BY
DAVID DVORKIN
POCKET BOOKS
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Captain's Log Stardate 7521.6
Standard orbit has been established around the
outpost colony on
Trefolg. Due to the sensitive nature of this
mission, I had planned to
beam up the prisoners and return directly
to Star Fleet Headquarters.
However, the governor of the colony, Lerak
Kepac, has issued a formal
invitation to me to pay a courtesy call. This is
a request I have of
course agreed to honor.
Kirk thumbed the log recorder off and took a
moment to look around
the bridge in satisfaction. His crewmen and
officers sat at their
stations working with calm efficiency or walked
briskly with firmness
and purpose. No wonder these outpost colonies
along the perimeter of
the Romulan Neutral Zone felt safer,
reassured, when one of the great
starships stopped by. Especially, he thought with a
touch of
smugness, this starship. The elevator doors
swished open and the
ship's doctor ambled in, wearing his dress
uniform, and strolled over
to the command chair. "Well, Jim,"

Doctor McCoy drawled. "How do I
look? Good enough to impress a
colonial governor?" Kirk smiled and looked
his friend up and down.
No matter what uniform McCoy wore, he
managed to make it look somehow
crumpled, as if he had just finished a long evening
of card playing
while wearing it. Kirk shook his head. "It'll
do. At least you're
wearing your dress uniform. More important,
you're wearing your old
country doctor persona. That's just right." "Thought
it would be
for a colony. Mind telling me what's up?"
Kirk stood up and
stretched. "Come to my quarters. I'll have
to change quickly before
we beam down." He didn't speak again until
they were in his spartan
cabin with the door closed. "Sorry,
Bones. I didn't want to discuss
it any further on the bridge." As he spoke,
he stripped his uniform
off quickly and chucked it into a small vent in the
wall. It
disappeared with a faint swooshing sound. He drew a
fresh dress
uniform with the insignia of a Star Fleet captain
from its packaging
and pulled it on, checking his appearance
perfunctorily in a mirror.
"I'm sure you know, since everyone else on the
ship already seems to,
that we're here to pick up some prisoners. This
courtesy call on the
governor I told you to dress up for is an
extra. Partly it's to
reassure the colonists that, even though the
Neutral Zone is right
ahead of them, the Federation and Star Fleet Command
are behind
them." "Nice turn of phrase you have." Kirk
grinned at him. "In
addition," he said, walking to the door,
"Governor Kepac said he had
a message he had to give me in person, something
he preferred not to
broadcast to the ship." As they walked down the
corridor toward the
transporter room a few minutes later,
McCoy remarked, "You know, Jim,
it sure is nice to see you looking relaxed for a
change. As if you're
enjoying your job." "Relaxed, yes." Kirk
pondered for a moment.

"There's little to wear on you on this type of mission,
no real
tension, in spite of the kind of prisoners we're
picking up. And yet,"
he shrugged, "I can't really say I enjoy it that
much. It's--well-it's
just too routine!" McCoy laughed. "Okay,
then. Worry about it being
too routine." Four Security guards were
waiting in the transporter
room, ordered by Kirk to meet them there. Sometimes
he wondered how
Star Fleet Security managed to keep finding
new recruits; the job was
probably the most dangerous on any starship.
Looking at the four, all
tall, heavily muscled, and self-confident, he
wondered how Security
managed to find so many recruits whose faces all
looked alike. It was the expressionlessness that did
it, along with that air of power, readiness, and competence.
The answer, he
knew, lay in their training, a training as long and
rigorous, in its own
way, as his had been; they were well equipped
to handle trouble, and Kirk
was confident that these four would be more than enough to handle the
nine
manacled prisoners waiting for him on the
surface of Trefolg.
Kirk, McCoy, and the four Security guards
stepped onto the transporter
platform and arranged themselves on the six available
positions. On the
return trip, Kirk planned to use one of the
cargo transporters, so that the entire group, which would
then number fifteen, could beam up together. He
wanted to avoid the complications of sending the
prisoners up in two or
more groups, splitting the group of Security
guards up, and having to have
more Security men sent to the transporter room
to cover the prisoners as
they arrived. The ship was operating smoothly and
easily, with no problems; the crew calm and as
relaxed as he was himself. He didn't want to take
any
chance of upsetting that.
Kirk spoke briefly to Chief Engineer
Scott, who had come to the transporter room himself
to operate the controls. He preferred to be in charge
in
person when
the captain or any of the other chief officers, such
as the ship's doctor,
were beaming up or down. "Scotty, it shouldn't
take more than three hours to satisfy Governor
Kepac's social requirements. Have the
transporter in Cargo
Bay Number Two kept ready and cleared and
beam up all fifteen of us there
when I contact you."
was his
Aye.
"Whenever you're ready."
Engineer Scott moved the levers on his control
panel forward, listening as
he did so to the whining hum that grew in the
transporter platform
mechanism; he was not even consciously aware that
he always did this,
listening, with the instinct born of so many years"
intimacy with the
machinery, for any flaw in the sound, any indication
that the transporter
was functioning less than perfectly. The six men
on the platform wavered,
changed into six vague, manlike outlines
composed of winking, twinkling
lights, then vanished. Moments later, the
Transmission Confirmed light
blinked on on his panel, signifying that they had
appeared on the surface
of the planet below. Scott sighed and relaxed,
shaking off the tension that invariably gripped him when
Captain James Kirk was among those being
transported.
As Scotty's square face faded away and the
functional buildings of the
colonial administration center on Trefolg
replaced the control room, James
Kirk felt his own tension rising again. Sometimes,
as during the last few
days, he could relax while onboard the
Enterprise, but he felt somewhat
unprotected and on guard when he left the
ship's protective walls and
beamed down to a planetary surface.
Governor Kepac came hurrying out of the
building in front of them in person to greet the party
from the Enterprise. He was accompanied by an aide.
Kirk remembered having met Kepac some years
earlier, before he had assumed the
governorship of the Trefolg
colony, and he remembered him as having been
short, chubby, carefree, and
constantly cheerful. Now Kepac was almost thin, his
clothes hanging on him
indicating that he had lost a great deal of weight
quite recently. His
carefreeness was gone, and his once-smooth face was
creased with permanent
worry lines. Nonetheless, he smiled broadly
as he came up to Kirk.
"Captain Kirk! I'm delighted to see you
again."
Kirk nodded and shook the outstretched hand.
"Governor. This is Doctor
Leonard McCoy, my chief medical officer.
I thought you might like to have
him look over your medical facilities and
supplies. We might be able to
provide some things from ship's stores."
"By all means. We'd be delighted. Mr.
Johnson," he nodded toward the man
who had accompanied him, "will show your guards where
the prisoners are
being kept and we can meet them there later."
There was a refreshing lack of ceremony and large
groups of subordinates on these frontier
colonies. After they had dropped McCoy off at
the colony's
main hospital-a small and primitive affair
compared to the medical
facilities on the Enterprise-Kirk and
Governor Kepac were alone. "Well,
Lerak, you said you had a message for me?"
They had reached a large open field beyond the
buildings. Shapes, trash of
some kind, were scattered all over the field. There
was something familiar
about the shapes that Kirk could not pin down.
"Yes," Kepac said. "I do. After Star
Fleet had dispatched your ship here to pick up our
prisoners, we received a coded subspace
message from
Trellisane. Very weak. It's only because our
receivers are so powerful out
here that we picked it up at all."
"Trellisane," Kirk murmured thoughtfully.
He knew something of that world
because of its unique and sensitive positio n. Could
this be the trouble
that the Federation had feared for so long?
As if reading his mind, Kepac said, "I don't
think the worst has happened.
But they did request that Star Fleet send a
ship. I doubt if their
transmission even reached Star Fleet
Headquarters in any coherent form, so
I thought I'd let you know and leave it to you." He
hesitated. "I didn't
want to broadcast any of thus, either up to your
ship or to Star Fleet,
because I was afraid I'd start some sort of
panic here. This colony always
skates along the thin edge of panic. We're
next-door neighbors to the
Neutral Zone, and if the Romulans decide
to start a war, we'd be the first
to go."
"Of course, Lerak. I understand." Kirk thought
he understood, too, why
Kepac had changed so greatly over the last few
years. "I hope the
Enterprise's presence will at least reassure
your colonists that they
haven't been forgotten. Now, tell me what this
place is." He pointed toward the field.
"I thought you might find this interesting. Shows the
length to which
fanatics will go. As I told Star Fleet
Command, the prisoners you're here
to pick up are members of the United Expansion
Party. They were about to
enter the Romulan Neutral Zone, hoping
to provoke a war between the
Romulans and the Federation, when one of our ships
intercepted them."
Kirk shook his head. "In spite of what the
United Expansion Party may
think, the Romulans have grown more tolerant. They
wouldn't go to war over
an incursion by a group of fanatics in a
civilian ship."
Kepac grunted. "It was more serious than that.
They had bought an old cargo ship, but they added an
enormous amount of metal superstructure and
plating to it so that from the outside, visually at least,
it resembled a Star
Fleet scout ship. They knew enough to make it
look to the Romulans like a
military provocation."
"But the Romulans would have known better as soon
as they boarded her."
"They wouldn't have gotten the chance. The prison-
ers have been telling us all this quite freely, by the
way. They're proud of it."
"Because they see themselves as the true patriots and you
as the traitors
for stopping them, I suppose," Kirk remarked.
"Exactly. They planned to put up the
appearance of a fight-enough anyway to make the
Romulans destroy them. Then the
Romulans would have no way of
knowing what they really were, and they would be convinced the
Federation
was planning to take over the Neutral Zone, in
violation of the treaty."
"They would have died when the Romulans destroyed
their ship!"
"Of course. No price too great to pay.
All of this in front of us," he
swept his hand in a broad arc, encompassing the
piles of jumbled metal all
over the field, "was their ship. I ordered it
dismantled so no one else
with the same ideas could use it, and also so that we could
use the parts.
We can always do with more metal, especially when it's
already been refined and alloyed for us."
Kirk looked over the piles of scrap metal,
and he had a sudden vision of
the Enterprise itself ending up the same way some
day, piles of anonymous
junk from an old and decommissioned vessel, that
left him shaken. Quickly,
he said, "The message from Trellisane-did
they say what their problem was?" Kepac's
face turned grim. "Not really. However, they did
refer to the
Klingons. That's another reason I wanted
to tell it to you in private. The
message was weak and garbled and that's virtually all
we could understand.
Let's get back to my office and I'll have a
recording of it played for
you."
The prisoners were three Earthmen, two very
humanoid women from Nactern, and a four-sex
marital grouping, physically bonded for life, from
Onctihis.
Since the latter creature was amorphous in
shape, an almost featureless ball about a meter in
diameter, only the Earthmen and the Nactern women were
manacled. Had Kirk never heard of the
surprising strength and agility of the innocuous-looking
Onctiliian group creature, he might have made
the mistake
of taking the least care with that prisoner. As it
was, he knew better, and
he didn't need Lerak Kepac's warning
to order the Enterprise Security men to take
special care with it. "They move without
warning," the governor told
Kirk. "And fast. One of our colonists was
crushed by the thing before we
learned to keep weapons trained on them at all
times."
When the group had all been beamed up to the
Enterprise, Kirk personally
saw the nine prisoners safely installed in
detention cells in the Security
section before he returned to the bridge. McCoy
had preceded him and, on
Kirk's orders, was telling Spock what he
had seen of the prisoners. Kirk
sat in the raised commanding officer's chair in the
center of the bridge
and allowed himself a full five seconds of
blank-minded
relaxation. Then he said, "Navigator, I
want a course for Trellisane.
Helmsman, take us out of orbit as soon as the
course is available. Warp 3
all the way."
Behind him, Spock and McCoy exchanged a
look of surprise. McCoy made as if
to speak from the raised platform where he had
been talking to Spock, but
the Vulcan first officer raised his hand in a
peremptory gesture, left the
platform, and walked casually over to a position
behind the captain's
chair, and only then spoke to Kirk, quietly,
in a voice no one else on the
bridge could hear. "Captain, I must remind you
of the high priority Star
Fleet Command has placed on our putting these
prisoners under its control
as soon as possible. This incident has great
political ramifications."
Without turning around, and suppressing a smile,
Kirk said, "I'm well aware of the political
aspect, Mister Spock. However, the prisoners
will have to
keep for a while. I'll want you, Scotty, and
McCoy in the conference room
in an hour, and I'll tell you why we're going
to Trellisane. Tell them."
Kirk got up and walked over to the communication
officer's console.
"Lieutenant Uhura," he said quietly,
"send the following message to Star
Fleet Command, scrambled. "The following
message was received at Trefolg
from Trellisane. I am proceeding
to Trellisane immediately to investigate.
James T. Kirk, commanding, U.s.s.
Enterprise." Then follow with this." He
handed over a small disk, a copy of the
recorded message he had heard on
Trefolg. He waited until the message had
been sent and acknowledged from
the other end, then retrieved the disk from Uhura
and turned to leave the
bridge.
"Captain," Uhura said in surprise, "aren't
you expecting a reply?"
When Spock had referred to the incident's
political ramifications, he had
been as accurate as always. Kirk chuckled at the
thought of the command
echelon at Star Fleet Headquarters trying
to balance the two 13
explosive issues, the prisoners and the mention
of a Klingon threat.
"Eventually, Lieutenant." He left the
bridge, thinking that by the time a
reply arrived, he would have reached Trellisane
and would possibly be too
involved to be ordered to leave until the problem was
solved.
The first officer, the chief medical officer, and the
chief engineer were
gathered in the conference room, waiting for the captain,
who had not yet
arrived. Star Fleet law, Star Fleet
custom, and the particular interplay of personalities
aboard the Enterprise had given these men a triple
role to
play with which they were not always comfortable. Each had
charge of major
functions involved in running the ship. Together, they
formed something of
a council of advisers to the captain. And each,
in a different way, was
James Kirk's personal friend. Against these
duties, they had to balance
their duty to Star Fleet, the Federation, and, most
immediately, the
hundreds of men and women on the Enterprise whose
well-being depended upon
them. If they agreed that the captain's
behavior was due to mental illness, or that his command
abilities had been impaired significantly
by physical
illness, or even that he was simply behaving
contrary to the best interests of Star Fleet, the
Federation, and the personnel of the ship-for example,
for reasons of personal gain or advancement-then it
was their duty to
remove him from command and to place one of their number
in command.
Personal friendship and admiration inevitably
clouded such judgments, and
every one of them would give James Kirk every
benefit of the doubt before
suggesting such a drastic step. Still, Kirk knew
he would make their lives
easier if he briefed them immediately on his
reasons for ignoring his
orders and heading for Trellisane. His reasons,
in fact, had been the
subject of their discussion in the conference room
while they waited for
him.
"Mr. Scott," the first officer was saying, his
calm, Vulcan face and even
tone giving no hint of the tension he felt, "you
seem to be unaware of the
dangerous nature of the prisoners we have
onboard. I'm sure the captain
feels he has good reasons for proceeding
to Trellisane immediately, but I
also believe he is mistaken in not being more concerned
with getting these
prisoners to a safer place of detention, such as
a starbase, or preferably
Star Fleet Headquarters."
Scott snorted. "That bunch? Three spindly
men, two women, and a ball of
flesh. The Enterprise can handle them!"
"Appearances and your prejudices have deceived you,
Mr. Scott. One of the
Earthmen is Hander Morl, a brilliant
organizer and rabble rouser. The other two are his
bodyguards, and although you may consider them
unprepossessing, they are both members of the
ancient cult of Assassins, able to kill
quickly with every weapon known to civilization or with no
weapons at all.
The two women are the products of a warrior
rite on Nactern and in their
own way just as dangerous as the two Assassins.
And as for the ball of
flesh-well, perhaps you'd best tell Mr.
Scott what you saw on Trefolg,
Doctor."
Scott turned to McCoy, who grimaced and
said, "One of the most smashed-up
human bodies I've ever seen. Squashed
flat by that creature, the
Onctiliian. And apparently it happened before the
victim could even get his weapon out."
Scott's confidence had been noticeably
shaken. "It looks so harmless," he
muttered. "Almost like a pet."
"I would advise against stroking it," the First
Officer remarked mildly,
causing the other two to wonder if this was a rare
case of Vulcan humor or
a sober caution. "The Onctiliian consists of
four separate creatures, but
they are physically bonded for life. The
Onctihians are unique in the known Galaxy for
their, ah, tetrasexual method of reproduction.
However, the
bonding serves
other purposes, as well. In particular, it
creates beings who have four
distinct personalities residing in them but are still
roughly four times as
strong and as fast as a single Onctihian. The
four can pool their
intelligence to a degree when necessary, and they will
react with utmost
speed and violence to any threat to their physical
integrity. If one of them dies, all die once
the bonding has been completed, there is no way
back for them. Instead of making the group creature more
cautious, more timid, as one might expect it to,
the opposite seems to be the case. An
Onctiliian group
creature attacks any threat ferociously, but
also very intelligently, hoping to disarm and destroy it
before the Onctiliian itself comes to harm."
Scott shook his head, his expression one of
distress. "Och," was all he
said.
Kirk strode briskly into the room. "I'm
sure you're right, Mr. Scott.
First, I want all of you to listen to this." He
drew from his pocket the
small recording disk he had earlier given
to Uhura and slid it into the
small combination console on the center of the table.
"Computer, play that
back."
A voice filled the room. "To the United
Federation
of Planets, or any associated planet or
colony that
receives this broadcast. Greetings from
Trellisane."
The weakness of the voice indicated a speaker of
advanced age, but the four men had the impression
of a
mind that was both strong and wise. They listened
quietly, intrigued. "We are not accustomed
to asking
for help from others, and we are reluctant to do so
now.
However, we believe the threat to Trellisane
is great,
and the source of that threat will surely be of concern to
you as well." At that moment, the voice faded
away,
replaced by a wash of subspace noise,
whispers of dying
stars and interstellar dust. Through it, they caught
only
fragments. "dis . . growing power of Sealon . .
. definite
signs of Klingon influence . . . military
vessel to help
us . . ." After that, the message faded
entirely, and only the ancient
noises of space could be heard.
"That's enough, computer," Kirk said softly, and the
noise died away. The
room was silent. Kirk broke the silence.
"Both Governor Kepac on Trefolg
and I interpret that to mean that Trellisane is
being threatened by their
neighboring world, Sealon, and that the Klingons are
behind it. That makes
it of concern to the Federation. Furthermore, I
consider the last fragment
to mean that they request help from us in the form of a
military vessel.
The Enterprise is the only ship in a position
to get to Trellisane in a
reasonable amount of time."
Scott, concerned more by the technical aspect of the
problem than anything
else, asked the room at large, "Now, why
didn't they keep repeating the
message? That way, we might have eventually put
together the whole thing."
"Perhaps they couldn't," McCoy said. "Jim, we
can't do anything against the Klingons anyway, because of the
Organian Treaty."
"It's not a matter of us against the Klingons,
Bones. The whole situation
is a very complicated one. Computer, display a
map of the Romulan and
Klingon Empires and the Federation exploration
territory, designating the
stellar system containing Trellisane. Look
at this, gentlemen."
The wall before them was converted into the requested map,
a map whose
general outlines were as familiar to all of them as the
corridors of the
Enterprise. In the center of the map, which
represented the Galaxy as if it were
two-dimensional and they were looking down at it from
above, was the
circular area which constituted the treaty exploration
territory given over to the United Federation of
Planets. Far smaller, to Galactic east
along
the Perseus and Orion arms of the Galaxy,
stretched the Romulan Empire,
separated from the Federation territory by the shaded
Neutral Zone. To 17
the west, its boundaries denoted as indefinite,
lay the Klingon Empire,
larger than the Romulan territory but still
smaller than the Federation, at
least as far as the computer knew. The barrier between
Klingon Empire and
Federation was titled ORGANIAN TREATY
ZONE. Kirk, for one, was oppressed as
always by what the map made so obvious the Federation
was considerably
larger than either of its two great antagonists
now, but the only direction
available to it for expansion was toward the
Galaxy's center, a most
unpromising direction, while both the
Romulans and the Klingons could swell
outward along the Galaxy's spiral
arms until they met a power great enough
to stop them. The Irapina might do that job with the
Romulans, and before
too many more centuries had passed, but there was no
reason to think the
Klingons would be limited at all. They might
yet become the Galaxy's
dominant power, and despite the Organians"
prediction of a future alliance
between Klingon Empire and Federation, Kirk was
often pessimistic about the
Federation's distant future.
Near the limits of the map, in a fuzzy area where
the Romulan Neutral Zone, the Organian
Treaty Zone, and the Federation Treaty Exploration
Territory
itself all merged, a tiny red light winked. "That,"
Kirk said, pointing at
the light, "is the location of Trellisane.
To say it's in a sensitive
region would be an understatement. Trellisane
has had occasional contacts
with the Federation, primarily in the form of trading
vessels from some of
the outpost colonies along the Romulan
Neutral Zone. They have also
independently invented subspace radio and have had
some spotty communica-
tion with Federation planets that way.
Currently, the conditions are very
unfavorable for subspace communication in that
sector, and so no one has
heard much from them for a few years. When last heard
from, the
Trellisanians were on the verge of exploring
their own stellar system in
ships driven by impulse engines. 18
Obviously, they are a gifted and inventive people,
and the Federation would
be glad to have them as soon as they qualify for
membership. Also obviously, both the Romulans
and the Klingons could be expected to object violently
to
that as an intrusion by the Federation into the treaty
zones. Trading
vessels are one thing, permitted by both
treaties, but actual membership
would be another."
"I'd like to see either of them stop us," Scotty
said hotly. "If those
people want to join us, of their own free will, no one can
object."
"There is a complication," Kirk said mildly.
"Mr. Spock, perhaps you'd like to explain the
complication."
"Certainly, Captain. I believe, Mr.
Scott, that there is another habitable
world in the same stellar system as Trellisane.
That is Sealon, to which
the subspace message we just heard must have been
referring. Sealon is
further from the primary it shares with Trellisane,
larger, cooler, and
almost covered with water. The only known
intelligent species on Sealon is
an aquatic mammal, large, strong, and
primitive. It is also quite barbaric
and warlike. These animals have reached a stage of
aquaculture of plants
and animals along the world's few continental
shelves, and have rude
settlements in the shallow water-the beginnings of
city states. There is a
perpetual string of raids and small wars between these
settlements, with
much killing and plundering of the lower animals and
plants the Sealons
cultivate. I would say that you humans should find
them far more compatible than you will the Trellisanians,
who are said to be quite civilized and
peaceful."
"Thank you, Mr. Spock," Kirk said
hastily. "Any questions?"
"Just one," McCoy drawled. "Why do we need
any computers on this ship when
we have Spock?"
Spock opened his mouth for a quick reply, but Kirk
spoke first, firmly and
loudly. "To return to the matter
at hand, gentlemen. If the message from
Trellisane does indeed mean that the Klingons have
visited Sealon and are arming the natives, or in
any way
trying to absorb that world and extend themselves in that
direction, then we cannot remain aloof. Even if the
Sealons are willing recruits, the expansion of the
Klingon Empire into that star system threatens
Trellisane, and we
can't simply ignore that."
"It's the same thing all over again, then,
isn't it?" McCoy burst out. "War again, ships
lost, men crippled. We're just starting all over
again. What
the Organians tried to do to stop us-it doesn't
matter, after all. We and
the Klingons are finding a way around it."
"Bones, perhaps the Organians shouldn't have
interfered," Kirk said gently. "If we and the
Klingons do manage to come to terms some day, we'll
do it on our own accord, and not because some outside force
has made us do it. Right now, however, we have an
immed iate problem. I'm sure you wouldn't want us
to let them conquer a peaceful, progressive people like
the Trellisanians
while we sat back and did nothing to stop them.
I'm also sure Star Fleet
Command will agree with me, when it finally gets around
to making up its
mind and sending me new orders."
McCoy sighed and slumped down in his chair.
"Yeah, I suppose so. I'm sorry, Jim.
It's just that I'd like, some day, to be able to look
forward to a
career of just fixing up minor injuries from
shipboard accidents. Phaser
burns and explosion wounds are so messy and
unpleasant."
Kirk said to the room at large, "I'd like to think
that what I'm doing will help make your wish come
true sooner."
Captain's Log Stardate 7526.4
The Enterprise is in orbit about
Trellisane. I have spoken to Veedron, a
member of one of Trellisane's many gemots,
or ruling councils. Veedron's is
the voice in the message recorded on
Trefolg. He has promised to explain to
me how their system of government works, but his more
immediate concern is
the threat to Trellisane. I am scheduled to beam
down and speak to him about it shortly.
Kirk hesitated for only a moment before adding,
"Since Star Fleet Command
has not yet responded to my message, I am
proceeding on my own initiative
in this matter."
Perhaps such malice was ill-advised.
Upper-echelon resentment could kill a
career quickly, no matter how illustrious an
officer's accomplishments.
There would still be time, however, before the contents of the log
were
transferred to Star Fleet central records,
for Kirk to "correct" its
contents.
He thumbed the communicator button on the arm
of his chair and said
briskly, "Security Section Chief."
A moment later, the reply came. "Kinitz
here, Captain." The calm, confident voice,
radiating strength and efficiency, gave a true
image of the man.
"What's the status of the prisoners from
Trefolg, Mr. Kinitz?"
"All secure, Captain." A faint tone of
puzzlement. Prisoners under Kinitz's control were
always well secured, so why was Kirk bothering him?
"Thank you, Mr. Kinitz. Carry on."
At that moment, Sulu said, "Captain!
Vessel approaching from dead ahead.
Collision course."
Kirk's response was swift and virtually
automatic. "Full power to screens.
Lieutenant Uhura?"
There was a short pause while Uhura
tried to contact the other ship. "No
response on any frequency, Captain."
The other ship loomed on the screen that covered the
wall facing Kirk.
While Uhura had tried and failed to contact it,
the ship had grown from a
negligible, moving dot among the stars to an
onrushing juggernaut that
filled the screen, blanking out both the stars and the
curve of
Trellisane's horizon. There was no time for
evasive maneuvers.
Instinctively, Kirk clutched the arms of his
chair. The design of the
attacker was familiar a Klingon warship, even
though its hull lacked any
markings.
The attacking ship veered off at the last moment,
and sighs of relief
filled the Enterprise's bridge. "Mr.
Sulu, arm main phaser banks. Spock.
Klingons, trying to warn us off?"
"So it would appear, Captain," the Vulcan said
thoughtfully, "although
there are subtle differences in the design
that suggest otherwise. If it is a Klingon ship-was
"Captain!" Sulu broke in. "Here it comes
again! Should I fire?"
"Calmly, Mr. Sulu. Only if I give
the word." Kirk had completed for himself Spock's
unfinished sentence
"If it is a Klingon ship, then they cannot truly
attack without violating
the Organian Treaty." But then, Kirk thought,
there's never an Organian
around when you need one. He watched the screen
tensely. Once again the
other ship grew from a small point to a
screen-filling monster, and once
again it veered off in time.
When the ship appeared ahead of the Enterprise for the
third time, instinct told Kirk that this would be it. The
Federation ship had not changed
course, had given no evidence that it intended
to leave Trellisane. If the
attacker's purpose had been to frighten the
Enterprise into leaving, then
they must know by now that they hadn't succeeded. They still
hadn't
responded to Uhura's attempts
to communicate. They were almost surely
planning to attack on this pass.
Instinct was right. This time the attacker did not rush
headlong at the
Enterprise. Instead, it established orbital
station keeping near the limits of phaser range,
did nothing for a moment, and then fired its phasers at
the Enterprise. The jolt to the ship was less than
Kirk had expected.
Malfunction in the enemy's weapon? A warning
shot? That was the enemy
commander's problem, not his. "Mr. Sulu, fire
main phaser banks."
"Aye, Captain."
Kirk prepared himself mentally for a long and hardfought
battle. He could
only hope that no civilian areas on the
planet below were damaged by badly
aimed shots. The twin beams of the main phasers
shot across the screen and
met at the distant object that was their attacker.
A flash of light, a
soundless explosion, and the other ship had disappeared.
There was a
stunned silence on the bridge and a bad
taste in Kirk's mouth. The enemy
had been unprepared; the fight had scarcely been
fair.
Spock, his eyes covered by the face-fitting
molding of the science
officer's readout device, broke the silence.
"Captain, the explosion
byproducts indicate that was definitely not a
Klingon ship. The alloys were not the
Klingon fleet's standard, and there is a very high
proportion of water
vapor."
"Water vapor, Mr. Spock?"
"Ice now, Captain, but I presume it was
water that was vaporized when the
ship blew up."
"Uhura, get me Veedron on Trellisane
immediately. Mr. Spock, conclusions?"
"Tentatively, Captain, that the ship was built
on Sealon and crewed by
Sealons. In that case, Klingon interference in this
system has progressed
even further than you had feared."
Kirk nodded. "Yes. I was hoping you'd have
concluded something else.
Uhura?"
"I have him, sir."
The picture on the large screen-stars in the
upper half and the planet's
rim m the lower, the lighted half slipping away
as the Enterprise moved
over the terminator-was replaced by an image of
an older man, dressed in
colorful robes. The background indicated a
richly furnished and hung room.
His face, however, showed signs of great fatigue
and worry. "Captain Kirk.
I am Veedron. Thank the gods you survived
that attack!"
"Veedron, surely you could have warned us it was
coming?" Kirk made no
attempt to hide his anger.
Veedron shook his head. "No, Captain. We
keep watch on objects in orbit,
but nothing further than that. I will explain the
reasons when I see you."
The picture faded away.
Kirk drummed his fingers on his chair arm. Then
he contacted the Security
chief again. "Mr. Kinitz, I'll
want a Security detail in the landing party, after
all. Three men. Send them to the transporter
room right away." After
Kinitz had acknowledged, Kirk spoke into the
communicator again. "Medical
Section. Bones, you're going down
to Trellisane with me. Meet me in the
transporter room." He swiveled his chair
around and stood up. "Mr. Spock, you will come,
too."
Spock raised his eyebrows in silent
surprise. Kirk smiled. "I would say
it's time to show the flag and impress the natives.
I get the impression
that something has scared the Trellisanians
witless, and I'd like our visit to have a real impact
on their morale."
"And their allegiances, Captain?" Spock
asked.
"That, too. Mr. Sulu, you have the con."
When they were alone in the elevator, Spock said
to him, "Captain, the idea of fighting a war against the
Klingons via proxies has disturbing
ramifications."
"I know that, Mr. Spock. But so does
letting the Klingons take over this
system by force without any action on our part. Other
uncommitted worlds
will be paying attention to what happens here, and so will
the Romulans.
Nothing exists in a vacuum, Mr. Spock, not
even in space."
Spock's expression was pained, but he said
nothing.
Veedron was taller than Kirk-almost as tall as
Spock comb he managed to give the opposite
impression through frequent bowing and repeated
apologies.
After suffering through this for some minutes, Kirk could
stand it no more,
and he said firmly, "I assure you, Veedron,
we don't blame your people for
that attack. I wish you had been able to warn us, but
I accept your word
that you couldn't. Now, I'd like to get to the reason for
your distress
call."
"The attack!" Veedron said. "That is our
problem. We are under frequent
attack, almost constant. We never know when
it will come, or what they will bombard. The ship you
destroyed was probably on its way to attack us.
They
noticed you, and you seemed a more tempting target."
was "They'?" Kirk asked.
"Sealons, of course."
"But, sir," Spock objected, "according to our most
recent information, the
Sealons are still far too primitive to have
achieved space flight. Even
with Khngon help, it will take them a generation
to reach that level, and
we know the Klingons have not been interested in this
system for that
long."
Veedron sighed. "It wasn't the Klingons who
helped
the Sealons along it was we Trellisanians,
to our infinite regret. One
moment, gentlemen." They had been standing in the
room from which Veedron
had spoken during his earlier contact with Kirk; the
landing party had
beamed down to that spot. Except for the
communicator on one wall and the
handsome tapestries on the walls, the room was
empty. The furniture Kirk had noticed in the
background during his conversation with Veedron from the ship
was missing. Now Veedron clapped his hands once,
and servants entered from
doorways concealed by the tapestries. They carried
small tables, chairs, and trays with food and
drink. The room was converted to a low-key banquet
hall
within minutes. Veedron seemed transformed at the
same time-from the
obsequious, frightened man who had greeted them
upon their arrival to the
dominant figure in the room. Kirk could more
easily believe now that this
was indeed the man who had sent the message he had
heard on Trefolg; now the man more closely
matched the impression the voice had given. "You
see,"
Veedron said, smiling, "we can still be civilized
and treat guests properly, no matter what the
external problems might be. Let us put off
discussion of
Sealon, please, and eat and drink and talk of
other things."
The time seemed interminable to Kirk, but experience
had taught him to put
on a good front for diplomatic purposes.
He chafed at it, though, and
wanted to get right to the point of their visit. Should
he show his
impatience, no doubt Veedron would classify
him and his companions as
barbarians. Too much depended upon making the right
impression, so Kirk
schooled his face to an expression of polite
enjoyment and waited.
The food and drink were delicious, and the variety and
quantity were both
abundant. The cuts of meat, especially, were
exotic and exquisite. Kirk
could not detect on his companions' faces the
same impatience he felt. At
last, however, it was over, and, with a sigh of 27
regret, Veedron assumed a more businesslike
pose and returned to the main
subject.
"Well over a generation ago, Captain, our
ships made the first voyage to
Sealon. By Sealon standards, that would be
two generations ago. As you
probably know, they area warlike people, killing or
subjugating each other
without compunction." He shuddered at the thought. "The
first Trellisanian
expedition was almost wiped out when it tried to make
contact with the
Sealons. The few who survived were able
to return and tell us their horror
story." He took a reflective sip of wine
from an ornate goblet. "After a
lengthy discussion between the leaders of the gemots, we
decided that the
Sealons needed to be helped along the path of
civilization and
peacefulness. It was clear to us that their belligerence
was due to their
undeveloped state. With our help, they could
outgrow all of that." An
expression of deep pain crossed his face.
"We lost many more of our
citizens before we could establish contact with them.
Their hostility and
cruelty were virtually mindless. Those we sent were
killed before they
could communicate our intentions. We persisted,
though, seeing it as our
duty to our lesser developed brothers, who are
after all children of the
same star." He paused, staring off into space.
"Obviously, then, you managed to make contact with
them eventually," Kirk
prompted.
"Oh, yes, of course. We persisted, trying
different locations on their
planet. In time, we came across one Sealon
city state whose leader was a
being of some vision, one who ordered his underlings to let
our people live until they could learn his language and
explain their mission. When they
had done so, he welcomed them and all the help
we wanted to give him.
They're quick learners, the Sealons. They passed
through the stages of
civilization much faster than our own ancestors
did." He said this with
some bitterness. "Before long, this 28
leader, Pongol, had extended his domination over
much of his world. Seaton
has few land masses, and those are
small. Pongol chose one such land area as his
technical center. Under his successor,
Matabele, we led them to the
stage of space flight and subspace radio.
On the land mass chosen by Pongol, they now have an
impressive technically and industrially oriented
city, and
their own space port. We had expected them
to use both their radio and their ships to increase their
cultural and commercial contacts with us, to our
mutual benefit. Alas, that was not to be."
Once again, he became lost in his thoughts.
Kirk, growing increasingly impatient at
Veedron's circuitous, drawn-out
style of storytelling, prompted him again. "I
suppose their warlike nature
remained."
"Yes." As if he wanted to get through the next
part of his explanation as
quickly as possible, Veedron spoke much more
briskly than before. "Yes,
they hadn't changed, after all. Once they had
learned what they could from
us, they killed all the Trellisanians within their
territory and cut off
contact with us. Unknown to us, they had already used their
subspace radio
to speak to the Klingons, and now they invited the
Klingons in. Under
Klingon tutelage, they learned to arm their space
ships, and then they
undertook a war against us."
"They also modified their ships along Klingon
lines," Spock remarked.
"Yes. In general, they found the Klingons far more
to their taste than they did us."
Kirk snorted. "They might change their minds
when they learn the Klingons'
true intentions."
Veedron's hand fluttered, dismissing that argument.
"I doubt if they have
any delusions about that, even now. The Sealons,
and Matabele in
particular, are a supremely confident
species, possibly with some justifi-
cation. I'm sure they plan to absorb all
they can from 29
the Klingons, just as they did earlier from us, and then
turn against them.
No doubt the Klingons will react more
vigorously to that than we did."
"How did you react?" Kirk asked the question, but
he thought he could
anticipate the answer.
"We retreated. Quite simply, we turned inward
completely. We were filled
with guilt as much as with fear. There was an
extraordinary council of all
the gemots at which the decision was made to abandon
all space flight and
concentrate on our remaining domestic problems.
We had done evil on Sealon; we had also put
ourselves in danger from them. We hoped that, with our
space ships gone, they would choose to ignore us
and go their own way."
Kirk shook his head. "Of course that didn't
happen. That path never works."
Veedron said, "I was one of the few who opposed
that path of action.
Fortunately, I was able to gain a compromise
we retained our subspace
radio installations. The Sealons did not
ignore us. They soon began to
attack us here, on our own world. At first, we
couldn't decide what to do.
We still feared going back into space ourselves, and we
were afraid we
would antagonize them even more if we tried to.
Then the Klingons
approached us with an offer. If we would join their
empire willingly, they
would protect us from the Sealons."
McCoy blurted out, "Don't trust them, for
God's sake!"
"Calmly, Bones," Kirk said. "He's right,
of course. You can't trust them.
They would never try to take over by open force. They
know that would bring us in in a hurry. However, if they
can honestly say that you invited them,
as the Sealons already have, then we have no excuse
to intervene. That was
when you tried to contact us?"
Veedron nodded. "We agreed we had no
choice but to reopen contact with the
noticed, we have no defenses. We no longer have
any detection devices beyond orbital sensors.
Trellisane also has a large ratio of water
to land
area-about two to one-with very large continental
shelves. The Klingons
implied they would gladly equip the Sealons
to make landings on those
shelves so that they could begin to colonize
Trellisane. We would be left
with nothing when it was all over, not even our
lives."
"If we agree to defend you, I hope you
realize fully what sort of Galactic
politics you'll be getting involved in."
Veedron was about to answer when Kirk's
communicator bleeped. He took it
from his belt quickly and flipped it open. "Kirk
here."
Sulu's voice. "Captain, we're under
attack again. This time, there're three of them." His
voice was interrupted by loud noises and the gabble of
voices in the background.
"Sulu! What's happening up there?" The men from
the Enterprise sat tensely, mentally projecting
themselves back onto the ship and trying to imagine
what was happening onboard. "Sulu!"
"Sorry, Captain. It was a bit worse this
time than last. They have screens, so we couldn't get
at them so easily. We've taken one of them out of
action, but the other two are still making
passes. There's been some
damage. We can't beam you up while this is going
on. I'll get back to you
as soon-was There was a loud crash, followed
by silence. Kirk looked around
the room helplessly, imagining the worst.
Endless minutes passed. Veedron went
quietly to the wall communicator and
spoke in low tones to the central office which
coordinated the orbital
sensors, but they could add nothing significant
to what Sulu had already
said.
The communicator bleeped again. "Captain
Kirk?" A smooth voice, well
modulated, unhurried.
"Yes! Who is this? Where's Sulu?" 31
"Sulu is well, Captain, for now. This is
Hander Morl. I am now in command
of your ship, and I have some unfinished business
to attend to, business
your treasonous friends on Trefolg interrupted.
I thought I would do you
the courtesy of informing you before the ship departed from
orbit. One
commander to another. Console yourself with this thought your
ship will be sacrificed to the good of the Federation, and you will
survive its
destruction. You may lose your commission because of
this, but once the war with the Romulans gets well
underway, there should be ample opportunity for an able
man like you to work your way back up the command ladder
again.
Good-bye, Captain." The communicator
clicked off, and there was no further
response, despite Kirk's repeated
attempts at contact.
"My ship," Kirk muttered disbelievmgly.
"They've got my ship." Beside that
fact, Trellisane and all its troubles faded
into insignificance.
Sulu had been overconfident. When the three
attackers were first detected,
he ordered only half power to the ship's
defensive screens, convinced that
this enemy's weapons would be no more potent than the
first attacker's.
These three came in with their own screens up and they
were therefore not as vulnerable to the Enterprise's phasers
as Sulu expected them to be.
Nonetheless, the Enterprise's first shot put one of
them out of action, even though it didn't destroy it.
The remaining two fired simultaneously and at
the same point on the
Enterprise. The Enterprise's defense computer
responded quickly, decreasing screen power elsewhere
in order to reinforce the point under fire, doing
the best it could under the constraint Sulu's order of
half power had
placed upon it. It was not quite quick enough. During the
picosecond delay
before the computer issued its command and the few
nanoseconds following
that before the command was implemented and screen power could
build up,
the Sealons' beams sliced through the weak screens.
What struck the hull
was much diminished in strength by its passage through the
screen, but it
was strong enough.
The beam hit the main hull and ruptured several
layers of the metallic
outer skin. This was where the
Security section was located. The impact sent
Security personnel reeling
against furniture and walls. Kinitz, the
section's chief, was off duty and
was resting in his quarters; the concussion threw him from
his bunk. He
landed on the floor in a half-crouch, snapping
awake and reacting
instinctively at the first shock. For a few
moments, the lights in his cabin went off. The
Sealons' phaser be.ims had cut through the main
power supply
to the Security section; by an almost impossible
coincidence, the shock
waves from the exploding outer skin had so degraded
the section's
self-contained emergency power unit that seconds
passed before the lights in Kinitz's cabin came
flickeringly and weakly to life again. In that dim
half-light, Kinitz waited impatiently for the
door of his cabin to open
slowly. As soon as he could squeeze through the
opening, he ran down the
hallway. His worry approached frenzy
uppermost in his imagination was the
image of the guardian beams of the detention cell
doorways cutting off for
those few vital seconds. Uncharacteristically,
Kinitz made a mistake. He
neglected to use the communication module in his
cabin to alert his men to
the possibility of an escape.
Kimtz's worst fears were justified. The beams
had cut off for a few
seconds, and one of Hander Morl's bodyguards
leaped instantly through the
doorway and into the corridor beyond. The other
Assassin, in an adjacent
cell and not quite as quick-witted as his colleague,
didn't move until he
saw the other man already in the hallway. By then, the
beams had come back
on, although weakly, and the second Assassin was
flung back against his
cell's far wall, unconscious from the blast
to his nervous system.
Hander Morl himself and the two Nactern women
watched all of this with no
reaction. But the Onctiliian group-creature,
estimating the weakness of the beams from the dimness of the
flash they made when the second Assassin hit
them, gauged its own chances
differently. It rolled back to the far wall of
its cell and then threw
itself forward at the doorway. There was a flash and the
smell of burned
flesh, but the creature's momentum carried it through.
It rolled to a stop
in the corridor, weak and exhausted. One of its
four components, the one
most exposed to the beams, had been knocked
unconscious. The other three
Onetiliians quickly reorganized their mental
union, reassigning life
functions so that the unconscious member was
properly cared for; the
resulting intelligence, reduced though it was, was
still greater than a
man's.
Recovered thus far, the Onctiliian took
note of its surroundings again. It
saw the Assassin vanish around the curve of the
corridor, and it saw
nothing by the doors of the detention cells that would enable
it to turn
off the beams and release the others, so it rolled
down the corridor in the direction
opposite to that taken by the Assassin.
The Assassin found the control panel only a
short distance further on. A
young Security guard had been seated at a
small desk before it, reading a
book while keeping a desultory watch on the
corridor, but the impact
seconds earlier had thrown him from his chair. He
had hit his head on the
floor and was only now climbing groggily to his
feet. He never quite made
it. The Assassin reached him before he could get his
feet under him or his
hand on his weapon or the alarm button. With the
guard lying dead next to
his desk, the Assassin studied the labels on the
control panels briefly,
then pushed a series of buttons. He picked
up the dead guard's phaser,
looked at it for a moment in contempt, then shrugged,
put the weapon in his belt, and headed back toward the
cells.
Meanwhile, the Onctiliian, still feeling somewhat
disoriented, came across
three Security men in the corridor and
stopped in momentary confusion. The
men were rubbing their bruised shoulders and elbows and
discussing their
although a Condition Red had been announced and the men
knew the Enterprise
was under attack, they had no specific
defensive duties, and they were
griping loudly to dispel their feelings of tension and
helplessness. One of
them happened to glance down the corridor and
noticed the Onctiliian sitting quietly in the
middle of it, as if it were listening to their complaints.
"Look," the Security man said softly,
nudging his neighbor, "what's that?"
The other man looked over his shoulder, then shouted,
"Jesus, it's one of
the prisoners!" He grabbed his phaser from his
belt and fired at the alien. Without conscious thought,
the Onctiliian had stopped with its
nonfunctioning component facing the humans. The
phaser was set on "stun,"
always the standard setting for men under Kirk's command,
but the comatose
Onctiliian caught the full force of the blast.
Because of the smaller size
of the individual Onctiliian body and the greater
complexity of its nervous system, what would stun a
man could be a dangerous shock even to a healthy
Onctiliian; weakened as it already was, the
unconscious component died.
The shock of its death tore through the three
surviving Onctiliians. A
high-pitched, three-voice scream echoed down the
corridor-an astonishingly
sweet sound, a Siren song. The cry
momentarily paralyzed the three security men. The
Onctiliian, enraged and bewildered, flashed down
the hallway, a
blur the men could scarcely see. It left two
of the men as long red smears
along the walls and the third one with a crushed side.
Deranged, the
Onctiliian rolled down the corridor,
randomly killing or crippling some of
those it encountered and ignoring others.
Spock had been somewhat mistaken in his information
about Onctiliians. In
this, he could be excused, since little was known about them
in the Galaxy
at large. While it was true that the death
of one of the four 36
physically bonded individuals had doomed the
groupcreature as a whole to
death, that death would not come as rapidly as Spock
had implied. The first
effect had been madness physically powerful and
mentally potent as the
three-part creature still was, its sanity could not
survive the sudden loss
of one-fourth of what had been itself. It was not that which
doomed it,
however, but rather the poisons from the dead member even
now spreading
through the bodies of the other three. Even if it had
stayed sane, it could
not have divested itself of the corpse. The attachment between
the four was
profound, thorough, and eternal. The dissolution of a
dead Onctiliian was
rapid, and its effect on the others-the effect of the
proteins, digestive
acids, and other biochemicals its death had
released into their
bloodstreams-was inevitable and irreversible, but
it could take hours or
even days to finally kill them.
Kinitz appeared before it. He fell into a crouch,
his phaser pointing at
the Onctiliian, but it suddenly swerved to one
side and through an open
archway. Kinitz hurried forward. The archway was
the entrance to a cargo
and service ramp that led downwards in a spiral
path to lower levels, and
by the time Kinitz got to the opening, the
Onctiliian had disappeared. He
hesitated for a moment, afraid of the damage the
creature might cause
below, but he knew the greater danger lay ahead of
him it was far more
important that he find Hander Morl, the leader
of the prisoners, and take
him captive again if he had escaped.
Further along the corridor, Kinitz came
across bodies and parts of bodies.
He also found the survivors. He had no time
to talk to the well or help the injured. He ran
faster. At last he came across a tableau that
brought him
to a quick halt, his phaser coming out. Hander
Morl stood in the center of
the corridor, tapping his foot impatiently,
while his bodyguard bent over
the other Assassin, lying on the floor, and
slapped his face 37
hard and regularly, trying to bring him back
to consciousness. The man on
the floor stirred and groaned and tried to raise his
arm to protect his
face.
"All right," Hander Mori snapped. "That's good
enough. Get him to his feet
and let's get moving."
"Moving back into your cells," Kinitz said
calmly. Mori and the Assassin
spun around, and the bodyguard p oised himself.
"Don't," Kinitz said,
grinning at him. "I know what you are, but this is
faster." The Assassin
relaxed again.
Kinitz had made his second, and last, major
mistake. Worried first about
Hander Mori, the prisoners' leader, and then more
immediately about the
deadly Assassin bodyguard, he had
dismissed as unimportant the Nactern
warrior women. They had both pressed themselves up
against the corridor
walls when they'd heard his footsteps, and they were
hidden from his sight
by the bulge of a turboelevator shaft. "Back
into the detention cells,"
Kinitz repeated, stepping forward, his phaser
held unwaveringly on the two
men before him. They backed away as he moved
forward, drawing him past the
two women's hiding place.
He saw the movement from the corner of his eye, but
before he could react,
a boot slammed into his wrist, knocking the
phaser flying, and something
hit him in the small of the back with a crushing,
stunning blow. Kinitz's
legs folded under him, and even as he fell, he
was hit on the side of the
neck.
Kinitz lay helpless on the corridor floor,
his vision fading. He heard a
man laugh, and he could see one of the Nactern
warriors' boots in front of
his face. At the end, he realized it had been the
women, not the Assassin,
who had broken his back and neck. He willed his
lungs to breathe, but the
will that could cow the strong men who worked in the
Security section could not control his own body, and
Kinitz's consciousness and life slipped away.
Hander Mori wasted no time on triumph. "Pick
up 38
his phaser and follow me," he snapped. He
himself had the phaser the
Assassin had brought back with him. The
Assassin and one of the Nactem women halfcarrying
the other bodyguard between them, the group hurried after
Morl. The other Nactern warrior caught up with
him. "What about the Onctiliian?"
she said.
Morl shrugged. "If he shows up, he can
rejoin us. I never entirely trusted
him, anyway." From the plans he had studied
while designing his substitute
starship, Hander Mori knew enough about the
Enterprise's layout to be able
to find the turboelevator that would take them to the
bridge. By the time
they all piled into it, the second bodyguard had
recovered sufficiently to
stand unassisted, and they were all armed with phasers
picked up along the
way from the dead left behind by the Onctiliian. The
wounded they passed,
they finished off.
The elevator hummed and lurched along
silently. The group of United
Expansionists within it waited stolidly, weapons
at the ready. When the
doors swished open, showing them the bridge spread
out before them, they
moved quickly.
Sulu was in the command chair, talking into the
communicator. "I'll get
back to you," he was saying. Morl raised his
phaser, aimed at Sulu, and
pressed the firing stud. Sulu jerked as the beam
hit him, then collapsed
against one arm of the chair. Until that moment, the
attention of everyone
on the bridge had been concentrated on the huge
viewing screen at the front of the room, where the two
Sealon ships could still be seen maneuvering for
another pass at the Enterprise. Now they found
themselves staring into the
muzzles of the phasers held by Hander Morl and his
followers, and there was nothing any of them could do.
Hander Morl stepped jauntily over to the command
chair, rolled Sulu out of
it onto the floor, and sat down. "All right,
everyone," he announced. "I'm
in command here. Get back to work and get us out of
here. I 39
want this ship headed for the nearest point in the
Romulan Neutral Zone as
soon as possible and at the highest speed
available. You," he said to Uhura, who was still staring
at him in openmouthed amazement, "you're the
communications officer, right? Where's your captain?"
"Uh, he's down on the surface of
Trellisane," Uhura replied, her response
to a question from the command chair virtually automatic.
A moment later,
she cursed herself for having said anything.
Morl laughed. "Wonderful! Get me in touch
with him, right now." Uhura
turned grudgingly to her equipment, and Mori
spoke to Chekov, who had
turned around to stare at him. "If your captain's
down there," Mori asked
him, nudging Sulu with his toe, "then who's this?"
"That," Chekov said, anger thickening his accent,
"is Mr. Sulu, and if
you've hurt him, all your weapons won't help
you."
Hander Morl smiled. "A commendable sentiment, but
the welfare of the
Federation should count for more to you than the well-being of
your
friend." He gestured one of his bodyguards over.
"Now this man, you see,
will wake your friend up and then see to it that Sulu
dies in grotesque
agony while you watch, unless you follow the
orders I gave a moment ago."
Chekov looked at the tall, heavily muscled
Assassin and at the man's
utterly cold expression; then he gritted his
teeth and turned to his
console to plot the course Mori had requested.
"I have the captain," Uhura said, her voice
sullen.
"Captain Kirk?" Mori said into the
chair's communicator.
"Yes! Who is this? Where's Sulu?"
"Sulu is well, Captain, for now." As
Mori spoke, the Sealon ships made two
more passes. After the first attack, Sulu had
corrected his mistake and had ordered full power
to the ship's defensive screens. The Sealons'

phaser beams now caused only a slight
tremor to run through the hull of the
Enterprise, and there was no damage. The
personnel on the bridge didn't
notice even that, for their attention was riveted on
the drama happening
near them and on Mori's taunting words to their
captain. "Good-bye,
Captain," he said at last and signaled
Uhura to break the contact.
Chekov had laid in the course and alerted the
engine room. He felt there
must be some way he could relay the appropriate
orders to Scotty, some
cryptic phrase he could use, that would alert the
chief engineer to the
situation on the bridge. His mind seemed
frozen, though, and he could only
speak and act mechanically, as if the man in the
command chair were Captain Kirk himself and the orders
Chekov was following were routine. He thought
of laying in a course to the nearest starbase instead
of to the Neutral
Zone, but something in Hander Mori's intelligent
face told him that the man would know if he did so,
and Sulu's life would then be forfeit. Well,
Pavel Andreievich, he told himself, it will take
a couple of days to reach the
Neutral Zone. There are only a few of them,
against more than 400 of us.
That should be time to think of something. What would
Captain Kirk do in
this situation?
But while Chekov searched for alternatives, the
Enterprise responded to its engines, left orbit
under impulse drive, and then headed from the
Trellisane system at warp speed, leaving the
puzzled Sealons behind.
Whatever small encouragement Veedron had
drawn from the arrival of the
Federation officers on Trellisane had
instantly deserted him once he
realized that, with the loss of their ship, they were now as
weak and
ineffectual as he was. "I'd better request
another council of the gemots, his
he said gloomily. "We must decide on a
new course."
Kirk had been staring into space, not lost in thought,
but helpless and
hopeless, stunned by the loss of his ship. He had
never felt quite so
abandoned, so lost, his very foundation removed.
McCoy leaned toward him
and said softly, "Jim. Captain Kirk!"
Kirk shook himself. "Thank you, Bones.
Veedron, you said you had abandoned
space flight. What about your ships?"
"We destroyed them, I'm afraid. Those few
that were left, that is, after
the initial Sealon attacks. None of our
ships had weapons or defenses, you
see."
"Of course not," Kirk said bitterly.
"Captain," Spock said, "the
Trellisanians' ships could not have been used
to pursue the Enterprise, in any case,
since they lacked warp drive
technology."
"That wasn't quite what I had in mind, Mr.
Spock."
A tremor shook the room and there was a muffled
booming noise from overhead. "The Sealons,"
Veedron said, collapsing still further. "Now that your
ship
is gone, they've gone back to their original
mission of bombarding us." He
shook his head. "I cannot bear to think of all the
deaths."
"You surely have medical emergency teams,
don't you?" McCoy asked.
Veedron looked bewildered. "We have our
hospitals, of course, and
physicians, and emergency services for
individual medical problems. Much of that becomes
inoperative during these attacks, however.
Ambulance pilots
cannot fly during bombardments. Power supplies
to hospitals are disrupted.
We pride ourselves on how well we handle
individual medical emergencies,
but the system breaks down in these conditions.
Even if we could get all
the wounded to hospitals, the staffs could not handle such
numbers."
"Good Lord, man," McCoy said angrily,
"don't you ever have natural
disasters or wars?"
Veedron's distaste was evident. "None of us
lives where there is a chance
of natural disaster. All of our cities are
restricted to the safest zones.
And we have not had a . . . war . . . since the
most ancient times. Surely
you don't have wars in the Federation now?" His voice
rose. "Surely such a
civilization as yours can avoid natural
disasters?"
McCoy's mouth quirked into a wry smile.
"Let's just say that a starship
medical officer learns to handle large numbers of
injuries under less than
ideal conditions." He turned to Kirk. "Jim,
maybe I could help these people organize teams,
medical strike forces. That all right with you?"
"Yes, Bones, of course. Veedron?"
"Do you mean you could help us deal with the
injured?" the Trellisanian
said. Hope a ppeared on his face for the first time.
"Come with me, Doctor!
We'll
give you whatever support you request." He
jumped to his feet and led McCoy
from the room.
After they had left, Kirk said quietly,
"Well, Mr. Spock, I see now even
more clearly what we're up against here. The
Trellisanians have an enviable reputation for
ingenuity and ambition, but it seems they avoid
adversity.
rather than meeting it face-to-face."
"Yes, Captain. I noted that Veedron offered
Dr. McCoy whatever support he
feels he needs, rather than asking him just to help
them with his broader
knowledge. They expect him to take the lead, to provide
all the initiative, because their dilemma is
unprecedented and frightening. Captain, you
expressed a desire a few minutes ago
to use a Trellisanian ship in some
manner, but not to pursue the Enterprise. May
I ask what your plans are?"
Kirk hesitated for a moment. "I don't think
I should tell you too much, Mr. Spock, for your
own sake. Even if I manage to bring all of this
to a
successful conclusion, it won't look too good
on my record. We're in this
situation because of my insistence on heading for
Trellisane with the
prisoners still on board. If I don't pull
off what I have in mind, then my
career is certainly over." He laughed, but it was
a bitter sound. "You
don't attain command of a starship in Star Fleet
without making some
enemies along the way, and they don't go away.
They stay around, waiting
for their chance. I may have just given it to them. You're
still clean, and I want to keep you that way. You made
your objections known to me when I
first decided to come here before delivering the
prisoners; that was your
duty. If you know what I plan next and help
me despite knowing, and if I
fail in the end, then your own career might be ruined
along with mine. I
don't want to be responsible for that, too."
Spock nodded. "Sufficiently logical,
Captain. Tell me only what you wish."
"Good. What I wantis to get in touch with the 44
Klingon naval commander on Sealon. However, I
want to be able to speak to
him from a position of strength. Therefore, I don't
want the Trellisanians
to contact the Klingons and surrender abjectly.
I wouldn't want them to do
that, in any case, but without some sort of meaningful
Federation
protection, I expect that's just what they're
going to end up doing."
Spock raised his eyebrows. "There is a
limit to how much interference we
can risk, Captain. We cannot violate either the
Prime Directive or the
Organian Peace Treaty."
"I'll keep all that in mind, Mr. Spock,
but the alternative may be a
full-fledged war between the Federation and the Romulan
Empire. The choice
of risks is a clear one for me."
Those below had no hint of it at first, but this
attack on Trellisane was
to be different from all those which had preceded it. The
bombardment
tapered off, but the Sealon ships didn't depart
from orbit and return to
Sealon as the Trellisanians had learned
to expect. Instead, the two which
had not been disabled by the Enterprise raised the already
high
inclinations of their orbits until both ships were in
virtually polar
orbits.
The high inclinations of the three ships' initial
orbits had been chosen to allow them to pass over the
major industrial, scientific, and urban
targets in both the northern and southern
hemispheres. To the Trellisanians manning the
radar stations and other orbital sensor installations
on the planetary
surface, nervously watching their screens and
readouts, the purpose of the
change to polar orbits seemed obscure. But
to Kirk and Spock, who were with Veedron when he was
told of the orbit changes, a reason suggested itself
immediately.
Veedron had been conducting them on a depressing
tour of a rubble-filled
site-the aftermath of a recent Sealon attack.
The damage was cleared away
and the buildings replaced as soon as the
Trellisanians could
manage, but destruction always takes less time
than construction, and the
Sealon attacks had been so frequent and
closely spaced that the
Trellisanians could not hope to keep up. The
site Kirk and Spock were being
shown when the message was delivered had been the
last remaining subspace
transceiver on Trellisane. The Sealons
must have intercepted the
Trellisanian appeal for Federation aid, for it
was immediately after that
initial transmission, the recording of which Kirk
had heard on Trefolg, that Sealon ships had
appeared at Trellisane for another attack; the
transceiver
had been their primary target.
In the middle of explaining all of this to the two
Star Fleet officers,
Veedron stiffened and his eyes took on a glazed
look. The three of them
were standing on the edge of the crater that had been the
subspace radio
emplacement. What had once been parkland
stretching away from the
emplacement in all directions was now sterile,
blasted earth, with here and there a jumbled pile of dead
tree trunks. Veedron's bright, ankle-length
robes stood out sharply against this dreary
background, making him look
like an exotic bird creature from elsewhere who
didn't belong here. He
stared abstractedly into space, ignoring his two
guests.
"Spock," Kirk said softly to the Vulcan.
"Some kind of seizure?"
Spock looked up from the handful of soil he was
examining and glanced at
Veedron's face. "I would say, Captain, that
Veedron is in communication
with someone."
"Telepathic contact, you mean?"
Spock frowned. "I've received no hints of that
since our arrival, no
impression of telepathic communication."
Veedron sighed suddenly and shook himself.
"Captain Kirk. Mr. Spock. I must
apologize for my rudeness. I've just been told
that two of the Sealon
vessels still in orbit about Trellisane have
shifted into polar
orbits rather than leaving for home. This has not
happened before, and I
fear it cannot be a good sign, although I am at a
loss to explain their
actions."
"Only two?" Kirk asked. "Three
attacked the Enterprise."
.
"The third was crippled by your ship. It remains
in its original orbit, but its altitude is low.
Drag is significant, and its orbit is
decaying."
Spock said, "Sir, a polar orbit suggests
a detailed mapping mission."
"Perhaps you're right," Veedron said dispiritedly.
"Perhaps they're
choosing targets for future bombardments."
"Or," said Kirk, "sites for a landing.
The beginning of their invasion."
Veedron's reaction to this suggestion was a
mixture of amazement and
horror. "Invasion! We thought we had much more
time! Please excuse me. I
must seek seclusion and summon another council
of the gemots. I fear this
will tip the scale in favor of an immediate appeal
to the Klingons."
As Veedron hurried off, Kirk said
angrily, "Councils! Discussions! That
seems to be their response to everything. There
seems to be no one here, no individual, with the
authority to act quickly in the case of a crisis."
"I would surmise, Captain, that Veedron and this
world's other leaders or
council members are linked electronically,
by means of some sort of brain
implant. That would explain both the manner in which
he received that
message and his current desire for seclusion.
My inability to detect any
form of telepathic communion supports my
belief. If the ruling elite can
all communicate instantly with each other,
no matter where they are, their
deliberations might be speedier and more efficient
than one would at first
think."
"Not efficient or vigorous enough to suit me. I
can't let them invite the
Klingons in. That would take away
what little bargaining power I might have, and you know
what would happen to this world under Klingon domination."
"I don't see what we can do to stop them."
"Perhaps not much by ourselves, but there must be someone on this
planet
with the guts and the will to fight back! We're going
to find them, whoever they are."
Hander Morl did not delude himself that he and his
four remaining followers
were a match for the more than 400 trained personnel
of the Enterprise. If
he exercised sufficient care, there should be no
confrontation outside the
bridge, no one would know that anything out of the
ordinary had happened.
On a long trip, he knew, he could never have
hoped to pull it off. There
would have had to be relief crews for the
bridge. Those off duty would have had to be guarded, which
would have necessitated splitting his own tiny
group up into two or three pieces. Food would
have become necessary,
eventually, and he could not imagine how he would have
handled that. And it would have been inevitable that someone from
elsewhere in the
ship-Engineering, perhaps, or Medical-would have needed
to talk to the
officer in charge of the bridge. As it was, though,
the trip should take no more than a day and a half, according
to Morl's estimate, and he would
simply keep the bridge sealed to outsiders, with
his own two Assassins
guarding the turboelevator doors rather than the
usual two Security guards, and keep the
present crew on the bridge for the duration. Once
the
Enterprise entered the Romulan Neutral
Zone and was destroyed, his purpose would be
accomplished and he would no
longer have to worry about these petty details.
Petty as the details were, though, Hander
Mori was forced to admit to
himself that they held a surprising appeal for
him. It was as much the
emphasis on order, duty, and obedience preached
by the United Expansion
Party as its philosophy concerning the destiny of the
Federation to grow to dominate the Galaxy that had
attracted Hander Morl to it. He believed in
the Federation's duty and destiny to expand and conquer,
but he also
believed in an individual citizen doing his
duty even to the point of
personal sacrifice. That, of course, was why
he and his followers were
willing to die on this mission, and why he was angry
at the knowledge that
the crew of the Enterprise would probably not be
willing, if he gave them
the choice, to do the same. Personal death was a
high price to pay, but it
was a small price in exchange for forcing a war of
conquest upon the
reluctant weaklings who ran the Federation. It was
not impossible that the
crisis would bring down the government and that the war
against the
Romulans, when it finally came about, would
be conducted under the control
of the United Expansion Party itself.
Morl had always derived great pleasure from
submitting himself to the will
of the UEP leadership. He obeyed his orders
without question, just as he
expected his own subordinates to obey his
orders. He had hoped that some
day he would be invited to join the leadership himself, but
if that never
happened he would still school himself to be content. This
mission was his
idea; party leadership had jumped at the idea and
immediately placed Morl
himself in command of the mission. Now he would never rise
higher in the
UEP he had known from the start that there would be no
returning from this mission. He accepted that, too.
To be chosen for this task was honor
enough, even greater honor
than commanding some section or brigade of the party.
In the future, school
children of the Galaxy-spanning Federation of Planets
would learn of his
exploit, would study his life. He would
be one of the greatest martyourselfigures in Federation
history. Still, sitting at this hub of power, feeling
the
lines of command stretching throughout this magnificent
space vessel,
binding more than 400 people into an obedient whole, and
converging in the
raised chair on the bridge where he, Hander
Mori, sat-this was a pleasure
and an honor, too, even if he had not attained
the position legitimately.
No, he told himself quickly. Put that thought from you.
My goals confer all
the legitimacy I need. If the Federation were being
run as it should,
someone like me would already be sitting here.
The Enterprise was still in an alert status. Hander
Mori had heard the
alert sounded via the wall speakers outside his
cell. So far, despite the
ship's departure from the scene of the battle, the
alert had not been
canceled. He had no idea if a day and a half
was a long time for an alert
to be maintained or not-if that might make
someone outside the bridge
suspicious-but maintaining it had at least one
advantage. As long as the
alert was in force, everyone on the ship would be too
worried about what
was going on invisibly outside the hull to concern
themselves with the lack of crew changes on the bridge.
Or so Hander Morl hoped. And there was a
good excuse for maintaining the alert status the
escape of the prisoners
from the Security section!
He motioned one of the Nactern women over and
pointed at Sulu, who was
still lying on the floor where Morl had dumped him
but was stirring and
groaning. "Get him on his feet. Quickly."
If there were any announcements
to be made, Mori didn't want alarm spread
by a stranger's voice on the
ship's speakers.
The warrior woman picked Sulu up easily
and held
him on his feet. His head lolled on his chest and
his legs were rubber. "I
meant, wake him up!" Mori said
impatiently.
She shook Sulu and slapped him hard a couple
of times, and at last he could stand by himself. He held
his head in his hands and tried to make his
stomach settle itself. The phaser had been set
on "strong stun," and Sulu's head felt as if it
would fall to the deck in pieces if he let go. As
his
vision cleared, he looked around the bridge and
saw the armed intruders,
their weapons moving slowly back and forth
to discourage all thoughts of
heroism. His mind was still fuzzy from the phaser
bolt, and he had no idea
who Hander Mori and the others were, but it was clear
enough to him that
they were in at least temporary command of the
Enterprise.
"Sulu!" Mori snapped. "Come over here. I
want you to make an announcement."
His knees still weak but growing stronger, Sulu
obeyed. Following Mori's
orders, he thumbed a button on the command chair
arm and announced the
continuation of the Red Alert. "The escaped
prisoners could be anywhere on
the ship by now," he said, half listening to the
amplified sound of his
voice echoing faintly through the walls of the
bridge. "Red Alert will be
maintained until all have been recaptured. They
are to be considered
extremely dangerous. Alert procedures will be
followed until further
notice. Bridge out."
Mori nodded. This one at least knew his duty and
did it. "Return to your
normal post on the bridge, Sulu." His tone
came close to being kind.
In the Medical section, Nurse Christine
Chapel muttered in annoyance. With
McCoy presumably still down on
Trellisane, and his other assistants off
tending to the wounded in the Security section, where the
damage seemed to
have been confined, she was virtually alone in
Medical. Normally, she could have handled that with no
difficulty, equipped as she was both by training
temperament to keep everything running properly. Quite
a few badly mangled
Security personnel had been brought to her,
however, and the automated
medical equipment was getting badly overloaded.
She needed more than two
hands to stay on top of things. For that matter, long
exposure to Dr. McCoy
had prejudiced her in favor of the human touch and
against the mechanical,
so that she felt morally bound to tend to each patient
herself, no matter
what the machine knitting the patient back together
said about the patient's progress. The continuation of the
Red Alert, just announced over the
speakers, meant that she could not requisition any
kind of help everyone
who could fulfill a duty had one assigned
during such alerts, and no one, of those who might be of
use to her, would be available to come down to Medical and
place himself under her orders. Dr. Goro, who would
normally have taken
charge of Medical in McCoy's absence, had
called in only minutes earlier to
tell Chapel that he was staying in the Security
section because of what he
called "the carnage here" and had no idea
when he'd be able to get back to
Medical section.
It was while she was sitting by the bedside of a young
woman from Security, whose pallor seemed
to indicate to Chapel that she was not doing at all as
well as the life-support equipment claimed,
that she heard a thin,
high-pitched noise behind her that she knew didn't
belong here. She turned
quickly, then gasped in astonishment.
At the far end of the room, jammed up against the
wall as though using it for support, was a
creature
unlike any she had seen before. It was a roughly
spherical thing, perhaps a meter in diameter, its
color
somewhere between pink and brown. She had not been
present when the prisoners had been brought
aboard,
and she had heard nothing about them since then.
Knowing nothing at all about Onctihis and its
four-sex
group creatures, she had no idea what this thing
was.
Her first reaction to it, nonetheless, was fear.
Its high-pitched,
sweet-sounding cry continued, and it cut through her,
fascinating and
repelling her at the same time.
Then Chapel saw that one side of the being, turned
almost away from her,
was oozing fluids; and as she watched it, the
Onctihian began to lose its
spherical shape and to slump down, flattening more
and more against the
floor until it had no recognizable shape.
"Why, you poor thing!" Chapel
said. "You're badly hurt." It was due more to a
feeling she received from
the creature, this conclusion of hers, than
to analysis. After all, she
knew of shapeless creatures whose slumping down
to the floor was no
reflection on their state of health; similarly,
she had seen beings who
oozed fluids as part of their normal functioning.
Somehow, she felt a
communication of some kind come across the room to her,
an impression that
all of the Onctiliian's defensive
ferocity had left it and that it was
pleading for help.
Chapel's instincts and training asserted themselves, and
she got up and
went quickly over to the Onctiliian, filled with the
desire to help this
latest patient. Essential as speed so often was
in medical emergencies, she had long ago learned
not to seem to be attacking a frightened, wounded
alien. She kneeled slowly before it and gently
placed her hand on it, near
the place the fluids were oozing from. The
high-pitched cry softened and
stopped at last. She could almost feel the dying
creature relax under her
comforting touch.
Earlier that day, rushing about trying to take care of the
needs of all the wounded and nearly dead being brought
into Medical, Chapel had cut her hand badly,
stripping off a few square centimeters of skin and
flesh on her
palm. Her own wound had been minor, in her
opinion, compared to those of
the patients being brought in, and if it hadn't been
for the way it had
interfered with her ability to function properly, she
would have ignored
it. As it was, she had dressed it
hastily and forgotten about it. Now, losing
consciousness at last, the
Onctiliian twitched, and Chapel momentarily
lost her balance and fell
forward. Her hand slid across the smooth, wet skin
and plunged into the body of the dead Onctiliian.
Disorganization, putrefaction-these followed quickly
upon death for an
Onctiliian. Indeed, it was largely this
rapidity of decay that doomed the
other three Onctiliians in a bonding to death,
for a longer grace period
would give them time to expel the dead member and find
a replacement.
Chapel's hand sank into the flesh up to her wrist,
and she cried out in
horror.
A fragment of bone within the dead creature had
caught on the dressing as
Chapel fell forward, and now the dressing and the
scab beneath it were torn off together. Her hand sank through
the almost liquid body of the dead
member and came to rest at last against the junction,
the boundary, with
one of the living three, her flayed palm resting
full length against the
communication nexus and the fluid interchange.
Chapel toppled over onto her side, her
eyes glazing. She felt herself
falling and falling, and then held firmly, both
comforted and trapped. She
opened her mouth to cry out again, this time in renewed
fear rather than
horror, but the sound that came from her, echoed by the
group-creature, was that high-pitched, utterly
inhuman Onctiliian cry of pain and bewilderment.
A new communication was established, a new joining
had begun, stranger and
more exciting than any that had gone before.
Had nothing out of the ordinary happened on the
bridge--neither the
takeover by Hander Morl and his men nor the
attack by the Sealon ships
which had made the takeover possible-the bridge
crew would all have been
relieved within a couple of hours after Morl's
phaser had knocked Sulu out. As it
was, those on the 55
bridge had already spent two normal shifts
trapped in that relatively small
place, and they were all dreaming, not so much of
freedom from the phasers
pointed at them, as of hot meals, hot showers, and
warm bunks with warm
companions in them. It was very surprising, Ensign
Chekov told himself, that he should keep thinking about and
missing all those little pleasures and
comforts of daily fife, rather than worrying about the
deeper issues here
the Enterprise was in the hands of a gang of
criminal madmen, headed for the Romulan Neutral
Zone, Chekov and his comrades apparently unable to do
anything to retake the ship, and all Chekov could
think of was his growling
belly and his drooping eyelids. Ah, Pavel
Andreievich, he thought, it's just that your backside
is killing you from sitting here for so long.
Chekov reached both arms up and stretched slowly
and thoroughly. It didn't
do anything for his aching buttocks or cramped
legs, but it helped relieve
the tension in his shoulders and back. He
turned his head from side to
side, wincing at the throbbing of a growing headache.
For the first time,
he noticed the Nactern warrior standing near his
chair and gazing at the
huge front screen in fascination. Well,
well, he asked himself, what's
this?
Her expression was one he had seen before, one he
had worn on his own face
for days on end when he was first assigned to the
bridge. It was virtually
impossible not to be captivated by the star field as
seen on the forward
screens of a ship in warp drive. Color
shifts and relativistic distortions
were compensated for automatically by the computer
controlling the screen
display, so that what showed on the screen was what
Spock liked to call "a
Newtonian analogue" of the scene a suited
crewman on the forward hull would see, but in a way
the result was even more entrancing. Dead ahead, in the
center of the screen, the stars seemed motionless, as of
course they were.
Toward the edges of the screen, 56
however, the ship's incredible velocity showed in the
way the multicolored
sparks crawled radially away from the center. Some
stars were close enough
to the ship's path to seem to move independently of the
others, crawling
past in front of them with an increasing speed that could
induce vertigo in
the inexperienced viewer.
Never mind that the Galaxy was stable, moving only
with astronomically slow majesty, and that what the
screen showed was merely an artifact of the
ship's motion and the computer's ingenuity still, the
unwary viewer could
easily find himself lost in the illusion that he was the
only fixed point
in a twisting, flowing Universe, where constellations
formed and dissolved
as he watched, and the Galaxy rushed past on all
sides, hurrying off to
some unimaginable destiny behind him. Despite the
simulations he had been
shown beforehand and the warning he had received, Chekov had
fallen prey to that illusion during his first
days on the job, and it had kept him
bewildered for days. He had experienced the
phenomenon then himself, and he had seen it happen often
enough to other newcomers, but he had scarcely
expected to see it happen to one of these singleminded
fanatics, and
especially not to this cold and rather masculine woman.
Use whatever the
gods give you, he told himself.
Chekov leaned toward the woman and said, "It's a
dangerous illusion."
She shook herself at the sound of his voice and said in
a bewildered voice, "What?"
"I said that it's a dangerous illusion. You can
lose yourself in it and
become nonfunctional." He explained quickly
how the display on the screen
was produced and how it differed from what they would be
seeing if it
weren't for the computer's processing of the image.
She smiled at him in a
friendly way. Chekov relaxed and began both
to put more effort into it and
to enjoy himself. Among the things he had always
admired most about James
Kirk was the captain's ability to switch 57
from terrifying martinet to charming and tactful
gentleman.
Behind Chekov, Hander Mori watched and smiled
cynically. Let the young fool try, thinking he's so
clever, Morl thought. It will keep him occupied.
Destinv is only hours away.
What arrived to take up a
circum-Trellisane orbit only hours after
Veedron's departure was quite different from anything
Sealon the Trellisanians had
seen before. It was huge, dwarfing the Sealon
attack ships they were growing accustomed to. By all
their sensors" indications, it was virtually
amorphous, utterly lacking that Klingon-inspired
bird-of-prey configuration
they so feared. This strange, blobby thing circling
their planet at low
altitude and low inclination-it was an
anticlimax, it was almost a laughable object. The
leaders of Trellisane, Veedron and the other heads
of the many
gemots, felt hope revive at last perhaps the
Sealons had come to their
senses and would cease their aggression!
The crippled Sealon attack craft, left
behind in a low orbit when its two
companions had raised their altitudes and shifted
to polar orbits, had long since succumbed to drag,
spiraling ever lower until it deorbited and
screamed down through the atmosphere, a brilliant
fireball, its remains
impacting on a large, uninhabited island near
the equator. Ever highly
moral, ever softhearted, the Trellisanians
had rushed one of McCoy's new
emergency medical teams to the spot to care for any
survivors. Of course
there were none. Now the
huge new arrival, in just as low an orbit,
began to break up. The
Trellisanians watched the destruction-hinting
at a loss of life far greater
than the earlier disasterwith utmost horror. How could
they watch such a
tragedy and stay unmoved? They summoned the
temerity to broadcast a message
to the huge craft "Raise your orbit! Can we
help you in any way?" There was no reply from the
Sealon vessel.
At last the Trellisanian observers realized
that the great ship's breakup
was no accident. The pieces that separated from the
main bulk were all of
roughly the same size, and they detached themselves at
regular intervals,
deorbited under apparent control, and splashed
gently into Trellisane's
oceans. Soon all that was left in orbit was a
giant framework, the skeleton of the monster that had
arrived in orbit, with one end bulging out to form
the housing for impulse engines. This skeleton
left orbit and departed upon the long coast back
to Sealon. The invasion was underway.
Kirk and Spock had managed to obtain
transportation back to Veedron's
headquarters building, which was in fact the
administrative headquarters
only of the Protocol Binders gemot, the
gemot of which Veedron was head.
With the advent of the Sealon crisis and because of
Veedron's acknowledged
eminence among the council of gemot leaders, the
building had become the
closest thing Trellisane had to a
governmental center. Observation of the
orbital sensors had been transferred here from the
headquarters of the
Orbit Traffic Controllers gemot on
another continent, and it was here that
Kirk and Spock watched helplessly while the
Sealons' invasion force
deorbited and vanished beneath the surface of the seas,
unhindered by
Trellisanian vessels in space, in the
air, or on the seas.
"They used to call them "beachheads,"" Kirk
said, forcing a smile. "We'll
have to coin a new word." For just. a moment, he
feared the Vulcan would
take him seriusly and try to provide the new
word.
Veedron was not there when they arrived. Nor did
he show up as the hours
passed and the evidence accumulated that the Sealons
were establishing
themselves in Trellisane's oceans with an air of
permanence and an attitude of aggression. Spock
remained impassive, but Kirk fumed at his own
impotence. Reports came in a steady
stream, detailing the Sealons" cool
destruction of what little remained of the
Trellisanians' ability to resist them. First,
ships already at sea began to disappear. From the few
eyewitness reports from aircraft, whose pilots
told of seeing explosions
dotting the surface of the oceans, it was clear that
Trellisanian shipping
would be destroyed immediately upon detection. Shortly
afterwards, contact
began to be lost w ith the aircraft themselves, those that were
over the
open sea. The Sealons had not only come
prepared to stay; they had also
brought with them weapons that could eliminate any
craft flying over their
new domain. All too obviously, it would
only be a short time before they
attacked the Trellisanians on land. Even
those few Trellisanians with the
courage to resist would by then be too weakened to do
anything, for the sea was their main source of food, and that
was to be denied to them.
A subtler kind of attack soon manifested
itself. Kirk, raging inwardly but
knowing how futile any outward display of anger
would be, left the
operations center, where Spock remained to watch with
detached, clinical
interest, and roamed the halls of the great building.
Kirk felt that he
needed to do something physical,, anything, even if
that was no more than
aimless wandering. And he came across Veedron,
curled into a ball on the
floor up against one wall of a corridor, still in
his colorful robes, like
a tropical bird that had been crushed by some winged
predator and then cast aside.
Veedron was still alive, but he didn't respond
when Kirk spoke his name and grasped his shoulders.
His eyes were open, but they stared unseeing at
Kirk, with no hint of either recognition or
intelligence in them.
Kirk cursed and looked quickly up and down the
hallway. No one was in sight. He pulled his
communicator from his belt and flipped it open.
"Bones! Where
are you?"
There was a few seconds' delay, and
then McCoy's voice spoke from the
communicator in miniature. "McCoy here.
Jim? What's wrong?"
"That's what I want you to tell me, damn it."
He told the doctor where he
was. "Get one of your teams here as soon as you
can. Something's wrong with Veedron." Silently he
added, Veedron's not much but he seems to be the best
we've got, and I want him preserved.
"Veedron. Well, in that case, Jim, I'll
come myself. Sit tight."
Kirk bit off an angry response, saying
instead only, "Kirk out," and
dipping his communicator closed. Won't do
to take my feelings out on one of the two good men on
the planet. Restraint is the word. Sit tight,
he says!
Subjectively, it seemed forever before McCoy
arrived, but Kirk checked his
timepiece half unconsciously and realized that the
time was very short. He
was mightily impressed by the speed of McCoy's
response; it indicated to
him what a fine job the doctor had done of
organizing an emergency response
system under these very trying conditions. All he said,
however, was, "Can
you bring him out of it?"
McCoy was kneeling beside the curled-up
Trellisanian leader in the hallway. Now he
straightened, drew a hypospray from his equipment
pack and pondered
its settings for a moment. "Probably." He
fiddled with the device for a
moment, then shook his head. "And to think my
instructors used to spend so
much time worrying about what's ethical and what
isn't. I'd like to see one of them deal with a war."
He leaned forward again and applied the spray to
Veedron's arm. There was a faint whoosh. "No
physical damage that I could
detect," McCoy said, meanwhile preoccupied
with
another tricorder examination of his patient.
"Some sort of mental shock,
I'd guess. What I just gave him should shock
him out of it, at least
temporarily."
As if at a signal, Veedron groaned and
relaxed from his fetal curl. He
muttered something, scarcely understandable. He cleared
his throat and
tried again. "Captain Kirk? Is that you?"
Kirk kneeled beside him. "Here, sir. I found
you on the floor,
unconscious." He chose not to mention the
wide-open, empty eyes nor the
position of Veedron's body.
"Yes, yes. Thank you for helping." Veedron
struggled to his feet and stood
swaying, the two Star Fleet officers
supporting him on both sides. "I was
standing here, in the hallway, engaged in a worldwide
meeting of gemot
delegates." He looked around as if in
wonder, still dazed. "There was no
one here," he explained, his voice almost that of a
trusting child whom
someone had injured, "and I thought it would be a good
place to be while
communicating with the others. Suddenly, there was a
blast of sound, of
noise, in my head! The others went away,
disappeared. Not all of them, just those on other
continents." He wailed in despair
"They're gone! I'll never talk to them again!"
Tears streamed down his face and he pulled his arms
from the supporting hands and fell to his knees, his
shoulders heaving with his sobs.
McCoy took out his communicator and quickly
called his Trellisanian
helpers. "We'll keep him m bed and sedated
until he can recover enough to
take care of himself," he said in a low voice, as
if he were speaking more
to himself than to Kirk. "Damn it, I shouldn't have
shocked him awake,
after all. That trance may have been a natural
Trellisanian defense
mechanism against trauma. I hope I haven't
done any permanent harm."
Kirk listened but didn't respond. "Worse
and worse," he muttered. "Or
down, close to Veedron. "Veedron!" he said
sharply, but the Trellisanian was too deeply
sunk in his sorrows to hear. "Veedron!" Louder this
time, but
still no response.
McCoy pulled him away, his face suffused with
rage. "Damn it, Jim, leave
him alone! We may already have done him irreparable
harm."
Kirk ignored him and took out his communicator
again. "Mr. Spock."
"Spock here, Captain."
How Kirk valued those calm and calm-inducing
tones at such times as these!
"Mr. Spock, do you have any indication that the
Trellisanian leaders'
communications with each other may have broken down, that
their implanted
communicators may no longer be operable?"
"One moment, Captain. I shall enquire." A
minute of silence; two minutes.
Then Spock's controlled voice again. "Indeed,
Captain, the technicians
monitoring those channels locally say they can no
longer establish contact
with their opposite numbers on the other continents.
It would seem that the Sealons have instituted some type
of blocking or jamming action to prevent
such communication. I cannot guess whether or not they
will be able to
extend that jamming over the airspace of the continents
themselves."
"It scarcely matters if they do, Mr.
Spock," Kirk said thoughtfully. "Kirk
out." Merely by cutting the gemot leaders on each
continent off from those
on all the other land masses, the Sealons had
managed to paralyze the
already ineffectual Trellisane governmental
structure. The natives had
managed little enough in their own defense before this; now they
would be
able to do nothing.
"Jim," McCoy said, "what was that about an
implant?"
Kirk quickly explained Spock's surmise
to him.
"Hmm. That's interesting." McCoy put his hand

his pocket and fiddled with a centimeter-long
cylindrical capsule he had put there only
minutes earlier. He had recovered it from the brain
of a dead
servant, victim of a head injury in an earlier
Sealon bombardment, whom he
had been vainly trying to save. Kirk's
communicator call had come just as
McCoy was admitting defeat another loss
to his oldest adversary.
By now, the medical team called in by McCoy had
arrived and were removing
Veedron on a stretcher. McCoy went with them,
casting an angry glance back
at Kirk, who told himself, not for the first time, that
McCoy's protective
feelings toward his patients were just about the only thing
that could ever cause the doctor to really seriously
consider mutiny.
Kirk headed rapidly back toward the control
center where Spock was still
observing. As he walked, he pondered the latest
change of conditions and
tried to estimate the impact on his already bizarre
circumstances. On the
one hand, the dissolution of the local tenuous
governmental system, based
on long-distance meetings between the leaders of the various
gemotswhatever in God's name those were,
anyway-meant that the organization, the
infrastructure, needed to organize some kind of
resistance had effectively
disappeared. On the other hand, though,
Veedron himself had predicted that
that government would have capitulated to Klingon; even
if that hadn't
happened, what Kirk had seen so far on
Trellisane made him feel sure that
the government would have been more of a hindrance than a
help. Now that it was out of the way, he could feel
unconstrained, could do whatever he felt
was necessary. What that might be and how he could go about
doing it,
without the Enterprise being available, was another
question, and perhaps
a far more difficult one.
Kirk reentered the control center's main room and
found Spock standing
where he had left him, watching the technicians
bustling about, on his face an 65
expression as close to one of interest as Kirk
could expect to see on a
Vulcan. Kirk beckoned Spock to follow
him out of the room. In the hallway
outside, Kirk said, unknowingly echoing the thoughts
of Ensign Chekov on the bridge of the
Enterprise, now so far away, "It's very strange,
Mr. Spock,
but in the middle of this disaster I find myself most
concerned with a
sudden, overwhelming hunger. Do you know how we can
get some food to fuel us for what comes next?"
"From observing Veedron, I would say it is
simple enough, Captain. Follow
me." Spock set off down the hallway, and
Kirk, after a moment's hesitation, followed him.
The First Officer led the way to a room that Kirk
recognized
as the one in which he had first met Veedron. That time
seemed years ago
now; indeed, he thought, the change in
Trellisane's condition since that
time is of such a magnitude that, in peace time, it
would have taken years
or even generations to come about. "And now, Ca ptain,
I believe we need
only do this." The Vulcan clapped his hands
sharply, once. However, nothing happened.
"Curious," he murmured.
Kirk grunted. "Veedron must have a flair that
you lack, Mr. Spock."
Calmly, unperturbed, as if hunger and
frustration
didn't exist, Spock said to his hungry and
frustrated
captain, "By the way, Captain, I took the
liberty of
questioning some of the technicians in the control
center concerning these gemots and their method of
government. A fascinating system. It seems that
gov
ernments of the type we know never really evolved on
Trellisane, and neither did a religious
hierarchy. What
took their place was a vast collection of
professional
organizations, each representing a profession
or trade
or craft, much like the guilds of medieval earth.
Those
guilds are what they call gemots. Each
handles matters
within its area of competence. Any matter not thus
covered is overseen by cooperative councils of
gemot
representatives, such as the supreme council
to which Veedron belongs."
Kirk nodded. "That would explain their
reluctance to do anything out of the ordinary, to take
drastic action at a time like this. Even on earth in the
Middle Ages, the guilds that ran the towns in
Europe were often a force for conservatism, for things as
they were. They protected the status quo as a
shield against the hostile outside world."
"Precisely, Captain. And since there is no
equivalent of the medieval
overlord to oppose the gemots and threaten their power
on Trellisane, there is no impetus to change
and advance for their own sake."
"Fascinating, indeed, Mr. Spock, but my
most immediate concern is my
growling belly. Perhaps if I try." Kirk
clapped his hands sharply, trying
to imitate Veedron's manner of superior
self-assurance.
This time, there was some success. The hangings on one
of the walls parted
and a servant entered the room. He approached the
two officers hesitantly
and bowed quickly. "Sirs, you wish something?"
"Yes, indeed," Kirk told him. "We'd like
some food, a meal."
Anger flickered on the servant's
face for an instant, then disappeared. He
bowed again. "Many are dead, sirs, or
requisitioned to help in the
rebuilding and rescuing, but I will try to find
someone to prepare food for you. Forgive me for any
delay."
The man's anger and his manner, which indicated that the
anger was still
there but held rigidly in check, hinted at something
important, and Kirk
momentarily forgot his hunger. "Just a moment.
"Requisitioned," you said?"
The servant's eyes darted from side to side
nervously and he licked his
lips quickly. He knew these two were from somewhere
other than Trellisane,
but clearly he did not know how far he could trust
them. "Yes, sir," 67
he said at last, reluctantly, "I said that.
The Man Healers gemot
requisitioned some, but most of them were taken away
by the Builders gemot.
And of course the Food Provenders gemot has
requisitioned, too."
"But what about your own gemot?
Doesn't it object to its members being . .
. requisitioned . . . this way?"
The servant laughed harshly. "Our gemot! You
must be joking." He looked
them over and decided they were serious. Kirk could
almost see the man make up his mind to trust them.
"We have no gemot. Didn't the illustrious
Veedron explain that to you?"
Spock said, "Veedron explained nothing to us about
this world's social or
governmental system. We have found out some things on
our own and deduced
others."
The servant's anger had returned, and this time he
made no attempt to
conceal it. "Then you didn't find out or deduce
enough. Those of us who
serve and tend our masters-we have no gemot, and
we never have had one. No
one protects us, no one pleads our cases.
The only time a gemot or its
members notice us is when we do something wrong.
Anyone can punish one of
us, and there is no gemot to stand in the way."
"Fascinating, Captain. This class of
helots was never mentioned to us
before, nor do I remember seeing any word of it in
the reports I reviewed
on the way to Trellisane. his
Kirk's face was grim. "No, Mr.
Spock, and it's clear enough why not. These
aren't servants they're slaves. The Federation
would not have approved,
and any negotiations over Trellisane's
admission to the Federation would
have gone by the board until this system was reformed.
Now listen, Spock,
I don't want to hear anything from you about the
Prime Directive. Clear?"
Spock gazed carefully in a neutral
direction.
"Fine." Kirk turned back to the slave, who
had listened with both evident
interest and confusion. "If your world can be saved from the
Sealons and
the
Klingons, then it will be obliged to turn to the
Federation of Planets for
future protection; it will almost certainly
petition for membership. That
will be to your advantage."
The servant snorted. "Klingon, Sealon,
Federation, or the ones we have now. One master is no
better than any other."
"No, damn it! The Federation is no one's
master. Each world that belongs to it is the equal of
any other world. And every single Federation citizen is
the equal, before the law, of arty other citizen.
Do you understand that?
It doesn't matter how many arms and legs you have,
or eyes, or what things
used to be like on your world before it joined the Federation.
To become a
member, a world has to guarantee every single
citizen legal equality, and
it has to adhere to all Federation legal and social
principles in that
regard."
"Equal!" The servant's eyes shone. "Does
that mean we'd have a gemot of our own?"
Kirk laughed. "A gemot! Better than that
you'd have the entire Federation
government behind you whenever you needed it-the biggest
gemot in the known universe!" Then he said,
harshly, breaking through the man's sudden
reverie, "But not if the Sealons and Klingons
succeed here. If they take
over, Trellisane will never join the Federation.
It'll become part of the
Klingon Empire instead, and then you'll find out that
some masters can
indeed be much worse than the ones you're used to.
We're no longer able to
protect you, because our ship has been taken from us.
The gemots are
virtually paralyzed, both because of this communications
breakdown and
because it seems to be in their nature to be
paralyzed. It's up to you-you
slaves. You're the only ones left who can
save this world."
"And then," the slave whispered, "we'll join your
Federation, and we'll be
in charge!" He turned and ran from the room.
"Captain-was Spock said quietly.
Kirk held up his hand. "I know, Mr.
Spock. But what other reaction could we have
expected? At any rate, we've found the men we
want, the ones I said
must exist somewhere on this world those with something
to fight forand
the guts to do it. Let's try to win this war first, and
then we'll worry
about reeducating them." He paused for a moment.
"Funny. I've lost my appe- tite."
McCoy was puzzled more than he was disturbed.
He had found the tiny capsules in the brains of
all the slave corpses he had examined, but not
yet in the
brains of any other corpses. Of course, he
had not yet happened to have
access to casualties of the uppermost
classVeedron's class, the gemot
leaders, and he knew from what Spock had told
Kirk that that class had brain implants of some
kind.
Very strange, he thought, that only the topmost and
bottommost classes
would have it. Assuming it's the same gadget in
both cases. Communication
for the rulers, Jim said. But what about the slaves?
What's it for? So that they can be given orders? Why
not just speak to them, for that? In fact,
they do speak to them, to give them orders. I can't
get anything out of the Trellisanians.
They act so ignorant and innocent.
The next day, as McCoy and his
Trellisanian assistants were having a
working lunch together-truly excellent steaks, very
uncommon for the
apparently vegetarian Trellisanians-when
one of the slaves who'd brought in the food and was now
standing in the background against a wall suddenly
slumped to the floor. McCoy rushed to his
side, tricorder out. "Com-
plete brain death," he muttered. "My God.
What the Hell . . . ?" Only then
did he notice that none of his assistants had
stirred from his place. All
were staring at him with puzzled expressions. One of
them-Pellison, the best of the lot-said, "Sir,
Dr. McCoy, it's only a yegemot. his
Only then did it occur to McCoy that injured
slaves had never been brought
to him for treatment. Those he had worked on, he had
come across on his
own, while exploring the sites of Sealon
attacks.
Two slaves came into the room, their faces
expressionless. They picked up
their dead fellow silently and moved toward the
door.
"Hey! Wait a minute!" But they ignored
McCoy's yells and tramped silently
through the doorway with their burden. "Who called those
guys? How'd they
know to come? Who called them?" He looked around
angrily. He got no answer.
Pain. Searing pain, dull pain, throbbing pain.
One hurts. Why?
Kidneys. Cannot cope. Other organs, too.
Kidneys? What are those?
Waste eliminators. Cannot cope. They will
fail. One will die. Pain
throughout, then death. Release one. Release one!
Release? Meaningless. We are one.
Release me! LET ME GO!
The shouted thought, and its freight of hatred and
fear, shrieked along the communication network. The
creature recoiled in horror of its own, and
Chapel rolled free, to lie gasping on the
floor, vomiting.
At last she regained enough strength to climb
unsteadily to her feet and
minister to herself. Christine Chapel,
research biologist with respected
credentials a nd impressive achievements, as she
had been before personal
matters had led her to join the Enterprise crew
as a nurse apart from
those instincts that urged her to 72
help the wounded being, she was driven by the understanding that
she faced
a professional challenge as great as any in her
previous career and far
greater than any she had encountered on the
Enterprise.
Still shaking, she injected herself with a metabolic
booster and certain
blocking agents. She had more than guesswork to go
on. Dim but present were memories of a greater,
clearer intellect, which she remembered as having
been her own, and an intimate knowledge of alien
biological processes and
how they had meshed with hers. She knew what the
alien fluids were and
their dangers and roles; and she knew of the mental
dangers and rewards.
What she had injected into herself should at least
protect leer body.
Thus fortified and forewarned, Chapel approached
the slumping Onctiliian
again. She steeled herself and placed her hand very
deliberately on the
darkening, oozing surface of the dead one. She
paused there for a moment,
took a deep breath and held it. Then,
firmly, smoothly, and without haste,
she forced her hand through the viscid flesh until it
contacted the nexus.
I have returned. I am here.
Ensign Chekov picked himself up slowly from the
deck of the Enterprise and
put his hand gingerly over his right eye. The flesh
around the eye was
already swelling out, forcing the lid shut. "Why," he
demanded through
gritted teeth, "did you do that?"
The Nactern warrior glared back at him, her
eyes level with his. "You're
lucky you're still alive!" she hissed. "Don't
try that again, or I'll
forget we need you on the bridge."
A bad miscalculation, he told himself, trying
to convince himself that he
was calm and collected. Let's try the innocent
approach. "Why, I don't
understand," he said, his tone denoting hurt
bewilderment. "I thought you
wanted me to kiss you. Was I wrong?"
"Wrong!" She laughed, a harsh, barking sound, but
her posture relaxed. "You're a harmless fool,
after all. No one kisses me
but my mate, and even she doesn't when we're in
battle status, like right
now."
"She-was At last a bright light dawned for
Chekov. The other warrior woman on the bridge,
of course, he thought. That's not a mistake I've
made very
often before. Now, what would Captain Kirk do in
a situation like this?
"I'm sorry," he said, looking as contrite as
his swollen-shut eye allowed.
"I didn't realize, or I certainly wouldn't
have tried anything. Look, let's just forget what
happened and continue collecting the food." They were in
a deserted recreation room near the bridge,
collecting the meals they had
ordered through the small wall dispenser.
Hander Morl had decided to make
this small concession to human needs, believing that
letting the bridge
crew have a meal would help keep them from causing
him trouble. Chekov had
instantly volunteered himself and the warrior woman
to do the job; to the
ensign's considerable surprise, Morl had first
laughed heartily and then
agreed without argument. Turning to the trays of
food he had ignored during his unsuccessful
attempt at starting a seduction, Chekov said,
"These
should be enough. We can probably handle them between us.
Look, there's no
reason for hostility now that I understand, is there?
We are on the same
side, supposedly."
Unexpectedly, the warrior smiled at him.
"Hander keeps telling us we are,
but I'm not so sure, from the way the rest of your
crew behaves toward us
and our mission."
"Perhaps the others don't see the issues as
clearly as I do," Chekov
suggested. He walked over to a nearby table and
sat in one of the chairs
propped up against it. "Come on. There's no
rush. Why don't you explain to
me just what you people are really trying to do? All
I've heard so far is
the captain's version, and I'm sure that's
biased. You can tell me the
truth."
With all the eagerness of the true believer sensing the

presence of a possible convert, she took a chair
next to his and began an
impassioned lecture. She started with a complete
history of the United
Expansion Party, and the minutes ticked away.
On the bridge, Hander Mori began to worry.
He struggled to keep his
feelings from showing on his face. What was keeping
those two? He didn't
dare send one of the Assassin bodyguards to find
them, for that would leave him with only two accomplices
to keep the bridge under control, and he
feared that might not be enough, not with the obvious fraying
of tempers as time passed without food or
sleep. The Enterprise personnel were growing
both more desperate and more frustrated, and
simultaneously, he and his
three subordinates were losing their edge from the
accumulation of tension
and fatigue.
If he did send someone, he thought, it would have
to be one of the
Assassins. The Nactern woman would be more
motivated, but she would also be more likely to behave
rashly if Chekov had somehow succeeded in his very
obvious intention. Mori needed Chekov; he
knew that. He couldn't have
succeeded, could he? Not with a Nactern warrior
woman! Mori realized he was chewing his fingernails
nervously, and he quickly and angrily pulled his
hand away from his mouth.
None of the surgical hoods could be adjusted so
far that they would
accomodate the Onctiliian. Chapel was
reduced to working with small,
portable equipment. The capabilities of the
portable devices were limited
at the best of times, compared with the full-scale
devices she would have
preferred to use, and this was not the best of times she
was working
one-handed, operating the equipment with her left hand
while her right,
still buried deep within the group-creature's body,
maintained her mental
link with her pain-wracked patient.
Fluids were injected, blocking the action of the
decay 75
agents released from the dead member's body.
Chapel herself was hooked into
her machines via a separate set of tubes and
wires, and fluids pumped
rapidly through these in response to her commands; even
while the human and
Onctiliian metabolisms were joined through her
hand, they had to be fed,
boosted, and controlled separately by the machines.
She had no help in this, had had no time to call for
it, and felt oddly furtive, even ashamed, about
her intimate communion with the alien. But she had
hope, hope that she would succeed after all.
The first priority was to save the lives of the three
surviving Onctihians. Normally, all would have
been long dead. Perhaps it was the
Earth-normal
gravitation on the Enterprise, considerably
less than that on Onctiliis,
that had slowed the deterioration so far. Perhaps it was the
political
commitment of this particular individual to the United
Expansion cause, for most Onctiliians, once
they had become part of a group mating, became
fairly apolitical. Whatever the reason, the
three living members, while
close to death, still lived.
Even so, their death would have been certain in
time. They had an intimate knowledge of and contact
with their own biology, the inner processes of their
group body, that probably surpassed that of any
other
creature in the known Galaxy, but they had few
means
of affecting those processes under such extreme
condi
tions as these. They might know what was happening
inside themselves, but they could only watch it happen
helplessly. With Christine Chapel's intervention,
that
had changed. The technology available
to her and the
training and professional experience in her
background
would not have been adequate equipment for the
rescue, either, under normal circumstances. But
added
to that was her psychophysiological link with the
Onctiliian what they knew, she knew; what
they felt,
she felt. She had little doubt that, if she were not
interrupted, if she were granted the time, she could
save them. What she would do next, was rather more
problematical.
The Nactern warrior broke off her lecture
on the aims of the United
Expansion Party suddenly and stood up. "Come!"
she commanded. "Too much
time has passed. We must gather the food and
return to the bridge."
Chekov protested, "But there are a lot of things
I still don't understand.
For example equals his
"Enough! Now I understand what you're trying to do.
You're not interested
in our cause at all. We've wasted
enough time. Come!"
He stood too and sighed. "You're right. I'm not
really on your side
politically. It was just an excuse to try to spend
some more time alone
with you, that's all." He grimaced ruefully.
Long ago, a girl he had known
well had told Chekov that he reminded her of a
little boy and that brought
out the mothering instinct in her. Now he tried hard
to look as little-boy
as possible. "Everything is so grim when we're
on the bridge. Down here, we can talk and try
to forget that we're all going to die soon."
"I never let myself forget what's important,"
she said harshly, her tone
all grim and filled with duty. But her
expression softened. She patted
Chekov on the shoulder. "Come, now. When it
happens, when the Romulans
destroy us, it will be quick and painless, and I will be
near you. Come."
Chekov picked up the trays and went along
obediently, trying to convince
himself that he hadn't failed entirely.
Think of it as an investment, he
told himself. Nothing comes of it immediately, but in the
long run, the
return can be significant. I hope the long
run isn't too long, though.
When they reached the bridge, Chekov watched the
invaders" reactions
carefully. Morl tried to act nonchalant, but
his relief was obvious. The
no attention. The other Nactern warrior looked
her comrade and Chekov over
carefully, then set her jaw as if she sensed
something she didn't care for
and moved pointedly away from her returned mate.
Chekov distributed the food and then returned
to his post at the
Navigator's Console. Sulu turned to look
at him with seeming casualness,
but his eyes held a question. Minutely, Chekov
shook his head no luck.
Sulu turned to the front again, his disappointed
hopes hidden from their
captors but not from Chekov. I tried, damn it,
Chekov wanted to say. We'll
just have to hope for something else.
Done they would live. She didn't know it, but this
was the first time in
the history of the Onctilhan race that a group
creature had survived the
death of one of its members. Chapel had already
earned herself a footnote
in medical history, should she care to exploit her
achievement. But what
was to come would dwarf even what she had already done.
She had already
made the beginning; now she was to confirm the creation
of a being that had never existed before.
Sure that her patient was stable, Chapel at last
relaxed her mental
concentration and gently withdrew her hand from the
communication nexus.
The dead member, she had already removed. Now she
covered the exposed nexus with a dressing and told the
creature to extrude flesh and skin to provide
a permanent covering. Only when that had been
accomplished, under her
careful scrutiny, did Christine realize that she
had given that last
suggestion, maintained that communion, without any
physical contact.
No, she reminded herself, there was still one channel of
contact the
portable machine that was steadily measuring the
prescribed fluids and
drugs into her bloodstream and the system of the
Onetiliian. There was no
more need for that, however, and she carefully detached it
from herself.
Still the communion persisted. 78
It was not so strong as before. She no longer felt
her identity threatened
by it. Or was it just that she had learned not to fear the
others, their
mental embrace, the merging of selves? The fear
was gone, the revulsion, the primitive flight
reaction. The joining itself remained, and now it was not
a threat to her, no longer frightening; instead, it was
warmer, dearer,
sweeter, deeper than she could have imagined. She
had an old, old wound of
her own, as old as her service in Star Fleet,
where a part of her had been
torn away, and that wound had never really finally
healed. Now at last that
ancient pain had faded wound to wound, the
incomplete Onetiliian and the
incomplete human had joined to form something far
greater and more complete
than either Earth or Onctihis had ever seen before.
Spock stood on the beach, staring thoughtfully out
to sea. "It seems to me,
Captain," he said at last, "that the
inconsistency between the
Trellisanians' excessive concern for the
well-being of others and their
treatment of their slaves is highly
significant."
Kirk, pacing back and forth along the narrow strip
of sand between towering black cliffs, was giving Spock
at best only half his attention. The other
half was divided between chewing over their plans,
looking for a major
flaw, and wondering when their coconspirators would
appear. "What's that,
Mr. Spock?" he said absently.
"Their utter lack of concern for the slaves
implies to me that they do not
really consider those slaves much more than machines,
or perhaps
domesticated animals."
Kirk stopped pacing and looked at his Vulcan
First Officer in astonishment. "Are you saying they're
robots, Mr. Spock? Surely Dr.
McCoy would have no-
ticed that while treating the wounded."
"No, sir. You misunderstand me. I'm not saying
that the slaves are
machines. Indeed, matters would be simpler if
they were. Rather, their
masters seem to regard them as little better than
machines-or animals, as
I suggested. Only by adopting such a view of
their
slave class can the members of the ruling
classes, such as Veedron,
reconcile the wretched treatment of the slaves with
this world's high-minded attitude toward other sapient
beings in general."
"I'm not sure that follows, Mr. Sock. There
have been many societies in
Earth's history with slave classes. These were
treated badly in many cases, but they were usually
considered to be fully human."
Spock shook his head. "I must disagree with you,
Captain. The ruling
classes may have professed to consider those beneath them
as human, but I
doubt whether they really did. I'm convinced that
Veedron and his equals do not so consider their
slaves. If all goes well for us and
Trellisane does
indeed petition for membership in the Federation, that
issue will come to
the fore most painfully. Our actions here today-using
the slave class to
strike back at the Sealons, and encouraging them
to look forward to full
equality with their present masters-will simply have
exacerbated the
inevitable tensions when that day comes."
Kirk felt momentarily angry, but he
responded in a calm voice. "That sounds like
another criticism of me, Mr. Spock, for
violating the Prime
Directive."
Spock nodded slightly. "Yes, Captain.
The Directive's wisdom becomes more
apparent to me every time we behave in the proscribed
manner."
Still keeping his voice calm, Kirk
said, "Since the odds currently seem to
favor Trellisane's destruction and a major,
Galaxy-wide war, I suggest we
postpone this abstract discussion for whatever future
we might have."
Spock nodded again. "Indeed, Captain, logic
seems to favor that course."
In spite of the determined pacifism of
Trellisane, such jobs as mining and
demolition demanded a supply of high
explosives. Similarly, the world's
high level of technology meant that the means
to use those explosives for
purposes other than mining and demolition 81
to adapt them, for example, to warlike
purposesabounded. Most of the men
most competent to do such a conversion were members of
various technicians'
and engineers' gemots, but not all. Often, a
slave assistant to one of those technicians or
engineers would be given enough responsibility to pick
up a
fair amount of pragmatic technical skill but
would not be highly ranked
enough to belong to a gemot. And among such
assistants, some, Kirk had felt
sure, would have been sufficiently badly treated
to be as filled with
resentment as the slave he and Spock had asked
to bring them food in
Veedron's headquarters building. Enough
resentment, he hoped, to put their
skills at his disposal.
At last he heard a faint crunch from the
direction of one of the cliffs.
The sound was repeated once, cautiously, and then
grew to a succession of
faint crunching noises. Footsteps, a group
of men, headed toward them.
"Spock," he said softly. The Vulcan's
alert pose showed that he had already heard the sound,
probably long before the human had.
A small group, half a dozen men, all
dressed in the nondescript, plain
clothing Kirk had already come to associate with the
slave class, came up
to them. The newcomers looked over their shoulders
furtively, clearly
afraid that they would be caught and punished for what
they were doing;
they hung back from the two Star Fleet
officers, their faces, even in the
pale moonlight, betraying their distrust.
"Godor sent you?" Kirk asked them. Godor
was the slave in Veedron's
building, and Kirk had expected him to be with this
group. "Where is he?"
They didn't answer him. After a few more
uncertain glances about them, the
group lost their faint courage and began to back
away. A moment more, Kirk
knew, and they would break and run, and that would be the
end of all his
hopes for resistance to the Sealons. He
hesitated, uncharacteristically
firmly to them, it might steel them, impart to them
some of his own strength of will and determination, or it
might just as likely panic them and send
them running off all the faster.
Suddenly there were sounds of running feet from the other
end of the beach. The group of Trellisanians
froze for a moment in terror. Before they could
flee, Kirk hissed at them, "It's only one
man! Wait!" They hesitated.
Godor came up, panting, unable
to speak, but his eyes blazed fiercely. He
carried a large box under one arm. Kirk could
tell from the way he handled
it that the object was heavy; that the man would run with
it showed his
determination. Gulping for breath, Godor gasped
out, "Here! What you
wanted!" He stood still for a moment, waiting
until breath came more
easily, then said to the other Trellisanians,
"Quickly, take us to your
boat. Now you'll see what we can do!"
The other Trellisanians on the beach were a
group of fishermen whom Godor
had recruited earlier, after Kirk and Spock
had explained to him what they
would need to attack the Sealons. Now the fishermen
grunted their
acquiescence and led Godor and the two officers
back in the direction from
which they had approached minutes earlier.
"Captain," Spock said softly, "these men have not
yet said a word to us."
Kirk nodded. "Yes. They'll talk treason
to Godor, but we're strangers, and
they still don't trust us. I hope they won't
lose their nerve." He asked
himself the question Spock had left unspoken Have I
really found rebels I
can rely on?
The tide was rising; water lapped about the base
of the wall of cliff the
fishermen led them to. They walked through the
ankle-deep water to skirt
the cliffs, an occasional wave splashing up to their
knees, and sometimes
their waists, and breaking against the cliff face with a
roar. Kirk
staggered under the impact o f one of 83
the higher waves and would have fallen had Spock not
caught his arm. "I'll
take the seas of space," Kirk said, forcing a
smile. He repressed the urge
to tell their guides to hurry up, before the tide
rose any higher. It was
not so much the water itself that bothered him; the sea was
generally calm,
except for the occasional swell, the beach was still
near, and he was a
strong swimmer. Rather, it was the everpresent
idea that the calm, rolling
surface, with the moon marking a beautiful, silver
trail upon it, hid the
mysterious, deadly Sealons. This sea was
suddenly not a friendly one. It
belonged to the unseen enemy.
At last they reached an opening in the cliff face
and turned inwards, away
from the open sea, into a small cove where the water
was even calmer. The
moonlight flooded in through the opening in the cliff
face, illuminating
the small, concave beach and the large fishing boat
pulled up on it.
Kirk pulled Godor aside and said to him,
"Isn't there some kind of gemot to control fishing?
Why do these men operate from this place instead of a
built-up harbor?"
Godor shook his hand off. "Why do you care? Of
course there's a gemot, and
it doesn't allow men like these to own a boat or go
fishing on their own.
They have to work in secrecy, and sell their fish
secretly."
Kirk grimaced. "I should have guessed.
Do they understand that this might
destroy their boat?"
"Yes. I explained that. Right now, they can't
use it at all, because the
Sealons destroy any boat that goes out far enough
to reach the good fishing grounds. They have nothing to lose.
I told them that when we've killed the
Sealons, we'll join the Federation and destroy the
gemots, and then they
can have their pick of the fancy fishing boats in the
harbors."
Kirk looked at him in astonishment but held his
peace. After a pause, he
said, "All right. Let's get that gadget
loaded and push off."
They placed Godor's box carefully in the
boat, and then Kirk, Spock, and
Godor climbed in to adjust and set the
mechanism contained in the box. When they were finished and
straightened from their work, they found themselves
alone on the beach. The fishermen's courage had
deserted them at last, and
they had silently faded away, using the hidden
paths up the cliff face that only they knew.
Godor cursed them for their desertion, but
Kirk, in
reaction to the controlled tension of the past hours,
burst into a hearty
laugh and could not make himself stop. Godor looked
at him openmouthed, but Spock, raising one
eyebrow, provided the needed verbal slap
"Sir, I must
say that levity seems inappropriate."
Kirk sobered instantly. "Right as always,
Spock. Now, if you'll climb out
on the beach again and help me push this thing off the sand
and into the
water, I'll show you how to row a boat."
As they were straining against the boat's reluctant
bulk, their feet
slipping on the sand, Spock managed to gasp,
"Surely, Captain, many rowers
are required for a boat of this size."
Kirk, sweating heavily with the effort in the chill,
damp air, grunted and
said, "Star Fleet warned you that being first mate is
a tough job, Mister."
Spock said nothing in reply. He threw his great
Vulcan strength even more
fully into the job and the boat, accelerating
suddenly, slid the last few
feet into the water and sat rocking gently on the
slow swells of the
sheltered cove. Kirk whooped with joy and waded
into the waist-deep water
and pulled himself over the side into the boat.
Spock followed him, and as
Kirk leaned over to offer him a hand to help,
Spock was amazed to see that
his captain's face wore a broad grin. It was
something beyond simple levity or the release of
long-suppressed tension, Spock thought; it seemed
more
the joy of a young boy on a long-awaited,
long-delayed holiday. Spock's
attitude toward naked
human feelings had always been complex, a
mixture of envy at the freedom
humans possessed and revulsion at their lack of
self-control. In James Kirk, he had found a
human being he could admire, one who, with no
Vulcan blood at all, seemed remarkably able
to control his emotions for the sake of a higher goal, an
integrated personality, a fine example of the
ideal defined by an
ancient Earth philosopher-"a life guided
by reason and inspired by emotion."
Now, suddenly, the control seemed to have disappeared.
In this earnest,
deadly business, James Kirk was behaving with
boyish glee rather than the
calm determination Spock might have expected.
Kirk was dropping to the level of the average human,
and Spock, who would have been greatly insulted had
anyone suggested to him that he was capable of
hero-worship, was deeply
disturbed.
Dr. Leonard McCoy wrapped up his brief
staff meeting at his operational
headquarters and watched his Trellisanian
assistants drag themselves from
the room. No one had complained about the long hours
and the psychological
burden, but even without their obvious physical
deterioration, McCoy could
guess how they felt. Their feelings and state of
health, he knew, matched
his own. No, he thought, theirs was probably
worse than his he had at
least the toughening effect of his Star
Fleet background; no matter how
deeply he might feel the pain of others, he
had at least seen the effects
of war so often that his reaction must be mild compared with
that of these
Trellisanian medical men.
The irony was that the current flood of victims
would
very soon abate, and it was that that worried him most.
The bombardments from space had slackened and
would probably soon stop. The Sealon ships that
arrived now were more invasion craft, rather than
attack ships; even the smaller ships that came
to
Trellisane from Sealon must be supply ships
for the
Sealon bases being built and expanded on the
ocean
floors, for the new spaceships landed in the seas rather
than bothering with bombing runs against land targets. The
current glut of bombing victims would probably
be the end of it, and when they healed up enough to go home, the
logistics of the situation would improve
remarkably.
But McCoy was even more worried about the
inevitable next stage. The
psychological effects of the invasion were already
appearing, and those
were much harder to deal with. The comgemot leaders
seemed paralyzed by their loss of communication with their
colleagues, and he suspected that
paralysis would soon be followed by a deeper and more
serious form of
mental breakdown. But most of all he awaited
with dread the apparently
inevitable mass starvation his Trellisanian
subordinates assured him was on its way. The world
depended so heavily on food from the sea, that the
loss
of the oceans to the Sealons would probably prove
to be a mortal blow.
Once, before realizing how futile it was,
McCoy had exploded at them. "Well then, why
not do something about it, damn it all! Start right now with
extensive agricultural programs and food
rationing. And attack the Sealons
on the sea bottoms. For God's sake,
let's take the fight to them! You can't just roll over
and die!"
But they could do just that; they almost seemed
to want to do it. McCoy's
own organization was virtually the only functioning
government left on the
planet. It was, however, not that disorganization that
gave him most of his problems, but rather the
Trellisanian nature itself malleable,
retiring,
timid, and so excessively humane that they would
rather suffer pain from
their enemies than inflict it.
The war between the two worlds-if "war" was even the right
word, given the
lack of any Trellisanian defense-reminded
McCoy painfully of the time James Kirk had
been split into two beings by a transporter
malfunction. One had
been the beast, the wolf in every 87
man, the animal left in us from our most
primitive days, amoral, wanting
only the satiation of every desire. The other being had
been the softer side of man, what Spock had
called "the positive side"; but it had been unable
to make decisions, especially the harder, less
humane ones. Together, the two
beings were the remarkable and admirable
Captain James T. Kirk; apart,
neither could survive for long, and both had come near
to dying before a
transporter repair had made it possible
to recombine them. He saw Trellisane and
Sealon as the same sort of division one
society overly bestial, the
other overly humane. And perhaps both were doomed
if they could not somehow
unite, unlikely as any such union looked
now. Sealon, probably, would
complete the destruction of Trellisane and would
then be itself destroyed by Klingon.
McCoy sighed, put his arms on the table, and
leaned his head on them for a
moment's rest. Beneath the cynic was the hopeful
romantic, but this time
cynicism seemed more justified. Pessimism,
rather. Unity through diversity, he thought as he drifted
away into sleep. That's what that pointy-eared,
green-blooded walking computer likes to espouse.
What does he know about
it? If he could convince the Sealons and the
Trellisanians to try it . . .
His dreams were filled with explosions and
blood.
Far from shore, surrounded only by the gently
swelling, moonlit ocean, the
three men in the fishing boat waited tensely for
an explosion to end their
own voyage in blood. They had already journeyed
further from the shore
without being detected and destroyed by the Sealons beneath
them than Spock had predicted they would. The oars
had been wrapped in cloths to muffle
their sound, in the small hope that this would make the
Sealons' detection
devices and computers dismiss them as
insignificant. They had not spoken to each other
except in an occasional whisper.
Now they halted and sat still in the boat for a few
minutes. Spock had laid his tricorder at his
feet and, at regular intervals during their trip
away
from the shore, had pointed it downwards. Now he
did so again. "Well?" Kirk whispered. "Anything
stronger here?"
"Yes, Captain. The earlier readings indicated
the fringes of a base beneath us, but now we must be near the
center. The readings may not be reliable
through this depth of water, but the density of life forms
and machinery
here is remarkable."
Kirk could almost hear McCoy's voice
muttering, "Long-winded son-of-a-gun,
isn't he?" Kirk's own euphoria continued,
had even increased since they'd
left the shore, and he grinned at the imagined
conversation. "Let's get
this overboard," he whispered, pointing at the box
at their feet.
The three of them picked up Godor's box and,
all leaning over the side
together and ignoring the extreme tilt this gave to the
boat, they lowered
it onto the calm surface of the water and let it
go. With only a faint
splash, it sank beneath the surface and dropped
quickly out of sight.
"Row!" Kirk ordered. He and Spock grabbed
their oars and bent their backs
to the task, while Godor kept nervously
scanning the water's surface for
Sealons. Had all the fishermen been with them, as
Kirk had planned, they
could have made good speed, but as it was, the boat
moved away from the
site of their primitive depth-charge with
agonizing slowness.
An enormous concussion slammed the boat
upwards. Kirk and Spock were
tumbled from their seats onto the boards, but
Godor, who had been half
standing to see further, shot out of the boat into the
water. He surfaced
instantly, his face filled with terror, and
screamed wordlessly at them.
Kirk gathered himself quickly and dove in. He
swam to Godor, who was still
screaming, and who now looked at Kirk with blank
fear and tried to keep him
away. Cursing, Kirk grabbed the
Trellisanian's clothing with his left hand
and punched him savagely on the jaw with his right.
Godor's eyes rolled
upwards and he went slack in the water. Pulling
him by the hair, Kirk drew
him back toward the boat. Spock drew them
both back onboard.
"I would recommend warp speed,
Captain," Spock said, calmly picking up his
oar again. Kirk granted him one brief look of
surprise, but picked up his
own oar and began rowing vigorously without comment.
Spock's rare attempts
at humor, he thought, came at strange times,
almost as if the Vulcan wanted to point out to his
human companions just how immune he was to panic
or any other overemotional reaction
to circumstances.
Behind them, the sea heaved itself up in a huge bubble
that turned white
and then exploded into a fountain of spray. It
rose high into the air and
then rained down on the surface of the sea and into their
boat, almost
swamping them. Unidentifiable bits of metal
pattered on the water and the
boat and its occupants. Something much like a human
hand landed on Kirk's
lap. Half repelled, half fascinated, he
picked it up and stared at it.
"Webbed," Spock observed quietly. "We
seem to have found our target."
Suddenly overcome with disgust, Kirk
threw the hand overboard and began
rowing again. "Let's get the Hell out of here,
Spock," he said through
gritted teeth.
The slave's name was Spenreed. His friends had
brought him to McCoy, and he was suffering from
nothing more than a minor leg wound that had become
infected. It was bad enough by now, though, that he
couldn't put any weight on the leg and needed
support
from a fellow slave on each side, and he was
drowsy,
obviously having trouble with clouded thoughts. Clear
ly, without treatment he would die quite soon.
McCoy
had already deduced that slaves were generally not given
treatment, except
in those rare cases where they were both vital and
irreplaceable; in most
cases, though, the vast pool of replacements
made it easier to let them die. I wonder if
we're fighting on the right side, he kept asking
himself. I
don't see how the Sealons can be any more
callous than this.
Word of McCoy's treating slaves' wounds had
got around, following the
branches of one of those mysterious grapevines that
slave classes always
seem to develop on any planet and in any
age. As a result, more and more of them were bringing sick
or injured fellows to him. He could usually fit
them in, leaving his Trellisanian assistants
to take care of the patients
who weren't slaves. It couldn't continue, of
course as word spread
further, he'd quickly be overwhelmed; after all, his
assistants would
refuse m horror to help him in this work, were he
to make the mistake of
asking them.
McCoy followed what had become his usual
practice. He beckoned Spenreed's
bearers to follow him with their burden, and he led them
into a small
operating room, lined with shelves, where they would be
uninterrupted. This had been a storeroom before
McCoy's appearance. The two slaves helped
Spenreed onto the table, and McCoy applied the
hypospray to his arm.
Spenreed went under immediately. Whistling, McCoy
set to work on cleaning
and dressing the leg wound. Of the two slaves,
standing by the operating
table, only one turned pale. The other watched
what McCoy was doing with
interest. McCoy grunted. "Look carefully.
Maybe you'll be this world's
first slave surgeon." The slave grinned and
nodded.
Making sure the slave was watching what he was
doing, McCoy opened up
Spenreed's head. Gently, he reached a
microprobe into the brain and
extracted a small capsule. He held it
up for the openmouthed slave to see,
then closed Spenreed up again. He busily
applied glue and synthetic skin,
the nearby wall and dropped the capsule onto a
shelf, into the dozen or so
that were already scattered there.
The watching slave clenched his jaw. "Three days
after birth, our children
are taken away. for a medical examination. The
defective ones aren't
brought back. The others . . ." He bent his
head toward the scattering of
capsules.
McCoy nodded. "Um-hmm." He used the
hypospray again, and Spenreed opened
his eyes, groaned, and struggled to sit up. "How
do you feel?" McCoy asked
him.
Spenreed groaned again. "I've got a
headache," he complained.
McCoy chuckled. "You shouldn't. I just
exorcised you."
Security couldn't pull itself together. If Kinitz
had had one serious
failing, it was his inability to delegate authority
properly. He had had two prime assistants,
either of whom could have taken over Security section upon
his death, but both were now unconscious and close
to death in Medical.
Beyond them, Kinitz had not provided for command in
case of his death, for
that situation-his defeat and death-had been simply
unimaginable to him.
That personality flaw of overconfidence had
proved to be his fatal one.
Now a power struggle was underway in Security
section. The surviving
subordinates, all nominally of equal rank,
were squabbling, each trying to
assert his own claim to temporary command. They
needed a strong-willed
superior to enforce order upon them, and now Kinitz
was gone. The matter
could have been settled quickly enough by an appeal to the
bridge, and they tried that, but the bridge was
strangely uncommunicative. Calls up there
were always answered by Sulu, who they knew had the
con in the captain's
absence, and he consistently refused to issue an
order that would halt the
confusion. "Wait until the alert is over" was
all they could get out of
him.
Kinitz would have been made suspicious by this, but
the men struggling for control of Security were not.
Nor did they correlate
Sulu's unresponsiveness with the escape of their
prisoners. Star Fleet
Security's recruitment and training emphasized
physical strength and
competence and an unquestioning acceptance of a superior's
orders; original
thought was not a Security man's strong point.
Chief Engineer Scott uttered a mighty
curse and slammed his hand down onto
the metal housing of the warp reactor monitoring
computer. One of his
assistants, working nearby, looked at him in
amazement and almost asked for a translation into English
of Scott's exclamation, but then thought better
of it and went on silently with his work.
Scott had caught the glance, however. "Aye, you
may well ask, lad," he
grumbled. "Here we are heading off somewhere under warp
drive, leaving the
captain down there in the middle of a war, and Mr.
Sulu up on the bridge
won't tell me what's going on. The alert's
still on, and I don't understand that, either. I've asked
for permission to turn it off for a few hours for
maintenance, and he won't even let me do that! I
can't get a straight
answer out of him. I've a mind to go up there myself
and force it out of
him."
His subordinate was appalled. "But, sir,
there's a Red Alert on! You're
supposed to stay here."
Scott snorted in disgust. "An alert! That's
fishy, too, I'm telling you.
I've decided. I'm going up there and put a
stop to all this right now." He
listened to the faint sounds of the laboring warp drive
reactor and shook
his head in mixed annoyance and concern. He
didn't need the monitoring
computer to tell him all was not well. He headed
for the exit, grumbling to himself, and made for the nearest
elevator. As soon as it opened, he
stepped in and snapped "Bridge!" at it,
putting all his frustration and
anger into the word.
A computer's voice replied "Bridge has
been declared closed to all
personnel not on duty there now."
"Och, you stupid-was Scott stopped and brought
himself under control. "This
is the chief engineer, and this is an emergency.
I'm ordering you to
override that and take me to the bridge."
After a pause, as if the decision were a painful one,
the elevator lurched into motion. Scott rebuked
himself for taking his feelings out on the machine, which was
doing no more than
following the orders of fallible humans. He
suppressed the desire to utter
an apology. He liked certain people, and he
liked certain brands of Scotch
whiskey and some brandies, but he liked virtually
every machine he had ever encountered.
When the elevator reached the bridge level, the
doors refused to open. The
computer spoke again, almost sounding apologetic this
time "Bridge is
closed." Scott could almost imagine it adding,
"Sure you don't want to
reconsider?"
He lost his temper again. "You know my
voiceprint. Open the damned door!"
The doors swished open this time, and Scott
stormed out onto the bridge.
"Mr. Sulu," he bellowed, "I want to know
just what's-was Too late to retreat, he saw the
phasers leveled at him from all sides. Someone
he didn't know
sat in the captain's chair and stared at him
appraisingly. "Who are you?"
this stranger said coolly.
Scott forgot the phasers and strode forward
until he stood next to the
captain's chair. "Who are you, that's what I
want to know, and what's going on up here? Why are you
in that chair?"
"Scotty." Sulu's voice, tired,
defeated. Scott turned toward him, disturbed
to find that Sulu, who he had been told was to have the
con, was on the
bridge though obviously not in command. "Scotty,
just cooperate with them."
Scott looked around and measured the situation.
Strangers, all armed and all alert, and all
looking at him hostilely. The
bridge crew sitting slumped at their stations,
all looking as tired and
defeated as Sulu sounded. Uhura looked up
at him, her gaze dull, almost
without recognition, and then she turned back to her
communications console. Only Chekov showed anything
approaching liveliness, and even that was far
less than he had learned to expect from
the young Russian. Scott did a quick mental
calculation. If he remembered the latest duty
roster correctly, most
of these people shouldn't even be here, should have gone off
duty hours ago. He turned back to the man in the
command chair and glared at him. "Okay,
mister, I'll tell you that I'm the chief engineer
of this ship, and now
you'd better talk."
Hander Mori, to his own surprise, felt
intimidated, in spite of the four
armed killers on the bridge who were at his instant
beck and call. He
couldn't show that, however, or his control over this ship
would become
even more precarious than he feared it already was.
He smiled at Scott
calmly, superciliously, and told him just who
he was. "I'm in control of
this ship, Engineer," he said, "and in not too many
hours, I'm going to
take it into the Romulan Neutral Zone and
start a war."
"A war! Good God, man!" Scott took a
deep breath and tried again. "Now let
me tell you what's really going to happen. Our
speed is already dropping,
and it's going to keep on dropping. If we're
all lucky, this ship will come to a stop and drop out of
warp into normal space. If we're all
unlucky, the whole scow will disappear in a cloud of
vapor when the warp reactor blows.
I've got repairs to do! I've been calling
up here to tell you that, and
I've been getting doubletalk." He glared at
Mori. "And I suppose you were
behind that, too.
Mort licked his lips, ignoring the chief
engineer. He muttered, "We can't
stop. Or slow down." Suddenly he stood up
and pointed his phaser at Chekov. His voice 96
shook with rage. "You! You must have known we were
slowing down, and you
didn't tell me!"
"You didn't ask me," Chekov said sweetly.
He reminded himself that he had
always wondered what it felt like to die by phaser; it
looked like he was
about to find out.
The Nactcrn warrior with whom Chekov
had been so unsuccessful earlier
stepped between him and Morl and said firmly,
"Don't be a fool, Hander. You know we need him.
A small delay won't hurt."
Sulu flashed him a quick look, but Chekov
kept his face impassive. Perhaps, he thought, his
investment was already paying dividends.
Morl sat down m the command chair again,
trembling from the reaction to his own anger but also from a
sudden fear that all was going to end m disaster
after all. "Let me think," he whispered. Could
he take the chance of
continuing as they were? The man obviously knew his
job-Morl respected the
capabilities of Star Fleet personnel,
even if he thought their motives
smacked of cowardice. If the ship blew up,
nothing would have been gained;
Morl and his people would have died without purpose, without
starting the
war. Even if the warp engines blew or failed
without destroying the ship,
they'd be reduced to impulse powers and Morl
knew that it would take months or even years to reach
the Neutral Zone. They might be caught
and stopped
long before that. Everything was falling apart! His grand
plan, the
wonderful opportunity this fortuitous seizure of
one of Star Fleet's
proudest vessels had provided-it had seemed
at first as if the Fates them-
selves were on the side of the United Expansion
Party, as indeed Morl had
always thought they were. Now he was faced with
failure no matter which
course he took.
He licked his lips again. "How long would that
maintenance you mentioned
take?" he asked Scott, and he couldn't keep
the uncertainty and fear he
felt from showing in his voice.
Scott smiled slightly. "Two hours.
Maybe three. Mind you," he added,
holding up a cautioning hand, "if there are certain
parts that need
replacement, well, then, it could take a day or
more."
A day or more! Impossible that he could keep
control of the bridge for that long! Mori's
suspicious nature asserted itself. Was the man
lying? How
would Mori be able to find out even if he were?
Then he noticed that his
own subordinates were watching him, disturbed at his
indecisiveness. So
were the Enterprise personnel, becoming alert and
hopeful again as they
thought they saw a weakness in their captors. "All
right," he snapped, his
voice firm. "All right, Engineer. I'll
allow that maintenance, but no
replacements that take too long. I want you
done with the whole thing in
three hours at the outside." Scott turned
to go. "Wait a minute!" Mori
shouted. "You think I'm a fool? You're not going
back down there alone!" He hesitated for a moment
more, then gestured to one of the Assassins. "You'll go
with him," he told the man. "Keep an eye on
him all the time so he
doesn't betray us. Keep your phaser hidden,
but be ready. Don't let him
talk to anyone else down there except for the
technical matters." He turned
to Scott. "As for you, remember that I have all these
people here under my
control. If you try to pull anything, I'll
kill them. All of them."
Scott looked around at the bridge crew, his
face grim. "I'll remember," he
said. He stared wordlessly at Mori for a moment.
"I'm not about to forget
about you, you can be sure of that." He strode back
toward the elevator,
the Assassin close behind him.
Only minutes later, the faint lurch of
transition between normal space and
subspace, more psychological than physical,
hit Mori. On the great screen
in front of him, the star field disappeared
momentarily and then shimmered
back into existence. But now it was static, the motion
apparent because of
the enormous velocities of the higher warp speeds
utterly absent. The
illusion of a flowing universe had given way to the
illusion that the ship
was absolutely still in a static universe. Although
Mori ordered Sulu to
press on at the greatest speed the impulse
engines would provide, he knew
that those speeds were so low in comparison to the vast
distance yet to be
covered, that the Enterprise might as well be standing
still. Their
pursuers, if there were any, would surely not be so
limited. It must have
happened when the ship was damaged and he and his
partners had escaped. Why
had the fool let his ship be damaged that way?
If Mori had been in charge
already, it would never have happened! But it had
happened. Mori groaned.
He was too preoccupied to notice the rush of
hope that had buoyed up the
slumping Sulu. He knew from his console that the
ship's speed had been
constant before, under warp drive. Scott had lied,
quickly and
extemporaneously, but apparently convincingly.
Now they had gained a few
hours, another ally in the form of the chief engineer,
and their captors
had been weakened by one. It had taken a
lot to make Sulu's natural
cheerfulness go dormant; now it came bubbling up
again.
At the sound of a throat being cleared, McCoy
looked up from
report from an assistant he was reading.
Spenreed stood in the
doorway, looking stricken. "Doctor. I
wanted to thank you for
helping me. I'mMy call has come."
"Your what?"
"My, uh, my call. So you won't see me
again."
"I don't understand," McCoy said. "You're
going somewhere?"
Spenreed choked back a sudden sob. "No.
No, I'm not. Yegemot
don't go anywhere. We just die."
"Die!" McCoy thought he began to understand.
"Are you trying to
tell me you've received some sort of premonition
of death?"
Spenreed nodded. "The call. I was officially
informed by a
representative of the Food
Provenders gemot. He said it must be
before the banquet for gemot leaders."
"Oh, yes. That damned banquet. I have to be
there, and I'm sure
not looking forward to it. Now, you listen to me,
Spenreed. I've
run into this sort of superstition, this fortune telling
and
forecasting men's deaths, on other worlds, and I can
tell you
it's nonsense. It doesn't
matter where in the Galaxy you run into it, it's still
nonsense. You come to me after that banquet, and I'll
repeat everything I just said, and we'll see how you
feel about it then."
Spenreed laughed suddenly and grinned a fierce,
broad grin. "You may see me at the banquet,
Doctor. Tell me then." He stalked off down
the hall,
leaving McCoy to wonder at his sudden anger.
McCoy pondered both that anger and the rest of the
curious episode for some minutes. Finally, he
shook his head and dismissed it all. "Damned
ignorance," he muttered. Maybe I can
force-feed some science into these
slaves. If their masters don't object.
Well, their masters better learn
very soon to change their attitudes, because if
Trellisane joins the
Federation, things are going to be very different on this
world. And
speaking of feeding, he thought, how the Hell can I
get these people to
start growing their own food on the land? Now that the
seas are lost to
them, or soon will be, they've got to stop
depending on those sea plants
supplemented by fish meat. Maybe they're going
to cut down on what they
feed the slaves, to make what's left go
further. Damned if I'll stand for
that.
He shook his head in annoyance and then forced his
attention back to the
report on his desk.
Their success emboldened the fishermen. Groups of
them set out in their boats with explosive
devices
delivered to them by Godor. He refused to tell
Kirk
and Spock who made these for him. As foreigners,
they
were obviously still not entirely to be trusted; who
knew if, the present crisis being over, they would
not
betray Godor and the other conspirators to their mas
ters, despite all their fine talk now about the
Federation
and its rules of equality. This was maddening
to Kirk,
for he knew how fickle war is. Godor went
out on the
boats often, success having returned all of his
courage
and more, and it was inevitable that the Sealons would
eventually strike
back. If Godor was lost, Kirk would have no
further access to the
explosives.
Spock agreed with him, something that had become
unusual. "Indeed, Captain, the Sealons'
quiescence so far is surprising. I can only
assume that they
have been preoccupied with plans for the next stage of
their invasion.
Perhaps they expected more resistance than they
encountered in fact. That
would explain why they landed in the deeper waters, rather
than along the
continental margin. Now that they have gained confidence from
the lack of
any Trellisanian response, they are
probably planning to move their
installations wholesale into the shallower water. We
must have caught them
at that stage, and they have tried to ignore us so far.
That cannot
continue."
"Yes, I'm sure that's true." They were on the
same beach where their small
resistance movement had started, waiting for the
return of a boat carrying
a depth charge. Kirk looked at his timepiece.
"It's taking them a long
time," he muttered. "Ah, there!" Out on the
horizon, the water rose up in
a dome that exploded upwards into a fountain of
spray. Some distance from
the site of the underwater explosion, the boat showed as
a small speck on
the surface of the sea. Kirk could imagine the
fishermen rowing frantically away from the explosion.
Spock, watching the boat too, squinted and said,
"Captain, something in the water . . ."
"I can't see as well as you can, Spock." But
then even he could see it
things in the water around the boat, furious
splashings. He could barely
see the movements as the fishermen tried to beat the
attackers away with
their oars. The shapes swarmed over the sides into the
boat, overwhelming
the Trellisanians. Then there was a mass
movement back over the sides into
the sea, almost a liquid pouring, as if the
attackers were boneless and
they had reduced their victims to the same 102
state. In minutes, only the empty boat was
left, bobbing up and down on the
waves still spreading outwards from the explosion. "So
much for them
ignoring us, Spock."
"Captain, if the Sealons had chosen simply
to eliminate the threat, they
could have destroyed the fishing boat from beneath,
from a distance,
without attacking the crew directly. That was the
nature of their previous
attacks upon Trellisanian merchant
vessels, and it entails far less risk to themselves."
"You seem to think they must have had more in mind this time
than defense."
Spock nodded. "Indeed, sir. I would guess
they wish to interrogate. Our
attacks upon them have been atypical; they break
the pattern. The Sealons,
or perhaps their Klingon masters, would wish to know what
has caused this
change." .
The two turned away from the sea and began to walk
slowly up the beach. The sun was bright, and the
white-yellow sand reflected it back into their
faces. "It's probably pointless to send out
any more boats, now," Kirk
said. "We'll have to come up with something else. If
they really are
preparing to move closer to the land, it becomes even
more difficult."
"Captain!" Spock said sharply. "Listen!"
In the distance, some sort of sea bird was
wheeling about in the air above
the cliff face, uttering an unpleasant
high-pitched cry. From behind came
the steady lapping of waves on the shore. Beyond that,
Kirk could hear
nothing. Knowing how acute a Vulcan's hearing
was, however, he stood still
and strained his ears. "Well, Mr. Spock?"
Spock shook his head. "I'm sorry,
Captain. I was sure I heard voices. Very
faint and muffled. Wait! There it is again."
This time, even Kirk could hear something, though it
sounded more like the
cry of an animal, and muffled, than a human
voice. He thought the sound had come 103
from the base of the cliffs to their left. Then it was
answered from behind. Kirk spun around, but at first he
could see nothing. The sun, dazzling off
the sand and water, almost blinded him.
Shapes rose from the water and shambled onto the
sand. They were bulky,
shapeless, larger than a man, and they called
back and forth to each other
eagerly, with something vicious in the sound. The
calls were repeated from
the directions of the cliffs at either end of the beach.
"Quickly, Captain, before they, can cut us off!"
Spock began to run toward
the rising land where the beach ended and the undergrowth of the
interior
began. Following him, Kirk told himself, at
least they probably can't move
fast on land.
Something hit him, like a great electric shock
coursing through every nerve pathway simultaneously,
flinging him forward onto his face. Paralyzed, limp
as a rag doll, his limbs flopping helplessly,
Kirk rolled a couple of times and ended up on his
left side, facing toward the water. He was still
half
conscious, but he couldn't regain the slightest
control over his body. A
phaser of some sort, he thought. On low stun.
Even without being able to
turn and look, he knew Spock must be lying not
too many meters away, in the same condition.
Kirk's eyes were open. He hadn't the power
to close them even if he had
wanted to. Helplessly, he watched the
Sealons-he had never had any doubt,
from the first instant, that that was what these creatures
werestruggle
across the sand toward him. He could tell that they were
making as much
speed as they could, perhaps afraid that Kirk's
followers would show up to
rescue him. Before he had sensed both viciousness
and triumph; now he
caught the hint of something unstoppable, of a driving
force that knew no
moral restraint. Kirk struggled without success
to move his arms and legs.
His body was as paralyzed as ever.
The first Seaton to reach him reared itself up over

him, one arm raised, aad Kirk prepared himself
mentally for the crushing
blow that would end his life. But apparently it was
only a signal to the
others, for the creature lowered its arm again without
harming Kirk, and the others began to appear within his
field of vision.
The creatures' colors ranged from pale brown
to almost black. Their skin
seemed to be covered by short, wiry
hairs, covering them like a shield.
Their general shape seemed humanoid, but he could
see webbing between the
fingers and toes. They were obviously heavily
muscled, beneath a surface
layer of fat. Their legs were short and apparently
unable to support them
well on land. He couldn't turn his head to see
more, so he was unable to
see what their faces looked like.
He was grasped roughly by powerful hands and lifted.
His body sagged, his
arms, legs, and head flopping from side to side as
they carried him back
toward the water. Had they spared him so far only
to let him drown
helplessly, unable to control his limbs and swim?
Just before they reached the water, however, his head was
grasped and
something opaque was forced over his face. He
couldn't resist in any way;
no control had yet returned. Straps were
tightened around the back of his
head to keep the device in place. The opacity
was complete; he was in utter blackness. But
he could feel water lapping over him and then rising
up over his head. The hands still grasped him, pulling
him deeper and deeper under
the ocean he could not see.
McCoy was trying without success to find someone who
could and would assume responsibility for food
distribution. None of this fell within the scope of the
duties McCoy had volunteered for, but what little
government Trellisane had had seemed to have
entirely disappeared, and he knew he couldn't just
matters and let starvation creep up on them. There
must be someone-or some
gemot-who dealt with food storage and so on, and
if he could only find them, he co uld perhaps talk them
into trying to forestall the inevitable. Was it
the Food Provenders he'd heard references
to? But no one he questioned
seemed to know or care who had the
responsibility. Much as he admired the
humane attitudes of Trellisane-at least,
during peace time-and what little
of their art and culture he had happened to see,
McCoy was beginning to have strong doubts whether this world
could be saved. Surely the natives must
contribute to the effort too!
It was while he was pondering this mixture of
practical and abstract
problems that Veedron stalked into his small
office and confronted him.
This was a face of Trellisane McCoy had not
seen before angry and
imperious, and chastising. "Those friends of yours,"
Veedron snapped.
"They've done something to anger the Sealons!"
McCoy's astonishment gave way to an anger of
his own. "Anger the Sealons!
What are you talking about? They're invading your
world, killing your
people! Whatever Jim and Spock are doing against them
is what you should be doing."
"No!" Veedron yelled. "You're wrong! If
we don't do anything to fight back, they'll
realize how foolish they're being to do this, and they'll
stop and
go home."
"Do you really believe that? Even after what they've
already done to your
world?"
"Yes, Dr. McCoy. Yes, I do.
They'll leave, and then everything will be the
way it was, the way it should be. Everyone on
Trellisane will settle back
into his rightful place and be happy with it."
For the first time, McCoy became aware of the terrible
fear underlying
Veedron's bluster. He spoke calmly,
gently to the Trellisanian, trying to
ease that fear. "I'm sure Jim and Spock
know the dangers. We've 106
dealt with interplanetary wars before, Veedron. You
simply can't try to win
by letting your enemy destroy your world. That never
has-was
"Your friends are destroying this world!" Veedron
interrupted. "It won't
matter even if the Sealons leave. After what
those two have started, things will never be the same again."
"There's a great deal of destruction to repair, of
course," McCoy said
soothingly, feeling puzzled by Veedron's near
hysteria, "but if we can just end this war and get back
in contact with Star Fleet, the Federation will
help you rebuild."
"But it's not the destruction, not the buildings."
Veedron's voice cracked. "It's our
society they're breaking down. After this, the slaves
. . . the
slaves will swallow us whole."
"The slaves!" The real cause of Veedron's
fear began to become apparent at
last. Things he had seen during the last two days
but had ignored began to
coalesce for McCoy. "I think I've been
too preoccupied," he muttered.
Veedron flopped into a chair. "Oh, you
offworlders just don't understand
how things are here, how things have to be in order to have a
civilized
planet! You have all those other species from all
over your domains, who
look so different from you, to do your work for you. You
don't have to face the moral and ethical burdens we
have running this world."
McCoy burst out laughing. "If you only knew
how much you sound like some
very old relatives of mine back home! Sit
still, my good man. I've got a
lot to tell you about how the Federation operates. I
don't think you're
going to like all of it."
Veedron looked at him with distaste, but he made
no move to escape.
The pressure on Kirk's body increased
steadily. He yawned desperately,
stretching his jaws inside the 107
flexible breathing mask the Sealons had fitted
over dishis face, hoping he was avoiding damage
to his eardrums. Only after he had been doing this for
some
minutes did he realize that the paralysis was
wearing off. He jerked his
arms free of the hands holding them and kicked in what
he thought was the
direction of the surface. He couldn't spare the
time to take his mask off so that he could see the light
of the surface. Something hard hit him on the
back of the head, stunning him and stopping his
escape. Strong hands gripped his arms and legs again
and started pulling him along once more. Another
heavy blow to the back of the head, and his consciousness
faded.
When Kirk recovered consciousness, he was first
aware of a grotesque
headache and next that he was lying on a hard, dry
surface and was
surrounded by warm air rather than cold water. He
couldn't quite focus his
eyes.
"Captain." Spock's voice. Nearby, and
full of concern. "Jim. Are you
functional?"
Kirk suppressed a mad urge to giggle.
"Yes, Mr. Spock," he said, the words
coming out in a slur. He could hardly control his
tongue, and he could
still make no more than a blur out of his surroundings.
"I'm adequately
functional."
"Here, Captain," Spock said. "Have some of
this."
Kirk's head was raised and something was placed against
his lips. He sipped a hot liquid, acrid
both to taste and smell. He forced a few sips
down, and his headache faded and his vision cleared. He
could see Spock leaning over
him, looking at his face with concern. As soon as
Spock realized his
captain could now see him, the look of concern
disappeared, quickly
replaced by the normal impenetrable
Vulcan stolidity.
From Kirk's right, a harsh voice spoke.
"Captain Kirk. You're lucky they
didn't crush your skull. A Sealon is very
strong, and it isn't wise to make them angry."
Kirk pushed himself shakily to his feet and
squinted in the direction of
the voice. A Klingon stood there, trying to mask
his arrogance and
hostility behind an assumption of polite interest.
"Aha," Kirk said. "At
last we find the puppet masters."
The Klingon flushed, his false politeness
vanishing. He growled, the sound
of a beast, the strange, almost instinctual hatred
between Klingons and
humans nearly overmastering him. With an effort,
he assumed his mask again. With an even greater
effort, he smiled at the two Star Fleet
officers. "We
know who you are. Captain James Tiberius
Kirk of the U.s.s. Enterprise, and the ship's
science officer and first officer, the Vulcan,
Spock. We could
tell from what our other captives . .
. uh, revealed to us that you two
were behind the sudden eruption of resistance. We
advised the Sealons to
capture you so that the resistance would end."
"You "advised' them, you said?" Kirk said.
"Wouldn't "ordered' be the right word?"
The Klingon smirked. "I think you're missing the
whole point, Kirk. We're
here merely in an advisory role. It's
obvious to us which of these two
races is the more qualified to rule this star
system. It must be obvious to you, too. If we're
doing anything, it's only to help the Sealons in their
natural progress to mastery. It's they who
expressed the natural and proper desire to expand
and conquer; we only provided the means. You have no
right to compidin if we chose to back the stronger faction
and your faction
loses."
"Sir," Spock said, in that dry tone that alerted
Kirk to the beginning of
a theoretical disquisition, "the distinction you have
drawn is surely moot. The Trellisanians
provided the Sealons with space flight, it is
true, but
they did not teach them to arm their ships. Nor did
they provide them with
phasers; indeed, that is a device the Sealons,
as an underwater culture,
would surely not have originated on their own and would not
have desired or known how to use. It was not until
your own intervention
that the possibility of attacking and invading
Trellisane arose. By creating that possibility,
you in effect led the Sealons into their present path.
Klingon must be held accountable for the present
war-if not in the eyes of
the Organians, then in the view of the Federation
Council. There will surely be retribution."
The Klingon officer laughed at Spock.
"Vulcan, in a few days, it won't
matter what role we played. When the Sealons
move onto the land, your weak
friends will be killed off, and then it will be too late
for the Organians
or the Federation government to do anything about it."
"Correction," Kirk said. "In a few days,
you can expect a Romulan fleet to
arrive and take over this system."
The Klingon whirled on him, his hand
dropping to the phaser on his belt.
"What? What lie is this? Speak quickly,
Kirk, or you're dead!"
Kirk grinned at him, deliberately goading
him into losing his temper. They
were alone in the office with the Klingon, and if he could
force the
officer into acting hastily, moving within range of
them, he and Spock
could surely disarm him. But the Klingon seemed
to realize his danger, and
he stepped back again, drew his phaser, and held
it aimed at a point in the air midway between Kirk
and Spock. "Now, Kirk," he said in a voice
held
deliberately calm, "explain what you mean."
Kirk hesitated. There was no longer any
security reason for not telling
this Klingon the whole story; it was rather that he felt
a great reluctance at admitting how he had lost his
ship. "A group of fanatics have managed to take
over the Enterprise, and they're on their way right now
to the Romulan Neutral Zone, hoping to attack
a Romulan vessel or base and start a war
between them and the Federation."
The Klingon laughed uproariously. "The great
Cap-
tain Kirk has lost his ship!" he shouted.
"Wonderful! Why should that worry
us, Kirk? You've destroyed your career, and now
your stupid Federation and
the Romulans will destroy each other. That's good
news for us-the best
possible. With both of you eliminated, there'll be
no one to stand in our
way."
Spock said, "Sir, you underestimate the
Romulans. They will quite possibly
manage to capture the Enterprise without
destroying it, and then they will
find out from the crew what has been happen ing here.
Even if they do
destroy the Enterprise, they will surely wonder
why the Federation would
initiate a war with them by sending a lone ship
to attack their empire. In
that case, they will surely become suspicious that
something quite
different is underway and will explore the star
systems in the neighborhood of the
Neutral Zone to try to determine what it is. In
either case, they
will be greatly angered to find that Klingon is trying
to encroach in this
area, which they regard as something of a no-man'sland
between the three
spheres of influence. That is precisely why the
Federation has moved so
cautiously here. Klingon has made a serious
mistake by not emulating us. I
doubt that your empire is prepared at this point
to undertake a war against the Romulans and the
Federation-or more properly, the Organians--at the
same time."
The Klingon glared at Spock for a moment,
obviously wanting to find the
words to destroy the Vulcan's argument but unable
to do so. "Why should I
believe any of this?" he asked finally.
Before Spock could generously explain why,
logically, he was not obliged to believe it, Kirk
broke in. "You can check on the whereabouts of the
Enterprise quickly enough."
The Klingon thought for a moment, then called in a
guard from outside,
another Klingon, and left the room quickly. After
some minutes, he returned looking shaken. "The
base on Sealon verifies some of what 111
you've said," he told them, his manner almost
friendly. "The Invasion
Commandant wants you both sent to him on Sealon
so he can discuss what to do next. If it were up
to me, I'd kill you both instead of cooperating with
you."
"And me without my swimsuit," Kirk said.
Invasion Commandant, he thought.
At least they're being honest with themselves about what
they're doing.
As if completely unaware of the Assassin
looking over his shoulder,
Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott,
chief engineer of the U.s.s.
Enterprise, pulled his head from the crawl space
beside the main warp
reactor and muttered, "Well, Scotty my
boy, that's probably the best you can do without
replacing those parts." Shaking his head, he walked
across the
open space in the center of Engineering Section to the
warp reactor
monitoring computer and stood in front of it
clucking his tongue.
The Assassin had followed, moving soundlessly.
"What's wrong?" he asked,
outwardly unperturbed but in fact disturbed
by Scott's obvious worry.
"Hmm? Oh, it's you. Well, you'see, I've
done the maintenance your boss so
kindly permitted me to. Now at least we
won't blow up when the drive fails. But it'll still
fail unless I'm allowed to remove some parts from the
reactor and completely replace them. And he
won't allow me time for that."
"How long before it gives out?"
Scott shrugged elaborately. "No way of
knowinguntil it happens. No one
tests the things that way, because a real starship
captain knows enough to
let his
chief engineer have his way where the engines are
concerned."
The Assassin said impatiently, "Just so they
last long enough to get us to
the Romulans."
Scott forced his anger down. The thought that
his beloved engines-and the
ship itself-were only tools to these madmen
infuriated him. They would let
his ship be destroyed, and for no purpose other than
their own madness!
Still, he could tell that if he attacked this man
he would accomplish
nothing except to get himself crippled or killed.
He could do the ship and
the Federation more good by keeping himself m working condition
until some
sort of opportunity presented itself.
One of Scott's assistants strolled into the
room at that moment, his arm
cradling a clipboard on which he was checking off
various status points as
he verified proper operations. He stopped in
surprise when he saw his
chief. "Sir, I thought you went off duty a
couple of hours ago."
"Just finished the warp engine maintenance, Bill,"
Scott told him, hoping
the young man would have the wit to accept that explanation
for now.
Instead, the young engineer frowned and looked
over the papers on his
clipboard. "But none of that was scheduled, sir.
I thought I remembered
that we took care of that last week."
"Right. That was the regular maintenance. We had
bad problems because of
the shaking up the engines took during that attack
at the beginning of the
Red Alert."
"Oh, yes, sir, I see." Diligently and
scrupulously, the young man wrote a
few remarks on his check-off fist. "In that
case, sir, I'd better look it
over so I know what to tell the man who
relieves me." And before Scott
could think of the right words to stop him without making the
Assassin
suspicious, the engineer had stuck
his own head into the crawl space, still uncovered, that
Scott had vacated
only minutes before.
Scott stole a quick glance at the Assassin.
The man was watching the
younger engineer and flexing his hands unconsciously.
Scott sensed
immediately that his assistant was close to death, and he
said, in a
cheerful tone, "We'd better get back to the
bridge, now, and tell them that we're done down
here." But the Assassin motioned him to silence.
The young engineer came out of the crawl space
frowning. "But, sir-was
"Yes, yes, lad, I know," Scott cut
in. "Those parts need to be replaced, or they'll
give out soon. But with this alert on, the bridge just
won't give
me the time to do that." Star Fleet engineering did
such a fine job of
recruiting young men and women of high technical
competence, he thought
bitterly. Why couldn't they manage to send him
some who were also quick on
their feet in the nontechnical aspects?
The younger man was obviously not reassured.
"Yes, but sir-was
"Damn it, laddie," Scott said, the anger in
his voice quite real and based
on his fear for the young man's life. "I know that's
not good engineering
practice, but we just don't have a
choice. Now, don't you mess around with
what I've done in there. It's all just on the
verge of not holding
together, and I don't want you sticking your mitts
in there and spoiling
what little I was able to do."
The other engineer looked hurt, but he said only,
"Yes, sir," and passed
on, sedulously checking things off on his
clipboard. Scott couldn't tell if he had at
last got the message that all was not what it should be
or if he
had been browbeaten into silence. Either way, he had
escaped a brutal death that had been, for some
minutes, closer than he could have realized.
The Assassin grasped Scott's upper arm in
a grip of
iron. Scott kept the pain from showing. The
Assassin stared down into his
face for a long moment, perplexity mixed with anger
in his expression.
Whatever he might suspect, his suspicions were
clearly not precise enough
for him to act on them. At last he shoved
Scott toward the doorway and
growled, "Back to the bridge. Move."
Scott moved, releasing the breath he had been
unconsciously holding. He
knew how close to death he had been, but he
told himself with some smugness that it had been worth the
risk in the end, the chance he had taken might
entirely save his beloved engines and ship from this
gang. Suppressing the
cocky grin that kept trying to break out on his
face, he headed for the
elevator.
It could have been called a data exchange, but that
does not convey the
deeper interchange that was taking place. Christine
Chapel sat quietly in
a chair in Medical Section, her eyes
closed, looking as though she were
napping briefly to recover from the rush of wounded.
A meter or two away
from her, also unmoving, the Onctiliian rested on
the floor. Now it was a
three-part creature; the once-gaping wound of the
dead member was healing
rapidly. The three and the new fourth member were
reliving each others'
lives.
Simultaneously puzzled and entranced, the three
Onctiliians experienced
Chapel's upbringing on Earth, her academic
career, her early professional
triumphs, and then the personal loss that had led
her to become a nurse in
Star Fleet. They ached and wept with her when she
found the lover she had
thought lost, only to discover that he was even more
irretrievably lost
than she had known. They comforted her, supported
her, wept with her, loved her.
And she lived their childhoods in the marshes of
Onctiliis, growing through the many stages of life of
that watery world's highest life form. Each life
story was repeated three times, though each time differed

from the others in some details. Hauntingly, through the
memories of the
three survivors, she lived the life of the
fourth, the one who had died but
would never be forgotten or fully relinquished.
She relived their meeting in the fern forest that was their
tribal mating ground, and then she relived
their inexpressibly joyous physical union
into a four-part adult. Finally,
with them, she lived through their discovery of
interplanetary politics, the United Expansion
Party, and Hander Morl and his small party of
fanatics, and the near-fatal trauma of the death of a
member.
Each member contributed something to the personality
of the whole. The one
who had died had been the most aggressive of the
four, and the one most
given to sudden and extreme enthusiasms. The being
which now included
Christine Chapel was not only more intelligent
than any other four-part
Onctiliian, because the human woman was far more
intelligent than any
single Onctiliian, but was also more
introspective and pacifist. This
creature would not have followed Hander Morl. Its
memories of what had
happened, and the part it had played, horrified the
being it had become.
We must correct this evil.
We sh all act.
The woman stood up and moved slowly, almost
dreamily, from Medical Section
into the corridor beyond. The other three, no longer
quite able to attain
sphericity and thus moving more slowly than
normally, followed. The
four-part view of the hallway and the four-part body
of sensations of
smell, sound, and vibrations were a revelation to the
member that still
called itself "Chapel." It strolled along the
corridor, absorbed,
delighted, reveling in the profound complexity of the
Enterprise.
Hander Morl laughed with pleasure as the stars on
the main screen dissolved into chaos and then reformed, but
this time in evident motion. The
was once more under warp drive, and once again his
race toward destiny was
on schedule. He pushed himself from the command chair and
stretched his
cramped muscles, then turned around to grin at
Scott, who stood calm and
relaxed on the raised platform where Uhura's
communications station was
located. "Thank you, Chief Engineer. The ship
feels good. We're going to
make it."
Scott inclined his head slightly but said nothing.
Uhura, both puzzled and
angry at Scott's complicity with their
captors, said, "Thank you indeed,
Mr. Scott. That was just what they needed."
In a voice scarcely above a murmur,
Scott said, "Don't thank me yet, lass.
The best is yet to be."
The office in which they had spoken to the Klingon was in
an underwater dome housing a series of such rooms.
As they were led along a succession of
corridors under guard, Kirk saw many other such
rooms, and they were passed
by many Klingons, both singly and in groups. The
dome was surely not
necessary for the aquatic Sealons. Clearly it had
been built only for the
sake of their Klingon "advisers," and just as
clearly the number of those
"advisers" must be very large. The air in the dome
was heavy with moisture,
and the temperature was too low for human
comfort. Water beaded on the walls and dripped from the
ceilings. In places, the prisoners and their guards
walked through puddles. It was surely well within the
abilities of the
Klingons to build a more pleasant underwater
habitat than this. Kirk assumed that they must see
this as only temporary; before too long, they planned
to
be established on the land and to rule this world, through their
Sealon
allies, from the surface.
At last they were led to an airlock. Beyond it, they
found themselves in a
long, pressurized, flexible tube laid on the
sea bottom. The tube was well
lighted and the walls were partially transparent. As
they were marched
along it, Kirk could see various sea
creatures,
shaped much like the fish and sea snakes of his
native Earth, nuzzling the
outside of the tube, drawn there by the smaller
animals that clung to it
because of the escaping light and warmth. Under any other
circumstances, it
would have been a fascinating place to spend some time
sightseeing. As it
was, he and Spock were hurried along to the end
of the tube.
The end was another airlock, on the other side of
which they found
themselves in a small shuttle craft. The cabin
had only one window, small
and reinforced to withstand more than normal atmospheric
pressure. Kirk and Spock were seated away from the
window and manacled to the arms of their
acceleration couches. So the Klingons haven't
given the Sealons
transporters, Kirk thought. Insufficient
trust, for true allies, or perhaps it's
insufficient faith in their dependability in the
future.
Noises came from beyond the airlock, and then the
shuttle was free and
rising up through the sea. Startled shapes moved beyond
the window, sea
creatures disturbed by the sudden motion of their new
habitat. Once,
something large swam up and a face that looked like a
cross between a man's and a frog's stared in
at them. A Sealon, Kirk realized, either a
curious
one or a suspicious one, checking up on the
latest movements of the
Klingons. The Klingon guard seated by the window
recoiled m open disgust
and put his hand reflexively to his phaser. Then
the Sealon face
disappeared. Kirk glanced at Spock and saw that
the Vulcan was watching the Klingon with the same interest
he felt.
The shuttle broke the surface and lay bobbing
for a few minutes on the
swells in bright sunlight. The window showed
alternations of bright blue
sky and green waters as the waves broke against the
vessel's side. Then
there was the rumble of engines and, sluggishly at first,
the shuttle
raised itself into the air. Gathering speed, it flashed
upwards at a steep
angle, the blue sky outside the window giving
place to a 120
deeper, darker color and then finally to the
starspeckled black of space.
This was a rare experience for Kirk, who was
accustomed to using the
Enterprise's transporter and could only rarely
allow himself the luxury of
traveling by shuttle. Time was usually so short for
his many duties that he
normally considered the shuttle as much an
inconvenience as a luxury. Now,
with no choice in the matter, he could revel in the
sense of community the
experience gave him with the first men to leave the Earth
atop their
chemical rockets and thrust into space. James
Kirk had few heroes, but those men were among them.
Then the craft turned slightly and beyond the window
part of a Klingon-inspired Sealon ship came
into view, and Kirk's fantasies
evaporated.
The manacles were unlocked, Kirk and Spock
were transferred to the large
ship quickly and efficiently and placed in a
detention cell, and the ship
left orbit for Sealon. Except for the
Sealons who had captured them on the
beach and the enigmatic face at the
shuttle's window while it was still
underwater, Kirk had seen only Klingons. He
began to wonder if the Klingons had already followed
their usual pattern of reducing their vassal
peoples
to slavery, without even waiting for the invasion of
Trellisane to be
completed. were there even any Sealons aboard this
apparently Sealon ship?
He filed the anomaly away for future
reference, along with the reaction of
the Klingon guard to the face at the shuttle's
window, not knowing yet what use any of this information
might be but hoping that it would be of some
use in the future. If I have a future, he
reminded himself.
Veedron had heard enough. He leaped from his chair
and stalked to the door
of McCoy's office. He paused there, turned
his head, and said to the
doctor, "I had no idea your Federation had such
stupid laws. We'll
certainly have to reconsider any idea of joining
it.
You'd expect us to share political
power with the yegemot--creatures whose
ancestors weren't even human!" Head high with
anger, he started to leave the room.
McCoy stared speechlessly at him for a moment,
then called him back before
he was out of earshot. "Veedron! Wait just a
minute. What was that last
thing you said?"
Veedron came back into the office
reluctantly and seated himself again.
"The yegemot, those with no gemot. That's what
we call them, the ones you
call our servants. I haven't explained this
to you before because we don't
talk about it to outsiders when they come here to trade.
We try to spare
the yegemot the embarrassment. After all, even
they have some feelings,
almost as we do."
"Oh, I'm sure that's true," McCoy said,
but his irony was apparently lost
on Veedron.
"Yes," Veedron said, "they do, although not everyone
seems to realize that. You see, McCoy, the
yegemot are actually descended from
domestic animals
that our ancestors bred to human shape ages
ago. Unfortunately, that sort
of biological skill has been long lost to us,
but fortunately the yegemot
breed true. I'd be the first to admit that our
economy depends upon
continuing their breed. There's never a shortage of
them." He sniffed in
contempt. "I suppose that's one advantage of
their lack of a moral code.
Now, I know that you have various animals as pets
and for some work on
Earth. Would you ever consider letting them vote or
share in the running of your world? Of course not! And
yet that is just what you expect us to do
here on Trellisane."
"Then a . . . yegemot may achieve as high
a level of competence in some
field or profession as possible and still not be
accepted as one of you?"
"Of course not. Anyway, they are not mentally
capable of reaching a very
high level of competence in anything."
"Because they're really animals in human
guise?"
"Precisely!" Veedron was triumphant.
"There, McCoy, now you begin to
understand. Now perhaps you can sympathize with our point
of view."
"Veedron, I'm probably better equipped
to understand your attitude than
anyone else on the Enterprise. Tell me,
though. Has it ever happened that
a yegemot has, um, mated with a human and
produced young?"
Veedron stiffened in anger. As McCoy had
anticipated, this was a question
that struck a bit too deep for comfort. Then the
Trellisanian relaxed again and said, slowly, as
if each word were being dragged from him painfully,
"Yes. It has happened. Our deepest shame.
Such children are considered to
be yegemot themselves."
McCoy put his hands behind his head and leaned back
in his chair, looking
thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Your ancestors must have
been smarter than
you realize. They've made biological
history here."
Veedron smiled, his anger forgotten. "I'm so
glad that you, at least,
understand our position."
"Oh, I do indeed," McCoy said. "This does
change matters in some respects."
Veedron left the office again, but this time not in
anger. There was a
bounce in his step. McCoy watched him go
thoughtfully, then got up and
followed him.
They were brought down from o rbit by shuttle craft
again. The vessel landed on a strip on a small
land mass that Kirk, searching his memory for the few
details Veedron had told them when they arrived
on Trellisane, guessed must be the land capital
built by Pongol, the great leader who had united
Sealon. The land was covered with huge buildings,
topped by tall chimneys
from which black smoke belched. Land and air
traffic moved about busily.
Nature had forced the Sealons to build all of
this on land, no matter how
much their own biology might make them prefer the
sea.
A Klingon guard-again, no sign of
Sealonsmarched them from the shuttle to
a small surface craft. In that they were taken
to a large office building,
much like an administrative center on any
planet. The grounds and the
corridors of this building bustled with Klingons,
striding about with
evident purpose.
They were taken to a large, grand office in the
building. A Klingon
officer, his high rank indicated by the braid on
his uniform, waited behind a large desk for them. As
their guard ushered them in, he rose and greeted
them in a surprising display of politeness. He
was tall, broad, heavily
muscled-huge for a Klingon, and gigantic
by Earth standards. He wore the
short, well-trimmed beard common among
Klingon officers; his skin color was even darker
than most. He radiated power, confidence, and an
unstoppable
will. His voice matched that impression-deep,
resonant, powerful. He spoke
quietly, almost gently, for a Klingon.
"Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. I
am
Fleet Leader Kaged, commandant of all
Klingon forces in this system. I am
quite pleased to meet both of you after all these years."
"Quite pleased to have us captive, you mean," Kirk
said.
Kaged inclined his head slightly. "Of course
that. But in addition, I'm
pleased to meet you in person. I've followed your
career with interest and
admiration, Captain. There is surely no other
officer in Star Fleet who has performed so well
against us. Therefore, I am pleased to have you captive
and no longer able to act against us; but I am also
glad to have the chance to speak to you."
This reception threw Kirk momentarily off
balance. To keep that from
showing, he said, "You know the situation with my ship.
There won't be any
time for talk if the Romulans arrive here and
attack your installation. You don't know them as we
do, Kaged. They're capable of just such a
response."
Kaged laughed suddenly, a loud, booming laugh

an undertone of cruelty and threat-the true
Klingon in him peeping out from
behind the mask of politeness. "We don't fear the
Romulans, Kirk, any more
than we fear the Federation. They worry more about
fighting honorably than
about winning. Fortunately, we aren't hampered that
way." He pursed his lips in momentary thought.
"Still, it would be inconvenient to have to deal with
them now, before we're ready. They're on our
schedule, you know," he said,
suddenly conversational and polite again, "but the
Federation comes first."
He's talking too much, Kirk realized
suddenly. He wouldn't say all of this
to us if he expected to ever let us go. Somehow,
Kirk had always thought
he'd die in battle, as a warrior, not that
he'd be coldbloodedly executed
while a prisoner of the Klingons. "The more you
talk, the closer the
Enterprise gets to the Neutral Zone."
Kaged nodded. "Preparations are already underway.
After this problem is
solved, I must extract from you the story
of your loss of the Enterprise.
Captain Kirk, of all men-our great
nemesis. You've destroyed so many
Klingon vessels, you and your ship. To have you lose
your own to an attack
from the inside-why, it astonishes me!"
Kirk gritted his teeth but said nothing. Kaged
watched him carefully for
signs of some response, but Kirk's control of
his expression was firm
enough that the Klingon looked away finally,
disappointed. "Yes," Kaged
said. After a pause, he continued, "I'm going
to give you something you've
probably long desired, Kirk a ride on
a first-line Klingon battleship. I'm sure you'd
prefer to be in command of her, having captured her in
battle,
but you'll have to settle for being a prisoner."
"What do you have in mind, Kaged?"
"Unfortunately, I have only a small fleet
here at my command, and I'm
reluctant to divide it. I've decided to send
the largest ship off after the Enterprise. Its speed
is greater than anything the Federation has, so
it
should be able to cato the Enterprise before it reaches
Romulan territory.
The new higher speed we've been able to attain
is something I wouldn't
normally want you to know about until you met us in
battle, but," he
shrugged his shoulders and smirked, "in your case it
hardly matters what you find out. You'll be on the
ship as an expert adviser to its captain. After
all, who knows more about the Enterprise and its crew
and capabilities comand
how to find, fight, and destroy her-than the great
Captain James T. Kirk?"
"You expect me to help you destroy my own
ship?" Kirk was as amazed as he
was angry.
Kaged looked at him shrewdly. "I don't
think your Federation is any readier to fight the
Romulans than we are, Kirk. We watched you
carefully when the
Romulans first attacked you. You gave back,
nearly collapsed. You just
barely managed to hold your own against them. Had
we only been ready at the time to take
advantage of it, we could have mopped you up afterwards in
no
time. Since then, we believe, the Federation has
grown even more pacifist
and weaker, while the Romulans, hidden behind their
Neutral Zone comwell, who knows what time and
resentment might have done for them? Kirk, I
respect
you personally, even admire you, as many Klingon
military commanders do. If you were typical of Star
Fleet ship's captains, it would be a different
situation. As it is, your Federation is doomed as
soon as we Klingons can
find some way around the Organians and attack
you. That might take
generations, however; certainly, the Federation should
survive during your
lifetime and mine. Unless you go to war with the
Romulans, of course, in
which case they will probably wipe you out before we have
the chance to do
so. It's your ship, your Enterprise, against the
survival of the
Federation. I'm offering you the chance to save the
Federation by helping
us."
In the meantime weakening the Federation by the 126
loss of the finest ship and crew in the fleet,
Kirk thought bitterly.
Spock said, "On the face of it, Captain, a
logical argument."
"On the face of it!" Kaged exclaimed.
"Logical all the way through, Vulcan.
Moreover, you will stay behind with me. Kirk, to ensure
that you won't try
one of your famous stratagems, Spock remains
here as a hostage. I think we
could manage to make even a Vulcan feel a
great deal of pain before he
died, despite their mental disciplines."
"An interesting challenge, sir," Spock said
thoughtfully. "I shall be most
curious to see whether your methods of torture
are indeed so efficacious as you seem to think."
Kirk shuddered involuntarily at the thought and at
Spock's coldblooded
discussion of his own fate. "It won't come to that,
Mr. Spock," he said
quietly, wearily. "I agree, Kaged."
He came closer in that moment to
admitting total defeat than he had ever done in
his career.
The quiet, small sounds of utensils against
plates, the gentle tinkling of
glasses being filled with exquisite wines, the
low murmur of civilized
conversation. Half a dozen men were present at the
banquet, besides Leonard McCoy; they were the ones
who had happened to be on this continent when the Sealons
cut off transoceanic travel. Still, they were the
leaders of most
of this world's most powerful and important gemots,
and thus, sitting in
council, they were what government Trellisane
had. McCoy was an honored
guest, and in fact he was being treated by these powerful
leaders as one of them.
The food was exclusively vegetarian. This
puzzled McCoy and annoyed him
somewhat. The fish he had had before was missing.
Well, of course, no
in his right mind would go out on the sea, with the current
conditions, and
on this world, fresh-water fish weren't considered
sufficient delicacies to
be served in such elevated company. The marine
plants the Trellisanians
ate-and which McCoy was already learning to detest, after
eating them three
times a day every day-had previously been harvested
on the high seas but
were now being grown on shallow bays and inland salt
pools. But what he
particularly missed was the meat he had been fed
upon arrival. He longed to
sink his teeth into a juicy, medium-rare steak.
That stuff was raised on
land, of course, so what was the problem? Or have
they, he wondered, killed
off all the herds already in panic over coming
shortages? He turned to his
neighbor on his right, a distinguished, elderly,
greybearded gentleman
wearing the subdued robes of the Building
Erectors gemot. "You know," McCoy
said to him in a low voice, "I wouldn't mind some
food with a lot less
crunch and a lot more blood in it."
His neighbor nodded and murmured, "Indeed.
I'm quite shocked that, with a
guest such as you present, proper food was not
provided. I must have a word with Geldop about this."
"Ah, of course, you wouldn't know. Geldop is
the current head of the Food
Provenders' gemot." He raised himself
slightly in his chair and looked
around. Then he sighed heavily. "I see he is
not with us. Perhaps he was
trapped elsewhere by the war, or possibly even
injured or killed, poor man. Still," he said,
looking righteous again, "that gemot has many able men in
lower positions, and this laxity is inexcusa ble."
He gestured over his
shoulder at the line of quiet waiters standing against
the wall behind
them. "Just feast your eyes on that row of healthy,
young yegemot. Truly
shocking."
McCoy bridled. "Well, now-was But at this
point, he 128
was interrupted by the beginning of a speech, and by the time
it was over,
he had lost his train of thought.
Later, as he was leaving the banquet hall,
satisfied with the drink if not
with the food, McCoy encountered Spenreed strolling
down the hallway,
looking jubilant. "Doctor!" the yegemot
burst out, grabbing his hand. "I
was hoping to find you here. I don't know what you
did to me when you
operated on me, but I think you saved my life
twice. I'm still alive!"
"I've noticed you are," McCoy said,
extracting his hand from the slave's
powerful grip. Flexing his hand, he added, "But it
wasn't anything I did.
Don't you see, it was just some foolish
superstitious idea you had, and as
I told you, those are nonsense no matter what
planet you're on."
Spenreed laughed joyfully. "Oh, yes,
Doctor. It's all nonsense, all right.
You've changed my attitudes about a lot of
things." He walked on down the
hallway, whistling, with a bounce in his step.
McCoy grinned after him,
shook his head, and went about his own business.
Honorable warriors they might be, but the
Romulans were not above monitoring Federation
communications from within the Neutral Zone. They had
caught even less of the message from Trellisane
than had been recorded by the colony on
Trefolg, so they had no idea the Klingons were
in any way involved.
Nonetheless, a war within the no-man's-land, in a
system not too far removed from their own borders, and
an appeal for help to the Federation disturbed
them mightily. Patrols in the general direction
of Trellisane were increased both in number and
strength, special bases were established to listen for
more messages, and military forces in the area were
ordered to be even more
alert than usual. If a patrol should
occasionally, overcome with zeal and
devotion to duty, stray beyond the Neutral Zone
in order to patrol more
effectively, no one was reprimanded. There were
powerful factions within the Romulan military command and
high imperial circles who were eager to renew
the war with the Federation.
Sulu watched the four points on his screen for
long moments, wondering
whether patriotism would be better served by speaking
out or remaining
silent. At last, loyalty to his ship won out
over other questions and he
said, "Something's headed our way." There was
no response from the command chair, where Hander
Mori was staring at him
uncomprehendingly. "I'll put it on the main
screen," Sulu said, hiding his
sneer with only partial success.
The starfield on the main screen wavered and
dissolved and was replaced
with a view that at first glance seemed similar.
However, near the center
of the image, four bright points moved together against the
background
stars. Sulu looked over his shoulder quickly at
Mori, but the man who
should have been issuing commands was staring at the screen in
obvious
puzzlement. "Ships, probably," Sulu said,
open contempt in his voice. "I'll magnify."
Again the image wavered, dissolved, then
resolidified. This time, the dots took shape as
four strangely shaped warships, growing steadily
larger as they sped toward the Enterprise. Sulu
felt a prickling at the
back of his neck. "Romulans," he whispered.
In the sudden, tense silence on the bridge, the
whisper carried to every corner.
Hander Mori sat frozen, his eyes bulging.
Earlier, he had reveled in the
feeling of being in control of this great weapon, at the
nerve center of
this embodiment of Federation might. He had looked
forward to the final
confrontation with the Romulans, the moment that would both
end and
epitomize his career. Now that moment was here, and
he was suddenly
paralyzed with fear. Those ships, those fiendish,
evil shapes rushing down
on them! How could they survive? How could they
escape? He looked around
the bridge. The Enterprise personnel were
concentrating on their instru-
ments, sparing only an occasional glance at the
screen, and Mori was
overcome by a wave of admiration for their courage
and sense of duty. His
own people were watching him for a cue. "Have we reached the
Neutral Zone
yet?" he tried to ask Sulu, but his voice
came out as an incoherent croak.
He cleared his throat and repeated the question, this time
intelligibly.
"No." It was Chekov who answered him.
"We're
some distance from it yet. Those ships penetrated beyond
it."
Moil felt relief and triumph. "Then
they've already precipitated the war by violating our
space!"
Scott, still standing calmly next to Uhura, said,
"I doubt it. This area
wasn't covered in the treaty. It's outside
both our space and theirs."
"Then we can't fight them here!" Mori said
desperately. "We've got to reach the Neutral
Zone first. Increase our speed!"
Sulu shook his head. "Sorry. We'll need
the screens up if they're chasing
and firing at us, and that means no more speed than we
already have." He
doubted if Mori would know better.
"I'm getting something," Uhura said. "They
want us to kill the warp drive
and stand by for boarding. They want to know what we're
doing here."
"Boarding!" Mori went pale. If he allowed
the ship to be boarded and
captured, that would be the certain end of all his
plans. "All right. Kill
the warp immediately." Sulu and Chekov exchanged a
glance of triumph,
thinking that Mori was defeated at last; their
pleasure kept them from
noticing the sudden determination in his voice.
Sulu's fingers moved over
the buttons of his console and, with that
psychophysical wrench, the
Enterprise dropped back into normal space.
"Speed at zero," Sulu said happily. It
would be more honorable to be taken
prisoner by the Romulans, he reflected, than
to be part of a plot to cause
a war.
While Sulu, Chekov, and the others turned from
their work to watch the
Romulan ships approach ever closer on the
main screen, Mori asked Scott,
"How will they board us?"
Scott shrugged. "Hard to say. They might use
a shuttle, or they might
decide to beam directly onto the bridge."
Mori nodded in satisfaction. He pushed himself

the chair and strode energetically over to Sulu's
chair "Out," he said.
"Quickly."
Sulu laughed but stood up. Mori sat down in
his place. Sulu grinned at his
back and said, "Don't touch anything, kid."
But Mori ignored him. His fingers moved
carefully but rapidly over the
buttons of the helmsman's console. He had
spent months studying the
blueprints and operating manuals for such starships
as this one, and he had spent the last many weary hours
carefully watching Sulu's actions. This and his
intelligence stood him in good stead now. Sulu,
watching him, lost his
grin and felt instead grudging but genuine
admiration. Mori finished
composing the series of commands, checked them quickly on
the small screen
on the console, and then stopped with his finger
over the button that would start the execution of the commands.
With everyone else, he watched the
Romulan ships in the main screen.
The four ships were arranged as the vertices of an
almost precise square.
They retained that formation, approaching and slowing
until the Enterprise
was at the center of the square. There they stopped. The
tension of waiting increased. Nothing further seemed
to be happening. Scott stepped quickly to the science
officer station and pressed his face to the visor of the
small
computer console. "They're scanning the bridge
now," he announced.
"Probably trying to establish coordinates for
their transporter. Yes, here
it comes."
Simultaneously, half a dozen vaguely
manlike shapes began to resolve
themselves on the Enterprise bridge in the display of
twinkling lights
characteristic of a transporter, and Mori pressed the
button on the console firmly. There was a sudden
jolt of impulse power and the six shapes, fixed
in space, seemed to move sideways
sharply and out through the walls of the
bridge into space as the Enterprise moved away
from them. Almost
immediately, the warp engines cut in and the Romulan
ships on the screen
disappeared. Mori grinned at Sulu 133
who, struck with horror at this callousness and
imagining himself in the
position of the Romulans in the transporter
beam, yelled at Chekov, "Get
that on the screen! Full magnification!"
Chekov fumbled with his console for a moment, then
succeeded. The scene was shrinking rapidly as the
Enterprise sped away, but even so Sulu could
make
out the six shapes in airless space, writhing and
struggling as they
suffocated and their tissues ruptured. Just as they
were lost in the
distance, he thought they twinkled out of sight, brought
back aboard their
ships by transporter, but he knew it was
probably too late to save their
fives. For a Romulan above all, he thought, that
must have seemed a filthy, evil death,
killed by trickery and dishonesty. And cruelly and
uncleanly.
The Romulans would not let them go now.
Morl stood up and returned to the command chair, a
spring in his step.
"That's how to do it!" he said, not trying to hide his
pleasure. "That's
how a patriot takes care of those animals.
Now, get the screens up if they
get close enough to fire. Otherwise, just keep us
ahead of them until we
can penetrate their home space."
Sulu returned to his position, feeling ill.
He raged at himself. Wasn't
there something they could do against this madman, despite
his underlings
and their weapons? For the first time that he could
remember, h e felt more
kinship with the Romulans than with his own kind.
Unity through diversity. That is the philosophy
of the unit called Spock.
Spock the new union had not destroyed old
emotions. Nor were feelings
hidden from the new partners, even if those feelings
had once been
partially, unsuccessfully hidden from herself. The
wave of feeling ran from the human body to the other
three and rebounded. But with it came warm
support and commiseration, sympathy and empathy for
unrequited love.
A good philosophy. It describes our
union and its beauty.
It is what Hander Morl and the others do not
see-what we did not see,
before . . . before . .
Before the death of the original fourth member. This
time, it was the human partner who supported and soothed
the others, calming the panic-hurt of the terrible wound.
Therefore the United Expansion Party must be
stopped. Hander Morl and his
followers must be shown their error and persuaded
to halt.
The being moved toward a turboelevator, waited
until the doors swished
open, and then stepped inside. The process
happened twice, for the being
had two bodies, and one of those was in three parts
and moved with
difficulty. A momentary pause, while the
memories of the human member were
searched and sheChapel to herself, still, but less so with every
passing
minute--struggled to speak. "Bridge."
"Bridge has been ordered closed to all
personnel not already working
there." The voice was almost apologetic.
Again the memories were searched. "Medical
emergency. This is Nurse
Christine Chapel. Check my voice pattern
and comply with my first command."
The pause was long, as if the computer, presented
by a second demand to
override its command from the bridge on the basis of
an emergency, had
grown suspicious. The voice pattern did not
match precisely that in its
files for Chapel, but the deviation was within the
allowable amount,
despite its strangeness, and it had no choice but
to comply. Had the bridge foreseen this, it would have commanded
the computer to notify it of any
override, but Morl had not thought of that.
As the elevator began to move, the ship's warp
drive cut off once more, and the Enterprise dropped
back into normal space. The effect was
insignificant to the
machines onboard, and even to most humans; once
they had had a chance to
grow used to it, the wrench of transition, more
psychological than physical, was only a minor
nuisance. To the new being m the elevator, however,
the
transition was a shattering blow. The transition
took place when the
elevator was passing through a region of the ship where
the shielding
against its effects was inadequate. The wrenching
effect would have been
much greater than normal for any other being, but still
bearable. Not so for this four-part creature.
Chapel crumpled to the floor nervelessly and lay
there unmoving and
unthinking for long minutes. The other three cried
out in pain as she fell
and then grew silent, watching her in confusion.
Shakily, bewildered, she
rose to her feet.
Who is this strange human with us?
A threat!
Shall we kill it?
She stared back at them, filled with an
unutterable loss. Contact had been
broken, communion lost. She remembered her
previous state, but they,
reeling from their earlier losses, their subsequent
brush with death, and
the new union with so alien a mind as Chapel's,
scarcely remembered her.
She felt their intentions and pressed herself against the
farther wall in
fear. They poised themselves for an attack.
And then the elevator passed into a well shielded
area and even the
transitory effects still remaining from the
transition to normal space
vanished. Slowly a trickle of telepathic
contact began, growing quickly to
a rush, a flood of sensation and memory, and the
four minds rushed together again into the communion with a cry
of gladness both physical and mental.
The merger was deeper than ever. Chapel and the others
knew with even
greater keenness than before what they had gained and how
fragile it was.
Hander Mori raged futilely as he
paced about the bridge. "You!" he
screamed, pointing at Scott. His finger and his
voice both shook, but he
was beyond noticing either. "Why did this happen?" He
had ordered Sulu to
demand warp speed again from Engineering section, but the
reply from below
had been that the warp reactor had stopped and could not
be restarted. Mori knew what Scott would reply
--that he had warned Mori this would happen if
he was not allowed to replace those mysterious parts in
the reactor-and he
could even guess at the smugness of Scott's
smile as he gave this answer.
Therefore he gave Scott no chance to answer.
"Never mind. Just get back
down there and fix it as soon as possible." As
Scott headed for the
elevator doors, Hander Mori motioned quickly
at one of his Assassin
bodyguards to follow the engineer. But even as he
did so, he wondered why
he was bothering. Did it make any difference now?
He had a sinking feeling
in the pit of his stomach. Something there must
still be something he
could do, even now.
The Romulans had been caught by surprise by the
shift from warp drive and
had overshot the Enterprise, but not by much. Now they
too had returned to
normal space and were heading swiftly back
toward their prey. "Full power
to shields," Sulu ordered calmly, filled with
that icy coolness that
overcomes some men in battle, all the more so when
they are sure they will
not live through it. With so little room or power
to maneuver, the
Enterprise must either surrender or face the
concentrated fire of the four
Romulan ships. Her shields would not hold up
for long under such a
bombardment. Perhaps there would have been a chance with a
superb tactician like Captain Kirk in command,
Sulu thought. He had pulled them out of even
worse situations before. But with this madman in
control, either surrender
or death was inevitable.
The small display above the elevator
doors indicated that another elevator
had arrived and was queued,
waiting its turn, waiting for Scott to leave for
Engineering in the elevator already there. Scott noted
that fact with some surprise and then noted that
no one else was aware of it. It might be help
on its way, he told himself.
In that case, I can do much more good up here on the
bridge than down in
Engineering.
The doors had not yet opened, since Scott had
not yet stepped within range
of the sensors. He turned to the Assassin walking
close beside him and said conversationally, "Sometimes you have
to keep reminding these elevators
that you want them, or else the computer forgets about
you." He stepped to
the side and pressed the array of buttons beside the
elevator doors
quickly, appearing to be summoning an elevator.
In fact, he had issued an
override command, ordering the computer to dispatch the
waiting car
elsewhere and instead allow the queued one to come up
to the doors. Then he stepped back to his
previous position, trying to look calm, but burning
with hope.
"Here they come," Sulu muttered. The four
Romulan ships swept down upon the Enterprise and
matched trajectories with her. The Federation ship was
at
the center of the square, with a Romulan at each
corner.
"They demand surrender," Uhura said.
Hander Morl gritted his teeth. "No!" he
hissed. "Fight the animals!"
Sitting ducks, Sulu thought. That's what we
are. Aloud, he said, "Arm
photon torpedoes."
It had been a few days since McCoy had had
the opportunity to remove a
capsule from the brain of a slave. Now he had just
done it again, and after
closing the patient's skull, be stepped over to the
shelf where he had been
keeping the capsules removed previously to add
the new one to the
collection. To keep them from rolling away, he
had put the lot of them in a
bowl. Now, bowl and capsules were gone,
and so was part of the shelf. Where
the bowl had stood was a hole in the shelf. The
wood had been burned through in an almost perfectly
circular pattern, with charred edges bearing mute
witness to the heat required. He bent down
to examine the underside of the
shelf above, and it too was blackened, although it still
seemed strong
enough to hold the beakers he had placed on it. Below
the hole, on the next
shelf down, he had put replacement units for the
hypospray charge. Some of
these, directly beneath the hole, had melted,
spilling their contents across the shelf. The others were
discolored, the fluids in them opaque. McCoy
cursed. "Spenreed!"
The slave had attached himself to McCoy as
permanent assistant, assuring
the Earthman that he would no longer be needed at his
previous place. Now
he came
running. "Look at this mess!" McCoy said.
"These hypospray units are
worthless now. Throw them out and see if I have any
more in the stuff I
brought down with me from the Enterprise. Do you have
any idea what happened here?" He pointed at the
hole in the shelf.
Spenreed shook his head, looking mystified.
"All right, all right. Get going." As the
slave hurried from the room, the
bundle of ruined hypospray units clutched in
his arms, McCoy muttered, "I
wonder if there was something funny about that bowl . .
. ."
There was a crash from the next room, and a bellow in
a voice McCoy
recognized as Veedron's. "Animal!"
Veedron shouted. "How dare you!"
McCoy ran in to find the two
Trellisanians facing each other, both red
faced. The hypospray units littered the
floor. "Animal yourself!" Spenreed
shouted. "You think the world belongs to you, your kind!
Watch your step
next time."
Veedron's eyes widened in disbelief. Then
stern anger ruled hi s face. He
pointed at the slave and closed his eyes, his
expression becoming one of
deep inner concentration.
Spenreed sank back against a wall, collapsing
to the floor, his hands over
his face, and moaned. His impertinence had
vanished, and he was white and
trembling in terror.
And nothing happened.
Veedron opened his eyes and said smugly,
"There!" Then he saw Spenreed
rising to his feet again. Now it was the
aristocrat's turn to pale with
fear. "Oh, no!" Veedron muttered. He
ran from the room.
Spenreed's cockiness returned as quickly as it
had left him. His voice,
though, was still shaky when he said, "I think you've
saved me three times
now, Doctor! I've got to tell others about
this." He skipped from the room.
It can't be, McCoy said to himself. It just can't be
what I think it is. My God, what kind of a world
is this?
The Klingon ship was huge, perhaps three times the
size of the Enterprise.
The bridge was considerably more than
three times as big as the
Enterprise's bridge, and thus seemingly out of
all proportion to the size
of the ship. During his long, weary hours there under
guard, Kirk realized
why this was so. The operation of this monster vessel was
apparently
divided into sections, just as a Federation starship, but
the emphasis was
different. The Klingons" Medical section was
tiny the Klingon Empire
preferred not to expend its resources on the ill
or wounded, with the
inevitable exception of the upper-level officer
cadre. Security, on the
other hand, was enormous, representing, Kirk
guessed, about half the ship's personnel. This was
so, simply enough, because everyone was under almost
constant surveillance-even the Security
personnel themselves.
The center for this operation was not in some distant,
removed area of the
ship, but rather right on the bridge. That way, the
ship's captain could
keep his own eye on the Security men.
One whole side of the bridge, almost
half the available area, was given over to these men,
sitting patiently and quietly before their banks of
miniature screens, watching ship's personnel
throughout the vessel and listening to their conversations. Who
was
watching the captain? Kirk wondered. He
remembered being told by the
Klingon Commander Kor on Organia that every
Klingon official was always
under careful scrutiny, every action and word watched and
weighed. Perhaps
someone, somewhere, in some hidden cubicle, was watching
the bridge, the
captain, and Kirk at that very moment, ready
to report instantly to his
superiors on Sealon if he saw or heard
anything smacking of treason or
weakness.
One thing at least was on a smaller scale than
its equivalent on the
Enterprise, and that was the main viewing screen on
the bridge. Had this
been the bridge of a Federation ship, with the main
screen showing as
bizarre a sight as this one, everyone on the
bridge would have been
watching it. Klingon crews were much more strictly
disciplined; on this
bridge, only Kirk and Karox, the Klingon
captain, were watching the screen. Five points of
light were displayed there, moving at sublight speed
against the background of stars. Four of them were arranged
in a square, with the
fifth at its center. Karox called out, "Full
magnification!" But even
before his order was implemented, Kirk knew what
he would see. The
magnified picture verified his premonition and
sent a chill through him. He scarcely heard
Karox's next order, to kill the warp drive and
maintain
present distance from the action depicted on the
screen.
There in miniature was the Enterprise, under
attack by four Romulan
vessels. All five ships were surrounded by the
haze of defensive screens.
Even as they watched, twin photon torpedoes,
visible as two brilliant
points of light, streaked from the Enterprise toward
one corner of the
square. One torpedo missed, continuing off the
screen, but the other hit,
and the hazy glow of the Romulan's shield
flickered and momentarily died.
The Enterprise followed with a quick barrage of
phaser fire. The
defenseless Romulan ship flared up in a bright,
explosive glow and then
vanished.
Karox pounded his fist on the arm of his command chair
and shouted, "Good
shot, Kirk! Well done! You're better
fighters than I thought." He sat back
in his chair and said, more calmly, "But the end is
inevitable. The
Romulans won't let that happen again. Your
ship is doomed."
Kirk knew he was right. The glow around the
surviving Romulans brightened
as they increased their shield power. They began a
steady phaser attack on
the
Enterprise; even with their phasers' power
reduced because of their
increased screening, the total effect was still
enormous. The glow of the
Enterprise's own screens slowly faded as the
ship's energy reserves
dwindled. The Federation ship fired off her
remaining photon torpedoes, but
the increased screens of the Romulans protected
them from serious damage,
and the Enterprise didn't try any more phaser
attacks, since to have taken
any more power from her screens would only have hastened
the inevitable.
"Something must be wrong with her warp engines,"
Karox muttered, "or she'd
get herself out of there." His interest was obvious, but
he was detached.
The scene that wrenched Kirk so was to the Klingon
merely an impersonal
tactical problem.
Kirk was manacled to the arms of his chair, set
firmly into the floor near
Karox's. He ached to do something for his ship, but he
was heavily guarded
and could not have made a move even if he
could somehow have removed the
metal bands around his wrists. "Karox," he said
hoarsely. "You've got to do something to stop it. You were
ordered to keep the Enterprise and the
Romulans apart. This is a powerful ship.
Attack the Romulans!"
Karox laughed at him, enjoying the distress
Kirk could no longer hide.
"We're not ready for that war quite yet, Captain
Kirk. We're not going to
fight the Federation's wars for it! We attack
only when we feel prepared."
He paused for a moment, thinking over his words.
"My orders were only to
catch up with the Enterprise and destroy it. It
appears that the Romulans
are going to do that job for me, so that my ship will
remain unharmed. It
occurs to me that we are not yet within the Romulan
Neutral Zone. I'm not
sure of the ramifications of the Romulans being out
here, beyond the
Neutral Zone, and attacking a Federation ship,
but in any case we're too
late to prevent that from happening. If the
Romulans destroy the Enterprise without
boarding her, as I think they're about to do, then they
won't know where she came from, and there will be no
Romulan threat to our operations on Sealon
and Trellisane."
"But their suspicions will be aroused," Kirk said
desperately. "They might
decide to investigate this whole region of
space."
"They're even more likely to do that if I attack
them and they get word of
it back before I can destroy, all three of them."
Karox leaned toward Kirk
and said m a low voice, "Kirk, if
Romulan suspicions are aroused, and if
it's not my fault, then it will be clear that it's
Kaged's fault. He will
be removed in disgrace, and I will move up to his
position." He sat back,
smiling at the thought. "I should have been promoted
into that in the first place. No, I think we'll just
stay where we are, beyond the sensor range of those four,
and watch to the end."
Beyond sensor range, Kirk thought, his military
training reasserting itself even in this moment of
ultimate despair. That must mean that, in addition
to the great ship's enormous speed, which he had already
found
frighteningly impressive, she could obtain clear
visual images at a range
that was greater than that of both Federation and Romulan
sensors. He knew
his higher duty to survive himself, no matter if
his ship was lost, so
that he could get word back to Star Fleet of this
double Klingon military
advantage.
"Now," Karox said, leaning forward toward the
screen. The Enterprise's
screens had gone down completely, and she was a
helpless target. Kirk
watched helplessly, wanting to look away but
somehow unable to as he waited for the final Romulan
attack that would disintegrate his ship.
For what seemed an eternity, nothing happened.
Then the Romulan ships
rearranged themselves to form an equilateral
triangle, still with the
Enterprise at the center of their formation, and faint
yellow lines sprang
inffbeing, linking each Romulan ship to each of the
other two and to the
Enterprise. "What is that?" Karox demanded.
One of the bridge personnel inspected the
instruments before him and
answered his captain. "Some sort of tractor
beam, sir. Very unusual
characteristics."
Karox glared at the man, then returned his
attention to the screen.
Suddenly, all four ships vanished. Karox
cursed loudly in Klingon. "Warp
drive," he muttered. "How did they manage
to pull something with the mass
of a starship into warp with them? Worthy opponents,
those Romulans."
"Karox," Kirk said quickly, "don't you see
what they're doing? They're
taking my ship back into the Neutral Zone with
them, and then they're going to board her and interrogate
the crew. They'll find out about Sealon and
send a force there. And it will be your fault, for
letting them take the
Enterprise!"
Karox looked at him for a moment and then
cursed again. "You're right,
Kirk, damn you." He barked a string of orders
at his helmsman, and the
great Klingon warship shot into warp drive in
pursuit of the Romulans and
their captives.
"Reduce it again," Hander Morl ordered, and
Sulu complied reluctantly. With each fresh
barrage of phaser fire from the Romulans, he had
been ordered to reduce the Enterprise's shield
strength. At first, this had seemed to him
to be simply further madness. Suddenly he saw
the point. The shield would
give way eventually anyway, under the combined
effect of fire from the
three enemy ships. Keeping it at the fullest
strength the ship could manage would only buy them a
small amount of time. But by reducing the shields
steadily, so that it looked to the Romulans as though
the shields had
already failed, the Enterprise would keep something in
reserve for possible future action. Sulu's
admiration was grudging but genuine.
Sulu reduced the shield strength the last,
small step, and the Enterprise
was defenseless. Damage reports started
flooding in, tinny voices in his
earphones filled with fear and confusion. Sulu
gritted his teeth and
ignored them he could see from the main screen that the
phaser fire from
the Romulans had already decreased; at last it
stopped entirely.
"They're giving us one last chance to surrender,"
Uhura said.
Morl nodded. "Accept. Tell them we
surrender."
The main viewing screen showed the strange beams
springing up, linking the
Romulans and the starship. There was a small jerk
as tractor contact was
made.
"Now what?" Chekov said.
Sulu shook his head. "Never seen anything like that
before," he muttered.
"Tractor beams? What do they want to do that
for?"
The transition to warp drive was totally
unexpected but unmistakable.
"Engineer!" Morl shouted. "I thought it
wasn't working!"
Scott's jaw dropped. He stepped forward a
few paces, away from the elevator doors, to get
a better look at the viewing screen. "By God!"
he said. "It's not ours! They've got some way
to take us into warp drive with them!"
Hander Morl relaxed, his face breaking into a
broad grin. "This is better
than I could have hoped. They're taking us into the
Neutral Zone, at least, for interrogation, and we
still have some shield capability and our
phasers. We'll get the battle we came for,
after all!"
All attention was riveted on the strange sight
on the main viewing screen.
Unnoticed by anyone on the bridge, the
elevator doors swished open.
Before the combined stresses of fear and isolationheld
captive on a small
island on a hostile world, seeing no one but
Klingons-a human being might
have given way before long. Not so a Vulcan. The
Klingons had Spock's cell
under constant surveillance, of course, but it was they
who were giving way
before Spock's imperturbability. Klingons are
an excitable, impatient
species under the best of conditions, and the sight of
Spock sitting on his
bunk, staring blankly into space for hour after
hour, his face as impassive
as always, drove the watchers to distraction.
Spock's application of Vulcan mental
disciplines was suddenly broken by a
shout and crashing noises from down the corridor.
Spock sprang to the door
of his cell, leaning as close to the dangerous force
field as he dared, to
try to see into the hallway. But the archway of the
cell's entrance
extended outward too far because of the thickness of the
walls, and he
could see nothing. Now Spock was showing a hint of the
impatience and worry the Klingon watchers had been
waiting for; however, they were now otherwise occupied and
could spare no glances for their spy screens.
There was a succession of unidentifiable soundsloud,
harsh growls with a
shrill overtone--4ollowed by
more crashes. And then the lights in the
cell and the corridor went out and
Spock found himself in utter blackness. Without
even a moment's hesitation,
Spock stepped forward. His estimate of the risk
was justified by the
results the force field had vanished with the
lights.
He walked down the narrow corridor in the pitch
black, carefully, his arms
out to either side, fingertips trailing along the
walls. His finely tuned
Vulcan hearing was strained to the utmost, listening for
what he could not
see. Spock thought it more than likely that a
Klingon or two might be
walking down the same hallway in the same
manner. But not even a Vulcan can calculate
odds correctly when important data are
missing, and there were
factors involved of which Spock as yet knew
nothing. He encountered no one. A vague,
prickly feeling on his chest and a sensation of
pressure against
his face alerted Spock that something solid lay
ahead. He reached forward
cautiously. His hands encountered a smooth metal
surface, and his exploring fingertips told him it was
a door. The surface was warm, wardher than the
walls of the corridor. Spock hesitated, then
leaned forward and placed his
ear against the door. Faint noises, a groan
cut short, then other noises
which slowly receded into silence. All he could hear
was a crackling sound
that seemed naggingly familiar. Suddenly it
struck him fire.
Spock could afford to wait no longer in the
interests of caution. The power failure that had freed
him had also killed the sensors and motor that would have
opened the door at his approach. He thrust his
fingers into the narrow emergency slot, set his feet
firmly, and heaved at the door with all his
Vulcan strength. It slid open reluctantly
on warped slots, the mechanism
squealing in protest.
Now there was light-the flickering glow of a fire in
the guardroom beyond
the door. The blaze snapped and crackled at
one corner of the otherwise
a small fire but spreading rapidly,
leaping to the wall hangings the
Klingons affected even while Spock watched and
rolling across the floor,
feeding on the piles of smashed furniture.
Spock headed quickly for the door at the far side of the
room, holding his breath. The wreckage of what had
been the room's electronic equipment crunched
beneath his boots.
Spock was intent on getting out of the room in
safety and then out of the
building, but by the increasing glow of the fire, he
noticed a Klingon
lying on the floor, blood pooling beneath his head.
The Vulcan stepped over to the prostrate guard
quickly and knelt beside him. The Klingon was dead,
or soon would be from this close, Spock could
see the multitude of bloody
rips in the clothing, evidence of gashes and stab
wounds beneath, and the
misshapen head that surely meant a crushed
skull. A fight of some sort?
Spock asked himself. A mutiny of Klingon
forces was unthinkable, but
perhaps some sort of private grudge. But then,
why hadn't the other Klingon simply used
his phaser? Spock bent closer and examined the
Klingon's head
carefully. His analytical Vulcan mind was
drawn by the mystery, and he knew he could hold his
breath for some time yet, if necessary, so that the gases the
fire must be producing were as yet no danger to him.
However, closer examination yielded nothing. The
Klingon's head was covered with clotted blood,
masking the true nature of the injury, and Spock
finally decided that this was not the time or the place for
an autopsy.
Regretfully, he rose to his feet and left
the room.
The hallway beyond was not utterly dark, for to one
side lay another room
with yet another fire burning in it. Spock
quickly revised his estimate of
his danger. He remembered enough of his trip through the
building to the
detention cell, he was sure, to be able to find his
way out now. But the
dark, punctuated only by the wavering, uncertain
light from so
many-fires degraded even his orientation, and he
found himself forced to
exhale and draw another breath before he could find
the exit. The gases he
drew in affected him less than they would a
human, but they did affect him,
and Spock's quick analysis of his senses told
him that he would not be able
to carry on for much longer.
It was the shouting that led Spock to the exit. A
multitude of voices,
crying out m rhythmic unison; through the chant,
despite the unintelligible alien sounds, ran an
unmistakable exultation. He would have been drawn
by
the sound of voices in any case, as promising
safety, but he was especially drawn by these, for they
were the same fluid, whistling cries he had heard
once before, on the beach with Kirk-the voices of
Sealons.
Spock staggered through a smashed doorway
into nighttime lit by the burning building behind him. He
drew deep breaths gratefully, then turned to find
that flames were now flaring out of every window and
doorway of the huge
office building. He turned away again, facing
toward the darkness, and
deliberately accelerated his eyes' dark
adaptation. It took longer than it
would otherwise have, because of the aftereffects of the glaring
fight of
the fire at which he had just been looking, but after a
moment a silent
crowd of figures took shape out of the darkness.
They were ranged in a
rough line, parallel to the building's front, and
just beyond the immediate glow of the fire. Their chanting had
stopped, and they were gazing
indecisively at the Vulcan.
Sealons, as Spock had anticipated. Not a
Klingon
was in sight all dead within the building, Spock
guessed, or else in hiding. Moments before, he
had
suddenly wondered whether the situation inside the
building might be due to a Sealon uprising against
their
Klingon masters. Clearly that was the case. His
main
concern now was whether the Sealons would be able to
distinguish him from the Klingons, or whether they would
see no difference.
He strode purposefully toward them.
As he drew close, they didn't move,
apparently unintimidated. He stopped
and stared at them, looking cocky and
self-assured, but in fact not sure
they would interpret his body language
correctly. The Sealons had been
almost standing--crouching, balancing on their haunches
an d the knuckles of their forepaws. Now, slowly, they
all sank forward into their normal
resting posture on land, lying almost prone, their
powerful upper portions
resting on their elbows. Spock knew this was as
close to a backing down as
he could hope for.
Spock stepped forward again, slowly this time but with
determination. The
Sealons shuffled aside to make room for him, the
movement spreading across
the ranks of dark, aquatic bodies like
ripples. He walked forward steadily, the crowd of
Sealons separating before him. Finally they stopped
moving
away; there was no sign of danger or defiance,
but they simply refused to
move out of his way. Before him rested a huge
Sealon, still massive and
powerful despite the sagging folds of skin around his
mouth that probably
signified advanced age. This one was still standing, or
as close to it as
a Sealon could manage on land, without the
slightest sign of fear or
hesitancy. Even without his great size and almost
upright posture, which
combined to make him tower above the others, there was an
air of authority
and self-confidence that made this Sealon stand out from the
others.
Despite his translator's inability to deal
with the unknown Sealon
language, Spock guessed that this was
Matabele, the ruler of the Sealons
who had made the mistake of inviting the Klingons
in.
The Vulcan advanced slowly, raising his hand
toward the Sealon's head.
There was a stirring and growling among the other
Sealons, but their ruler
stayed where he was unflinching and allowed
Spock to place his long 151
fingers gently on his broad, frog-like face. The
Vulcan mind-meld began.
Yes, it was Matabele. As the Sealon stiffened
with amazement at the contact with the powerful Vulcan
mind, Spock was sifting fascinatedly through the
flood of images pouring into him from the brain of the
Sealon. Clearly,
this being and his culture were more complex than the
Trellisanians had
realized. But then a more specific image
surfaced for a moment, and Spock
grasped it quickly and fished urgently for the more
submerged details.
There! He had it. This uprising was part of something
greater, and on
Trellisane, even at this moment . . .
It was rare for the Klingons to overlook military
details, but their long
string of successes with subject peoples had
made them overconfident, and
it had come to seem impossible to them that anyone would
even dream of
revolting against their rule. The dome on the sea
floor of Trellisane had
no external defenses, since the Klingons
knew the Trellisanians would not
fight back and they simply did not think their
tame Sealons would attack
them.
When the environmental monitors indicated a
leak in one segment of the
dome, a call was automatically dispatched through the
surrounding water for a Sealon maintenance team
to repair any damage from the outside. The Sealon
team leader quickly signaled back that he and his
fellows were already at
the site, working on the damaged area. Indeed, that
was quite true, since
it was that team of Sealons that had created the tear in
the dome in the
first place, and now they were clustered around the tear,
working
vigorously at enlarging it. Beneath them, on the other
side of the tough
fabric, were store rooms, and the Sealons were
betting that the leak would
therefore not be noticed directly by any Klingons,
and that the monitoring
send out a call for Klingon attention
until it was too late. Occasionally
one of them would have to swim up to the surface for
air; then he would
force himself quickly down again to rejoin his comrades
sawing, cutting,
even chewing away at the fabric of the dome.
Elsewhere along the swelling,
smooth surface, other groups of Sealons were
doing the same. There were some waterproof bulkheads
within the dome, and the Sealons wanted to be sure that
there were no safe pockets of air left where
Klingons might survive.
In his office within the dome, the Klingon officer
who'd interviewed Kirk
and Spock when they'd been taken prisoner was
poring over some papers
detailing the next steps he was to take. The
conquest of the land would be
gradual, by usual Klingon standards; that was
largely to ensure that the
Sealons weren't able to kill all
Trellisanians off-the upper strata, the
technically capable, were to be kept alive, for they
could be of great
service to Klingon in the future.
A sudden tremor shook the floor of his office
and made the stylus lying
near his hand roll back and forth. The Klingon
frowned in surprise
Trellisane was supposed to be a geologically
inactive world. He sneered at
the thought. That probably had much to do with the
Trellisanians' repellent timidity.
Dismissing the matter as unimportant, he
returned to the
documents before him. Another, even sharper,
tremor shook the room, and
this time he rose from his chair and started toward the
door, flaring into
furious anger. It is Klingon nature to find
an underling when something
unpleasant happens and to blame and punish him for
it, even if the
unpleasant thing is utterly beyond his
responsibility and control. The
officer, disguising his deeply buried fear from himself
as annoyance,
stalked through the door to look for some lower ranking
Klingon to punish.
He turned into the corridor and stopped.
The air pressure shot up
unbearably, lessened suddenly, and 153
then shot up again. He fell to his knees
clutching his ears in agony.
Despite his ruined ears and his hands over them, he
could hear a rush of
sound in the abnormally dense air-a scream, and a
roaring, thundering noise, then groaning, ripping sounds
from the fabric of the building. The floor
heaved violently, flinging him forward onto his
face. Dazed, he got his
hands underneath himself and raised himself, unwittingly
imitating the
common Sealon posture. The walls at the end
of the corridor before him
swelled inward and then burst, disappearing into the vast
wave of foaming
green seawater that rushed through. He opened his mouth
to shout an order or a curse, but before any sound
came out, the water smashed into him, carrying him before it
like any other piece of flotsam, and crushed him
against the
farther walls of the corridor.
Only then did the water elsewhere in the dome
reach the central power
generators, and all lights went off, leaving the
few Klingons who yet
survived in trapped pockets of air in the
dark. Their commander's body
bobbed limply against the ceiling in his own office,
up and down, as the
sea's abrupt entry into one open room or
corridor after another sent waves
and ripples through the whole body of water inside
the dome. Finally that
ended and the water became still.
The Klingons who survived called out to each other
cautiously and began to
organize themselves, increasingly confident that,
despite the pitch
blackness, they could regroup and somehow escape.
But their calls to each
other provided all the signal the Sealons,
inside the dome for the first
time, needed. The silent, black water was their
pathway to revenge. Not all the surviving Klingons
were stabbed or bludgeoned to death. Some were
dragged beneath the surface where crowds of Sealons,
their eyes evolved to
see dimly at these depths, could watch
them struggle and drown.
Veedron put his hands over his face and groaned.
"How awful! To die out
there, under the sea."
McCoy snorted. "My heart bleeds for them."
When Veedron had come to tell
him of the huge bubbles filled with debris that had
been seen bursting upon the surface of the sea and had
said that Trellisanian experts were sure
that it was a sign of the collapse of the Klingon's
underwater base, McCoy
had not tried to hide his pleasure. He still
didn't try.
Veedron looked up at him in outrage and
horror. "How can you be so callous? You're a
medical man!"
McCoy nodded. "Yes, I'm a medical
man. I'm also humane and compassionate,
and I have a high empathy rating, which I try hard
to hide beneath a crusty exterior. But I've also had
many contacts with Klingons over the years, and I can
tell you that the only good one is a dead one. To coin
a clich6. If
I hadn't felt that way before, what I've seen
in this system would have
convinced me."
Veedron was outraged. Before he could say anything,
a messenger came into
the room and muttered something to him. Veedron's
face lost what little
color it still had. "The Sealons are bringing the
Klingon bodies ashore all along the coastline and
leaving them just above the high tide line." He
rose to his feet, his face suddenly brightening.
"Perhaps this is their way of asking for help or offering
peace!"
"They could contact you directly if they wanted
to do that, Veedron. Don't
be so na1ve. I think this is a warning of
what's in store for us, and also
an attempt to intimidate us before the invasion
begins. Undermine your
courage, so to speak," McCoy added with heavy
sarcasm. "I just wonder what
they're waiting for." And I wonder why I've
been waiting so long to
initiate my own confrontation. "Veedron,"
McCoy said suddenly, not giving
himself time for second thoughts, "I want to change
the subject
considerably. I've discovered that the yegemot have
a brain implant of some kind put in
them when they're children. Now, I know that you and your
class have
something like that, too, but I suspect they serve a
very different function in your case."
"True," Veedron said distractedly. "Ours
are for the purpose of
communication."
"And theirs?"
"Oh." Veedron waved his hand. "For control."
"Hmm. There're different kinds of control,
aren't there? Behavior control,
population con trol . . . Those occur to me right
away. What kind of control do you mean?"
Veedron shook off his distraction and stared at
McCoy. "Why, for both of
those, of course, as well as others. Come, come,
Doctor surely you've
noticed how well discipline is maintained in our
society."
So it's as bad as I feared, McCoy thought,
remembering Veedron's vain
attempt to discipline an impertinent Spenreed from
whom the brain
transplant had been removed, and remembering,
too, a hole burned in a
shelf. "So you give "em the evil eye, and their
brains get vaporized!
Handy. The ancient Romans would've loved it."
But what about that waiter
who collapsed? Total brain death. He
hadn't insulted anyone. And the
capsules on the shelf-Spenreed talking about his
death being forecast, or
whatever. So it wasn't just a superstition . . .
. "And you schedule lots
of them for death even if they haven't done anything
to offend anyone,
don't you?"
"Of course," Veedron said offhandedly. "I
assumed you were aware of that."
"Aware of it! Scarcely! Hell, I thought you
were civilized beings, not
barbarians. You're worse than barbarians.
They at least don't hide from the facts. When they
kill each other, there's blood involved, and the
killers
know what they've done. You've tried to sanitize
it, so that you can be
coldblooded about being bloodthirsty, and all the
while you can pretend
that you're not doing anything out of the ordinary. They

just drop to the floor, nice and clean, and you go on
about your business.
And then I suppose the bodies have to be carried
away by other yegernots,
poor bastards. And all this time, you've been
trying to pretend to us that
you're somehow better than the Sealons."
Veedron responded with anger of his own. "Who
are you to assume a pose of
moral superiority? We made you and your
shipmates welcome on our world, and you partook
gladly enough of our hospitality. You ate our meat
with us, and yet you must have known how ritually and
symbolically important that is to
us."
McCoy was thrown off balance by this seeming non
sequitur. "We knew that
you're vegetarians, mostly. I don't
understand."
Veedron sneered. "Then it's time you did. Come
with me." He grasped McCoy's arm and
pulled him from the room. Ignoring McCoy's
protests and struggles,
and displaying a surprising strength, he dragged the
Earthman along behind
him. They hurried down corridors until they
were outside the building.
Still moving, Veedron pulled McCoy down a
quiet street, a beautiful avenue
marred by the rubble of an earlier Sealon attack.
To McCoy's repeated and
increasingly angry questions, Veedron at last
replied that they were going
to observe food preparation, and then he would say
no more. Finally they
reached a small, isolated building that seemed
to be Veedron's destination. Breathing heavily, the
Trellisanian paused for a moment before it, and then
he strode into the building, still dragging McCoy behind
him. A sickeningly familiar smell attacked
McCoy; he knew what it must be, but he
refused to
admit that truth to himself.
They entered a large, high-ceilinged room. A
group of Trellisanians stood
with their backs to the door, hard at work,
hands rising and falling
steadily. By the noise and the motion, they were chopping.
They became
aware of the presence of the newcomers, and some of

them turned to see who it was. They knew
Veedron, of course, and one of them came forward
to greet him subserviently. Now McCoy could
see everything.
The men wore butcher's aprons, and they were
spattered with blood. Beyond
them was a long table, and upon it lay a dismembered
corpse. And m a far
corner of the room, McCoy now became aware,
halves and quarters of torsos
hung upon a row of hooks.
"Too late!" Karox growled, slapping his
palm against the yielding arm of his command chair. "Too
late. The Romulans know we're approaching their
territory."
The peremptory challenge had come over the ship's
communications a moment
earlier. Karox and his ship had stayed well beyond the
sensor range of the
Romulan ships they were pursuing, but the
Romulans were now beyond the
boundaries of the Neutral Zone, and the Romulans
had powerful installations along that frontier to watch for
approaching vessels. These installations
had detected the Klingon approach and issued the
challenge. That Karox had
not foreseen this was strong evidence to Kirk that the
Klingon captain's
confidence and relaxation were masks for a worry and
tension that were
interfering with his judgment.
"I'm not ready to fight them," Karox muttered.
"I'll have to stop soon to
avoid penetrating the Zone, and if I do that, the
Enterprise will escape
from me. I'll have to attack now, risk a war."
"Wait!" Kirk said. "Release me. Take
me to your transporter room. You can
send me to the Enterprise before she's out of range.
Her shields are down,
and the Romulans won't be expecting that. I'll
bring her back out."
Karox looked at him with scorn and anger, but then
his expression changed
suddenly. "Yes. With Klingon guards
to go with you." He sat up, his chest
swelling, eyes blazing. "I won't destroy the
Enterprise-I'll capture her!
My most glorious victory." He barked a
string of commands.
Kirk's wrists were freed, and then he was pulled
to his feet and marched
quickly from the bridge and through a short but bewildering
series of
intersecting corridors. At the end, he found
himself in what was obviously
a transporter room, much like the one on the
Enterprise, but larger, as
most things were on this ship, with many more transmission
stations.
There was a short delay, and then three heavily
armed and heavily muscled
Klingons marched in and took up positions
wordlessly on the stations beside Kirk's. Karox entered
the room.
"Kirk. I know this handful of men isn't enough
to take over the Enterprise, but they are enough to keep
an eye on you and control the bridge. When
you're back in command, bring her out and surrender her
to me. If you
betray me, they'll kill you and I'll destroy
your ship. Well?"
Kirk nodded. He understood the conditions well enough
and accepted them
only because he had no choice.
Karox motioned to the technician at the
transporter console. The man's
fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard, and
Karox's sneering face faded
from Kirk's view.
The elevator door opened and the four-being group
creature came onto the
bridge unnoticed by those already there. The Chapel
component moved quietly in one direction, and the other
three rolled off the other way.
It was Sulu who noticed them first, catching a
movement from the corner of
his eye. He looked up
quickly to see the three Onctiliians bearing down
on one of the Assassins,
the one still standing close to Hander Morl. The thought
flashed through
Sulu's mind in an instant that this weird
creature, who had been brought up
from the surface of Trefolg, must be in
some way on the side of the
Enterprise crew now; even if not, its attack
on its former comrade could
only help Sulu and his friends. Even though
Sulu managed to stifle the
exclamation which had risen to his lips at first,
Hander Morl had noticed
his astonished expression and had followed the
direction of Sulu's gaze.
Morl turned his chair around just in time to see the
Assassin crumple
before the Onctiliians" unexpected assault.
Then the Onctiliians changed
direction and charged toward Morl. But Morl was
already in motion, flinging himself desperately from his
chair.
The new mental integration with Chapel was
complete, but physically the
three were still not quite balanced, missing the contribution
of their dead partner and slightly disoriented by the need
to reconcile visual images
from two physically separate locations, theirs and
Chapel's. They crashed
into the chair, bending its base so that it spun about
at a crazy angle.
But they could no longer redirect themselves quickly enough
or move fast
enough to catch Morl, who scrambled frantically
along the floor, then
pulled himself across Sulu's console.
The bridge had erupted into life, with personnel
shouting at each other and trying to keep out of the way of the
Onctiliians. The Chapel component
stepped up to the side of one of the Nactern
warriors, moving warily
because the memories provided by the Onctiliian
components revealed how
deadly a threat the Nactern could be to the safety
of the Earthwoman body.
She pressed a hypodermic against the Nactern's
side, pressing the trigger
as she did so. The Nactern whirled about, hands
coming up for a fatal chop; but her legs wilted beneath
her even as she turned, and she 161
collapsed heavily to the deck. The other
Nactern sprang to her side,
oblivious to Chapel's presence or the
maneuverings of Morl and the
Onctiliians.
The Assassin standing near Scott
stepped forward to enter the fight, and
Scott, breathing a quick and silent prayer, stuck
out a foot so that the
man tripped over it and fell forward into the
depression holding the com-
mand chair. Scott was on him before he could get
up again, chopping
repeatedly at the back of his neck. The
Assassin slumped forward with a
groan, unconscious, and Scott rose to his
feet, breathing heavily, but
inordinately pleased with himself. "Don't mess with
my engines, laddie," he muttered.
Hander Morl and the Onctiliians were moving about the
console cluster in a
deadly dance that struck Chekov as curiously
stately. Morl's phaser had
fallen out during his mad dash to get out of the
Onctiliians' path, and he
had not been able to get back to it. It lay
unnoticed on the floor near t he command chair, and
Morl could not see how he could reach it. Meanwhile,
he
circled the consoles slowly, trying to keep them
between him and the
Onctiliians. He wanted to call for help,
but some instinct told him, even
though he was afraid to take his eyes from the
Onctiliians to look around
the bridge, that he was on his own. He grasped the
console nearest him for
support, his knees shaking with the fear that
overwhelmed him.
Step by step, placing one foot carefully after the
other, Morl forced
himself into motion again. He passed behind Chekov's
seat, but his eyes
were fixed on the menacing ball of flesh; it had no
visible eyes, but Morl
could feel its gaze following his every movement.
Chekov jumped from his
chair and shoved Morl away from the consoles.
Morl stumbled and fell
heavily onto the floor, well away from the
shelter of the consoles. He saw
the Onctihians rolling toward him; he slithered
toward his phaser, lying
nearby, but knew he wouldn't be able to reach it in
time.
A phaser beam sliced across the bridge
and transfixed the Onctihians. The
Nactern warrior, satisfied that her comrade and
lover was only unconscious
and not harmed, had at last turned her attention to the
excitement around
her. Seeing Mod cringing back as the
Onctiliians rushed toward him, she had drawn
her phaser quickly and fired at her former ally. The
Onctiliians
glowed white and disappeared the final, ultimate
disruption of union and
communion. Chapel screamed at the same instant
and sank down nervelessly.
Morl rose shakily to his feet, his face
drained of all color, clutching his phaser. He
pointed it at Chekov. "You tried to kill me!"
he screamed. The
gun was waving so wildly that he could not keep it
aimed at the young
Russian, and he had to grip it with both hands in
order to point it
properly. "You," he screamed again, but his throat
constricted with fear
and fury and he couldn't get any more words out.
The Nactern warrior stepped forward in
front of Chekov, shielding him. She
held her arms out to either side. "No, Hander,"
she said simply.
Morl, his hands still shaking, fired. The beam
caught the Nactern full in
the chest. For an instant, just before she vanished in the
glow of
disruption, Morl saw a look of surprise and
accusation cross her face.
Morl sat down heavily in the command chair. Because
of its tilted base, the chair swiveled under him and
dumped him on the floor. The horror and self-
hatred on Morl's face made what might
otherwise have been a bizarrely comic incident
into tragedy. Sulu, Chekov, and the others on the
bridge watched
Morl's collapse into tears with something
approaching pity. His follower,
his subordinate, entrusted to him and trusting in him!
She had not been a
sacrifice to the cause, like the Onctiliian
she had been killed by a
stupid accident, by his doing, through his own
ineptitude and stupidity.
That was the kind of leader he really was
inept to the point that he
endangered his own
people, or even killed them himself through sheer
clumsiness. Kirk would not have done something like that, he
admitted to himself; Kirk and these other
Star Fleet personnel he'd been dealing with would
never be guilty of this
kind of failure. He knew that the pain of
remorse was not enough to give him the punishment he felt
he deserved.
Four shapes twinkled into existence on the
bridge. The Enterprise
personnel, still rocked by all that had happened
to them, were scarcely
able to react to this latest shock. The twinkling
lights resolved
themselves into James Kirk and his Klingon guards.
The Klingons had their
guns already drawn, and they arranged themselves quickly
along one side of
the bridge, guns covering the Federation
personnel.
Kirk glanced around quickly, trying to size up the
situation. "Mr. Scott?"
"Sir. Enterprise secure internally
but within Romulan space. Do you have
orders?"
Kirk turned to the Klingons behind him. "As you can
see, gentlemen, the
Enterprise is already under Federation control again.
Thus by boarding you
are risking war with the Federation as well as with the
Romulans. I'd
advise you to put away your weapons and accept the
situation gracefully."
He could almost feel the growing tension behind him, the
instinctive
reaction of the crew to the presence of Klingons,
armed, aboard their ship. If the Klingons didn't
back down, and soon, someone would make a move,
breaking the tense restraint, and then the situation would
be beyond his
control.
The Klingon squad leader hesitated, his
instinctive
hatred of humans warring with his prudence and sense
of duty. He had the humans at a
disadvantage, confi
dent that three Klingons with weapons drawn were
immeasurably superior to any number
of soft and
unarmed humans. And yet he was an ambitious
young
officer, and he suspected that Kirk was right about the
legal situation. If he acted hostilely
anyway and Kirk
was right, then he would suffer both loss of rank and
further, and probably
painful, punishment. He decided the risk was
probably too great. Another
thought struck him suddenly. Success on
Kirk's side could scarcely help
Karox's career, and with Karox out of the way, the
squad leader stood a good chance of moving up a step
or two in rank. He holstered his phaser and
motioned his men to do the same.
Kirk released a breath he hadn't realized
he'd been holding. "Lieutenant
Uhura, contact the commander of the Romulan fleet
that has us under tractor beam." While Uhura
moved to comply, Kirk said to the Klingon squad
leader,
"And I want you to contact Karox and explain
to him what the situation is
here."
The Klingon uttered an exclamation of
surprise.
Kirk grinned at him. "That's right. Tell him.
And also tell him that he'll
have to beam over here himself immediately to settle this
situation once
and for all."
The Klingon officer looked openly doubtful, but
he drew his small
communicator from his belt nonetheless and spoke into it
quietly. The voice that replied was far from quiet
Kirk could hear Karox's miniaturized bel-
lows from across the bridge. But the Klingon captain
had little choice,
Kirk knew, except to give up entirely on
ever getting the Enterprise under
his control. Sooner than giving up so readily
what Karox had hoped would be his greatest victory,
Kirk hoped, he would risk coming aboard the
Enterprise in person, even though she was now under
Federation control
onboard and under Romulan control from the outside.
The Romulans had at first refused to respond
to Uhura, fearing that another betrayal like the first one
was on tap. Eventually, however, she received
a grudging reply, and then Kirk took over.
"This is James T. Kirk,
commanding the U. S. S. Enterprise," he
rapped out, glorying in the words,
in being able to say them again. "I must speak to your
fleet commander
immediately."
After a pause, a new voice boomed out over the
bridge, calm, unperturbed,
strong-Romulan. "This is Tal, fleet
commander. You have much to answer for, James T.
Kirk. You tricked us twice before, but you will not do so
again.
You misled the brave woman who was my commander,
leading her to weakness,
dishonor, and death. And you murdered my warriors
most cowardly and
unfairly. You must be taken where you and your crew
can be punished
properly."
Tal Kirk had dealt with him before, during the
incident Tal had referred
to, but then Tal had been only a subcommander.
He must have distinguished
himself to have risen, in the relatively
short time that had passed, to
command of a fleet of ships entrusted with this
sensitive mission. Despite
all the differences between the Federation and the Romulan
Empire, Kirk
knew that such a rise must require the sort of
professional competence and
dedication a similar advancement would require in
Star Fleet. This was a
man much like him, one he could respect and
admire; an equal. It occurred
to him, not for the first time, that there was a kind of
professional
community building between the stars; he and his crew had
more in common
with the commanders and crews of the Romulan ships, and
even with Karox and the Klingons under him, than they did
with the teeming millions confined to the surfaces of the many
planets that made up the Federation. Kirk smiled
slightly. "Fleet Commander Tal,
congratulations on your promotion.
Considering your high rank, I'm sure you have been
told something about the activity in the
Trellisane-Sealon system. You'll agree that
that situation
is More important to your empire's well-being
than taking revenge on me and my crew."
"We have monitored your communications recently,"
Tal said reluctantly.
"And those of the Klingons in this area. We know you are
both heavily
involved in some sort of local war there. However,
that scarcely
affects us. You are no threat to us at this moment,
and the Klingons have
assured us they have no ambitions in our space."
Kirk laughed. "And you believed them, of
course?"
There was a long pause before Tal answered.
"What do you want to discuss
with me?" he said cautiously.
Kirk relaxed, aware only now that he had been
holding himself tensely until this moment. "Not only
with you, Tal, but with the Klingon commander of a
ship you can't even see as well."
"Can't even see? What are you talking about,
Kirk?"
"They can detect your ships from beyond your sensor
range. Chew that over
for a while. While you're digesting that
fact, arrange to have yourself
beamed over here for a three-way, face-to-face
conference. We have
something important to arrange, and I think it can be
done more quickly and satisfactorily by three commanders
like us than by distant governments."
"I will be there," Tal said simply.
After you dispatch a message to your home base
to tell them what's happened and about the Klingons'
new superiority, you mean, Kirk added mentally.
That was something that Romulans seemed to lack,
compared to both humans
and Klingons the willingness to break out of their
rigid adherence to duty and obedience and display some
independence, some autonomy. It was their
strength as an empire, but their weakness as
individuals. If the war
between the Romulans and the Federation ever started up
again, that might
provide Kirk and his fellow officers with the edge
they needed.
Kirk turned to find himself face to face with a
grinning chief engineer.
"Captain," Scott said, his burr returning
for a moment, "we've been busy.
Look." He pointed at the command chair, which a
crew of two technicians
from Engineering were just finishing with, having replaced its
base with a
spare and reconnected the communications leads.
Kirk grinned back at him and sat down
gratefully in his command chair.
"Fits perfectly, Mr. Scott. Thank
you."
Scott looked faintly sheepish. "Och.
Welcome back, sir."
A growl from the direction of the squad of Klingons
drew Kirk's attention.
Karox had arrived and was standing in the midst of his
men, being briefed
on recent events by the squad leader. He pushed
the squad leader away
angrily and stalked over to face Kirk.
"Kirk!" he snarled. "Why did you
tell them about our new long-range sensors?
What treason are you up to?"
Kirk smiled at him, knowing it would only
increase the Klingon's fury.
"You're stretching the meaning of that word quite a bit,
Karox. It's not
treason for me to neutralize your advantage a
bit. Relax and enjoy our
hospitality. The Romulan commander will be beaming
over here shortly, and
then the three of us will have a few things to discuss."
Karox howled his anger. "Kirk, it won't work!
I know what you're up to, but Trellisane and
Sealon are ours now, and you're not going to deprive
us of
the system."
"I think events have overtaken you, Karox.
Surpassed you, perhaps. There
are situations that Klingon bluster and aggression cannot
master. You will
have to realize that you face such a situation here. You
know Klingon
forces cannot face an alliance of Federation and
Romulan ships, and that's
just what you'll have to contend with if you don't
cooperate."
Karox drew back, his face relaxing.
"Yes," he nodded, speaking calmly.
"Neither of you has the courage to face us alone.
I believe you would
combine to defeat us, because you each fear us
so."
Kirk shrugged. "Put it in those terms, if it
preserves your self-respect.
The results are what matter to me. Consider this,
too, Karox." Kirk sat
forward in his chair. "You could be the one who pulls
a stalemate, at
worst, out of what is otherwise shaping up as a
disaster for Klingon. You
won't retain the Trellisane-Sealon system
for long if you alarm the Romulans as much as you've
already alarmed the Federation. I'm offering you the
chance-you, personally-to retain some promising
options for Klingon, instead of losing the system
unequivocally."
Karox grew thoughtful. "Yes," he nodded, a
smile growing on his dark face.
"Yes, Kirk, you're right. I would be a hero,
and . . . certain others . .
. would be villains. Yes," he laughed loudly,
"yes, it grows more appealing by the second."
Kirk disguised his scorn. "Good, Karox. I
think we have our third
negotiator now." The preliminary signs of a
transporter beam transference
had appeared on the bridge not far from him and
Karox. The lean form of
Tal, so startlingly like Spock's, began to take
shape. The pointed ears,
the sharp features, remnants of the Romulans'
Vulcan ancestry-Kirk knew
he'd have to guard himself carefully during the upcoming
negotiations, lest those Romulan features
mislead him unconsciously inffbeing overly
trusting. This was no Vulcan; this was a
Romulan, a deadly enemy, as deadly in his way
as Karox and the other Klingons. Kirk rose to his
feet and
uttered some formal words of welcome, meanwhile
thinking that what was to
come might be harder than any physical battle
he had ever fought. "Tal,
Karox, please follow me. Mr. Sulu, you have
the con. I will be in the
conference room with our two guests, and I do not
want to be disturbed."
Sealons are not given to psychological warfare.
Direct, physical, frontal
attack has always been their favorite method of
making war, the attacks
launched as soon as the warring parties feel
adequately prepared-or even
before, if the blood lust and desire for conquest are
stronger than their
rudimentary feelings of caution. Even Pongol and
Matabele, the greatest
leaders and organizers in Sealon history,
greater rulers than any of the
heroes in Sealon's many sagas, were never able
to change this basic nature.
Pongol and Matabele led their nation to triumph
over its neighbors, not by
using the gentle arts of persuasion on their
subjects, but rather by having
greater strength of will, more dominating
personalities, than those among
their advisers and subchiefs who opposed their
plans. They simply imposed
their own ideas of strategy upon their followers,
brooking no opposition.
Thus the long quiescence of the Sealons in the seas
of Trellisane was highly uncharacteristic.
It was also completely destructive of what little
morale remained among the Trellisanians. Had
the Sealons been intending to conduct
psychological war- fare, and had they known enough about the
working of Trellisanians' minds
to do so, they could not have done
better than to wait beneath the calm sea surface
as they did. Even the
yegemot, whose defiance had already diminished as their
numbers dwindled at
Sealon hands, became quiet, waiting
uncertainly for the next move from the
deadly invader hidden beneath the seas.
Veedron's reservoir of courtliness had
deserted him. "How can we get more
organized?" he screamed at McCoy. "We
don't know what to organize for!"
McCoy shrugged and pressed his palms against his
eyes. He felt enormous
fatigue, and he seemed to be incapable of feeling
anything else. It was as
if the long, hard, thankless hours of dealing with
Trellisane's in-
creasingly uncooperative leaders and the nausea
resulting from his latest
discovery had drained him of even the ability
to experience anything but
weariness. He let his hands fall to the
table. "I don't know what to tell
you, Veedron. Perhaps it's not worth doing anything,
after all. We're all
doomed. Give up and face the inevitable. I
know 1 don't care any more."
This was enough to at last reduce Veedron to silence.
He stared at McCoy,
realizing for perhaps the first time just how much of himself this
alien
had given to Trellisane, how unselfishly he
had given it-and how little
thanks he had received for his sacrifice.
Veedron searched for the words to apologize to McCoy
and to thank him if they must all perish, then
Veedron
wished all the more to restore Trellisane's
honor before it was too late.
Before he could formulate the long, elaborate
circumlocution he intended to deliver, however, a
yegemot entered the room and hurried over to him.
"A ship, Your Honor," the man said
breathlessly. "A ship of the Sealons has arrived."
Veedron glared at him. "You interrupted me for
that, creature?" he snapped. "More invasion forces,
that's all."
"Sir, this one has come down on the ground near
here, not in the sea."
Veedron exchanged a glance of surprise with
McCoy.
"Either they're overwhelmed with confidence," McCoy
said, "or they want to
talk to us."
Veedron shook his head. "They could have done that
earlier. A special ship
from Sealon wasn't necessary."
"Then maybe there's someone special onboard,
someone the Sealons here have
been waiting for."
"Matabele," Veedron muttered. He turned
to the yegemot messenger. "Take me
to the landing site," he ordered. He turned back
to McCoy, his tone of
voice respectful. "Do you wish to come with me,
Doctor?"
"I wouldn't miss this for the world!" He had noticed
Veedron's changed
manner. It was almost back to the politeness of
earlier days, before
Veedron's revelation concerning the slaves.
Wonder how he'd act if he knew
I've been taking those damned capsules out of every
slave I can get my
hands on ....
The landing site was near the Sealon-blasted sub
space transceiver Veedron had shown Kirk
and Spock
some days earlier. McCoy had never seen this
place
before, and now his attention was drawn to the huge
vessel resting in the midst of what head once
been
parkland, rather than to what was left o do' the
recreation
ground. There was no activity around the great
vessel;
a crowd of Trellisanians watched nervously
from a
distance, waiting for someone in a position of
sufficient
authority, such as Veedron, to show up and take
over.
As he and McCoy approached, one of the watching
Trellisanians broke away
and hurried up to them. It was one of the doctors
working under McCoy, and
he addressed himself to the Federation doctor rather than
to Veedron. If
Veedron had been an Earthman, he might have
resented this, but as a
Trellisanian, and especially as the chief of the
Protocol Binders, he gave
way to McCoy's position of authority almost
instinctively.
"There is no sign of life at all,
Doctor. I happened to see the ship coming down, and
I came here immediate-
ly in case I was needed, but no one has been
injured. This crowd gathered
fairly quickly; however, the Sealons have not
attacked it. The ship could be automatically
operated, for all I've seen."
McCoy thanked the man absentmindedly and
walked toward the Sealon ship,
scarcely noticing the crowd of Trellisanians
parting respectfully for him.
He had never seen a spacegoing vessel this
large
down on the surface of a planet before. The
largest
vessels he had seen on the ground in
previous experi
ence were shuttles, such as those of the Enterprise.
This
enormous mass of metal, resting quietly on
the ground,
had the indefinable aura of deep space about it, that
place where he had already spent so much of his life.
The ship sat lightly, as if it were ready at
any moment,
at any hint of a command from its masters, to leap
joyously back into space, its proper home.
McCoy had
spent the days on Trellisane immersed in the
details of
his grim duty-body counts and hospital beds,
limited
manpower and nonexistent medicines comand until this
moment had not thought about space. It was his proper
home, too, he realized, and the ship was a
magnet to
him. Did the Sealons love space, too? Was
that why
their ship spoke so eloquently of the beauty of the
great
blackness? Why, then, he had some things
in common
with them, after all, perhaps more than he had with
that crowd of jellyfish muttering nervously behind
him.
He walked forward slowly. Veedron called out
to him
"Doctor, please be careful!" And then louder
"Doc
tor!" But McCoy ignored him and kept
walking toward
the Sealon ship. Matabele there must be a
man-no, a
being-he could admire and respect, certainly more so
than he could feel anything of such emotions toward
Veedron or the other gemot leaders.
At the base of the ship, a door slid open,
eliciting a gasp from the
Trellisanians. McCoy stopped moving,
overcome himself, at last, with the
realization that he
had not behaved with prudence in exposing himself this
way. He was well away from the crowd, alone in
the space directly before the Sealon ship, and he
would be the obvious first target if Sealon warriors
should emerge from that silent facade and
launch an attack.
A ramp slowly extended itself from the bottom of the
doorway, covering the
short drop to the ground. A man could have jumped
down with no trouble, as
could a Mingon. This, McCoy realized, was an
adaptation so that Sealons,
whose bodies he had already examined carefully, could
slide to the ground
without injuring their small, weak legs. At last
he would meet some live
Sealons, perhaps Matabele himself. So what if
he was about to die? He would at least go bravely,
even adventurously, perhaps in combat with the great
Sealon king himself.
The sunlight was bright, while the space beyond the
doorway was quite dim.
A figure appeared in the opening, but McCoy
could not make it out. Then it
stepped forward onto the ramp and descended
calmly to the ground to stand
before McCoy, and the doctor opened his mouth in
astonishment but found
himself unable to speak.
"I trust you are well, Doctor, and
that your speechlessness has no
pathological cause?" Mr. Spock asked.
The negotiations were taking place in a large
room onboard the Sealon ship, and they were not going
well.
A raised platform had been constructed near the
door for the Trellisanians' use and provided with
comfortable chairs and a small table. The sunken
floor of the room was covered with a meter and a half
of water, and it was
here that the Sealons relaxed during the discussions.
Their great shapes,
far more fluid and graceful in the water than on a
dry surface, flowed
swiftly back and forth across the room. Against a
far wall, Matabele rested on the surface of the
water, huge and silent, raising himself occasionally
to stare at the Trellisanians with his penetrating,
discerning, 174
discomforting gaze. Sealons normally squint in
sunlight, but here in the
gloomy, humid interior of the ship,
Matabele's eyes were wide open, huge,
black, and impenetrable. The Seaton
negotiators would carry the words of the
Trellisanians to him, receive his instructions, and then
dart back across
the room to the platform to resume the bargaining.
Spock, drawing on knowledge gained during the intimacy
of the mind-meld,
had managed to reprogram both his and McCoy's
translators to handle the
fluid, whistling speech of the Sealons. Thus
communication was possible
through the medium of the two Star Fleet officers
even though none of the
few Trellisanians who knew the Seaton
speech was available. Matabele had
already sent messages to his forces in the seas
to halt their interference
with Trellisanian communications; thus Veedron
and the other gemot leaders
were once again in contact with those of their equals who
survived on the
other continents. However, it had proven far easier
for Spock to work out
such practical details of communication than it
was to design a settlement
acceptable to both Trellisanians and Sealons.
The Trellisanians in fact had
nothing to bargain with, and they knew it,
and this had elicited in the gemot leaders a sudden
and surprising
stubbornness founded on wounded pride. Matabele
demanded that the seas of
Trellisane, most of its small island chains,
and certain inlets along the
continental coasts be given to his people. In fact,
all of this and far
more was already his for the taking, if he chose that route.
In return,
Matabele offered extensive fishing rights in what
would become, under the
agreement, sovereign Seaton territory on
Trellisane and even in the oceans
of Seaton. The oceans of the two worlds were the only
territories
attractive to the Sealons; as far as
Matabele was concerned, large land
surfaces, including the moons of the system and
whatever other planetary
surfaces Trellisaman technology could
make habitable, were free for 175
Trellisane to take. Above all, the
increasingly technological Sealons would
become trading partners and peaceful allies of
Trellisane.
The agreement proposed by Matabele was so
balanced and logical that McCoy
was sure he saw a Vulcan mind behind it. He
leaned toward Spock and
whispered to him, "You've been a busy little boy,
haven't you, Spock? Just
what have you been up to since I saw you last?"
Spock cast a short glance of annoyance at him
and turned his attention back to the Trellisanian
gemot leaders. It was clear to him that it was the very
magnanimity of Matabele's offer that offended them.
If they had shown this
sort of backbone earlier, he reflected, they
might not be in this situation now; as it was, their
argumentativeness was little more than petulance. "I
think, sir," Spock said calmly to Veedron,
"that the Sealon terms are more
than generous."
Veedron glared at him. "How do we know we can
even trust these animals to
keep their word? Agreements don't mean the same
to them as they do to you
or me."
Part of the Trellisanian anger, Spock
realized, was a way of masking a
particular and peculiar fear to survive under the
proposed agreement,
Trellisane would have to move outward into its
system aggressively, expand
rapidly and with determination, colonizing moons and
planets wherever
possible. Veedron and his colleagues feared this
prospect more, perhaps,
than they feared annihilation. Indeed, perhaps their
fearfilled, retiring
souls would welcome destruction as the ultimate
escape from challenge and
responsibility. "Sir," Spock said
firmly, in a tone that made it clear that even
Vulcan patience has its limits, "you do not
speak for all the people
of Trellisane, but only for those who are
members of gemots. There are
fishermen and other slaves, as I know quite well,
who belong to no
gemot and who would welcome total control of this
world, even under Sealon
terms."
"Yes, indeed," McCoy chimed in, scarcely
able to keep a grin off his face.
"And for that matter, why aren't they represented
here?"
"You're quite right, Doctor," Spock said
gravely. "A serious oversight on
my part. I should have arranged for the presence of a
member of the slave
class."
The Trellisanians all began talking at the
same time. McCoy was finally
able to impose silence on them and gain their attention
by pounding his
fist on the light table, which jumped off the floor
in response, and
shrieking, "Shut up!" at them at the top of his
voice. They obeyed him
largely because they were stunned that someone they had
recently grown to
respect as an equal could be guilty of such a
breach of etiquette. Spock
stared at McCoy with a hint of amusement on his
almost expressionless
features. The high-pitched communications at the
far end of the room ceased and Matabele and
his subordinates turned their dark eyes and
froglike faces toward McCoy.
"Well," McCoy said, affecting heartiness,
"now that
you're listening, I think I'd better point out a
few things
to you." He drew a deep breath. "There are two
facts you of the gemots need
to consider. First of all, you need our protection-the
Federation's, I mean- whether or not you decide
to become members, and you must have realized from what
I've already told you that you won't be able to get it with
your
present governmental setup. You'll have
to rearrange things so that the
yegemot have a voice.
"Second, as Mr. Spock has already pointed
out, the yegemot themselves won't accept the status
quo. They've fought the Sealons. They've tried
to defend
this world, and you can bet they didn't risk their
lives-lose them, in too
many cases-just to save your privileges. You know,
I've been a busy little
boy.
Removing brain implants, for instance . . .
Face it, gentlemen you have no
choice."
Veedron licked his lips and looked around at his
fellow gemot leaders, but
they all looked down at the table, refusing
to meet his eyes. At last,
convinced his colleagues would not offer him any
support, Veedron spoke.
"Doctor, I know those arguments," he said
reluctantly. "I've used them with myself. I
suppose I-we-would be willing to accept a small
degree of
participation in the government by the yegemot, since
we seem to have
little choice, were it not for one insurmountable
difficulty." He stopped,
his evident distaste for the subject seemingly making
it almost impossible
for him to say more.
"And that difficulty is?" Spock prompted.
Veedron forced himself to continue. "They are
animals, beasts." Anger
flared in him again at the thought. "They serve us because
they were bred
up from bestiality for that purpose only! We
can't-was
"Just a moment," McCoy cut in, his face
stern. "You tried that one on me
before, and this time I can't just let it go by. As
soon as you confirmed
that you and the yegemot are cross-fertile, I
knew the story abbut their
ancestry was rubbish. If your medical men
weren't as prejudiced as the rest of you, they'd have
drawn the same conclusions as I did. It could be
proved easily enough with tissue samples in a lab,
but that's not even necessary
you have to have common ancestors, and fairly
recently, you have to still
be the same species-by definition-to be able
to breed together."
The Trellisanians were speechless. McCoy
wondered whether the cause were
confusion or outrage. He became aware for the first
time of Matabele and
his Sealons watching the scene with a calculating
silence. One of the
Trellisanians finally found his voice. "But
your colleague, the Vulcan . .
. I was told he's half Earthman. What you
said is obviously not true." The
rest of the group nodded vigorously and muttered their
agreement.
"Sorry to destroy your last defense,"
McCoy said, feeling like a hypocrite
because he wasn't sorry at all, "but Vulcans
and Earthmen are both
descended from an ancient race who colonized
most of the known Galaxy.
Almost all the humanoid races we know of are
descended from them, and that
probably includes you. Of course there has
been genetic drift and
adaptation to extreme conditions, producing
anomalies like the Vulcans. The races who
don't have those common ancestors are precisely those
races who
are not crossfertile with humanoids from other
worlds."
Veedron said, "This is a great deal to ask us
to accept, Doctor. To
overturn the ways of generations on your word . .
." He shook his head.
"Damn it," McCoy flared at him,
"I'm not asking you to take just my word!
When you first told me that cockeyed theory about the
yegemot being bred up from domestic animals, I
went right out and collected tissue samples from
various corpses, victims of the bombardments,
both yegemot and your own
kind. The results are all available for your
biologists, well documented,
genetic analyses and everything. You could have done that
yourselves at any time. Now I've done it for you. Now
you'll have to face the truth!" McCoy
realized he was on his feet and shouting. Feeling
suddenly foolish, he fell silent and sat down.
Spock's almost-smile was even more apparent
to McCoy. "Well?" he snapped at the
Vulcan. "Do you have something to add on the
subject?"
"Not at this moment, Doctor." Spock added in
a low voice, "Implants? You
must explain that to me later." He turned to the
Trellisanians. "I don't
think you'd be wise to put off your decision much
longer, gentlemen. I've
come to know Matabele quite intimately," he
paused, darting images of
dark, deep oceans of Sealon surfacing in his
memory, "dis . . intimately, and
I believe that despite his pragmatism and
magnanimity, was he emphasized the
word, "the usual Sealon impatience is very much a
part of him. If you delay
any longer, he might withdraw his offer and launch
the final attack. His
followers in the seas must be chafing at the delay as
it is."
Perhaps it was the thought of murderous Sealons swarming
out of the seas,
slithering across the beaches to kill and destroy, perhaps
it was the
cumulative effect of Spock's well
orchestrated attack; whatever the cause,
defeat was evident on the faces of the
Trellisanians. Even though they
performed the ritual of discussing their reply among
themselves and with
the invisible host of other gemot leaders linked
to them mind-to-mind, the
result was clear long before they announced it. At
last, with a deep sigh,
Veedron said to Spock, "Please
tell the king we accept his terms."
Before Spock could say anything to the expectant
Sealons, who were now
swimming back and forth impatiently near the
platform, McCoy raised his
hand to stop him. "And what about our terms concerning the
yegemot?"
An expression of great distaste crossed
Veedron's face. "Yes, we agree to
your terms as well."
Spock turned toward the Sealons and spoke a
few words quietly in Vulcan.
His voice was drowned out by the fluting, whistling
sounds that came from
his translator and sent the Sealons gliding
swiftly across the room to tell Matabele that the
oceans of Trellisane were his.
The Sealons erupted into wild gyrations of
triumph, flashing across the
room and leaping out of the water in front of the
platform, whistling
shrilly, and splashing the Trellisanians as they
crashed back into the
water.
A new Sealon arrival darted in through
the doorway, looked around for a
moment until he spotted his king, and then glided
swiftly to Matabele. At
first the Trellisanians and the two Federation
officers on the plat-
form didn't notice the new Sealon, partly because
all Sealons looked alike
to them, and partly because the Trellisanians were too
busy wiping water off themselves and rearranging their
robes. Those on the platform finally
realized that something important had happened when the
Sealons, Matabele in the lead, churned through the
doorway and vanished, leaving behind a trail
of bubbles and foam that slowly dissipated.
"I think, Veedron, that we'd better return
to your headquarters," Spock
said. He rose and led the way to the exit, using the
narrow ledges that ran along the walls just above water
level. The Trellisanians followed
spiritlessly, defeat heavy upon them, as if nothing they
did mattered any
more.
Outside, it was already dark and the crowd had drifted
away. The group made its way as quickly as
possible to the headquarters building of the
Protocol Binders gemot. The building gleamed
in the dark, every light on, and people hurried in and out. The
illusion of organized pandemonium was shattered
when they entered there was no organization, only
pandemonium.
Spock tried unsuccessfully to stop passersby
to find out what had happened. Veedron finally
succeeded when one of the hurrying functionaries
recognized him. "Sir," the man said breathlessly,
"I'm glad you're back. We've all
been worried-was
"Never mind that. What's caused this excitement?"
"You don't know?" He looked at the impatient
faces before him and explained quickly. "A fleet of
ships just arrived. Klingons, Romulans, the
Federation- combined. They're in orbit now, demanding
that we and the
Sealons surrender to them!"
Captain's Log Stardate 7532.8
The Enterprise will be leaving Trellisane
orbit for Starbase 28 in a matter
of moments. Upon arrival, I will deliver our
surviving prisoners. I will
also dump to the Starbase diplomatic computer the
full details of the accord I have signed
with the Romulans and Klingons.
Kirk raised his thumb from the log recorder
button and let his mind drift
for a moment. Would Star Fleet Command and the Federation
Council accept
the new treaty with only minor quibbling? Or would
his actions be condemned as an overreaching of his
authority? He shrugged and pressed the log
recorder on again.
"Perhaps this is the beginning of the cooperation between us and the
Klingons forecast by the Organians. It goes
beyond that forecast by
including the Romulans as well." Kirk
hesitated, then, grinning, added,
"This is surely one of the most significant
opportunities for peace we have had in this century,
and I sincerely hope we will not fail to grasp it."
He released the button to off and sat back,
feeling satisfied. "Helm, initiate new
course on this orbit."
"Aye, Captain."
Back in control, Kirk thought with satisfaction.
Giving orders again, the
orders that moved this enormous machine and its
400-odd crewmen-a different kind of
machine--sending it across the Galaxy if he,
James T. Kirk, simply
desired it. The surge of power from the engines, the
faint vibration under
his feet it was all in obedience to his will; the ship
and its amazing
energies were virtually extensions of him.
McCoy had come to the bridge a few minutes
earlier and now stood beside
Kirk's chair, watching the main viewing screen
with him as Trellisane
receded rapidly. The planet dwindled to a
point of light, which was joined
on the screen by the much brighter point of the system's
primary. Both
disappeared into the field of stars.
"Warp speed, Captain."
Kirk nodded his acknowledgment.
The first officer left his station and crossed
to Kirk's chair, taking up
his familiar position on the side opposite to that
chosen by McCoy.
"Captain," Spock said thoughtfully, "it has
occurred to me that under
better circumstances Hander Morl could
have made a fine Star Fleet officer, perhaps even a
ship's captain."
Spock's eyes were on the screen, and he couldn't
see the flash of anger
that crossed Kirk's face, then quickly vanished.
"How so , Mr. Spock?"
"Considering his lack of training, Captain, he
managed the Enterprise
remarkably well under most difficult
conditions."
McCoy, who had caught Kirk's momentary
display of annoyance, said, "Why, I
believe you're right, Mr. Spock. Trust a
Vulcan to see it. Morl was
arrogant, ruthless, singleminded, egomaniacal.
Yes, Spock, the perfect Star Fleet
captain." He turned toward the screen, nodding
sagely, feigning
unawareness of Kirk's glare.
Kirk rose. "Mr. Sulu, you have the con.
Bones, Spock, come with me."
He led them to the conference room. When all three
had entered and the door had slid shut behind them, Kirk
relaxed his self-control and allowed the
anger he had been suppressing ever
since his return to Trellisane to come
to the surface. "All right, gentlemen," he said,
his jaw clenched, "I want
to know what you two thought you were doing down there while
I was away."
"Captain?" Spock said in a puzzled tone.
"I don't understand your
question."
"Don't play games with me!" Kirk roared.
"I finally regained control of the Enterprise,
managed to browbeat the Klingons and Romulans into a
treaty
concerning Trellisane and Sealon, only to find
that you and McCoy have
drawn up some sort of agreement of your own."
"Jim, that's completely unfair," McCoy
said, unable to entirely keep his
own temper. "We weren't trying to undercut your
authority. Spock
accomplished something on Sealon that I think is
damned near miraculous,
and you should be congratulating him for it. You weren't
here, we didn't
know what had happened to you or if you were even
alive, and we both acted
as we thought best in the circumstances. Read what
the Star Fleet Manual
says about officers "showing initiative and
enterprise when not under
direct orders."" He paused for a moment, then
laughed suddenly. "Hell, did
you want to amend that to read "when not under direct
orders to do
otherwise"?"
Shamefaced, Kirk said, "I suppose I
overreacted. Look, I knew at the time
that both Karox and Tal signed the agreement I
worked out for a tripartite
commission because they both thought it would give them
control of the
system in the end. Neither of them would have willingly
given up that idea. They wanted to back out, Karox
especially, when we got back to
Trellisane and found that the other Klingon forces
in the system had been
killed and control was now in the hands of the Sealons.
The way you two set
things up, the system has achieved real
independence. The combination of
Sealon aggressiveness and
Trellisanian technology and science probably
means that the alliance will become a real force in the
Galaxy in the near future. Both the Klingons
and the Romulans could find themselves threatened. They
wanted the Tripartite Commission to have control over
the Sealons and the
Trellisanians, partly to prevent that very thing from
ever happening."
"Sorry if we ruined all that Great Power
politicking for you, Jim," McCoy
said. "I, for one, think this situation is
preferable."
"I'm sure you're right. I apologize to both
of you. You understand, of
course it was the tension, even the humiliation, all
coming together."
McCoy grinned at him. "Plus, of course,
that you wanted to be the one who
solved everyone's problems, to make up for having
your ship stolen from
under your nose, and instead you found that we'd already
done most of the
work. Captain."
Kirk stared at him, trying to will himself to anger but not
succeeding. He
gave up the struggle and let his face relax
into a smile. "It's a good
thing you weren't with me on the Enterprise, after
all, Bones. You're a
marvelous ship's doctor, but you're a lousy
diplomat."
"Aye, aye, Captain. I won't argue with that
at all."
"Nor would I," Spock said. "May we be
excused, Captain? I believe both the
doctor and I have much work to do to repair the
damage done during the
takeover."
"Yes, of course, Mr. Spock." He
dismissed them with a wave of his hand and
watched them leave. As the door was closing behind
them, the speaker on the wall behind Kirk spoke out with
Uhura's voice.
"Captain, I have a response from Star Fleet
Command to the message you sent them when we left
Trefolg."
Kirk had to think for a moment to dredge that one up from
his memory. Ah,
yes, that had been his message that he was going
to Trellisane to
investigate the plea for help from that world rather than
immediately
taking his United Expansion Party prisoners
to a starbase. At the time, he
had been worried, even without Spock's warning,
that he was placing his
career in jeopardy. His concern over that had been
displaced by much more
immediate problems during the subsequent days, but it
returned now. He felt his muscles tightening.
It had taken Star Fleet Command long enough to
respond, as he had thought at the time it would. At
the time, he had
convinced himself that so long a time would be virtually like
eternity,
that he could simply not think about it. Now eternity
had arrived, and he
was surprised at his own tension as he said, "Read
it to me, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir. First they acknowledge receipt of
your message, then they say,
"Kirk, do not forget the sensitive location of
Trellisane. Investigate the
situation, but tread warily and do not antagonize
the Klingons. However, do what is necessary
to guarantee the independence of Trellisane. J.
Potgieter, Rear Admiral." That's all
there is, sir."
"Thank you, Lieutenant. I'll be on the way
to the bridge shortly." He knew
Potgieter; the man functioned more as a liaison
with the diplomatiq corps
than as a regular staff officer. What a
wonderfully noncommittal order
investigate, tread warily, do not antagonize,
but do what is necessary to
guarantee Trellisane's independence. Kirk
laughed aloud with the sudden
relief of tension. He would have inter Qreted that
command to mean he was
on his own, had it arrived in time. As it was,
matters had drawn themselves to a conclusion, and the
message really meant that he would be commended
for his actions when he returned to a
starbase, just as he would have been reprimanded had he
failed. Star Fleet
Command had decided not to decide after all Kirk
had a free hand, but if he failed to bring things off
properly, then the fault would be entirely his.
But it had always been that way, from the start
of his career, as it was for any other officer in a
major command position. Eventually it might give
him
an ulcer. In the meantime, though, he admitted
readily to himself, it made
his one of the most exciting and satisfying lives in
the Galaxy. Perhaps no
one else on the ship would be able to fully understand
that. Probably only
Tal or Karox could sympathize. His enemies
and his colleagues
simultaneously. The three of them justified
each others" existences. What a
wonderful joke that was on Star Fleet Command and the
equivalent in the
Klingon and Romulan empires!
As they left the conference room, Spock said
to McCoy, "By the way, Doctor, I'm sure
you're aware that your argument concerning the necessity of
common ancestry for cross-fertility is neither
correct nor logical. The idea of an ancient
race from whom we humanoids are all descended
is an hypothesis that has never been proven. The
archeological evidence is skimpy and
inconclusive. Moreover, your argument
was a tautology two races have
recent common ancestors because they are
cross-fertile, and they are cross- fertile because
they have recent common ancestors. It is fortunate
that the fallacy in your words didn't strike the
Trellisanians as quickly and
forcefully as it did me."
McCoy snorted, which he considered a sufficient
dismissal of all that Spock had said. "Don't
try to confuse a simple country doctor with that
sort of
verbiage, Spock. It worked, and that's what
counts. And speaking of logic,
I noticed that when you arrived back on
Trellisane in Matabele's ship, you
showed definite pleasure and relief that I was
unharmed and had come
through the Sealon attacks unscathed. That wasn't
logic, at all. You can't fool an old country

doctor it was genuine human feeling I saw
peeping out." He held his
hand up quickly before the Vulcan could reply.
"Wait a minute, I know
just what you're going to say-that you were merely
expressing your
relief that Star Fleet's investment in me was not
wasted and that the
ship needs my professional services for
optimal functioning. Right?"
Spock remained imperturbable. "Not quite,
Doctor. What is of most value
to the Enterprise's optimal functioning is your
country-doctor,
anti-technology pose. It's good for ship's
morale, since humans have a
curious need for someone like you as a means of
vicariously expressing
their romantic delusions. Any competent
medical technician could cure
their physical ills as well as you do, but no one
but you can do such
a good job of playing the court jester." McCoy
opened his mouth to
say something biting, then closed it with a snap,
turned on his heel,
and stalked off down the hallway. Spock watched
with a faint hint of
a smile. "Mr. Spock, that was cruel." He
turned to find Christine
Chapel standing before him, her expression
disapproving. "I heard the
last part of your conversation. You shouldn't have said that
to him.
He's really a very sensitive man." Spock
nodded. "Yes, he is a
sensitive man. He's also a remarkable
doctor, and the Enterprise is
fortunate to have him. However, he needs occasional
correction. More
than that, though, I believe he derives great
pleasure from insulting
me and having me insult him in return. That is
the only way he will
allow himself to express affection to a being as alien
as L" Aquatic
images overwhelmed him momentarily. "Unity through
diversity," he
murmured. "That is our strength. That is what
Hander Morl and his party
could not understand, even though his group consisted of
alien,
diverse creatures. It is our ability
to communicate and empathize
despite our racial differences that
makes

the Federation strong and healthy." Somewhat
brusquely he added, "Of
course it is virtually impossible for anyone but
a Vulcan to
understand that, because only we, of all the races we
know, can
perform the mind-meld with beings alien to us. Please
excuse me, Nurse
Chapel. I am needed on the bridge."
Chapel watched him as he hurried
away. "Only a Vulcan," she whispered. This
was her first trip outside
sickbay since her collapse on the bridge,
when the Onctiliians had
died. No one else on the Enterprise, least of
all Spock, knew of her
experience, of her union with alien beings on a far
deeper level than
any Vulcan mind-meld had ever been. And no
one else ever would know
of it. She had been walking slowly down the
corridor because she and
the Onctiliians had passed this way
together on their way to the bridge
.... It had helped to calm and soothe her.
Unity through diversity
no one, not even a Vulcan, would ever understand that
idea as deeply
as she did. And she knew she would never really
experience it
again-not as she had for that one, brief, brilliant
moment, that
too-short time of love, light, and fulfillment.
She sighed and walked
on, still shaky. The door of the conference room opened
and Captain
Kirk came out. Yes, he was back in control
and everything was once
again where it should be in his private universe, but one
thing still
rankled, and that was Dr. McCoy's depiction
of the perfect starship
captain as "arrogant, ruthless, singleminded,
egomaniacal." Kirk
could not put those words from his mind. Was that what it
took,
really? Was he that way? Or am I less than
perfect? he asked himself
with self-conscious irony. He walked slowly
toward the turboelevator
entrance, entered, and said, "Bridge." As the
elevator sped toward
the control center of the Enterprise, Kirk
returned to the question.
Was it arrogant to be aware that he was the best
qualified of anyone
to command 189
this great ship and its diverse crew? Or ruthless
to expect his orders
to be obeyed because he was the captain and knew what
was best? Or
singleminded to be more concerned with this magnificent
vessel's
wellbeing than with anything else, including his own
wellbeing?
Egomaniacal? "Say that again, Bones," he
said aloud, "and I'll have
you drawn and quartered." He chuckled. The
doors opened and the
bridge lay before him. He could sense the air
of-not tension, but
extra alertness as he appeared, as if everyone was
suddenly concerned
to be on his best behavior now that James Kirk
was present. Was it
egomaniacal to feel more than faintly pleased
at that response? he
asked himself. Yes, he answered, it is. But he
felt no less pleased
as he strode toward the chair to resume control
of the Enterprise.