“Even if we could modify the food so we could live on it, we may still be trapped here for the rest of our lives. Along with whoever comes to rescue us.”
Stardate: 7502.9
Following the end of a four-week benchmark survey of “Sector 3” where the crew witnessed a rare sight (the two brightest stars in the sky merging together), the Enterprise has been given secret orders to return to Starbase 3, but suddenly a yellow alert is issued! The Enterprise comes upon a gigantic space ship in the form of a hollowed-out planetoid moving at sublight speed inside a Bussard-type interstellar ramjet. The ship is like a small spinning plane, slowly decelerating. It has about 95 years left of its voyage, after having been in flight for nearly 3,000 years (it was apparently launched from what is now a tenuous globular shell of gas). But it is en route to a perilous destination. Is it a suicide ship? Or possibly a futuristic Noah’s Ark? This whole scenario brings to mind “generation ships” that were launched from earth (including one called “Forty Families” that has been missing for some 250 years), as well as the TOS episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.”
When the mystery ship does not respond to communications, a landing party is organized consisting of Kirk, McCoy, and several new faces: Lt. Martin Larousse, security chief B. “Tuck” Wilson, and Ensign Moore. Upon arrival, they are stunned to find none of the million or so sentients seem to pay them much attention. The furry creatures with large wings call themselves Chatalia and they live socially under a strict caste system. Notably, the Chatalia have lived their whole lives inside this starship and don’t believe there is a universe outside their world (they don’t even understand that they are onboard a starship hurtling through space):
“The creatures were slightly humanoid. They had the ‘correct’ number of eyes, hands, feet, noses, and mouths. There the resemblance ended. They were covered with short dense fur, and otherwise wore no clothing except necklaces of ribbon, yet displayed no clue of gender. Each had a pair of wings, similar to those of a flying squirrel: continuous leathery membranes that grew out of their sides, from wrist to ankle” (12).
However, it doesn’t take long for the local police force to capture Kirk and crew, where they are accused of being “magicians.” They are taken to a “House of Education and Justice” where they meet a “magician” who turns out to be none other than a Klingon! He is likened to “a medieval artist’s vision of Satan.” Then, we learn this planetoid ship (“Chatalia”) has a shell with a unique metallic substance around it that prevents the Enterprise’s transporter from working both ways. It leaving the crew members trapped on Chatalia. Eventually, Spock decides to beam down and rescue the imprisoned landing party, while Sulu and Ensign Jakobs investigate another curiosity. They don space suits and search a crashed and frozen Klingon ship (note the creepy horror Joe Haldeman invokes when depciting the derelict Klingon ship):
“Inside the Klingon vessel, the deck was covered with a centimeter-thick layer of bluish frost: frozen air. As they picked their way down a corridor, wisps of vapor swirled around them, the stuff being melted and evaporated by the heat from their boot soles… One Klingon had evidently survived to the very end. He was in a space suit similar in design to their own. Just before his death he had removed his helmet. His mouth and eyes were full of ice, his skin was frozen leather. The others, eleven of them, looked less pretty; they had evidently committed suicide together, and the cold preserved them in an advanced state of decomposition” (41).
This is followed by a compelling glimpse at a Klingon log that describes how the Klingon ship became entrapped and crushed by this planetoid (I thoroughly enjoyed this unique addition to the book). Back aboard the ensnared Enterprise, Scotty has been placed in charge of the ship, and it is now rapidly losing power. Soon the ship will lose all its power and the crew will forced to beam down to the surface. The novel’s tension is further stressed when a Klingon vessel suddenly appears: Captain Kulain of the Klingon warship “Korezima” arrives and drops a nova bomb, which he hopes will finally destroy Captain Kirk and the Enterprise. However, the nova bomb is inexplicably prevented from detonating and the Korezima also becomes ensnared by Chatalia.
Meanwhile on the surface, the crew are led by a Chatalian named W’Chaal (the landing party’s interpreter) as they venture across miles of rough terrain, from oceans and jungles teeming with hostile creatures, until they arrive at the Chatalia’s pole known as “Magician’s Island” where the magicians live. The planetoid is shown to be shaped like a low gravity dome so the gravitational gradually declines the close they get to the pole. When they arrive at the Magician’s Island, the crew can even start “flying” like the winged Chatalia (makeshift wings are supplied with help from the Enterprise). After a final confrontation, the landing party is led beneath the island where they meet the leader, known as the “Father Machine” –which turns out to be a vast network of plants controlling the whole planetoid. Unsurprisingly, the Father Machine is a godlike being who has actually created all these Chatalia for his own amusement, and he has likewise developed a sophisticated cadre of technology, some of which rivals the Enterprise’s transporter while others can clone his creations. Of course, it was he who actually stopped the nova bomb from detonating.
Naturally, the conclusion arrives somewhat abruptly. Spock saves the day after being entirely consumed by the Father Machine and then Spock performs a mind-meld. During the course of their brief exchange, Spock informs the Father Machine that if Chatalia continues on its present course, it will face probable destruction. The Father Machine then curiously offers to release the Enterprise, returning the ship with just enough energy so it can get back to Starbase 3. At the same time, the Father Machine also plans on consuming all the nearby Klingons. Why does the Father Machine prefer to consume Klingons instead of the Enterprise crew? I was a little hazy on this strange turn of events. But in the end, the Enterprise is allowed to leave this precarious situation while the Klingons are left to be swallowed up.
Joe Haldeman has described how he was contractually obligated to write a second Star Trek novel after Planet of Judgment, though he claimed his second Trek outing was arduous and frustrating (and I don’t begrudge him). I’m sure it’s incredibly taxing to write a story taking place within the limited horizon of an established science fiction universe like Star Trek. At any rate, I quite enjoyed World Without End. There are some interesting science fiction concepts explored here, like the caste and family-structured world of the Chatalia (who are also under strict population controls), as well as their spiritual beliefs in reincarnation or “rebirthing” thanks to the magicians and the Father Machine. I was also drawn to the idea of a mysterious generation ship hurtling through space, albeit slowly decelerating, which has a derelict Klingon vessel that crash-landed upon it. And there are some “fascinating” logical expositions from Spock included here (Haldman offers a welcome bit of hard science fiction), along with a handful of extant crew members (like Ensign Barry in Cartography), and I clocked a surprising scene between Uhura and Scotty bidding each other an emotional farewell. However, I would say this book goes a bit off the rails with the introduction of the main villain, a large godlike plant that absorbs creatures and starships for energy. It’s a little bit fuzzy to me why the Father Machine would so easily allow the Enterprise to depart. Still, World Without End is an action-heavy, engaging adventure for the Enterprise and it is most certainly a stand-out novel in the early Bantam era.
Haldeman, Joe. World Without End. Bantam Books, New York, New York, 1979 (republished in 1985). With an epigraph by Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”