security personnel.  Giving the strange metal that this thing is made out of they want to make sure their transporter will work first.   Spock and Uhura send down a beacon and when they can communicate with it, they decide to send the landing party.  Which turns out to be a huge mistake because although they can beam things in easily enough, they are unable to beam things out. “The confrontation team” is stuck.

When the landing party beamed down, they found that the natives are strange creatures that sort of resemble flying squirrels on Earth.  They have large towers, and the crew sees many of the locals flying from building to building. It is both their wings and the low gravity (lower than Earth’s moon) that gives them the power of flight or at least gliding.  Even after the Starfleet personnel materialized in the public square the landing party was ignored by the locals. It wasn’t until Kirk tried to talk with them that they screamed and scattered.  After a few moments an armed and organized group with a leader shows up.  This one is a little more open to taking, but not really listening.  This person cannot believe that there is an “outside” where people can come from.  He thinks they must be “magicians,” who are the ruling group on this planet.  Kirk and company cannot get the locals, known as the Chatalia, to accept the truth but McCoy convinces them that they might be magicians with amnesia.

The Enterprise is known to encounter bizarre aliens

They are taken from the public square and brought to “police headquarters” for lack of a better term.  There the landing party’s weapons are taken but they are allowed to keep their medical bag, tricorders, and universal translator.  There they learn about the society of Chatalia.  To explain this, I will quote from the book directly when Spock was entering a Captain’s Log.

“Every individual belongs to a family and a caste level assigned to him.  He may only speak to members of his own caste, or those immediately above or below him.  Isolation of the individual is further intensified by the fact that each family has its own language.  Thus, a second-class carpenter might be allowed to speak to a second-class baker, but they wouldn’t be able to understand one another.

“Therefore one of the largest families is the interpreter family.  Almost every transaction beyond the level of simple barter requires one of these Chatalia.

“The magicians, who are relatively few in number, are exempt from the caste restriction, and may speak to anyone, although they also require interpreters.  They evidently have only two castes, first and second, and the first-caste individuals are rarely seen.  Their main function seems to be reproduction, which the informer claims is done by magic.

“The population is strictly controlled.  When an individual dies, a replacement is delivered, after a lag time of about two years.

“The word ‘child’ does not translate.  According to the informant, fully grown individuals are delivered by the magicians to the lan-Chatalia, who live in the rural areas surrounding the city.  There they are trained, and eventually delivered to their families.” (pg. 34-35)

The Enterprise finds something interesting near the surface of Chatalia.  It is a century-old wreck of a Klingon cruiser.  Upon expecting the wreck Lt. Sulu’s team discovers some bodies of a few dead Klingons, but not enough for the whole crew, and some recordings.  They listen to the recordings to find out that the ship was pulled to the surface of Chatalia and that attempted to flee causes ship’s hull to be damaged.  That their power was drained, eventually they used the last of their power to beam everyone down except the priests who all committed ritual suicide.  Shortly after discovering the fate of the Klingons, the bridge crew with orders from Spock checked to make sure the ship was at safer distance than the Klingons were when they were caught.  It turns out the Enterprise was already trapped and being pulled in. 

The Klingons causing trouble

The landing party gets to meet a magician, who is already angry with the regular Chatalia, named W'Chaal, for getting too friendly with them.  It turns out that unlike the regular Chatalia magicians get to keep their memories every time they are reborn. T'Lallis, the magician, access Kirk and his party of being Klingons.  This both offends and amuses the Starfleet officers.  They try to explain that they are not Klingons, but T’Lallis, isn’t having it. 

The Enterprise is going to have to be abandoned in a few days if the power drain continues.  They deactivate everything to slow it down.  Confident that Scotty can lead the ship through the necessary steps if they are to be evacuated, Spock decides to join the landing party.  He arrives to knock out T’Lallis and free the captured crew.  They realize that in order to save the ship they will have to make contact with those doing the actual running of Chatalia, the vessel. They reason that the first-class magicians are those very people.  

One of Chatalia trying to figure out how a phaser works caused an explosion in the lab killing himself and several of his fellows.  The landing party gather their remaining phasers to take both T’Lallis and W’Chaal prisoner and demand to be brought to the land where first-class magicians are.  Along the way they get to learn more about Chatalia society.  When they “borrow” a cart from a farmer they learn that they aren’t actually stealing it because all property belongs to the magicians.  More importantly the landing party learns that when making new replacement Chatalia sometimes they screw up the process and end up with deformed creatures who can’t be placed with the rest of society.  So, they are dumped in this area all to themselves where they live as predatory monsters.  The landing party is able to battle these poor creatures and get part them to the obstacle.

It turns out the Enterprise wasn’t the only ship trying to explore Chatalia.  The IKS Korezima has intercepted the Enterprise’s transmission to Starfleet.  Instead of getting too close to get caught like both their adversary and predecessors, Captain Kulain is going to attack from a distance with what they call a nova bomb.  To make sure the Organian Peace Treaty isn’t violated the send the Enterprise a warning, knowing full well that the Enterprise can’t do anything about it. 

Scotty makes a plan to shoot down the bomb by staying behind and manning the Enterprise’s phaser banks.  On the surface have come to a point where they have to fly to get where they want to go, which is Magicians’ Island.  Fortunately, in this low gravity they can do that with artificial wings.  Ensign Parker Tinney, who has lived on the moon and flies there all the time, is sent down to coach them how. They attempt it but are apprehended half-way by the magicians, which is just as well because that is where they wanted to go. 

With the Enterprise freezing with no life support on, Scotty is keeping warm with a fire.  It turns out the Klingon bomb is a dud because the Chatalia absorbs all of its energy at impact.  The Klingons decide they are going to have to get closer and physically build a bomb inside Chatalia even if it costs them their lives.

The Enterprise surrounded in darkness 

On the Magicians’ Island the phasers no longer work.  To the landing party’s disappointment, it turns out the first-class magicians don’t know any more about that Chatalia’s status as a world ship.  Spock tries to mind-meld with one and nothing happens.  They bring them to what they call the Father Machine, this is where the magicians are reborn.  One of the red shirts tries to get red shirted, but the Father Machine spits him out.  It speaks declares that humans are gross—which I guess they could have predicted as the Catalia’s couldn’t touch the humans because of salt in the humans’ skin—and it says it wants to eat some Klingons.  Spock goes in actual gets reborn that he describes as just a transporter set to “slow.”  He is able to mind meld with the Father Machine.  The Father Machine explains that it is the only sentient life on this place.  It knows all about the ship slowing down and is cool with the idea.  It already has the capabilities to survive under such conditions with its technology.  So, the Enterprise crew was really just wasting their time.  It says it will let the Enterprise go if they can get it some more Klingons to eat and consume—not replace.  Spock agrees.  When back on the ship Spock contacts the Klingons and explains without any deception what the Father Machine is, what it plans to do, what their odds would be if taking this challenge (not good) and waits for them to respond. The Klingons are excited for the challenge and will face it like warriors.   With that the Enterprise is allowed to go along her way.    

Additional thoughts: This is a great story, fun to read, this strange world and its people are interesting that the reader will enjoy exploring with Captain Kirk and his crew.  And even though it was also good, I do like this story more than the author’s previous book: “Planet of Judgement.”  It manages to feel original even though this concept has been tried in the franchise a couple of times already.  The idea “let’s have some people in a spaceship who don’t know they’re in a spaceship they just think it’s their natural world,” was tried with first “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” and it was also for the Star Trek book “The Starless World.” In the later story the Klingons also poke their noses in.  I will state I liked this one the best out of the three, the alien world of Chatalia was a lot more fun to explore.  

There were a couple of science-y questions about some of the plot details like the whole issue of the pre-warp artificial world/generational ship decelerating?  I thought in space that would never happen that they would maintain whatever speed forever until they hit something.  Also, if life support is offline and Scotty is warming himself with the fire won’t the fire burn up all the limited oxygen that was left?  I am not sure about that last one, it was just a thought I had while reading the story.  The author decided to give Kirk a little bit of an origin story that would not line up with the rest of the series. I am breaking a little bit of my rule about not discussing future Trek and evaluate only by what existed at the time the work was created.  However, since Kirk was a Starfleet brat who followed his father into the service is so well known with the fandom, I couldn’t help but briefly mention it. 

So, Disney is still the 23^rd century?  And now they have a theme park on the moon!  I am really happy to hear that Disney is doing so well in the 23^rd century.  I bet the park on the moon is cool.  I wonder if other Federation worlds have a Disney resort?  I bet not Vulcan.

Okay I really don’t except the discovery at the end that the Chatalia are not really alive and just creations of the Father Machine.  Even if the Father Machine truly believes this and is responsible for their creation, they clearly have evolved beyond that.  T’Lallis and W'Chaal clearly had fully formed personalities.  W’Chaal was conservative but very intellectually curious.  He was eager to learn about these visitors and listen to their tales even though he might lose his life over it.   Even if he is replaced his new self wouldn’t have his memories.  T’Lallis is vain, full of himself, and entitled.  The very image of a born aristocrat.  It’s hard to reconcile that as being pieces of the Father Machine when T’Lallis was overly concerned with keeping secrets from W’Chaal.  It reminds me of Solipsism, a concept I have always rejected as being ridiculous in nature.  If true, every time I am talking on the phone, I am just talking to myself, for the purpose of amusing myself.  It makes my time working in a call center strange. I think the idea of the Father Machine being the only true living thing might have sounded great when it was a thought in the author’s mind, but after exploring the world it just comes off as weird foot note in the end of the story.

I really like how the Klingons were written here. When they were first introduced in “Errand of Mercy” they were shown to be a warrior race that loves combat.  Kor was salivating against the idea of facing Captain Kirk and hated his duty on Organia ruling over people who looked like farmers.  They also depicted this way under Kang in “Day of the Dove.”  For the rest of the series, however, they became rather sleazy fighting the Federation using cheap tricks.  The best example of that was “The Trouble with Tribbles” where the Klingons had a spy trying poison the Federation’s colony.  Most of the books reviewed for this blog so far have been the sleazy Klingons in almost every appearance.  These ones are warriors, and they are excited for the opportunity for a warrior’s death. 

 Spock compared the Father Machine to a transporter. The Father Machine uses saved patterns to recreate the dead.  During the Animated Series we often saw the Enterprise crew use the transporter for a cure.  Most notably the episodes “The Lorelei Signal” and “The Counter-Clock Incident.”  So, the story has clear precedent.  

Should it be canon: With exception to some minor details like Kirk’s farmer dad, I think yes, the main story would be a great addition to Star Trek canon. 

Cover Art: An odd cover, with Captain Kirk looking more like Ben Shapiro than William Shatner with his wrists bound. McCoy right behind him. Nothing but red background and picture of Chatalia in the bottom viewer’s right corner.

Final Grade: Final Grade 5 of 5