STAR TREK - 75 -   First Frontier


  by Diane Carey and James L. Kirkland


  Foreword
  STAR TREK and dinosaurs... what a combination!
Each brings forth visions of adventure and fantastic
worlds--one in the vision of a promising future, the
other shadowed by the mists of time.
  But what is the connection? STAR TREK is
science fiction, stories of a boundless future with
infinite possibilities.
  Dinosaurs are science fact, an extinct
group of diverse animals that dominated this planet
for 160 million years.
  Each is a glimpse into an unattainable world.
  As a child, I owned every dinosaur toy on the
market, which in the mid-sixties was a very limited
selection. My mind was filled with images of great
beasts fighting it out on a landscape loaded with
volcanoes. On one of my trips to the library,
searching for another book by one of the great dinosaur
hunters like Edwin H. Colbert or Roy
Chapman Andrews, I stumbled into science fiction.
  Soon I was reading every SF book I could find.
I began to liken the alien world of Earth's
Mesozoic Era to an alien world in deep space,
each attainable only through my imagination.
  When STAR TREK hit the airwaves in
1966, I was hooked. The stars were ours
to explore, a new vista revealed each week.
STAR TREK has become a lasting success because
of the interplay of real characters in this marvelous
unexplored panorama. Like the very best of
science fiction, STAR TREK examined mankind
while mankind examined the universe.
  As I pursued a career in science, my
perception of dinosaurs matured. I began to see
a lot more than a bunch of giant reptiles. The
Mesozoic Era was not just one world, but an immense
succession of worlds, with ever-changing atmospheric,
oceanographic and climatic conditions to rival an
alien world. Life was as diverse as today, but alien and
unique. If we went back a billion years,
we couldn't even breathe Earth's atmosphere.
  I realized dinosaurs have no more in common with
reptiles than do birds or mammals. They were the
most successful creatures in history, but not just because
they happened to be there. They were dominant because they
outcompeted all others, including mammals. In
fact, they're still not extinct. They survive today in
the form of their descendants, the birds.
  .dinosaurs were too successful to have died out because
of any earthbound mechanism. They were driven out by an
extraordinary event--the impact of an asteroid
ten miles or more in diameter. During the past
decade, evidence has led to discovery of "the
bullet hole," a crater 185 miles across and more
than 12 miles deep on the north side
of the Yucatan, known as the Chixulub crater.
  This changing view of the Mesozoic world has
caused a revolution in dinosaur paleontology.
It is my good fortune to have witnessed and to now play a
role in this revolution.
  As far as dinosaur paleontology is concerned,
these are the "good old days."
  As my perspective of the past has matured, so
has the STAR TREK universe through books,
movies, and new TV series. I've followed
all these permutations. Many a night around the
campfire, discussions of the ancient world would shift
gears as the stars above beckoned, and we would start
talking about STAR TREK.
  After graduate school, I became a gypsy
scholar and hoped for a permanent job. For a popular
subject, paleontology has always offered few
jobs, so I considered myself lucky when I landed a
job actually doing paleontology.
  The Dinamation International Society (Dis)
was the brainchild of Chris Mays, President and
CEO of the Dinamation International Corporation.
DIC is world famous for its traveling robotic
exhibits of which the dinosaurs are the most famous.
Chris formed a nonprofit organization
dedicated to promotion of earth, biological and
physical sciences, and particularly that most
interdisciplinary of all, dinosaur
paleontology. I was hired by Executive
Director Mike Perry as DIS'S first
employee, to oversee a participant-funded
dinosaur research program. Dinamation's
Dinosaur Discovery Expedition program
provides manpower and funding for dinosaur research
and gives the amateur public a chance to dig
dinos. We've worked with host institutions in
Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona,
Mexico, and Argentina, and have programs pending in
England, Indonesia, and perhaps Morocco. We're
now the largest organization conducting dinosaur
digs. Now, I'm teaching people from every walk of life
who love dinosaurs and the process of discovery.
There's nothing more fun than watching someone uncover
something new to the human experience. If you'd like to know
how you can get your hands and knees really dirty and
live to tell about it, call 1-hjj-DIG-DINO.
Even more exciting than working with such an enthusiastic
audience is the fact that we've made several
important discoveries. It was excavating a new
dinosaur discovered by amateur fossil
hunter Rob Gaston that unexpectedly led me,
Don Burge, and my other colleagues from the
College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric
Museum to the discovery of Utahraptor. Now,
here's the kind of dinosaur to discover if you want
to make a big splash with the public! One of the most
sophisticated hunting machines the world has ever
known, the dromaeosaur--or "mptor"--was a
terrifying dinosaur. At twenty feet long and
1,000 pounds, Utahraptor was the largest
raptor ever found. We released the story and were
feeling pretty pleased with the worldwide coverage, when
I got a call from Diane Carey.
  Diane had read an article about Utahraptor
in Discover magazine and wanted to know how the heck
I knew that this animal hunted in packs. Now,
I knew here was someone who wanted the inside
scoop. Not many people will call the editor of a national
magazine and harass him until he gives up the
phone number of a source. In fact, Diane is
the only person ever to phone me as a direct
result of an article. .i explained that
raptors were fast and coordinated, as anything that
killed with knives on its feet had to be, and that the
best-known raptor, Deinonychus, was known
from a site where five were buried with a much larger prey
animal Certainly they were specialists in killing
animals much larger than themselves. If you'd like to see
the life-sized robotic Utahraptor in all its
gory splendor, visit us at the Devil's
Canyon Science and Learning Center in Fruita,
Colorado, just off Exit 19 on I-70, by the
entrance to the Colorado National Monument. The
conversation with Diane ultimately strayed to her line
of work, and for me this was too good to pass up. I told
her about a story line I'd come up with during one of
those long nights around the campfire. The story was
based on an intellectual exercise proposed
by Dr. Dale Russell of the National Museum of
Canada, who noted that the most intelligent of
dinosaurs, the troodonts, may have had the
potential to evolve into a technical species had
their stay on Earth not been cut short by extinction.
I related my idea to Diane, who suggested we
collaborate.
  She and her husband, story developer Oreg
Brodeur, and I molded the original story line
and finally developed the story you now hold in your
hands.
  A percentage of the royalties from First
Frontier will go to Dinamation International, to help
continue our explorations. We've merged the STAR
TREK universe with that of Earth's past, and in our
own way expressed my long-held belief that, when
we look closely, deep time is not at all
different from deep space. See you in the future,
and in the past ....
  James I. Kirkland, Ph.d., Dinamation
International Society, 1-hjj-DIG-DINO


  Prologue
  A SC-ENT OF ENEMIES over the
ridge. Sounds. Scents. Vibrations on the harness
sensors. Even before the instruments told her, her
instincts were there to tell her. Living things over the
ridge. Not many, but enough. A science outpost
wouldn't be populated by very many. The real question was not how
many, but how many what. And how strong, how determined,
how armed. Mythology blistered the air. Whispered
rumors, legends of an opportunity so outlandish
they had barely spoken about it even among themselves
during their entire voyage to this region of space.
There was no room for failure. Even after the loss
of nearly half their crew, she pushed them on,
searching for a technology older than any known
settled planet, a place so out of the way
that no one wanted it. If it still existed. I insist
in my mind that it does. "Oya,... don't ..
lag!" The technicist bowed her head in acknowledgment
of the director's snap. A silent answer to buoy
her silent doubts.
  Until now the terrain had been spongy, pierced
with rocks. As Oya's footpads would sink into the
moss, a stone would press up and push her off. Her
bad leg would buckle, and she would thrash for balance.
The others had been struggling, too, twenty-two
thick tails swinging in exaggerated arcs. Now the
ground was hard, but her feet were SO-RE and her
thighs ached. She wished there was more cover. This whole
planet was barren, ugly and gray. At least they
had left their bright livery on the ship. These
polished utility harnesses, launcher gauntlets,
spatterguards, and shell belts were the least color
she could convince them to wear. They were on a stealth
missionsentirely against their nature. Spikers
didn't like to be quiet. They were too young and SO
impatient that it had become custom to paint only
two colors on their faces, and in time the
two-colored face had come to identify them. And
Oya disdained being in back, but that's always where she
was. Always behind the ones who got to fight
first, to eat first, and to rest first. Instinct needled her
forward, to slash and kick her way up there, to be a
leader. She watched the bright yellow, red, and
bronze necks and heads of the female directors,
and she let envy chew at her. The males were
hungry. There was no eating before a maneuver, but no
males had ever gotten used to that. Their heads were low
with frustration. Their necks curved and swayed. They
swiveled their eyes back and forth, willing to snap
at rodents in ,the rocks or anything else they
saw. Hunger crowded their minds. "Rusa." She
waited, but there was no response. Again she said,
"Rusa." The director nearest her glanced
back. On Rusa's face three bands of colored
paint identified her quickly, even in the oblong
shadows cast by these ruins. Oya hissed, "Keep
control of them." Rusa arched her neck. "Don't
tell me my work." The scent of prey teased
Oya's nostrils, and she caught glimpses of
movement beyond the rocks... not rodents. Enemies were
there, real ones, very close, shifting back and forth,
talking, working. t," she said, pushing a growl on the
end of every word. "We'll never have this opportunity
again. You keep control!"
  Rusa drew up sharply, her eyes
dirty with resentment. "You are a technicist. That's
all."
  "This is my mission."
  "I don't care about you. This place doesn't
look like the legends say. We're in another wrong
place. If we get a fresh meal out of it, good."
comOya took a long step to draw herself out of the rear,
lowering her shoulder to push the spiker in front of her
down and out of the way. "This is the right place! You know
how difficult it was to hold orbit!"
  "So what?"
  "You know the theory! The doorway is on a dry
planet
  "Theory, legend, all the same."
  "It's not the same." Oya had to draw her
voice inward just as she wanted to spit. They could be
heard from here. "This is the place! You must keep
contr--" Her bad leg folded, and she stumbled, but
she was able to right herself without falling. Two of the
spikers and one of the other female leaders glanced
back at her, but none made a SO-UND. They
didn't care about her any more than Rusa did.
They hated her authority, that she could tell them
to retreat or order them onward, outpost after
outpost, until they found the right one or ran
out of supplies and died in space. Or until they
were caught and humiliated before the civilized galaxy
even more than they already were. Two-thirds forward through
the silent, swaying line of brown bodies and bright
necks, Rusa twisted her long neck and made
motions with her tail and hands, gesturing the spikers
into position. The single file broke up. The
spikers fanned out. One by one they sank into hiding
places among the rocks. Oya drew her head
downward and lowered her tail. Her legs folded, and
her body settled down onto them. Cool rock
cradled her thighs. The scent of their targets entered
her nostrils, flowed back into her sinuses and down
along the rims of her tongue, and now she could taste
them, too. Sweat. A touch of salt. The taste
made her want to pump forward, attack, rip, and
gulp. What must it be doing to the young males? They were
panting, shaking, shifting their weight more than they should
be on a stealth mission. Carefully she moved her
head enough to look down at her readings on the
harness-mounted sensors. A handful of living beings,
moving casually... scattered temporary dwellings
around a large ellipsoid rock formation...
massive, sprawling ruins, very old... some
concentrations of metal and synthetics--
probably scientific equipment. Upright beings,
bipedal, about the height of the spikers, a head
smaller than the females of her team. No
tails. Keeping low, Rusa moved back toward
Oya and kept her rough voice low. "What are
they?" Oya kept her own voice low and her head
down. "Mammaloids. Could be Vulcan...
Klingon... Terran Romulan. Can you see their
heads?"
  "We will smash their heads," Rusa hissed. The
fire in her belly shone in her bright eyes.
"Easy kills."
  "They have no precautions against attack," Oya
confirmed. "Keep one of them alive for me."
Rusa's bright yellow throat tippled. Rough
abutting scales flickered above her armored vest.
Her eyes were heavily shaded under their protective
brow plates, but the excitement glared through. "I'll
keep one head." She folded a clawed hand and
motioned Oya back. Oya straightened her neck
until her eyes were on a higher level than
Rusa's. "The mission is mine. I have authority,
too. I deserve to provoke."
  "You're not in training as a spiker leader
anymore." Rusa's expression flared.
"You sucked on six or eight generations of
respect because of it, but those days are shrinking. This
batch of youngsters has no respect for you. To them
you're only a technicist. They won't follow you.
I won't follow you either."
  "Then they must do exactly as you tell them. You
must keep control of them? "I will."
  "That's what you said the last time!" Rancor
boiled in Rusa's face. "I'm saying it again.
Go away, thinker."
  "Make them use weapons," Oya persisted.
"And take prisoners." She turned her head and
angled back into the locks, taking the chance that Rusa
wouldn't slice her team technicist's head off and
call it a casualty. Anticipation shuddered through the
crouching spikers, each a mottled ball jutting from
a crevice. Hunger enflamed their young eyes,
left their mouths slightly open. Their lips
quivered and showed the tips of ivory ripping teeth.
Beyond the rocks, the prey were moving. The spikers
twitched, hunched their shoulders, dug their claws
into dry dust. Rusa raised her large head and
stiflened her stance to hold them back. Oya watched
with ripening envy. She remembered how it had been,
training to lead the spikers before the accident that
crippled her leg,. Now, all she could be was a
scientist, to sit around day upon day and think. ,And she
had thought up this mission. Presented it before a
leadership desperate enough to listen. And here she was.
She pressed to the cliff abutment and wallowed in
umbrage. If this mission dissolved, her people would
slip back again to living in the bushes just as they had
before--cycle after cycle for millions of years. The
ugly image grew crimson in her mind. At
least as a technicist she was a valuable evil, a
modem necessity--one of those who sit and think. A
step above those who only sit. She would eat
humiliation raw if she could be the one to keep the
backsliding from happening again. "Attack," she
murmured. "Attack!" Rusa and the other female
leaders cranked their long necks around to glare at
her, but too late. The spikers erupted around them
and didn't care who gave the order. They were young,
their blood was hot, and they were no good at stealth.
Hissing and snapping as their senses took Over, the
males flushed over the rocks and jumped into the arena
around the big rock formation.
  "Weapons only!" Oya bellowed.
  As soon as she cleared the rocks, she saw their
targets and the research outpost they had
established. A dozen or more mammaloids, small
eyes wide with shock, some frozen in place, others
diving for cover.
  The mammaloids scattered. The spikers shot
incendiary darts from their cuff launchers as they had
been so carefully drilled to do. Flames skittered
on the tents and on some of the mammaloids" clothing,
driving them to the ground.
  Head crests bristling, tails whipping,
slash-claws flexed, the heavy-legged spikers
pounded into the camp. From where Oya stood back against
the rocks as ordered, she saw only two of the
spikers but could hear the others and the panicked noises
coming from the victims.
  The mammaloids were maneuverable beings, quick
to understand what was happening to them. They were good fighters.
Oya thought they were all male, but she couldn't be
sure. This slim upright anatomy was common in the
settled galaxy, and these could be any of a hundred
species, a thousand races.
  Can there be so many of the conqueror kind, and so few of
us?
  The spikers whirled in calculated
half-circles, balancing in a beautiful way,
one foot at a time on their two walking
toes, and they fired a volley with each pause.
  The mammaloids were good hiders and quick with their own
weapons--phasers. Recognizable. Very
effective. Needle-thin and unforgiving.
Phasers... that's right.
  Streaks of glowing energy lanced from the fog Oya
kept her head low and tried to sift the scene for more
clues, but the confusion and spurts of movement blended
to make this almost impossible. She held her breath and
reassured herself with what little she already knew.
  So far the spikers were channeling their
aggressiveness into extreme speed arid risk. They
plunges and rushes, more foolhardy than the method
of the female directors.
  Bodies littered the ground stunned and heaving with
effort. Weapons only, weapons only.
  She chanted the order in her mind and thought it might
hold, until one of the mammaloids--a thick,
muscular one whose eyes were dark and mane nearly
black--pounded from a hiding place with some kind of
knife in his hands. The blade was short but sharp.
  "Bring him down!" Oya shouted to the spiker he was
running toward. "Turn around!"
  The sound of her voice startled the mammaloid, and
he veered away from her but didn't stop his
charge. He raised the sickle blade and swung it
high, forward.
  But the spiker had heard her, too, and to him her
voice was more than just the hissing roar it was to the alien
guard. He swung around, arching his tail outward in
a reflex that would sweep the area clear by the time his
throat and chest were in line with the charging enemy. The
tail came in contact with the big blade.
  The mammaloid saw that he had lost his chance
to slice the spine of his target and managed to control
his blade as it struck the spiker's swinging tail,
putting all his weight into redirecting the attack.
His blade made a hollow whistle as it swept
downward at an angle. The spiker dropped back
a step, and only that saved his life. The blade
sliced across the spiker's shoulder, rode across his
throat, and was deflected finally by the heavy harness
covering his chest.
  Red blood sprayed the mammaloid in the face.
He was driven to one knee by the inertia of his attack
and had no time to raise the heavy sickle again. The
spiker bellowed, a passionate thanks for breaking
him free from standing orders. Pain acted in his favor
and made him move faster toward the alien who had
attacked him.
  He roared over the being's head and reached down.
"Hold back! No slashing? Oya called to him.
When he ignored her, she swung around. "Rusa!
Control them! Control them!"
  But the spiker plunged forward in ram-slash
style, spread his hands wide, extending the claws
on his fingers, and got the mammaloid by the face.
He slashed his victim from throat to groin with the big
claw on his foot. Torn fabric rolled back
and entrails pushed out the gash. The creature's
white eyes widened. Oya charged forward. She had
to separate them. The spiker slapped her aside.
Before she could recover and use her greater mass against
him, he pushed his snout into the mess and shook it
back and forth. His growls were answered by the roars and
thrusts of other spikers suddenly ram-slashing other
victims. Contagious wildness blurred their minds.
The leaders didn't bother to stop them. Blood had
been spilled, and the females were hungry, too. As
the craving clouded their thinking, they stopped caring about
how a feast would leave them or about why they were here in the
first place. The scent enticed Oya and made her
want to join the young fighters, to club-kick and slash
her way to that succulent passion she smelled and heard
from the spikers and their leaders. She raised
her bad leg and lowered her mouth to it, taking the
crippled foot in her teeth. The taste of skin and
dirt... the scent of free-flowing blood... If
she could bite off her own foot she would taste what
the spikers were tasting and push herself into the riot. In a
few moments wound-shock would set in, and she wouldn't
care whether it was a victim's limb or her own:
Suddenly, there was blood everywhere. The males roared
and plunged, driven by their own pain, every pierce of their
own hides or their enemies' thin skin, every thunderous
volley as the victims fought back against the headlong
attack. Salvos of phaser fire still skittered
along the hard ground, answered by shells from the spiker
leaders' leig-launchers, but the scene was under
domination by the spikers now. Battling for control over
her own mind, Oya used her tongue to push her
foot out of her mouth and gritted her teeth hard. The
smell of blood and shredded flesh muddled her
thoughts, but she clung to her purpose. She had
to move and function, or her instincts would make her
forget why she was here. Blood sprayed and ran
along the rocks. Strangled screams bounced across
the clearing. Limbs of the butchered mammaloids
littered the ground. The dwellings were on fire, the
mammaloids no cover other than the
rocks, and they couldn't run fast enough to outrun the
spikers. Two spikers were using their ripper claws
to hack at a small standing structure, probably
a supply bin, and Oya realized that one of the
mammaloids had locked himself inside it. A flash
of hope punched through the daze of be. instinct. She
dodged and barely missed the ripper-plunge of one
of the spikers who had lost his ability to distinguish between
friend and foe. He took a sidelong hack at her
with a foot claw, but she whacked back with her large
hand. He Igot the message and angled away.
Ignoring the phaser volleys streaking across the
clearing, he pushed his blunt snout into a mass of
slaughtered enemy and began to gore. Oya stepped
over the young spiker and his lunch, ducked through pulsing
cross fire, and struck out toward that supply bin.
Two other spikers were tearing at the bin with their
hacking claws and pounding at it with spent launcher
casings. She would have to fight them off if she was
to save that mammaloid inside the bin for questioning.
  Had there been time for a distress signal? Why was
this outpost here? What were the purposes of these old
rock formations? were the legends right?
  The questions caused her to salivate. She clamped
her mouth dosed and banished the heavy scent of
blood and bowels; she was nearly there. There were fewer
screams now.
  Almost all the victims were finished. The silence
triggered a deep afkill hunger, and she had
to battle that down, too.
  She fixed her eyes on the variaegated tails
of the two spikers pounding on that bin. The creak of
metal spurred her forward, and she jumped. A touch
of that old spiker training surged back and even her
bent leg responded. Pain belted through hot
hips, but she slashed her way between the two spikers.
A yellow and black tail struck her across the
face, driving her down. Her knee cracked against
the base of the storage bin, but as she went down, she
lashed out at one of the spiker He fell sideways,
she fell forward, and the metal bin vibrated against her
harness. The downed spiker lay on his side and
kicked, confused about whether he was standing or not. Oya
shoved her elbow into his thigh, levered herself back
onto one foot, and blunt-kicked the other spiker
in the ribs. He staggered back, red-rimmed eyes
blinking at her like mechanical flashes. Oya
vaulted up and reached inside the gashed supply bin.
The creature inside hacked at her, but her arm was
long enough that none of the blows reached her neck
or face. She would pull him out, save him forw
She was hit from behind, a blow across the neck. One of the
spikers bumped past her, then the other, both hissing
and snapping, to the torn metal opening in the bin and they
fought over the captive inside. One of them put his
foot on Oya's neck and pressed her to the dirt.
Energy shells sheeted the ground near her legs, and
she realized other victims were still fighting. Their
screams told her the spikers were earning their name. Not
many weapons here, not a heavily defended outpost.
Could this be the right place? Doubts chewed at her.
The place they soughtwanyone with sense would defend it
to the extreme. Or someone might come and try what
she intended to try. But could such a dry, dead place
be the portal to paradise? A wild scheme, but her
people were half wild and willing to snatch at a chance.
She would give them that chance if she could. If she could
get past these two brats. The creature inside the
bin had some kind of weapon to fight with, a club or
shard of metal. The spikers flinched as their faces
and arms were hacked every time they reached inside, but they
kept grabbing. Suddenly one spiker got a metal
point in the eye and stumbled backward, half his
face torn. Blood pumped out of the eye socket.
Oya pushed him out of the way. In spite of
his injuries, his instincts had hold his of him and he
tried to punch forward again, but she kept him back with
her own outrage. She grasped the shoulder of the other
spiker and pulled. He arched his back and neck,
keeping his head inside the hole. His shoulders
flexed as he pushed deeper, and the bin shuddered with the
gasps and thrashing of the mammaloid i inside.
No!" Oya roared. Again she scrambled up, this time
aiming for the spiker's legs. He felt her grip his
lower leg and kicked at her. Intoxicated and
combative, the spiker beat her back with three
limbs and his tail, with the other arm buried in the bin,
slashing at the captive. Hope fled as Oya
heard the screams from inside dissolve to gagging, then
chop to silence. A dirty kill. She dropped
back. The spiker kicked maniacally at her, then
turned to concentrate on his task. He pulled
away from the bin and with both hands pulled out his winnings.
The captive was now carrion. Its body was cleaved
almost in half, its head unrecognizable, sliced
at least three times from ear to chin. One of its arms was
missing. The spiker drew the corpse out and was chewing
on its ribs even before its feet cleared. Blood
splattered Oya as the spiker whipped around with his
prize and retreated to indulge. The bywords
of her culture throbbed through the scent of blood and
entrails. Full belly, empty mind. She still
didn't know what species this was. She still
didn't know if they had raided the right outpost. It
didn't fit the legends of lush scenery, vaulted
mountains, temperate air, and burgeoning prey.
Here there were only rocks lying against a yawning sky,
with air made stale by so little plant growth. . Around
her the spikers and their female leaders crouched .
over gushing lunch, overgorging themselves on their
victory. It would be hours before their heads cleared.
If a distress call had been sent and another
enemy group came, all these would be dazed and
helpless. Oya clamped her mouth shut. The smell
of blood, bile, and discharge made her mind
sizzle, but she forced herft to beat down her desire
to eat. These others wouldn't get their minds back for
hours after surfeiting themselves. She had been afraid
of this since first rising from her saddle in the
spacecraft. The seats weren't as comfortable as
everyday furniture that supported their necks and
tails, too, but comfort wasn't the idea. Space
travel was only a purpose, not a luxury, and it
was the most advanced of their science s to be able
to leave their home planet and trundle out
into space, possibly to take advantage of one
technicist's crazy idea, a chance to give their
race the great destiny promised by nature. After
months of living on blocks of frozen meat and
nutrient tablets, could she beat them back from fresh,
salty, wet meat when they got it? Well, she could
try, if she wanted a look at her own innards.
She moved cautiously across the stinking clearing,
battling to keep her mind, to survey the large rock
formation at the center of the outpost. Frustrated and
doubtful, she shook her head and turned back. She
moved toward Rusm The big female leader had
pushed her large head almost inside the stretched,
gaudy corpse of a mammalold who had been cut
lengthwise from neck to knee, and she was wobbling back
and forth to force the guts out. Staying out of tail-slash
range, Oya circled around into Rusa's
periphery. Rusa's eyes were glazed as if
drugged, her face pasted red with the blood of the
vanquished. Her large face turned slightly
toward Oya, and she blinked. Through the glaze her
eyes focused a little. Oya made a motion with her
handsin nothing overtbut enough, she hoped. Rusa
seemed to go back to her meal but then reached up,
punched the dangling head of her victim
until it snapped loose, and batted it toward
Oya. Oya scooped the head away from Rusa, then
picked it up an moved well out of hacking range.
The smell filled her senses. Just one lick ....
i'ilShe brushed the blood-matted hair away from
the ear. Not Vulcan... not Romulan. disi.
  Saliva dribbled from her back teeth out the
corners of her mouth. She pressed her tongue hard
to her palate and shuddered. She pushed the hair away
from the top of the victim's head. Not Klingon. The
open eyes were blue. Not native Rigelian.
She smelled it. The scent rolled back into her
skrull and il turned into taste. Terran.
Probably Terran. Human. She lifted her
head to i'. fill her nostrils with the scent. And there
against the sky she saw the circular formation of stone that
would be the saving of her race. " "This is the
place," she said through a convulsive shiver. "This is
the place..." She looked closely at the round
formation again and forced herself to think like a scientist, past
all the trappings of legend, to the facts before her.
"Rusa," she said, "this is the place. Say
good-bye to be everything you've ever known. No more
shame for us. Today, everything will be different." The
spiker leader tilted toward her, looked at
her, but kept "comchewing at the ribs of her headless
meal. Her eyes were glazed. Oya tasted in the air
all the primitive instincts that had curtailed her
culture and the bitterness of their slow development.
No more. There would be domination as nature intended.
She looked down and turned the head in her hands
until the face no longer gaped up at her. The
passion rolled through her. Her thoughts swelled and
turned to fog. Dreaming of the coming hours, she gave
up and pushed dis.her snout into the exposed flesh.
  PART ONE
  HIGH WARP
  Limitless power mad with endless rage
  Withering a soul; a minute seemed an age. He
clutched and hacked at ropes, at rags of sail
Thinking that comfort was a fairy-tale ...
  --John Masefield
  "BATTLE STATION'S. All hands ready for
incoming fire." Apprehension needled the ship's
bridge. Something about that old-fashioned way of using
ready as a verb. Worked every time. The captain heard
his own voice throb through the dozen-plus primary
decks and the dozen more engineering decks far below, but he
felt detached from the sound. The communications officer
would gladly have done that job -- probably
should have and announced general quarters, but at times like
these the captain liked to do it himself, let the crew
hear his voice just before he plunged them into thunder. It
was almost an apology before the fact, testimony that
he was here, on the bridge, putting his own hand into the
fire first.
  Trying to be deadpan without being spiritless almost broke
his neck. Battle stations. Battle stations.
Okay, people, general quarters. Cool, not
hard-hearted. Controlled without being soulless. There should
be a class at the Academy on this. Dispassion
202. He almost stuck a finger in his ear to ratfie
out an itch, then thought about what that would look like.
"Raise shields," he added. He tapped the
communicator on his chair's arm console.
"Engineering, confirm you have shield control." The
voice of an assistant came through, a little cocky.
"Shields confirmed routed through warp engines, sir."
  "Stand by." He'd never had to practice being an
inspiration in emergenciesmhe could do that. His
natural ability to rouse a crew had won him
both awe and contempt. But this was different. This was
inviting destruction to come on over and take a
potshot. "Yellow alert lights creased the
bridge's upper level, casting amber
slashes upon the half-dozen faces most familiar
during day watch and three or four others assigned
to subsystems stations by their department heads. The
captain drew a breath into his muscular, compact
body and felt it almost immediately pushed back out. He
needed another dose of medication and almost turned to the
ship's surgeon standing behind the command chair, but his mind
was on the incoming fire and that's where he insisted it
stay. "This is Captain Kirk of the Starship
Enterprise, authorizing full-impact attack.
You may fire when ready, Gridleys."
  his(beridley One, aye. Starship Exeter
preparing to fire, Jim. Gridley Two, take
position and acknowledge."
  "Gridley Two, Captain Phillips,
U.s.s. Farragut, acknowledging."
  "Captain Phillips," Kirk said,
"congratulations on your first field assignment."
  "Thank you, Captain. I'm ready when you both
are."
  "I think we just said we were ready," Kirk
muttered flatly. "Stay sharp, everyone." He
leaned hard on his right elbow and glared restlessly at
the forward screen. The black rectangle showed a
beautifully generated picture of space
before them--well, maybe a little down and to the right--where
two starships hovered on two different planes of
attack. It was disquieting to look at the other
ships, perfect --if slightly newer--echoes of the
Enterprise, with starlight flickering on their
dish-shaped primary hulls" white plates and the
stiff spines of those nacelles going back like strong
chalk marks above the low-slung engineering hulls.
They'd been in war games before. Enterprise had
always shown herself a tough customer, taking more than she
was designed to take. One of only twelve in a
mighty big galaxy, the first of her kind, older, more
battered, and more hardened than anymthe starship was their
life. Letting somebody take shots at her plied
against the grain of any crewman's mettle. So
let's get to it. Ready, aim, fire. What was
taking so long? "Lieutenant Uhura," he
began, swiveling to see the woman at the
communications console, "cut off the chatter. I
don't want to know when they give the order to fire.
That cancels out the worth of the test."
  "Yes, sir," the graceful woman said and had the
noise blanked before her own voice finished.
"Actually, it doesn't, Captain," a low
voice drummed from the upper deck at his
right. "The new shield technology's reception of
impact from any angle has no relation
to surprise." Kirk glanced up there. "But it has
a relation to me. Thank you, Mr. Spock." His
Vulcan first officer regarded him with those
unaccommodating dark eyes set in angles beneath
gunshot-black brows that were also angles. The face
of a thousand subtleties. Not grim exactly.
Earnest, with spice. He didn't look like
anybody else here, hovering above them with his helmet
of black hair and that blue uniform shirt the only
science entity on the bridge. Everybody else
wore the command old or the bright red of engineering--
No, that wasn't right. Kirk swiveled and glanced
to his left at Leonard McCoy. The doctor
was also in blue but wearing a short-sleeved,
tight-fitting, glossy medical smock. Well,
so he couldn't count his blues today. Or maybe
Spocck just wore it differently. McCoy was
looking down at him as though he could read his mind.
"Want another treatment, Jim?" the doctor
muttered, holding his voice down. No sense
blurting out to the bridge crew that their captain was under
the weather. Though no one said anything or even glanced
at him, Jim Kirk knew they had all
registered his reddened eyes, the glaze of fever on
his cheeks, his Academy-trim sandy hair now
sweat-drenched and flopping in his eyes, and the bulb of
swollen leg he tried to hide under the other boot.
That's what he got for going first into inclement
planetary conditions instead of letting some brawny
yeoman go first. "Not now," he said. "You can't
fight this off," McCoy insisted. "This is the bite
of a hairy thriLlkiller scorpion. Now, how do
you figure that animal got its name? This isn't a
hangover. You know what this means?"
  "Means it hurts."
  "Means it's seventeen times as toxic as the
bite of a king cobra and about forty times harder
to cure, and the victim had better cooperate with his
friendly dockside physician. What you're feeling
is inflammation of the joints. You should be convalescing."
  "I don't even like the sound of the word, Doctor.
I'm not that sick." McCoy waggled a writing
stylus at him. "Only because we live in these times.
That bug thinks he killed you. He'd be right if I
wasn't around."
  "The test first." His elbows were shaking. He drew
them closer to his ribs and tried to position himself
casually in the command chair. "Well, what's
keeping theme" the doctor beefed. Kirk pivoted
his chair back toward the main screen. "That's a good
question. Ship to ship."
  "Ship to ship, sir," U-hum echoed. "Kirk
to Exeter. Is there a delay?"
  "Newman here. No delay--we're just
coordinating our firing sequences." Kirk glanced
up at Spock for that flicker of tacit agreement
that was always there. Almost always. 2O
  Understood but I would suggest, gentlemen, that enemy
fire is rarely coordinated." Point taken, but,
we don't want to hit you with too much too fast. his
  "I wish you would." Hearing the crab in his voice,
he glanced at McCoy. His plundered leg throbbed.
"Field testing these warp-powered shields with starships
would be a waste of time if we didn't throw all we
had at them. Especially considering the next step."
  Since you're the man who's going to take that next
step," Douglas Newman responded, "we'll do
it your way. Prepare for random fire."
"Acknowledged. Kirk out. All right, everyone, this
is it. Let's not have anyone get carded away and
start returning
  A faint thump on the lower starboard deck beside
him drew his attention, and turning his head
displayed a sore neck that hadn't been sore a
minute ago. Captain, if I may"--Spock
appeared beside him, hands clasped behind him--
"respectfully suggest I relieve you for " the
duration of the warp-shield testing." His expression was
mild, or maybe Kirk just saw the mildness under the
severity of Spock's reputation. "Thank you,
Mr. Spock, but either I'm up on the bridge with a
bad leg and a fever, thinking about the tests, or I'm
in my quarters with a bad leg and a fever, still thinking
about the tests. Since I can't get away from it, I
might The fever took him by the brain and blurred the
screen before him. Fever? With one hand thrust out and
down, he kept himself from rolling. It was a phaser
hit. McCoy was picking him up. As he was stuffed
back into the command chair, Kirk noted with
gratitude that the doctor had the sense not to ask him
out loud if he was all right. "Friendly fire," he
grumbled, his eyes fixed upon the wide forward
screen. "Pardon, sir?" In front Of him,
Helmsman Sulu leaned toward him without really
turning. Kirk pressed his back against the warm
black leather of his chair. "Nothing, Lieutenant.
Present all shields to them in random sequence.
If there are any weak points in this
technology, I want them found right now."
  "Aye, sir. Executing-was Spock bent over
his panel's viewers and warned, "Second volley
incoming." "Brace yourselves," Kirk snapped. This
time he clung hard to his chair. The phosphorus
blue lights of twowthree--full-strength phaser
bolts bloomed from Exeter's outer hull, made a
true line to the Enterprise, struck their new
shields, and crackled around the ship. Dipping far
to port with the seizure of the hit, the ship fought against the
artificial gravity that was their unseen lifeline.
She righted herself almost immediately, compensators howling.
Kirk wiped his brow. "Good shields." The two
other ships veered off their positions on separate
angles, one sideways and one on the z-minus.
He suddenly envied their moves, the action of the
game. His job was to be the sitting duck and take the
hits. "Sulu, hard port, one-half
impulse." The helmsman's shoulders tucked a
fraction; the Enterprise moved. "What are we
doing, Jim?" McCoy asked quietly. "Might
as well make the lesson worthwhile on their
sides, too. Let them hit a moving target" The
other ships didn't hail them. They just responded.
There seemed to be an extra lilt to the
phasers crashing along Enterprise's shield
envelope now. "Mr. Nourredine, shield
status?" At the engineering subsystems monitor,
a gangly mideast-ern ensign said, "Mr.
Scott reports no drains and no sign of
overload whatsoever on the warp tie-in.
Space-time element seems to be working right along with
warp theory
  "Thank you. Uhura, notify Exeter and
Farragut that we're warping out. I want to see how
the tie-in works when there's a hyperlight drain on
the warp engines." Spock straightened and turned.
"That is not in the test program, sir." Kirk
looked up at him. Spock tipped his head.
"Logical." "Go to warp one."
  "Warp one, sir," Sulu responded. The
starship hummed around them, more a feeling than a sound,
and dipped gracefully through open space. Salvos
from the other two Starfleet vessels pounded against the
new-tech shielding at undiscussed angles,
causing the phasers to distort as they skittered across the
impact plane. Starfleet phasers at this
proximity were terrifying weapons and Kirk sensed his
crew's fears. No one knew better than
Starfleet people how exterminatory their own
weapons could be. It was easy under enemy fire
to believe those doing the shooting were insufficient or behind
the times, but today they were ordered to take a full-power
pounding from their own science and that was different. Big
different. Kirk indulged in a few glances
to measure the expressions of his bridge team. Of
all Starfleet, the twelve starships were supposed
to be the best, strongest, tightest operations in the
flying galaxy, by attrition their crews the best of
each profession. But the reputation, implied or
earned, didn't provide much armor at times like this.
He saw them bury their personal fears by keeping
their faces cool and blank. It was a dead
giveaway. Spock had more expression right now than
anybody else. So Kirk got up and hobbled
over there. "Report, Mr. S pock." The first
officer didn't turn this time. He responded
only by changing his posture as he gazed into his
readout screens. "Warp tie-in stable, forward
shielding unfazed... Midships and aft shielding
show fluctuations within the one one-thousandth percent
range, stabilizing now." He moved to another part
of the computer complex, summoned a readout with a fanning
touch, then said, "Hyperlight compensators show
nominal strain." Kirk leaned on the
bridge's circular red rail and turned.
"Engineering?"
  "Mr. Scott reports the strain is
negligible, sir," Nourredine said. "He'll have
numbers for you 'within five minutes."
  "I'm not waiting for it. Helm, reduce speed
to sublight. Advise Exeter and Farragut
to cease fire and regroup. All departments report
any changes to the first officer. Ladies and
gentlemen, prepare for stage two. Fifteen
minutes from now we'll know exactly how much these
shields can take. Assuming we survive."
  "A fifth-magnitude sun, one of the most
powerful natural forces in the galaxy. The
gravitation is strong enough to hold twenty planets the
size of Jupiter. Megatous of debris move
at extreme speed as they are drown inside. As
we pass near the blue giant, they will have to absorb
that intense gravity, ward off any solid
objects, plus deflect heavy X-ray
bombardment. The problem with conventional deflector
shielding is that overload can occur. These new
shields, powered through the warp engines, can dissipate
energy through space-time. Extreme gravity tends
to change the physical laws of space-time,
magnifying uncertainty in any equation. At this
point, physics will be based not on certainty, but
on probability. This will be the final step in the
test, the culmination of years of lab testing, field
testing on drones and modified cargo vessels.
We will be passing closer to a blue giant than
anyone ever has. If the warp shields can stand up
to this, we will consider them a success. Only a heavy
cruiser starship is powerful enough to engage the
phenomenon at this proximity with any hope of
survival."
  "Thank you, Mr. Spock. Is that clear,
gentlemen?"
  "Very clear, Captain Kirk"
  "As clear as a nonphysics major can soak
up, Jim. I'm glad you have Spock on your
side, since you're the ones going across that monster."
  "Appreciate that, Doug. It'll be good to know you
and Farragut are out there in case anything goes
wrong."
  "I hope we're completely useless, otherwise
we'll be here to record your extermination. And I
don't like that idea very much." Jim Kirk stuffed a
groan back down his throat and willed his swollen
foot to stop hurting. He won with the groan,
but the foot ignored him. He refused to let the
pain show on his face. On one of the monitors over
Spock's station, Newman looked a little older
than the last time they'd had contact, around the eyes
mostly, but that was forgivable. U.s.s. Exeter had
been supporting a line of defense on the Klingon
Neutral Zone almost singlehandedly for eighteen
months, and that was aggravating service. Not war, but a
very tense situation.
  On the other screen, Farragut's new captain
showed another kind of strain -- guilt, maybe--at
not being the ship to go into the big fire. Kirk knew that
little guilt, and he hated it. He'd volunteered
all his life for the dangerous missions just to avoid that
feeling, the sensation that he should've gone instead of
somebody else and didn't... and somebody else
died. McCoy was observing him. Kirk swiveled
the chair away from the doctor's ice-blue incising
eyes. "We're not betting on extermination," he
said, "so don't call up your ship's logs just
yet." On the port-side screens, both
captains smiled. "No, we won't," Newman
said. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."
  "No difference," Kirk told him. "My ears
are clogged up
  "Captain Kirk," Phillips said, "it's within
our mission schedule to give you time to recover from that
injury if you like."
  "And have you two tell headquarters that I let a
six-inch scorpion slow me down? Not on your
life."
  "It was nine inches," McCoy muttered.
"Captain," Sulu interrupted, "we're
approaching the vicinity of the blue giant."
  "All stop."
  "All stop, sir."
  "Adjust forward screens for safe visual.
All hands, yellow alert. Stand by, Captains."
He didn't wait for their responses before motioning
to Uhura to cut off the communications. He wanted
to sweat a little and wince a couple of times without their
seeing it. Both screens went blank. On a
third monitor, Exeter and Farragut wheeled
around to Enterprise's starboard bow and held
position. "Engage main screen to show us the blue
giant." Sulu Danced at his board just to make
sure the compensators were on line ,and he wasn't
about to blind what might be the finest bridge crew in
Starfleet, then activated the screen. "There it
is," the captain uttered. "Izell."
  "One of the brightest stars in the heavens," Spock
filled in. "Fifty-one thousand five hundred
times as powerful as Earth's sun. Its diameter is
roughly ten million kilometers." Before them, a
ball of neon blue-white energy, glowing with
mindless, unthinkable power, incapable of comprehending its
own beauty. Maybe that's the mark of nature,
Kirk thought. The line that divided man from everything
else--that we appreciate ourselves. With its center of
strontium-white and its electric-blue rim, the
star shined with such perfect violence that it created the
illusion of having another sun inside and the sensation that
they could hear it sizzle. A constant flow of
debris washing toward it from open space to disappear
inside the licks of blue fire. For a moment, the
captain and his crew were caught up by the meer dumb
triumph of the thing. No one said a word. They stood
at their posts and let it burn. For centuries
artists had struggled to convey the stunning presence of a
blue giant on everything from canvas to glass
to crystallized fabric. No one had done it.
Tourist agencies still ran shuttles of high-paying
sightseers out here, because there was nothing like the real thing.
coneaKirk cleared his throat. Adjust for
ultraviolet spectrum. Spock made
one of those barely there motions with one flmd, and the main
screen changed. Ultraviolet waves illowed
outward from the great mass, delineated in what
Ippeared to be beet red pulses. :::. "X
rays." Another change. Flowing pulses of green
to silver. :. "That's a sight to see," McCoy
murmured. "It's laughing at us. If we
explode during this test, we won't even register
:; that thing. It has the power to rip a neighboring star
to bits. "It probably has," Kirk muttered.
"That's all the debris
  , McCoy leaned on the command chair in a moment
of commonality. "It's even bigger than Rigel."
  "Yes," Spockk confirmed from up there, as if
anybody had asked . "I-Iwever, unlike
Riel, which supports fourteen 'VO-RLDS, ten
of which are habitable, Izell supports only
eight 'i Planets, none of which bears life or
has been colonized."
  "We wouldn't want to tamper with somebody's
sunshine," Kirk clipped, then tossed over his
shoulder, "Bones, be if you want to give me a
treatment, now's the time." . "You should come down
to sickbay for treatment," McCoy said. "You know
it's a thirteen-minute process."
  "It only takes thirteen minutes because you stop
to give me your mission philosophy every four
minutes. Just get me through the next ten, and all this
will be over." ylus down on the command chair's arm ,
and wrestled in his medipack for a hypo. Obviously
he " hadn't o win this one and had come prepared.
"Hold still." He pressed the hypo to the inside of
Kirk's elbow. . The captain held his breath.
Shots didn't usually hurt, but -- this one burned
gooing in and kept burning all the way up his arm and
into his neck. At least it distracted him from his
throbbing foot and its unhappy ankle. "That'll
hold the fever and infection down for about forty
to minutes," the doctor said. "Enough for you to get us
in real
  trouble." He pointed at the captain's glazed
face, then at the turbolift door. "You,
sickbay. As soon as this test is over." Kirk
felt his mouth pull into a grin. "Understood. Now
for the hard part." He shifted again and eyed the figure
hovering over them on the upper deck. "Mr.
Spock."
  "Captain?" "Come down here, please." Spock
moved to the captain's side but stayed a step farther
back than usual. His patinaed features
were strained. Ignoring McCoy's silent
curiosity and what the third presence might cost
Spock, the captain lowered his voice. "All
right... what is it?" The Vulcan hesitated,
glanced at McCoy, then drew his slashed brows
together. "I beg your pardon?"
  "Whatever's bothering you." Spock looked as if
he'd been blsided. "Sir..."
  "You haven't slept in six days," Kirk said.
"You've downloaded all the information available about this
test and run it again and again in your quarters. Yes--
I know you're thorough, but seems to me you're also
uncertain about this. I assume you've found nothing
wrong with the tests up until now, because you haven't
stopped us. As science officer, that's your
prerogative, but you haven't done it. But everything
you've said is laced with... let's call it
suspicion. So there must be something else."
Resistance plied Spock's face. He went from
one foot to the other, put his hands behind his back again,
and spoke with particular deliberation. His voice was
low, almost gravelly. "There is always a frontier
of science," he began, "especially in physics,
which can only be understood through experience. Very often the
experience does not match the theory.
Extreme gravity and intense energy conditions
change our equations by changing space-time around us.
The more elements thrown in, the more unknowns, and the more the
equation may distort."
  "Are you objecting to the test?" By asking, Kirk
gave him the option to get them out of this, just as
McCoy could supersede the captain on medical
grounds--and looked like e might any minute. ::
Spock paused, seemed almost to be considering that, then
made a decision he wasn't happy with. "I have
no basis on which to object. There are certain
assumptions dealing with "disuantum probability
matrices, but while a 'guess" will ""lccasionally
be correct and may even allow a shortcut, it
con.nzill more often provide the reverse. I prefer
a system of thought." , "In other words," Kirk
added, "you think that in the long run we're better off
with the facts in hand?" McCoy leaned forward. "You
won't admit you've just got a hunch, will you,
Spock?"
  Spock looked at him as though the question were serious.
"I cannot countervail the test based on unease,"
he said. .
  Now he looked down at Kirk, and his eyes
turned decidedly rmpathetic. "Unless, of
course, your unease, Captain."
  "Thank you," Kirk told him, "but I've already
decided to ride it out. After this is all over, I can
put my leg up and read -- a good book without
preoccupation." . "Usually," McCoy needled,
"it's you, Mr. Spock, with that hybrid
physiology of yours that's so susceptible to xotic
bugs." :: He waited for the smart response, the
cutting comeback, the intellectual razz--usually
the best show on the ship--but seconds ticked by,
and... "Yes," Spock said. "Excuse me,
gentlemen." They watched him go. He didn't
look back at them but reached for his computer consoles
with both hands and sank atinst the units, eyes fixed
on the readouts, one knee bent conalinst the bulkhead
as though to push events his way. .mcCoy continued
to watch Spock as the first officer fine-tuned the
ship's computers. "Well," he sighed, "I
guess verybody's entitled to a little forbearance now and
then."
  "He'll trust my hunches," Kirk pondered,
"but not his
  The doctor came forward and leaned closer. "Should
we lastpone the blue giant?" No "matter the
doctor's low voice, no matter the
distracting and horrific beauty of the great star showing
its spectra like a dance hall girl flashing her
petticoats before them, the words somehow carried.
Kirk sensed the attention of the crew around him, though
no one looked at him. They didn't have to. But
they were listening. "This is our job," he spoke in
measured tones. "We're explorers, but not only
of the concrete area of open space. We're also a
tool for the most hair-brained plots of Federation
science. It's our job to run these gauntlets,
to court disaster on purpose. To be rash with
dignity."
  "We're plucky," McCoy chimed. "Willing
to prove we're red-blooded... Oh, sorry,
Spock. Red and green."
  "I should be writing this down," Uhura droned.
McCoy cast her a look. "This is how
Zephram Cochrane stumbled onto the space
warp. While looking for something else."
  "Which he never found," Sulu added. "I don't
think he missed it any." Kirk pushed out of his
chair and with his tone brought them back to the task of the
moment. "Mr. Sulu, plot us a course across the
equatorial region. Feed the engine control
directly into the navigational computers.
Plot three alternative elliptical courses
and two more courses directly away from the blue
giant at thirty-degree angles."
  "Aye, Captain," Chekov said just as Sulu
said, "Aye, sir." Kirk tapped his chair's
communication panel. "Bridge to engineering." A
few seconds ticked by. That told him they were
busy down there, and the engineers and assistants had
been told not to answer the bridge hails themselves, but
to leave that to the chief engineer. "Scott here, sir.
"A solid voice. That Caledonian
know-what-I'm-doing rumble. "Mr. Scott,
we're putting as much on automatic as possible
on the bridge, and I want you to do the same."
'greed, sir."
  "We're plotting two angled courses away from
the blue s tar in case we get in trouble.
Coordinate your engines to trigger with those
navigational lines and give us a surge of power in
order to break out of the gravitational pull."
  "Makes good sense, sir. I'll feed it through
to the bridge within two minutes."
  "Acknowledged. Sulu, make sure the forward
screen is adjusted to go black if the light
becomes too intense for us to tolerate and still
do our jobs. We're going to get... rather busy.
  He slid the thigh of his good leg onto the black
mat of his chair but didn't settle too deeply.
Moving only his eyes, he communicated wordlessly with
Spock on the upper deck, then fixed his attentions
forward. "Let's march up the cannon's mouth.
Warp factor two."
  "Warp factor two, sir," Sulu echoed. As
the ship turned into the face of Izell and jockeyed
for position to run across the dangerous belt, Kirk
heard the echo of his own words and clung to them for all
they were worth. This was part of their job. To be
daunfiess in the face of nonenemies as much as
enemies. To die, if necessary, for a test. To follow
orders so others could call them valiant.
Chivalry? Not exactly. The screen went
dimmer, though the blue giant burned nearly white
as they turned toward it. They vectored across its
equatorial region on a great arch that closed
kilometer by kilometer. Energy and gravity yanked
at them and tried to push them away at the same time.
The ship began to shudder as the new shields channeled
all that energy through the warp effect and dispersed it
into space-time like the flickering of candles in an
infinity mirror. Readouts started to change
so fast that the crew couldn't follow them. Dizziness
washed over Kirk's body and fogged his mind.
Maybe he should've taken that treatment. Then he
looked up and saw McCoy sway, and Nourredine
at the station above had his eyes closed and was shaking his
head. McCoy's stylus slid off the command
chair's arm. Kirk looked down at it, and his
gaze locked there. Suddenly he couldn't move his
neck, couldn't look up again. He spread his
fingers, leaned on the chair, and reached for the stylus.
In the middle of all this, why was he reaching for a
writing implement? Leave it on the carpet-- Two
frames of mind collided in his head. One said they
were fine, hadn't even started the test yet. The other
pushed forward into his imagination--they'd started the test
and were skimming the vast blue equator. But that was
real. Wasn't it? He straightened his back,
tried to move his neck so he could look at the main
screen. The stylus held his attention. He wanted
to look at the main screen, but his neck still wouldn't
move. Had the scorpion bite won out? McCoy
said something about joints freezing up-- Kirk
swallowed a couple of times to see if he had
control over his muscles. He pushed a groan up
through his throat to check on his voice. Still
something there, but all he could do was look at the stylus
as it lay there on the command chair's arln. It tipped
over the edge of the chair arm and fell again. Again...
again. Kirk tried to turn his head, but he might as
well have been sculpted from granite. Unhinging his
jaw was like manipulating iron. "Spock! Time...
warp!"
  

Chapter 1
  "LAUNCH MUST BE DONE from the highest
ground. We must keep them moving."
  "You do your science. I will keep them moving," The
spikers had eaten, so they were still lazy. The key was
to get them to work just when they were getting a little hungry
again but before they lost their minds. Rusa had said that
three times already. "I'll keep them moving." But
Oya was plagued with doubts and tensions. This
place... they could lose their minds here. Such a
different place from where they had begun, yet somehow just
a step away. Midheight mountains, continental
fragmentation, heavy plant life, at least two
major continents separated by a seaway. Much
animal migration going on. Very hot air. Super
tropics dripping with moisture and life. High
sea level. Warm saline water carrying less
oxygen than cold water, deep, sluggish,
oxygen-starved ocean basins. If only there were time
to study But there would be. There would be. This was spiker
paradise. In a few days, they would all be able
to pour themselves into this land and live here without effort.
Paradise. No more rocks, no more ruins. They had
come through the doorway and the galaxy would be theirs. If
only the spikers could be kept from losing their minds
before that. Rusa would keep control of them. Oya
pushed herself onward through the lush vegetation, demanding of
herself that she ignore most of what she saw around her
and that she only glance from time to time at the sensor
equipment on her harness. There would be time. All her
life.
  Heavy scents of animals swarmed around the team
as they hauled carts overladen with equipment. They
had brought everything with them when they stepped throughm
launchers, backup launchers, firing mechanisms
and sequencers, computers and sensors, mapping
equipment, nutrient rations to keep the spikers from
hunting, antenna grid, guidance system, beam
emitter, loading plate, crystal housings,
particle accelerator, focusing shell, arming
console, intermix chamberm
  "Teehnieist! Are you thinking again, or are you
walking? You're falling behind."
  Oya was shaken brusquely from running her roster
of equipment for the tenth time. The spikers and leaders
could keep up a pace without strain, but for her to keep
that pace required concentration.
  "Yes," she mumbled to herself, "I'm walking."
  Heavy air. Wet. A smell of life. The
taste of it rolled on a thrifty breeze. With every
step, the spikers grew hungrier. Already the males
were snapping at insects, from time to time getting one.
Every few minutes a domed head would lash out to the
side or even directly behind, long muzzle leading
outward, snaggled teeth clashing, and each time a
tail went whipping out or up to compensate. They
wanted to stop, setup the equipment here, and be done
with it. Each time they growled and paused, Oya would have
to insist for higher ground, fewer trees.
  Before her, Rusa and a couple other female
leaders trod through the bushes, then the line of young
spikers struggled on, some trailing a loaded rig,
and in front of them two more females. Their heads
shifted fore and aft with each stride, arms folded
tight against their chests, hands hanging limp at rest.
Their legs were doing all the work today.
  Here, in this uncivilized place, there was room
to stride and stretch, a relief from the ordeal
of getting here. 'Space
  travel had always been uneasy because of their
bodies" wide turning radius. Some career
spacefarers, what few there were, had their tails
amputated for that reason but inevitably paid for it in
loss of balance.
  Not a bad place. Hot, wet, overgrown,
volcanic. Frogs, lizards, salamanders, were
everywhere. The spikers were snapping up a few of those
here and there, too.
  There would be plenty of food here after the mission.
They could survive on fleshy animals, on fish,
shellfish, insects, planktonmany other treats this
environment could provide the healthy carnivore.
There were plenty of hot-bodied animals. Smells
of them, in life, in death, were everywhere. Plants could
be spices and flavorings, but food was best
fresh-dead and still warm.
  Something came out of the sky and flapped down to whack
across the line of spikers and sent them all snapping and
hissing, but the creature swirled back into the sky
even before Oya could get a good look at it.
Small, fast, and apparently curious. If it
tried to strafe them again, its curiosity would make it
lunch. With luck, only one spiker would
catch it. If two got a grip on it at the
same time, there would be a fight.
  That would take time. Oya sighed in aggravation and
admitted to herself that she wasn't sure enough of her
calculations. How much time would they really need to set
up the launcher? Would the automatic targeters work?
She either had a few minutes or a million
years, and only her mind, her wild calculations that
couldn't be put together on any machine held her
accountable for today's success and the future's wonder.
  Suddenly two of the spikers dodged to one side,
both snapping at the bushes. Leaves rattled, and
before Oya could see what was happening, a shapeless
piece of bloody flesh spun through the air and
slapped her in the eye ridge. Had they attacked
each other?
  "What happened! What is it?" she demanded.
An aroma of raw meat and red blood swelled her
nostrils as she pawed strings of ripped-up muscle
off her face.
  Rusa whirled toward the attraction, smacking the
young males out of the way, forcing them to stay in line.
"What is it?" Oya asked again. Pausing and
looking downward at the base of a spikey plant with
one lonely flower, Rusa said,
"Carrion." Desperate, Oya raised her head.
"Don't let them eat!" Too late. Three of the
spikers were already picking at the carrion around
Rusa's massive legs. Their eyes began
to glaze as they licked, gulped, and forgot their
purlx. "This is new kill. Whatever did it,"
Rusa said, raising her own head to look down into the
valley, "is still nearby."
  "Let's hunt them," one of the female leaders
said. "No time!" Oya protested. Rusa
swiveled her head to look at her. "You don't know
that. We could have a thousand years." Oya shook her
head. "This is how we lose chances."
  "No," Rusa said. "This is how I keep
loyalty. There's no harm in letting them hunt.
If they turn on me in a bloodlust, there'It be
no leader to push them forward, and your mission will be
over. They'll give up and satisfy themselves with
gorging and sleeping. Then where will you be?"
  "In a few days, that will be all they have to do
forever," Oya grumbled. "Why can't the males think
beyond instinct?"
  "They're good at what they do. Mind your
business." Despite the contempt her species
often held for tech-nicists, thinkers,
designers, Oya realized the faith that had been
put in her to devote an entire field team to her
theo13t and for Rusa and the others to donate their
lives to cause. No matter how they leered at her
or bit off attempts to explain, they had all
given themselves up. They would live out their lives here.
The divine superiority would be the Clan's, as those
who had borne them to their planet first had always
intended. Until now, they had failed to achieve their
foreordination. Until today, there had been nothing but
stalled prosperity for them, for they were contained by their
lessers. Today, at last, they had a future.
  An animal roared in the distance--a large one--a
sound like metal grazing against gravel. A twinge of
apprehension rattled through Oya's chest. The rest of
their lives, here... Eventually their food would run
out, their equipment would break down, and they would sustain
themselves on the abundance of life here, unless the
abundance decided to prey upon them. She shuddered from
harness to footpads. The Clan had been called
primitive by many in the settled galaxy, called
unevolved, underevolved, even devolved. She and
her kind knew it wasn't true. No matter the
likeness between Clan and creatures in the distant
past, no matter what the others thought, the
Federationers, the Klingons, the Romulans--the
Clan knew who they were. From now on, everyone
else would, too. Oh, she dreamed! She let her
thoughts roll with the scent of blood. She dreamed of
knowing what would happen, of seeing all the wondrous
revelations that would occur--the magnificent
accomplishments, conquests, superiority that would
release upon the Clan after today. Such a future!
At last, at last. "Look!" One of the spikers
raised his long hand and pointed. "There they are!" In
a shallow valley to their left, a rustling in the
leaves rippled through wide-leaved undergrowth and all
at once they saw a half-dozen small faces.
For a..moment Oya thought they were looking at a
flock of birds, but the faces were leathery and
greenish brown, eyes-forward and toothy. "What are
they?" one of the other females said. Her name was
Aur, and she didn't talk much. There was a shudder
in her voice. "I know what they are," Oya said.
Rusa swung around, her tail echoing the movement of
her head with less than grace. "Then what?"
  "Flocking predaters. In books, I've seen
fossils of them."
  "Let's take them on!" a spiker gushed,
hunger in his eyes. "We can make them
fight us." The others bobbed their heads and gargled a
cheer. Oya pushed forward. "Rusa, Aur, I'm
begging you." "Spikers need sport as much as they
need food," Aur said. Without waiting for the
females to argue among themselves, the spikers shed their
harnesses. Moments ago they had been sluggish and
exhausted, but they suddenly discovered an energy
reserve. The taste of blood and meat had done that
to them. "Half of you go," Rusa said. "Front of the
line, stay here." The front spikers howled and
argued. Rusa waved them down and they complied,
rumbling with dissatisfaction. Even as females
went, Rusa was large and had a mastering nature.
In seconds the spikers were down to bare skin and
crowding the edge of the incline. "No, Rusa, this is
bad!" Oya shook her long, narrow hand in the air.
"Those are advanced predators. This isn't a game
to them! Don't you see what they are?"
  "Animals." Rusa shook her heavy head.
"Mind your science. The rest of you, go. Bring meat
back, and we will not stop again until we find the
ptace to set up the launcher." Half the line of
young males rushed over the edge of the incline and
scrambled down toward the valley. They had worked for
months on this project, traveled weeks
in space, willingly given up their place in
society and sacrificed their futures for this, and now
they wanted only to play. Ten spikers shuffled in
a rush down the incline, their broad backs warmed
by the envy of those left behind. The others folded their
heavy legs, settled forward upon their resting bones,
retracted their arms, and lined up to watch. In the
bushes below, a flurry of heels and tails
answered the spikers' rush. Whistles and squeals of
effort chased them like the attention of wild admirers.
The spikers rattled through the brush, teasing,
snapping, stomping, and breaking as many branches as they
jumped over, making loud noise to attract the quick
little predators. When they reached the bottom of the
valley, they turned abruptly to the right and pounded
toward open ground. The small predators launched
into broad pursuit, as though they too thought they had
fallen on playtime. But there was a ferocity about their
play. Their necks were extended fully out, their
teeth gritted and leathery lips pulled back,
eyes wide beneath bony protective plates,
forearms reaching and long claws touching at the air before
them. They had crescent-shaped claws on their feet
also, held back as they ran, but theirs were much larger
in comparison to their body weight than the
spikers', and the sight of the claws clacking against
rock gave Oya the shiver of the lame. They would've
been on her by now. They would've torn her to pieces
by now. "Rusa," she said tensely, "get the
spikers back."
  "It's a game, Oya." "No, it's not."
Below, the running spikers divided into two groups and
drew the predators into division also. But they failed
to confuse the smaller ones. Several Clan males
glanced behind, expecting to be gaining range, yet
gaining none. The predators hadn't so much as
paused. They separated in almost perfect
symmetry, dividing like a leaf torn in half by the
wind. The spikers gargled a reaction and ran
faster, enticing the predators into the open. "At
least," Oya began again, "draw your weapons."
  "On lizards?" Rusa spat. "Primeval."
Oya pushed sideways past other hungry spikers
chomping as they watched and made her way to Rusa.
She lashed out toward the valley with one specifying
finger. "Those are not lizards! Those are
warm-bloods! Intelligent! Look at the resting
bones! Look at the position of their eyes! How
their brains are set upon their necks--Rusa, take
your weapons out!"
  "It's a game. They're animals. The divine
nature of the Clan is to dominate. Sit on your
bone, relax, and watch." It was Clan nature
to feast on the vanquished, to waste time eating the
conquered. This was part of the strong instinct that had slowed
them down scientifically and let others take control
of the galaxy. The Clan were good hunters, the top
of the food pyramid on their planet, and had to force
themselves to use intellect. Once bellies were
full, they would fall behind.
  Oya was a thinker and most of her life had lived
with the stigma of that. The Clan could be more brilliant,
pound for pound, than Terrans or Romulans or
Orions or anyone else, but instinct had always
overwhelmed them. Most of their science had been
borrowed, kept alive by types such as her, the lower
caste, the necessary evils. The most admired were the ones
with blood-cunning. The superior eat.
  Since she had never been able to compete
physically, Oya had developed her mind. She
had studied societies that developed faster,
discovered that not every other living thing was only food. The
deities had put her people on their planet to be the
top eaters, and as such they had never been eaten.
  They had never been able to find a genetic
link between themvs'and their own planet. They had been
put on their planet without ancestors. They were the
children of a higher purpose.
  But when they first ventured out into the galaxy to conquer
there too, they'd been driven back, held away from
their purpose, their destiny as the chosen ones left
unfulfilled.
  Held back for generation after generation by the Federation.
By the humans. Humans... who tasted the same as
the little scurrying, crawling animals on the Clan
planet.
  A flush of humiliation made Oya's skin
ripple. It was the same flush that had driven her
to conceive this plan, to go before the leaders, explain, then
explain again, then wait until after lunch, then
explain again.
  These young spikers were just right for this. They'd been
chosen from among the hatchlings five years ago and
raised to be here today. The strongest legs, the leanest
bodies, not too bigtjust right for space travel,
then long hikes through jungle, wilderness, or this
hot, crunchy land.
  Only she herself, Oya knew, was not up to this. But
she was the one who had disthought of it. Yet, as she
watched the spikers rushing through the bushes
  below, she still felt the tug to be one of the
hunter-chasers, one of those who always had enough to eat.
  Around her, the nine remaining spikers were foaming
at the teeth and quaking with excitement. Would Rusa
be able to hold them back? They wanted their turn.
  She screwed her eyes shut. She would never have
her chance. Forever she would rely on the scraps
tossed by others.
  The carrion was making her wild! She glanced at
it and at Rusa standing guard over it.
  Oya settled down on her bone and pressed her
chest forward almost to the ground. Cold anticipation
crawled through her body until she shivered in
spasms.
  The predators were anxious to get to the open area.
The spikers let themselves be driven forward, whisthng
with the rapture of the game. In a moment they would turn
on their pursuers and attack.
  The bushes fell away and the running spikers
came out into the bowl of the valley, an area with
scrubby growth where sand was kicked up in great puffs
by pounding feet and slashing claws.
  "Rusal" Oya shouted, vaulting to her feet.
"They're being eaten! Rusa, go after them!"
  Even in the early tribal wars, before the
planet squared away against the galaxy, they never
ate each other. They
  even burned their enemy's dead. None shall be
devoured. "Rusa!"
  But Rusa was staring, too, entranced by a spray of
blood and slashed skin rising out of the dust cloud.
"Weapons out!" she shouted. "Go down! Weapons
out!"
  The shocked males here on the ridge looked at
each other, at Rusa, at the valley--they
didn't understand. Below, the dust began to spread,
to flatten against the land, giving rise to the heads and
thrashing tails of the spikers.
  Bloody heads, shredded tails. The scene
opened to view, parting in a dozen places as a flower
opens and releases its scent, but this flower was
blackened, soured. From before them and from the sides, the
spikers had been corralled by more than twenty
predators--twenty more. Chased to
  haustion by a fleet they thought they were leading, the young
males were trapped in a flurry of coordinated
attacks. Every few seconds, one of them reared from
the dust cloud, skin shorn and punctured, throats
slashed, and they were drowning in the dust.
  Paralyzed, Oya gasped at what she
saw, her mouth open. Dust collected on her
tongue and the rows of her teeth.
  Rusa fired wildly across the valley, sending a
stream of energy spiraling over the scene of carnage
below, serving only to scatter a few of the predators.
Almost instantly they realized they weren't hurt and
whirled around to leap upon the panicked spikers again.
The attack was brutally coordinated, quick. There was
nothing of the arbitrary here, nothing of individual
animals seeing to themselves. This was teamwork, and that took
intelligence.
  The spikers were falling to their knees, each covered
with five or six small slashers whose
crescent-shaped hind claws sliced between the
spikers' ribs, creating lacerations like gills that
wheezed precious breath out. The spikers were going
down on their forearms like puppets whose strings were being
cut.
  "Go! Go!" Rusa roared, slamming her fists
upon the backs of the spikers around her. Each time she
struck, one of the young males came to his senses,
brandished his weapon, and rushed down the hill into comthe
flurry of whipping tails and archirig spines.
  When five were gone, Rusa held back the rest.
"Use your weapons!" she called to the fresh
team. "Fire! Fire!"
  Two of the young ones skidded to enough balance to use
their weapons. Spirals of energy blurted into the
slaughter, blasting the small predators away from
their prey, but not enough.
  "Look?" Oya shouted. "Morel"
  Out of the bushes, ten, twenty, twenty-five more
predators came flooding at the fresh spikers,
some only to be slaughtered in the beams of the weapons.
But even the fresh males couldn't move fast enough
to take down so many organized attackers. The
energy weapons whined and spat. Flesh blew away.
Shattered bones flew off and dug furrows in the
sand.
  The dust cloud rose again. Weapons clunked to the
ground, spent, useless. Others fired with blunt,
spitting deliberation.
  Gradually the slashers gave up and scrambled for the
cover of heavy overgrowth. The spikers gained
control over the site.
  "Come back! Hurry!" Rusa waved her
weapon over her head to break the trance of the shocked
youngsters below. "Leave them and hurry back here!"
  The confused, horrified spikers scrambled up'the
hill, flushed with panic as they turned their
backs on the bushes below and were wheezing when they reached
Rusa and huddled behind her, peeking out at the valley
floor.
  Within moments, the bushes rattled again. The gaggle
of slashers nosed their way out, eyeing the top of the
ridge, and made their way to the site of the slaughter.
  And they began to feed casually upon the twitching
bodies of the dying youngsters.
  Shivering with violent energy, heart pounding and mind
aflame, Oya reached across the backs of two
spikers, nearly climbing them as she did--and she
might have pierced skin herself had she not realized at the
last instant what she was doing--and managed to snatch
Rusa's weapon out of its holster.
  "We can't let it happen!"
  A blunt force cracked across her face. The
impact rolled down her long neck into her shoulders
and sent her stagger
  "It's done," Rusa raged dreadfully, her
voice sibillating, "It's over. We'll lose
even more if we try to save them. Spikers, in
linerain line! Harnesses on! Double the rigs; discard
the camp equipment. Take only the science gear;,
stop looking over the edge! Do your jobs! Aur!
Take the lead! Oya, stop looking down
there. We'll go to your high ground now."
  Here on the ridge, dumb with shock at what they
saw below, the terrorized spikers slowly gathered their
harnesses and doubled their loads, slipped into the hauling
yokes, and took on the duties of those who had gone
off in sport and ended up cut to pieces. Rusa,
Aur, and the other females
  goaded them forward, anxious to get out of here before
those fast devils below decided to climb the ridge.
They weren't used to this. None remembered any age
in which Clan had been overtaken by predators. They
had always been the toughest on their planet. Now
what? Even with weaponsmwhat? How long could their
weapons last? History had just changed below them.
No paradise. For the first time in their history,
Clan were being eaten. Legs shaking like winter
twigs, heart shattering in her comchest, Oya rested
downward and lay her extended hands upon the ground,
wracked with hate for what they were being forced to do. This was
a decision she knew was beyond her. She would have
committed every last spiker, every last leader, until
all were shredded by those smart killers below. They would
all be dead. The mission would be over. The future
would be set. Rusa was right, Oya took her place
at the rear of the line, eyeing the guard at her
side, who was eyeing the feasting predators below.
Ahead, the familiar shuffle of doubled rigs full
of equipment began again as if nothing had happened.
Limping forward, she stepped over discarded equipment
that now was too much for the shrunken team "to haul. She
scooped up one of the rig yokes and drew it over
her own head. As she pushed forward, her head hung
low and her feet moved to the cadence of spurting
blood below.
  

Chapter 2
  Jim Kirk heard the ship's emergency-disengage
switches trying to cross over from the new shields
to the old ones, but the switch wouldn't complete. He
kept trying to reach for them, to help or confirm the
override, but the movement kept repeating. Yet he
was aware of doing it. Each movement wasn't
entirely new. He felt each occur, then
recur. His hand hovered over the stylus again, down
there on the carpet next to McCoy's black
boot. McCoy was trying to move. Kirk sensed the
attempt but couldn't look. The doctor's hand
passed in front of him, and for an instant there was a
hint of touch on his arm, then things changed again.
Lights from separated spectral bands passed across
the carpet and McCoy's leg and what
Kirk could see of his own nose as he looked down.
The reflection off his own cheekbones nearly blinded
him. For a moment he saw the main screen as though he
were still standing straighttthe first few seconds of passing
across the blue giant. Then he was looking down again,
but no sense of movement lashed the perceptions together.
The stylus tipped and fell again. His innards pu as
he realized what was happening. Some slices of time
were caught like eddies on the banks of a rocky
river, but others were moving forward, and the moving ones were
hiring the stalled ones. Now that he knew what was
happening why was it? As human beings they had trouble
accepting hopelessness, the concept that their lives might
be unsalvageable, their ship irrecoverable. They'd
cheated death so many times, maybe they didn't
believe they could be killed. Maybe they wouldn't work
hard enough against the confusion and repeats of the immediate moments.
He'd have to talk to the crew about that. He squeezed
his eyes. These thoughts weren't threading together right. This
wasn't the time to get philosophical. They had
to get away, gain space. The engines howled louder
now, fighting for the ship's life, shutting down system
after system and stealing the power, demanding of her own
guts that she not be sucked past the point of no
return. She'd rip herself inside out
to keep that from happening. Kirk sank all his hopes
into that one chance--the ship. She had no perceptions
to confuse, no vision or hearing to be distorted, and
didn't care how many times she noted the same thing
happening She'd fight the scrolling events again and
again until she escaped or was
  He would have to talk to the crew about that. Talk about
that. The stylus fell again. This time McCoy stumbled
and landed on top of it. Kirk reached out to catch him
but only brushed his knuckles against the doctor's
bare arm before things started to change again. Talk to the
crewu The ship bellowed so loudly he thought his
eardrums would burst. Again he looked uptand this time
his neck moved Vermilion lights damned his every
motion. Spock was crossing the upper deck,
plunging toward the stabilizer monitors. The
urgency of his plunge was offset by Kirk's damning
knowledge that there was almost nothing they could do. Everything was up
to the ship now, and her ability to override each
surge of time within microseconds. That was the only
way ground could be gained. They were down to measuring their
movements in half-centimeters, and only the ship
could count those as progress. What felt like
recurrence to him might be progress to the ship. That
goddamned mightmhe hated it. How many
times had he clung to it? He'd have to talk to the
crew. Suddenly he fell on one hand and a knee
on top of McCoy. With the other hand he caught the
bridge rail. The howling of the ship changed. The
engines picked up a roar of confidence and the ship
tilted to starboard, enough to throw everyone sideways. The
peal of red alert knelled against the braying of hull
strain and engine's bull roaring. The sounds started
pulsating in his head.
  Spock's voice. Kirk turned. Turned
again. And again. Finally he saw Spock in his
periphery and managed to keep him there. "Accretion
disk!" Spock called, forcing every syllable.
"Accretion... disk!" The tone told Kirk that his
first officer wasn't having time glitch his words
into repetitions. He had said it twice on
purpose. Forcing his neck to twist until his
muscles felt twice their length, Kirk pulled
toward the forward screem The composition of Izell
had changed. A ten million-kilometer-diameter
blue giant star... had changed Great arms of
pearly fire had been blown off the star in blue and
white streaks and were being sucked into what appeared to be
a swirling disk in space. The only definition
of the disk was the matter and energy it yanked
off the star by the megaton, but this was nothing like watching the
natural beauty of a nebula or a swirling
cluster. This was pure violence. The star was being
pulled apart before their eyes--by something that hadn't been
there a few seconds ago. Nourredine crawled
forward on the bridge rail and gasped,
"ImpossibleI"
  "Source, Spocld" Kirk shouted. His tongue
felt like a wad of glue. "A black hole?"
Spock managed to shake his head once, very
deliberately. "No source of collapsed mass
--"
  "Then what is it?" What he was really asking
was, How do I fight it? And Spock knew that.
Whatever it was, even if they couldn't find it, the
force was behaving something like a black hole, except
that there wasn't any black hole. How could there be
enough gravitational force to form an accretion disk without
a black hole?
  "Impossiblemimpossiblemimpossible!" The young
engineer crawled forward twice more, three times, then
recoiled from what was happening to him and shoved himself
aft wward his post, shocked by the repetition.
"Captain!" Spock had miraculously moved from
his station to the steps between the upper and lower
bridge deck. and was hanging on to the rail.
"Speed of light--- gravity..."
  Kirk pulled toward him. "Say it again,
Spock!"
  "Gravity reacts at the speed of light," the
Vulcan struggled. "If we turn into it at high
warp--" Kirk cranked around. "Sulu, comply!"
he called, speaking fast, determined not to let time
repeat itself before he could save his ship. "Turn
into it, emergency warp factor nine!" The order
didn't make sense: turn into the accretion disk
instead of angling away? Head into it just as those streams
of crackling blue fire were doing? Would Sulu
believe him? Or think it was more distortion and do what
he was trained to do? Summoning his will muscle
by muscle, a finger, a joint at a time, Kirk
shifted one hand to Sulu's chair and dragged himself
toward the helm. He went through the motion twice but
got there. Sulu's eggshell complexion had gone
to white shellac. His hands spread over his controls
as he tried to pinch the ship harder starboard. He
knew what Kirk was thinking, but his hands kept
repeating the motion. "Setting automatic--engaging
high warp--" On the screen before them, the accretion
disk's fabulous gravitation yanked off
solar flares the size of entire solar systems,
cutting into the Izell's surface and peeling off
strands of steely fire as if that was easy. "Keep
doing it," Kirk choked. "Keep doing it... do it
again--"
  "Aye, sir," Sulu rasped. "Aye, sir,
sir, sir, aye sirw"
  "Push your... velocity."
  "Warp seven, sir,... warp eight...
nine..." Kirk pulled back toward Chekov. The
young navigator's eyes were fixed on the forward
screen and he was working his controls by feel, resisting
the urge to use one of those preprogrammed escape
angles. He had been asked by his leaders to do the
insane, and that's what he was doing. His face was
screwed into a grimace. At this point physics
is based not on certainty, but on probability.
"Work at it," Kirk uttered not too loud, or they
might try to glance at him, and that could be fatal.
They might spend their last moments glancing over and
over again instead of pinching the ship out of this mess. The
Enterprise clung to her reputation. Strong and
determined, able to take those body blows with dispassion,
she shot toward the accretion disk even as it ripped
the giant star's gorgeous inferno off like a
cheap wig. A maneuver like this could peel the hull and
melt the structural members. She howled as she
climbed successive tiers of compensation. Now that
she'd gotten her orders straight, she was
scrambling to obey, slamming forward into the intense
gravitational field at immeasurable speed.
Caught on the side of a slippery hill, she
scratched and bit her way toward her master's
voice. "Come on," Kirk murmured. "Come
on." All at once, time snapped. Jim Kirk
swore he heard the craclc Suddenly the star was behind
them and they were plunging through open space. A sharp
mechanical howl pumped up from the engineer-big
bulkheads on the port side, then dropped off.
With it went the pulling sensation holding them all down.
Kirk stumbled--his weight was suddenly cut
by nine-tenths.. He caught himself on the command chair
and shouted, "Shipwide compensation! Safe distance,
Sulu!" The helmsman only managed a nod, but
it was the right kind of nod and freed Kirk to turn his
back on the helm. At engineering, Nourredine was
crawling along the bulkhead, pulling himself toward the
controls. Engineer Scott would be doing the hard work
many decks below. "Minimum safe distance,
Captain!" Chekov gasped.
  "All stop! Stabilize!" Ten seconds
later, the red alert's hunting-horn bawl was all
that was left of the screams of near death. Breathing like
an old man, Kirk hobbled up to the engineering
subsystems on the upper deck and helped the
lieutenant bring down the top ends of his readouts.
Gradually the starship settled down around them, though
twice as many lights were flashing as usual as the
root system of mechanics throughout the ship clamored
for attention, each fiber seeing itself as the most
important. Around him, Kirk's crew was gasping
and groaning. Luckily, Sulu had let the ship
coast on impulse past the minimum safe line and
into a better zone of stability, and Chekov had
kept them from piling into any debris on its way to a
close encounter with that blue monster back there. "Good
work, both of you," he tossed off as he reached down
for McCoy. "Bones?"
  "Fine, no problem," the doctor coughed. "Just a
minor broken neck..."
  "Damage control." Sluggish, Uhura nodded.
"Aye, sir damage control parties, this is the
bridge..."
  Stumbling past McCoy and favoring his bad
foot, Kirk used both hands to drag himself,
limping and sweat-drenched, to the starboard upper deck
and to his first officer's side. "Spock? All
right?" he asked.
  "Ship's condition seems stable for the moment, sir."
  Kirk paused. "Good, but I was referring to you."
  The Vulcan met his eyes in a blunt but candid
fashion. "I am quite well. Thank you very--"
  "What happened to us? How could there be an accretion
disk with no source of collapsed mass? Do you
know?" Spock seemed to take security in having
been asked. He held his finger out to a scale that
came up on one of the monitors. "I have yet
to isolate the cause of the accretion disk, but when we
reached the point at which our conventional shields would have
collapsed, the force of gravitation and warping of
space-time went off all scales. Our conventional
shields would have shut down at this point, but the warp
shields allowed us to approach the apex of the star's
equatorial region. Then the warp drive
weakened, and the shields started failing. The engines were
bombarded with X rays, therefore could no longer
support the shields. We were plunged into an
effect of almost unreality as the shields broke
down. Somehow, space-time was distorted by our
actions."
  "It's that 'somehow" that bothers me," Kirk said.
"At times even the hull looked transparent. I
kept seeing myself doing what I'd done five
seconds before." Spock nodded. "When the shields
started failing, they not only stopped acting as
shields, but began acting as a lens, focusing energy
back upon the ship rather than dissipating it, and trapping
it inside the shield sphere. The ship was nearly
incinerated. Only veering into the... "object" within
four seconds saved us. Because we could move faster
than the gravity moving at the speed of light, we
actually passed through it before it had a chance to crush
us."
  "That's pretty good for a ten-second
analysis." Looking tired and relieved, Spock
tilted his head graciously. "Thank you,
Captain." Burying a shudder, Kirk allowed himself
a long breath. "So much for warp shielding. Intense
gravity seems to throw all our probability
equations out the window."
  "Obviously there are unforeseen flaws,"
Spock said quietly. "A minuscule
probability became nearly a certainty, and the
technology broke down. It will take years
to unravel exactly what happened to the
shields." "Somebody else's years, Mr.
Spock, not ours." The captain glanced around at his
people as they coddled the ship into turning off some of those
bells and jangles. "That's what tests are for."
He pivoted toward Uhura. "Go to yellow alert.
Report all major damage up here."
  "Yellow alert, sir," Uhura answered. She
pressed back a flop of black hair that had
twisted into her way and gathered her composure.
"Secure from red alert... Repeat, secure from
red alert. All hands go to yellow alert... yellow
alert... Report minor damage to department
heads, all major damage to the first officer."
Kirk listened to the sound of her voice and let the
regulation evenhandedness crowd out little fears that still
shivered in the corners of his mind. "Spock, see
if you can figure out what happened."
  "I will, sir." Stunning how sharply something like this
could be on them and then over with. As Kirk and Spock
stood together and waited for those damage reports, the
bridge crew began to move with more control, burying
their shaken nerves in the therapy of their work. The
crisis had hit, they'd fielded it, it had flown,
and now there was nothing to do but coil lines and tidy the
deck. They had lived. One more time, they'd
pulled out at the last second and earned solace.
And the damned stylus was finally staying on the deck.
"Captain!" Irritated, Kirk looked sharply
down at Chekov. "Ensign?" "Exeter and
Farragut--Captain, they're gone! They're both
gone!"
  

Chapter 3
  "EX-PLAIN that!"
  "No vessels of any kind within sensor range,
sir," Sulu confirmed, scrambling to cross-check
the navigator's discovery. "Not even at extreme
range." Unclamping his finger from the edge of the
library computer housing, Kirk pushed off the
console. "Spock, confirm that reading. Sensor
failure?" Spock squinted into the readout hood.
"Sensor systems are somewhat scorched but
accurate. No vessels registering at all,
sir." Squinting until his eyes hurt, Kirk
drew a breath. "Red alert." U-hum looked
at him for an instant, then turned away and
funneled that pedal-toned voice through the ship. "Red
alert... all hands, red alert. Man general
quarters... Red alert--" The amber flashers on
the walls suggesting that they were on the edge of trouble
turned to bright electric red. Prowling the
main screen, Kirk became abruptly
suspicious of everything. The blue giant was still out
there, spooling merrily its blazing gases, so the
Enterprise hadn't been thrown light-years away
by some unguessed power. So what happened to the other
ships? "They can't have run out of our scanning range
so quickly, not even at high warp. Full search
pattern, all stations. Wide-range sensor scan
of the area." He paused, his instincts twitching, and
added with great deliberation, "Adjust for disaster
beacons or wreckage." McCoy was watching him,
face white and eyes wide. Everyone else was
working, putting out a thousand feelers through space. That
wide black expanse before them teased their awareness
of how fragile they were out here without the protective
islands of their vessels to keep them alive.
"Lieutenant Uhura," Kirk began quietly,
"audio scan of subspace. See what you can
hear."
  "Aye, sir." She pivoted to her station,
adjusted, listened, adjusted again, frowned, touched the
earpiece linking her to the outside galaxy, adjusted
some more, but didn't like what her instruments drew in.
"Captain, this..." She paused and fine-tuned again.
Dissatisfaction creased her dark eyes.
"This doesn't make sense." She swiveled around
and looked at him. "I'm not picking up any
subspace noise on conventional channels at
all." He moved toward her. "Garbled?"
  "No, sir, not garbled. Just... nothing. Empty
space. I can't explain it. I can't even catch
drifting residual signals on Starfleet or
Federation channels at all. Not at all." She
turned from him long enough to run an emergency
flash-diagnostic just to make sure her systems were
at least talking to each other. There was nothing worse
for a communications professional than to hear nothing.
"This simply can't be. Subspace signals linger
for years sometimes!"
  "Keep searching, Lieutenant," Kirk said.
His calm was a lie. "Prepare to send high-warp
hails, emergency scramble. Call for immediate
rendezvous, these coordinates."
  "Aye, sir."
  "Captain," Spock said, stepping in behind him,
"no disaster beacons, no propelled or drifting
wreckage of any kind, and no life pod carrier
loops."
  "Then they didn't collide with each other."
  "Space is unthinkably large for such
an occurrence, sir." Spock's way of agreeing.
"Jim!" McCoy gripped the command chair. "Could
that incident have done something to us?" Kirk shot the
same glare at Spock. "Time warp? Have we gone
either forward or back? Have we been thrown any
distance?" Spock looked embarrassed that he hadn't
thought of that but vectored back to his station, tapped his
panel with three or four touches, then hovered over
the readout hood. Its frosty blue light washed
across his eyes. "Calibrating relative position
of stars. Negligible changes. We experienced a
time shift of only... four minutes, twenty-one
seconds. Our location is also stable, since
Izell is still within sensor range."
  "All that was only four minutes?" Kirk
moaned. "Four minutes during our encounter with the
blue giant."
  "Then where are they? If this is Doug Newman's
idea of a joke, I'll have his hide." Still bending
over his station, running program after program through the
computer, eliciting the machine's help in coughing up
possible causes for a four-minute vanishing of two
ships, Spock dealt with his own subtle
incredulity. "I doubt even Captain Newman
could engineer the total disappearance of two
starships. Even a cloaking device produces a
ripple effect."
  "Can they be hiding behind the blue giant?" Spock
frowned at the idea. "Certainly not in four
minutes without residual trail from their warp
drive."
  "I know. I just wanted to hear you say it."
  "Sir, long-range sensors snapping on,"
Sulu interrupted. He squinted into his own
readouts. "Large vessel approach-
  "About time. Identification." Their flashing hopes
and "assumptions cracked to pieces when Spock
said, "Unknown configuration..." Suddenly he
looked up. "Romulan signature." Levering on
one hand, Kirk leaned on the bridge rail to get
his bad leg out of his way. He dropped to the command
deck. His jaw hardened. "Battle stations," he
said.
  

Chapter 4
  "RAISE SHIELDS." Sulu turned. "Warp
shields, sir?"
  "Negative. Conventional shields. I'm not
taking that chance until we know what happened to us.
Arm everything we've got."
  "Phasers armed... Photons armed...
Ready, sir." Diagnostics flashed across the
upper rim of the bridge, sifting the incoming ship, but
there was heavy shielding on that ship, too, and every little
detail became a win. "Captain, they're
attempting to scan us," Spock said. "Jam it.
I want to know who they are." Kirk swabbed a
clammy hand across his face and blinked the sweat out of
his eyes. The bridge was hot, muggy. "Confirm that
signature, Spock," he said. "I want to be
sure."
  "Standard warp drive... Slightly richer
formula than usual... Vessel is double-hulled,
double-shielded, heavily armed... Communication
echoes specifications..." Bent over his console,
Spock half turned to meet the captain's eyes.
"No doubt, Captain." Gritting his teeth,
Kirk grunted, "All right, then... maximum
visual. Let's have a look.". The forward screen
shifted its star pattern, and suddenly they were staring
head-on at a pit bull of a space vessel.
Even at this distance, the ship looked twice the size
it should have on this magnification. That made it almost
twice the size of the Enterprise. Kirk pressed
his spine against the black leather of his command chair. The
vessel was shaped like a crouched cat, with arched
weapon launchers for muscles and two forward
viewports for eyes, dark blue with yellow markings
disguised as lights, so only a close look showed
where the lights really were. There were great stylized
wings painted onto the hull, archirig up in contrast
to the shape of the ship itself. A war bird's wings.
Those, at least, were familiar, but all the
reassurance of familiarity was a lie. The rest of the
paint, the nondecorative colors, was designed
to make the ship look smaller than it was and to confound
the eye during visual targeting, angled where there were
no angles, dark where there were no shadows, except
for those two glowing portals, like an eagle's eyes
in the dark. Pretty good effect. "Romulans in
a ship like that?" McCoy blurted. "Since when?"
  "Could be renegades," Noureddine suggested.
Tight as a drawn bow, Kirk pulled forward.
"Display all Starfleet codes, pennants, and
signals. Imply minor distress so they don't
take us as hostile. Request flagging and home
system I.d."
  "Aye, sir." Uhura's voice, like
Noureddine's, pretended to be calm. She was a
lot better at it than the engineer. "Open hailing
frequencies, audio only."
  "Frequencies open, sir." Kirk cleared his
throat. "This is Captain James T. Kirk,
commanding U.s.s. Enterprise. You are in Federation
jurisdiction. Stand down your weapons and identify
yourselves immediately." He paused and waited. This was always
the bad time. Uhura perked up suddenly.
"Receivin response... Seems to be some kind
of warning or challenge... Definitely native
Romulan, sir." Having confirmed that, she touched
her earpiece and frowned. "But I don't think they
understand what we said." MoCoy leaned toward him.
"If they're Romulan, they should know passable
English. Why can't they speak to us?" The pain in
Kirk's leg was pumping for attention again.
"Uhura, universal translator."
  "Engaged, sir. Go ahead."
  "This is Captain James Kirk of the United
Federation of Planets. You are in violation "This is
the Imperial Guard. You are in the war zone.
Identify yourselves and your purpose." The alien
voice thrummed across the bridge. "I just did,"
Kirk muttered. "This is James Kirk, commanding
the Federation Starship Enterprise. You are in
Federation space. Explain yourselves."
  "We have never heard your language.
What is your homeworld?" Kirk and McCoy
exchanged a glance, then, just for security, he
looked up at Spock. Spock looked down at
him and all but shrugged. With a silent nod, Kirk
passed the shrug on to the alien craft. "Earth,"
he said, more flippantly than he meant. On the
upper deck, Spock appeared more troubled. He
bent to double-check what he already knew--and he almost
never did that. "There is no 'Earth." What is your
true homeworld?" Kirk ran a finger along his lower
lip and allowed himself time to think. He motioned
Uhura to go silent and leaned on an elbow.
"Well, hell," he murmured. Why did it
seem so long since he had a captain to do his
worrying and thinking and make decisions for him? He was
so tired today... He tried to think. Large,
heavily armed alien ship, apparently Romulan,
hadn't heard of Earth-- "Chekov," he said,
"man the defense subsystems station." The
Russian navigator jumped up from his chair with a
faint "Aye, sir" and hurried to the starboard bow
quarter, up the walkway from Spock's station.
Kirk glared at that big ship coming at them and drew
a deep breath. His chest hurt now, too.
"Uhura, take navigation." Her chair
made a faint squeak as she turned, then stepped
down and slid into the helm chair at navigation.
"Spock," Kirk began reservedly, "opinion.
Are they lying? Testing us for some reason?" The first
officer kept tight to his instruments but glared with
plagued fascination at the encroaching vessel. "I
cannot conceive of any such reasoning. Federation space has
been well marked for decades."
  "What can it get them?" McCoy offered.
"Maybe they're trying to foment a dispute."
  "There's no dispute here, Doctor," Kirk
said. "They're well inside our territory. The
question now is whether or not they represent the
Romulan Empire as they claim to. I've
never heard of anything called "Imperial
Guard," Romulan or otherwise. All right,
we'Have do it the hard way. High frequency
all-points display. Warn them off. I want a
sphere of clear nonentry. Range?"
  "Five hundred thousand kilometers, sir,"
Uhura reported. "Sir!" Sulu blurted.
"I'm getting a firing sequence. They're opening
fire! Quadramegaton salvos!"
  "Evasive action. Emergency warp five."
Kirk pushed to the edge of his chair, intending
to stand, but at the last second his foot sent pain
stabbing up into his hip and kept him down. Huge
white globular bolts were launched from the Imperial
ship and bore down toward the Enterprise, but the
starship wasn't waiting around. Sulu angled the
ship off and pressed her into high speed. "Photon
torpedoes," Kirk ordered. "Narrow dispersal."
  "Targeting, sir," Chekov said. "Fire
torpedoes one and two." The ship bucked twice,
buffeted by her own firing system coming into action in the
middle of a very tight turn. Bright salvos plunged
in on some kind of acquisition program, dodging
after them no matter how the starship plunged and veered.
One salvo was losing power, but the second held
integrity and flashed in at them. The bulkheads
shuddered, structural members hummed. Straining
to hold course, the ship skidded to one side and sent
her crew smashing into their consoles. Kirk held on
to his chair and managed to grab McCoy and hold
on before the doctor stumbled into the helm. "Engineering
section" Nourredine choked. "Possible str
ructural rupture--"
  "Another incoming, sir!" Sulu shouted over their
voices. A heartbeat later the second hit
struck. The ship jogged slightly to one
side, then continued building speed. "Glancing blow
off the port nacelle, sir," Spock called
over the noise. "Stabalizing."
  "What about our shots?" Spock straightened and
turned. "Both direct hits. They made no
attempt at all to evade our fire. Damage
is uncertain."
  "Negative. They seem to be topping off at
warp seven."
  "I'll take it. Mr. Sulu, warp
factored"
  "Captain, another contact!" Uhura
interrupted. "Dead ahead!" The screen dropped the
departure angle and flashed to a garish picture of
what could're been the same ship, but stationary in
front of them. Kirk pushed to his feet. "Same
as the ship behind us, sir," Sulu confirmed. "Sound
collision."
  "They're blocking us," Sulu said, effort rising
in his tone. Kirk gritted his teeth. "Ram them."
The helmsman didn't dare turn from his instruments
because things were happening too fast. "Say again--"
  "Ram it? "Aye, sir!" Sulu gasped,
raising his voice over the whine of instruments and
warnings. "Brace for collision!" Everyone
grabbed for a handhold as a moment of horror reared
itseft that even a starship couldn't survive.
Holding his breath as they relapsed into danger,
Kirk made a mental bet on his helmsman that
Sulu knew better than to ram anything head on and
would find a way to glance off that monster. Get out of
my way. He grasped the arm of his chair and hung
on.
  

Chapter 5
  The huLITTLE pushed up at him, the carpet
pressing upward into his aching foot. On the
screen, the big menace tilted at a bizarre
angle. A turbolift nausea worked on his
stomach. He held on to the chair with both hands and
damned the lights flashing in his mind. The hit went
straight to his bones. Where had the two ships
struck? The primary hull could take a lot, but
those nacelles--if they were knocked off alignment
by so much as a centimeter-- He leaned forward, found
the back of his chair, and wrapped an arm around it as
though clinging to a friend. The forward screen was full of
stars. Open space! "Status? he choked.
"We're clear, sir? Sulu gulped. "Aft
view!" The main screen shimmered and brought them a
picture of the second enemy ship, spinning
awkwardly, driven by the impact, one of its big
weapon-launch arches sliced open to reveal sizzling
veins of energy pouring into space, crackling with the
change in temperature. "Damage report,"
Kirk demanded. "We grazed the underside of our
primary hull, sir," Uhura said. "Forward
port quarter." Spock quickly straightened. "No
compromise in maneuverability or thrust,
Captain."
  "Mr. Sulu, get us out of here," Kirk
gasped, holding his tone down. "Warp eight."
Sulu swallowed a lump. "Warp eight, sir."
A sharp turn to starboard threw them all
sideways, but they'd heard the order and everybody
managed to cling to something. The ship's massive warp
engines vibrated through the hull and into the crew's
bodies as speed piled upon speed. "We're leaving
them behind, Captain." Spock's deep voice was not
only the knell of security, but a plain relief.
"At least we know we can outrun them," Kirk said
with an involuntary shudder. At engineering,
Lieutenant Nourredine stared at the empty
screen, breathing hard. "We ran..." Looking up
at him, Kirk noticed for the first time the youth and
freshness up there. He hadn't really paid
attention before. He'd never questioned Engineer Scotts
choice of post assignments or the crusty department
head's habit of shuttling very young engineers to the
bridge for instant experience. Sometimes they got
caught in a vise. Like now. "Of course we
ran," he said. Paying the price of bridge
duty, the engineer blinked. "No... no disrespect
intended, sir. I just thought--"
  "You thought the good guys never retreat. As a
matter of fact, it's the good guys who know when
to retreat, in my experience." Kirk settled
back in his chair and let his shoulders ache. "All
through history there are episodes of clever saves."
  "I... didn't know that, sir."
  "I'll tell you the stories sometime."
  "Thank you, sir."
  "Damage report, anyone?"
  "Oh--" Nourredine shook himself and cloyed to his
work. "Minor damage across almost the whole port
side of the engineering section. No major hull
ruptures discovered yet, but sensors have taken
a.beating. Long-range sensors are reduced
twenty-two percent, but looks like short-range
sensors are down completely."
  "Put the hull stability on
priority."
  "Yes, sir." "Captain," Spock
interrupted quietly from his post; "if you would,
please." Kirk glanced up and anchored himself to the
complex, solid expression of his first officer. There
were answers up there, he saw in the black eyes and the
frictionless posture. Troubled answers, but
answers. He pulled himself up with a grip on the
back of Uhura's chair. "Lieutenant, take
your post and see if you can contact Starfleet Command
on a scrambled frequency. I want to know what's
going on. If they don't know, I'm going to tell
them."
  "Yes, sir, I'll try," Uhura
murmured, moving behind him. Spock waited until
the captain limped to the steps, then reached down
to help him to the upper deck. He kept his voice
low, private. "We're most fortunate that we
evaded head-on strikes by those salvos," the
Vulcan said. "Quadmmegaton force is
sufficient to break our shielding and possibly
inflict majpr damage with one blow. I am at a
loss to explain the Romulans' access to such a
weapon. There are no reports from Starfleet
Intelligence of any such possession."
  "I'm aware of that. What else?"
  "I believe I know what happened to us." With a
disbelieving smirk, Kirk asked, "You analyzed
what happened to us at the same time as we were under
fire?" Spock looked perplexed, then a little
guilty. "I had begun the analysis when the other
vessel--" "Never mind. Let's hear it."
  "If you would attend monitor number three...
the ship's automatic recording system captured
this series of events. The pictures are not the
usual quality. Energy was being tapped from this system
to the hull plate shields when the warp shields
began to break down."
  "Yes, it saved our lives." Kirk couldn't
help a little squint, as if that would help. The
accretion disk was there as well as miles-long
licks andblue solar flares and solid mass being
torn off the giant star. But there was an added
element. Something the big forward screen hadn't
registered the first time around. This time there was a slice
through the picture, as though a scalpel had been
drawn from top to bottom at dead center of the
accretion disk. Kirk leaned forward. "What's
that?"
  "Computer analysis revealed this
central spool," Spock said evenly. "As we
arched across the blue giant's heavy gravity field
at warp speed, with the new shields operating as they
did, we began to generate a change in the gravity,
in fact yanking material and energy toward ourselves.
We created the accretion disk, which then began to drag
us toward it. In essence, we created a node."
He paused, letting the word sink in. "Do I have
to ask?" Kirk prodded. "No, sir. A node,
theoretically--is a period of stabalization for
cosmic string." Kirk actually backed off a
step. Even the talk of this kind of blind power made
him nervous. A kind of scientists' tall story.
Spock watched him. "As you know, cosmic string
exists between layers of space-time. Our new warp
shields work by displacing energy through space-time."
  "And we catalyzed it..."
  Turning, Kirk motioned to the center deck.
"Doctor, come up here. I want you to hear this.,
McCoy's eyes were already fixed on the small
monitor. He moved toward them, keeping one hand
on some part of the bridge--a chair, the rail, and
finally the captain's elbow. "I'll bet you're
going to describe to me how many broken bones and
concussions are waiting for me in sickbay,"
he muttered, but he wasn't being funny. "Did you
hear what Spock was explaining?" Kirk asked.
The doctor nodded vaguely. "Something about...
cosmic yarn." Indulging in a sigh, Spock
clasped his hands behind his back. "Cosmic string.
Primordial matter so tightly spun that
  it manifests itself in immeasurable gravity slicing
through the levels of space-time, much as a knife
might go through paper. It is so dense that it actually
bends space and time. In the proximity of cosmic
string, nothing works as we know it. Thousands of
trillions of tons per centimeter, traveling at
nearly the speed of light, it is indescribably
small--" McCoy glared at him suddenly.
"Try." The challenge lit Spock's black
eyes. "It could pass through a planet and not
collide with a single molecule."
  "So what? What's a molecule, more or less,
among friends?" The doctor glanced at Kirk. "So
it passes through."
  "As it moves," Speck went on with false
tolerance, "it would crush the planet to the size of a
walnut. The poles would rush toward each other at
ten thousand miles per hour. If an atom were as
large as a nebula, cosmic string would still
be the diameter of a becteriumm"
  "That's enough." The doctor looked like he'd been
slapped. "I got those last two--"
  "This doesn't make sense," Kirk
interrupted. "There's no string in this solar system.
We would've picked up its X-ray and
gamma-ray distortion--comor at least we'd have seen
its gravitational effect on every star in the area as it
passed by. If it just passed near a planet,-it
would yank off the atmosphere and half the surface
mass."
  "That is precisely what it did, sir,"
Speck said, "to Izell. It consumed nearly a
quarter of the star's mass."
  "Yes, but space is a vastly empty place,
Speck. You said that earlier. It's filled with
mostly nothin The odds of string appearing here, at this
time, this space--they're trillions to one." With
damning ease the Vulcan said, "And we are the
one." Every now and then, when two like moods were in the right
equinox, Spock would make a joke, but as
Kirk and McCoy gazed at him, they realized quite
abruptly that this wasn't one of those times. "In
fact," Spock went on, "we attracted the string
to this space-time by creating the node of
stability for it. As it traveled through dimensions, it
was momentarily caught .. here."
  "Sounds to me like it's almost the same as a black
hole," McCoy said. Some of the color was coming
back into his face.
  The Vulcan nodded briefly. "True. But
unlike a black hole, it has no dimension."
  "But how did we survive being so close to it?"
  "By moving at hyperlight speed," Kirk said.
"Gravity moves at the speed of light. We were
within a million miles of the string. At warp nine,
that distance was traveled almost instantaneously. The
crushing waves tried to act on the ship at the speed
of light, but by turning into it we were actually dragged
into the string and passed through it faster than its gravity
waves could crush us."
  McCoy stared and shook his head. "That's
phenomenal... I can't conceive of that!"
  "Neither can I," Kirk said bluntly, "but that's
what saved us and I'll take it." With a bitter
knot forming in his gut, he lowered his voice.
"Spock, could the cosmic string have destroyed the
Exeter and the Farragut?"
  The prospect reared its inhumane snout and
cracked them like a whip. All of a sudden the
speculation had a foul solidity.
  Finally, under the eyes of the whole bridge crew,
Spock faced the captain. "I am only assuming
that physics acts as we know it under such
circumstances, Jim," he admitted. Worry
showed in his eyes. "I am not that sure of these
details." At least he was brave enough to say it.
  Kirk freed him with a nod. Something on the
bridge was starting to whine, and the forward screen was losing
its picture.
  "Captain," Uhura said, and only then did he
realize she'd been watching them, trying to catch his
attention and find a good place to interrupt.
  "Report, Lieutenant."
  "Sir..."
  "Say it."
  "Sh', I can't pick up Starfleet on any
channel. In fact, I
  can't pick up anybody at all on any
Federation channel."
  "You mean there's complete silence?"
  "Oh, no, sir, I'm catching ragged signals
on other channels, but it all seems to be
scrambled. My translators aren't recognizing
a single code. I'll... keep trying."
  He saw the fear behind her confusion and her
determination to reach out into space and find something.
  That expression on the faces of his crew--that
decipherable fear, asking him to take care of them,
to come up with the missing piece to the puzzle--the burden
seemed iron hard today.
  "Tampering with space-time," he murmured,
"dimensions... We could're caused any number of
wild things to happen... Did those two alien ships
slip through a dimensional crack when that string paused
here? Have we loosed them on our own galaxy without
event"
  "But they were Romulan!" Chekov bolted.
  "Yes, sir," Sulu added. "Even though we
didn't recognize the ship, they weren't from some
other dimension. We know who they are."
  "Yes," the captain uttered. "Romulans."
  The whine got louder. It was blocking his thoughts.
"Course of action, sir?" Spock asked.
  He could barely hear now. He fought to think.
"Course of action... We'll go by the book.
Starfleet Catastrophic Response Code,
Section A: when all forms of communication fail
to establish a link between Starfleet vessels and any
Federation outpost, all personnel and
ordnancere"
  "Will attempt immediate rendezvous at Starfleet
Command," Spock completed..
  "Yes. Uhura, open all frequencies...
Scan continually for any Federation contact at all.
Sulu"
  "Jim!" McCoy caught his arm on one side,
Spock on the other. Kirk registered that his legs
weren't holding his weight. His thighs pressed back
on the computer housing.
  "You've got to let me treat you," McCoy
insisted, "or you're not going to be conscious to deal with
this."
  The doctor had gone no-nonsense, and there
wasn't going
  to be any more putting off. Medical authority had
just kicked in. "All right," Kirk wheezed, "all
right... Spock, do it." Still holding him up,
Spock turned to the helm. "Mr. Sulu, set a
direct course for Earth, warp factor eight."
  "Warp eight, sir." Sulu's response was a
buzz. As his head wobbled and the earpet reeled before his
eyes, Kirk tried to nod to Spock. "Good... be
sure to keep us out of trouble--" The last thing he
registered as they carried him off the bridge
was the life-buoy voice he would cling to in his
encroaching nightmares. "I will, Captain."
  

Chapter 6
  "APPROACHING THE SOL SYSTEM, Mr.
Spock."
  "Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Still no response from
Starfleet, Lieutenant?" The first officer
didn't turn for Uhura's answer. He knew
she wasn't ready to give it. The clicking and
straining of her computer complex told him she was still
reaching into space for messages, codes, symbols,
something familiar. Yet he had asked. As the words
left his lips, he tasted the illogic of asking.
An inefficient habit he had picked up after
nearly two decades of service in the company of
humans. She would have told him if there had been a
change. All the way here, past planets
colonized by the Federation, outposts, starbases--there
had been nothing but silence. No response to any
search or hail. Starfleet Catastrophic
Response Code demanded that they not stray
to investigate but head straight to Earth to rendezvous
with anyone else who might also find themselves alone in
the silence. "Nothing, sir." Uhura's voice was
heavy, soft with trouble. "No nearby
subspace communication of any kind, Starfleet or
private. This area should be teeming with
transportation. I don't understand it, sir."
Spock felt stiff, empty. "Understanding will come with
time, Lieutenant," he said. "For now we deal with
only the facts." He leaned forward in the command
chair, his brow tight as the planets of the Sol
system floated by in brainless innocence--and utter
lifelessness. Not a light, not a signal, not a
single colonial satellite. He spoke of
facts, but his hands were clenched, elbows pressed hard
to the chair. His chest felt hollow, and he did not
possess the logical answers with which to fill it.
"Status of tactical sensors now, Mr.
Nourredine?" "Only up to thirty percent, sir.
Mr. Scott wants six hours." "Acknowledge
that."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Sir, we're approaching Earth," Sulu said.
Everyone paused and looked up. Before them the
familiar solar system they'd all cut their teeth
on scrolled out, planet after planet, moons,
asteroids, and the tolerant yellow sun far beyond. And
Earth, home to them all in one way or another,
home to Starfleet, core of the Federation, a
sedate blue ball marbled with clouds and dashed with
spice-colored land masses-- "Mr. Spock,"
Chekov began, "where are the space docks?"
  "Where are the orbital stations?" Nourredine
echoed. "I don't pick up any lunar
installationsre"
  "Go to the dark side of the planet, Mr.
Sulu," Spock interrupted. Ordinarily, this would
have been a beautiful sight. Moving from the sun-bathed
side to the comforting nest of shadow, where glittering
cities shone their prosperity. through mindless patches
of cloud. No cities... Sulu turned, his
face blanched. "Could it all have been destroyed
somehow, sir?" For a moment Spock didn't
respond. The concept was too encompassing for a yes
or no. He would let the reassurance of science
put a frame around the outlandish moment.
"Tactical," he ordered. "Thirty percent will have
to do. Mr. Chekov, if you please." Chekov
slid out of his post and jumped up to the science
monitors. Seconds went by like surgical time.
"No wreckage or flotsam... No industrial
residue... No propulsion traces,
manufactured surplus, or sensor shadows."
Struggling with the idea as much as he struggled
with the English language, he turned and added, "No
sign of life at all, sir." Spock sat
back in his chair. "I assume you mean there is no
sign of contemporary industrial life, Ensign."
Chekov mentally retreated but seemed strengthened by the
demand for accuracy. "Yes, sir." Spock dug
deep within himself for the indifference that sustained him but found
it lacking. No one, not even a Vulcan, could
gaze upon an emptiness where once there had been
teeming intelligent life and roaring progress, the
roots of his heritage and the pediments of his
civilization, and remain passive. He had no
desire to be passive. But the people glancing at him
from all sides expected him to be their logical
foundation. He struggled for that and found himself wishing the
captain were here. He pulled his voice up. "Bring
us into orbit, Mr. Sulu."
  "Bones. his
  "Right here, Jimallyou'll be fine in a minute."
Kirk squeezed his eyes shut hard, then
concentrated on opening them. All he saw was a
pale gray haze. Maybe blue. Maybe
white. The walls in sickbay. Mechanical
biceps and whirs--the diagnostic panel. His
heart rate was up. He tried to raise his
aching head but succeeded only enough to catch a glimpse
at his own body, thick and muscular and lying
completely useless on the bed's black cushion.
The mustard-colored uniform shirt and his black
trousers beyond; his boots were still on. So it hadn't
been long since he collapsed. He let his head
fall back and winced at the memory of folding on
the bridgen't go down that way, slumping in front of
his juniors. How long? An hour? Two? How
much could go wrong in that much time? "Where are you?" he
rasped. A fuzzy blue pillar appeared, and for the
life of him Kirk couldn't figure out where from.
"I've got to get up there."
  "That's a laugh," the doctor popped back, as
though he'd been keeping the response in his pocket
for quick use. The slim blue pillar sharpened and
became McCoy, regarding him with a scolding
wisdom. "Captain, you've been very sick for the past
nine hours. You're not out of danger yet." Kirk
thrust himself up on an elbow. For a minute he thought
his arm would shatter under the strain. "Was I dead?"
The doctor paused, and blinked. "Well, how much
does proximity count?"
  "Then I want to be up on the bridge. You
get me up
  "Status?"
  "Orbital status at Earth, Captain.
Short-range sensors still seventy percent blind."
Spock's voice was subdued, indicative. They
instantly understood each other. Trouble. Nothing
solved yet. What Kirk had seen before he passed
out hadn't been an illusion or a glitch or even
a complete crash of their systems. The ship was still in
the middle of a great big wrong. Pulling his arm
loose from McCoy's custodial grasp, he
cleared himself of the turbolift and made it to the rail.
As Spock met him there, he anticipated what
he saw in his first officer's expression. "I'm
all right. Tell me what we've got." As the
soft orange lights from the low ceiling lay upon his
shoulders like warm hands, Spock glanced at the forward
screen. "We have no visible signs of current
constructed civilization at all. No space
docks, cities, or traffic of any kind, nor
are we picking up residue from propulsion or other
energy emissions. No city lights or other
artificial lightingre" "Power generation?"
  "None. This solar system is completely
pristine. Void of communication, current or
lingering, and all of our colonial
installations are absent."
  "What about life forms?"
  "Tactical sensors are still too weak to break
through the atmosphere."
  "Then we'll have to go down there for ourselves... and
look around." Kirk sensed Spock watching him
carefully, as though encroaching on a troubled prayer,
waiting to catch the captain's attention. After a
minute Kirk couldn't avoid it anymore and
looked at him. "May I suggest," Spock said,
"that I lead a science party down, sir, and
investigate in some depth." Anxiety ate at
Kirk's stomach as he watched the blue oceans and
sienna continents slide by under the white froth of
clouds--yes, the atmosphere was still there. Perhaps it was
a good sign that it hadn't been ripped away. It was
chafing comfort, but at least it was something. "Organize
your landing party, Mr. Spock," he said, "and tell
Scotty to come up here and take command. I want
to see this for myself."
  "Spock, are we in the right place?" Kirk
blinked and shielded his eyes. A tree bough wagg
overhead and cast a sharp movement on the blue
uniform tuniCan as the Vulcan turned away from the
eye-level sun and squinted at his
tricorder. "Longitude and latitude are
exact, I'm afraid, Captain." Before them,
overgrown hills and nestled pockets of grassland
rolled five miles out to a blinding blue-gray
bay. In the valleysBhuge, broad valleys
curtained by green crests --comentire square miles
of open lands were drenched in yellow flowers
spotlighted by the setting sun. McCoy came up
beside him. "The transporter officer must have made a
mistake." Favoring his bad foot, Jim Kirk
moved to the edge of the bluff. His throat was raw.
"You recognize the lay of the land, don't you?
We're right where I told you we were going."
McCoy stared at him, then raised his hand and swept
it to
  "Then where the devil... is San
Francisco?" The great western bay shimmered in the
middle distance as the sun sank. No Golden
Gate Bridge. No tangled ribbons of
municipal streets and skyways. No central
metropolis. No polished urban sprawl. No
buildings to catch and reflect the buttering sunshine.
And the no in those Phrases began to knell. Only
the whistle of water birds and the skitter of animals
in the darkening bushes -- an- endless
purgatory of pastoral. "At least the hills are
still here," McCoy rasped from beside him. "It looks
exactly as it's supposed to," Kirk said.
"All the right trees, grass, a blue sky, the
bay... just no buildings. No people."
  "Feels very void to me." "me, too. No one
here to appreciate it."
  "Jim, do you thinkBut" McCoy stopped as a
crunch of footsteps brought Spock back to them.
Spock came around in front of them despite that it
brought him so close to the edge that his boots forced a
handful of rocks to drop and rattle down the cliff
face. He anchored himself on the captain's gaze.
"Gentlemen, we're standing where the reception
solarium of Starfleet Command should be. Admiral
Landali's office
  there, Admirals Oliver and Nogura's
offices there, and the VIP sanctum just beyond. On the
tip of that hill should be the surgeon general's wing,
and in the valley to your left, the physical training
ground of Starfleet Academy and the Thomas
Jefferson Vintage Rose Garden." In their
minds the recitation went on, places and monuments,
trees and bridges they all wanted to be here. But
Speck had a point to make and had made
it. The three of them stood looking out over the
scrubby overgrowth that in their minds was a manicured
panorama of old roses whose seeds had been
smuggled through wars, hidden in family coffins and
ladies' gloves until they could be brought to bloom
in the bright new century. Now there was nothing but
overgrown grass and wildflowers, trees rustling in
the offshore breeze, sheets upon sheets of yellow
blooms waving like fabric as they caught the last
strong blaze of sunlight. Not bad, but not roses.
"All right," Kirk groaned. "We'll start from
scratch and work our way up. Rundown of crew
specialties, please, Mr. Spocko" Speck
started pointing at the line of bewildered uniformed
personnel, each already swiveling around with ghoulish
curiosity. They were an attractive group against the
bright daylight, all ages, decked in their bright
modern primary reds and blues, edged with black,
and the dot of shimmering gold Starfleet delta
shield on each breast. Each had a tricorterer
hanging from a thin black strap over a shoulder,
except the four security men who had full phaser
weapons and emergency packs. Very competent looking,
comforting, crisp against this crackling world that should have been
a core of modern development. This was a
place where someone would scratch out a campsight, not
plan the expansion of a vast and technical
civilization through the galaxy. "Lieutenant Mark
Rice, geology and geophysics," Speck
began, "Lieutenant Louise LaCerra,
paleontology and zoology; Lieutenant
Elizabeth Ling, botany and zoology;
Lieutenant Dale Bannon, anthropology;,
his assistant, Ensign Erica Smith; and Chief
Chemist eroston Barnes. Security detail
Ensigns Williams and MacGuinness, Yeomen
Rhula and Hardy."
  "You brought the whole university," Kirk said.
He knew their names, except for the newly
transferred botanist and one of the Security men, but
it helped to be reminded of their departments. "Spread
out, teams of two. You know the problem. Let's find
the answers." The murmur of yes-sirs and
aye-ayes was unenvigorated. They'd lost San
Francisco and had a pretty good idea they
weren't going to find it today. He had asked them to come
down and confirm that most of their families and
certainly all of their heritages were gone. Even the
normally cocky Security types meandered off behind
the specialists without even plowing into the
lead. In a moment Kirk was alone again with his two
partners in command distress, alone in a place that should
be home. "The city wasn't destroyed," he said
quietly. He bent with some effort and scooped up a
handful of overgrowth. "There's not so much as a broken
blade of grass. No signs of annihilation, the
atmosphere is still intact... Nothing's wrong with the
planet, except for the complete absence of San
Francisco."
  "There are no other cities either, Captain,"
Spock mentioned. "Despite shortages in
tactical sensors, we've been able to verify
empty land in place of Los Angeles, New
York, Boston, London, and Bangkok. There
are no pockets of organized habitation anywhere."
He almost sounded apologetic but checked himself before it
overtook his expression. Too late; they'd seen
it. "The climate's the same," Kirk said.
"Geography is still here... so where in blazes are
the people?"
  "Something tells me I'd rather be with them than where
I conam," McCoy murmured thoughtfully. He
plucked a bright yellow flower with a distinct black
eye and twirled the stem between his fingers as he gazed
into the valley. "I used to sit on a
lounge right over there and look down on my
daughter's house..." The words drifted away on
the breeze. Kirk turned away. "Spock,
let's get a wide-range detailed picture
if we can. Can't we bYP-ASS the tactical
sensor damage somehow?"
  "I shall attempt it." Spock pulled out his
communicator and flipped open the sensor grid.
"Landing party to Enterprise." "Lieutenant
Uhura, sir."
  "Tie my tricorder signal directly into the
library computer, Lieutenant." "aye, sir,
one moment."
  "Standing by." Spock started to say something else,
when the bushes behind him suddenly rattled violently
and a red flash burst out of the leaves, smashing into the
back of the Vulcan's legs. He was driven down
by a wild ball of red feathers with a long neck and
legs. It squawked in terror, veered away from the
bluff, and disappeared into a thick stand of bushes about
twenty-five yards away. Before McCoy could
react, Kirk was already at Spock's side,
hauling his first officer to his feet. "Are you
hurt?" "Not at all, thank you." Spock brushed
twigs from his uniform and scowled at the
rustling bushes. An instant later, the bushes
fell calm as though nothing had happened. As
McCoy hurried to them, Kirk pointed at the
bushes. "Bones, did you see that?"
  "Did it look like a short ostrich?"
  "Yes!"
  "Then I saw it."
  "That doesn't make sense," Kirk hissed.
"There's nothing like that in North America. Spock,
did you see it?"
  "Only a glimpse, Captain. Can you
describe it?" McCoy pushed between them. "It
looked like an ostrich, only the size of a goose
and the colors of a Rhode Island Red." Spock's
communicator twittered and he thumbed the exposed
controls. "Might it have been a wild turkey?
Excuse me--Spock here."
  "Could've been," McCoy drawled, "but it
wasn't."
  "Uhura here, Mr. Spock. You're tied into the
main computer system, all memory banks. The
tricorder won't be able to store much, but you have full
access as long as the channel is open."
  "Do I have sensor access as well?"
  "Yes, sir, Mr. Scott has tied
that in also. Short-range sensors are up
to sixty-three percent operational and rising."
  "Thank you. Spock out." He adjusted the
ricorder and made use of the vast encyclopedic
store of information logged in the computer system and the
ship's half-blind sensors, which struggled to scan the
planet from orbit. "Information is choppy, but coming
in, Captain." Feeling flushed again, Kirk
leaned back on a rock in a half-sitting
position. "Go ahead, Spock." Cupping his hands
over the tileorder to keep the sun off, Spock
paced a few steps while glaring into the tiny screen,
then paced back without looking up. "Continental
readings show low-lying everglades and deciduous growth
in the East and Southeast, prairie and grasslands in
the West... Mountains north of those. No
domesticated crops, however. In the far north there
is considerable tundra and barren land toward the
Arctic. Abundant sea life... Considerable
animal life... Birds, reptiles,
invertebrates--"
  "It's the North America we all
recognize, is what you're telling me."
Spock's eyes narrowed into black wedges. With a
twinge of cautious sorrow, he simply
said, "Yes." From down the hill, somebody called,
"Captain?" Their paleontologist was scratching
her way up the hill to their left, dirty up to her
elbows. Her knees were caked with mud. Kirk
extended a hand to haul her up over the blufls
edge. He glanced around for Spock, but the Vulcan
was striding across the bushy ground toward the other woman
on the team, who was signaling that she had something,
too. So he looked down into a pair of bright,
troubled eyes and said, "Report, Lieutenant."
  "Sir," the small-boned woman said, "Ling,
sir, Life Sciences Department. The wild
foliage is mostly correct, like the conifer
forests north of here, but there's no domesticated
growth. No cultivation. And something else bothers
me, sir,... I can't find the redwoods." With a
scowl, Kirk bent toward her. "Explain that." The
woman's delicate face crumpled. "I just can't
find any evidence of the major ancient sequoia
growth in the whole western coastal region. I
checked with the ship, but they couldn't find a single
giant redwood tree. Mr. Scott thought it
might have something to do with the sensors being partly down,
but... but I can't find any evidence of the redwood
forests in recent geology."
  "You wouldn't find any," McCoy said. "There
are no fossils in the Bay area."
  "I know that, sir, but I analyzed a pond
floor and I couldn't even find any ancient
redwood pollen. At least, nothing over the past ten
thousand years. I should be able to find something, and I
can't." She looked at Kirk. "Sir, why aren't
they here?" Kirk straightened, troubled. "And if they
were," he added, "what happened to them?" She
nodded. "There's abundant insect life, but I
can't find any of the wildlife that's supposed to be
here--no beavers, bears, or even squirrels.
There are some large grazing animals registering, but
I haven't seen them yet. But a minute ago I
was sure I saw a small primate."
  "A primate? Here?"
  "It just wouldn't make sense, sir! The
tricorder's giving me metabolic readings, but I
like to see things for myself."
  "Smart girl," McCoy dropped in. "All
right," Kirk muttered. "Carry on, Ling See
if you can't pinpoint the large grazers and we'll go
have a look."
  "Aye, sir." She seemed relieved to have
permission to go after the big targets and made
her way down the rock-and-weed slope. McCoy
toed the yellow wildflowers on the clifis edge.
Then he blinked, bent to look at the large
blooms, and said, "You know, this looks just like a
California poppy." The captain stretched his
sore back. "Is that supposed to mean something?"
  "I don't know. Except that poppies should be
bright orange. These are banana yellow."
  "Mmm."
  "Oh--there's a bee." McCoy withdrew his hand
from fondling one of the yellow flowers, then on second
look bowed lower over the flower, reached down, and
carefully snapped the stem. "Jim .... look at
this." On the black center of the flower was the bee,
industriously plumbing for nectar without giving the men
any attention at all. "So it's a bee," Kirk
said. "Look closer. Look at the colors." The
bee was a bee, perfectly formed for its purpose,
big, fat, fuzzy, single-minded, and well armed--
and colored bright yellow with white and green stripes.
Kirk tried to concentrate, registered what he was
looking at, but had trouble holding the thought. "A
green bee. Maybe'it came up from Mexico."
McCoy looked up at him, forgot the bee, and
dropped the flower. "Feel all right,
Jim? You look overheated."
  "I am. Why isn't the medication working?"
  "It is working. If you were in bed, in sickbay,
where you belong, you'd be fine. If you keep straining
yourself, you're just going to drag out the process of
recovery." His expression softened some, and he
added, "I don't like my patients making my job
harder." McCoy took his arm. "Why don't you
sit down?"
  "If I sit down, I'll stop thinking."
  "Yes, but I might be able to get the fever
down."
  "Not now--Spock's coming." Blue on black,
recognizable from a mile off, their science officer's
slim form was caught by the last shafts of hazy
orange sunset as he came toward them, his
trieorder in one hand, the other dripping with mud and
seaweed. His hair was a dot of stove black against
the wild landscape. Without so much as a house or a
hut to civilize the background, he looked like a
colorful Peg driven into the ground by a really big
child. "Geologist LaCerra has made a
discovery," he said as he approached. He had
to raise his voice slightly over the miles-wide
sizzle of crickets now rising as the
darkness settled in. "What've you got,
Spock?" Spock hesitated--not something that usually
happened when he had an answer literally in hand.
He paused, shifted from one foot to the other a
couple of times, and fixed his eyes on Kirk.
"Ammonites, Captain." Kirk squinted at
him. "What?"
  "Ammonites were cephalopods. Shelled sea
animals similar to the chambered nautilus. They were
bountiful in all bodies of water during the
Cretaceous period, roughly seventy million
years ago. Beaches were littered with them. There were
thousands of species."
  "So?"
  "With the extinction of the dinosaurs and several other
life forms, ammonites ceased to exist almost
instantly on the evolutionary time table. There are
billions of fossilized impressions of these
creatures below the K-T layer, but none above
it."
  "What's a K-T layer?"
  "Pardon me--the Cretaceous-Tertiary layer
is the point at which the two geological time
periods meet. There are billions of ammonite
impressions below this layerr"
  "And none above it. So they're extinct.
Spock," Kirk interrupted with a telling groan,
"tell me bluntly what the problem is." The
Vulcan paused, but not because he had been drawn up
short. He clamped his lips and simply extended
his hand. Embedded in seaweed was a baseball-sized
coiled shell, not particularly attractive, but
polished and streaked with variegated color and clearly
not made of millions of years worth of sediment.
"Captain," Spock said, "this ammonite is
alive." Kirk stepped closer. "Alive? Are
you sure what you've got?" He poked at the
specimen in Spock's hand. "Jim," McCoy
interrupted, "do you smell something?" He was squinting
through the fresh twilight at the clumps of overgrowth.
He stepped toward the bushy tangles.
"Manure..." Dread crawled over the captain as
he let the little shelled animal fall from his mind and
hurried to McCoy. "Phasers. On stun."
  "Captain," Spock said, "should we engage our
lighting implements?"
  "No," Kirk told him. "Let's not disturb
the natural goings-on. If we turn lights on,
half the wildlife will hide." Spock offered about
a third of a nod. "Logical." The
underbrush caught Kirk's insteps and forced him to work
for each step. His arm tingled as he held his phaser
above the leaves. The musty smell of manure grew
suddenly strong. The crickets had stopped
clicking. Silence blanketed the hillside,
maybe too much. "Captain," Spock began, his
head tilted slight, "I hear something.
Respiration... Increasing now." Between them,
McCoy stiffened. "I thought it was the breeze."
Kirk turned to the direction Spock was facing and
extended his phaser. "There's no breeze.
Spock, back off... slowly." When Spock had
managed to shift backward a few steps through the
tangled bushes, Kirk mouthed, "Tricorder."
The slim dark form of his first officer moved with
cautious stealth, lowering the phaser and bringing up his
tricorder. A few seconds passed, then
Spock clicked the tricorder's power on. And the
tiny mechanical click was all it tookt. The
night cracked open with a single loud shriek. The
bushes parted before them. A wide black mound rose
to eye level, brisfiing in the starlight. It wobbled
briefly, then forced itself upward out of the bushes like a
seismic eruption, and in seconds it was over their
heads. The shriek dropped to a blistering
roar and got louder. McCoy dropped backward and
disappeared, but Kirk never saw what did the pushing.
He heard the whine of Spock's phaser and raised
his own but was struck in the left shoulder--how could
something so big move so fast! Before the thought set in,
he was lying on his right hip with his elbow dug into the
underbrush and his good leg pinned under him. Above, against
a muted sky and a cloud of flies, rose the outline
of a giant head with a five-foot-wide bony
frill and a scoop-shaped horn as long as he was
tall. And Spock's phaser whined again through the
darkness. The sound fortified Kirk. He twisted his
upper body, brought his arm close to his earmhis
own phaser was still somehow in his hand--and he closed his
fingers on the firing mechanism. The night opened up
with an electric orange streak that sizzled. The
beam struck the giant black shape hovering over
them as the animal swung around again and roared. The
sound climbed his bones. Even growing up in the
woods and farmlands of rural Iowa, he'd never
heard a sound like that befma cross between the long call
of a moose and the shriek of... well, a hell of a
shriek. The animal was turning but not toward him.
Toward
  Kirk felt its huge feet stomp the
ground unevenly, maneuvering to attack the
Vulcan, and something inside him snapped. Forcing
himself upward until he could see over the grass,
he changed his posture, gripped the phaser with both
hands, and aimed where he thought the animal's spine should
be. I'm the captain. If you want meat, come
get me. And he opened fire again.
  

Chapter7
  THE massive animal's howl was counterplayed
by the whine of Starfleet phasers. Why wasn't it
going down? The phaser was designed to neutralize
--suddenly the night sky wobbled. The
black-on-black mass shuddered, tilted to one
side, dropped partially down, then all the way down
with a great humph. The bushes snapped, and other
animals, unseen in the darkness, skittered out of the
way. With a huge breath, the animal gave up the
fight and lay heaving in a clearing its own weight had
just created. Breath after breath, it huffed the
proclamation that it wasn't down for good. Kirk
rolled onto his side, then forced himself up onto his
knees, grabbed a handful of branches, and pulled
himself up. Fighting to catch his breath, he pushed through
the bushes toward where he had last seen McCoy.
"Bones! Spock! Where are you?" About ten
yards away, Spock rose from the overgrowth,
dragging McCoy to his feet. Kirk tried
to knee his way through the brush to them. "You all right?"
  "Yes, sir," Spock said, but he seemed a
little surprised. "Bones?" Stumbling to his feet,
Leonard McCoy staggered to the ramned creature and
circled it, keeping clear of the twitches of cloven
hooves. He breathed heavily as he lifted each
of his legs high and made a series of little jumps that
brought him to the animal that had nearly gored
Spock. "Captain, take a look at this!" The
creature was massive--the size of a buffalo. In
fact, it had the thick hide and hair of a buffalo,
four-toed hooves of a rhino, but also a wide
sweeping horn arching out from a faceplate, and a neck
crest that must have been five feet across. The
creature's tiny eyes rolled, a leg twitched,
but otherwise it lay still, heaving. McCoy reached for the
frilled edge of the neck crest and shook it. It
barely moved. Just the neck and head were the size of a
Starfleet cargo crate. He fingered the animal's
hair. "Look at thistit's hairlike, but it's
not hair. It's insulation of some kind... probably
developed in response to an ice age."
  "Most insulation evolved from scales,"
Spock said. "Some mammallike reptiles
developed true hair; some flying reptiles, a
hairlike material; and some small meat-eating
prehistoric animals may--"
  "Look, I know there's never been anything like this
on Earth!" McCoy wheezed. "Prehistoric or
otherwise!" Without wasting time on pointless
agreements, Kirk snapped up his communicator.
"Spock, who's the zoologist ?"
  "Lieutenant La cerra is senior zoologist
and palentologist, sir, just transferred from the
science vessel John RocMand. Lieutenant
Ling ist"
  "Kirk to LaCerra." The communicator buzzed
faintly. When no response came, he switched
frequencies. "Kirk to Enterprise."
  "Lieutenant Dewey here, sir."
  "Where's Uhura?"
  "Off watch, sir, but she's down in engineering
trying to sort out the communications dysfunctions."
He drew a stiff breath. Reassurance washed through
him that martial structure was still in play, watches
were still being maintained, and all the time-honored,
traditional, systematic orderliness that kept a
ship's crew from cracking
  under pressure were still in operation, even in the bowels
of catastrophe. "Dewey, contact Chief
Barnes and get me Lieutenant LaCemi. Have
her beamed directly here. I've got an animal
I want her to look at." 'ye, sir. Stand by,
please." Keeping his communicator grid open,
Kirk fingered the controls of the phaser in his other hand.
The smell of the heaving animal at their feet was enough
to choke a dead horse. "Both of you, put phasers
on kill. Obviously we can't anticipate the
usual North American wildlife we've been
used to. Either of you have a theory about this thing?"
  "It appears to be a slow-moving grazer,"
Spock said. "Possibly related to the woolly
mammothre"
  "Or a rhinoceros," McCoy added. "Or a
stegosaurus! Look at this tail!" He. reached
into the grass and came up with both arms coiled around
a shocker of an extra weapon: a tail as big
around as a man's rib cage, armed with a single-rowed
rack of flesh-colored spikes the size of
swords. "Incredible!" Kirk limped through the
grass and put his hand on one of the spikes. 'Today
categorize this creature as ceratopsoid,"
Spock said. He ran his tricotaler
over the smelly, fly-clouded mass. "Large
bony cranial frill plate protecting heavy
neck and shoulders... Forward-mounted facial
horn... Massive low-hanging head, but with a
blunt snout, squared off for ttzing, though most
ceratopsoids had parrotlike beaks." Making a
passing wave at the flies, he knelt beside the
animal's huge head. "To my knowledge there has never
been a creature like this on the Great Northern
Plains, even in prehistory. There are antlered
animals here, but none with horns."
  "Or there should be none. Spock, reanalyze.
Have we retreated in time?" Spock peered through him in
the darkness, and his tone was solid. "Absolutely
not, Captain."
  i"...i All right... what took it so long to go
down under

***

 The Vulcan's expression betrayed his
racing thoughts. "That forejudgment may be premature,
sir."
  "May be too obvious, you mean?"
Spock snapped a look at him, gratified.
"Yes, sir." Kirk hobbled toward the huffing
animal, his voice hardly more than a choke.
"What did we do?"
  "Jim," McCoy interrupted, "how do you know
we did anything?" He turned to his doctor.
"Because," he said, "we're here." The statement fell
on the shimmering remnants of sunset and was consumed.
Spock didn't say anything, but the captain could
tell that his intuitive officer found no remedy in that
conclusion. Cold with deep mortal panic that somehow
he had gummed up the universe by botching one
experiment, Kirk felt his throat knot up. Every
man at some time in his life wonders if things would be
better off without him. As a starship captain, his
successes and certainly his blunders had always been
magnified. This, thongh--be could barely grasp the
scope. "If we went back and shot Adam and
Eve, it wouldn't affect this much," Kirk pressed.
"These bizarre animals can't be just the result of
lack of humans. The sky is filled with birds,
just as it always has been."
  "Evidently," Spock said, "even here they
outcompeted the flying reptiles."
  "We're not that sure of the science we've
been tampering with. Somehow we caused ourselves to jump
into a parallel universe or caused our own
universe to change." As an embedded chill
gripped his spine, he limped between his two officers
and looked over the undeveloped landscape. "What
if we're not lost... but humanity is? It's one
thing to accept that we've marooned ourselves
interdimension-ally, but if we've destroyed the
civilization around us... I feel damned obliged
to fix it." The statement fell on the broad glazed
bay. He started to say something else but chopped his
own thoughts away with a motion that whipped his
communicator up. It chittered at him. "Kirk
here," he barked before the instrument was finished making its
sound. "what's the problem with that beam-over?"
Frustration rolled through his limbs and tightened them.
He determined to win out over the poison in his body
ffhe had to dig for leeches and bleed hmfmffthere were
still leeches. And he would make a decision, no
matter how bitter, if he could stitch together a
theory. Forward movement of kind--would he have
to strangle a wild guess out of Spock?
"Barnes here, sir..."
  "Barnes, what's going on with the zoologist?"
"Bannon just came up from the valley
floor, sir. Is it possible for you to beam over
here?"
  "Why?" Kirk demanded. "Captain,"
Barnes's voice croaked over the distance between them,
"Lieutenant LaCerra's been killed, sir."
  "We killed about... half of them, sir. But they
got to LaCerra before we could drive them off. Some
of them went that way... Sir, if you'd come with me."
Chief Chemist Barnes's uniform had been shredded
in sevral places, leaving ragsides dripping
all over his chest and loose threads clinging like vines
around what was left of his trouserlegs. McCoy was
eyeing the bloody streaks on the man's arms and chest
but didn't try to get between him and the captain yet.
"Anybody else hurt?" Kirk asked.
"Bannon's real shook up, poor kid. This
way, sir." Barnes was in a hurry but moving in a
fatalistic way, as though he knew hurrying
wouldn't help. He seemed more anxious to hurry
himself out of the command ring and get omebody else to take
over the situation. "One of these things started to chase
LaCerra," he said, huffing like a racehorse.
"She tried to get away from it, but he didn't
realize it was deliberately driving her into a pack
of others hiding in the tall grass. There
must've been eight or nine of them."
  was On a depressed portion of tall grass, as
though fallen on the brink of a pond, lay
Lieutenant Louise She could're been dozing in the
moonlight, so was her face. Her body had been
slashed open from under one arm to the point of her hip, and
from the underside of one breast across and down to the cup of
her pelvis. Her uniform had been slit open and the
material was curled back, baring the white lips of
open wounds cleanly meant to disembowel--not random at
all. McCoy didn't even bother to kneel by the
corpse. There just wasn't any point. And he
didn't want to get too close to that thing lying beside
her. Tucked sedately into the warm body was the
clawed foot of an animal that lay beside her in a
deceptive caress, a creature with skin like a
snake and a face like a lizard but eyes wide open
that looked like a cat's eyes. Its forepaws were
gripping LaCerra's shoulder, dug in to the
knuckles. Almost as long from nose to tip of its
blunt tail as its prey was tall, the animal had
a gaping mouth that showed rows of pointed teeth gleaming
in the moonlight. Tiger-striped hide and a bare
white belly were like a reptile, but certainly
weren't the colors of any known Earth
lizard. And those sure weren't the eyes of a lizard.
"There are six more of those things lying around here, sir,"
Barnes reported, fighting his emotions down. "I
mean, if you want them." He shuffled into the grass
and kicked another of those animals, phasered to death,
out into the open at the captain's feet. It flopped
like a sack of sand. "That one next to her drove her
to all these others. Then they were on her like fire
ants. She never had a chance." Kirk moved away
from the animal, away from the boiling misery rising in
his mind that this girl who had gone into space with spirit and
bold initiative, willing to risk her life as far
from Earth as a person can get, had died right here, within
hiking distance of where she had been educated and trained.
He found something of a betrayal in that. He sidled
toward Speck. "A precise and coordinated
attack," Speck commented, keeping his voice low.
"A man eater--if you'll pardon the crude
colloquialismmmst be smarter, faster, and better
9O
  armed than what it eats. These animals may be
the smartest life form on the planet under these
conditions. They may be as intelligent as leopards,
perhaps even chimpanzees. Driving prey toward an
ambush is partly instinctive but
definitely partly learned as a hunting
technique." It's a sprinter," McCoy said.
"Look at those long, strong hind legs. And the
slashing foreclaws and ripping teeth... and what it
did to that poor girl. These things know how to disable their
targets--"
  "While minimizing their own chance of injury,"
Speck interrupted. "But it's not a mammal,"
Kirk said. He pushed down a surge of irritation
at Speck for being a little too fascinated and not
angry enough. "I don't see anything that's a
mammal."
  "They may be here," Speck suggested, "but kept
in check by the creatures like this." He nodded again to the
animals slaughtered in defense of a giri. "It
may be interesting to transport to the Amazon
region. Arboreal primates may be quite
successful under these conditions."
  "This isn't a field trip." Kirk spun to the
other Starfleet personnel. "The rest of you have
anything to put any light on this problem?"
  "Yes, sir, I do. Bannon, sir," the
red-haired fellow with the buck teeth said. He was
trembling. "Anthropology."
  "Report, Bannon."
  "I've got some data here I'd like Mr.
Speck to have a look at. his
  "Why? Just tell me what you've got."
  "Well... because I think I've picked up
trace evidence of worldwide natural
catastrophe." He winced at his own words.
Bannon said "think," but he meant he was damned
sure he'd picked that up and he knew he sounded like
a lunatic when he reported it. You mean there was a
civilization here?"
  "That's right, sir!" Bannon shook his
tricorder. "I've been tied into the ship for a half
hour, and all the wide-range readings come up for an
organized prehistoric civilization. Then they
all... just up and died! Or maybe killed each
other." Kirk waved a hand impatiently. "Tell
me why you think this. Spocok, listen to this."
  "The ship's lab is reading several layers of
development up to a point," Bannon said, "both
manufactured and natural, and then a cutoff,
encroachment of nature, then another gradual rising
of a civilization, with all the steps we'd expect,
then the same cycle of destructiom All the
evidence is in the center of the continents, mostly in
South America and Mrica, and it's
several strata down. It's all been covered over,
but I had them do some overlays, and we think there's
evidence of wooden structures, then later a
surge of sophisticated metallurgy. And above
those, traces of wide-range warfare." Kirk
tried to hold on to his expression. "War?. Are
you sure?"
  "Yes, sir, real big war. It runs in the
same cycle, over and OV-ER The
anthropologist's ruddy face screwed into a
frown. "It doesn't make any sense! There
wasn't any industrial life on Earth that long
ago. There wasn't even rudimentary tribal
life, never mind sophisticated battle
capabilities. Seismology indicates
deeply embedded geological evidence of
destruction on the large scale... possibly
nuclear!"
  "Well," McCoy blurted, "now we know what
happened to the redwoods." Suddenly angry that there
wasn't the hum of a city beyond the crackle of
crickets and the whistle of birds, Kirk pressed
his lips tight. "How old is this evidence of
destruction?" Bannon managed to keep his voice
steady. "On the order of ten to twenty
million years." McCoy pushed toward them.
"That's ridiculous left-brace his
  "Much earlier than tribal hominids," Spock
said. "So it certainly wasn't a human war,"
Kirk snapped. "Could someone have colonized the
planet and made all those wars?" He turned.
"Chief Barnes, what do you have to say about the
atmospheric chemistry?"
  "Not much, sir," the older man said. "It reads
just as Earth's atmosphere should red under these...
apparent conditions. No trace pollutants from
early fossil fuel usage, at least not on the
surface, and no artificial sculpting of land
masses."
  "No evidence of space travel?" Barnes's
reddened eyes widened. "No, sir, nothing like that."
"Doesn't mean it didn't happen... after ten
million years," Kirk said, "anything could clean
itself out." Spock scanned Bannon's tricorder
screen. "Preliminary sensor sweeps confirm
radiation abnormalities at different places in
different strata all over the Earth. W, call
these "welded-glass horizons" The ecology
rebounded in every instance, though there were at least four
major periods of continentwide
obliteration. Given enough time, nature always rebounds.
With new forms of life, of course, but it does
rebound. Many of these animals may be the result of
radiation." In the deep background, an animal--
one that had never lived on this planet befmshrieked
at the moon. Alien insects rattled like bacon
frying. He primed his communicator again. "Kirk
to Enterprise." "Dewey, sir."
  "Launch a lighting flare, five kilometer
radius. I want to see this valley floor."
  "Aye, sir, one minute." The sounds of the
landscape were damnddingly familiar. The ratcheting of
frogs, the chitter of neocrickets, the soft brush
of breeze over long grass that was once the grass
of his childhood. Jimmy, put down that fishing
pole and get the lawn tended. You only have one thing
to do, so why haven't you done it? And the smell of it
allrathe bay, the air, the grass. It played
games with his mind as Kirk fought to swallow the
reality of what their science told them. He felt as
if he were letting go of something he would never
retrieve. He'd had this feeling since the Exeter
and Farragut disappeared, and he'd seen it in his
crew's faces. The creased eyes, the pursed
lips, the guarded fear that something had
happened that they couldn't correct, that finally tampering
with science on too big a scale had exacted too
big a price. Mankind had run that risk for a
long time. Had they gone one step too far? Had he
given one order too many? "There it is, sift'
Barnes shouted, pointing almost directly over his
head. In the slate sky, even smaller than the
stars, was a moving pinprick. They watched as it
wobbled and spiraled, changing its path with the vagaries
of the stratosphere, drifting this way, then that;
volleyballed by thermals that argued above the water and
land. Then the flare's altitude trigger kicked
in, and it popped --they could almost hear the crack--
and a sizzling strobelike light burst over the
entire valley floor, nearly five miles
across. Suddenly the planet was like an old-time
movie, east in gray and opal, and a black wedge
of San Francisco Bay anchoring the farthest
point. Startled heads rose over the grass, huge
heads with six-foot horns, neck plates, and
tiny eyes. Beyond that, two long-necked relics
placidly chewing stalks they had pulled from a
tree. They might have been giraffes, except that
their heads were smooth and elongated. Their bright
white-and-yellow necks arched, long
throats constantly working, thick balancing tails
lapping slowly from side to side, and spindly legs
poised in place. They were patently disinterested in the
sudden brightness or the odd little observers way over
here. They froze in place and stared but continued
to chew. An ungodly racket far to the left went
up like a cannon shot. A pack of LaCerra's
new-age banshees were cornering a slothlike
animal with a leathery face and a forejaw that lanced
downward as a weapon instead of front teeth. It
hacked downward again and again now that it could see what was
attacking it, then screamed as the relentless
predators ganged in on it. Some distracted it
while others plunged in and ripped its spine open.
Suddenly all Kirk could think of was the girl he'd
failed to protect. Half the banshees kept
hacking away with their foreclaws, ignoring the light that
had whacked on overhead and was wobbling on the
thermals, but the other half were shocked by it and their
intelligent minds told them to beat it. Kirk
watched them pause, look, squint, try to make the
decision between fear and famine. Some even looked at
the light, then at the prey, then at the light again.
About a third of those ran away. The rest decided
to ignore the hoverin white light and feast
on that which they had so diligently pursued. There was the
evidence, plain as--day. Creatures swept with
instinct, consumed by raw nature, yet smart enough
to make a conscious choice. They were on their way
to being able to think. Creatures with skin like snakes and
minds like leopards. The flare would have kept lighting
the landscape for six or eight more minutes, but a
sharp puff of inland wind blasted it out over the water,
and the sudden lack of thermals brought it crashing into the
bay with an audible ftzzzzz. The last they saw of
it was a thread of smoke twisting toward the moon.
Darkness fell in again. A few feet away, someone
sighed heavily. Someone else made a worried
whew. But no one actually said anything. James
Kirk and his crew stood listening to the snapping of
bones and the arguing of smart predators. They might as
well be standing on a planet millions of
light-years from here. "All hands," Kirk said,
"collect any specimens or information you need right
now. We're leaving. You have ten minutes. Stay
together." A cloud of miserable "Aye ayes" rose
and dropped away. The captain moved to the edge of the
mesa. He absorbed the slate sky, called with his
mind to the empty enameled bay, listened to the shuffles
of his command as they gathered what they could. "This
is like a dream inside a nightmare," McCoy
sighed. "A pleasant place, decent weather,
nice sky... on a forgotten planet."
  "We haven't forgotten it," Kirk snapped.
"Something's wrong. I'll fix it if I can
figure out how." He limped a few feet away
to the brink of a hillock and peered through the trees at
a sliver of San Francisco Bay. His eyes
felt as though they would pop out if he held his
breath. "Earth," he uttered. "The cornerstone of the
Federation completely barren of intelligent life."
"This has been the wish of countless human beings for
centuries," McCoy said. "A pristine Earth,
untouched by the hands of men, free to grow, live at
its own pace--"
  "Only the wish of those who regard intelligence as
a contaminant," Kirk defendedThis is
beautiful, yes, but our Earth was beautiful, too.
There are trees and animals by the millions there,
too. This... it's not all that different from the Earth
we know. The same trees, the same grass, the
same deserts, not in much different amounts.
Mankind isn't a plague on Earth, any more
than the Federation is a plague in space. We of
all people should be ready to admit we've done
some good out there. Humanity is part of nature.
Without people, this is an empty, savage,
unappreciated place7" Silence coiled around the
drained thoughts. "I agree," Spock said.
McCoy turned to look at him. "You do?"
  "Of course."
  "I wouldn't have expected that from you, Spock.
You're usually so quick to point out humanity's bad
judgments--anytime anyone points out to you that you're
half human, you feel obliged to be ashamed."
  "Bones," Kirk said, "leave him alone."
Everything about Spock was suddenly understated, yet
poignant in his alien way. He seemed
heavy-laden, deeply disturbed, more than either of his
companions would have expected. He specialized in
taking even the wildest of occurrences in stride,
fielding all the unimaginables of space travel with
grace, working by the book, taking things one at a time
--well, fifty at a time but in logical order.
Tonight he was different. Finally he visibly let his
guard
  down a little and blinked into the flames. "A world
without intelligence is a primitive place,
Doctor, not an enchanted place. Intelligence
is part of the advancing scheme of evolution.
Without it, nature reaches a plateau very quickly and
does not progress beyond raw survival. The full
flavor of possibility goes unsavorecLike And
that... is a true shame." McCoy offered a
grin. "Well I'll be." Beyond the tiny opal
solace of the moon was a moist landscape dotted with
pockets of fog Kirk raised his eyes again to the
dark and chirping landscape, and his mind leaped ahead.
"I feel like I'm staring at an accident where
somebody diedk? Am I still in that coma$9"
  "If you are, Jim," McCoy said, "we're in
it with you."
  

Chapter 8
  "Leave the Solar System, Mr. Sulu,
one-third sublight."
  "One-third sublight, aye, sir. Destination,
sir?"
  "None yet. All right, Dr. McCoy, get
to work. Make it fast."
  "Yes, Captain. Just stand still and don't breathe
too
  ,Lieutenant, I want the ship at yellow
alert until further notice."
  "Yellow alert, sir. Attention all hands, go
to yellow Repeat, yellow alert."
  "go ahead, Mr. Spock- We're all
listening." The bridge was a buzzing haven, bright and
soothing after the pristine world they had just left. This was
home now, their only home. A little more crowded than
usual, since Barnes, Bannon, Ling, and the other
scientists from the landing party were here, too, dispirited and
grim. Ordinarily, this would've been done in the
briefing room, but Jim Kirk wasn't about
to leave his bridge in what had suddenly become
hostile space. While McCoy applied
hypospray after hypospray and fed him little cups of
medicated liquid, each of which gave him a new
flush or chill, Kirk sat in his command chair and
felt his eyes redden. He should be lying down for the
treatment, but he refused to have a cot brought to the
bridge. His health was at the bottom of his
priority list right now. "Go ahead, Spock," he
urged, determined that ship's business come before the
hissing and the slurping and the sweating. Above, on the
circular quarterdeck, Spock stood in elegant
repose at his station, his shoulders slightly rounded.
"Positions of the continents are unaffected. South
America's thorny forests are intact, but there is
minimal rain forest. Nearly nine-tenths less than
we had, in fact. Africa's grassy
savannas, deserts, barren land, and jungles are
relatively unaltered. Here is some of the
planet's wildlife. Western Ethiopia..."
Pictures were popping on and off three science station
monitors, high-altitude shots that quickly zeroed
in as the ship's tactical sensors picked up
life forms right down to heart rates. "Quite a large
population of burrowing and/or colonizing
creatures," Spock began, "relatively
small primates that are somewhat squirrellike.
No rodents, though there are multituberculates with
prehensile tails. Billions of insects with
appreciable evolutionary changes. In the Orient,
Lieutenant Ling has singled out dwarf versions of
recognizable sauropods, theropods, and
ornithopods. I have yet to find any large roaming
predators. There are some sizable grazers, but
predation is dominated by small pack-attackers;"
  "No tyrannosaurs," Kirk muttered, "but
there are wolves." Spock looked down at him.
"If you're speaking in the poetic sense, yes."
He let the screen continue showing pictures of
hippo-sized animals with long necks and heavy
tails. "Obviously sauropod descendants.
Not as large, but clearly related."
  "But no large primates, sir?" Lieutenant
Ling broke in from behind the captain's shoulder. There were
tears in her eyes. Nobody could blame her.
"Nothing that highly evolved?" Spocok shifted his
feet. "What is "highly evolved" depends
upon your point of view, Lieutenant. The
squirrel-sized early primates are the most
advanced we've found so far. And the oceans..." He
tapped the controls, and all three screens switched
to water shots with creatures shipping through heavy
rollers and coasting on crests. "I don't
understand!" Bannon croaked, his voice cracking.
"That's a twenty-meter pliosau How can that thing
possibly be there? How can it be there, sir?." He
turned to Kirk, his face reddened and hot, eyes
orrow-blinded. Kirk flung a blistering glare at
him and dared him to lose control on the bridge.
"Control yourself, Lieutenant." Like a slapped child
who was suddenly relieved to know where the boundaries
were, Bannon murmured, "Yes, sir."
Spock ticked off ample seconds, then
blanketed the bridge with his fluid voice. "We
have found large plankton eaters, large-mouthed
monosaurs, or rather their descendants, a breed of
surface dwellers similar
to elasmosaurs... billions of Mesozoic
shellfish, ammonites, and countless relations On every
body of water, including fresh water, and you'll
11ote here some four-meter to eight-meter floating
mounds. " 'l"...1108e living colonies,
probably similar to the Portuguese
to llan-o-war, with sweeping fibrous tendrils as
long as fifty There are sharks, also, of course, as
they are among oldest of predatory creatures.
Many marine animals are "equals Jltvced
versions of--"
  "It's a very nice zoo, Mr. Spock,"
Kirk bluntly cut in, "but it's not ours. Can you
give me a conclusion? Something I can use?"
Spock snapped off the screens and let the void
fall. Behind him, the darkened screens were emblematic.
"These animals are unknown, but familiar," he
told them, "almost traceable to Earth's Mesozoic
background, but dearly they did not exist as they are
now on Earth at all, even in prehistoric times.
And with the exception of some ocean dwellers, most of these
creatures are smaller than their Mesozoic
relatives. Our most substantive theory," he
finished, "is that they are descendants of an
alternative universe... one in which the
dinosaurs never died out." The bridge sounds
elieked and whirred in purposeful peace,
amplifying a human silence after he finished. No
one said anything. What could be said to that? Spocok was
being charitable by using the word theory; it softenexl the
ghastly blow that what they had seen was real, that they had
nowhere to go, no Federation to turn to. If he had
said fact or conclusion, he might as well have
slapped them each in the face with the nonexistence of their
homes and families, their nations, their histories,
their homeworld. "Captain," Sulu said, his voice
heavy, "clearing the solar system, sir."
  "Ahead standard." Kirk anchored himself
to Spock's opiate expression. "Standard, aye,
sir." Spock came a step or two closer and
gazed down at him. "Sir, when the evolution of
animals provided no clues, I went to the next
most obvious level of analysis: geology. The
Earth itself." Noticing the inflections in his first
officer's voice, the glint in his black eyes,
Kirk sat forward slightly. "You've got something,
haven't you?" Spock raised a single ink-slash
brow. "I've roughly correlated the data we
collected on the 'new" Earth and run a
comparison with physical conditions of Earth
as we know it. Our Earth shows geological
evidence of cosmic dust, molten Pellets of
tectite glass, or shocked quartz, and a thin
layer of iridium in the K-T layer of strata.
The Earth beneath us now has none of these ballistic
details."
  "Oh, Jesus," Bannon uttered, and he and the
science specialists looked at each other.
Squinting, Kirk asked, "What does that do for us?
What happened?" What did not happen, sir,"
Spock corrected, plainly hopeful under his
mantle of poise, his emphasis nearly poetic.
"Iridium is very rare on Earth, but extremely
common in asteroids." i "What's that supposed
to mean?" Kirk glanced around. Spock and the others
seemed to be waiting for him to catch the meaning. Finally
Spock shifted from one foot to the other. "Sir, it
is commonly known what killed off the large-bodied
animals and much of the sealife of the Cretaceous
Earth." . "Well, common it to me." Everyone around
him seemed embarrassed for him, but he didn't
care. And what was that look McCoy was giving him?
Had he grown horns? What was one asteroid, more
or less, to a starship captain? Flagging his hands in
protest, he said, "It's not my venue.
So what?" McCoy gestured at the upper deck.
"Come on, Spock, we're playing with millions
of years here! A million this way or that, ten
thousand, a century... What are the odds? One
asteroidre"
  "Gentleman," Kirk said with starch. They looked
at him. Spock nodded heavily. "Roughly ixty
to sixty-five million years before now, an
asteroid ten to fifteen miles in diameter struck
the Earth at a point that is now under water, just off the
north coast of the Yucatan :. Peninsula in
Mexico. The crater, known as the Chixilub were
forster, is nearly one hundred eighty miles in
diameter and i histo " hidden under the Gulf waters
for millennia. The impact "beii shocked quartz
and teerite glass fragments similar to evidence at
sites of nuclear detonation and notable in a layer
of Earth's strata. When the dust finally settled, the
age of dinosaurs was snuffed out. But here, 

***

  ones who stayed in our universe while everything
else was changed around us?"
  "That's a blue giant of a coincidence,"
McCoy drawled. "Precisely," Spock said.
  Kirk put a hand between them. "Is Izell
changed in the previous time line then? Was the cosmic
string ever there now?"
  McCoy shook his head. "You can't ask for every
answer, Jim!"
  "Yes, I can. I'm still not sold on the idea that
we didn't cause this." He felt the changing
light from the forward screen move across his flushed
cheeks. "We know how to go back in time. We also
know how dangerous time travel is. Touch the wrong
thing, cross the wrong street, cause the wrong
person to live or die at the wrong time, and all
history changes. We can use the slingshot
effect around a sun to take the ship back, then use
photon torpedoes to duplicate the effects of an
asteroid impact or stop the interference from stopping the
asteroid, whatever the interference was. That event would
have to happen in space, so we'll need the ship."
  McCoy shook his head. "The slingshot effect
is fine when we're dealing with a century or two, but
how will it be with multimillions of years? You
don't know what that'll do to
  US."
  "We know a slingshot effect takes us back in
time roughly a hundred years to the minute. Spock,
run it down for us. Sixty-five million years.
Six hundred fifty thousand centuries-was
  "Six hundred fifty thousand centuries would
take ten thousand eight hundred thirty-three point
three hours," Spock said, suddenly monotone as
he calculated. "Which would be... four hundred
fifty-one point three eight eight days."
  As his hopes crashed, Kirk felt his shoulders
sink. "A year and a half in the dream-stasis of time
travel... The crew would starve."
  "We wouldn't live long enough to starve," McCoy
pointed out. "Dehydration would kill us within days.
Add to that the
  fact that you don't even know exactly when this
asteroid hit--it could be sixty-two million and
twenty years or sixty-eight million and four
years. To show up within a thousand years would be
fantastically accurate!"
  "And the slightest deviance in trajectory,"
Spock added, gazing at McCoy with surprised
appreciation, "movement of the fifth place after the
decimal point could put us off the mark by hundreds
of years."
  Troubled, Kirk looked at them. "And what if
we dare take a guess, kill off the dinosaurs,
then the asteroid hits anyway? What would two
impacts like that do to the Earth? To evolution?"
  Plagued, McCoy frowned. "I don't like where
this is going, Jim."
  "There are even simpler factors, gentlemen,"
Spock said. "Four hundred fifty point three
eight days of gravitational and time-distortion stress
on the ship, in her current condition--"
  "We'll have to find some other way," Kirk said,
sharpening his voice. In as dramatic a gesture as
he could make it, he hauled himself to his command chair
and slid into it, then faced the helm. "What's your
heading, Mr. Sulu?"
  "Currently three seven mark one, sir.
Straight across the
  most populated area of... well, our
galaxy."
  "Hold your course."
  "Aye, sir."
  "Forward view."
  "Forward view, sir."
  The screen abandoned the solar system they knew as
the hub of their lives and turned outward the way they
were heading, to the unfamiliar galaxy. As the ship
wheeled on her way, Kirk gazed at Spock in
silence. No one was doing any more analysis of the
Earth they were leav'mg behind. Even Spock had seen
enough of it.
  A mechanical twitter at his shoulder broke
their eommunication--McCoy's medical scanner.
  Captain," McCoy began, "your temperature
is back to normal, for the time being I'd like you
to remain seated as
  much as possible for the next three hours or so, and
even though I might as well be talking to myself,
I'd like you to get some sleep."
  "Tell yourself you're dreaming. I--"
  "Captain!" Sulu sang out.
"Long-range scanners hitting us, sir! They
tracked us somehow!" Glowering at the screen, at an
enemy he couldn't even see yet, Kirk said,
"Shields up." "Shields, aye."
  "There has never been a Romulan this close
to Earth!" Chekov spat, his rage stumbling over the
English words. McCoy gathered his med pack under
one arm and held tight to the command chair with the other.
"Tell them we're parked in a no-Romulan
zone."
  "Belay that," Kirk snapped. "Sound general
quarters." The klaxon erupted through the ship, the
glow of red alert lighting engulfed the bridge, and
Uhura's voice announced the incoming danger with a
deceptive calmness. The whole ship started to throb
with activity. "Where are they, Mr. Sulu?" "Ten
degrees substarboard abaft the beam, sir...
bearing three-one... range, four point one
parsecs and closing. No cloaking device, coming in
at high speed."
  "Put them on the forward screen, maximum
visual." The screen shifted from what was in front
of them to what was coming up on their starboard quarter. Not
a full second later, one of the neo-Romulan
ships they'd evaded before came plunging
down upon them out of deep space. "Sensors on
full capacity. Arm phasers."
  "Phasers armed... ready--"
  "Ready the photon torpedo guidance systems."
  "Photons armed... Ready, sir."
  PART TWO
  DAMAGE CONTROL
  "Why me? I look around that bridge... see the
men are waiting for me to make the next move, and,
Bones... what if I'm wrong?"
  --lames Kirk, Balance of Terror
  

Chapter 9
  "Intrcept course!" Chekov called out.
"Evasive. I don't want to fight here unless
I have to. We don't know the politics of this
situation--who's right and who's wrong." From behind him
McCoy mumbled, "If it's that simple."
  "Evasive, aye," Sulu responded, and the
ship plunged away from the enemy. "They're in
pursuit, sir." Kirk didn't look away from
the screens but knew Spock had glanced at him.
With a grim eye on the forward screen, he leaned on
his chair's arm and tapped the comm. "Kirk to
  "Engineering, Scott here, sir."
  "Mr. Scott, we're engaging a
hostile up here. We've outrun them before and I
want to do it again. Power up for high
  "No problem, sir, we'll have it." Very good.
Kirk out."
  "Their weapons are armed, sir," Spock said from
the upper deck. "They're preparing to fire."
  "Mr. Sulu, warp factor six as soon as you
can get the power."
  "Aye aye, sir... warp two... three...
four... Captain!"
  "Three more ships, sir!" Chekov shouted.
"Dead ahead!"
  "lielay warp eight--forward visual." Kirk
was aware of the eyes flicking at him from different
points on the bridge. They were watching him to take
their cues from him. Critical, yes, how his enemy
perceived him, but also and even more immediate was how his crew
perceived him. "Continue evasive." He turned his
head slightly to starboard without taking his eyes off the
screen and spoke in a manner that would get
Spock's attention. "Just like those animals. They
led us to the pack."
  "Some things," Spock answered quietly,
"remain efficient through the eons." Pressure hit
them as Sulu was forced to angle the ship
downward and to port to avoid two of the ships, but by the
time he did that, the other two ships had closed in
on his heading. "Do what you can, Sulu," he said.
"They're boxing us in, sir," Spock said at the
same time, making it clear that he didn't think
Sulu could do much by way of maneuvers alone
to dodge the big ships. "We've got the speed, but
they're not letting us use it." Kirk gripped his
chair's armrest. "All right, if that's the way it
is. Come about starboard."
  "Coming about. Helm's answering."
  "They're flringl" Chekov interrupted. On the
auxiliary scanners, ships plunged in and out of
frame, circling like vultures. "Incoming
salvos!" His eyes were fixed to the screens as a
wide arch of coordinated shots from two of the enemy
ships crashed toward them. The starship bucked and
whined, then recovered and heaved out of the way of the
second wave of shots. "Incredibly tight
movements for big ships, sir," Sulu gasped,
all his muscles twitching as he forced the starship
to pivot "Now I see why they don't have high
speed," Kirk said as he and McCoy both clung
to the command chair. "They've sacrificed it
to close-range maneuverability. Jam
their sensors, Mr. Spock. Mr. Chekov, you
handle the weapons, multiple targeting... Fire
at wilLike"
  "Aye, s" The young officer climbed up the
tilted deck to the weapons subsystems station and
pluned into his purpose, playing the four enemy
ships like me pieces. Within seconds he was keeping
any ship from getting within five thousand miles without
paying for it. He managed to detonate a few
incoming salvos in time to give Enterprise a clear
path to fire hack before she had to dodge again. But the
starship couldn't room to gain any way. The four
ships had done this before and were good at it. Kirk leered
at the forward screen, then at the coordinated
monitors. He'd never known Romulans to behave
in coordinated attack patterns at all, much
less in this persistent pack-dog fashion.
"Photon torpedos, automatic guidance, Mr.
Chekov. Wide dispersal. Fire!" Tense
seconds flashed by as Chekov fired four times.
"Two direct hits," Spock droned, his face
cast in blue light from the sensor hood as he bent
over it, "one glancing blow, one clean miss.
Damage uncertain--" Suddenly the ship heaved
to starboard and seemed to ate to a stop--at
hyperlight speed! The vessel around them howled her
protest and yanked and chewed at what was holding her.
"Tractors, Captainif' Spock shouted above the
mechani-
  "Hit them with feedback," Kirk said. "Break
those buns." ulcan crossed the bridge to the
engineering station and shouldered Nourredine aside. With-
moments the ship whined again and scrambled to fget her
feet under her, but the strain showed itself in the wobbling be
whine of the mechanic "Tractors are down forty
percent still affecting a drag on us. May be able
to break them down further with maneuvers."
  "Do it, Sulu," Kirk said as if the
helmsman didn't have enough weighing on him.
"Trying, sir," Sulu chokeds well have been
pushing the ship with his hands. Squalls of enemy fire
peeled protection off by energy layers the thickness of
fingernails. With each hit, the ship was a fraction
less protected. With each harsh burst, something was
rattled deep inside her, but like a wild horse
she held on to freedom and would do it until she
went mad. "Double-load torpedoes. Fire."
Chekov bent over his controls, his young face
screwed into a bitter mask. "Double firing
mechanism is nonopera-tional, sir!"
  "Then random-fire the single salvos in tight
succession. Pick targets on their hull sections
and hammer the same place."
  "Aye, sir, targeting."
  "Don't burn out the firing mechanisms,
Ensign. We may need them later."
  "Oh--aye, sir." The bridge became a
flurry of bolts, responses, orders, wound
shocks, and backhandings as the four heavily armed
ships struck and struck again. The black pit in the
bottom of Jim Kirk's stomach began to ferment.
His ship and crew oould beat off the dogs for a long
time but not forever. That was the tactic the enemy was using--
scratch and fall back, strike and dodge away,
until the prey bled to death. Within minutes the
ship's power levels would start to slip, her shields
to crumble, and all she could hope to do was take one or
two of the enemy down with her. Here there was no one to come
to their aid, no chance of calling out into space for
reinforcements. Hits on her primary hull
wracked the ship as the threat turned into a
  "Sir" Nourredine called. "Mr. Scott
says the magna-tomics are taking overflow from the
firing chambers!"
  "Inform him he has permission to lock
those down, or we
  won't be here very long," Kirk said, soulsick
at knowing Scott would have no choice but to deplete the
weapons systems long enough to make that repair. Even
if it only took thirty seconds, they couldn't
afford to cease fire that long. Raw desperation and a
dollop of fury came into his mind. "Mr.
Sulu, shields double forward. Pick one of those
ships and direct all fire to it. If we disable one
of them, maybe we can slip by--if we can manage
to keep from getting our stern blown off."
  "New contact, Captain!" Spock suddenly
announced over the noise. "Arching out of the sun."
  "Stand by, Sulu." Kirk cranked around and
pulled himself to the ship's rail. "Spock?"
  "Unknown construction. I don't recognize the
signature. Definitely not another Imperial
Guard vessel... Much smaller, highly
power-packed--fifteen thousand metric tons, all
armor and shields... Configuration is haphazard,
generally cylindrical with a heavily armored nose
section .. probably a one-man ship." He
straightened and looked at the forward screen. "Coming in
at uncontrolled warp." "*Weapons
sequences?" Kirk pulled himself to the
front of the helm. "No reading of that," Spock
said. "Sir, the Romulan ships are backing
away!" Chekov called. "They're veering off at
high warp!"
  "Why would they do that?" Kirk leered at the forward
screen on which the four Romulan ships were suddenly
gathering into a clutch, wheeling about, and beating for
distance. "Captain, new contact is veering in,"
Chekov said. "Should I fire?" They held their
breaths and waited for the captain to use the fabulous
power of sun and fire under them to slice their way
to victory by cutting up everything in sight. "Hold
your fire!" Kirk ordered on an impulse.
"Helm, ten degrees port. Move us out of his
way." The ship hummed with effort but arched to port and
slightly upward, clearing a path for the unidentified
incoming. Abruptly a small flash of light
streaked out from the bottom of the forward screen in hot
pursuit of the Romulan ships, obviously able
to overtake them, without giving the Enterprise a
pause. But it was like an acorn overtaking a
rockslide. What effect could it have on those
gargantuans? "They're firing on it, Captain,"
Spock went on, squinting again into his sensor
hood. "Leaking some atmosphere now...
Its engines are showing signs of overheating." The
heavy vessels fired wildly, trying to hit the
tiny ship racing toward them. Its speed and size
made it impossible to hit with aimed shots. Two
of the Romulan vessels attempted wide dispersal
shots but too late. Without timidity the little ship
rocketed toward its targets and at the last second
selected one of the ships to hit. It angled in,
plunging headlong at the big ship, and plowed
straight up its aft thruster intake chute. The
screen blew white. Volleys of electrical
flashes backwashed over the Enterprise, blinding the
shocked bridge crew and forcing them to shield their
eyes. "One Romulan ship destroyed," Spock
said matter-of-factly. Then he hooked his hand over
the neck of his sensor hood and squinted. "The others
are continuing away at high warp. Reading scattered
debris--a life pod, Captain? His voice
betrayed his shock that anything could have come out of that
explosion in less than twenty pieces. "You're
kidding," Kirk muttered, sweating. "Likely it
jettisoned just before impact."
  "Prepare for rescue then. Beam any
survivors aboard. Send a Security unit to the
transporter room. Mr. Sulu,
locations of those other three enemy vessels?"
  "Out of range, sir. Not even on our
monitors anymore."
  "One little ship, and they ran like rabbits," Kirk
murmured. "I wonder who it is we've got
here." He realized his hands were shaking as he grabbed
for the comm unit on his chair. "Kirk to transporter
room. What's the condition of that beam-in?"
  "Transporter Room, Security here. He's
coming in now, sir."
  "All stop."
  "All ir"
  stop, s , Sulu sighed. "Damage control,
all decks. Let's do it while we've got the
time." Uhura nodded, then announced that. Her
voice throbbing through the ship was a solvent for their
tensions. "Mr. Spock, communicate our
circumstances to all de- partmerit heads and watch
leaders."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Transporter room here, sir. We've got
two unconscious rescues, one is pretty
bad. Both have superficial burns, some damage
to the arms and--"
  "Have them taken to sickbay."
  "Begging pardon, sir, but I'd like to have them
treated in the brig. They"...ence Klingon."
  "Repeat that."
  "The survivors are both Klingon, sir." He
glanced at Spock. "Acknowledged. Have the
prisoners taken to the brig under heavy confinement.
Kirk out. Dr. McCoy, get down there."
McCoy looked shaken up but glad to have something to do.
"Right away, Captain."
  "Secure from battle stations. Go to yellow
alert. Let's get out of the vicinity, gentlemen.
If they come back, I don't Want to be here."
Spock pushed off the console and came down to the command
arena, folded his arms, and leaned toward him. "Where will
we go, sir?" As Kirk looked at him, he saw
in Spock's inanimate fatures a thousand
expressions, all small. A clutch of antiment
got him by the heart. "First order of business," he
murmured to his first officer, ,ae to ourselves. We
can't put things right until we have a. " conccIllear
barometer of what's wrong..w, here's the most
logical to :! lalace to start? The Federation
doesnt exist... Who can we trust?" Spock
gazed at him with true sympathy, then said, "We
Klingons and the Romulans still exist."
  "Yes, they do," Kirk responded. "And if
they're still around, then the Vulcans must be." He
looked at Spock. "Will they listen to you?" Hovering
in place, Spock didn't say anything, as though
waiting for the captain to answer his own question. The
Vulcans had for decades been the staunchest
defenders of Earth and her bombastic people. An
unlikely pairing, the same as the bond between the two
of them. Nothing anyone expected or would've bet
on. The most obvious relationship between the two
races would more likely have been constant disapproval,
but that wasn't how it had worked out. Humanity had
gone flocking into the galaxy, enticing the many
inconstant civilizations out there to get together and form a
network of commerce and defense, and it had worked. A
common theme of decency had risen above the petty
differences between people, and those who couldn't get along were
beaten back. And there was Spock, the first Vulcan
in Starfleet, standing beside him on their bridge,
evidence of it all. The Vulcans had offered a
constancy of devotion that was envied and emulated by other
alien races, and of everyone in the history of
Starfleet, James Kirk had enjoyed that devotion
the longest. Spock. The best of both worlds. The
captain gazed at his long-time votary and
couldn't help indulge in a tiny grin. The great
lie--that Vuleans were without emotion. Like hell they
were. "We know humanity isn't in the picture,"
Kirk pushed. "We also know the Romulans and
Klingons are here and hostile toward each other. And the
chance is good that Vulcan is still here and probably still
under the practices of Surak. If so, the
Vulcans shouMore be willing to accept the evidence of
their eyes--a Vulcansthuman hybrid." He
paused, eyed Spock, and asked, "How did I
do?" Spock offered a composed bauble of those straight
black eyebrows. "A reasonably stated argument.
Perhaps I should go to sickbay and assist the medical
staff." For anyone else, this was like shouting,
"Brilliant!"
  "Thank you," Kirk said.
  "You're welcome. Development of the Vulcan
culture should be relatively unaffected, with the
exception of having no Federation to join. The odds of
both Earth and Vulcan's being drasticallyre"
  "Not the odds, please."
  "However," Spock added with a pause that seemed
somehow dangerous, "if the change is limited
to Earth and the Vulcans are still following the teachings of
Surak, it is unlikely they would
cooperate with the Klingons or Romulans. They
may have been subjugated... or destroyed, sir."
Hope was suddenly creased with rude realism. It was
hard to imagine the sober, thoughtful Vulcans
successfully beating off the Romulans or the
Klingons or both all by themselves. And apparently they
were every bit as alone in the galaxy as the crew of the
Enterprise. "Very well," Kirk sighed.
"We'll deal with what we find. Like trying
to tiptoe in snowboots, but we'll manage. All
hands--" "Captain," Spock said, quieter, "I
am obliged to point out whether it is ethical to inform
any planet of an alternative existence. The
Prime Directive may be in order here."
  "The Prime Directive applies
to primitive races. This isn't the time to pay
homage to a universe that didn't evolve."
  "Regulations may require that of us."
  "The Prime Directive was never meant to be that
specific," the captain said. "We can't call upon
any outside morality. As for the Vulcans,
they'll just have to buck up and handle it. All hands,
secure the ship for silent running. No sense
letting ourselves be tracked." Uhura glanced at
him, then tuned herself into the ship's comm
system. "This is the bridge. All hands, rig for
silent running."
  "Shields on standby. Shut down all
nonemergency emissions. Long-range sensors
only. What would the course be from where we are,
Spock?"
  "Checking. Four-nine-eight, mark two, sir."
  "Mr. Chekov, that's your heading. Mr. Sulu,
warp factor six. Let's go to Vulcan." He
gazed at the forward screen, gathered his puckering
innards for what was to come, and forced himself not to cry over
the biggest puddle of spilled milk in all
eternity.
  

Chapter 10
  No CANDLES glowing through the dimness. No
chanting. But there were lights. And there was pain, sounding
in great horns through his head and parts of his body.
Perhaps this was a death dream. Those last few seconds
after detonation. The lights were blurred, east in
blues. He parted his lips, found them cracked,
sticky. A tiny bubble of moisture formed between the
side of his tongue and his upper teeth. With his tongue
he toyed with the bubble, and when it popped, he suddenly
realized he was not dreaming. He tried to open his
eyes. They fought him. They burned.
Acid from the explosion? Had his Spear detonated?
Had he destroyed his target? Where was Zalt?
Dead? Probably. The long tunnel of the enemy
thruster shaft flashed in his mind and a sense of
victory followed him into it. His back was the only
part of his body that felt complete. His spine and
pelvis rested on a cushion, and beneath his head was a
small pillow. Who possessed such things? He
concentrated on one hand, then brought the hand upward
slowly along his pelvis, his stomach, his ribs.
Some of his armor was missing, including the eject
harness that should've been across his chest. Bandages in its
place... His wounds treated... His arms and legs
without bindings... He was being nursed. Elation poured
into his chest. He had been picked up by a home
ship! One chance in a thousand, and this had happened
to him. His tiny buoy signal had found resonance
on a friendly console, and they had come to find him. When
he was well, he would tell about his success in
destroying an entire enemy ship. He had shaken the
enemy all the way to their home planet! And to have
survived... to have survived! Through his aching eyes it
suddenly came to him that the color of the walls was
wrong. They were pale. No ship of his own people was like
this. Nothing around him was Klingon. His joy
sizzled away. Cloying suspicion clunked
into place. The enemy had him! He heard a hum of
energy. A barrier field. When he turned his
head, he could make out the impeller bands through the
haze of his injured vision. Beyond the field, to one
side, were the shoulder and elbow of a guard. Only one
guard? Could the enemies be short of forces
  Fear and desperation balled in his stomach suddenly.
Why would they bind his wounds and nurse him? Why
hadn't his harness detonator been activated by the
enemy ship's transporters? He cursed the
mechanism for failing. . Klingon scientists had
struggled for a decade to isolate that pattern,
to allow one particle of matter to be triggered by the
'enemy transporter, and only that. He might have
taken down two ships instead of only one. Any
surviving Spear ii hoped to do that rather than float in
space and probably die
  He moved one leg, then the other. The left was
well The right was sore at the knee, but it
functioned. were a source of pain as he moved his
legs, forcing choke back a gasp. His head
hammered as he turned it again.
  What was this room? Not any prison cell he
had ever encountered. A medical facility?
Why would they treat his wounds?
  Was he being brought back to health for interrogation?
There was nothing he could tell them. He had never been
significant, noteworthy in anyway--this one
act was his only major contribution, and it was over.
They could only be treating his wounds and making him
live so they could torture him for information he
didn't have.
  He was ready to die but not to be tortured. He
understood what would happen to him. His people and his enemies
were twdgsides of the same blade. Blood chilled
at the unspeakable methods his own kind used.
  Had they done this to his eyes to keep him from
escaping? He had heard nothing of such practices
before. The enemies knew all there was to know about the
Klingnn warrior habits and all about the machinery and
ships, so there was nothing to gain from keeping prisoners.
There were no more tactics left to be discovered.
  Except for the Spears. They would torture him
to find out where the Spears were coming from.
  And so they would torture him until he died, because
he did not know where the Spears were coming from, and he was a
ghastly liar.
  He jerked his head up from the bed and refused to let
it fall back, no matter the pain in his
neck and shoulders. His teeth ground fiercely. He
almost slapped himself but knew that would attract the
guard. Instead he raised his fists in a gesture of
despair and batted the empty air. Think.
  He was ready to die, and they had robbed him of this
tiny thing
  Zalt was dead already. The chances of two Spears
surviving impalement were microscopic. He forced
himself to turn onto his side, then lay sucking air
from the effort.
  No. They would not rob him of this. He would keep
the last promise to himself for a violent peace. The first
concern would be to break throh that barrier and past that
guard.
  He drew several deep breaths, then parted his
lips, and let out a moan that would bend bones.
  "Sickbay. McCoy here."
  "Doctor, this is Yeoman Chapman,
Security. Your patient's making some godawful
painful noises in there. He's coming out of it, but he
don't sound too good.
  McCoy glanced around sickbay at the patients
he already had--one case of appendicitis and one
savagely broken wrist from a bad fall off one
of the engineering walkways--and wondered if
he should take up carpentry. He had to get out of this
business.
  "Probably those eye injuries," he said.
"I'll come down with a treatment as soon as I
arrange to have a fracture set. Give me
fifteen minutes."
  "Aye, sir. I'll make sure he's ready
for you."
  "All right, but take it easy with those manacles,
Chapman. No point injuring him any further."
  "Oh, aye, sir. Security out."
  A way to kill himself quickly. That was a good goal.
Desperation impelled him through bright corridors with
lots of room from side to side. Soft places
to sit and lay a head down. What kind of place was
this?
  They had been near no planet, so this must be a
ship. That ship he passed by on his way to death. So
much open space inside, so much excess of
material... lightweight supports, open
corridors, no guards, no blaster ports, no
internal survival pods, good lighting, fresh
air, warmth...
  He had picked up fragmented reports of a ship
moving out of enemy space at warp eight
point riverawas he aboard that ship? Had the enemy
built a ship that could outrun even the Spears?
  If so, the tide of war would turn away from his people
as it had so recently turned toward them. Could they
lose the sliver of an edge they had just gained?
  His questions pounded him as he hobbled down the
corridor, shielding his eyes with one arm and clamping
his
  injured ribs with the other. The fresh air made his
head swim. He had a weapon, taken from the guard
whose throat he had squeezed until the man
collapsed in his arms, but he wasn't sure how
to use it. He had barely been able to see, but a
body is a body and he knew where the throat was.
The weapon was strange, too. But it fit his hand, and
that was all it had to do. He could turn it on himself if
he could read which of these settin would kill, rather than
leave him unconscious to be recaptured. No--
he would have to damage this ship first. No matter the
slight odds, he had a chance to strike another blow.
Someone was coming. There were many footsteps on this
vessel, and he was quickly learning how to tell where they
were and when to hide. He listened carefully, measuring
the shufite of footfall. He strained his eyes now
and hoped the shadow he had ducked into was
dark enough. He braced a foot alainst the wall
behind him and stopped breathing. Visible movement--the
footsteps rounded the corner and materialized into a
blurred figure moving casually across his shadow.
With a grunt of effort, he launched himself off the
wall and attacked.
  The starship sailed hot and close-hauled across the
black sea with a white wash of a comet's tail as her
spinnaker. As he sat in the command chair behind the
helm, James Kirk resented the beauty of
space at this aberrant moment. People had compared him
to a charioteer with great reins in his hands, and sometimes
he felt that way. But there was a definite mudlark
humility in captaincy. He hadn't built this
ship or even worked on her. She belonged to those who
decades ago had envisioned her. No matter how
arrogant he tried to act for the benefit of his crew,
or himself, or even sometimes to save their lives, there
was always a top to his knight attitude, a point
at which he became more cow-puncher than chevalier.
  He glanced at Spock for security. It
helped a little. Speck had already been here when
Kirk came on duty, though "off duty" under these
conditions had very little meaning. Kirk almost never stayed
in his quarters anyway. Slept there,
yes, but stay for nothing. No. He and Spock had
developed a watch schedule unlike any other in
Starfleet. Or anywhere else, probably. The
Vulcan rested very little, and his private hours were
short. He took his double duty as first ofistcer and
science officer seriously, doing the work of two men
almost every day. Certainly he was doing that today. Kirk
knew what Spock was up to. Analyzing that
cosmic string business that had thrown them here. Trying
to figure out a way for them to throw themselves back. He
wanted to go over there and stand with Spock and talk
to him, but that was too human a need and the disturbance
wouldn't do Spock any good. "Captain!" Uhura
belted abruptly. "Security reports the
prisoner has broken out of the brig?" Kirk spun
out of his chair and almost made the mistake of putting
his weight on his bad le "Details," he
snapped. Security Yeoman Chapman was
attacked when he went inside the cell to check on
the prisoner's condition. Dr. McCoy was on his
way down there to treat the Klingon." Spock
turned. "I shall attempt a physiological
track, sir." Without responding to him, Kirk
looked at Uhura again. "Go to shipwide intruder
alert. Is Chapman alive? "Yes,
sir. He's being treated for a crushed esophagus.
Attention, Security, all decks... Intruder
alert... Repeat, intruder alert." With a hard
grip on the bridge rail, Kirk narrowed his
eyes in empathy. "What about McCoy?"
  . ...... With hs arm tight around his enemy's
throat, the Kingon drajged his captive inWill the
shadows. The captive choked and grabbed at the arm
around his neck but didn't struggle very much. A rap
on the side of the head sent the captive to the floor,
  and a point of his own people's weapon apparently made
good sense to him. He stayed on the floor. He
spoke, but the words were nothing. Nothing--in a
language completely unknown. A new
language! The Klingon stared down. What
language could there be that he had never heard before, not
even a breath, not a word? There weren't that many
languages in the space-faring spectrum. He
reached down for the eaptive's collar, squinted his
damaged eyes to get a good look at what he had.
Pale cheeks, a wide face, eyes the color of
water and blinking with alarm, expressively set under
a casual cap of brown hair. Suddenly the
Klingon drew away. His captive dropped against
the wall, choking, and stared at him. This was
no being he recognized. This... was not his enemy.
He stumbled back, blinking his eyes convulsively,
demanding that they operate. Leonard McCoy glared
at the Klingon who had jumped him and knew he was a
hostage, but couldn't read that sudden expression on the
Klingon's face. His neck pounded from being twisted
half off, and his shoulders hurt from being thrown against the
wall. The Klingon had been about to slaughter him,
or at least knock him out for easy handling, but had
suddenly backed off. Why? He struggled to one
knee, an arm pressed against the bulkhead for
support. "Do you speak English?" he asked. The
Klingon glowered at him in utter perplexity.
"Didn't think you would," McCoy gasped. "Your
eyes are hurting, aren't they?" He pointed to his
own eyes, then exaggerated a gesture toward the
Klingon's. "Eyes," he repeated. "Hurt?"
He formed one hand into a claw and made a scratching
motion at his own eyes. His medikit was over there on
the floor. He pointed to it. The Klingon looked in
that direction, but his burned eyes couldn't see that
far.
  "Let me help you," McCoy said. He
placed his hand gently over his eyes in a comforting
manner. "Help you, understand? Help?"
He put both hands downward in a nonthreatening
manner, then put one hand out toward the medikit.
"They'll zero in on us, you know," he said just to make
himself feel better. "Klingon metabolism--"
  "Klingon!" the prisoner gulped suddenly.
McCoy stopped in place. One word in common.
He poked his own chest with a finger. "McCoy," he
said broadly. "Mick... Coy." The Klingon
shifted his feet--obviously in some pain--and took
another gasping, shallow breath. Then he thumped his
own chest. "Roth!" McCoy straightened up a
little. "You're Roth? Well, that's progress."
He pointed at the Klingon, then at his own'eyes,
then at the medikit. "Roth's eyes... help?"
With both hands he patted the skin under his own eyes.
"Yes." The Klingon sniffed, wiped his nose with the
back of his hand, then moved to one side, away from the
medikit. Something in his glazed eyes said the right thing.
"You'll get better," McCoy said, hoping his
tone of encouragement would carry. Decades as a
physician had given him that tone. He moved
toward the medikit and picked it up, not taking an
eye off Roth. "You're in pretty good hands, as
hands go..." The Klingon seemed ready to shoot,
ready to trust, alternating by the second.
McCoy forced himself to keep in mind that this Klingon
couldn't possibly know English, had never heard it,
and wouldn't trust the sound of it. If he could get to the
wall comm, he could notify the bridge of their
position on deck nine, three corridors port
from the brig. But Roth was hurt and confused,
unlikely to allow him to get his hands on a comm
unit, so he dispatched that plan and resolved to let
the bridge find them with the bioscanners and hoped he
wonld live that long,. "Mevl HighoSo!"
Roth bellowed just as McCoy's hand ,aught at the
medikit. His sore eyes were watering and he was wincing
every few seconds now. He pushed the phaser out to the
end of his reach. Knowing the phaser could go off at a
touch, never mind a good stiff shudder, McCoy
knelt to the floor, still gesturing compliance, and pulled
the medikit to him. He held up one hand and with the other
urged a treatment bottle out of the kit and held it
up to show that there was no weapon in there. Once again he
motioned to Roth's eyes and made a motion with the
treatment bottle. He closed the steps between them
gingerly but now heard the sounds of a half-dozen
footsteps pounding down the corridor. "Oh, fine
timing," he moaned. He held a hand out to Roth and
said, "Fido, stay." But the Klingon
heard the Security detail running toward them.
He caught McCoy by the upper arm and dragged him
against his own chest, then put the phaser to his
captive's cheekbone and waited for the footsteps
to round the corner.
  Blistering rage and fear.for McCoy sent a
claw of self-reproach deep into the captain's
chest as he and four guards hammered through the
corridors of deck nine. He had failed to make
his ship safe. Nowhere the crew could go with their
unthinkable power and speed was entirely safe, and all
around them, outside the protective walls, lurked
the inhospitality of cold space. Of all
places, the ship was supposed to be safe, the
corridors unbreached. He had failed to keep it
that way. And McCoy in the hands of a foe whose
motivations they couldn't measuremKirk hated that.
If he knew something about the Klingons here, he could
make a plan in his mind, pick out a half-dozen
actions and be ready. But this was impossible to guess
ahead no matter how he demanded clairvoyance of
himself. Two of the Security guards skidded around the
corner in front of him, but as he caught a
glimpse of McCoy held with his shoulderblades
rolling against the chest of the Klingon, with a
phaser to his cheek, Kirk shouted, "Hold
position! Hold your fire!" Luckily, the men
had the sense to realize he was talking to them and not the
Klingon. They braced their les, aimed their
phasers at arms' length, and stayed back. "No,
Jim!" McCoy shouted, half choked. "He had
a chance to kill me, but he didn't!" Kirk held
his own phaser down and shifted from run to stalk. His
face throbbed with the fever of rushing, of tension, of his
fears and furies. "His name is--" The Klingon's
arm tightened. After a breath McCoy coughed out,
"RbledRoth."
  "Roth...". Kirk lowered his chin and raised a
brow. "Give me my doctor back." The
Klingon spat something back in his own language and
shook McCoy in bald threat. "Security,"
Kirk said, "one of you contact the bridge. Have
Lieutenant Uhura come down here and hang a
personal universal translator on him. We
can't get anywhere if we can't talk."
  "Aye aye, sir!" one of the guards said and
ducked back into the main corridor. "The rest of
you," Kirk told them evenly, "back off." The
guards didn't like that order. He felt it in their
hesitation but refused to repeat himself. They
had their orders. He had the Klingon's attention.
He pushed everything he had ever thought about Klingons,
their tactics, their desires, their patterns of
loyalty, out through his glare to its target. He needed
no eommonality of words for what he thought of
Klingons. It boiled to the top. Roth--Kirk
knew the Klingon could see the scalding hostility and
feared disx. He was damned right to fear it. At the
moment Kirk could reach out with just his attitude and
commit a hanging. The Klingon blinked at him, and his
expression crossed several lines, never quite fixing
on one message. Beneath the outer actions was a clear
layer of abstract befuddlement. He didn't
recognize anything he saw. A Klingon who
didn't know whether or not to hate Terrans. Kirk
tried to do as he had told his Security men,
to back off in his mind and hopefully in his
expression, to pocket the feelings brought up by a
lifetime of dealing with entirely other Klingons.
Shifting the phaser to his left hand, he kept it
down at an angle, ready but down. With his right hand,
he reached out and made a beckoning gesture. Give
me my doctor back. Roth's watering eyes,
skin burned pink all around, blinked as if trying
to make sense of what he could see. His arm
weakened around McCoy's neck. Kirk motioned to the
Security men. "Phasers down." "Captain,"
one of them protested. "Right now." Slowly he put
his own phaser on the deck. With a sudden shout Roth
pushed McCoy forward violently and charged.
  

Chapter 11
  McCoy SLAMMED INTO KIRK'S shoulder and
spun into the starboard bulkhead, landing a ringing blow
to the doctor's collarbone and the side of his head. The
captain writhed to one side, grasped the Klingon's
phaser arm by the wrist, and nailed him with a hard right
to the ribs. The injured Klingon gagged and went down,
still clinging to the phaser he had hesitated to use.
"Security," Kirk ordered. "Take him
to sickbay under triple guard. Have Lieutenant
Uhura meet you there with the translator."
  "Aye aye, sir," the senior of them said.
"Get him up."
  As the men crowded in and took charge of the
collapsed prisoner and his phaser, Kirk hurried
across the corridor to McCoy and pulled the doctor
to his feet. "Bones, did he hurt you?"
McCoy hung a hand on that bruised collarbone.
"I don't think so, Jim. He seemed more scared
than anything else. You and that rabbit punch
--he's got fractured ribs, you know." With a
glance to the guards as they hauled the moaning prisoner
away, Kirk droned, "Pardon if I knocked
him silly. Come over here." He took McCoy
by an arm and led him a few steps in the other
direction. Desperate prisoners had been known
to kick their way clear of guards. "Report.
What's your judgment of his condition?"
  "His eyes are improving slowly," McCoy
said, "but they need treatment. He doesn't speak
English, but he does pay close attention
to attitude and intent. He's observant,
scrupulous, and willing to take each situation moment
to moment."
  "That's pretty good judging for a hostage." The
doctor rubbed his shoulder and winced. "My job,
Captain' "Anything else?"
  "Only that his name or maybe his rank is
"Roth.""
  "Roth... Did you notice his clothing? The
body-armor design, pads, coils--almost
exactly as we know them."
  "Not the colors," McCoy commented. "No, but
everything else. The Klingon culture must have been
unaffected until the past hundred
years." "When Earth people would have made contact with
them."
  "Yes." He picked up the medikit, held it
briefly, and handed it to the doctor. "That means
evidence is congealing that suggests the original change
only affected the evolution of humanity." Kirk
sighed heavily, "And the absence of humanity affected
everything else." McCoy fumbled thoughtfully with the
medikit in his hands. "So much for wondering if we'd
be missed."
  "Or if we've done the right thing by moving out
into space," the captain said.
  The doctor looked up. "I don't think this is
the time for valentines, Jim."
  "And I'm not giving one. There are clear rights and
wrongs in the universe. With the rights absent, the
wrongs flourish. And they're shredding the whole
fabric of civilization. If the policemen are
gone, the criminals take over."
  "How do you know they're not the policemen here?"
McCoy flared.
  "Because it hasn't been long enough for Klingons to be
that different. They're still Klingons and we're still the
United Federation of Planets. I'm proud of
what the Federation has done, or I wouldn't
be out here doing it."
  McCoy's expression softened. He nodded.
"Sorry, Captain. I understand how you feel."
  Irritably Kirk clipped, "Good for you."
  He spun around and went back to scoop up his
discarded phaser. As he straightened up, Spock was
there to meet him.
  "Security Ensign Beremuk informed me of your
location, Captain," the Vulcan said. "I have a
report on the fragments of the Klingon vessel...
Doctor, are you all right?"
  "I'm very well, Mr. Spock," McCoy said
as he joined them, "give or take the odd contusion.
Thank you for asking."
  Kirk glowered as if he preferred them to be
sniping at each other. "Let's have that report,
Spock."
  "Yes, sir. The remnants of the small ship
are made of a super energy-resistance material,
something the Klingon
  science must have concentrated upon heavily."
  "Defense. It's a clue to their priorities."
  "Yes. The material is unstable, however. It
is breaking down even now and will crumble within days. I
would surmise these vessels are built
only hours before their actual use and made to be
used only once."
  "Evidently."
  "To sacrifice manpower and resources for the
demolition of one enemy post or vessel... That's a
tactic of desperation. A war between the Klingons and
Romulans, relatively
  equal in technology, going at each other's
throats without any interference or referee, no other
parties in the settled galaxy able to stand them off...
both cultures ruled by nothing but shallow parochial
honor, but no principles about individual
rights... How long could it go on before it came down
to resources and personnel and one side started
whipping the tar out of the other?"
  "Do you think that's what's happening, Jim?"
McCoy asked. "The Klingons are losing?"
  Kirk almost dropped a yes on the floor and
kicked it over there, but something made him hesitate.
Conclusions too early, believing in what he thought
too soon--maybe even wishful thinking--these things
could stunt his efficiency.
  "We've got to get answers out of that Klingon,"
he declared.
  "Captain," Spock began, "are you
intending to explain the situation as we know it to our
prisoner? That course may be unwise."
  "It's all the wisdom I've got at the
moment."
  The doctor cocked his head. "Have Spock go up
there and explain to him how we were slam-dunked by a
ball of thread."
  "String, actually," Spock said flatly.
  "No need to be so specific, Mr. Spock,"
McCoy tossed back. "There's nobody around
to check up on you. The relentlessly logical
culture you're devoted to might not even exist in this
time line."
  With his hands clasped behind him, Spock pivoted with
casual purpose. "We cannot be sure of that,
Doctor. And I am not 'devoted" to the Vulcan
culture," he added, "or I Would be on
Vulcan."
  McCoy looked as if he'd been corked.
  Jim Kirk put a hand out between them. With this
hoUr's tumbledown reality chewing at his heels,
he felt like a man trying to make a rope of sand.
  "All right, as you were," he said. "Let's go
talk to him."
  "I've got it keyed to translate from
Klingon to English on
  outgoing speakers and English to Klingon in the ear
piece. But he won't let me put it on him,
sir. He's afraid of it."
  Uhura stood just outside the triage room at
sickbay, her even features crimped by frustration.
  Kirk frowned and peeked into the treatment area, where
the Klingon was sitting in a chair, wrists bound
together, flanked by two guards and vultured from behind
by one more. All three had phasers drawn, and the
clarity of their message shone in the prisoner's
bearing as he sat with his arms tight over his ribs.
  "Safe distance, all of you." Kirk led the way
inside.
  The Klingon had heard them, for he was fixed
wide-eyed on the entryway as the four came in.
  Suddenly his entire body went hard and his reddened
eyes stretched wide. He bolted to his feet and
charged.
  "romuluSngan!" The word was hardly more than a
spit. Seeming to realize that, Roth gritted his
teeth and hissed again, was romuluSngan!"
  Reflexively McCoy stumbled back
into Uhura, Spock moved to protect them, and
Kirk stepped forward to take the brunt of the
attack. The two flanking guards hooked Roth
by both arms and hauled him back roughly. The third
  guard flashed around front and took aim with his
phaser. "No, don't stun him!" the captain said.
  Roth was pushing at the guard's grips and glaring
needles only at Spock.
  Reacting to the raw, bald despise in the
Klingon's face, Kirk got between him and Spock
quickly. "What's romuluSngan?"
  Spockept his voice in careful check. "I would
surmise that's his word for Romulans."
  Hearing that tone, Roth's expression changed.
He peered at Spock, took measure of his
demeanor, and saw something
  else. With notable astonishment, he gasped,
"Vulcan?" Spock offered him one confirming nod.
  The Klingon stopped pushing at the guards, put his
teeth together. "Vulcan!"
  But this time, he spat the word.
  "Lieutenant Uhura," Kirk summoned,
frustrated.
  Uhura approached, but Roth jerked back and
almost pulled the two guards off their feet.
  "Give me the translator," Kirk said, fed
up. He attached it to his own collar and
indicated to Roth that there was nothing poisonous about it,
that it was harmless, then barked at the guards, "Hold
him."
  The guards put their weight on the Klingon.
Kirk stepped in and clipped the translator to the
Klingon's shirt collar, glad the heavy harnesses
and chest armor had been taken off. Then he put the
corresponding ear plug into Roth's right
  ear.
  "How do I engage it?" he asked.
  "Tap the earpiece, sir," Uhura said.
  The Klingon twisted his face out of the way but
didn't fight.
  "Jim, wait." McCoy pulled out the little
bottle he had tried to use in the corridor.
"Hold him down."
  All three guards leaned on Roth again, and the
doctor stepped in, forced his eyelids up, and put
droplets of the treatment into the injured eyes.
  "There." McCoy backed off. "If that's not a
peace offering, i don't know what is."
  Roth blinked, sore eyes set now in a
different kind of surprise. His new expression
came not from what his eyes were feeling, but from what he
had heard.
  Kirk watched him. "Do you understand me?"
  He waited to see if there was a reaction. He
made a gesture that backed the guards off and stepped
closer. "Do you understand what I'm saying to you? You
might as well answer."
  The Klingon blinked his eyes mechanically, but he
seemed to see them more clearly--and the shock of whatever
had come over that earpiece was working on him.
  "What are you?" The facsimile of his voice was
so close as to be startling. He flinched at the sound
of "himself" speaking Klingon and getting a strong
blunt echo in a strange language.
  Kirk felt a surge of hope. This was the first
communication they'd had with this universe that wasn't a
yellow poppy or an unknown beast. This was a moment
when a
  wrong turn on his part would mean future or
fracture for all involved.
  "We are humans," he said deliberately.
"I am Captain Kirk. This ship is the
Enterprise, United Federation of Planets."
  "Kirrk?" Roth tipped his head. "It is a
Klingon name?"
  "No. It's a human name. We're from the
planet Earth."
  "There is no Earth," Roth said, testing the
translator and not entirely trusting it. "Where is
Zalt? My commander?"
  "Don't tell him," Kirk snapped. He
straightened, and
  they squared off. "Why did you attack my
medical officer?"
  "I thought I was captive on a
rornuluSngan ship."
  "Then why didn't you kill him?"
  Roth paused, looked at McCoy. "He is
not my enemy."
  "Are any of us your enemy?" Kirk gestured at
Uhura, the guards. Then he moved to Spock.
"Is this your enemy?"
  Roth kept tight control over his motions, quite
clear on what phasers were meant for, and he stopped
short when Kirk put a firm hand on the
Klingon's chest and let it be known he'd better
state his intentions.
  So Roth fixed his sore eyes on Spock and
lowered his voice. Even his inflections were brought across
effectively by the translator. "Vulcan, why
are you here, coward? Animal? Liar. Did you
escape?"
  Spock hesitated, but when the captain urged him
on with a look, he said, "My name is Commander
Spock. I am the ship's first officer."
  "Impossible! How did you escape?" Roth
persisted. The
  Klingon echo buzzed behind the English words.
"Explain what he escaped from," Kirk urged.
"From the boundary channels!"
  At that tone, one of the guards slipped forward a
step but
  didn't encroach on the captain's progress.
  "Explain why we aren't your enemy."
  "Because I do not know you! And the romuluSpu' were
firing on you."
  "The enemy of your enemy... is your friend? Is that
your belief?."
  Reticent to commit himself, the Klingon backed
away a pace.
  "If we explain our situation to you," Kirk
pushed, "will you tell us the nature of yourself and your
enemies?"
  Roth stared at him, measuring what he saw in
Kirk's eyes and the set of his brow, waiting for a
flinch or a blink that would give away deception.
Kirk had been looked at like that before and
refused to do either. He stood his mental ground as much
as he stood defense between Roth and Spoc, letting
the Klingon know he also was not entirely trusted.
  Ultimately, the Klingon nodded, once, very
bluntly. "All right," Kirk said, "the rest of
you, get out."
  "Captain..." Spock moved to him, turned a
cold shoulder to Roth, and spoke very low.
"Respectfully resist your
  being left alone with him. He is, after all, a
Klingon." Kirk almost smiled. "Prejudice,
Spock?
  Without offering even a glance at the prisoner,
Spock raised a brow. "If necessary, sir."
  The captain nodded, warmed that Spock would admit
that on his behalf. "Noted. Leave one of the guards
here."
  The others did as he bade, but McCoy stepped
quickly to
  the captain. "What are you going to do, Jim?"
Kirk felt his eyes tighten at the corners.
"I'm gonna explain it to him."
  Roy's. Once proud, then shamed, now
suspicious.
  These were the cleverest lies he had ever
heard. Such detail. Even on the screen,
generated graphics of something the captain called a
squeezing disk. Violence and transmutation danced
before him on the visual monitor. This, they said, had
happened to them. But it was the pictures... the
recordings... of a civilization unimaginable that
shook him. Yes, wars, but the wars were aberrations in
a way of life, not themselves a way of life. What
kind of minds did these people possess that they could think
of life this way? Pictures of Klingons dealing with
these aliens no one had ever seen, of romuluSngan
and Vulcan interacting on the large scale with these
people. The captain had explained what they thought had
happened to them, then turned on the computer,
"spaeefarer to spacerarer," he said and let the machine
take over. Why would they waste their complex
fabrication on a prisoner? Wouldn't they try
to find a high council to show it to? No matter how
he wanted to believe, there was that Vulcan who said
he was part of the ship's crew. A Vulcan! Who
could believe any story now? were there Vulcans where
these people said they came from? were they liars and cowards
there, too? His thousand questions twisted with the throbbing of his
head. Pictures could be faked. The captain was
watching him. Jamestee Kirk. A
golden man. Golden hair, golden shirt,
gold-and-black shield on his breast. Golden
eyes. Hard eyes, this one. Hatred in those eyes.
Spacefarer to spacerarer, yes. But this one didn't
like Klingons. Roth didn't mind being hated. In
fact, it was a clue of sorts, coming from this man who
said he and his people did not come from this universe at all
and sought only mutuality. "You," he began, "are
lost?" The captain watched him. "Yes. We're
lost."
  "I don't believe you."
  "I know you don't. But I want you to think about
all this Somehow I intend to convince you over the next
few hours."
  "You will fail."
  "We'll see about that. Until then, you don't have
to say anything. I'll talk. You tell me when
I'm wrong. You're the pilot of some kind of
suicide vessel. You, and presumably others like
you, veer in at high speed and plunge up the thruster
ports of those Romwthose romuluSngan bulk
cruisers. Those are resouree-intensive ships.
They take time to build and large crews to maintain.
To eradicate one is considered a great victory.
On the other hand, it only takes a few
weeks to put together one of your small attack
ships, which are all engine and never meant to come
home." Blinking, Roth felt his jaw grow tighter
with every phrase. He set his mouth hard against blurting
an accusation of subterfuge against so total a
stranger. But how could this man know these things? "Most
pilots of such craft," the captain went on,
"expect to die in the explosion, but you didn't. For
some reason your people install a life pod in your
suicide ships. Why would you do that?" The captain
glared at him so directly that Roth couldn't help
but see the petulance. "The Empire is short of
men, isn't it? You'll take manpower from anywhere you
can get it. You're losing the war, aren't you?" Roth
was forced to break his stoicity with a cough. The captain
prowled him. "Your two empires are nothing but
malevolence met with malevolence," the gold man
went on. "You've made an evil-fashioned
galaxy here, with the two of you pounding each other so
relentlessly that you haven't been able to get past the
battle to enjoy what you win. Your culture tries
to ripen, only to spoil on the ground because you have no
time to gather it. All you have to show for years of struggle
is the open wound that could're been the Klingon
civilization. Now, you tell me I'm
wrong." Silence clamped down sharply. The faint
twirps of equipment from the lab next door came
through. Roth could only offer a corrosive glare through
his watering eyes. The captain stopped pacing and
faced him down. "When did this war begin?" Roth
released his lip and licked it. "Always."
  "Always," Krok said as if the word had a bad
taste. "Do you want the war to end?" In the
captain's eyes Roth saw a determination, even a
familiarity with war, but there was something about the way he
said "end," as if he had seen or made wars end
before and calculations were ratcheting up in his mind about
how to do it again. End? "War does not end," Roth
finally pronounced. "Fight enemies, win, then
fight friends. Or lose."
  "Do you think that's right?"
  "Right? What is "right"? It is what's
done." Kirk seemed to think there was something odd about
that perception. "This is a starship of the United
Federation of Planets," the man said, his amber
eyes angry. "We know what that stands for. War
happens for specific reasons. We have no stock
in whatever goes on between you and your enemies. I've
got a ship and crew to worry about. My first concern
is to find a way back. I want you
to help me." Roth pushed his hands to the bench and rose
on his hips. "There is no going back for yo If
your story is true, you have to live here now." The
words reached out from the mouth of a prisoner and struck his
keeper like a slap. Roth felt it ricochet off the
walls, swirl around the young guard standing beside the
doorway. The captain's own personal dynamism
had kept him from believing what he had just been told
and for the first time Roth found himself believing a shred of
what he had been told. More proof than any reams
of computer storage, more than any scientific
programs, more than seeing it for himself, he saw now
in the captain's face. This was a man who had never
imagined living out his life in any other than his own
universe, where matters were known to him and where he had
anchors.
  Until now, Jamestee Kirk had never thought of
not getting back. "If you will not be my enemy,"
Roth began, "whose will you be?" Kirk stiffened.
"We will be neutral for now."
  "There is no neutral."
  "There is for us." "Not here, Captain," Roth
said. "For your own lives' sakes, you must join us."
The ship was here, there was no denying that, and it was
sophisticated and certainly couldn't have been
constructed in any Klingon or romuluSngan
sphere of patrol without being discovered by one side or
other. No one anywhere could build just one of such a
ship, not without having built many others before it. They
must have come from very far away. Yet they came alone.
Why? Had their people been destroyed? They must be the
last to come here like this in the middle of the forever war. And
there was that Vulcan. That Vulcan. Doubts
crawled in Roth's mind. "You must become part of
our fleet," he said bluntly. "We will not join
you. We won't have our ship used for someone else's
conquest."
  "You will have no choice. The Klingons will be the
winners."
  This young stick of fire swung around from where he had
paced. "Winners who use desperation tactics?"
  "The Spears have turned the tide. We were losing,
but now the romuluSo nganpu' run from us. You saw
it!"
  "Yes, I saw it. And we won't participate
in your pattern of conquest , not you or the
RomuMromuluSnganpu'."
  "You have not had hard lives," Roth pushed in, the
faint Imzz of the translator echoing every syllable.
"Your clothing is new. You have resources
to devote to that! There's fresh disir and laughter on
your ship -- laughter! But this will all end for you unless
you face the truth. How long can you survive disin
deep space all alone? You must live here now and
join one side or the other. I want you for mine."
  Boiling, the captain glared at him, shoulders
rocked back. "Not a chance."
  "And also no chance of creating this interdimensional
distortion more than once. You will never go back. This
is your life now."
  "We aren't that certain of our theory. There are
missing elements. And we're not participating in your
war. We are absolutely neutral."
  Roth widened his eyes. Mick-Coy had given
him back his eyes, but they were irritated and tired.
  "I do not understand you. There is no neutral.
None is allowed here. Neutral is... water.
Nothing else. I don't understand your thinking."
  "We are not getting involved in your war of
conquest. We will defend ourselves, but that is
absolutely... all."
  "You will have no choice, Captain. Word is
spreading about you now. You're being pursued without
doubt. You must not be captured by the romulungan.
If you have them in your culture, then you know
why. If you join my people, you will be brought into our
culture and you can gain trust. Your ship will be
integrated into our fleet and you may be allowed
to continue serving on it. If the romuluSngan
catch you, your crew will be torched alive until
none are left. And you will be last... and they will have your
ship anyway."
  He was making a gamble. He saw in the
captain's eyes that the captain knew he wasn't
being lied to again.
  "In nature," Roth said, "there are two kinds
of life. There are the kind who fight and the kind who
are food. You are fOO-DO! He lashed out,
furious at the idea of keeping this ship out of a
conflict whose tide it could turn. "Everyone goes
to war with everyone eventually, Captain. No one can
resist trying to take what the other has. Sometimes it
is done without weapons through the sheer power of
authority, but it always happens. You can't stand up
to both of us. Eventually we or they will take you, either
in battle or when your supplies run low. Join
with us while you're strong and can bargain, or fight
both my people and the pestilential rornuluSngan and
die. And leave your ship for us."
  The captain looked as though his muscles
had cured to stone. He looked past Roth to the
Security guard, and there was liability for the future
burning in his face. The guard was standing too
straight, struggling for palace-guard
immutability, his eyes turned upward, his face
pinched and pale from what he was hearing.
  "We're not joining you," the captain said again.
  "You will have to!" Roth pushed off his bench and almost
fell. He was surprised when the captain reached out
and helped him stay on his feet.
  : The Security guard plunged forward to get between
his commander and the Klingon, but the captain pushed him
back. "As you were, Ensign."
  Putting space between himself and them, Roth forced himself
to keep talking. "The rornuluSngan are toxic
people," he gasped. "They will turn your crew
into another conquered mass." Roth placed a
scratched hand on his chest. "We wouldn't do that. We
know the makers of such a ship are worth keeping
alive! You are not our enemy yet!"
  "I don't intend to be your enemy unless you force
me to," the captain said. "Or the romulungan
either."
  "Your ship bristles with weapons. Where is the
peace in your culture?"
  "We keep peace by holding back the violence.
We keep it with morality, individualism, and
law. Thousands of planets live in prosperity and
protection. Even the Klingons are beginning
to prosper in spite of their isolationism. You saw
  "I saw. If it were real, this would be paradise.
No one of us has ever--" He clamped his mouth
shut. He was talking too much. It was easy to make
that mistake with this man and those drilling eyes. This was
the kind of man who was hard to lie to.
  But he was soft, golden, gentle. The ship was
run with too little discipline. It was humiliating to be
captive of these ols. They and their fabulous
vessel wouldn't survive long if eaught between the
two sides of the blade.
  "There are things you aren't telling me," Roth said.
"When I find them out, then I will decide what
to believe about your stories. Either you go back where you
came from--and you cannot ally with my people against the menace
we fight." Korik fixed his eyes on him, moved
back, then moved sideways and back, hackles
up and prowling. "We aren't going to war with anyone."
Roth didn't even blink this time. "Yes," he
said, "you are." The captain glowered and flexed his
hands petulantly. "I liked you better
when you wouldn't talk."
  "To stand against conquest does not work here," Roth
said. "This is where you live from this day on, with me and
my people and my enemies. Now... will you let me lead
you to my fleet's headquarters, Captain Kork?"
There was a bitter cold light in the strangeifs
eyes. A subdued grin touched his lips, also
cold. "It's Kirk," he said, "and no." They
stared at each other. Even when the force barrier at the
entrance was dropped by the guard as another officer
approached from outside, Roth was careful not to look
away from the captain. This man would notice any
backing down, any at all. "May I disturb you,
Captain?" a baritone voice interrupted.
Kirrk ticked off another two seconds of
glare, then broke away. "I'm already disturbed,
Mr. Spock. What do you want?" Through a watery
sheen Roth saw the form beside the gold blur of the
captain, panels of blue and black. He pushed
to his feet, thrust out one arm before him, the other behind
for balance, and plunged forward. "Coward Vulcan?"
  

Chapter 12
  THE SECU-MTV Ounm greater-than slammed
into him, shoulder first, and managed to keep inches between
Roth and the Vulcan he was trying
to attack. The captain shoved his officer back and
came between them. "Vulcan!" Roth blasted between
grinding teeth. "Tell me the truth! I have always
dealt fairly with you!"
  "Back!" the guard shouted in his ear. "Last
chancel" Beside his face, Roth saw the guard's
weapon teeter for aim. For a moment he didn't
care, but then he did. He could do nothing
unconscious on the deck or dead. He changed his
demeanor, forced himself to gain balance against the guard's
grip. The captain and his officer set each other on
their feet and Kirk came toward him. "We've
told you the truth."
  "There is no truth where a Vulcan walks! This
talk of . neutrality--it comes from them." Roth
looked at the Vulcan and said, "You have broken the
treaty. Do you intend to
  VS-EVERY this ship to go to war with Klingon?" Slowly
the Vulcan shook his head. "I am not at war with
Klingon. Nor have I any such plans." g h
considered sitting on the deck. The guard's arm
Rot " P .
  , pressing against his throat wasn't easing up.
The weapon s point still picked at his ear. The
captain came closer. "You expect him
to recognize you. Why? Will other Vulcans
recognize you, too? Can you address them on our
behalf It's your life as much as ours."
  "Our lives are over if we go to Vulcan,"
Rote scorned. "You have nothing in common with them. You
are one of us. There is Klingon in you, Captain...
Kirk." Two futures bawled for attention. Beyond
what the captain clearly heard as an ingrained
insult blared the hunting horns of a possibility that
would not be ignored. Kirk stared and stared, but the
horns wouldn't fade and Rote refused to back
down. "Captain," the Vulcan encouraged, "if you
will." He balanced a nod toward the corridor.
"You have no right to comment, coward!" Rote inflamed.
"Kirk, the Vulcans will tell you that you can stay
neutral--you can't. They say there are always
alternatives. There aren't. They tell you the mind
can rule the universe... It cannot. They say we can
all look beyond our differences." He pushed against the
guard one final time. "It is a dream." The
captain moved back to the Vulcan's side,
summoning a deeper root of the submerged candor. The
two were almost opposites in all visible ways,
yet there was something solid about their standing together that way.
"Mr. Spock and I look beyond our
differences every day," Kirk said. "We're
shipmates. And we're friends. And you're wrong."
James Kirk turned away from the Klingon, skin
crawling with expectation of a rebuff. He didn't
think he'd get the last word. At least his name was
finally right. He stopped in the middle of the
corridor, swung around to Spock, and barked,
"All right, what've you got?" Spock's voice
was a salve. "Mr. Scott reports the Klingon
life pod is made of conventional materials.
However, it is a concoction of spare parts of varying
ages and stress levels. There's evidence of
prior use, some simple age, some violent,
including exposure to hard radiation and heavy weapon
fire."
  "Then I was right. And now that I have him, what do
I do with him? Keep him?" Trying to be tactful,
Spoc said, "We have no reason to hold him under
any articles of war."
  "What about other cultures? Governments who were
Federation allies in our... time." "Like the
Vulcans, we can assume their history did not
deviate until recently. They simply have had
no Federation to join. Since no one encouraged them
to band together, they've been alone against the two
most aggressive forces in the settled galaxy. As
such, it's likely they've had to subject themselves
to harsh compromise."
  "Compromise usually means one side giving up
a lot," Kirk distilled unhappily. Spock
offered a mild nod. "A war of this magnitude will
have taken thousands of planets with it during the fifty
to one hundred years during which the Federation would have
held the hostile powers apart."
  "Then I have to assume the peaceful races have been
subjugated?"
  "Yes," Spock said. The simplicity of it was
damning. He didn't quote odds or frame his
answer in theoreticads. Just yes. "We know the
Vulcans exist," Kirk said when the silence
became overbearing. "He's familiar with them, even
if he doesn't like them. Can we turn him over
to them?"
  "A viable solution, unless we consider his knowledge of
our ship and situation a risk." The comm system on
the wall clicked on the tail of Spock's words.
"Bridge to Captain Kirk"
  "That damage has been done," Kirk said.
"We can't fix it. And I don't want to keep
him. We'll turn him over to the
Vulcans." He stepped to the wall. "Kirk
here."
  "Mr. Scott would like to speak to you, sir."
  "Put him through."
  "He says this might be classified, sir."
  "Nothing's classified anymore,
Lieutenant." A pause, then, "Scott here,
sir. We have a new contact. Unfamiliar
design, one hundred fifty thousand gross tons,
no recognizable signatures. They identify
themselves as a Vulcan merchant transport, cargo
pharmaceuticals. They'd like to come into beaming range
and have a word with you."
  "Understood. All stop. Tell them to stand by."
  "aye aye, sir."
  "Spock, take the con. Explain our problem
to the Vulcans if you think they should know."
  "Yes, sir... Captain, where will you be?"
  "I'm going to arrange a prisoner transfer,"
Kirk said. "I'm going to put Roth in the same
cell as the other Klingon... and let'm work on each
other. I might have to live in their universe, but they
have to live in mine, too." Ten minutes later,
James Kirk spun out of the turbolift and tilted
down the steps toward the lower deck. To his
astonishment, a dozen crudely dressed strangers
held his bridge crew at pistol point. All
men, the strangers were shaggy haired, robust, rugged,
their faces built on angularities that were
familiar, and their demonic pointed ears gave them
away. Vulcans, allies otherwise, but not
necessarily here. Every one of these Vulcans held
at least one bridge crewman at the point of a
weapon. And on the starboard bridge, a
shaggy-haired Vulcan in a bulky jacket of
olive green, black trousers, and pirate
boots, with a gray cowl around his neck, was squared
off with Spock, one hand held out at his side, the
other hand spread across the side of Spock's face.
Kirk understood that Vulcan telepathic talents
could be turned punitive. Mind meld-- The heat
dropped out of his body as he absorbed the sight of
armed and aggressive Vulcans and what was happening
in the only sacred place left to him in the
galaxy. His first officer was under assault. His
bridge had been taken.
  

Chapter 13
  BETWEEN THE STARSHIP'S CAPTAIN and his first
officer, an unfamiliar Vulcan held a weapon
on Lieutenant Uhura at the
communications station. Only three feet away, this
individual made a fair first target. Blessed with the
compact frame of a wrestler and a few bundles of
muscle he was proud of, Jim Kirk moved
to take his ship back. He faked a step to port,
then dodged to starboard with the point of his elbow plowing his
course. As he drove the nearest Vulcan down,
Uhura ducked under his arm and out of his way to give
him room. Momentum drove the Vulcan aside.
Kirk forced himself up with a left hook, and the
Vulcan hit the deck. But these were Vulcans, and
he had just played his only surprise card. There was
noise behind him; he hoped it was somebody else in his
crew taking advantage of his fake and dodge. The
sound of raw resistance pumped him with energy. He
launched upward at the other Vulcan with a backhand
blow whose impact pried the stranger away from
Spock, then punctuated his attack by bringing his right
fist around to the stranger's jaw, like a mallet
driving a wooden stake into the heart of a demon.
Dazed from the broken telepathic attachment, the
stranger staggered back and bumped the bridge rail.
Spock fell backward, too, arching over his
sensor hood, arms flagging like a rag doll's.
Then his ribs tightened, and he found
purchase on the science panel and fought for balance.
Kirk grabbed the rail and scanned the deck to size
up the situation. Behind him, two engineers had
sprung to life. Scott wasn't here--probably
headed for the engine room as soon as Spock took the
bridge--but Nourredine and an assistant were. The
assistant was a big kid who downed the surprised
Vulcan who'd been hovering over them, and
Nourredine and Chekov were grappling with another one
on the lower deck. Three Vulcans down. How many
were there? He fixed on another and braced to get there.
"Captain!" Spock rasped. "Don't."
  Kirk almost broke his back grating to a dead
halt. Spock would never stop him without a good
reason. Better be a hell of one.
  The stranger in the olive jacket, now with a
swelling lip, snapped something in Vulcan to his
own men.
  In spite of the fact that they outnumbered the
bridge crew, all the Vulcans now lowered their
weapons.
  Glowering under his brow like a bear just out of a trap,
Kirk shoved himself up, pressing the bridge rail
so heavily on his right arm that he thought his
wrist would snap. He stood straight to deal with the
Vulcans. The bridge was his again.
  Angling at Uhura, he cracked,
"Security."
  She touched her board. "Security detail to the
bridgem
  On the wide main screen was a thoroughly
unfamiliar ship, dull and utilitarian. Kirk
skimmed the bulky cargo holds and heavy
industrial engines in a mental demand that the ship
prove she was what she said she was.
  He glanced around. The Vulcans were all
crudely and heavily dressed, well fed, and
strong, wearing cowls or scarves and heavy boots.
Cold over there, apparently.
  Fighting a lingering daze, Spock gathered himself.
"Captain Kirk... may I present Captain
Sova, Cargo Vessel T'Lom, of the Vulcan
Merchant Consortium."
  "I don't care who he is. Nobody takes
my bridge." Kirk tilted his head toward
Uhura without taking his eyes off the
  "Call McCoy to the bridge. Then give me
a
  bridgewide."
  "Aye, sir... tied in."
  Locked onto Sova's mud-brown eyes,
Kirk saw a stability in his expression. If
they'd had the room, they would've circled each other.
  Before either could speak, the turbolift hissed open
and six heavily armed Security guards plunged out
and spread across the bridge, scooping up Vulcans
as they went.
  The lieutenant of the guard glanced around to make
sure all was secure, then nodded at Kirk.
  Satisfied, Kirk nodded back. Now he could
get mad if he wanted to.
  He faced Sova again. "You boarded my ship
without an invitation. Can you explain that?"
  The newcomer offered a blunt, uneasy bow. His
voice was gravelly through the translator. "We
live on the defensive. We seek the swiftest
solutions. This was my way. We have developed a
method of matter transport through shields at
close range. It costs great power, but I have
saved my cargo from pirates many times this way."
  "And this looked like a pirate ship to you?"
  The Vulcan might have been embarrassed--or was
he amused?
  "No," he admitted, "it does not.
Now I understand and offer greetings, Captain... from
my universe to yours."
  "I don't think much of your manner of greeting,"
Kirk said roughly. He pivoted to Spock. "You
all right?"
  "Yes," Spock drawled as he levered
to Kirk's side. The glaze of telepathic
encroachment was clearing from his eyes,
  though he still looked as though he'd taken a gut
punch. "Were you under attack?"
  Spock eyed the Vulcan commander.
"'Interrogation" may be more accurate.
Impolite, but efficient."
  At first Kirk thought Spock was getting a slap
in with that remark, but then he realized that in two words
his first officer was giving him critical information--that
these Vulvans were different. In their own universe,
Vulcans considered such deeply personal intrusion
demeaning. Spock was telling him that these people had been
through something that changed their attitude about mental manners. 
Suddenly Jim Kirk was face-to-face
with a total stranger who knew a hell of a lot about
him and his crew. The turbolift opened again, and
McCoy came out but stopped and gawked at the
scene. "What's going on?" he asked.
"You'll know when we do," Kirk told him.
"Captain Sova, do you understand what's happened
to us?" Sova moved toward them. "Mr. Spock
himself is testimony to your predicament, sir. No
native Vulcan--"
  "Then you've got the information you need?" Kirk
charged. "You know what happened to us?"
  "I know what you believe happened, and this ship of
yours is evidence that you have not given yourself to fantasy.
And it is unlikely that you do." "CaptainMore"
Chekov cranked around and spoke sharply enough to give
away that he'd been waiting for a chance to interrupt.
"Long-range sensors tracking two large
cruisers, possible three, bearing one-four-nine,
extreme distance." Kirk turned. "Closing?"
  "No, sir, traveling laterally across our stern."
  "We have screened you," Sova said, "but we can
keep doing it only a short time. Keep all your
shields up."
  "Helm, full shields up." Kirk swung
back to Sova. "Can you help us?" The Vulcan
captain shook his head. "I have no authority. But
I will let you speak to someone who does."

  "Zalt! Alive!"
  "Yes, I am alive. I see you are
also. It's too bad for you."
  "I--made no special attempts to live.
You know they found me in the same life pod as you!"
  "Still... too bad. I offer you my pity."
Zalt was limited to one arm, the other caught up in
a traction sling of some kind, and one eye now bore
a gory scar, but his face still held that familiar
contempt. None of that had gone away after Spear
duty, after taking out an entire Ri'ann warship
by themselves. And they had both survived! No medicine
Klingon or romuluSngan could bring back two
Spears from a detonation!
  The commander was wearing his own leggings and a simple
blue shirt from the sickbay. McCoy, then, had
been here, too. And so had the captain, for Zalt was
wearing one of those translators. The two of them
waited in smoldering silence while the guard outside
reestablished the barrier field that would keep them
both in here, and its hum covered their voices, at
least a little. "You have been here all the time? In their
brig?" Roth asked. "Yes." Zalt glanced at
the two cushioned beds and blankets. "Soft."
  "They are soft," Roth agreed. "They asked me
questions but without torture. Never even talked about it."
  "And what did you tell them without
torture?"
  "Nothing, I swear."
  "What is their heading?"
  "I think they go to Vulcan."
  "Then you did talk to them!" Zalt erupted.
"No!" Roth gasped. "I told them nothing about
me!"
  "And when the Vulcans see you, what will they tell
these strangers! Fool!"
  "I can't stop that..." Roth waved despairing
hands. Zalt swung back. "Are they with us or
against us?"
  "The... Vulcan?"
  "No! These humans!" "They say neither."
  "That is not an option."
  "I told him that."
  "I know, Roth, you talk too much. You have always
talked and talked. You talked millions of
Klingons to their deaths." Zalt stalked the room but
lowered his voice further and eyed the guard outside the
cell. "We must disable this ship while it is still in our
space," he said, "or destroy it." Roth looked
up. "Commander, we have no way to confirm their story.
We shouldn't destroy them before we know the truth."
  "You talk too much." Zalt cut him
off with a growl. "You show weakness and tiredness to the
enemy. I had to tolerate
  you as my copilot, but the glory is over. You will
not question me now. The voice of a humiliated Klingon
is not a voice."
  Desperation creased Roth's brow. "But I've
been a Spear! I've been walking dead! I
didn't tell anyone! I've saved my honor"
  "You've saved your family's honor. Now they
can go on without speaking your name. You will never have any
honor. Some things cannot be fixed. It's my order that
we disregard these people's wild stories and act
to cripple this ship. If they are not with us, they are
against us."
  Roth shuffled backward into the shadow of the two
bunks of the wall, put his arms to his sides.
"Yes, Command Silence fell, and Roth swore it
made a whack on the deck. His hands went numb,
mind blazing and hopes dashed. He felt filthy.
  Zalt wasn't looking at him. It was a shame
to look at him. When the barrier field snapped
away, he barely noticed. Only when the guard
came in with four other guards did he look up.
  "All right, you two," the guard said, "no
tricks or we'll shoot you down.
Don't make any mistakes about that. Move."
  Zalt hesitated two seconds while the
translator caught up with the human's fast manner
of speech. "Where are you taking us? Are you going
to torture us?"
  "Yeah, we're going to torture you. How do you
feel about eating each other's fingers? Let's go."
  Two of the other guards smiled. The first guard
waved his weapon and gestured to the open corridor and the
red gauntlet of the guards.
  Zalt went first and paused as his hands were
manacled. "Have we arrived at Vulcan?" he
asked while they snapped the cuffs.
  "Don't know," the guard said and distributed a
square push to the middle of Roth's back. "I said
move. Captain wants to see you."

  While the transporter hummed between the two
ships, Kirk waved Spock down from the starboard
deck. "Come down with me."
  Together they dropped to the command deck, the center of the
bridge. Kirk had a particular impression he
wanted to make.
  On the viewscreen was a picture of the Vulcan
ship, rough and old, patched together. There was no
prosperity, no something-for-something's sake,
be it design, art, science, exploration. The
boarding party's clothing was basic, with familiar
Vulcan stitching, but any jewels, stones, or
brooches were conspicuously missing.
  Spock landed at his side almost exactly as
another Vulcan materialized on the upper
bridge, port side. The new Vulcan
visitor raised an eyebrow and stepped back when
Uhura met him up there and offered him a personal
translator.
  Uhura arranged the translator on the breast
of the Vulcan's bronze tunic--almost the same
color as his hair--keyed it to his
encephalography, then casually returned to her
post.
  Crossing the lower deck, Jim Kirk worked
to hide his limp. "Welcome to the Enterprise.
I'm Captain James T. Kirk."
  Sova spoke up from the starboard side.
"Captain, may I present Secretary
Temron of the Vulcan High Council."
  The new one looked young for such a heavy title.
In fact, they all looked young. Where were all the
old Vulcans? Tired? Crippled? Dead from
years of fighting? Didn't Vulcans get the chance 
to grow old in this universe? Didn't anybody?
  Temron looked around, wide-eyed. "Your ship
is... large. When we heard of an unknown
vessel that could outrun the Klingons and Ri'ann,
we envisioned a small vessel, powerpacked--but to have
such speed in such bulk. You mystify us, Captain
T'Kirk."
  If he was enthused, it was embalmed in concern and his
fascination was muffled. He broke away from scanning
the bridge and was now staring at Spoc.
  Kirk moved back to the command deck's center to stand
a little in front of Spock and a little beside him. "This
is Mr. Spock, my first officer." Now
Temron openly stared. He murmured,
"Impossible..." Spock mounted the stairs and
paused before him on the upper bridge. There was something
imposing about the two of them standing there, statuesque and
becalmed. Spock raised his right hand and offered the
Vulcan greeting. "Live long and prosper,
Temron." The visitor gazed at him, again
mystified and not bothering to hide it. The words meant more
than a rote greeting. Slowly, he raised his own
hand. "I wish you peace... Spoc." With deepening
lament he offered the best his own culture
had to give, and the poignant disparity between the two
greetings seemed to wrack Temron like a blow. His
expression did not change, but his despair rang
around the bridge. Temron glanced around, noted that
he was slipping, and struggled for irapassivity. He
did look young. But who could really tell with a
Vulcan? Looking at Spock again, Temron
lowered his voice. "How can you be here? were you lost in
your youth? Refugeed or castaway? were your parents
killed?"
  "My parents are alive," Spoc said
fluidly. "My father is Vulcan's ambassador
to the United Federation of Planets. I believe
he is currently on a mission to the planet of
Tellar."
  "Tellar... I know this planet. The
civilization there was obliterated by the Klingons when
I was a child." McCoy came forward on the upper
aft deck. "What's that supposed to mean? You mean
they were killed on purpose?"
  "They refused to cooperate," Temron said.
"Klingons use it as an example of
nonsubmittance." He paused, looked at
Kirk, looked at Sova, then back at Spoc.
"There are none left."
  "The population of Tellar," Spock offered
solidly, "is six billion as of the last local
census." Ternton shook his head. "No."
McCoy came around the rail toward him. "What
about the Orions?" Ternton looked at Sova,
then at McCoy. "No..."
  "The Alpha Centauris?"
  "I do not know what those are." Spoc supplied,
"Their indigenous name is Saroming." Again Temron
shook his head. "There are none of that name surviving
here."
  "The Tholians?" McCoy pressured. "They
were exterminated long ago."
  "The Andorians?"
  "Enslaved."
  "Melkots?"
  "Are being forced to mass-starve." McCoy's
squarish face went chalky. He backed off, as
if Temron himself had done the starving and the
exterminating. Spock faced Kirk and lowered his
voice. "Captain, if I may suggest--" The
turbolift interrupted him, and there was a commotion on
the aft bridge. Then, Temron spoke suddenly.
"Roth! But you are walking dead!"
  

Chapter 14
  AT THE BACK of the bridge, flanked by two
guards each, Roth and that other Klingon stood staring
at the Vulcan secretary and at Sova. Kirk
narrowed his eyes. "You know each other?"." But it was
the other Klingon who spoke up as he put a
space between himself and Roth. "We all know him,"
Zalt said with cold despise. "He was contaminated
by them. "He wagged his head at Ternton. Kirk
puffed up with a warrior's kind of hope. He'd
wanted answers and thought there might be clues in
throwing these parties up against each other but hardly
expected this. Roth clenched his hands and stepped toward
them until one of the guards fish-hooked him.
"Vulcans! I knew it! Wish me peace,
Temron, so I can wish you death? Kirk pulled
himself to the upper bridge. "Explain that." He
turned to Temron. "What's "walking dead"?"
  "He volunteered for Spear duty," the
secretary said. "Sacrificed himself for the destruction
of an enemy ship. No one comes back from that."
  "He did. We rescued him. Now explain how
you know him y Ternton suddenly retrieved his
Vulcan composure, as though searching for the right words
to keep himself dispassionate on a subject that could
only be passion. Below them, Spock
connected glances briefly with Sova, then came
forward a couple of steps and said, "Roth came
to Vulcan as a regional surrogate. It was said
that he began to study the teachings of Surak, discover
that tolerance could be a tool against contention. He told
us... told the Vuleans that he believed our way was
a better one and that there could be an agreement. He
put together a delegation of Klingons and Vulcans
on an unauthorized peace mission to the
Romulans." Spock paused, looked at
Sova, and the Vulcan captain gestured that he
continue to spill the beans of their meld. "The
Romulans pretended sincere interest, but one of the
Vulcans was in fact a Romulan spy. They
sent a diplomatic squadron that turned out to be
three heavily armed ships and cooperated enough to get
inside Klingon space. They obliterated several
colonies and almost destroyed a whole continent on the
Klingon homeworld. Billions were slaughtered."
Kirk swung around to Roth. "Are you saying that the
reason the Klingons are losing... is him?" Shame
rocketed across Roth's face. Well, there was the
answer to that question. Spock averted his eyes from Roth.
"The Klingons turned on the Vulcans in angry
retribution but the Vulcans defended
themselves without timidityw"
  "Timidity?" Roth gulped. "You came on the
attack! There was nothing defensive about it! You cut
our fleet down and obliterated the helpless stranded
aboard those ships!" Kirk leveled a finger at
him. "Shut up."
  Below, Spock sighed. "He is reviled on
Klingon as a capitulator who caused the enemy
to prevail."
  "Because he fell for the Vulcan's methods and
tried to make peace?" Temron drew his hands
close to his body. "Roth's efforts were sincere."
"Don't defend me, coward!" Roth shouted. "I
volunteered to be a Spear so my reputation would be
cleansed!"
  "You will never be cleansed," Zalt rumbled from behind.
"I was ashamed to have you in my craft. I
volunteered for all the right reasonsinto harm the
enemy."
  "And save your culture, isn't that right?"
Kirk rounded on him. ""You're losing. That's why
you've been using this Spear tactic and sacrificing
perfectly healthy trained pilots."
  Zalt cranked forward against the guard's grip.
"But we are winning now! Except for him."
With a sharp-edged boot he lashed out at Roth.
  "Get those two off the bridge," Kirk
ordered.
  "They're lying to you!" Roth shrieked.
"Temron! Tell them the truth! Tell them there
is no future for them on Vulcan?
  Kirk snapped his fingers at the Scurity team.
"Off? As the struggling prisoners receded into the
lift and the doors wheezed shut, he turned to the
Vulcans. "Is the other Klingon right? Are they
winning?"
  "It is debatable," Sova said. "They are
slowly turning the tide, but they are weak and may not
recover. As for Vulcan..." he added
solemnly, then didn't finish his sentence. Beside
Kirk, Temron took on the responsibility that
Sova found so uneasy. "We cannot live under the
Romulans. They would treat us with murdering
revenge. They despise Vulcans."
  "I understand," Spock offered, reaching a comforting hand
across dimensions. Temron seemed gratified. "I
still do not know how you are here," he said. "Or who you
are, or why you know so little of the populated galaxy.
Are you from such a distance? Are you a generational ship?"
  "Secretary," Sova interrupted,
"The details are... overwhelming, and time is
short. I suggest a meld. I will return to the
ship and tend the veil." Sova looked at
Temron, Temron looked at Spock, Spock
looked at Kirk. The look on McCoy's
face wasn't helping much either. Feeling he could
use a breather, Kirk motioned towaerd the
turbolift. He thought about suggesting Spock's
quarters, but given the decor--musical instruments
and sculptures from a whole other Vulcan--might
be one too many looking glasses to step Temron
through all at once. Maybe later. He said, "The
briefing room. We'll give you ten minutes."
Spock wordlessly gestured Ternton to the
turbolift, and they disappeared on their voyage to the
lower decks. Feeling numb from the hips down,
Kirk forced himself around. "Captain Sova, get
your boarding part off my ship." It took effort
to avoid saying, "the hell off my ship." Sova
motioned his men into a group and touched a mechanism on
his belt, and without even contacting their ship, the entire
group fizzled into energy and dissolved. "Security
detail dismissed," Kirk said. The guards
flooded into the turbolift--a forest of broad
shoulders and biceps that barely fit in there
all at once. McCoy stepped down toward the
captain's chair just as and slid onto the black
leather. His back
  ached, and his injured foot was on fire again. The
leather was cool. "This is our chance to get someone around
here to completely believe us," Kirk said
quietly. "I don't think Sova buys the whole
story."
  "But it was his idea that Ternton and Spock do their
little brain thing, Jim," the doctor said. "Sova's
a ship's captain in the middle of a war, and it's his
business to be suspicious. He wants Temron
to shoulder the responsibility." McCoy sighed.
"I don't blame them for being suspicious. Not
even the Klingons could swallow that we were slammed through
a dimensional crack by one of the rarest phenomena in
science." "I don't know how rare it is. I
feel nauseated. Can you do anything about that?"
  "I'll try. It's almost time for another
treatment."
  "Make it now and make it fast. I gave
Spock ten minutes. You've got eight."
McCoy looked up at Uhura. "Lieutenant,
have one of my interns come up here and bring the
captain's prescription, full
treatment."
  "When's this thing going to get better?" Kirk
grilled, shifting his leg to another position.
"It'll get worse before it gets better."
  "Worse than this?" "The toxins have to run their
course. It's like a virus. I can't cure it.
All I can do is mask the symptoms enough that the
symptoms don't kill you." Rubbing his thigh with the
heel of a hand, Kirk slanted his eyes at him.
"What a merry profession you have." He gazed
pensively now at the ship off: their port bow that was
working to keep them screened from the Klingon search
pattern. Eventually those screens would break down and
they'd have to run again or fight. Or both. "There are
missing pieces to this puzzle, and I'm bound to find
all I can before I give up. You've got six
minutes left."
  who wanted nothing more in life than to tackle
one-dimensional tasks. As such, he found
magnificent satisfaction every ten minutes or so and
was one of the happiest crewmen Kirk had ever known.
  "Captain, sir, sir! I found something," the
big kid panted. "Out there, 'bout half a mile!
You gntta see it!"
  

Chapter 15
  "STATUS?" Kirk dropped into his chair and
sat ramrod straight. They were after his ship. It
all came down to that. "Full emergency alert,
sir. Two ships, six hundred ninety-two
thousand kilometers, warp five and closing."
Engineer Scott moved out of the way and eagerly
took his station on the port side, talking as he
went. "triple-shielded and powering up their firing
sequences, if that alien hardware reads right.
They'll have us in weapons" range in roughly
ninety seconds."
  "Sensors on full capacity."
  "Aye, sir." On the upper bridge, Spoc
stood with Temron. They all watched the
viewscreen. The unfamiliar Klingon ships bore
down upon them like running dogs, never really looking as
though they were moving, yet plowing down on them frame
by frame. Nary a swerve, nary a hesitation. There
was no canny dance of antagonism or attempt
at clever dodging. Just a down and dirty full-out
run. They'd found the rabbit and they knew the rabbit
was fast, so they were going to run it into the ground.
"We'll beam you back, Mr. Temron," Kirk
said, keeping one eye on the screen.
"Unfortunately, there's no time for long
good-byes. Mr. Sulu, target those vessels'
critical points." "Targeting."
  "Scotty, rig a failsafe one-button
detonation for the warp core in case we're boarded.
We won't have time for codes and countercodes."
Above, Spock moved to the rail. "Captain--"
  "We'll take our chances," Kirk said with
anticipation, "but I'm not having the Vulcans
lose their eighteen percent chance of turning this
cesspool around. Rig it, Scott." Scott
glanced at Spock, then headed for the turbolift.
"I'll do it myself, sir."
  "Kirk to transporter room." "Transporter
room, Simmons."
  "Simmons, pinpoint the upper bridge, port
side forward. We're going to beam ship-to-ship.
Correlate with the Vulcans' bridge."
  "Wouldn't you rather do it J"...f the pad down here,
sir? It's safer and it doesn't strain the instru--
was
  "Don't instruct me, Ensign. Set your
coordinates."
  "Aye, sir. One minute."
  "Make it less. Mr. Temron,.. a short
acquaintance, but one we'll all remember
for the rest of our lives."
  The idea of leaving--forever--this font of the possible
struck Temrom hard, and it showed in his eyes. He
had just been shown the design for paradise, and now they
were locking him behind a glass wall. As long as he
lived, he would be able to look but never touch.
  "Enemy ships in range, sir," Chekov said.
  Spock took Temron's elbow and ushered him
to the correct position to be picked up by the
transporter sensors when the order was given.
Temron allowed himself to be put
  place, then turned abruptly and looked at
Spock.
  in"...I will teach my people," he pledged, "to live
long... and prosper."
  Even beneath the shield of control, Spock appeared
complimented, gratified. "You will shear the chains of this
circumstance," he sanctioned. "I believe in you."
  Heart-stricken and not ashamed to show it, Temron
  accepted those words with a nod.
  Spock stepped back and away.
  Ticking off the seconds, Kirk was moved by the
intensity of this one moment in all of endless time. What
goes on when a person enters another person's
mind? When all the memories of
childhood and youth, education, and experience are
flooded together like two rivers joining?
  He didn't envy either of them. Each had
sacrificed privacy, one for his ship, the other for his
civilization.
  Temron took another step backward, a
finality of sorts, and looked down. "Thank you,
Jim."
  "Best luck," Kirk offered. Then suddenly he
wished he had come up with more to say. "Kirk
to Simmons--energize. Mr. Sulu, prepare
to open fire on the Vulcan ship, phasers
one-quarter."
  "Ready, sir. One-quarter phasers, locked
on."
  The pillar of lights consumed Temron, and his
body was slowly dissembled at the molecular level
and sent back to his vessel. The whole process
would take eight seconds.
  After four, Kirk ordered, "Full about.
Fire."
  Smoldering with wounds that would later save its
life, the Vulcan ship veered off in one
direction, and the Enterprise in another, with the starship
firing as she ran, chasing the echo of her
captain's voice.
  "Mr. Sulu, warp factor six. Let's
outrun them here and
  now."
  "Warp six, aye, sir .... warp two...
three.. 2'
  The crew held on like bats to a ceiling as the
ship hulled over, took a grip on raw space,
and sprinted. Enemy fire sliced across her underside
and crackled along her shields. Regurgitated
energy changed to blinding light and flashed so brightly that
they shaded their eyes.
  "Sir, they're hailing us," Uhura reported.
"They demand we stand down."
  "No response," he said, eying the screen.
  "Warp four, sir .... warp three seven five
--sorry, sir--" Sulu was working harder now.
He'd had to slow down to angle away from the changing
Klingon formation.
  The enemy ships weren't giving them time to make
high warp without changing course. They weren't like the
Klingons Kirk knew. Those wandered around the
settled galaxy with a chip on their shoulders, boxed
in by stronger powers, and knew very well that they'd
better behave. They postured, growled, and
threw things, but rarely had they been tested on any
scale of battle.
  But these Klingons were accustomed to lighting--real
fighting. They knew how to do it. Their whole science
was devoted to it, everything they could invent, buy, or
steal. Working their way in front of a starship, two
ships twisted for position while two others circled
her abeam, not throttling back because they knew the new
ship could outrun them and that they had to change
tactics.
  It was smart. A sign of experience on the
battlefield. They'd learned.
  The starship charged through space, but she might as
well have been on a leash, stuck at warp four or
lower. Vexation poured through Kirk at the prospect
of a peaceful galaxy whose chances had been swatted
down by these petty contests.
  "Never underestimate your enemy," he grumbled.
"If we "Sir--sir, we're got two
Klingons--sit on "era if you have can get clear,
we can outrun them. Maybe we can put some to,
damn it! Henry, aren't you armed?" strain on them
while we do it. Force them to follow us till fi
Kirk hunched over the comm unit, as if getting
closer hurts." would do any more good than
shaking it. "Anderson, give
  With his face cast in blue from the sensor hood,
Spocl me a report!"
  nodded once. "We may gain way if we force
them to come "We've got intruders, sir; two
Klingons are down here. We
  through heavy fire."
  i found 'era in the forward weapons access
jacket. I have to
  "Noted," Kirk said. "Mr. Chekov, ready
full phasers. assume sabotage."
  Photon torpedoes on standby."
  "You'd better assume it, Lieutenant,"
Kirk fumed. "Get
  "Phasers ready... Photons on still--sir!"
The navigatorhl those two back to the brig and have
Security check on the youthful face crumpled.
"Firing mechanisms are fused!" four guards who
were supposed to be taking them there."
  Speck dodged to his side. "Confirmed.
Sixty percen "Yes, sir."
  shutdown, Captain."
  "All right... Mr. Chekov, stand by on that
weapons
  Kirk pounded a comm unit. "Engineering!
What's hal greater-than order. We'll have
to outmaneuver them. Mr. Sulu, continue pened to the
weapons integrity?" evasive."
  The line was open, but no one spoke to him. The
sounds "Aye, sir."
  of shouting and scuffling babbled through as if the engineera
"Mr. Speck, do you have any way to know what
happened
  had dropped something and were all fighting over it.
  r to Temron's ship?"
  Thenm "I noted them engaging warp speed and
angling away as
  "Intruder alert! Security to main engineering!
Intruder the Klingon vessels came upon us,"
Speck said. "None of
  alert?
  the Klingons abandoned pursuit of us to go after them,
so I
  i suppose their escape. By the time the Klingons
confront
  to them, Temron and his captain will probably have
concocted
  a plausible story for their nearness to us and why we
fired on
  them. I hope their damage will provide
a fair substantiation."
  "I hope so, too." Kirk suddenly realized
he was breathing
  

Chapter 16
  like a race horse. "When it comes down to it,
everybody has
  to die for himself."
  Troubled by that and other things, Speck managed a
small
  nod.
  "Let's get out of here," Kirk offered him.
  Another small nod, but the eyes changed.
"Agreed."
  "ENGINEIRING! Give me a report!"
  "Mr. Sulu, position of the enemy ships now?":
  Jim Kirk grabbed the arm of his command chair an
"Two dead astern, sir, five hundred thousand
kilometers shook it, as if that would help. From the
comm unit on the one z-minus twenty thousand
kilometers... One off @chair's arm, a
frantic voice squawked up at him through al the
starboard beam, thirty-two thousand kilometers.
All haze of static. attempting to close."
  172 173.
  "All stop." The bridge crew stared
at him suddenly. Sulu cranked around. "All
stop, sir?"
  "Affarmative. All stop--right now." Parting his
lips to argue, Sulu thought better of that and turned
to his helm. "Aye, sir. All stop." He
tapped his controls. With a ghastly squeal the ship
folded in on herself and drew up hard, pitching them
all forward, even if they were hanging on. The force was
enough to pull their skin off. Kirk managed to stay in his
chair and keep his eyes on the screen as his ship and
crew buckled around him, hoping that what had worked with the
Romulans would work with the Klingons. Over the whine,
Chekov croaked, "Two enemy ships crossing in
front of us, sir--overshooting us!"
  "Aft ship overtaking us," Spock reported,
"coming into collision range with the vessel abeam of us."
On the forward screen, three of the enemy ships plowed
past them in different directions at blinding speed,
rushing so far into the distance that they were suddenly invisible.
"Full about, Sulu," Kirk barked. "Now's our
chance. Warp factor six." The helmsman
didn't respond, but his elbows bent as he tried
to work the controls that were buried under his chest. The
ship's squeal fell off, and the engines began to pump
again. Warp two... three... four...
"Warp factor five, sir," Sulu heaved.
"Warp six, sir."
  "Enemy ships coming about, sir," Spock read off
his long-range sensors. "Falling far behind." He
straightened and turned, offering Kirk the
congratulations of his tone. "They were completely
surprised." Kirk nodded but said nothing to him.
"Mr. Chekov, maintain surveillance behind us."
  "Yes, sir!" The young man stared at the main
screen, sweating, but also grinning. Sulu leered at
Chekov--a smile there, too. And Nourredine up
at engineering was still hanging on to his chair but
grinning. 1 "7A
  "Security to bridge, Ensign Meerwald."
  "Kirk here. What've you got?" "Captain,
we found the four guards. They were stuffed into an
envirosuit locker."
  "What's their condition?"
  "I'm sorry, sir, but... they're all four
dead, sir. The bastards killed "ern." Nausea
rushed through Kirk's body disand rage through his mind.
Losing men made him insane, even though it was part and
parcel of the service. Those men hadn't signed up
to die at the hands of prisoners who were already arrested
and manacled. He didn't know what
happened down there, half a dozen decks below, on
the way to the brig. Perhaps those men hadn't been used
to this kind of Klingon, the kind who had done more than
crow about war, but who instead had waged it all their
lives. Now he would have to write to their families.
If... "Acknowledged. Kirk out," he slurred.
For a moment he stared at the carpet. It turned
to fuzz before his eyes. A thump on the deck made
him look up. Spock was there, now folding his arms,
and regarding his boots briefly before looking up.
"Now that we have a clearer picture of the state of
affairs... where will we go?" The question was heavy with
Spock's perception that Kirk had been thinking about
this all along and must, by now, have racked up a
possibility or two. Even for Kirk, this sudden
solitary power was a revelation. He'd been
independent, yes, almost sovereign, as all
captains are once they left the dock, but
Starfleet had always been there before. Weeks away,
yes. But there. Now he found himself the true head of
all that was left of Starfleet. All that existed of the
human race was on this ship, and he was in charge of
them. He sighed and paused to think. "If we
manage to correct whatever happened to create this
new time line, we won't be destroying
any of these species? Am I right?" Spock
offered a not very convincing bob of his brows. "I dare not
say." they were telling the truth. Do we dare tamper
with time? We could be ruining our own eternity!"
  "Or saving it!" Zalt's voice was bitter and
vicious, loaded with dare. "Close your teeth and
listen. These are your orders. You're going to make
friends with these people. Swear on your honor that you will not
interfere with what they are doing. Then interfere
greatly."
  "On my honor? I cannot!"
  "You will. You have no honor left upon which to swear,
so you can swear all you like. Do it." Roth sank
back against the moist rock, as Zalt shook the
tethers from his wrists and threw the useless stake to the
ground. "Follow me," Zalt said.
  Shuddering like a wounded dog, Jim Kirk followed
his excited young Security man through the rain's
consistent assault. By the time they reached a bluff in
the middle of the low-slung mountain, all were whipped and
panting. Reenie and the other Security man,
Vernon, went ahead and took readings and made
sure the environment was relatively secure. They
were all soaked, but now the rain was stopping, or they were
climbing out of it. The veiled sun had
westered and slid behind the mountain, and the sky was getting
dark. Kirk looked down into the valley from which they
had just come. A cottony fog rested in the valley
like soup in a bowl. Here it was nearly dry, moistened
only by the heat and thready fog from that cloud down there.
Above them, the star-shingled night was black and
beckoning. He squinted down at his boots in the
fading light and at the ground beneath them. Dry. His
sopping uniform shirt clung to his chest, arms, and
back. They were on an incline, a natural
pathway that spiraled up this mountain. The pathway
beneath his feet was hard rock coated with a layer of
gritty soil and a tenacious moss, leaving this
convenient indentation in the mountainside. Still an
uphill climb but walkable. "Here, Captain,"
McCoy said and handed him a stick he'd ripped out
of a fallen tree. It was four feet long and almost
two inches thick, not quite straight, but straight enough.
"In England they call it 'fellwalking." Now you
can tell people you've done it. Just say it was in
Georgia." Kirk glared at him but took the
stick. Something to lean on. Vernon's tall,
shoulderwide form appeared at the erest, where this incline
curved along the body of the mountain. "Right up here,
sir! You're not gonna believe it!"
  "Bet I wwill," Kirk grumbled. The
doctor stayed a pace or two behind him, which
irritated him because Kirk knew McCoy was
anticipating having to catch him if he fell. He
didn't want to be caught or picked up or even
empathized with. He staggered as his stick slipped on
a mossy place but beat off McCoy's attempt
to help him with only a well-aimed glare. Before
them, Spock turned in concern but had the sense
to wait until they caught up rather than coming back
to help. He knows me too blasted well, Kirk
thought as he glared forward at the Vulcan. Spock
stood against the incongruous junglescape, a blue
and black pillar of high civilization, and waited as
his captain approached.."...One hundred yards,
sir. Emmendorf and Reenie are setting up
lighting implements." "Good. I'm getting a
feeling we shouldn't have come here until morning,
We'll get what we can, then go back to the cave."
  "Agreed," Spock said. "Iungle settings
are generally more dangerous during the night hours."
Kirk nodded automatically. "Let's go." One
hundred yards farther along, and twenty feet below
them on a lush plateau, lay one of the strangest
sights Kirk had ever encountered. Ten or
so large-bodied animals lay slaughtered,
peppered with the bodies of smaller animals. The
ferns and groundcover all around were blood-spackled
in the portable daylight the junior officers had set
up.
  

PART THREE
  DEEP TIME
  "Millions and millions of lives hanging on
what this vessel does next." "Or what this
vessel fails to do, Doctor."
  --McCoy and Spock, Balance of Terror
  

Chapter 17
  "THE OVERVIEWS OF HISTORY recorded
on our previous mission here are stored in the
library computer, sir. I'm having them loaded
into this tricorder."
  "Fine." The bridge was hot again. "When you're
finished, :..: assemble another landing party.
Include the two Klingons." The shadows on the
bridge were harsher than yesterday, chiseled out of the
colors and shapes of the chairs and consoles. Their
edges were cracks on the bridgescape. "I beg
your pardon, sir?" " Jim Kirk blinked
once, then screwed his eyes shut again, harder this
time. "It may help us if they see
whatever happens from now on. When we find out what
happened, I . .. want to see the truth in their
faces. And bring that kid from before. The
anthropologist. i: "Lieutenant Bannon,
sir." -. "Fine. Bring him along." spine
suddenly compressed. He fell sideways as his
leg folded under him. His elbow rammed into the
Spock, and he felt the pointed of his hip jar against
the housing. His body jackknifed. Spock caught
him by the arm and levered him back onto
  his sea legs, but the angular face was turned not
to the captain but to the instruments, now whining and beeping for
attention. "Enemy fire?" Kirk gasped,
despite the fact that the ship hadn't gone
to automatic red alert, despite again the fact that
all sensors were on standby. "No, sir," the
Vulcan said, peering into his sensor hood. He
studied his sensors' readouts, then turned. His
face was animate with victory. "That was a first
wave of time displacement, sir. We're in the right
place." Kirk leaned on the science panel and
tried to catch his breath. One bump, and he was
gasping. The pain in his temples announced itself every
few seconds with nerve twinges just under the skin of his
forehead. Time displacement... surging
outward in the form of mw energy. For the first time in days
he felt as if he'd done something right. "Jim?"
On the center deck below them, McCoy came toward
the bright red rail. "See you a minute?" Kirk
didn't step down but came to the rail and pressed his
hip against it, just in case there was another one of those
waves--and there would be. "What is it?"
McCoy's squarish face was blanched. "How are
you feeling?"
  "Hot, sore, nauseated, foggy-brained, and
dizzy. Anything else?"
  "You left out irritable." "Not on purpose.
What are you gonna do about it?"
  "Well, I can give you another treatment right about
now, but you're going to have to understand that part of convalescence
is rest. You're not getting any." "There's nothing
I can do about that." Kirk cupped his hand around the
back of his neck and let his head hang as the
muscles stretched. When he raised his head, his
spine cracked like marbles dropping. "Let's get
going. Mr. Sulu, hold course into those energy
waves. Go to yellow alert. Mr. Spock, you have
the con." McCoy met him on the upper deck and
stood between him and the turbolift. "Jim, there's just
one more thing. Bannon doesn't want
assignment." Another energy wave hit, but this time
Kirk was ready. It was McCoy who stumbled, then
whirled and fought the impact. The ship capered a few
yards, bucked, and dropped back into place.
McCoy pulled himself to the rail, knuckled white.
"The anthropologist, Jim. He doesn't want
an assignment."
  "Why not? Was he injured?"
  "No, no, that's not it... He says he's
resigning from Starfleet." The doctor cupped one
hand with the other and twisted until the muscles in his
bare forearms flexed. His medical smock shimmered
in the bridge lights. "I think we might've
scared the daylights out of him." Kirk stepped past
him. "I'll take care of it. Give me the
treatment right now, then collect whatever you need for this
leg and meet us in the transporter room in
twenty-five minutes."
  "I want you to get off your feet for at least
four hours."
  "Fine. You can carry me." "Am I going to have
to give you a medical order?"
  "If you want to see it stuffed and mounted."
  "Now, Jim, you listen to me..."
  "Bannon?"
  "Captain!" A lieutenant j.g."...ness
quarters. Nostalgia times ten. Single bunk,
dim lighting, plain walls. Head and shower adjoining
with the quarters next door. One bed shared on
alternative Off-watch periods by two crewmen.
"We've almost reached our destination," Kirk said.
"Mr. .
  Sp oock is stuffing a pair of tricorders with
historical database and with class-M
paleontological and geological databases.
I'm putting together a landing party. I'd like you to be
on it." red-haired Bannon stared at him without the
idea of what to say. The fact that the captain was there
in person proved that Kirk had already heard of
Bannon's plans to abandon his duty, to slide
into some nice
  quiet lab and live out his life not affecting very
much at all.
  After all, anthropologists were pretty much
cleanup crew for
  past and current cultures. It'd been a hell
of a long time
  since a critical bit of research had come off
the desk of one of
  those.
  Feeling the pressure of his own
responsibility, Kirk
  paused and raised a brow at him. "Well?"
  The boy backed up until his calves butted
against the
  bunk. He Couldn't sit down in the captain's
presence. -- Kirk's other brow went up. "You,
you, you?" Bannon rubbed his hands against his thighs.
"I don't want to go, sir. I'm thinking of..."
A bizarre, heavy silence folded around the little
quarters. For James Kirk, the words leaving and
Starfleet didn't go together. As often as he had
questioned himself, even wished for respite, the concept of
putting his braid on somebody's desk and dropping
a "Thanks, bye," beside it was beyond reach. Nervous,
Bnon shifted and twitched. It was one thing to tell a
bunkmate that he wanted to quit the Fleet or
report it to the watch commander, who then took it to the
department head, who reported it to the first officer, who
maybe, if the situation ruerired attention, took it
to the captain. Maybe. The last person he
expected or wanted to spill his guts all over was
his commanding officer. Lowering himself to the desk chair
to get weight off his throbbing leg, Kirk asked,
"Is this about Lieutenant LaCerra?"
Bannon blinked as if shocked that somebody as up
there as the captain had the foggiest intuition about
personal things. "Yes, sir," he finally purged.
"Guess it is." He stared at the earpet. "When
those animals started to drive her into the high grass,
I was taking readings on the biotricorder. I
threw it down and grabbed for my phaser." His voice
broke as he added, "I got my communicator
by mistake." Out in the corridor, somebody ran
by. Then somebody else. Maybe a couple of
engineers. Their footsteps made a were hurried
thrum on the deck under Kirk's feet. It
isn'tyour fault, Jim. I'm in command, Bones.
It makes it my fault. Kirk pushed himself to his
feet. "I see." Then he half turned.
"You're welcome to resign your commission once our
problem is resolved, Lieutenant. Until then,
we've all got to give a hundred percent.
Outfit yourself for a field reconnaissance and be in the
transporter room in ten minutes."
  Ruins extending to the horizon. An ancient
planet, age still in question, despite years of study.
Had it been years already? Before them at a notable
distance, hovering in place as if painted on the sky,
tall as two men and wide as four, a
circular rock formation stood like a polished slice
of a geode on somebody's desk. It seemed inert,
but they knew it wasn't. Muttering like a
midshipman, Jim Kirk led the way. He knew
the way. He clung to the anchor of his own voice,
so he didn't have to listen to the echoes in his head,
drumming memories of another voyage to this place,
ringing in his head and driving him to distraction. Hiking
over the rocks beside him, Spock had nothing to say .
That didn't mean much. Spock, whose compassion had
confound an unashamed place right behind those black
eyes that satanic mask--amazing just how much could show
through that shell. Maybe he just didn't try so hard
to hide it anymore. They'd been here before, done it
together, the two of Stepped through that glittering donut,
arrived in the had the future at their fingertips.
Fixing the mistake had meant letting an
exceptional woman die under the bumper of a truck,
preventing her from actualizing a future that would have
changed history for the much worse. Not everything was
meant to be. the history of the galaxy rode on
Jim Kirk's shoulders.
  Did you do something wrong? Whatever it is, let
me help. He stopped between two crops of broken
ruin and let his aching arms go limp just for a
moment. He'd actually heard her voice. Spock
stood there, chin down, brows up, empathizing for all
he was worth. "Captain?" Kirk looked at him,
going over in his mind what they'd been through the last
time. Another glitch in history that had to be put
right. Here was Spock, wondering where they would find the
personal fortitude to go through it again. And there was
McCoy, adding up the billions of innocent
lives who never got a chance to live, pained for them
every bit as much as if they had died one by one on his
surgical table. "I've felt this way before,"
Kirk said, "this being alone."
  "Intuition, Captain?" "Not good enough for you?" They
stood together with that thing on their immediate horizon, trying
to drum up a little shoulder-to-shoulder knightly spirit
to sustain them, then deal with the light-headed thrill of
fear, and hope their decisions were crisp. Kirk
knew he was treading thorns, doing double duty as
captain and invalid, sweating down the poison in his
body and the unholy torment in his soul. He wanted
his crew to see him taking it like a man, but his shrinking
stomach provided a grisly reminder that his lifted
finger could condemn a thousand worlds. That was what it meant
to be out front. This was what it meant to command
starships, for himself and his fellow captains,
going out there first and bearing the deepest scars--those of
their own decisions. After all the braids and
decorations, accolades and cocktail parties,
only the captains remembered the missions that went
wrong. Those memories made all the pats on the
back just a little sore, leaving the inner man
curdle-blooded and crouching scared. "Out here in our
court dress," he grumbled, "with no castle to come
home to." Spock broke from his scan of the ruins.
"Sir?"."
  "I don't like these things. Of all the good that's come
from
  exploration since human beings crossed the first land
bridges onto new continents, there's been no chance
to go backward and start over. Usually that's a good
thing. As much as we may wish to go back, we're
better off slogging forward. It's only recently
we've found ways to wedge ourselves into the past, where we
don't belong. It's not fair to those who never get a
chance to tell us to butt out. I can push forward, take
chances, make bets... but look backward, and
I'm not so sure anymore." His words dropped upon
the rocks, muffled cries for help for which there was no
answer. "Come on, Spock," he resigned.
"Let's get this over with:" The ground was
littered with crumbled rocks in this area. Huffting with
effort of his own, McCoy made a point of getting
to Kirk's side. "Captain?"
  "Something?"
  "Before we get into whatever we're about to get into,
I want to suggest sending Bannon back to the ship.
My evaluation of his mental state--"
  "I've taken care of it." McCoy glowered.
"Did you have a talk with him?"
  "I listened."
  "You didn't say anything?"
  "I told him to report for duty."
  "Jim, that boy's in shock. Can't you see it in
his face?"
  "It takes a good man," Kirk rebuffed,
"to think he's wicked because of a fumble. Nothing I've
got to say will fix him. That pain of having altered
another life... There's no bandage for it. It's a
power everyone craves but damned few appreciate
for the danger it is. He's got to learn some time if
lie wants to be in Starfleet."
  "He says he doesn't."
  ""He's lying."
  "Jim--" :: "That's enough. We're almost there."
At the center of the time displaceement, the
site was .
  mpletely undisturbed, peaceful as a church.
They may as well have been here yesterday, as
familiar as it seemed. The sky was gunmetal
gray and flat as concrete. This system's sun
didn't really want to have much to do with this place.
Spock and a Security guard took Kirk by the
arms and hoisted him down from the rocks onto a slab
of ground. He came down hard on the heel of his
bad leg, pain jarring into his hip. Before he could
breathe again he was ready to swear he'd landed on his
ear. McCoy started past him toward the slice of
rock sitting up on its edge, with the horizon of this
planet showing passively through the middle.
"Bonesu" Abruptly Kirk reached out, caught the
doctor by his upper arm, and yanked him back.
"Don't get too close."
  "Place gives me the shivers," McCoy
admitted. "I don't blame you." Pushing
McCoy behind him, he threw a collective glance
to the rest of the team. "Sensors." Around him, the landing
party brought up'the tricorders or phasers
respectively and scanned the area. There were seven
of them: Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Bannon,
two Security guards, and a
twenty-three-year-old Tibetan girl who'd
begged for a chance as science assistant. Spock,
Bannon, and the girl scanned the area
electronically while the guards did a cursory
walk around. "No life forms," Spock said, "no
energy output other than the main structure... No
signs of disturbance."
  "Acknowledged," Kirk allowed. "Carry on."
He stared up at the huge donut of rock. It
wasn't glowing or showing any sign of the energy he
knew was there. Yet it raised the hairs on the
back of his neck. A few feet away, a
communicator chirped. "Spock to Enterprise. The
site is secure. Beam down the second landing
party now." Into Kirk's resting mind came the buzz
of scrambled energy, the whistle of mechanical effort
as a billion molecules were forced through space and
reassembled over a matter of seconds. Before him
on the chalk-dry ground stood two more Security
guards and the two Klingon prisoners, each
manacled at the wrists, both wearing sickbay
shirts and their own trousers. Faces rough as
watchdogs', Roth and Zalt glanced around at the
forbidding landscape, both probably suspicious that
the plan was to abandon them here. Not a bad
idea. "All right," Kirk segued, limping toward
the big geode. He started toward it. "Let's
see what we've got going for us." Before him, the
two-foot-thick cimular frame of what appeared
to be solid stone stood in elegant and utterly
silent repose. "Guardian," he began. "Do you
hear me?" The rim of rock accommodated him
by lighting up internally, coming alive in response as
if excited to have somebody to talk to. A slow,
booming voice thrummed across the open landscape.
"I AM THE GUARDIAN OF FOREVER...
LET ME BE YOUR GATEWAY." The voice
was grand, yet somehow emotional, like a priest coming out
of sequester, trying to maintain a lordly distance while
desperately wanting to dance at a wedding. Kirk
managed to stifle a pointless nod. "Do you
remember us?" SPO-CK leaned toward him and
murmured. "Captain?"
  "Maybe it's got memory banks or something."
The lights were already on again. "I AM MACHINE
AND BEING... BOTH AND NEITHER..."
  "There, Spock! That's what we asked it when we
were here bfore. It does have memory banks. It
remembers us."
  "Or it may simply have telepathic
traits, sir." A few steps back, without moving
his lips, McCoy grumbled, "I'm bet'n on
machine myself." i Kirk didn't react. He'd
hooked a tish and wanted to reel. "Guardian,"
he began, "do you know us?" ,: "YOU ARE FROM
BEFORE THE CHANGE," the big
  voice boomed. Spock glanced at him again.
Wha change," Kirk prodded, "are you referring
to?"
  his
  "THE CHANGE OF TIME." swarmed in the
unnatural lights, eerily silent, feasting on the
corpses. A sight of prehistoric slaughter?
So what? Spock and McCoy plunged past him,
and Kirk found himself inadequate in the light of their
professional curiosity. He wanted to throw up but
not with his junior officers watching. Or senior
officers either, for that matter. A captain's
dilemma: couldn't throw up in front of anybody.
Withered intestines hung like holiday decorations all
over the green growth and ferns, some still linked to the open
guts of the animals from which they came. The larger
animals were a good ten feet from head to tail and on
those thick hind legs could rear back almost as tall
as he was. Their gaping mouths were snaggled
with bloody teeth. Their eyes stared, even more terrible
because these were large brown eyes, like the eyes of an
owl, not like a crocodile. He couldn't feel for a
crocodile, but this... "All right, Mr.
Vernon," he started bluntly, "what's the
attraction? We've got a bunch of dead
animals. What did you want us to see that couldn't
wait?" The tall Security man pointed. "The
faces of the big ones, sirmlook at their faces?
Kirk moved forward glaring through a band of artificial
light. "Is that paint?" Spock drew his fingers
along the yellow and purple designs on the
animal's long skull. "Paint, Captain...
acrylic pigment. Synthetic, not natural." His
voice dropped away and he murmured, "Amazing!
Meant for visibility ... or possibly to frighten
an enemy."
  "Somebody else must have painted these creature's
faces to throw us off."
  "Somebody else?" McCoy looked up.
"What makes you think that, Captain?"
  "If we can travel time, so can someone else."
  "Only the big ones have paint on them," Reenie
said. "Maybe these little ones are the babies of the big
ones," Vernon wondered. "No,"
Reenie said. "The small ones have their claws between the
ribs of the big ones. They were attacking"
  "A coordinated attack, also," Spock
noted, fascination rising again in his voice. "Note
the angles from which the smaller ones approached...
nearly all the same." McCoy got down on
both knees and put his hands into the laid-open
animal. "Warm blood." Kirk leaned hard on
his stick. "How long have these animals been dead?"
  "Minutes. Maybe an hour. But some of the
bodies are still warmer than others. They may have lay
here dying for a while. But not very long Trauma like this
doesn't let an animal hang on for long."
  "We may have frightened off the victors," Spock
said. "Which means whatever did this is probably still
nearby." Kirk motioned to Emmendorf, Vernon,
and Reenie. "Stay on your toes, people."
  "Jim, do you have the time for me to dissect one of
these?" McCoy asked. "We've got sixty
million years. Help yourself. But we'll do it
back at the campsite. Mr. Emmendorf, come
down here and assist Dr. McCoy. Mr.
Spock, secure the area while you have the chance,
please."
  "Yes, sir." Spock stood up, his
gaze lingering on the face of the sad creature lying
at his feet, its painted face calling to his
scientific mind with" contradiction after
contradiction. Kirk empathized with him, but there
wasn't time to indulge. They needed something more
concrete, something the tricorder would recognize and
say, "Got it!" They needed that thing, that one hint
to drive away their doubts. To Jim Kirk, that was
the perfect world--one with no doubts. The hard
decisions weren't really the worst part of command. It was
the doubting he hated. Command... the ship... the
beautiful Enterprise... a ghost of it blew past
him in the dark sky overhead, so real he almost
looked up and waved. They had counted on him. They
hadn't doubted him. I'm sorry, sir... I'm
sorry, sir..."
  "Not your fault, Scotty..." riddled with doubt
at all these unverified and perilous guesses they'd
had to work with. At this moment, the lair opened and
Spock's unconcealed relief rushed out of
sequester into the light for an occult flap across the
open sky. A smile crept over Kirk's
lips. "I wish we'd had more time to talk
to Temron and his colleagues. They were spirited people."
Speck canted his head slightly to one
side and raised that brow that proved he was intrigued.
"What the Vulcans here have learned," he granted
earnestly, "is that the principles of peace operate
only if all sides abide by them. In our time
line, my people had the luxury of never having to learn
that." Mustering a grin, McCoy swaggered in
place. "So that's your excuse?" "Captain,"
Speck pressed, "the change this entity mentioned--that
will be the key." Kirk steadied himself and nodded.
"Guardian," he asked, "can you show us the change?"
The lights pulsed again. "I AM MADE
TO DISPLAY THE PAST IN THIS MANNER."
  "Then Earth's past, Captain," Speck said,
keeping his voice between them. "There has to be some
registration of it. Consider the Guardian to be a
kind of computer. Ask it to call up specific
threads from the tapestry." Kirk nodded again. "Can you
show us," he asked carefully, "the past we have in
common?" A tense moment trundled by, almost as
though the Guardian didn't intend to answer this time.
Then the lights came on again and the heavy bass
voice boomed. "FOR THIS... I MUST GO
FAR BACK." Glancing at McCoy, Kirk
only got a shrug. From his left, Spock's
expression was a shrug too, even though he
didn't move. "How far?" Kirk spoke up.
This time the machine didn't answer. Apparently,
its idea of an answer for that question was to call up its
files and do its job, sifting through the minds--or the
physiology?--of the people standing before it, catching the whiff
of human evolution and the spice of a half-Vulcan
and going deep into its pantry for answers. The
lights on the rim pulsed very dimly, moving almost
constantly, not like they did when the entity was talking, but
more like a series of rolling electrical surges.
For a moment it seemed the Guardian had blown up.
But there was no sound--only a bloom of bright light.
The image zoomed in on a blazing planet being
bombarded by meteors, slamming mindlessly into the big
hot rock. As the meteor bombardment tapered off,
a crust started to form on the planet, rushing along in
quicktime on the Guardian's screen, until nature
threw it a curve ball--a very big curve ball.
A spatial body nearly one-sixth the size of the
planet smashed into it, and a moon was born from the
splash ejecta. The infant Earth recovered before
them. Most of the crust began to cool. Volcanic
centers ran along fractures in its active
surface. Huge sheets of the surface were pushed
under the edges of other sheets, and new crust
was formed. A haze slowly obscured the surface as
an atmosphere rich in water vapor began
to collect. "Science department," Kirk blurted,
"talk us through it." " After nobody else spoke
up, Speck seemed to feel responsible to roll the
first ball. "It appears we are witnessing key
points in the birth and early history of Earth."
  "Where are the continents?" McCoy asked as the
cloud cover cleared and a watery planet showed itself
to them, interspersed with long volcanic island cones.
Speck didn't take his eyes off the alien
screen. "Continents require billions of years
of tectonic movement to distill the lighter minerals
to the surface. The atmosphere we're seeing is
largely CO2 with some nitrogen and water, 'much like
Venus today. Very dense..." EncoUraged
by Spock's beginning to explain, Ensign Reenie
came forward, then held her tricorder out in front
of her. "Life may have appeared, sir, but it's very
simple." His own voice startled him. He glanced
around, self-aware, wondering if anyone else had
heard him. No one was looking. McCoy was
elbow-deep in slaughtered dinosaur, giving orders
to a nauseated Emmendorf, and Spock was up on the
incline, intently scanning, Kirk knew
he was better at the art of roughing it than Spock,
but for how long? His medication had been thinned until
he barely felt it working. The fever was back, his
legs hurt, his thoughts wandered, and he had to pull them
back every few minutes. How long could he hold
on? Would they find him dead in his sleep a few
days from now and be forced to go on without him? He looked
up the incline at Spock. He knew Spock's
sterling loyalty and cautious foresight wouldn't serve
long or well in this place. Eventually one of the young
officers would be killed by this nightmare environment, and
Spock would have to live with that. Spock always
pretended to take those things in his logical stride,
but Kirk knew it was fake. He'd seen the change
in Spock's behavior, watched him grow more mellow
as he paid the toll of being a first officer, of having a
subordinate's life slip through his fingers from time
to time. It soured an officer's iron-willed
confidence. Doubt. It was the demon on a leader's
shoulder. The one Kirk had never gotten used to.
Spock looked up from the tricorder, and for an
instant Kirk was afraid he'd been thinking too
loudly. "Something here, Captain."
  "Coming." Climbing was torture. Kirk dug his
fingers into the stubby overgrowth, took each
step one at a time. He couldn't let them see him
fall. A hand caught him under the upper arm and gave
him support. One more hitch upward, and Spock
had him. Kirk sat on the edge of the stony
embankment. His face was clammy, his breath
rattling in his chest, and he gripped the edge of the
ridge with both hands. Spock knelt to hold the
tricorder in front of him. "Traces of refined
metal." There was victory in the Vulean's
voice.
  Invigorated, Kirk cranked to look
directly at him. "Spock, are you sure?"
  "Very faint traces on the limestone below this
soil." He scooted back a few inches
to gesture up the incline. "Note a pattern
scraped into the soft... something has been dragged
along here, possibly some form of travoy. It
carved grooves into the ground, and where it struck stone
we have these traces. Definitely high-grade
steel composite." It didn't show in his voice, but
it did in his eyes--he was thrilled. Probably
relieved. Steel... "Then therests more going on than
we've seen so far," Kirk said. "Somebody else
has been here and has been tampering with these
animals." Spock lowered his tricorder.
"Yes." They looked at each other. Somewhere an
animal shrieked, its cry carried to them on a gust
of moist wind. Their brief visit to the modern age
was cut off by the sound of primitive hunt.
"Spock, go back over the the readings you took from the
Guardian. See if you can find something there... or
not there. Not just the animals, but something else."
  "I understand," the Vulcan condensed. "And
analyze these metal traces--"
  "Captain!" Ensign Reenie was craning her
neck over a crest of bushes, her slick hair,
somehow blacker than Spock's, waving as she
shifted from toe to toe. "Something's happening down
there."
  "Ensign!" Kirk snapped. Shaking out of
Spock's grasp, he slid down the incline and
shambled through the litter of bodies and entrails
to Reenie's side, where he caught her elbow and
pulled her back, putting himself in her place. He
looked over the bushes but saw only glimpses of
movement on a lower level. There was noise, huging
of effort, grunts and howls, now getting louder.
Something solid arched into the air--a taft. Big.
With a knot on the end. "Let's have a look.
Heads down." He led the way through gaudy
flora and spiked plants twice his height,
cautiously pointing out those large webs phere and
buried it on the seafloor in the form of limestone or
calcium carbonate. The accumulated remains of
billions of shells over hundreds of millions
of years."
  "Eventually they'll be Earth's great oil and gas
reserves," Kirk said appreciatively. He
wanted to just lean back and watch the pretty
pictures. "Heavy plant life has released
massive quantities of oxygen into the
atmosphere," Reenie panted, "countering the high
levels of carbon dioxide. Crawling arthropods
are colonizing the, urn, land masses--" Bannon
interrupted. "They provided a food sottree for
lobe-tinned fish and other creatures, so they can come
out onto the land." A series of uglies crawled
by, antennae twirling and legs spinning. Giant
millipedes were the first big plant eaters. Not quite as
beautiful as a moment ago, life went from hiding in
a shell in the muck to crawling out on land and sucking
at the open air. "Amphibians," McCoy
pointed out, "should be some-where--there they are." Suddenly
there were almost as many frogs and snakes as fish a few
minutes ago. The land was covered with club
mosses, horsetails, and tree ferns. A
giant dragonfly drifted by. Life started
to change very fast as eons were crunched into seconds,
a steaming zoo of creatures, flying reptiles, and
smooth-skinned predators. A small but angry
vultur dissized thing plunged toward them so
realistically that Reenie jumped back and McCoy
went with her. "Advanced archosaur," Bannon
reported, reading off his own tricorder, the one
stuffed with paleontology. "At least, I think it
was. Damn! It went by so fast!"
  "Jurassic era now," Spock took over.
"Humid climate worldwide. Dinosaurs. Large
sauropods... stegosaurs... possibly some
small early mammals..." Fabulous numbers of
giant herding dinosaurs elegantly led their young
across verdant plains, watered themselves in blue green
pools, placidly lived and violently died, to be
consumed by charging meat eaters. It was raw nature in
its chest-thumping glory. "Lord, I'd love to step
through there for just ten minutes,"
  McCoy uttered. "Get my hands on one of
those..."
  "You could," Kirk said.
  The doctor huffed. "No, thanks. I
wouldn't last the ten."
  The dinosaurs went on for a long time. New
giants came
  to replace the old. Whole species died off.
Others rose.
  Spok ticked off the years by tens of millions,
but there
  didn't seem to be any end to it. After a
hundred million,
  ninety, eighty, Kirk found himself humbled to all
but the
  pictures.
  Maybe the Guardian wanted them to feel
insignificant- or perhaps the opposite, to understand
their significance in
  its reason for showing them all this. If only the
damned
  thing would talk in something other than booming
  poetry...
  The Guardian's screen suddenly rippled, went
blurry, and
  winked out. The center of the stone structure was
completely empty again.
  The starship's crew stared at it. Nothing.
  So they stared at the captain.
  "What happened?" Kirk looked at Spock.
"Why'd it
  stop?"
  Maybe the Guardian had quit because it somehow
knew
  he'd stopped listening and was going into overdrive.
  "Nothing we did," Spock offered.
  McCoy muttered, "Maybe it's got a
short."
  Kirk took a step. "Guardian, why did you
stop?"
  The device flickered. For a moment the lights
went out
  and it seemed the thing had gone dark, shut down.
  Then the lights came on again, and the voice
drummed,
  "YOUR COMMON PAST CEASES THERE."
  Kirk pushed down a shiver. "Ceases? You mean
there's no
  more history from our planet?"
  "THERE IS NO MORE HISTORY THAT IS
COMMON
  conBETWEEN Y."
  Feeling as if he'd just been told his parents
never got
  married and his life was all a dream, Kirk
backed off a step
  and kept his voice down. "Spock... give me
a time
  comi: frame."
  that no one wanted to disturb and murmuring every few
steps, "Look out for this... Don't touch that...
Duck under this..." Suddenly before them was the edge of this
stand of bushes. Kirk almost stumbled out into the open before
realizing how close he was to the activity out there.
"Down, everyone," he whispered. "Speck?."
  "Here." Speck shuffled through as Reenie made
way for him. He held his tricorder before him, but the
scene upon which they had stumbled was too astounding for
analysis yet. Before them was the savage waltz of a
hunt. On an open plateau, where lush vegetation
had attracted creatures to come and graze, was a
sight of the most horrible and inspiring kind. For
decades, paintings and animations had been done of
such things, but this was real and they were here to see it.
"Recording," Speck murmured automatically.
Kirk didn't care. He was engrossed in
fantasy. In the plateau's center, nearly two
dozen creatures huddled in a curious circle.
Down on all fours like grizzly bears were
stocky armored animals with noses like camels, the
adults more than twenty feet long. On their
backs, rows of curved plates tapered down to the
long tails, each row of plates knobby all the
way across like a dog's collar, mounted with
protrusionsddon which moss had settled as if on the
shingles of an Irish church roof. Each had a
heavy-looking armored skull, bony eyelids; a
toothless beak, large flat feet with heavy
toenails, and a no-kidding knot of embedded bone
fused into two lobes mounted side to side on the end
of the tail. Mixed in with them were a few bipeds,
brightly colored, with their dome heads rising above the
knobby backs of the armored animals, their small
paws sometimes resting on those knobs. "They've formed
a defensive circle," Kirk uttered
appreciatively. "Look at the outer
perimeter." A pack of more than fifty much
smaller creatures were moving in, walking on two
legs, using a border collie method of
corralling the armored animals and the dome-heads
hiding among them. "The four-legged animals may be
Ankylosaurus," Speck responded, squinting
into the tricorder screen. "Order Ornithichia...
heavily armored, roughly seven meters in
length, possessing a bony club on the tail. I
may be incorrect about the species. This readout
has ankylosaurs as upland dinosaurs, characteristic
of drier environments." "Then what are they doing
here?" Kirk asked. "Unknown. With the draining of the
seaways, they may be expanding to new habitats. The
bipeds among them are ... I believe,
pachycephalosaurs. Interesting, Captain, how the
prey are banding together. It's extraordinary
be-hayloft "Sir, if I had those things stalking
me," Reenie said, "I'd make a deal with the
devil."
  "What are those?" Kirk pointed at the dozens of
prowling creatures on two legs. Speck lowered
meaningfully. "Raptors, sir. Generally accepted
as the most viciously efficient of prehistoric
hunters on land. I'm reading over a hundred of
them."
  "I only see fifty... sixty..."
  "Others are waiting in the brush." Spock
raised his tricorder slightly. "According to this, the
varieties known range from the twenty-foot
Utahraptor to the ten-foot deinonychus to the
six-foot light-weight velociraptors.
Strangely, the larger ones occur earlier
than the smaller ones. It's possible they were
responsible for the extinction of sauropods in North
America--the large long-necked dinosaur/which would
have caused the raptors to become smaller and hunt
smaller prey in larger numbers." Kirk peered
through thick elephant-ear leaves. "Those are, I'd
say, four feet." Speck looked up.
"Captain... I believe these are
troodontids."
  "You meanre"
  "Yes, exactly. Very successful predaters.
Bladed teeth... expanded braincase, dexterous
hands... sizable thumb claw, blunt snout,
forward-directed eyes--comodd, the tricorder is
reading out these creatures with longer snouts than what
we are observing--" Kirk glanced at him. "You
don't have time, Mr. Spock."
  "I beg your pardon?" He looked up. "You
don't have time to get a degree in paleobiology.
Don't fret over it." Spock's brow crinkled.
I"! had not noted fretting, sir,... simply an
attempt to narrow the facts--" "And be accurate,
of course. Well, there are times when accuracy
isn't everything. Just make sure we understand what we
need to understand." After a valiant effort
to pretend insult, Spock gave up and said,
"Always, sir." The dozens of troodonts had their
hands full--claws full. If surprise had
been part of their strategy, they'd failed. Or if
they had meant to get at the young, they'd also failed.
The adult ankylosaurs presented their knobby
armored backs and wielded the bony clubs at the
ends of their tails in purposeful warning"
sweeps. Not even a tyrannosaurus would bother
trying to bite through that armor. No chance for
surprise, no cornering a loner... Some days,
nothing goes right. Kirk found himself empathizing with the
troodonts. After all, everybody has to eat. A
gurgling whistle broke his thoughts. To the left of where
he peered through the leaves, one medium-sized
troodont stood a few feet back from the ones who
were closing in. This one extended its snout and made
a low-pitched cooing sound. Neither impressive in
size nor color, this troodont had signs of
wear and tear--seam on its elongated face, scars
on its tail, and a healed break that left its right arm
bent noticeably outward. In responses eerily
matched, haft of the approaching troodonts closed
in, crowing and snapping at each other, while the other
half lingered back. And Spock said there were
plenty more in the bushes. At first the stalkers moved
slowly, unruffled by the honks of the dome-headed
pachys. Kirk found himself watching that leader as its
growls and whines made the others move in certain
ways, rank by rank. Finally the troodont with the
crooked arm made one long-winded sound, like metal
  scraping against metal. Dozens of troodonts
made a barn yard scream and plunged in.
  Almost too fast to watch, the first rank flew to their
prey
  on long, muscular les, tails whipping and
foreclaws 8rasping the knobby backs of the
ankylosaurs.
  They didn't even bother attacking the adult
ankylosaurs.
  They leaped over and attached themselves to the bare
  throats and shoulders of the pachys and went to work with
  those sickle claws. Fans of blood blew
into the breeze as if to
  proclaim that the dome-beads didn't stand a
chance. Kirk
  felt his skin shrink with empathy and a certain
unexpected
  guilt as he realized that he might have to do the
same thin
  possibly to the same creatures, if his landin
party wore to survive.
  , The ankylosanrs raised their tails, lowered
their heads, and swung inward at the troodonts who
had broken their circle. Clubbed tails cracked
hideously against the spines of several troodonts,
folding the attackers backward in agony, to be
dragged through the stomeping feet of the encircled
victims. But it wasn't enough. The broken-armed
troodont barked again. Now the ,mur m me
anlcyosaurs, but the anlcylosaurs' nak young
hiding among their legs. The leader made his grating
scream again, louder now. Suddeuly the bushes
rattled, Another fifty or more troodonts flew
out of the fronds and rushed the scene. "Spock, are you
seeing this?" Kirk was barely able to keep to a
whisper. "That's a coordinated attack. There's a
command structure! That one over there--it's giving
ordersI"
  "Even more, Captain," Spock appraised.
"There's rudst- mentary language at work."
  "Are you serious?"
  "I've distingnstshed roughly ten sounds that elicstt
spedtic actions, all being delivered to one attacking
rank at a tstme. Until you pointed it
out, I had not noted all were conting from a specific
individual."
  The planet moved at his side, the rocks
swarmed like water, and somebody took his ann.
"Jim?" He forced his back straight. "I'm all
right." But with that physician's glower, McCoy
frowned at him. "I wish I was half as good a
liar as you are. Let me at least have the ship beam
down something for you to lean on."
  "A cane?"
  "Of course, a cane. It'll give you character.
After that I'll prescribe five o'clock shadow and a
fedora." Kirk put his hand on McCoy's
communicator before the doctor got the grid open.
"No. They've got their hands full up there.
There'll be time for me later." In his periphery, a
reflection from the screen flashed on his own shoulder,
creating a bulb of mustard gold. His uniform...
The gravity of his choices weighed him down. He
couldn't get away from it anymore than a cat could
walk away from its tail. "Jim." McCoy
shook him out of his molasses-covered thoughts.
"You're not thinking of going through that thing..." Squeezing
his fists, Kirk shuddered out a breath and gazed at the
ovoid rock formation. "We might have to,"
he said. Even without looking he saw the doctor's
face flush white. Not pale, not
duskymabsolutely stone white. Kirk looked
at him and suddenly saw only McCoy. Not
until now had he realized the villification of the
Guardian of Forever in Leonard Ming in front of
them had worked a bitter trick on them a long time
ago, especially on McCoy. Under the influence
of a dangerous drug he had stepped through there and
changed history with a sweep of his innocent hand.
Mending the slip had nearly torn the innards out of
them all and made them sensitive to the tender strands of
time. They'd barely gotten over those terrible hours,
and to this day they were still soulsick. Millions will die
who did not die before... "Now wait a minute,"
McCoy burst in. "Time travel is one thing when
it involves a few hundred years. What will the
effects be when the expanse is tens of millions
of years? How do you know that thing can find us and pull us
back Over that much time?" His words frightened them all.
Kirk knew he couldn't bat the fear down or
kill the rational question with a snap. He turned to his
other side. "Spock? Legitimate concern?"
  Glancing at McCoy as though he didn't
want to hand over
  any unconsidered compliments, Spock said, "Of
course."
  "Can you narrow that risk?"
  i "The temporal disturbances sent out by this
device are
  strong and radiate outward at unpredictable
intervals. I can
  neither explain nor define their power."
  A nonanswer. Kirk hated those. He turned
to the source.
  "Guardian," he began. "If we go through to a
distant past, millions of years can you return
us?"
  "TIME IS FLUID. DISTANT HISTORY
IS AN OCEAN.
  NOTHING IS SURE IN AN OCEAN OF
TIME."
  The sonorous voice shook the rocks around them and
made the ground beneath their feet take a shudder. This
monster was pretty damned quick to give them a big
nothing to work with.
  - McCoy swung around like an attorney in
court. "We could be lost in time!"
  "Photon guidance on automatic, Mr.
Sulu, long range."
  "Ready, sir."
  :. "Leave orbit. Come to course
two-four-nine, then hold position. Keep the
planet on our stern. That'll offer some
protection."
  "Course two-four-nine, sir. Helm's
answering."
  Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott stalked the
command chair. He was itching. He could pilot the ship
out of the solar system, engage the enemy out there, but before
he knew how
  many ships he would have to face, he was the wiser
to huddle here, under the protection of three tightly
orbiting planets, whose gravity and proximity would
tangle up those husky ships. "All weapons
systems on standby," he said. "Arm every bank.
Emergency procedures shiwide. All
noncombat posts should be secured and those crewmen
leave the outer areas." He was talking to hear himself
talk. What was taking those bastards so long to get
here? If he stayed here, would he be drawing attention
to the planet? Did the Romulans or the Klingons
here have pinpoint sensors? Would they be able to pick up
the heat of living bodies down there? Or maybe they
would think the starship was hunkering down, almost
out of fuel, chosing to turn and fight. Let 'em
waste time guessing. The idea of leaving the planet
gave him the shakes. If they got too far off and
were damaged, could they get back before the landing party
died of thirst and starvation down there, unprovisioned?
Or would he and the starship have to hang out there, broken,
unable to limp into transporter range, while the
enemy beamed down and slaughtered the captain and the
others? Options swam before him as he stared at that
gem-studded screen like a badger in his hole. In the
tumult of these seconds, the awful waiting before a
fight, he cursed James Kirk for deciding
to stay down there. But if the galaxy were to be set
right, they had to have Kirk and Spock. There wasn't
in all the rest of Starfleet a combination like those two.
"Another bolt coming in, sir," Chekov reported
from the navigation console. The boy's hands were chalk
white. They had tracked six long-range bolts
so far, managed to dodge all but one. That luck
wouldn't hold. "Warp power to the shields, Mr.
Chekov," Scott growled. "Aye, sir...
adjusting." The flush of emergency was infectious.
Crewmen pounded through the corridors, automatic
systems popping
  on like a cat's claws coming out and back
hairs bristling. Red
  lights flashed, though the alert klaxons had gone
silent after
  five minutes in order to let them do their work and
fight
  their fight without the giant horn in their ears. After
five
  minutes of that honking, anybody who wasn't
awake and on
  station was already dead.
  His face felt as red as his shirt. Below decks,
below decks,
  below decks... engine room, engine room...
  "Enemy coming into long-range sensor sphere,
Mr. Scott." Chekov's voice hiked up a
notch.
  Scott stepped forward of the command chair. "How
  many?"
  "Two confirmed... possibly three, sir."
  "Let'm come on up. We'll engage them right
here. Inside
  the solar system they'll have to drop to impulse
speed.
  Those big ships are built for warp speed
battle. We'll have a
  wee advantage. Prepare for tight
maneuvers, gentlemen."
  "Aye, sir," Sulu said, shoulders hunched.
  "Aye, sir," Chekov echoed and keyed his
phaser and
  photon banks for close range. "Sir!
Another ship!"
  "When"'11 it get here?"
  "Two minutes, sir."
  Without turning, Scott said, "Lieutenant
Uhura--"
  "Sir?"
  "Jam all communication frequencies. We've
got nobody
  to talk to and I won't want those buggers talking
to each
  Other."
  "Here they come, sir?" Chekov's eyes flipped
from the
  semen to his console. "They're dropping
to impulse power
  .. entering the solar system... There they are!"
  Two pinpricks flew toward them and swelled
into the recognizable Romulan design of this time
line--big, thick, tough, angry. The
offensive ship swung in at them and
  beccWithout the slightest ceremony opened fire.
Impact after
  .: imPact thrummed against the starship's
shields, but she stood her ground. The Romulan
ship pounded away at them with some kind of modified
laser--might have been phased
  "to it Weapons, no time to analyze--overshooting
the ship his
  by at least thirty percent. Typical
Romulans, more concerned about hitting hard than
hitting effectively. "Use your thrusters to dodge
those bolts if you can," Scott said. "Make'm
slide down our deflector grid. Waste theft
shots for'm."
  "Third ship is now coming into the solar system,
Mr. Scott," Chekov reported. "Let it
come. Uhura, keep jamming those signals.
Don't let'm coordinate their attack
pattern." "Aye aye, sir. I'm overloading the
whole sector." Suddenly the nearest ship veered
into close range, reared up like a snake, and let
loose on them. "Photon torpedo incoming!"
Chekov sputtered. Quickly Scott ordered,
"Turn into it, Sulu!" Sulu leaned
into the helm and the great ship took a strong diving
turn to starboard just as the enemy salvo met her
deflectors and scattered along the rim of her
primary hull. At the angle it hit, the photon
grazed the ship's edge, then flickered off
into space, scorching their deflectors as it ran.
Beside them, the Romulan vessel teetered suddenly,
its tail section dropped, and it went up on its
backside as if kicked under the chin before the people inside
got control again. Scott glared at the screen.
"Nourredine! What did that to
  On the upper deck the young engineer was beginning
to grow gray hairs. "I think they were rattled by the
backwash from that photon when it came off our
shields and detonated. We're only a hundred
forty thousand kilometers apart." Scott squinted
fiercely at the ship on the screen. "No
proximity safeties. Those salvos must be fully
prearmed! Chekov, target their photon tubes and
fire just as the torpedo comes out of the tube!"
Chekov's brow crumpled. "Before it leaves their
shield sphere?" "That's right, lad. Do it, do it."
  "But, sir, our phasers can't get through their
shields--"
  "if I figure right, you won't have to.
There's one warming
  up! Take aim! Fire on it!"
  Chekov aimed at the oval red glow inside the
enemy
  ship's photon tube. It turned white as the
photon was
  propelled out. He hit his controls. A phaser
launched from
  the Enterprise and struck the enemy's shields
almost at the
  point at which the photon was coming through the shields.
  The phaser fire crackled in a dozen
directions along the
  energy wall surrounding that ship, dissipating without
rupturing the shields. The photon bolt hit the
disruption and
  exploded into a white blast.
  "Brace yourselves!" Sulu shouted. "Shock
waves!"
  The proximity detonation grabbed the Romulan
ship's
  left fill and tore it dean off, and the ship's own
propulsion
  took over from there. Moving just enough to kill itself, the
  ship folded almost in half, hulls
crumpling as artificial
  gravity went wild. Finally the warp core
ruptured, and the
  ship blew into a huge ball of sparks and blinding
light.
  The Enterprise bucked and shuddered under wave after
  wave of convulsive energy being released over there.
Sulu's
  shoulders worked as he fought to keep the ship nose
forward
  into the waves, or she'd be sent spinning and
crammed into
  that planet.
  "Mr. Scott, I don't understand!" Chekov
squawked,
  throat dry.
  "We detonated their photon inside their shield
sphere,"
  ott said. "They've got no safeties that
prevent those things
  from going off too close to their own ships. Where're
the
  other two?"
  "Maneuvering to come about, sir," Sulu
reported. "One
  above us, four hundred sixty thousand
kilometers... The
  oher on our port flank, five hundred thousand
kilometers."
  , Ready phasers," Scott ordered. "Target
their main struc 'llral braces and their engine
room."
  " i"..."...Phasers on target, sir."
  i:;ffffi-"Attack maneuvers, Mr.
Sulu. Prepare to veer away from the to to ..
planet. Let's see if they can run an
obstacle course. Mr. Chekov, open fire."
  who wanted nothing more in life than to tackle
one-dimensional tasks. As such, he found
magnificent satisfaction every ten minutes or so and
was one of the happiest crewmen Kirk had ever known.
  "Captain, sir, sir! I found something," the
big kid panted. "Out there, "bout half a
mile! You gntta see it!"
  

Chapter 18
  As Chief Engineer Scott's voice rumbled
through empty space from the ship to the landing party, Jim
Kirk parted his lips to speak but never got the chance.
What could he say? He was here, not on the bridge,
and didn't know the details, didn't know
what the ship faced up there.
  "Couldn't stop what was about to happen any more than
he could stop his own heartbeat.
  Something in Scott's voice turned him to ice.
He looked
  conAcross the periwinkle sky, a bright amber streak
creased atmosphere, arching from the dim upper
regions of thin ilpace to the heavy horizon,
spitting fire all the way. There was no mistaking
the pumping white light streaking rlllO the
atmosphere. They'd seen it a hundred times in "
memos, and their own minds. It was release of matter
and antimatter coming in mutual annihilation, so bright
they could see it ten thousand miles away like the birth
of a new star.
  in its way. A beautiful horror. Destruction
of of their lives. The death of a ship of the line.
whispered, "Oh, Jim..."
  Desire embedded itself to catch this moment, freeze
it, abey it until they could fix what went wrong,
but before anyone could move so much as a linger or an
eye, the broad amber brushstroke blew into bright
yellow, then white--and finally fell dark. Never
even made it to the horizon. Off to the back
someplace, Lieutenant Bannon
whispered, "Sir... was that..." Disaster. Disaster.
James Kirk stared and stared into the empty sky.
Why hadn't he been up there? Captain must go down
with his ship... Reality lanced his mind and he came
awake, as if his body were suddenly shot with the sheer
power of his starship. It wasn't gone, it was in here,
in his chest, his legs, his heart, and it screamed for
implementation. "Phasers out? he ordered. "Take
cover? The guards pulled their weapons, then yanked
their prisoners down beside a rock, not sure what
to aim at. Kirk seized his own phaser with one hand
and McCoy's arm with the other and whirled toward a
nearby set of fallen pillars. "Cover?"
McCoy reacted. "Cover from what?"
  "No questions," Kirk preempted and shoved the
doctor down. He almost stumbled himself but caught his
elbow on a rockma damned sharp rock--and forced
hmffaround. "Spock! Get those people down!" Spock
reached for Reenie and Bannon and funneled them through
confusion toward another clutch of ancient pillars.
They made it only halfway there. Between them and the
rocks they were heading for, six streaks of
transporter beams shimmered out of empty air and
grew thicker and thicker. Spock shoved Bannon
to one side and Reenie to the other and stood his
ground with his phaser drawn, his narrow lips
bracketed by two stern creases, chin down and eyes
harsh. Kirk shouted, "Spock, get down!"
Dodging a dozen columns of crackling energy,
Spock tried to step to the side as the transporter
beams drew tight and formed into recognizable
figures wearing unfamiliar costumes. They might
have been Vulcans, though more severe, more threatening
These seemed to have worked on that image. The
Romulans came out of the matter streams already firing
their disruptors, skimming an area that they couldn't
possibly see yet. Their weapons might have been
preprogrammed. Whatever they had, it worked. Energy
beams sliced along the ground and etched their initials
into nearby rock and ruins that had probably lay
undisturbed for ten thousand years. Spock plunged
for the sandy ground. Disruptor beams kimmed over him,
raising the black hair on the back of his head and
causing his blue uniform tunic to smoke. In the
seconds between the first volley and the Romulans'
Bathering of their senses, he rolled over, fired,
reduced one of the enemy to a puff, and crawled behind a
square tone. One of the Security boys popped up
from behind the fallen pillars, lay his arms across the
rock with his phaser in both hands, and opened
fire with continuous volley, narrow beam. Kirk
squinted in that direction. were the prisoners going
to. cause trouble? But Roth and the other one were
huddled Ihind a square thing that might have once been
an altar. dis.apparently they had no desire
to turn themselves over to the Romulans.
con"dis.bbDispersing in prearranged patterns, the
Romulans bloomed outward, spreading across the area
and taking :, cover. Spock took one down, the
second Security guard anothr, before the enemy
soldiers found cover. Would there be more? How many could
they hold off before their phasers were drained? with the ship,
down with the ship, sunk without a
  Kirk squirmed around to the upended ring "Show us
our common history again! Begin with approximately
--Spocld"
  "One hundred million years ago!" Spock
shouted over the whine of phaser fire. Without bothering
to use its "voice," the Guardian of Forever conjured
up pictures they'd seen only a few minutes
ago. Again the spocy images of prehistoric
Earth rumbled by like a grade school simulation.
Oblivious to the phaser fire grazing its rim and
sparking off its pedestal, the Guardian ealrnly
did its job. "Spock, tell me when!"
Phaser fire ceased from Spock's corner, and
Kirk knew his science officer was nose down to the
tricorder, ticking off centuries in gulps.
"Thirty seconds, Captain!"
  "All hands!" Kirk shouted, "Follow me!"
The wide phaser beam blanketed the area with
crackling energy and forced the Romulans to cease
fire and huddle. Follow meretwo words that made
history. Once upon a time these had been two
grunts, two waves of the paw, the claw, the hand,
the club, the spear, two flashes of the eye.
Follow me. The quintessence of leadership, boxed
up and shipped. Starfleet personnel vaulted out
of the ruins and ran toward him. Kirk led them to the
enormous slice of rock that had a voice and
gestured them all between it and him, then turned and fired
the wide beam again. Romulans ducked out of sight
and their disruptors stayed quiet for a delicious
second more. The Starfleet crew came tight
to Kirk's side. Spock gathered the group
snugly together on the narrow pedestal. They huddled like
fools on a ledge, between death and suicide. "Nine
seconds, Captain," Spock said. "Seven...
six... five... four..."
  "All at once!" Kirk ordered.
McCoy shied from the smoking chasm of the Guardian's
portal. "Jim, you've got to be kidding!" Kirk
blistered the area with another blanket shot, then
grabbed McCoy on one side, Bannon and
Reenie on the
  other, glanced at Spock, who had corralled the
two guards and the two Klingons. "Two... one...
now, Captain!"
  "Go!" Kirk shouted. "Go! Go!"
  

Chapter 19
  DOWN into the storm they went, pressing barehanded
to their chests an unshielded sense of peril. Hardly
more than a blink, a taste of vapor, and they were here.
As if stepping through a door they came into another
room, and the door disappeared behind them. Captain of
nothing, representative of no one. But still leader of
this wayward group. He had said follow, and they had.
Now they were in wonderland. i The first and most
abruptly obvious difference was the
  smell of the place. Rotten eggs. Swamp
gas. And a touch of salt ... saline seas. But how
near? Hothouse conditionns raised the scent of a
constant stir-fry, suddenly moist on cheeks,
uncomfortable inside their collars and sleeves.
tunics were made of special fibers
meant to shed hot elimates and insulate in cold,
and maybe it was but in his poisoned condition, Kirk
couldn't tell He glanced around. Except for
Spock, who wouldn't sweat on the Amazon,
everyone's face was glazed with perspiration.
  Bedewed ferns beckoned lazily above a carpet
of pulpy Heavy undergrowth. mist veiled the sun,
diffusing its light branches of trees whose wide
trunks wore shamrock green from sky to roots with
velvet moss and lichen. Palmettos, prickly
growth, palms. Stumpy cylindrical trees were
armored with overlapping scales the size of a man's
hand, and from the tops sprouted fans of lacy fronds
that seemed too small for the trunks. Some plants
had stout trunks shaped like globes, and others like
cones. Trumpet-shaped florets hung from stalks
and trees. Ficus, magnolia, catkins.
"Looks like Florida," somebody said. It was
Security Ensign Emmendorf. Through the tips of the
conifers shone the purple summits of mountains
laced in mist. Paradise, but deceptive. Kirk
didn't feel at all as if he belonged here. But
it was Earth... He pivoted around for a quick head
count. All here. Even the Klingons, one of whom
appeared shocked and amazed, the other shocked
and suspicious. The two Security guards held
their prisoners as if the Klingons had done this
somehow. Good boys. Thick as a grown man's
thigh, a snake moved in a gnarled tree. Looked
like a boa. Its peacock-marked back glinted in the
diffused sunlight as it paused and turned its
perfume-bottle head to them, then lost interest and
went slowly on its way. Something shrieked across the
sky, but they never saw it. It was over them and gone in
seconds. One of the Security men drew a
phaser, but there was nothing to shoot at. McCoy was the
first to speak, his human voice out of place here.
"What if they follow us through?" The crickets"
rattle dropped off by half. A creature in a
tree plunged away through the jungle's encroaching
growth. Spock turned but not fast enough to see what it
was. "They'll have to figure out the Guardian,"
Kirk said. "Anyway, it'll probably take
them ten or twenty million years. Mr.
Spock, I'd ask where we are, but I think I'd
better ask when are we? Did you understand what I was
yelling for back there?" "The moment of the change in
history," Spock said, brushing a gauzy web from
his arm. He looked up. "I assumecCan"
  Kirk nodded. There were advantages
to working so closely together for so long. "I hope this
is right. Otherwise, it's going to be a hell of a
long camping trip. Do you have a rough estimate of the
date?" Spock adjusted his trioorder and peered
into the tiny screen. "Sixty-four million twenty
thousand four hundred ten years." Kirk blinked at
him. "That's... pretty good for rough.-I want you
to designate duties. Set one of the Security
guards to inventing and making weapons out of indigenous
materials. We have no way of knowing how many months
or years we'll be stuck here. I want the
phasers conserved at all cost. See if you can
locate fresh water. And put McCoy and
EnSigu Reenie on deciding what we can eat and
what we can't. I don't want anyone swallowing
any toxic berries. Have Bannon see what he
can do about shelter. It won't ow here, but I'll bet
it rains like wildcats." Very well, sir."
Spock moved off a few paces to talk to
conBannon, and McCoy moved into his place beside
Kirk, obviously uneasy. i"...We've been on
some alien worlds," he said, "some exotic, some
horrifying, but I don't think any are so alien as
our own world this far in the past. And what good does it
do? We might be ten years off. Come
to think of it, how do know we're not ten years too
late?" Spok, Turning to them, overhearing as was his
sacred duty, said, "The captain and I formed a
theory about the Guardian, that time travel flows like a
river, with currents that carry us along certain
patterns and spirals toward critical points.
I hope that's what has happened here."
"'There's also the possibility that the Guardian
is more an elevator up and down through time," Kirk
carried on. "I'm betting it knows what happened and
it's the right time and place." a whopping hope,"
McCoy agreed gutturally. place? Where are
we? Looks like Hawaii or the Congo."
  "Sixty-four million years?" Bannon
tossed in from across their clearing. "Could be downtown
Chicago for all we know."
  "See if you can figure it out. This is one of those
situations where you find you don't have any control, and
all you can do is the best you can. SpockI'd like as
full a report on our surroundings as possible in
thirty minutes." As his crew wandered away, taking
their first cautious steps through bug-heavy leaves that
rattled in their ears with the taller of crickets,
Kirk limped to the Security guards, who parted for
him and let him through to Roth and Zalt.
"Let's understand each other," he said. "I hate you
and you hate me. We don't have to be soul mates.
All I want is a devil's bargain. We'll
keep you alive. You cooperate." Zalt's eyes
squeezed down to slits and the translator buzzed.
"I do not cooperate with you." "Fine," Kirk said.
"When we run out of food, we'll know where to turn.
You're just another animal to us." He swung around,
a little too fast, but managed to keep his balance.
He didn't care how the Klingons reacted. How
much of his humanity showed in his face? And what was his
mission? Stop whatever had happened to make this
change. It had something to do with San Francisco,
didn't it? San Francisco... I am pleased
and proud to confer upon you, James T. Kirk, the
rank of starship captain, Starfleet, United
Federation of Planets, with all the rights,
privileges and responsibilities appertaining
thereto. Congratulations, Captain Kirk...
stlren't you taking leave in Iowa this year for
Christmas, Jim? Captain April's going to be
there, visiting your parents. I think you'd better
take it as a direct order to attend... Jimmy,
when is it going to dawn on you that rules exist for a
reason?... "Captain, sit down for a
minute. Jim. Jim, right here." For long, dragged
seconds he could see only leaves and brown mush.
Then his eyes focused on his boots. What was he
sitting on? Whatever it was, it was soggy. Ahiss
at his shoulder made him flinch and inhale sharply.
This wa great, just great. Deliver a threat, then fog
out while the enemy's watching. His head started to clear
some. McCoy had put him down oa a
moss-draped tree trunk. "Jim, listen to me.
Listen to me. Look at me."
  "I'm looking. Keep your voice down." He
blinked hard, irritated at having to be told what
to do. His joints, inflamed with infection, speared him
with sharp pain as he arranged his legs. Around him, the
jungle whistled and reeked. "Just disd your medicine.
The rest is my business."
  "That's the problem," McCoy said. "You have
to understand. I only have enough medicine for a few days. This
toxin that's got you, it's like diabetes once was.
Perfectly manageable with medication and finally curable
through treatment. It's no problem in our time, but back
here... I can relieve the symptoms to some
degree, but the cure is back on the
Enterprise." Under the gassy pall of thinly
overcast skies, crickets taRled with
unremittance and purpose, and creatures
unclescribed bellowed in the distance. Jim Kirk
stared into his friend's eyes and found so little hope there that
the noise ofinsects began to close in. Here he
was, socked in beside an ironbound coast to which he had
relentlessly steered. "Some of us might survive,
Jim," McCoy finished, "but you certainly
won't."
  

Chapter 20
  moirr, SP-OCX, let's have it." drew up a
patch of ground beside where Kirk was with his back against a
rock and his bad leg raised on 'mound.
  "Massive life forms, Captain," he said
simply. "Astonishing numbers. Vast herds of
creatures, five to seven tons each."
  "How close?"
  "Within five miles. We've compiled a
cursory analysis of our immediate surroundings and
overlaid it against information in the tricorders about this
time period," the Vulcan said, his cheeks flushed
copper with intensity. "According to growth lines in fossil
corals and highly refined atomic and crystal
clocks, we know that the ocean tides are slowing the
Earth's rotation by friction of the ocean against the sea
floor and continents. The Cretaceous day
is twenty-one minutes, twenty seconds shorter
than our day, the moon is eighteen hundred miles
closer. The month is seven hours, ten minutes,
forty seconds shorter, and there are approximately
three hundred seventy days in the Cretaceous
year." "Spock..."
  "Because of continental drift, the poles of rotation
are different, the North Pole being
approximately halfway between the Bering Strait and
where "I don't want to know this." Spock dropped
his shoulders. "I beg your pardon?"
  "Tell me something I can use." Dashed,
Spock glowered thoughtfully. "We have used this
information, sir." "How?"
  "We've used it to ascertain our specific
location. "Then tell me where we are."
  "We're are on the eastern North American
continent. Though this appears to be Florida or the
Caribbean, we are actually in a location that will be
southern Georgia, a few degrees north of the
Florida line. I believe we're on a large
thumb of land, a peninsula raised by the rugged southern
spine of the Appalachians--those mountains. To the far
north, a sea extends from Hudson Bay across the
high plains of Canada, to cover North
Dakota. To the south the Mississippi embayment
extends inland to western Tennesee.
  "That's a lot of water."
  "Yes, it is. By the way, there are no ice
caps yet on either pole." Spock spoke quickly
again, as if wanting to stick that detail in before he was
told not to. "Eastern and western North America
are two separate continents right now?"
  "they are are acting as two separate continents.
However, they're part of the same tectonic plate and
will not separate. Sea levels seem to be on the
rise again, which contradicts what we thought about the
Upper Cretaceous period. Most studies
concluded that the sea level was at its lowest point,
but that is evidently wrong."
  "I'll bet a lot is going to contradict what
we thought about this place."
  "Mmm," Spock murmured, not exactly an
agreement. "Eventually the inland sea will separate
and the transcontinental arch will be revealed and become
the Great Plains. It may have already happened, but 1
cannot tell without a satellite connection." 'Kirk
had heard the last few sentences, but the words drummed
with meaningless order for him. Iowa... maybe under
water, drowned, struggling to form itself into the
p" where someday he and his brother would be born. The
glaciers weren't even here yet, the ones that would
carve out the Great Lakes and the Saginaw Valley,
cutting out the fingers and thumb of Michigan and leaving
the state half plae-studded dunes and half sandy
basin. '8o many centuries, cons, and the little
decades of their began to dribble and shrink.
Florida's still under water," he managed, trying
to disitmw a map in his mind. :;! Sensing
Kirk's conflict, Spock raised his inflections
to a scholarly tenor. "And much of eastern Mexico.
West the Central Rockies are probably
rising. When dealing on a scale of millions of
years, there is enough time to raise a range over a
mile above sea level, then wear it down to sea
level again. Everything here is a theoretical
conclusion, Sir, based on knowledge that is rebelliously
sweeping." That was his way of apologizing for not being more
sure.
  Kirk felt his lips curl up at one corner
in a pathetic grin. "Deep time," he murmured.
Spock paused and questioned with his eyes. Kirk
plucked at a fern just within reach. "As with deep
space, Mr. Spock, there seems to be deep
time." Caught by the concept, Spock gazed
at him. Nothing else. "Spock" Kirk began
again quietly, "back on the ship, just after this
happened, I wasn't in a fever-induced fog when
I heard you say we hadn't made any jumps in
time, correct?"
  "Correct. According to the locations of stars, we were
steady to the month, and the planets of the Izell system
gave us accuracy down to the minute. We had not
shifted at all in time."
  "Of course," Kirk pressed, "I could still be in
the midst of being crushed to death by that cosmic string and
ripped apart by time distortions. This could be the last
imaginings of a dying mind. What do you say to that?"
  "Captain... I... see no evidence for that
line of thinkingat all..."
  "Well, you wouldn't, since I'm inventing you."
Spock opened his mouth again, but nothing came out. He
was probably plotting to have McCoy check the
captain's medication and find it was being mixed too
rich. Kirk's naughty-boy grin gave him away
as he left Spock on the hook, but he didn't
care. "It's a damned shame. To rise
to intelligence, then completely disappear, and for that
to happen time after time, failure after failure."
  "Extinction is part of the normal scheme
of nature, Captain. Even mass extinction..."
  "Not for intelligent creatures who can design
their own future. Who were they, Spoc? And what were
they doing here? They're not from here, so who are they?"
Discontent limned Spock's sharp features.
Trouble stressed his posture, and sympathy, his
eyes. "Perhaps," he attempted, "I could find you
a drink of fresh water, sir."
  "I'm sorry," Kirk said. "I'm fine. Go
on with your geography."
  "Palcogeography, sir," Spock
corrected. "According to our recorded data, India
is an island now, much like
  Auatralia in our time. Australia is still
linked to the Antarctic and South America.
Transylvania, Italy, andRomania ar slowly
colliding with Europe. The hot climate is due
to inlased CO2 levels. We're reading a great
amount of vulcanism and mountain building. Much of the
equator is nveloped in a supertropic. At this
latitude, we're in a full-blown tropical
climate. The water we're reading in the "
diatance to the east and south is hypersaline and warm,
rulting in a sluggish ocean, which cartes much less
oxygen. There is no cold, dense,
oxygen-rich water sinking and propelling circulation.
Less nutrients come back to the surface..."
  "Spock, not so much monumental analysis,
please. I don't want to build any mountains.
Give me some functional details."
  "very well. The most profound difference in flora
from our own time would be the complete absence of
grasses. Other than the herds of large-bodied
animals we're picking niPP-ON our
tricorders, we're also reading millions of
small--bodied animals, primarily small
mammals, lizards, salamanders and frogs." even
if I'm not in Florida, I'm still in
Florida." i*',sentially so. Although perhaps a
bit more like the
  ,..,.: disha these large animals. . they're
dinosaurs?" disand:. though Ensign Emmendorf
captured a mouse-sized which is vaguely
squirrellike, which Mr. Bannon says is the
earliest known primate. A stunning find,
ternIs." Did he kill it?"
  "Accidentally."
  "too bad. It was probably my
great-great-great-grandad " don't exist
anymore. Go on." to accept that as
perfectly plausible logic, Spock not yet
ascertained which animals and plants therefore we must
assume they all are. As for swarmed in the
unnatural lights, eerily silent, feasting on the
corpses. A sight of prehistoric slaughter?
So what? Spock and McCoy plunged past him,
and Kirk found himself inadequate in the light of their
professional curiosity. He wanted to throw up but
not with his junior officers watching. Or senior
officers either, for that matter. A captain's
dilemma: couldn't throw up in front of anybody.
Withered intestines hung like holiday decorations all
over the green growth and ferns, some still linked to the open
guts of the animals from which they came. The larger
animals were a good ten feet from head to tail and on
those thick hind legs could rear back almost as tall
as he was. Their gaping mouths were snaggled with
bloody teeth. Their eyes stared, even more terrible
because these were large brown eyes, like the eyes of an
owl, not like a crocodile. He couldn't feel for a
crocodile, but this... "All right, Mr.
Vernon," he started bluntly, "what's the
attraction? We've got a bunch of dead
animals. What did you want us to see that couldn't
wait?" The tall Security man
pointed. "The faces of the big ones, sirmlook at
their faces? Kirk moved forward glaring through a band of
artificial light. "Is that paint?" Spock
drew his fingers along the yellow and purple
designs on the animal's long skull. "Paint,
Captain... acrylic pigment. Synthetic, not
natural." His voice dropped away and he
murmured, "Amazing! Meant for visibility ...
or possibly to frighten an enemy."
  "Somebody else must have painted these creature's
faces to throw us off."
  "Somebody else?" McCoy looked up.
"What makes you think that, Captain?"
  "If we can travel time, so can someone else."
  "Only the big ones have paint on them," Reenie
said. "Maybe these little ones are the babies of the big
ones," Vernon wondered. "No," Reenie said.
"The small ones have their claws between the ribs of the
big ones. They were attacking"
  "A coordinated attack, also," Spock
noted, fascination rising again in his voice. "Note
the angles from which the smaller ones approached...
nearly all the same." McCoy got down on
both knees and put his hands into the laid-open
animal. "Warm blood." Kirk leaned
hard on his stick. "How long have these animals been
dead?"
  "Minutes. Maybe an hour. But some of the
bodies are still warmer than others. They may have lay
here dying for a while. But not very long Trauma like this
doesn't let an animal hang on for long."
  "We may have frightened off the victors," Spock
said. "Which means whatever did this is probably still
nearby." Kirk motioned to Emmendorf, Vernon,
and Reenie. "Stay on your toes, people."
  "Jim, do you have the time for me to dissect one of
these?" McCoy asked. "We've got sixty
million years. Help yourself. But we'll do it
back at the campsite. Mr. Emmendorf, come
down here and assist Dr. McCoy. Mr.
Spock, secure the area while you have the chance,
please."
  "Yes, sir." Spock stood up, his gaze
lingering on the face of the sad creature lying at his
feet, its painted face calling to his scientific
mind with' contradiction after contradiction. Kirk
empathized with him, but there wasn't time to indulge.
They needed something more concrete, something the tricorder
would recognize and say, "Got it!" They needed that
thing, that one hint to drive away their
doubts. To Jim Kirk, that was the perfect world--one
with no doubts. The hard decisions weren't really the
worst part of command. It was the doubting he hated.
Command... the ship... the beautiful Enterprise...
a ghost of it blew past him in the dark sky
overhead, so real he almost looked up and waved.
They had counted on him. They hadn't doubted him.
I'm sorry, sir... I'm sorry, sir..."
  "Not your fault, Scotty..." His own voice
startled him. He glanced around, self-aware,
wondering if anyone else had heard him. No one
was looking. McCoy was elbow-deep in slaughtered
dinosaur, giving orders to a nauseated
Emmendorf, and Spock was up on the incline,
intently scanning, Kirk knew he was better at
the art of roughing it than Spock, but for how long? His
medication had been thinned until he barely felt it
working. The fever was back, his legs hurt, his thoughts
wandered, and he had to pull them back every few
minutes. How long could he hold on? Would they
find him dead in his sleep a few days from now and be
forced to go on without him? He looked up the incline
at Spock. He knew Spock's sterling
loyalty and cautious foresight wouldn't serve long
or well in this place. Eventually one of the
young officers would be killed by this nightmare
environment, and Spock would have to live with that.
Spock always pretended to take those things in his
logical stride, but Kirk knew it was fake.
He'd seen the change in Spock's behavior,
watched him grow more mellow as he paid the toll of being
a first officer, of having a subordinate's life
slip through his fingers from time to time. It soured an
officer's iron-willed confidence. Doubt. It was the
demon on a leader's shoulder. The one Kirk had
never gotten used to. Spock looked up from the
tricorder, and for an instant Kirk was afraid
he'd been thinking too loudly. "Something here,
Captain."
  "Coming." Climbing was torture. Kirk dug his
fingers into the stubby overgrowth, took each step one
at a time. He couldn't let them see him fall.
A hand caught him under the upper arm and gave him
support. One more hitch upward, and Spock had
him. Kirk sat on the edge of the stony embankment.
His face was clammy, his breath rattling in his chest,
and he gripped the edge of the ridge with both hands.
Spock knelt to hold the tricorder in front of
him. "Traces of refined metal." There was
victory in the Vulean's voice.
  Invigorated, Kirk cranked to look
directly at him. "Spock, are you sure?"
  "Very faint traces on the limestone below this
soil." He scooted back a few inches
to gesture up the incline. "Note a pattern
scraped into the soft... something has been dragged
along here, possibly some form of travoy. It
carved grooves into the ground, and where it struck stone
we have these traces. Definitely high-grade
steel composite." It didn't show in his voice, but
it did in his eyes--he was thrilled. Probably
relieved. Steel... "Then therests more going on than
we've seen so far," Kirk said. "Somebody else
has been here and has been tampering with these
animals." Spock lowered his tricorder.
"Yes." They looked at each other. Somewhere an
animal shrieked, its cry carried to them on a gust
of moist wind. Their brief visit to the modern age
was cut off by the sound of primitive hunt.
"Spock, go back over the the readings you took from the
Guardian. See if you can find something there... or
not there. Not just the animals, but something else."
  "I understand," the Vulcan condensed. "And
analyze these metal traces--"
  "Captain!" Ensign Reenie was
craning her neck over a crest of bushes, her
slick hair, somehow blacker than Spock's,
waving as she shifted from toe to toe. "Something's
happening down there."
  "Ensign!" Kirk snapped. Shaking out of
Spock's grasp, he slid down the incline and
shambled through the litter of bodies and entrails
to Reenie's side, where he caught her elbow and
pulled her back, putting himself in her place. He
looked over the bushes but saw only glimpses of
movement on a lower level. There was noise, huging
of effort, grunts and howls, now getting louder.
Something solid arched into the air--a taft. Big.
With a knot on the end. "Let's have a look.
Heads down." He led the way through gaudy flora
and spiked plants twice his height, cautiously
pointing out those large webs that no one wanted
to disturb and murmuring every few steps, "Look out for
this... Don't touch that... Duck under this..."
Suddenly before them was the edge of this stand of bushes.
Kirk almost stumbled out into the open before realizing how
close he was to the activity out there. "Down,
everyone," he whispered. "Speck?."
  "Here." Speck shuffled through as Reenie made
way for him. He held his tricorder before
him, but the scene upon which they had stumbled was too
astounding for analysis yet. Before them was the savage
waltz of a hunt. On an open plateau, where lush
vegetation had attracted creatures to come and
graze, was a sight of the most horrible and inspiring
kind. For decades, paintings and animations had been
done of such things, but this was real and they were here to see
it. "Recording," Speck murmured
automatically. Kirk didn't care. He was
engrossed in fantasy. In the plateau's center,
nearly two dozen creatures huddled in a curious
circle. Down on all fours like grizzly bears
were stocky armored animals with noses like camels,
the adults more than twenty feet long. On their
backs, rows of curved plates tapered down to the
long tails, each row of plates knobby all the
way across like a dog's collar, mounted with
protrusionsddon which moss had settled as if on the
shingles of an Irish church roof. Each had a
heavy-looking armored skull, bony eyelids; a
toothless beak, large flat feet with heavy
toenails, and a no-kidding knot of embedded bone
fused into two lobes mounted side to side on the end
of the tail. Mixed in with them were a few bipeds,
brightly colored, with their dome heads rising
above the knobby backs of the armored animals, their
small paws sometimes resting on those knobs.
"They've formed a defensive circle," Kirk
uttered appreciatively. "Look at the outer
perimeter." A pack of more than fifty much
smaller creatures were moving in, walking on two
legs, using a border collie method of
corralling the armored animals and the dome-heads
hiding among them. "The four-legged animals may be
Ankylosaurus," Speck responded, squinting
into the tricorder screen. "Order Ornithichia...
heavily armored, roughly seven meters in length,
possessing a bony club on the tail. I may be
incorrect about the species. This readout has
ankylosaurs as upland dinosaurs, characteristic of
drier environments." "Then what are they doing here?"
Kirk asked. "Unknown. With the draining of the
seaways, they may be expanding to new habitats. The
bipeds among them are ... I believe,
pachycephalosaurs. Interesting, Captain, how the
prey are banding together. It's extraordinary
be-hayloft "Sir, if I had those things stalking
me," Reenie said, "I'd make a deal with the
devil."
  "What are those?" Kirk pointed at the
dozens of prowling creatures on two legs.
Speck lowered meaningfully. "Raptors, sir.
Generally accepted as the most viciously efficient of
prehistoric hunters on land. I'm reading over a
hundred of them."
  "I only see fifty... sixty..."
  "Others are waiting in the brush." Spock
raised his tricorder slightly. "According to this, the
varieties known range from the twenty-foot
Utahraptor to the ten-foot deinonychus to the
six-foot light-weight velociraptors.
Strangely, the larger ones occur earlier than the
smaller ones. It's possible they were responsible
for the extinction of sauropods in North America--
the large long-necked dinosaur/which would have caused
the raptors to become smaller and hunt smaller
prey in larger numbers." Kirk peered through thick
elephant-ear leaves. "Those are, I'd say,
four feet." Speck looked up. "Captain...
I believe these are troodontids."
  "You meanre"
  "Yes, exactly. Very successful predaters.
Bladed teeth... expanded braincase, dexterous
hands... sizable thumb claw, blunt snout,
forward-directed eyes--comodd, the
tricorder is reading out these creatures with longer
snouts than what we are observing--" Kirk
glanced at him. "You don't have time, Mr.
Spock."
  "I beg your pardon?" He looked up. "You
don't have time to get a degree in paleobiology.
Don't fret over it." Spock's brow crinkled.
I"! had not noted fretting, sir,... simply an
attempt to narrow the facts--" "And be accurate,
of course. Well, there are times when accuracy
isn't everything. Just make sure we understand what we
need to understand." After a valiant effort to pretend
insult, Spock gave up and said, "Always, sir."
The dozens of troodonts had their hands full--
claws full. If surprise had been part of their
strategy, they'd failed. Or if they had meant
to get at the young, they'd also failed. The adult
ankylosaurs presented their knobby armored backs
and wielded the bony clubs at the ends of their
tails in purposeful warning' sweeps. Not even a
tyrannosaurus would bother trying to bite through that
armor. No chance for surprise, no cornering a
loner... Some days, nothing goes right. Kirk found
himself empathizing with the troodonts. After all,
everybody has to eat. A gurgling whistle
broke his thoughts. To the left of where he peered through the
leaves, one medium-sized troodont stood a few
feet back from the ones who were closing in. This one
extended its snout and made a low-pitched cooing
sound. Neither impressive in size nor color, this
troodont had signs of wear and tear--seam on its
elongated face, scars on its tail, and a healed
break that left its right arm bent noticeably
outward. In responses eerily matched, haft of the
approaching troodonts closed in, crowing and
snapping at each other, while the other half lingered
back. And Spock said there were plenty more in the
bushes. At first the stalkers moved slowly,
unruffled by the honks of the dome-headed pachys.
Kirk found himself watching that leader as its growls and
whines made the others move in certain ways, rank
by rank. Finally the troodont with the crooked arm
made one long-winded sound, like metal
  scraping against metal. Dozens of troodonts
made a barn yard scream and plunged in.
  Almost too fast to watch, the first rank flew to their
prey
  on long, muscular les, tails whipping and
foreclaws 8rasping the knobby backs of the
ankylosaurs.
  They didn't even bother attacking the adult
ankylosaurs.
  They leaped over and attached themselves to the bare
  throats and shoulders of the pachys and went to work with
  those sickle claws. Fans of blood blew
into the breeze as if to
  proclaim that the dome-beads didn't stand a
chance. Kirk
  felt his skin shrink with empathy and a certain
unexpected
  guilt as he realized that he might have to do the
same thin
  possibly to the same creatures, if his landin
party wore to survive.
  , The ankylosanrs raised their tails, lowered
their heads, and swung inward at the troodonts who
had broken their circle. Clubbed tails cracked
hideously against the spines of several troodonts,
folding the attackers backward in agony, to be
dragged through the stomeping feet of the encircled
victims. But it wasn't enough. The broken-armed
troodont barked again. Now the ,mur m me
anlcyosaurs, but the anlcylosaurs' nak young
hiding among their legs. The leader made his grating
scream again, louder now. Suddeuly the
bushes rattled, Another fifty or more
troodonts flew out of the fronds and rushed the
scene. "Spock, are you seeing this?" Kirk was
barely able to keep to a whisper. "That's a
coordinated attack. There's a command structure!
That one over there--it's giving ordersI"
  "Even more, Captain," Spock appraised.
"There's rudst- mentary language at work."
  "Are you serious?"
  "I've distingnstshed roughly ten sounds that elicstt
spedtic actions, all being delivered to one attacking
rank at a tstme. Until you pointed it out, I
had not noted all were conting from a specific
individual."
  They grew calm in the pressing heat and were drawn
by the scene that a fluke of high science had
privileged them to witness. The vast-bodied
titanosaurs were eminently at home here, huge
heads waving into the sky-high mist. Their hides were
subtly variegated, an illusion of stripes that
served to let their bulks be disguised in the trees.
White and gray birds of different sizes
fluttered from titanosaur to titanosaur, lighting
on the broad backs, clinging to the long necks,
dodging between the thick legs, and picking in the
ground stirred up by the sauropods' shipping-crate
feet. "Hey, look!" Bannon went up on his
toes and pointed. "Look over there. Look at
that!"
  "Triceratops! Wow!" Reenie bubbled,
jumping up. "Two of them!" Bannon exuded. A
pair of tank-sized beasts wandered toward them along
the creek, ignoring the titanosaurs who returned
the ignore. Each had a horn over each eye and
one on the nose and a flaring scalloped neck
frill. Grazing in a manner hauntingly cowlike,
they rooted at the edges of the stream, pushing their sharp
beaks into the mud and pulling up hidden roots. As
they grazed, two convex oval-shaped areas of the wide
frills expanded and contracted. Jaw muscles--
all the way up into those neck frills.
"Triceratops!" Reenie twittered, her voice
high. "I always wanted one for a pet!"
  "Who didn't?" Bannon grumbled from beside her.
Kirk motioned to Spock. "Well?" Unhappy
again as he tried to focus his tricorder on the two
new animals, Spock said, "Not Triceratops,
but the same family. Either Torosaurus... or
Pentaceratops. Probably the former.
Torosaurns was large as Triceratops,
but much more rare, possibly traveled alone rather than
in large herds as Triceratops probably did.
Small extended beak... nasal and brow
horns... twenty-one to twenty-five feet
long... generally believed to have populated Wyoming,
South Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan--"
  "I thought we were in southern Georgia,"
Bannon inter-rnpted, skewering Spock with an
improper look. The Vulcan met the look with one
of his own, masterfully cold. "The fact that we
haven't found them here, Lieutenant, does not
preclude the possibility of their having been here.
In fact, there is virtually no terrestrial
fossil record in Georgia at all. It was
all eroded into the sea."
  "Good Lord," McCoy exclaimed as the pair of
animals drew nearer, "just the skulls must be ten
feet long!"
  "Average of eight point five feet, with the
crest accounting for half the skull area." The
doctor twisted a lip. "That's it, ruin it for
me." Spock gave him almost as much attention as the
titano-sams were giving the approaching torosaurs.
"This animal's skull was the largest of any land
animal ever known." He turned to Kirk.
"If these are torosaurs, Captain, this is a
remarkable cataloging opportunity. I would like
to attempt to get closer." Torn between scrambling
for safety and allowing his crew to do their jobs,
Kirk looked at the unshrouded curiosity in his first
officer's face. "Spock, I don't know..."
Spock stepped closer. "Captain, if I could
get--" . A bellowing roar cut him off, at first
sounding like another tuba howl, but' This had a
guttural severity that failed to eo. Kirk
pressed Spock aside in time to see a massive
mgled disform charge out of the trees on giant turkey
legs ten f long each. With brutal singularity of
purpose, five tons of.force propelled a huge
mouth gaping with pointed teeth the length of bananas,
plowing full bore into the side of one . of the
sauropods. i'Aw!" Emmendorf bellowed in
empathy. tion about what they were watching, no need .
to consult a tricorder. Every schoolchild
recognized North American Tyrannosaurus
rex, everybody's bad guy, the one animal of
Earth history that wanted to watch in action but
nobody wanted to
  there it was, pounding its torpedo of a face into the
titanosaur and knocking both of them
to Propelled by the force of the charge, the two
dinosaurs skidded together into the creek and out of that
trickle of water somehow made an enormous
splash.
  In a cloud of maddened birds, the other
sauropods swung full about and stampeded
stiff-legged down the creek and out of sight in
astonishing speed, leaving their wounded family member
and the tyrannosaur to deal with each other. As they
stampeded through the maddened birds, they stumbled into the
pair of torosaurs, who were turned and driven before
them in a panic.
  The titanosaur was the first to get to its feet. It
swung around on its hind legs to face the
tyrannosaur and reared upward. As blood poured
down its hindquarters from the wounds on its hip, the
animal swiveled and began dropping its full
weight toward the tyrannosaur, which was struggling
to get both massive legs out of the water and back
underneath. Squirming as the titanosaur came down,
the big T bellowed an enduring sound like metal
scraping against metal. The titanosaur's foot
came down on its attacker's tail, and there was
another ghastly bellow, this time more of pain than
rage.
  The thunder lizard twisted its thick, strong neck
and bit into the titanosaur's shoulder, shoving its
toothy face through hide, muscle, and bone in one
snap with sheer force. Shaking its head, it ripped out
a mouthful and bolted it down like a crocodile
bolts down a calf.
  "What are the chances he'll come over here?"
Kirk asked, cautious of his volume.
  "He probably won't notice us," McCoy
said. "Everybody get down anyway. Stay near the
ground."
  While they all huddled near the ground or hid
behind broken tree branches, Bannon murmured,
"What a sight!"
  Before them on the creek bed, the titanosaur
slid down onto one knee but was able to wheel around
again on those tree-thick hind legs. Coming down with a
bass drum boom, it slammed that immense tail
into the tyrannosaur's side, knocking the predator
over.
  The movements were shocking and fast, much more supple
than Kirk ever would have imagined creatures of
  such bulk could move. At a circus he'd seen
a female African elephant driven into a
rage. Before its trainers or anyone
  his could react, it attacked and killed two
workers, then thundered into the bleachers and drove its wide
head through a be wall. But that was on Rccgel
Four...
  His(disi With another metal-scraping scream, the
tyrannosaur rolled over onto its pointy spine
and came crashing down on its other side, legs
thrashing and small arms pushing at the ground.
  While it thrashed, the titanosaur turned and
charged across the creek toward Kirk and the others.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
  He heard McCoy. "Uh-ohu"
  Spewing blood, the titanosaur pounded past them
and smashed straight through the trees, not bothering to look
for a better way out. With a ghastly crackle the dense
trees were driven down, making a path wide enough
to fly a shuttlecraft through.
  All at once, the titanosaur was gone.
  Boom, boom, boom... the sound faded away.
  "Down! Now!" Kirk gasped, pushing McCoy
and Emmendorf down, hoping the others would have the chance
to drop, too.
  The tyrannosaur scratched to its feet,
extended its neck, and roared in frustration.
Snapping its maw twice--crack,
crack--it sniffed at the air. Could it smell them?
were
  foreign scents clinging to them that would bring that beast
here?
  Limping, the tyrannosaur sniffed again--the air,
the lffl'ound, the trail of blood--and pounded
deliberately to them, each step a drum beat.
  :."...ationobody... move," Kirk murmured,
barely audible.
  would be a prefect time for the Klingons to attempt
an
  like needlepoints within skeletal sockets, the
lowered its head, stretched out its neck, and
  and hard. Then it put its snout to the and
deliberately tracked the smashed trail left by the
  titanosaur, hammering its fifty-foot body
and tail past Kirk and his party without a glance.
Apparently it knew what it could have with a little
perseverance. They watched, hearts pounding, as the most
renowned killer of all time drummed into the dense
woods. At the edge of the woods, it paused,
turned toward them again, lowered" its giant skull
and screamed one more time, waited until the echo
fell, then also disappeared into the wilds. "Wow..."
Reenie breathed. "He's a walking nose
with teeth," McCoy said softly. "Did you
notice that he didn't fight except when he was
pinned down? He smashed open that animal's rib
cage, then pulled back to let nature take its
course. I bet he'll track the titanosaur for
miles if he has to. Even a minor bite will
kill it before long. Those animals' mouths must be
havens for bacteria."
  "I can't believe we saw that!" Bannon pushed
to his feet. "On the contrary," Spock said, "with the
sheer numbers of those varieties of creatures on this
continent at this time, it would be surprising if we did
not encounter them." Kirk put an elbow out and let
Emmendorf hoist him up. "Let's move on.
I don't want to be here if---"
  "Jim!" McCoy's arm shot out in a point.
"Look!" Scanning the landscape, Kirk drew a
breath and snapped, "Down!" On the creek bed,
sniffing at the ground, were two more tyrannosanrs.
One was two-thirds the size of the first they'd seen,
thirty feet or so, and the other was only about fifteen
feet long. "It's a baby!" Ensign Reenie
panted. "A baby that could eat a Clydesdale,"
McCoy drawled, appreciating the young T's
ottoman-sized head. "The scale is
incredible? Baby or not, there wasn't much cute about
this thing. In every way a duplicate of its elders, the
little T stuffed its horny snout into the mud,
scooped up a bloody chunk of muscle torn from
the sauropod, and greedily coughed it down, mud and
all.
  "Is the other one its mother?" Emmendorf asked.
"No way to tell," McCoy said, squinting. Now
the larger of the two caught the scent of the trail and
roared. Tails whipping, they trundled past the
Starfleet crew toward the path of crushed trees,
sniffing at the bloody disbble as they stomped through.
Shaken and stunned, Kirk and his party cautiously
got to their feet. Face-to-face with the big ones,
that was what Starfleet had promised--a life of
adventure and exploration. Well, they'd just come
face-to-face with the biggest big ones of all. Now
they had to learn how to hide from them.
  "Jim, we found some food. Or at least, we
think it's food." As McCoy picked his way
across the clearing, and with every one of his steps, Kirk
realized with one more pang how hungry he had
become. His body was fighting off the toxins, dealing
with the medication, struggling for clarity of mind, and all this
took a vat of energy. "Y'know,"
McCoy rambled, "it's a jungle out there. I've
never seen so many funny-looking animals. You can't
take ten Steps out there, but some nest of big
lizards jumps up and scatters. It's bad for the
heart." With his body rewarding him for his diligence with
i well-timed twinges, Kirk bent over
McCoy's bundle of Iffafamiliar fruits.
A few were round, fuzzy, and brown, some to to aaty and
yellow green and scored with cut marks, some ants still
in the shells. He pushed at the soft brown round :.
"Oes with his finger. are those?" kind of fig,"
McCoy said. "And these are palm Over here might
be a version of raspberry. Now, me to that--" you
tasted it yet?" busy stanching the wounds on the
backs of It had three-inch thorns." set me up
for that question, didn't you? who wanted nothing more in life
than to tackle one-dimensional tasks. As such, he
found magnificent satisfaction every ten minutes or
so and was one of the happiest crewmen Kirk had ever
known.
  "Captain, sir, sir! I found something," the
big kid panted. "Out there, 'bout half a mile!
You gntta see it!"
  

Chapter 21
  "No PhaSERS! No phasers!
Get him out? Jim Kirk skidded down the last
quarter of the ridge, shouting as he hit the bottom.
He wrenched his hips around in the lucky direction and
managed to land on his good leg. "Pull him out of
there?" He plunged past Reenie and Emmendorf,
crashed into the water, and sent green spray fanning in
every direction. He grabbed for Bannon, who was
batting frantically at the water with his bare hands as
if to take karate chops at the frothy surface.
The water was too warm, unnatural and invisible on
the body. Kirk had braced himself for a chill, but it
never came and for an instant he thought he was losing the
feeling in his legs. He got his hands around
Bannon's arm, pulled hard, and kicked
viciously at the gaudy spear that had its teeth
sunk into his crewman. McCoy came crashing
into the water past the two stunned crewmen and somehow this
shook the two out of their terrorized stupor and they
followed him in. Of course, nobody was more
terrorized than the bunch of four-foot
crocodiles on the opposite bank, who jolted
and suddenly scattered.
  The creature in the water, shark or not, had no
spine for combat. It was a scavenger, and easier
food would present itself in due time. It
disengaged from Bannon's calf, and like a wizard into a
puff of smoke made two swipes of its tail and
disappeared, to forget in moments where it had just been.
Kirk stuffed Bannon into Emmendorf's thick
short arms and snapped an order to get ashore before
those crocodiles wised up. He struggled to get out
of the sucking grit that held his boots underwater. There
was a lot of heart thump in the vulgar fear of being
eaten. Bannon was chalk white as they dropped him
on the shore, and McCoy fell to his side, a
hand already clamped to the artery in the young man's calf.
"Did anybody see what it was?" the doctor
asked. "I did," Reenie said. "It was sort of a
shark, but the slash in his leg came from its dorsal
fill. It was kind of... @.rrated. Then it turned
around and bit him."
  "There's a bite here. Not bad. The fill did
a lot more
  .bannon swore and gasped but didn't make
much sense. Reenie held his head and stuffed back
tears, but lffmmendorf's wide young face was
drenched with tear tracks cutting through the slime that had
splashed on his aeek and he evidently didn't
care who saw him cry. Kirk felt his heart
quit drumming and start cracking at the
sight of them crumpled there on the shore at his
feet. He'd failed to protect them. His hands were
both clenched in their raw-nerve imaginations twisting the
spine out of 'Umt fish. "Bones?"
  "Checking." The doctor didn't look up. "
"Bannon choked and tried to sit up. "I'm
gonna lose my
  ,'ationo, you're not," Kirk stated blunfiy with
deliberate
  conyes snapped up to him. He glared at the
  posture and his own glaring eyes, Kirk commu-a
silent order. Anything you have to do. looked down again.
"No," he said. "You're not swarmed in the
unnatural lights, eerily silent, feasting on the
corpses. A sight of prehistoric slaughter?
So what? Spock and McCoy plunged past him,
and Kirk found himself inadequate in the light of their
professional curiosity. He wanted to throw up but
not with his junior officers watching. Or senior
officers either, for that matter. A captain's
dilemma: couldn't throw up in front of anybody.
Withered intestines hung like holiday decorations all
over the green growth and ferns, some still linked to the open
guts of the animals from which they came. The larger
animals were a good ten feet from head
to tail and on those thick hind legs could rear back
almost as tall as he was. Their gaping mouths were
snaggled with bloody teeth. Their eyes stared, even
more terrible because these were large brown eyes, like the eyes
of an owl, not like a crocodile. He couldn't feel
for a crocodile, but this... "All right, Mr.
Vernon," he started bluntly, "what's the
attraction? We've got a bunch of dead
animals. What did you want us to see that couldn't
wait?" The tall Security man pointed. "The
faces of the big ones, sirmlook at their faces?
Kirk moved forward glaring through a band of artificial
light. "Is that paint?" Spock drew his fingers
along the yellow and purple designs on the
animal's long skull. "Paint, Captain...
acrylic pigment. Synthetic, not natural." His
voice dropped away and he murmured, "Amazing!
Meant for visibility ... or possibly to frighten
an enemy."
  "Somebody else must have painted these creature's
faces to throw us off."
  "Somebody else?" McCoy looked up.
"What makes you think that, Captain?"
  "If we can travel time, so can someone else."
  "Only the big ones have paint on them,"
Reenie said. "Maybe these little ones are the babies
of the big ones," Vernon wondered. "No,"
Reenie said. "The small ones have their claws between the
ribs of the big ones. They were attacking"
  "A coordinated attack, also," Spock
noted, fascination rising again in his voice. "Note
the angles from which the smaller ones approached...
nearly all the same." McCoy got down on
both knees and put his hands into the laid-open
animal. "Warm blood." Kirk leaned hard on
his stick. "How long have these animals been dead?"
  "Minutes. Maybe an hour. But some of the
bodies are still warmer than others. They may have lay
here dying for a while. But not very long Trauma like this
doesn't let an animal hang on for long."
  "We may have frightened off the victors," Spock
said. "Which means whatever did this is probably still
nearby." Kirk motioned to Emmendorf, Vernon,
and Reenie. "Stay on your toes, people."
  "Jim, do you have the time for me to dissect one of
these?" McCoy asked. "We've got sixty
million years. Help yourself. But we'll do it
back at the campsite. Mr. Emmendorf, come
down here and assist Dr. McCoy. Mr.
Spock, secure the area while you have the
chance, please."
  "Yes, sir." Spock stood up, his gaze
lingering on the face of the sad creature lying at his
feet, its painted face calling to his scientific
mind with" contradiction after contradiction. Kirk
empathized with him, but there wasn't time to indulge.
They needed something more concrete, something the tricorder
would recognize and say, "Got it!" They needed that
thing, that one hint to drive away their doubts.
To Jim Kirk, that was the perfect world--one with no
doubts. The hard decisions weren't really the worst
part of command. It was the doubting he hated. Command...
the ship... the beautiful Enterprise... a ghost of
it blew past him in the dark sky overhead, so real
he almost looked up and waved. They had counted on
him. They hadn't doubted him. I'm sorry,
sir... I'm sorry, sir..."
  "Not your fault, Scotty..." bend what he was
looking at. This multitude of hidden, dull
grazers were the deer of this age. Quiet, shy, and not
very bright, these were the prey of the Cretaceous. Somehow
he couldn't imagine mounting one of those heads over a
mantle. Reenie panted and let go of his thick
arm. "I think I... I think... I think I...
stepped on it..."
  "It's all right. They're not going to hurt us,"
he murmured. "Let's go." They broke out of the
bushes and onto a flatlands that appeared to once have
been a riverbed. Stretched around the base of the
mountain in both directions, it had been trampled
time and again. There wasn't so much as a sapling growing
across the two-hundred-foot expanse, but there were
hundreds of footprints the size of
basketballs. "Natural migration trail."
Spock blinked in the hazy sunlight. "Captain,
I feel some vibrations also." "Let's hurry up
then." Kirk stood twenty feet out from the tree
line and turned to Vernon and Emmendorf as they
pulled Bannon toward the flats, with McCoy and
Reenie herding the Klingons after them. "Gentlemen,
hurry along."
  "Coming, sir!" Vernon called, hoisting
Bannon over a clutch of ferns. "Don't
worry, sir!" Kirk glanced at McCoy.
"Well, if I can't have answers, at least I've
got enthusiasm." McCoy couldn't muster a grin.
"Jim, I'm telling you, the ground is rumbling
Is it rumbling where you are?"
  "I'm only twenty feet from you."
  "Well, is it?" "Spock scan this
area. What do you pick up?" Pausing thirty
feet out, Spock adjusted his already overloaded
tricorder. He turned in place, then paused.
"Captain... I suggest we retreat." He
slung the tricorder strap over his shoulder,
hurried back to Kirk, and took his arm.
"Quickly." Kirk took the cue for what it was.
"Fall back!" The ground was rumbling. And that
honking was closer, a lot closer. His chest throbbed
as he hurried back toward the brush line,
relieved to see that his crew made it, but he couldn't
make himself go all the way into the bushes without seeing
what they were running from. Foolish--what if it
wanted to eat them? "Captain, this way,"
Spockencouraged. "Just a minute. I want to see
them." Crouching at the edge of the thick growth, Kirk
was gratified when Spock came to wait with him
instead of trying to convince him to back away. The
honking was very close now, echoing on the mountain in
front of them. "There they are!" Emmendorf shouted,
standing on a stump and pointing wildly north.
Spock hot to a standing position and actually forgot
to raise his tricorder. "Spock!" Kirk
snapped. "Record!" The Vulcan blinked, then
fumbled for his tricorder. "Yearn"
  "Back up, everybody back up. Back up!"
The rumbling of the ground became a solid drumbeat,
a wall of animals that looked like plucked
ostriches eae hammering through the open flatlands. Within
secOnds, dozens swarmed into hundreds.
be"EV-ERYBODY stay back," Kirk mumbled as
much to him'slf as his crew. The urge to step out and
stare was Overwhelming. He'd never seen so many
animals in one 'lfliffence before, not on any
planet. "Hadrosaurs, Captain," Spock
said. "Anatotitan, specifi- Thirty feet
long on average... herbivores. Apparent-
percent of dinosaur species were plant eaters."
glad. Unless, of course, they step on you."
Kirk back at his people, nervous and custodial.
pressed his hands on a stump and pushed up for a
view. The adult hadrosaurs were massive
animals, duck-billed faces, probably for
foraging in except that the average of these beasts was
seven tons each and Kirk wasn't about to call them
As the hadrosaurs thudded by on their thick hind
  His own voice startled him. He glanced around,
self-aware, wondering if anyone else had heard
him. No one was looking. McCoy was elbow-deep
in slaughtered dinosaur, giving orders to a
nauseated Emmendorf, and Spock was up on the
incline, intently scanning, Kirk knew he was
better at the art of roughing it than Spock, but for
how long? His medication had been thinned until he
barely felt it working. The fever was back, his legs
hurt, his thoughts wandered, and he had to pull them back
every few minutes. How long could he hold on? Would
they find him dead in his sleep a few days from now and
be forced to go on without him? He looked up the incline
at Spock. He knew Spock's sterling
loyalty and cautious foresight wouldn't serve long
or well in this place. Eventually one of the young
officers would be killed by this nightmare environment, and
Spock would have to live with that. Spock always
pretended to take those things in his logical stride,
but Kirk knew it was fake. He'd seen the change
in Spock's behavior, watched him grow more mellow
as he paid the toll of being a first officer, of having a
subordinate's life slip through his fingers from time
to time. It soured an officer's iron-willed
confidence. Doubt. It was the demon on a leader's
shoulder. The one Kirk had never gotten used to.
Spock looked up from the tricorder, and for an
instant Kirk was afraid he'd been thinking too
loudly. "Something here, Captain."
  "Coming." Climbing was torture. Kirk dug his
fingers into the stubby overgrowth, took each step one
at a time. He couldn't let them see him fall.
A hand caught him under the upper arm and gave him
support. One more hitch upward, and Spock had
him. Kirk sat on the edge of the stony embankment.
His face was clammy, his breath rattling in his chest,
and he gripped the edge of the ridge with both hands.
Spock knelt to hold the tricorder in front of
him. "Traces of refined metal." There was
victory in the Vulean's voice.
  Invigorated, Kirk cranked to look
directly at him. "Spock, are you sure?"
  "Very faint traces on the limestone below this
soil." He scooted back a few inches
to gesture up the incline. "Note a pattern
scraped into the soft... something has been dragged
along here, possibly some form of travoy. It
carved grooves into the ground, and where it struck stone
we have these traces. Definitely high-grade
steel composite." It didn't show in his voice, but
it did in his eyes--he was thrilled. Probably
relieved. Steel... "Then therests more going on than
we've seen so far," Kirk said. "Somebody else
has been here and has been tampering with these
animals." Spock lowered his tricorder.
"Yes." They looked at each other. Somewhere an
animal shrieked, its cry carried to them on a gust
of moist wind. Their brief visit to the modern age
was cut off by the sound of primitive hunt.
"Spock, go back over the the readings you took from the
Guardian. See if you can find something there... or
not there. Not just the animals, but something else."
  "I understand," the Vulcan condensed. "And
analyze these metal traces--"
  "Captain!" Ensign Reenie was craning her
neck over a crest of bushes, her slick hair,
somehow blacker than Spock's, waving as she
shifted from toe to toe. "Something's happening down
there."
  "Ensign!" Kirk snapped. Shaking out of
Spock's grasp, he slid down the incline and
shambled through the litter of bodies and entrails
to Reenie's side, where he caught her elbow and
pulled her back, putting himself in her place. He
looked over the bushes but saw only glimpses of
movement on a lower level. There was noise, huging
of effort, grunts and howls, now getting louder.
Something solid arched into the air--a taft. Big.
With a knot on the end. "Let's have a
look. Heads down." He led the way through gaudy
flora and spiked plants twice his height,
cautiously pointing out those large webs that no one
wanted to disturb and murmuring every few steps,
"Look out for this... Don't touch that... Duck under
this..." Suddenly before them was the edge of this stand of
bushes. Kirk almost stumbled out into the open before
realizing how close he was to the activity out there.
"Down, everyone," he whispered. "Speck?."
  "Here." Speck shuffled through as Reenie made
way for him. He held his tricorder before him, but the
scene upon which they had stumbled was too astounding for
analysis yet. Before them was the savage waltz of a
hunt. On an open plateau, where lush vegetation
had attracted creatures to come and graze, was a
sight of the most horrible and inspiring kind. For
decades, paintings and animations had been done of
such things, but this was real and they were here to see it.
"Recording," Speck murmured automatically.
Kirk didn't care. He was engrossed in
fantasy. In the plateau's center, nearly two
dozen creatures huddled in a curious circle.
Down on all fours like grizzly bears were stocky
armored animals with noses like camels, the adults
more than twenty feet long. On their
backs, rows of curved plates tapered down to the
long tails, each row of plates knobby all the
way across like a dog's collar, mounted with
protrusionsddon which moss had settled as if on the
shingles of an Irish church roof. Each had a
heavy-looking armored skull, bony eyelids; a
toothless beak, large flat feet with heavy
toenails, and a no-kidding knot of embedded bone
fused into two lobes mounted side to side on the end
of the tail. Mixed in with them were a few bipeds,
brightly colored, with their dome heads rising above the
knobby backs of the armored animals, their small
paws sometimes resting on those knobs. "They've formed
a defensive circle," Kirk uttered
appreciatively. "Look at the outer
perimeter." A pack of more than fifty much
smaller creatures were moving in, walking on two
legs, using a border collie method of
corralling the armored animals and the dome-heads
hiding among them. "The four-legged animals may be
Ankylosaurus," Speck responded, squinting
into the tricorder screen. "Order Ornithichia...
heavily armored, roughly seven meters in length,
possessing a bony club on the tail. I may be
incorrect about the species. This readout
has ankylosaurs as upland dinosaurs, characteristic
of drier environments." "Then what are they doing
here?" Kirk asked. "Unknown. With the draining of the
seaways, they may be expanding to new habitats. The
bipeds among them are ... I believe,
pachycephalosaurs. Interesting, Captain, how the
prey are banding together. It's extraordinary
be-hayloft "Sir, if I had those things stalking
me," Reenie said, "I'd make a deal with the
devil."
  "What are those?" Kirk pointed at the dozens of
prowling creatures on two legs. Speck lowered
meaningfully. "Raptors, sir. Generally accepted
as the most viciously efficient of prehistoric
hunters on land. I'm reading over a hundred of
them."
  "I only see fifty... sixty..."
  "Others are waiting in the brush." Spock
raised his tricorder slightly. "According to this, the
varieties known range from the twenty-foot
Utahraptor to the ten-foot deinonychus to the
six-foot light-weight velociraptors.
Strangely, the larger ones occur earlier than the
smaller ones. It's possible they were responsible
for the extinction of sauropods in North
America--the large long-necked dinosaur/which would
have caused the raptors to become smaller and hunt
smaller prey in larger numbers." Kirk peered
through thick elephant-ear leaves. "Those are, I'd
say, four feet." Speck looked up.
"Captain... I believe these are
troodontids."
  "You meanre"
  "Yes, exactly. Very successful predaters.
Bladed teeth... expanded braincase, dexterous
hands... sizable thumb claw, blunt snout,
forward-directed eyes--comodd, the who wanted nothing
more in life than to tackle one-dimensional tasks.
As such, he found magnificent satisfaction every ten
minutes or so and was one of the happiest crewmen
Kirk had ever known.
  "Captain, sir, sir! I found something," the
big kid panted. "Out there, 'bout half a mile!
You gntta see it!"
  

Chapter 22
  "WE HAVE TRAVELED TIME!"
  Reflecting the impossible, Zalt's cheeks were
russet with the fury of science, of magic, of the
astounded, the angry who had been left out of a
secret. How many of their own scientists
knew about this machine and had not told?
  Roth felt the same betrayal. Had Klingon
preoccupation with killing the romuluSnganpu" and
taking their possessions left his people dry of discovery?
Had his civilization forgotten how to explore?
While he and his fellow soldiers were fighting, was
nothing else being pursued?
  Yes, nothing. Scientific advancement had
grated to a stop in all but space vehicle
design and propulsion and weaponry. Even that had
been relatively static for years.
  "Time!" Zalt hissed again, staring at the empty
place where the starship captain and his officer had sat
moments ago, then suddenly twisted around to look at
the sleeping man at the far back of their shallow
cave. "Unconscious," he rumbled. "Good."
  "Why have they left us unguarded?" Roth tugged
at the shackles that pinned him to the ground. "Are they
so sure of this?"
  Zalt craned his neck toward the jungle.
"Listen to me. We are back in time. They have brought
us here for a reason. They are trying to change what must
happen."
  "How can they?" Roth dared to sound sarcastic.
"Time is time. Their story is insane."
  "You're not a thinker. You can't see in your mind
what could come to pass. They could end everything we know.
Cause us not to exist anymore! And the Vulcans
are mixed up in this somehow..."
  "Then you believe what they told us on their
ship?" Roth stared into the little fire the Starfleet men
had made for him and Zalt. A fire for the enemies
to warm themselves by. Comfort of the enemy... it would never have
occurred to him. What kind of men were these?
  Zalt suddenly lurched to his feet, braced
hard against the ground, and began pulling with set-jawed
effort at the stake that held them to the ground. "Help
me!" he growled through his teeth.
  Surprised, Roth bolted up, raised his hands
until the tether stopped them, and also began to pull.
  The stake was made of hard wood, cut out of a
tree by their captors, a long spear driven
deeply into the stony ground.
  Zalt's face turned purple as he strained.
Roth tried to match the effort, but his own personal
drive to break free couldn't match Zalt's.
  The long stake came up a hand's width, filling
Zalt with a rage of determination. He roared and
slammed Roth aside so hard that Roth fell to the
ground on his side, then rearranged his stance
directly over the stake, coiled his shackled arms
against his chest, and put all his physical power into a
great upward thrust.
  The spear of wood began to cry out, scratching
against the stone-fiddled earth into which it had been driven.
Finally the earth itself parted and released the shaft of
wood. Zalt staggered back, lungs heaving.
  "Free!" he gasped. "Now, now we can fight
them!" Roth scratched to his feet. "Fight how?
We don't know if
  they were telling the truth. Do we dare tamper with
time? We could be ruining our own eternity!"
  "Or saving it!" Zalt's voice was bitter and
vicious, loaded with dare. "Close your teeth and
listen. These are your orders. You're going to make
friends with these people. Swear on your honor that you will not
interfere with what they are doing. Then interfere
greatly."
  "On my honor? I cannot!"
  "You will. You have no honor left upon which to swear,
so you can swear all you like. Do it." Roth sank
back against the moist rock, as Zalt shook the
tethers from his wrists and threw the useless stake to the
ground. "Follow me," Zalt said.
  Shuddering like a wounded dog, Jim Kirk
followed his excited young Security man through the
rain's consistent assault. By the time they reached a
bluff in the middle of the low-slung mountain, all were
whipped and panting. Reenie and the other Security
man, Vernon, went ahead and took readings and
made sure the environment was relatively
secure. They were all soaked, but now the rain was
stopping, or they were climbing out of it. The veiled
sun had westered and slid behind the mountain, and the sky was
getting dark. Kirk looked down into the valley from
which they had just come. A cottony fog rested in the
valley like soup in a bowl. Here it was nearly dry,
moistened only by the heat and thready fog from that cloud
down there. Above them, the star-shingled night was black
and beckoning. He squinted down at his boots in the
fading light and at the ground beneath them. Dry. His
sopping uniform shirt clung to his chest, arms, and
back. They were on an incline, a natural
pathway that spiraled up this mountain. The pathway
beneath his feet was hard rock coated with a layer of
gritty soil and a tenacious moss, leaving this
convenient indentation in the mountainside. Still an
uphill climb but walkable. "Here, Captain,"
McCoy said and handed him a stick he'd ripped out
of a fallen tree. It was four feet long
and almost two inches thick, not quite straight, but
straight enough. "In England they call it
"fellwalking." Now you can tell people you've done it.
Just say it was in Georgia." Kirk glared at him
but took the stick. Something to lean on. Vernon's
tall, shoulderwide form appeared at the erest, where this
incline curved along the body of the mountain. "Right
up here, sir! You're not gonna believe it!"
  "Bet I wwill," Kirk grumbled. The
doctor stayed a pace or two behind him, which
irritated him because Kirk knew McCoy was
anticipating having to catch him if he fell. He
didn't want to be caught or picked up or even
empathized with. He staggered as his stick slipped on
a mossy place but beat off McCoy's attempt
to help him with only a well-aimed glare. Before
them, Spock turned in concern but had the sense
to wait until they caught up rather than coming back
to help. He knows me too blasted well, Kirk
thought as he glared forward at the Vulcan. Spock
stood against the incongruous junglescape, a blue
and black pillar of high civilization, and waited as
his captain approached.."...One hundred yards,
sir. Emmendorf and Reenie are setting up
lighting implements." "Good. I'm getting
a feeling we shouldn't have come here until morning,
We'll get what we can, then go back to the cave."
  "Agreed," Spock said. "Iungle settings
are generally more dangerous during the night hours."
Kirk nodded automatically. "Let's go." One
hundred yards farther along, and twenty feet below
them on a lush plateau, lay one of the strangest
sights Kirk had ever encountered. Ten or so
large-bodied animals lay slaughtered, peppered
with the bodies of smaller animals. The ferns and
groundcover all around were blood-spackled in the
portable daylight the junior officers had set up.
Insects swarmed in the unnatural lights, eerily
silent, feasting on the corpses. A sight of
prehistoric slaughter? So what? Spock and
McCoy plunged past him, and Kirk found himself
inadequate in the light of their professional
curiosity. He wanted to throw up but not with his
junior officers watching. Or senior officers
either, for that matter. A captain's dilemma:
couldn't throw up in front of anybody. Withered
intestines hung like holiday decorations all over the
green growth and ferns, some still linked to the open guts
of the animals from which they came. The larger animals
were a good ten feet from head to tail and on
those thick hind legs could rear back almost as tall
as he was. Their gaping mouths were snaggled with
bloody teeth. Their eyes stared, even more terrible
because these were large brown eyes, like the eyes of an
owl, not like a crocodile. He couldn't feel for a
crocodile, but this... "All right, Mr.
Vernon," he started bluntly, "what's the
attraction? We've got a bunch of dead
animals. What did you want us to see that couldn't
wait?" The tall Security man pointed. "The
faces of the big ones, sirmlook at their faces?
Kirk moved forward glaring through a band of artificial
light. "Is that paint?" Spock drew his fingers
along the yellow and purple designs on the
animal's long skull. "Paint, Captain...
acrylic pigment. Synthetic, not natural." His
voice dropped away and he murmured, "Amazing!
Meant for visibility ... or possibly to frighten
an enemy."
  "Somebody else must have painted these creature's
faces to throw us off."
  "Somebody else?" McCoy looked up.
"What makes you think that, Captain?"
  "If we can travel time, so can someone else."
  "Only the big ones have paint on them,"
Reenie said. "Maybe these little ones are the babies
of the big ones," Vernon wondered. "No,"
Reenie said. "The small ones have their claws between the
ribs of the big ones. They were attacking"
  "A coordinated attack, also," Spock
noted, fascination rising again in his voice. "Note
the angles from which the smaller ones approached...
nearly all the same." McCoy got down on
both knees and put his hands into the laid-open
animal. "Warm blood." Kirk leaned hard on
his stick. "How long have these animals been dead?"
  "Minutes. Maybe an hour. But some of the
bodies are still warmer than others. They may have lay
here dying for a while. But not very long Trauma like this
doesn't let an animal hang on for long."
  "We may have frightened off the victors," Spock
said. "Which means whatever did this is probably still
nearby." Kirk motioned to Emmendorf, Vernon,
and Reenie. "Stay on your toes, people."
  "Jim, do you have the time for me to dissect one of
these?" McCoy asked. "We've got sixty
million years. Help yourself. But we'll do it
back at the campsite. Mr. Emmendorf, come
down here and assist Dr. McCoy. Mr.
Spock, secure the area while you have the
chance, please."
  "Yes, sir." Spock stood up, his gaze
lingering on the face of the sad creature lying at his
feet, its painted face calling to his scientific
mind with" contradiction after contradiction. Kirk
empathized with him, but there wasn't time to indulge.
They needed something more concrete, something the tricorder
would recognize and say, "Got it!" They needed that
thing, that one hint to drive away their doubts.
To Jim Kirk, that was the perfect world--one with no
doubts. The hard decisions weren't really the worst
part of command. It was the doubting he hated. Command...
the ship... the beautiful Enterprise... a ghost of
it blew past him in the dark sky overhead, so real
he almost looked up and waved. They had counted on
him. They hadn't doubted him. I'm sorry,
sir... I'm sorry, sir..."
  "Not your fault, Scotty..." His own voice
startled him. He glanced around, self-aware,
wondering if anyone else had heard him. No one
was looking. McCoy was elbow-deep in slaughtered
dinosaur, giving orders to a nauseated
Emmendorf, and Spock was up on the incline,
intently scanning, Kirk knew he was better at
the art of roughing it than Spock, but for how
long? His medication had been thinned until he
barely felt it working. The fever was back, his legs
hurt, his thoughts wandered, and he had to pull them back
every few minutes. How long could he hold on? Would
they find him dead in his sleep a few days from now and
be forced to go on without him? He looked up the incline
at Spock. He knew Spock's sterling
loyalty and cautious foresight wouldn't serve long
or well in this place. Eventually one of the young
officers would be killed by this nightmare environment, and
Spock would have to live with that. Spock always
pretended to take those things in his logical stride,
but Kirk knew it was fake. He'd seen the change
in Spock's behavior, watched him grow more mellow
as he paid the toll of being a first officer, of having a
subordinate's life slip through his fingers from time
to time. It soured an officer's iron-willed
confidence. Doubt. It was the demon on a leader's
shoulder. The one Kirk had never gotten used to.
Spock looked up from the tricorder, and for an
instant Kirk was afraid he'd been thinking too
loudly. "Something here, Captain."
  "Coming." Climbing was torture. Kirk dug his
fingers into the stubby overgrowth, took each step one
at a time. He couldn't let them see him
fall. A hand caught him under the upper arm and gave
him support. One more hitch upward, and Spock
had him. Kirk sat on the edge of the stony
embankment. His face was clammy, his breath
rattling in his chest, and he gripped the edge of the
ridge with both hands. Spock knelt to hold the
tricorder in front of him. "Traces of refined
metal." There was victory in the Vulean's
voice.
  Invigorated, Kirk cranked to look
directly at him. "Spock, are you sure?"
  "Very faint traces on the limestone below this
soil." He scooted back a few inches
to gesture up the incline. "Note a pattern
scraped into the soft... something has been dragged
along here, possibly some form of travoy. It
carved grooves into the ground, and where it struck stone
we have these traces. Definitely high-grade
steel composite." It didn't show in his voice, but
it did in his eyes--he was thrilled. Probably
relieved. Steel... "Then therests more going on than
we've seen so far," Kirk said. "Somebody else
has been here and has been tampering with these
animals." Spock lowered his tricorder.
"Yes." They looked at each other.
Somewhere an animal shrieked, its cry carried to them
on a gust of moist wind. Their brief visit to the
modern age was cut off by the sound of primitive
hunt. "Spock, go back over the the readings you
took from the Guardian. See if you can find something
there... or not there. Not just the animals, but something
else."
  "I understand," the Vulcan condensed. "And
analyze these metal traces--"
  "Captain!" Ensign Reenie was craning her
neck over a crest of bushes, her slick hair,
somehow blacker than Spock's, waving as she
shifted from toe to toe. "Something's happening down
there."
  "Ensign!" Kirk snapped. Shaking out of
Spock's grasp, he slid down the incline and
shambled through the litter of bodies and entrails
to Reenie's side, where he caught her elbow and
pulled her back, putting himself in her place. He
looked over the bushes but saw only glimpses of
movement on a lower level. There was noise, huging
of effort, grunts and howls, now getting louder.
Something solid arched into the air--a taft. Big.
With a knot on the end. "Let's have a look.
Heads down." He led the way through gaudy
flora and spiked plants twice his height,
cautiously pointing out those large webs that no one
wanted to disturb and murmuring every few steps,
"Look out for this... Don't touch that... Duck under
this..." Suddenly before them was the edge of this stand of
bushes. Kirk almost stumbled out into the open before
realizing how close he was to the activity out there.
"Down, everyone," he whispered. "Speck?."
  "Here." Speck shuffled through as Reenie made
way for him. He held his tricorder before him, but the
scene upon which they had stumbled was too astounding for
analysis yet. Before them was the savage waltz of a
hunt. On an open plateau, where lush vegetation
had attracted creatures to come and graze, was a
sight of the most horrible and inspiring kind. For
decades, paintings and animations had been done of
such things, but this was real and they were here to see it.
"Recording," Speck murmured automatically.
Kirk didn't care. He was engrossed in
fantasy. In the plateau's center, nearly two
dozen creatures huddled in a curious circle.
Down on all fours like grizzly bears were stocky
armored animals with noses like camels, the adults
more than twenty feet long. On their backs, rows
of curved plates tapered down to the long
tails, each row of plates knobby all the way
across like a dog's collar, mounted with protrusionsddon
which moss had settled as if on the shingles of an
Irish church roof. Each had a heavy-looking
armored skull, bony eyelids; a toothless beak,
large flat feet with heavy toenails, and a
no-kidding knot of embedded bone fused into two
lobes mounted side to side on the end of the tail.
Mixed in with them were a few bipeds, brightly
colored, with their dome heads rising above the knobby
backs of the armored animals, their small paws
sometimes resting on those knobs. "They've formed a
defensive circle," Kirk uttered
appreciatively. "Look at the outer
perimeter." A pack of more than fifty much
smaller creatures were moving in, walking on two
legs, using a border collie method of
corralling the armored animals and the dome-heads
hiding among them. "The four-legged animals may be
Ankylosaurus," Speck responded, squinting
into the tricorder screen. "Order Ornithichia...
heavily armored, roughly seven meters in length,
possessing a bony club on the tail. I may be
incorrect about the species. This readout has
ankylosaurs as upland dinosaurs,
characteristic of drier environments." "Then what are they
doing here?" Kirk asked. "Unknown. With the draining
of the seaways, they may be expanding to new habitats.
The bipeds among them are ... I believe,
pachycephalosaurs. Interesting, Captain, how the
prey are banding together. It's extraordinary
be-hayloft "Sir, if I had those things stalking
me," Reenie said, "I'd make a deal with the
devil."
  "What are those?" Kirk pointed at the dozens of
prowling creatures on two legs. Speck lowered
meaningfully. "Raptors, sir. Generally accepted
as the most viciously efficient of prehistoric
hunters on land. I'm reading over a hundred of
them."
  "I only see fifty... sixty..."
  "Others are waiting in the brush." Spock
raised his tricorder slightly. "According to this, the
varieties known range from the twenty-foot
Utahraptor to the ten-foot deinonychus to the
six-foot light-weight velociraptors.
Strangely, the larger ones occur earlier than the
smaller ones. It's possible they were responsible
for the extinction of sauropods in North America--
the large long-necked dinosaur/which would have
caused the raptors to become smaller and hunt
smaller prey in larger numbers." Kirk peered
through thick elephant-ear leaves. "Those are, I'd
say, four feet." Speck looked up.
"Captain... I believe these are
troodontids."
  "You meanre"
  "Yes, exactly. Very successful predaters.
Bladed teeth... expanded braincase, dexterous
hands... sizable thumb claw, blunt snout,
forward-directed eyes--comodd, the tricorder is
reading out these creatures with longer snouts than what
we are observing--" Kirk glanced at him. "You
don't have time, Mr. Spock."
  "I beg your pardon?" He looked up. "You
don't have time to get a degree in paleobiology.
Don't fret over it." Spock's brow crinkled.
I"! had not noted fretting, sir,... simply an
attempt to narrow the facts--" "And be accurate,
of course. Well, there are times when accuracy
isn't everything. Just make sure we understand what we
need to understand." After a valiant effort to pretend
insult, Spock gave up and said, "Always, sir."
The dozens of troodonts had their hands full--
claws full. If surprise had been
part of their strategy, they'd failed. Or if they
had meant to get at the young, they'd also failed. The
adult ankylosaurs presented their knobby armored
backs and wielded the bony clubs at the ends of
their tails in purposeful warning' sweeps. Not
even a tyrannosaurus would bother trying to bite
through that armor. No chance for surprise, no cornering
a loner... Some days, nothing goes right. Kirk
found himself empathizing with the troodonts. After all,
everybody has to eat. A gurgling whistle broke
his thoughts. To the left of where he peered through the
leaves, one medium-sized troodont stood a few
feet back from the ones who were closing in. This one
extended its snout and made a low-pitched cooing
sound. Neither impressive in size nor color, this
troodont had signs of wear and tear--seam on its
elongated face, scars on its tail, and a healed
break that left its right arm bent noticeably
outward. In responses eerily matched, haft of the
approaching troodonts closed in, crowing and
snapping at each other, while the other half lingered
back. And Spock said there were plenty more in the
bushes. At first the stalkers moved slowly,
unruffled by the honks of the dome-headed pachys.
Kirk found himself watching that leader as its
growls and whines made the others move in certain
ways, rank by rank. Finally the troodont with the
crooked arm made one long-winded sound, like metal
  scraping against metal. Dozens of troodonts
made a barn yard scream and plunged in.
  Almost too fast to watch, the first rank flew to their
prey
  on long, muscular les, tails whipping and
foreclaws 8rasping the knobby backs of the
ankylosaurs.
  They didn't even bother attacking the adult
ankylosaurs.
  They leaped over and attached themselves to the bare
  throats and shoulders of the pachys and went to work with
  those sickle claws. Fans of blood blew
into the breeze as if to
  proclaim that the dome-beads didn't stand a
chance. Kirk
  felt his skin shrink with empathy and a certain
unexpected
  guilt as he realized that he might have to do the
same thin
  possibly to the same creatures, if his landin
party wore to survive.
  , The ankylosanrs raised their
tails, lowered their heads, and swung inward at the
troodonts who had broken their circle. Clubbed
tails cracked hideously against the spines of
several troodonts, folding the attackers
backward in agony, to be dragged through the stomeping
feet of the encircled victims. But it wasn't
enough. The broken-armed troodont barked again. Now
the ,mur m me anlcyosaurs, but the
anlcylosaurs' nak young hiding among their legs.
The leader made his grating scream again, louder now.
Suddeuly the bushes rattled, Another fifty or
more troodonts flew out of the fronds and rushed the
scene. "Spock, are you seeing this?" Kirk was
barely able to keep to a whisper. "That's a
coordinated attack. There's a command structure!
That one over there--it's giving ordersI"
  "Even more, Captain," Spock appraised.
"There's rudst- mentary language at work."
  "Are you serious?"
  "I've distingnstshed roughly ten sounds that elicstt
spedtic actions, all being delivered to one attacking
rank at a tstme. Until you pointed it out, I
had not noted all were conting from a specific
individual."
  "l guess it takes a captain to know
one." Instincts whistled at him, warnings as clear as
the ship's red alert klaxon. Before them, the ground
grew saturated with blood churned to soup by stemping
feet and the slash and thump of those clubbed tails. The
defensive circle cracked. The ankylosaurs
broke and ran for the horizon, followed by their young and the
panicked pachycephalosaurs. They stumbled over
each other and the coughing bodies of their dying fellows and
made a run for it. Only a few of the treedents
had been killed. Only three or four out of a
hundred. Most of the prey who escaped made it to the
open plateau, though some were wounded and would fall
eventually, if only to die elsewhere and float down
some waterway and clog up a stream and become feast
or fossil later on. It was hard to think of that;
to imagine millions of years in any direction was
daunting. Kirk knew this was why he wasn't a
historian. He was too much a man of the moment.
He felt too much for those animals out there,
understood too much being pmdator and prey.
"Captain..." Reenie pointed through the leaves.
There was his friend, the barking, yipping leader of the
troodont vanguard, the scruffy face and crooked
right paw now held absolutely still. Even the tail
was poised, countering the raised head, and did
not move. It was looking right at them. "Nobody
move," Kirk whispered. The other troodonts
plunged into a meal, ripping into the bodies of
animals both dead and dying. Except for this one.
And now it was peering right into Kirk's eyes.
  

Chapter 23
  The captain drew his weapon, keeping the muzzle
up. They had to conserve phaser power, but heRather, in the
ferns and cycads, they could be ambushed. "Ensign
Reenie... warn and assist Dr. McCoy.
Clear the
  Orders bolted from Kirk's throat like photon
firing, so blunt that his guts hurt and his throat
scratched. The girl bent low and disappeared,
faintly rustling the bushes. Kirk saw Speck
narrow his eyes in a kind of winc, and that made him
look out at the treedont. Enlighteningly catlike,
the animal lowered its head without ever taking its eyes
from them. Kirk's nerves shriveled as the treedent
opened its snaggled mouth, drew its lipa back from
those mythological teeth, and made a noise that
somehow sounded familiar, purposeful. The other
troodonts suddenly raised their heads in a thing so
near unison as to be beautiful Not one of them
failed to look up at the call of its
leader. They began a deliberate chirping, several
of the sounds recognizably the same. Speck was right
--rudimentary language. "Higher intelligence,"
the captain whispered. "It's outlandish. So far above
what we've always concluded about this era..."
  "Them have been theories," Speck said, "but not so
early." Kirk drew his head down another inch. The
desire to run
  crashed through him, but he had to stay here, keep those
creatures staring, long enough for M-Coy and the others
to clear out of the other killing ground.
  In the distance the large dinosaurs pounded off into the
trees, a sorry few collapsing before reaching
safety, drained of blood by their gory wounds. Before
they even had a chance to be prey, they would be eardon.
  A whistling shriek in the sky overhead made
Kirk look up--a mistake--to creatures
circling in the sky that were certainly not birds.
Recognizable from his earliest childhood, from kids'
stories and animations, animals soared overhead who
were not birds, occasionally taking a pelicanlike
single flap of their twenty-five-foot spans of
skin stretched over bone, with skeletal arms and
fingers visible through wing membranes, gracefully
flexing with the thermals overhead.
  Spock scanned the sky "Pterosaurs..."
  The flying creatures cruised in and out of the
artificial light, their heads shaped like a pair of
Scotty's isomagnctic pliers. Their elongated
pelicanlike beaks were toothless and looked heavy,
off balance with their scrawny extended necks, but their
flight was fluid and easy. Among them were smaller
birds. Probably waiting for the pickin's.
  "I thought they were extinct by now," Spock
rasped. Kirk glanced up. "Do they lay eggs?"
  "I believe so... Why?."
  "I'm hungry."
  Two of the pterdgsaurs swooped low to have a
look at the carnage, spiraling out of the sky so
suddenly that Kirk broke his concentration and ducked.
Perspective failed him, they were almost to the ground
before he realized it. They were huge! One was ten
feet in wingspan, the other over thirty feet. As
their long beaks scooped at the ferns, the
artificial lights startled them and they panicked.
They made three or four great flaps, found a
thermal, and rose again into the darkened sky.
  Spock slowly brought his tricorder up.
"Stunning, Cap-rain, if we could capture one--

  "We'd eat it. Let's get out of here."
  Usually Spock went about business with simple
circumspection, but today his smoothness was marred
by pauses and glances of concern--the worst kind.
Concern about Kirk, about whether the captain would be able
to go on commanding, about the pain he was forced to endure, and
even about whether he would live. In spite of his own
blurred senses, Kirk saw those glances and felt
that concern and knew there was nothing either of them could do but
slog, hack, carve their way through the unforesecable and
try to bend the situation to their needs.
  He wanted to tell Spock there was no cause for
worry. He couldn't.
  He offered a reassuring pat on the arm and a not so
polite push. "Go on, go."
  Bringing up the rear made him feel better, even
though he had to lean on a stick. He didn't dare
try to predict what curious creatures would do and
didn't want to be here when they did it.
  "Rusa... Rusa! l.xok!"
  "Look at what? Weeds and blood. Keep
moving."
  "Below us... someone else is here!"
  "You're in the way, technicist. Let the
spikers pass." Tons of equipment had
been a constant burden, much more taxing now that their
number was halved. In order to make room for all
the hardware, they had been forced to leave several of the
antigrays behind in the future and use the spikers
to haul harnessed rigs, but now there were fewer spikers
and not enough antigrays to make up for them, and they
grumbled by the minute for those forsaken antigrays.
  So much for the joy of the innocent hunt. Healthy
spikers slaughtered. Like simple animals.
  "Rusa, that light is mechanical. Look
down. See what I
  Rusa was still angry about losing the other spikers,
and if Oya wasn't cautious, she would be the
target of that anger.
  She said nothing but pointed in the correct
direction and handed the magnifier to Rusa, who
placed the magnifier over her eyes and waited for the
automatic focus.
  Holding her breath, Oya imagined what her
leader was seeing Artificial lighting implements
casting a blue silver glow on the night-shaded
plateau far below them, where not long ago they had
paused for entertainment and ended up expending their
weapons and sacrificing so many of their team.
  "Terrans. Starfleet!" Rusa
swung to Oya. "Did you give away our
plans?"
  Blinking, Oya looked up squarely. "Of
course not." Deprived of an argument, Rusa
moved her head from side to side, searching out a
better view. "The same animals that attacked
our spikers are stalking them. They'll be killed,
too."
  "No, it won't be enough," Oya insisted.
"Terrans have phasers. These have Starfleet issue.
No animals can stand against that. They must be here
to follow us--stop us... but how can they have followed?
And to be here so fast, they must have come back in time before
we did! But how could they know to follow?"
  Her thoughts grew frantic as one piled upon the
next, each with a new question attached.
  "When did they come through?" She let the others
shuffle past her and gazed down the slope. "The
moment we went through the time device, we either succeed
or fail. If we are successful, there would be no
humans to follow us through. So how are the humans
here? Do we fail? If we fail, no one would
bother to follow us! Why are they here? How are they?"
  "You think too much," Rusa grieved, glowering
down the hillside at the dome of cold
blue white light. "We have to send a team to kill
them. Don't interrupt me again."
  She swung around, away from Oya, and the colors
on her painted face winked in the starlight in three
panels.
  Oya's questions were like flies buzzing. She was just
annoying them with her struggle to understand the paradox.
  The Clan had developed thought as a necessary evil,
like passing waste. It had to be done, but it wasn't
very satisfying. Full belly, empty mind, and not
much drive beyond that.
  But for the few thinkers among her people, even their
simple space travel would never have been
acquired, and what they had of that they had borrowed from
other races. Instinct versus intelligence.
  One of the other females had joined Rusa at the
edge of the incline. "If they have phasers, they can
destroy our machine. We have to kill them first. Send
a team."
  "I will," Rusa said. "Two spikers... and
Oya goes."
  Oya shoved up on her heavy hind legs. "I
have to assemble the launcher!"
  "These spikers can assemble it."
  "Not well!"
  "As long as it works. Aur and I and the other
females are needed here to control the spikers.
You're lame and no good to lead or carry. You'll be
the leader of the attack on the Terrans."
  "I'm a technicist!"
  "You're a thinker. So think."
  Rusa spat the word with contempt. Thinker. To sit
and think. And Oya had committed the ultimate
shame: she had enjoyed it. The process of thinkin
element to element, evidence to conclusion,
to extrapolation. And she had been good at it. His
  Rusa, Aur, and the other females didn't
wait for her to choose her team. They took the
packs from two spikers, argued briefly among
themselves, and snapped their teeth at the spikers to make
them obey this bizarre twist of plans. Now it would
be only herself and two young spikers in an environment
that was perfect for them.
  Her desires tore in half--she watched as the
females trundled off with the other spikers and their
crates of precious technology. She wanted to go
with them and build her machine and watch as she commited
one single act that would give her civilization
prominence.
  Far down the hill slopes, the
artificial lights were winking out. The Starfleet
team was moving again.
  Excitement surged through her. She was going to have the
chance to hunt the most dangerous animals in the
galaxy.
  "This isn't a tropical holiday. We're in
enemy territory. We have to act like it." It was
well after midnight as Kirk and Spock saw the
soft yellow glow of the fires inside their camp.
Those gentle lights looked as inviting, as
civilized as the gentle lights and shadows of the
Enterprise's bridge. Smoke skeined along the
ceiling of their shelter, blunting against the awning of
fronds they had built. McCoy, Vernon,
Emmendorf, and Reenie had gone before them to the cave
and had been here doing their work while Kirk and
Spock gathered up their lighting implements and did
a lame man's version of hurrying after. "Captain!
Here, sir!" They angled toward Vernon's
voice. Why wasn't he in the cave? Vernon
stumbled out of the tangled overgrowth. "What's the
noise for?." Kirk asked. "Give me a
report."
  "Aye, sir--I've been searching about fifteen
minutes. No sign of 'era."
  "Of who?"
  "The two Klingons, sir. They pulled themselves
loose and they're gone. I'm sorry, sir. I
couldn't track them in this stuff." Furious, he
kicked at the heavy greenery. "Gone," Kirk
impugned and glanced at Spock. "Fine
Starfleet contingent. Can't even hold on to two
Klingons. All right, terminate the search. Continue
to fabricate weapons."
  "Aye, sir! Sbrry again, sir!"
  "I don't want to hear it."
  "Yes, sir!"
  "Captain--" Spock pulled up close.
"Lieutenant Bannon was in the cave with the
Klingons."
  "Let's go." Kirk plunged past him. As he
led Spock inside the wide opening, he was struck
with a gout of scents, some from the fire over to their
left, where Vernon and Reenie were cooking fish.
To his right, McCoy was already elbow deep in
autopsy on the slaughtered animal he'd taken a
fancy to. The spilled intestines, spools of
scalpeled muscle and visible white bone glistening
in the firelight made the food roasting at the other
fire about as appetizing as ear wax. And
at the far back of the cave, Lieutenant Baunon
lay on his back, apparently conscious. McCoy
looked up from the corpse. "Jimffeaye were getting
worried about you two. You both all right? Without
answering, Kirk stepped to where Bannon lay.
"Lieutenant?" He thought about kneeling, but he
probably wouldn't be able to get up again. "Did the
Klingons hurt you?"
  "I'm here, aren't I?" ""How did they get
away?"
  "Don't know. I was unconscious. Pulled out
the stake, I guess. Lucky they didn't brain
me with it." The young man's face was pallid, his
tone sandy, he wouldn't meet Kirk's eyes, and
he hadn't said sir once. Kirk straightened. Not
exactly teatime. He motioned to Spock to come with
him. They crossed to McCoy. "Report on
Bannon." McCoy glanced up. "It was a clean
wound. I cauterized it. He'll be walking by tomorrow
noon."
  "Doesn't sound that way."
  "Well, I didn't say he was happy about
it."
  "What're you doing?"
  "Postmortem. I'm finding some
surprises, too." The doctor motioned to his
medical tricotaler, which was lying propped against the
cave wall, clicking placidly. "I did
DNA testing, but it fouled up somehow. I got
ridiculous results."
  "Run it again."
  "Already doing that, Captain. Are you ready for the
shock of your life?"
  "Too late." Kirk took Spock's arm and
levered himself to the ground, then motioned for Spock to sit
beside him. "All right, Doctor. Make me
understand." McCoy moved his hands over the laid-open
corpse of the dinosaur as a pianist caresses the
white keys. "Does this animal remind you of
anything, Jim?"
  "Reminds me remind me of a lizard. So
what?"
  "It's not a lizard. Look. These are abutting
scales, not overlapping ones. It's primitive
skin. Primitive to us, I mean. We're not
looking at a crocodile here. And it's not a
dinosaur either."
  "Then what is it?"
  "It's a dinosaurold. That's not saying it's a
dinosaur. It does have a tail, but it's
still bipedal." The doctor pointed at a bundle of
muscles at the place where the ereature's tail was
attached to its spinal column. "When mammals
evolved, the caudofemoralis muscles--here, the
ones anchoring the tail--were replaced as the
pelvis rotated. But in this animal the
caudofemoralis muscle group is anchored by the
tail and is used to pull the leg back in the power
stroke of the running stride. What we end up with is
a very powerful stride. Something similar happens in
birds as a weight-saving measure. The most
similar stride to us would be that of an ostrich. And
look here--a four-chambered heart."
  "Like a bird's," Speck put in, not hiding his
infatuation. "A bird," McCoy confirmed,
engulfed in the ballad of anatomy. "And it has
an air sack system on the vertebral column.
This is why it doesn't sweat. This system is
involved with the braincase and the vertebrae, and it's
hooked into the lungs. This happens in birds, too.
The arm folds like an accordion. Upper arm
back, forearm forward, hand back. The legs do the
same. And this large bone here, forward pointing, shaped
like a pendulum... that's the pubis bone. But it's not
set back toward the tail ke a crawling
animal's. It's set forward. I'd say this
creature settles at rest the way a bird
does."
  "Doctor," Kirk bristled, "are you telling
me I'm looking at a twelve-foot-long
bird?"
  "I'm telling you you're looking at something
disturbingly similar to a cross between yourself and a bird.
But my friend here has a tail. That means, even though
it's a two-legged animal, it never had a
knuckle-walking ancestor. They're not fully
upright, because their 'hands" were already free to begin with.
They never went through that series of evolutionary
steps." He sounded delighted in a schoolroom
way,
  at all these things he could share with a captive
audience. Kirk peered at him. "Just how do you know
all this?"
  McCoy spread his bloody hands. "I'm a
doctor! Do you think I sent in'for a mail-order
certificate?"
  "Sorry."
  Dismissing him with a blink, McCoy swung around
on his knees to lift the heavy tail. "The tail
isn't just a balancing device. The whole
center of gravity is right here, over the hind legs.
That's for power at a full run. They're faster
than
  we are. After all, you have to be faster than your
food."
  "Or have a phaser."
  "Bear with me, Jim, I'm getting to something This
creature has a bulky body, which developed
to support a heavy head, which supports a large
brain. The neck is S shaped and maneuverable but
has to be thick enough to support that head with its large
brain--"
  Wait a minute, Kirk interrupted. "What's
a large head got to do with a large brain? A horse
has a large head, but the brain is only the size
of a lemon. How do you know this
  thing has a big brain?"
  "I looked."
  "Oh."
  "Look at the fingers."
  "Three."
  "Two," McCoy corrected, "with an
opposable thumb. That thumb is it." He
maneuvered the precious digits like
  a puppeteer making a marionette's
joints. "23 " His
  tts s what lets
  us develop tools, Jim. This is what built
every useful
  commodity in history, culturally and technically,
since the first deliberately lit campfire. Without
this, we could have a brain the size of a basketball and
not be able to make use of, it."
  Kirk forced himself not to press for a point. He
knew one was coming. Ordinarily all this would've held
his attention, but here in a sweltering cave, sick and
overburdened, he found concentrating an effort. Beside
him, Speck was utterly rapt by what McCoy was
saying, and that was a clue to shut up and pay attention.
  McCoy inched forward on his mud-caked knees
to turn the animal's face toward Kirk and
Speck. "The brow ridge is more typical of
primitive evolution. Most intelligent races
eventually lose the bone crest over the eyes because we
don't need protection from our friend's tails while
we go after prey."
  Kirk pointed at the animal's aft end. "But
this still has a tail."
  "Exactly."
  "Most upright hominids bear the lingering
traits of devolved mils, specifically a tail
bone," Spock assisted. "Humans, Klingons,
Rigelians--"
  "And Vuleaus," McCoy added joyously. The
doctor lifted the animal's beautiful but
mutilated head, its broken skull and
snaggle-toothed mouth resting pliantly in his hands.
"The muzzle is pushed downward slightly," he
said as he ran a finger down his own nose. "Like
ours. That indicates priority to the vision. And the
brain sits back, also like ours, to allow for better
positioning of the eyes. Jim, this is binocular
vision. This is a highly evolved element! It
suggests that vision is more important to them than
olfactory ability. And the bright skin colors
back that up. It
  suggests they're visually oriented, like birds and
primates."
  "Then we can sneak up on them," Kirk
concluded.
  McCoy wagged his free hand in frustration.
"That's not
  my point, Captain!"
  "Then what is!"
  "All right, all right..." Hesitation
clouded McCoy's response. His eyes grew
troubled, his mouth pressed and drawn, but finally he
folded his arms, ignoring the messy stuff on his
hands while professionally managing to keep most of it
off his shirt. "Jim, all this adds up to something that
doesn't make sense. They're so much like us... the
right eyes, the right thumb, the right evolutionary
priorities."
  Kirk gazed at one of the few people in the galaxy
he trusted as much as he trusted himself, and his brow
furrowed. "Go ahead, Bones. Say what you
think."
  Struggle showed in McCoy's eyes. "If I
wasn't in this place," he said slowly, "in this
time, I'd have to conclude that I'm looking at an
advanced being, with culture, with communication, and with
science. Nobody painted this animal's face. It
painted itself."
  

Chapter 24
  "AJ YOU xvmo to tell me," Kirk incited,
"that on a planet stuffed to the gun'Is with
dinosaurs, you've found an advanced being?"
  "Well, we're here, aren't we?" McCoy
twisted the statement with irony.
  "We don't look like the other
dinosaurs, Doctor. This thing does. Are you
trying to kill me just so I can turn over in my
grave?"
  McCoy shook his head at the argumentative
truth but refused to apologize. "Jim, it's about
the size we are, five to seven feet tall, a
hundred eighty pounds or so. I'd say that's the
physiological average. Think about it,
gentlemen... the right size for space travel.
Large enough to mine and manipulate ore, yet small
enough to fit in a spacecraft that can break out of
gravitational pull."
  Kirk felt the tight rack of his brow. He
turned to Spock. "So why didn't you think of this?"
The Vulcan actually broke into an expression of
surprise.
  didn't
  "Why
  "Follow that line of logic and see what you get.
What about the trace of refined metal you found? And the
acrylic pigment on their faces? Are these better
clues than we think?"
  "If we follow this line of logic," Spock
picked up, "hinoc-alar vision would provide them with
greater depth perception. Therefore they can be more
proficient in tool use. It
  also suggests that technology is more critical
to their civilization now than hunting, despite their
savage appearance. "Right," McCoy said.
  Kirk leaned forward. "You think this animal could
actually come from somewhere else? Another planet?"
  Here, McCoy stopped having the answers. His
brow furrowed, his folded his arms again and sat back
on his knees, gazing down at the sliced-up
creature that was
  starting to smell up their cave. "I don't think
so...
  "Why not?"
  "Because of the DNA of this thing."
  "You're running the analysis agmyou said it
fouled up."
  "Yes... and I'll give you my report as
soon as I can."
  "Make it sooner than that."
  Noticing Spock and McCoy glancing at each
other with those looks of concern that he appreciated but
really didn't like, Kirk rolled onto one knee,
put his hand out for them to help him to his feet, and when
he was up withdrew his hand as if to claim independence.
  "Get back to work. Food, weapons,
and answers. That's what we need, gentlemen. And
at this point, I'd be hard
  pressed to tell you which we need most."
  Spock nodded. "Yes, sir."
  "I'm getting some fresh air." Kirk stepped
past them without giving anyone a chance to ask if he
should be going outside alone.
  The night was tar black. Usually, he enjoyed the
black sky, the stars. Some had accused him of going
to space so he could see the stars all the time.
Well, there were stars. Lots of them.
  The sky. The empty sky. Before him, the jungle
was midnight green, sizzling with insects.
  And there was something moving out there. "Spock..."
  Holding himself stock still, leaning on his stick,
Kirk waited until he felt a living warmth
brush against his arm, then raised that arm sharply to stop
Spock and hold him against the false protection of the
rock wall.
  Knotted, Kirk nodded significantly out
into the jungle foliage to their middle left. Staying
still, Spock didn't need to look very long.
  "Followed us," Kirk very quietly observed.
  "Tenacity," Spock commented. "Could be a sign
of intelligence. Most predators are
frugal. They give up and pursue easier prey
before their energies are exhausted."
  Kirk shook his head. "There's more. They made a
significant kill today. Enough to feed ten times their
number for days. So why are they stalking us?"
  "I don't know... prudence, possibly?"
  "Instinct isn't prudent, Mr. Spock, it
acts on the moment.
  There's more going on here than survival."
  "What do you think it is, Captain?"
  "I think... curiosity." He buried a
shiver.
  Spock took his arm, firmly drawing him
inside toward the fire. "Would be well to avoid them
in any case, Captain. If you will please sit
down..."
  "Have Vernon stand guard at the entrance."
  "Mr. Vernon," Spock summoned.
  "Sir!" The tall kid unfolded himself from his
sitting position and bolted to attention. "Yes,
sir!"
  "As you were. Stand guard outside the entrance.
Notify us if you see anything moving in the
foliage--anything at all Take nothing for
granted. Do not fire your phaser unless
  your life is threatened. Is that clear?"
  "Aye aye, sift."
  "Dismissed."
  Vernon dashed outside, so fast he probably
scared off the things they'd sent him out there to guard
against.
  Inside, the cave had become a department store.
In one section, Bannon was recuperating, sitting
up now, staring at the jungle. In another, Reenie
was trying to rig a crude slingshot. On the
mezzanine, Emmendorf was scaling a big
sturgeon. On the fire near him, some kind of
acorns or nuts were merrily roasting on a flat
rock in the middle of the flames, and a sizable chunk
of animal meat--Kirk had no idea what kind--
was cooking on a spit rigged between two y-shaped
sticks in the ground. Well, they wouldn't starve.
  He made his way to the girl, reached down, and
scooped up one of the slingshots. Ignoring the grating
of his joints, he
  swung the sling in his hand, testing the weight.
  "Balance is off," he said.
  Reenie looked up as if she'd just been told
her newborn infant was ugly. "Oh, I'm
sorry, sir."
  "I didn't say it wouldn't work. But this piece
of wood is too short. Whoever fires this will have
to know how to compensate."
  "I'll start over, sir."
  "Good. What else have we got?"
  "Oh--um... we got some primitive
high-glucose grain and we're mashing it... Over
here is a yeasty organism, and Dr. McCoy had
an accelerant we can use to distill it. We're
boiling out the alcohol. With some hollowed-out pieces
of wood, we can make little Molotov cocktails.
Mr. Spock got an idea to dissolve some silver
in nittic acid--"
  "Precipitate it as silver chloride,"
Kirk said. "Any source of salt will work. But
it'll have to be done in the dark or it'll reduce
back to silver. Then you add ammonia--"
  "Dr. McCoy had some of that, too. We can
make silver amiochloride and dry it."
  "Yes, it dries to silver azide. Remember
it's a contact explosive. Scratch it, and it
blows. Don't let anyone touch it
  without being very careful. Where'd you get the silver?"
She wagged her bare fingers. "My wedding ting,
sir." Sadly, Kirk grinned at her.
"That's valiant, Ensign."
  "Captain?" It was McCoy, holding his
medical trioorder in both hands. "If you have a
moment, I've got the con-filmed DNA
results."
  Kirk looked down at Reenie. "Continue what
you're doing, Ensign."
  He hated being responsible for a woman in this
uncivilized place, especially one so young, who
should have a future. He shouldn't have brought her. He
hated to see women die.
  He shuffled to McCoy. "Go ahead, Bones.
Spock, over here."
  "Don't you want to sit down?" McCoy
asked, stalling. "No. Go ahead."
  "Well... I don't know how explain this. This
flies in the
  face of everything I said before. I don't know what
to do."
  "Tell me. I'll do something about it."
  "Jim... the..." He pointed to the dead
dinosauroid on their camp floor. "The DNA of
this animal points conclusively to Earth roots.
Despite all the anatomical evidence I gave
you before, this creature's ancestry is from this
planet."
  "How do you know?"
  "There are certain key indicators," McCoy
said, sparing the jargon. "I can take your DNA and the
DNA of a porcupine and find out that neither of you is a
Klingon. If I have the planet's
microbiology, I can tell you which planet
  you're from. Just don't give me Spock's--"
  "Are you that sure?"
  "I'd like to say Fm not sure, but I'm standing in
the middle of about eighty billion gross tons of
DNA that exactly matches this animal's." He
gestured to the great outdoors, then back at the
corpse on their floor. "This thing is from Earth."
  The cave was heavy with smoke from the cooking fires
and thick with the stench of the dead dinosauroid sprawled
across a quarter of the floor space. The revelation
they'd just had did nothing to perfume the bizarre.
  Spock's face was troubled. "I must disagree,
Doctor. I accept your autopsy results.
There can't possibly be so large a gap in the
fossil record as to allow for this creature's
existence here and now. This animal cannot possibly be
from Earth sixty million years ago. It has
highly advanced traits that simply cannot have
developed here yet."
  McCoy angled at him. "And the moon has a
man's face, Spock. Given millions of
monkeys, nature will eventually invent a
typewriter."
  "Captain," Spock persisted, "there is a
third possibility, which I find galling."
  Defiantly the doctor stepped closer. "Which
is?"
  "That we're a million years too late, that's
what," Kirk interrupted. "We just watched thousands
of animals like these go by on the Guardian's screen
after the change. If we're late, we're sunk."
Petulance came off in his tone, but he didn't
try to stop it. If he was staring at an ugly
truth, then the others would have to look at it, too.
He limped across the cave, casting a grudgeful
glance from wall to wall. "Jim." Spock followed
him and came around in front of him, not grim, but
earnest. "You're right, of course. However, we have
dealt with the Guardian before. It tends to send
travelers on the same currents and eddies.
Chances are fair that we've been deposited in the
correct area as the situation demands." Kirk
looked at him and snapped, "A guess,
Mr. Spock." He heard the harshness in his words.
"But I'll take your "fair chance" over
anybody else's sure thing," he added. "Could that
be it, Spock? Could we be too late?" Deep
trouble grooved Spock's face. "If I could
set up two correspondant tricorders to--"
  "Captain! Sir!" Vernon surged back
inside with his phaser drawn. "Something's coming through the
trees, straight toward us!" Without giving him
acknowledgment, Kirk swung around. "Ensign
Reenie, let's have those weapons. Quickly, quickly.
Attention, everyone. All hands... battle
stations!"
  

Chapter 25
  MOVE-tt in the junble gallery; thunder in the
wings. Every tiny sound, insect, footfall, was
deafening, enormous. Crunching through a carpet of
deadwood, eycads pricking their thighs, they went
into the deep gray shadows with shoulders hunched and
phaser hands leading. Flanked by Spock and
Vernon, Kirk struggled to stay a step or two
ahead of them. Reenie was right behind them. He thrust his
phaser outward. "Hold it!" Behind, his crew
stopped and held position. Laughing too hard
to move probably. He'd just told a
dinosaur to hold it. His reputation was saved when a
rough voice came out of the midnight jungle. "I
have no weapon." Well, at least the dinosaur was
cooperating. In English? Vernon plunged forward
two steps, straddled a fern with both legs flexed,
thrust his own phaser out with both fists and shouted,
"Starfleet Security! Get your hands up!"
  "My hands are up."
  "Come forward! No tricks!"
  "I possess no tricks..." Not English.
A translator's echow -- Klingon with an
English echo. Kirk moved to his right, toward
Spock, and let the Security man do what he
did best. Vernon ticked off a few seconds,
then plunged into the ferns and came out with a rumpled but
recognizable character. "Roth," Kirk prompted.
"Welcome back. Ensign Reenie, take charge
of the prisoner. Mr. Spock, Mr. Vernon,
secure the area for the other Klingon. Be careful and
stay together."
  "Very well, sir," Spock said, and both were
suddenly gone. Even in the dimness Roth's face was
scored with scratches from plants and thorns. His chin
was lowered, but he gazed up at Kirk with a roguish
languor. The captain peered back. "So
you missed us. Where's your friend?"
  "He was never my friend. He was my commander. I was
compelled to serve with him."
  "Where is he now?"
  "Killed by an animal. Out there."
  "What kind of animal?"
  "A terrible one." Suddenly Roth stopped
walking and turned sharply to him. "Kirk--"
  "Move along!" The girl held her phaser to the
Klingon's cheek, but he ignored her. "At
ease, Ensign," Kirk allowed. Roth pushed
toward him a step. "Kirk, you understand me. We have
spoken honestly to each other. I have realized I
can't survive in this world. I do not know how you brought
me here or why, but I do not wish to spend my life
out there alone. If I swear not to act against you,...
will you promise not to stake me down again?" Beneath the
sense of bluff and tactical suspicions charged
between them was an undeniable quiver of truth. Kirk
caught it, just a glimpse, like a tiny red lizard
ducking under a leaf. But there had been a falter in
Roth's voice, a hesitation that may have been
deceit. Kirk tapped his instincts, experience, his
own talent as a rascal wire-puller to interpret
what he was seeing and hearing. If there was a
scheme here, it was deep laid and subtle. He
couldn't read Roth like other Klingous he'd known. This
wasn't the kind of Klingon he was used to, but a
whole new batch. A Klingon who differentiated
between enemies, allies, and nonenemies. You are not
my enemy. "I won't stake you down," Kirk
said. "But I want your promise as a soldier.
You and I both know how important that is to men like
us."
  "One more thing..."
  "Yes?" Letting his head sag, Roth sighed,
"Have you got any food? I have found nothing I dare
eat. Nothing but animals that spit and trees with
needles growing from them and plants that swallow whole
insects! What kind of planet is this? I know how
to survive in open space, but not on...
parasitica! shrubbery!"
  "Yes, we have food," Kirk said. "In
fact, you may find you've never eaten better in your
life." Spock and Vernon appeared as Kirk
drew his prisoner out from the fronds. "Area's
seems securee, sir," Vernon reported.
"No sign of the other one."
  "Very good. Carry on."
  "Captain," Spock began, staying far
enough from the Klingon, "my science tricorder holds a
base encyclopedia of information on general Earth
prehistory and history from the Office of the Federation
Direction of Archives... physics, biology,
paleogeology, as you requested. With your permission
I'll attempt to merge information in this unit with that
history that we recorded passing on the screen of the
Guardian."
  "Yes, Spock. More than anything we have to find
out who changed history, and how they did it."
Spock lowered the tricorder and fell into a more
relaxed pose. "Perhaps this would be an opportune
time for you to rest. Perhaps eat."
  "I will. Don't worry. Go on." But Spock
was worried. It showed on his face without rein. As
Reenie and Vernon ushered the prisoner to one side
of the shelter, drawing him along despite his horror
at the shriven corpse on the floor, Spock
ushered Kirk inside so McCoy could take over.
The one subject upon which Spock and McCoy
trusted each other was Jim Kirk, and he knew that.
Spock couldn't give him orders but knew
McCoy could. It made Kirk angry at his
condition, belligerent
  against treatment, as if that would help. The
weakness was harder this afternoon to will against than it had been this
morning He was in almost constant discomfort now that
MCC-OY couldn't afford to be free with the
painkillers. Inside, the aromas were thick, the
fires still crackling, and that corpse beginning to fester.
He thought about telling MCC-OY to get rid of it but
knew the doctor would've done that already if he were
finished with the thing, Apparently McCoy still wasn't
happy with that DNA conclusion. The doctor showed up
immediately to take Kirk from Spock, and the two of them
looked at each other with that plying worry that made
him feel too far out of the picture. "All right,
gentlemen, as you were," he rumbled, pushing them both
back a step, and they broke if up. As Spock
turned away, McCoy handed Kirk a ground-out
rock with a heavy glazed liquid in the middle.
"Boiled-down tree sap," the doctor said.
"Sugar content. Eat it." Kirk took the rock
and sniffed at the concoction. "What do I do? Pour
it on the roasted acorns?"
  "If you want to define those as acorns, be my
guest. It's not bad on the pond-lily roots
either."
  "All right, I'll go over here." The Klingon was
picking at a fish tail. Out of the whole
sturgeon, he wanted the tail? He looked up as
Kirk sat down. "So," Roth said. "Do you dine
with enemies?"
  "What we are to each other," Kirk told him,
"time will tell. But we're not enemies. You said it
yourself."
  "Then why do you run with a Vulcan?" Kirk
remained passive. "He's my friend." Roth
paused. the Vulcan way is childish. They fought
the Empire and won but retreated instead of pursuing.
Retreated! They didn't win. They only made
sure we didn't win! Is that any way to fight a
war? I do not respect them." "You did once. Enough
to try to get the Klingons and the Romulans talking.
Maybe it failed, but your idea was on the right
track. The Vulcans are united, adaptable, and
in spite of their claims of total peace, they're
good fighters. They stood up for themselves, and your
empire couldn't fight a two-front war."
  "Their only wrong tactic was failure to press
advantage," Roth said. "After each attack,
instead of striking the weak spot, they simply sat
back and waited for the next attack." Putting his
"plate" down on his swollen knee, Kirk leaned
forward. "It was a
RomulanwromuluSnganspy who betrayed you, not
the Vulcans." Roth stopped eating also and shook his
head. "I don't like you, Captain. I don't like
you at all."
  "Then tell me, how does a pilot become a
Spear?." The Klingon paused again but seemed
relieved that the subject of the personal had been
forgiven for a moment. "There are no ceremonies, no
rituals, no good-bye... The greatest honor is
to tell no one. The honor is depleted by letting
anyone know you are walking dead."
  "Why wouldn't you want your family's
support?"
  "It is a shame to tell. We can't give it
sways"
  "Because morale is crucial to your people. Isn't that
right?" Roth peered at him, then shrugged. "I really
don't like you." Kirk deliberately didn't say
anything, letting the silence pressure the Klingon.
"We are a society that survives," Roth said.
"That is all we do. It is how we raise our
children, how we use our resources, everything There is
nothing left except the necessities of
survival." He looked out at the sky,
remembering. "The dying was not so hard, but
to remain silent was harder than I expected. To know
I was seeing each of my family for the last time... but
I couldn't give it away, or my family would
remember me that way and my act would be a selfish
one."
  "But why did you volunteer?" Kirk pressed.
"You're healthy, strong young enough. Why sacrifice
yourself?." For a moment Kirk thought the Klingon was
choking on his roots and fishtails, but that wasn't
it. Roth had stopped dead in his confessions and couldn't
seem to go on.
  Kirk simply gazed at him as if they'd known
each other twenty years. He could get Spock
to open up this way, too, if his timing were right. Just that
stare. Nose down a little, lips pursed, brows
up, eyes just tight. Roth sighed. The anger
flushed from his face. "War is the only way.
Fight enemies, then fight friends. Someone will always
want what another has. The teachings of Surak
only function if all agree. The only place
where all agree," he said, "is on Vulcan."
His mouth turned hard. He stared at the ground between his
feet, raised the fish tail to his teeth and tipped
it in half. "Excuse me, Captain." McCoy
stepped in. "Eat this, please." He
handed Kirk a weed. Kirk looked at it without
taking it. "What's that?"
  "Few million years from noTOMORROW, I think
it'll be a foxglove."
  "Why am I eating it?"
  "My medical tricorder indicates this contains
digitalis and I want you to have a dose. It'll
serve as a facsimile for some more refined medication.
Now, be careful and only eat what I give you.
Too much of it would be poisonous, and you're
poisoned enough."
  "We couldn't skip this step?"
  "No." Without waiting to be dismissed, McCoy
dismissed himself. Roth watched him go. "Being wounded,"
he said, "is inconvenient." Biting off a leaf,
Kirk chewed it like tobacco. "Don't change the
subject."
  "We are enemies in your time," Roth said
abruptly. "I have seen it in your eyes from the start.
You are like us, yet you hate us. What are my people
to you, Captain?" "In our "time," your people and mine
have struck an agreement. Because of that, the Klingons have
prospered despite being hemmed in."
  "You hemmed them in?"
  "Yes, we did. They're combative and
imperialistic. The cooperative nations of the
Federation had to establish a neutral zone as a
buffer and allow the Klingons to prosper as long as they
don't encroach upon the rights of anybody else.
There's even an element of commerce. I showed you the
pictures." Roth buffed at him. "Healthy
Klingous, many children, clothing like yours... big ships with
light in the corridors --it is a fantasy."
  "It's no fantasy. It's my reality. My
Klingons have a martial culture, but there's peace
for everyone through our strength. Gradually they're doing
business outside their culture, and it works for
everybody. You see life as punishment--that's what
constant war has done to your civilization. There's
been nothing to hold back your butchery of each other.
I'd become a Spear, too, if that was all 1
had to live for." He shoved the rock off his knee.
Melted tree sap oozed into the sand. "If you
don't believe me," he insisted, "tell me why
I would bother to fake all this instead of just killing
you?" They stared at each other. Slowly the
animosity flowed out of Roth's eyes. His shoulders
settled. Leaning over, he scooped up the rock with
Kirk's tree sap trickling out and ran a finger
along the edge to stop the spilling, then handed
the questionable delicacy hack to him. "It is a good
question," he said. Kirk took the rock. "Is the
answer any good?" Roth picked at his fish, took
a bite, chewed, spat out about half of it. "On
Vulcan I was a treaty monitor. I came
to respect them before I discovered the truth. Before they
lied to me. Their talk of peace showed itself in
battle. They cut our fleet down without second
thought." Pushing, Kirk undetgirded, "But..."
Roth twitched. "But they... Vulcans have
families. They don't die young, they have other
interests... They live for more than just survival.
They talked to me about diversity and peace. I
believed them. I tried to change the Klingon pattm
It brought me to disaster when my truce was betrayed.
My laad said contamination was too strong in me. They
took me away from Vulcan, lowered my position.
They turned on the Vulcans, and the Vulcans
hammered them back."
  "You were drummed out?"
  "What?"
  "Stripped of rank, kicked out."
  "A trained pilot? Never. I could disembowel the
emperor and I would still fly. I was... disgraced.
My family was in shame. No one would
speak to them."
  "Why should you pay so much for a good effort?" Kirk
said with a shrug. "Intermediaries have been trying and
failing throughout history." Suddenly Roth's eyes
flared and he looked up. "Your history, not mine!
The Vulcans are liars! They kept me from the most
important factor--that their ways are planetbound
and cannot survive in diversityi Pacifism works
only if all are the same?" He cranked around and
fiercely glared across the cave at Spock, who was
working with the two tricorders. Spock stopped in
place, poised in case the Klingon turned that
expression into an attack. There was caution but not
revelation in Spock's face. Kirk knew these
things weren't a surprise to his first officer. The
preachings of the long-dead pacifist philosopher
Surak hadn't pulled Spock away from Kirk's
side nor from Christopher Pike's before him.
Kirk seized Roth's meaty upper arm and dug his
fingers in. "Leave him alone," he ordered. With the
grip he forced the Klingon to break off his sizzling
accusations across the cave. Roth hunched his shoulders
and he turned his back on S pock. Keenly,
Spock met Kirk's eyes with bottled thanks,
then made a point of attending to his
tricorters. "My people did not stop fighting among
themselves until we found someone else to fight," Roth
said, caustic now. "If the Spear tactic works and
we defeat the rornuhSngan, we will turn on the
Vulcans. When they are gone, we will turn on
each other. If the romustuSnga defeat us, then
they will be the ones who doom the Vulcans. What
difference does it make? Already romustaSngan
ships are on others of their own kind, scrabbling like
animals over scraps. And when the scraps begin
to disappear, each will fight harder to be the one who
brings in the last scrap. Like us, Captain, the war
is all that holds them together. When it goes, they will
murder each other out of habit. And in their death
throes they will slaughter all who are ensisved
until not a living thing breathes. I became a
Spear to reclaim what shred of dignity was left
to me. I wanted to find a way to kill royserf
by hurting my enemy, to die with respect. But I
did not die. When I tried to escape, I was going
to find a way to kill myself, because I wanted to die."
Looking up at Kirk now, Roth no longer
hesitated to meet the captain's trenchant eyes.
He bent forward until his elbows rested upon his
knees, and he clasped his hand "I would
slit a thousand throats," he said, "for one day of
peace."
  "All hands, front and center." The crew was
nervous beneath their fatigue. Sweltering heat sapped
their energy, yet they were jumpy. They'd done a
befflywhop into the past and now all their muscles
hurt and their minds were workillg like sailors on the
zero-four-hundred bow watch--nothing to stare at but
eternity stretched out before them and no way to rest.
Blanketed by the rising stench of the wood fires and the
dead dinosauroid, they gathered around the log where their
captain was sitting "Mr. SpocLike So ahead."
Spock stood beside him. His voice filled the
cave. "We have a working, incomplete theory
regarding our situation: we are on Earth, sixty
to seventy million years before our own time. Fauna
is consistent with the summer months of the Cretaceous
era, southeastern North America, in the vicinity of
southern C, Georgia along the spine of what will
eventually become the Appalachian Mountain chain.
All is as it should be," he said and paced to the
corpse on the floor, "except for this animal.
Despite appearances, this animal is not consistent
with biped development in this era, but is several
million years beyond that. The pigment on the
creature's face is acrylic paint, certainly
not available in the late Cretaceous. These
inconsistencies give us reason to suspect
contamination by other advanced beings than ourselves.
Confirmation of that is our new objective."
  "Thank you," Kirk said. "Strange as it may
seem, this is good news. We've been looking for a
focal point in time and we guessed it was the
asteroid, but we weren't sure. Now we've found
advanced beings who don't belong here any more than we
do. That means they're here for a specific purpose.
It also means we still have a chance to stop them. But keep
in mind, if there are other advanced beings out there, then
we're a target. Any questions?" He hoped there would
be a few. For some reason the silence was nettlesome.
"When dawn comes, we'll fan out. Work in pairs.
Mr. Emmendorf, take the first guard watch
outside. Don't stray far."
  "Aye aye, sir." Pushing to his feet and
leaning on his stick, Kirk hobbled around the dead
animal, glancing at McCoy and implying with his
eyes that it was really time to get rid of this thing. He
made his way to where Bannon sat huddled at a
fire. "Mr. Bannon, do you consider yourself fit for
duty'?" Kirk handed a communicator
down to him. But the lieutenant didn't take the
communicator. Didn't even look at it. "Who
cares?" Bannon's hair was matted with sweat,
soggy red spikes dawing at his eyes. Firelight
glinted off the white of his cheeks. His shoulders were
hunched forward. "Lieutenant," Kirk said, "you will
address me as "sir."" Bannon's sweat-stung
eyes flipped up. "Go to hell." The air in the
cave electrified. Kirk felt the prickle of the
crew's eyes. And the Kilnport was watching, too.
Insubordination was a nasty thing. It made him itch.
He stepped back a pace. "Get on your feet,
Lieutenant." The focus of all the others was on
him. He didn't care. His attention was on the
discipline drying to dust before
  . "dis: Favoring his injured thigh with considered
drama, the unshaven lieutenant slowly got up.
Every movement rotting with melancholia, Bannon
wagged his arms at his sides in one bitter,
languorous shrug. "So I'm on my feet.
What do you want?" FO-RATHER the first time Kirk
noticed that Bannon was a good ten " inches taller
than he was. But he wasn't ten inches madder.
bey the Star ffleet Code of Conduct as applying
to officers," Kirk said. "Who cares?"
Bannon said. "We're going to die in this moldy
sewer. You can't get us back and Starfleet's not
coming to rescue us." Jim Kirk met his young
officer's melted mood fiber by tiber with his own
doggedheSS. He had no old-world recourse of
lashings or keelhauling. Usually there was no trouble
keeping the devotion of a starship crew, who considered
service as much privilege as duty. If
insubordination appeared, it was on a much lower level
than the starship's bridge, shown to officers of the
deck, bosuns, watch leaders, or even
bunkmates. The crew themselves kept each other in
line before irritation could siphon all the way to the
bridge. "Lieutenant," he said, "we are
Starfleet." . Bannon's right eye flinched, and
he blinked. His hands tlexed, but there was no other
movement. -" Kirk squared off and braced both
legs. His cane pirouetted and hit the dirt.
"All right," he said. "I'm lame, I'm
feverish, weak, drugged, and overworked. If you think
you can take me, mister... there's no better time."
Jim Kirk said his piece and stood waiting,
muscular arms slightly flexed, chin up a little,
ready to take the punch he'd dared be thrown.
Bannon swallowed hard, then again and again,
until he seemed to be sucking on rocks.
Everything was finished for him. He had achieved a
scientist's paradise and hated it. The massiveness
of the past was overwhelming him. And now he had insulted
and threatened a senior officer. It didn't get
any worse than that.
  So he dumped his commission on the cave floor and
pitched a roundhouse right at his captain.
  He'd as well have launched a paper plane. The
punch he threw was predictable, sketched on page
one of every boxing manual in the UFP, and the easiest
to dodge.
  The boy's height betrayed him. Kirk's
compact stature along with his brawlet's
scrapbook of lower-deck vendettas let him
recoil just right. He slid under Bannon's
twenty-foot arm, rabbit-punched him in the ribs,
concentrating the power of his whole weight into the
five-inch square of his fist. Then he pulled back
to see the effect.
  Bannon's eyeballs were halfway across the
cave, his face purple as a grape. He staggered
back two steps, one elbow drawn inward to his
ribs, hands knotted. There would be no
  second swing. Bannon was done with
defiance. "Captain, we're being attacked!"
Ah, beautiful distraction.
  Emmendorf stumbled toward them, one finger wagging
at the midnight jungle. "Sir--sir! Like Mr.
Spock said!"
  The stocky Security man swallowed and pointed,
but that was all he could get out that made any sense.
  Outside there were sounds of phaser fire.
"Acknowledged. Go on," he said to Emmendorf. As
the Security man charged back outside, Kirk
turned back to Bannon. "I'll give you two
seconds to decide whether you want to be in my
crew anymore. Either take another swing at me
or get out there and do your job."
  Ignoring the humming crackle of shots in the
jungle, Kirk refused to dismiss one emergency for
another.
  Bannon shivered, his tongue pressed up against his
teeth, both elbows tight to his hammered body
now.
  Scooping up an armload of their contrived
weapons, Kirk shoved them into Bannon's arms.
"You're on report. Get moving. Roth, stay
here. McCoy, make sure he does."
  As Kirk veered away, Spock shoved
the cane into his hand, and they both plunged for the cave
mouth, toward phaser shots whistling through the
magnolias.
  In the rush of battle Kirk forgot his enfeeblement
and drove himself into fighting posture, head low, eyes
searching for his crew as they defended themselves with their
phasers.
  Green lances spewed through the foliage, casting a
green flickering light on wide dark leaves, set
fire to the fronds, and turned ferns into smoking
flakes.
  Something was wrong about this. The neon green streaks
fell quiet, then started up again. A lot of
energy... Whoever was shooting didn't care about using
up their weapons.
  "Spock!"
  "Yes, Captain, I see."
  "Answers our question, doesn't it?"
  "Yes, it does."
  They crouched together briefly. Starfleet issue
weapons emitted a red-orange lance of phased
light, different from any others, from Klingon,
Romulan, or any other known destructive
handheld energy emitters. But these streaks were neon
green, right off a peacock's tail.
  He leaned toward Spock. "Numbers?"
  "Shots are coming from two distinct directions,
sir. Possibly three. Firing seems
arbitrary... possibly an attempt to frighten
ns."
  "Let them think it's working. Take the left
flank."
  They melted away from each other into the sealy
bushes.
  "Vernon!" Kirk called. "Have you got the
alcohol grenades?"
  "Got'm, sift'
  "No better time than now. Let's introduce
ballistic chemistry to the Cretaceous era. Commence
firing, Mr. Vernon."
  Vernon bent down. Before him lay a wooden
catapult about the size of a man's folded leg, and
beside it eight plant stalks sliced into cylinders and
standing like a little brown infantry. Each wore a
tufted hat of dried moss. Not very big, but they
didn't have to be.
  Setting the miniature catapult, Vernon
fitted one of the plant stalks into the launcher, then
clumsily tried to ignite the dried moss with the tip
of his hand phaser's boost injector. The
phaser clicked but didn't spark the moss.
Self-conscious, Vernon hunched his shoulders and
kept trying.
  "What setting have you got it on?" Kirk asked,
empathizing with the nervous young man.
  "Stun select, sir," Vernon squawked.
  "Go to disrupt select. Keep your face
away."
  "Oh--yes, sir."
  He flinched when the phaser sparked. The moss
caught
  fire and burned enthusiastically.
  "Get rid of it," Kirk urged.
  For a horrible second Vernon fumbled with the
catapult, then found the catch and tripped it. The
rubber thong holding the flexed branch that would do the
shooting, in real life a tourniquet from
McCoy's all-knowing medikit, did its job as
if preordained. The catapult jumped, the thong
flipped, and the flaming stalk soared through the foliage
to unfortunately smash into one of the twenty-foot
palmetto trunks. The stalk busted into shards, the
hastily distilled alcohol inside ignited, and the
tree was set on fire.
  The flash illuminated a dinosanroid
face. Yellow and red paint flickered and the shapes
of the elongated face and bladelike teeth
glittered.
  "Adjust your aim," Kirk snapped. "Two
degrees higher." The second volley flew through
the leaves in a bright arch through the darkness, seemed for
an instant to disappear, then flashed near the ground.
Their reward was an agonized howl.
  "Got'm? Vernon chirped. "Keep firing.
Drive them back."
  "Aye, sir."
  Together they tracked sounds, motion, and those green
lancets.
  When they were down to two cocktails, Kirk
motioned Vernon to cease fire. "Good shots.
Move in."
  Vernon grabbed a four-foot javelin and
scratched into a run, parting a stand of shrubby
preoaks with the bulbs of his shoulders. Like an
offensive lineman the Security man dodged
stumpy ten-foot plant trunks that would've
cheerfully taken his skin off and charged one of the big
attackers with a fervor that made his captain proud.
  Kirk shuddered at the sight. Vernon was
unprotected from the whipping tail and
erescent-shaped hacking claws, going after that huge
animal with nothing but a four-foot javelin.
  Vernon swung at the beast's head, made
contact, and put a five-inch furrow in the
animal's neck with the javelin blade. Blood
sheeted down the animal's long neck to its shoulder.
  Starfleet's Security team was the best trained
in the settled galaxy, capable of wrestling down
any other humanoid. But they weren't
bullfighters. They weren't trained for this. Vernon
went after the animal's eyes and was knocked back
by a whip-crack of the thick tail. He staggered up
and braced the javelin above his head in both hands.
He charged, made a jump, and forced the javelin
sideways into the dinosauroid's mouth. Digging his
toes into the dusty slab, Vernon crammed forward,
a hand on either side of the ereature's enormous
snaggled mouth, pushing angrily on the two ends of the
javelin.
  The dinosauroid gargled and twisted against the
pressure Vernon put on its mouth. Bringing its
long hands forward, it gripped Vernon around the body
as if dancing. If it dug those claws in or
punctured his lungs with those Opposable thumbs-
"Vernon, use your phaser!" Kirk
shouted.
  Vernon grimaced in the middle of the hand-to-hand
fighting. "Don't worry, sir, I won't use
it!"
  Kirk took a breath to shout again, but there was no
chance. The dinosauroid cranked its neck hard
to one side, tipping Vernon almost completely over
on his head. The javelin fell from its mouth, and
Vernon hit the ground and rolled, still clinging to the
wooden shaft.
  Kirk whipped his own phaser up, but there was too
much movement for a narrow phaser beam. If he
switched to wider beam, he'd take out his own man.
The Security guard was already back on his feet,
viciously slashing his short spear, whipping it in
both hands like a club, not knowing how to make the sharpened
point work in his favor against an animal whose head and
teeth reached out farther than its hands. The
dinosaurcid moved in on him, caught the javelin
in its teeth, and snapped the wood to splinters.
"Vernon!" Kirk called again. "Use your
phaser!"
  "Yes, sir!" the man called, but he kept
slashing with the frayed end of the stick. "Get out of the
way!" Kirk attempted, trying again
to get a clear shot, but Vernon parried and jumped
between him and the dinosaurcid. "Vernon! Down!
Down!" Where was Spock? Any tree trunk
could've been a crouching man or another of those
animals waiting to attack. He moved his bad
leg under him but didn't dare stand up. He couldn't
move fast enough in this condition to duck a shot or
defend his crewmen. Vernon was down, a lifeless
rag on the slab, with the dinosauroid's wide foot
pressing him to the hard ground. As the animal aimed
its toothy snout and began a move that would've
ripped Vernon's head off, three arrows thunked
into its thick neck just below its jaw. It roared and
shook its head, raising both arms to pull at the
thick stalks embedded in its neck. Kirk craned
to see where the arrows had come from--that's where Spock would
be, with Emmendorf and Reenie. Where Bannon
was, he had no idea, and the thought flickered that the
humiliated lieutenant might have run away.
Bringing up his phaser again, Kirk took aim through the
trees at the dinosaurcid. The head was coming up and
down, in and out of the shadow as the creature dug at the
short arrows in its throat and screamed in frustration.
He held his fire. "Move, move," he
muttered, holding the phaser in both hands,
waiting for a clear shot. If the animal were in
physical contact with Vernon, a phaser hit could
suck the downed man away, too. He couldn't
risk that. "Left flank!" he shouted. "Charge!"
As he came into the open, flanked by two
fern-topped trunks as thick around as he was, a
bright grin flash blinded him. Everything around him
exploded. His body was throttled by flying tree
scales that tore at his arms and face. The trees
turned drunkenly, trees danced, and the ground rose
up to meet him.
  

Chapter 26
  "DON'T move! Don't fire! Hold your
fire! Idiots!" Oya shrieked at the spikers,
but they weren't listening. The two males had come
barreling out of the bushes toward the enemy outpost,
drawn by the scent of smoke, cooking fish, and dead
flesh. If they weren't held back, the smell of
blood would drive them wild and she would have no hope
at all of controlling them. The spikers were lathered,
moving on the imperative with princelike
unresttaint, jumping beautifully, ducking, charging,
making perft targets. Children! Males! They had
never fought against Starfleet before. They would give
away in seconds that there were only the three
of them. Their attack would dissolve a-Sust
opponents of this aliber. The air detonated a
few strides from her, a barbaric flash that frightened
her into falling back. A few Paces away, one
of the spikers fell back, too, blinking and
desperately scraping hot sparks from his fa.
Cautiously lifting her head, Oya sniffed at the
air. Alcohol. Where in this jungle had the
Starfleet people found alcohol? While Rusa and those
other fools had been playing games with loal
animals and being slaughtered for it, the Starfleeters
had scraped an explosive out of the past! Clang
--a stone-bladed weapon fell against Pae barrel
of an energy pistol, and Oya turned in time to see
one of the humans charge a spiker with some sort of
spear. The spiker's energy pistol flew out of his
grip and skidded into the moss. The other humans were
shouting, driving the spiker back. He had allowed
himself to be pressed up against the opening of the humans'
camp, and now he was paying for it in having no room
to maneuver. Leveling her own weapon, Oya
selected a target: the Vulcan among them. He
was an oilocr, a commander, and his loss would
debilitate them. All at once, across the breadth
of the cavern mouth, she saw a glint of
amber gold illuminated by the flash of another
alcohol bomb. Oya scoured her memory for
Starfleet color codes. Amber-- Their
captain! If she could cut his legs off, slice
him in half, the enemy team would be crushed.
Humans were nothing without their leaders, without
ancestors and histories on which to stack their
confidence. She pivoted to change her aim. She
shook her head. How often her culture talked about
killing, crowed about strength, about massacres, about
conquest--but it was all talk, all howling in the
night! The Clan would have to possess more than talk
if the future were to be taken. Bracing her good leg
on a mass of roots, she narrowed one eye for
focus and settled lightly on her resting bone.
She tilted her bulky hindquarters toward the
braced leg, angled her shoulders, lay her head
back on her curved neck, held her breath, and
fired. Chemical green energy broke from the
muzzle of her pistol and split the hanging moss
bundles directly in front of her, not random and
slanted like the spikers' careless shots, but level
with the ground. Moss and snaggled fronds burst
into flame. She was blinded by the brightness of her own
weapon. Instantly there was a bitter
crack somewhere in the bushes. Had she killed the
leader? Was he cut in half by the cauterizing beam?
As she forced her eyes open, she imagined the
tattered Starfleet team, stunned and frazzled
by what she had done, decapitated, confused, too
frightened to carry on. And in their frazzle they could be
easily cut down. Now the spikers would pay
attention to her. Rusa would pay attention. Aur and the
other females would listen. She couldn't see their
captain anymore. Where he had stood there was now a
shattered and burning stump. Suddenly she wished she
had talked With him before she had slashed him down.
Why hadhe come here? How had he known to come? In a
flurry of movement to her right, the trapped spiker
now had shafts of wood stuck in his neck. He
pounded the ground to threaten two more Starfleet men who
had cornered him and plunged into the foliage to get
room to maneuver. The bushes rustled, and he
plunged back toward the Starfleet team, but they
didn't disperse. They stood their ground and hammered
the spiker with well-planned shots of weapons they
had built from these rocks and sticks, and two more of
them now were draggingthe collapsed teammate off the
slab of rock while the others held the furious
spiker back. A shriek at her side
rattled her mind and made her stumble. A force
struck her in the neck, snapping her head back and
knocking her onto her resting bone. Pain shot across
her shoulder. Blood squirted at the side of her
face. She knew her shoulder had been laid open
in a violent slash. Tucking her tail, she
swung around with her claws flashing out at the height
of a Terran. The scent of blood, even her own,
made her suddenly wild. But it wasn't a Tenan
who had attacked her. There was something on her back
now, but she spun so fast that she threw the weight
off. A long gray form tumbled into the leaves, raking
down shreds of hanging moss. Horror swelled as
Oya saw what had attacked her. Not Starfleet
--she wished it had been. Her torn body bled
freely as she raised her weapon again and tried
to aim. Out of the doze came a terrible mutation of her
own face, mouth parted in a shriek, tongue twisting,
lips peeled back, eyes yellow and dilated for
night attack, plunging toward her. She counted off
terrible seconds until the animal was nearly on
her again, then opened fire. Green light broke
into the leaves and burned the open mouth of the animal
charging her. It choked as though trying to swallow the
concentrated energy, its eyes flaring, then the
ghastly stink of burning flesh rose in a puff, and the
animal broke into pieces, and each piece
sizzled away like ashes cooling,. There were more coming--
she could smell them! She had to protect herself, find
out if the other spikers were still alive, order them
to fall back, and let the ancient predators kill
the humans. She lowered her head and tail and began
to back away when a voice behind her made her spin
around, crushin8 the leaves as she turnedt A
Starfleet phaser hovered between her eyes, just out of
arm's sweep. Oya closed her eyes and prepared
to burn.
  Out of a green shabby nowhere Spock appeared and
put his shoulder to the shattered stump beside Kirk,
ducking from the hot shards. His voice was a baritone
shock of reassurance in the panic erupting around
them. "Jim, are you all right?"
  "What's left of me is," Kirk coughed from under
a palmetto. His face was spackled with bits of the
blown-up tree trumk, his uniform shirt pocked with
ash, and he came out on his hands and knees, but he was
still alive. "How many of those things are there?" Spock
pulled him to a better position. "At least ten.
These are tile troodonts you noted were stalking us."
  "Vernon was following my order to hold
back use of the phasers." Kirk's words were
bitter, his eyes narrow and sary. "I didn't
intend that he should sacrifice himself
  "Spocld" An unkind elbow in the chest crushed
him aside as Kirk fired past him into a lizardish
face that charged them
  out of the fanning leaves. In an instant the face,
its glare recoiled in shock, blew into hot
colors, and were erased by the bright civility of a
phaser strike. And what a stink it left behind.
"Thank you," Spock rasped as he levered himself
up. The side of his face was bleeding now, laid
open by the hand- sized overlapping scales on the
remains of the trunk. "Did you get Vernon out of
there?" Kirk asked. "Yes, sir. Roth is
defending the cave mouth."
  "Willingly?"
  "Quite willingly. He has no more desire to face
these individuals than we do."
  "You gave him a phaser?" Spock looked
insulted. "He's using a spear and a knife."
"Where are the other two dinosauroids?"
  "Unknown. When we killed the one that attacked
Vernon, the others ceased fire. They may have
fallen back, but it's more likely they're
also under attack by the troodonts. Thererand there."
  "Communicate to all hands to use phasers until
we drive the little ones back," Kirk said. "I
don't want to lose anybody else."
  "Very well." Spock scanned the shuddering,
noisy jungle, then turned and spoke as if they were
back on the ship's bridge, safe. "Are you
sure you're all right?" Kirk frowned but realized
he must really look a wreck for Spock to ask
twice. Probably had plant sap in his hair and
wood flakes all over his face. He turned the
frown into a shrug that gave the Vulcan his answer,
along with a companionable shove. "So I'll
impress the girls with my bruises. Go on."
Spock hesitated but ultimately knew he would
have to leave his debilitated captain whether he liked
it or not. Kirk silently appreciated the concern
but didn't like it. He was glad when Spock
filtered away into the bushes. "Be careful," he
called quietly after him. The situation scalded
him. The native assailants were a hell of a lot
more dangerous than intelligent aliens with modern
weapons that were at least a known quantity and something the
Starfleeters were accustomed to. These smart
primitives, though... they knew the
savage arts. Shrieks in the foliage shook him
out of his huddle. He recognized that noise--a
whine with a whip at the end. Yes, he'd heard that
before, while he and Spock were watching the troodonts
attacking the other dinosaur. An order. As the
foliage broke with activity and six or eight
troodonts surged out onto the slab, screaming at
the cave mouth, he realized he was right. That was the first
rank, ordered to attack by his smart little friend out
there. Roth plunged out of the cave mouth, fanning a
torch in one hand and a spear in the other, whipping the
torch in great half circles that drove the
troodonts leaping backward. It wouldn't work for
long. They weren't running away. Any second,
Roth would swing one way and the troodonts on the other
side would plunge in. They were working together--it was
obvious. Kirk fired his phaser and took out one
of the raptors closest to him, then swung around
to face the dark open jungle. There would be a
second flank, and he didn't want to have his back
to it. He fell back against the sheer rock and opened
fire with a wide burst. Four troodonts were
burned out of existence in front of him. The others
at the cave mouth whirled in shock, then two of them
charged him. He dodged, and their own body
weight carried them past him. They snapped at him
as he squirmed between them but couldn't get him.
Spinning around on his good leg, he was now in the
middle of the rockslab, right in the line of fire. So
he dropped flat and shouted, "Spock! Wheel
right! Fire!" At his order, Spock,
Emmendorf, and Reenie came out of the jungle,
firing in bursts all at once. Over the space
between them Kirk could see Spock's lips moving in
the order to fire, cannily using as little phaser power
as possible but staggering the shocked attackers with every
burst. Several of the animals were handily killed, the
rest terrified into falling back. At the cave
mouth, Roth had fallen back, out of the way. One
troodont squirmed on the rock slab, a spear
crammed up its throat and out the back of its head.
As he lay on the slab, Kirk forced up the
details McCoy had talked about when he examined
the dinosauroid corpse, and he tried to apply them
to the dying troodont ten feet from him. No
opposable thumb... The four-foot animal had
three long fingers, almost the same length. Binocular
vision... This animal's nose was not as down-turned
as the dinosauroid, but the beginnings of the change were
there. It still had pronounced eye-protection
plates to protect it from its friends' tails during
feeding frenzies. The dinosauroid's brow plates
were smaller, smoother. Devolving. Not needed in a
civilized society-- A thud on the ground beside
him shook him hard. He rolled over, phaser up,
and held his breath for one heartbeat to make sure he
wasn't about to fire into the face of one of his own people.
Bad breath hit him in the face, pushed by a
blustering scream, and he was looking down a nasty red
throat rimmed with two-inch-long disteeth, so close
he could see the serrations. He brought his knees up
and let out a blunt kick. His foot bolted into the
troodont's underside and knocked it'back a
step. That was all Kirk needed. He clutched his
phaser in both hands and fired. In a puff, the
troodont separated into a dozen burning blobs and
melted away, right in the middle of a good long
scream. The foliage was rustling wildly, like
maracas rattling in his ears. Gasping, Kirk
pushed himself up on his elbows, rolled over, and
struggled to his knees. Around him, the rock slab
was bloody but clear. The troodonts had retreated
into the jungle, their number cut in half. The dead
dinosauroid and the dead troodont lay inches from
each other, gaudy wounds oozing the same
red'blood. They looked like each other, but he knew
they weren't alike. It would be as if a human saw
a chimpanzee and thought it was the same because it had two
eyes, two legs, two arms, and a mouth. These
animals were millions of years apart. Now they were
here, dying together. He made it to one knee, then
stopped and gasped for air. His throat was dry,
caked with dust. Someone grasped his arm and hoisted him
to his feet. "Captain?" Spock held him up
with both hands. That meant he'd bolstered his phaser.
That meant he thought he didn't need it anymore.
Good. They had control of the moment. Kirk nodded at
his logic. "I'm fine," he choked. All he
wanted was a drink of water. "Situation?"
  "The troodonts have retreated. There is no
sign of the dinosauroids. Evidently there were only
three of them." Kirk nodded again. "Not a bad
day's work... Doesn't give us any answers
though..."
  "Captain!" Dale Bannon stood at the edge
of the stone slab, holding his phaser at arm's length.
In front of him he ushered one of the oddest
creatures Kirk had ever seen. With its arms
folded back at rest against a decorated leather
harness, the dinosauroid gazed at him--not
at anyone else, but at Kirk specifically. It
knew he was the captain. That meant it was familiar
with Starfleet color coding,. Its face was
painted, but with more colors than the other ones. Red,
yellow, bronze, in a zigzag design across the
elegant, primitive face. Its brown eyes were
particularly intelligent, even over the decidedly
hideous rows of snaggled teeth. "Prisoner,
sir," Bannon said.
  Inside the cave, James Kirk limped to the
back, where his ship's surgeon was trying to hold the
tenuous threads of life still pulsing in Ensign
Vernon. Condemning himself for his prudence in saving
phaser energy, he boiled at the sight of his downed
Security man. "How bad?" he asked. "I
don't know yet, Captain," McCoy said. To their
right, on the other side of the cave, the prisoner
narrowed its eyes at Emmendoff and Bannon,
flexed its long-boned hands with their notable claws,
but clearly had no desire to take on the humans
as long as they held trinse phasers. Every time it
flexed a claw at him, Emmendorf teased with his
weapon and the animal backed off. "Well," Kirk
muttered, "it knows what a phaser is. And it's just
like that one. The same face painting same
size, same features, energy weapons... You were
right, Bones. It's an advanced being."
  "She's a she." McCoy said casually,
glancing up from his bloody patient to the new
prisoner. "Female." Kirk shifted only his
eyes. "How do you know?" The doctor looked up
with a devilish flicker in his eye. "Trust me. And
as long as we're on the subjt, she was in charge.
The other ones were acting on her gestures."
  "How do you know that?"
  "Just happened to notice. While I was trying
to keep my throat from getting slashed, that is. And
notice, Captain, she's slightly larger than the
males. That might be normal in her culture.
It's very common in the wild, anywhere you look." A
female. A great thick-legged, smooth-sealed,
snaggle-toothed, yellow-eyed gift with a beautiful
tail sweeping the air placidly behind her, watching
him with an expression decidedly intelligent.
Waiting for him to take the next step. Not an it,
nor even a he, but a she. McCoy suddenly
stood up, wiping his hands. "I've done all I can
for him, Captain," he said, looking down at
Vernon. "His ribcage is partially crushed, and
I've set and bound it. He doesn't have
many open wounds. We all have our own personal
rate of recuperation. We just have to wait." He
sighed and turned to the dinosauroid prisoner, and his
blue eyes flared with interest. "Now... I'm going
to treat her." He stooped, picked up his medical
implements, and straightened again. In those seconds,
something ehangeck As he stepped past Kirk, the
captain snatched him by the arm and held him back.
"No. Don't treat her." McCoy stared at
him. "She's got slashes from her spine to her
underside! Her shoulder's laid open! I've got
a duty to that?
  "My duty comes first," Kirk said. "I have
to find answers. Her discomfort might encourage her
to talk."
  "Jim, that's barbaric!"
  "That's right."
  "Jim, she doesn't belong here! She's an
advanced being She's just like that animal over there!" The
doctor swung an arm and pointed at the creature
he had autopsied. "Neither one of these are from
sixty-five million years ago on Earth.
Spock's right--there can't be that big a gap in the
fossil record!"
  "What about the DNA results? You said
the dead one is absolutely from Earth. Didn't you
say that?" As if he'd forgotten, McCoy withdrew
his accusing finger. "I don't know... I don't
understand that part."
  "Then get your equipment out and take a DNA
sample from he I'm going to get to the bottom of this
if I have to have my own leg cut off and dissected!"
Overwhelmed, McCoy mumbled, "We'll
probably find out you're a dinosaur, too." He
sighed and moved toward the fourteen-foot-long
dinosauroid who sat in sexlate, civilized
repose, watching them. She drew back her head from
the doctor as he approached, but when Emmendorf
put his phaser into her prehistoric face, she
knew exactly what that meant. McCoy glanced
at Kirk, then drew a sample of her blood for
his test and withdrew as quickly as he could. Kirk paced
toward the prisoner. She never took her eyes off
him. She didn't belong here any more than the
Enterprise crew did. He tried to think like a
paleontologist: to ignore the obvious and look for
subtle differences. At first glance, she was just a
large version of those troodonts who had attacked
them, but that's not what she was. He noticed that she
held her body, her posture, more upright
than the troodonts. Her jaws were smaller in
relation to her size than theirs. She held her head
higher. Her hands were more free to maneuver, her arms
longer, her thumb more opposable. No, she didn't
belong here. So why was she here? Ready to prosecute
somebody for stealing his planet out from under his aching
feet, Kirk snapped his fingers into the hot air
over one of the fires. "Where's that translator we
had on the other Klingon? Did he take it?"
  "Right here, sir."
  "Hand it over, gn." He snatched it from
Reenie, fumbled briefly with it, then at
Emmendorf's phaser point slipped it over the
large, elegant head of the prisoner. Then he
stepped back. "Do you understand what I'm saying
to you?" The dinosauroid didn't respond. But her
expression, the creases of her shimmering boalike
skin, and the way she drew her nose downward gave
her away. He squared his shoulders, his instincts on
to something. "I'm Captain James T. Kirk of the
U.s.s. Enterprise and you know damned well
what I'm doing here, don't you?" Again she said
nothing, but her head shrank back on that long curved
neck and her face turned a little to the side as if
she had been slapped. Her dark eyes
widened, then abruptly narrowed. Yes, she knew.
He bent forward, crushing down the instinctive
revulsion of staring into a long, slim gray face of
scales, leering eyes, and two-inch-long serrated
teeth. "That equipment your people are hauling," he
drummed, and he was unremitting. "It's an
asteroid deflector, isn't it?" The
dinosauroid's eyes widened. She drew her head
farther back in subtle response. Kirk leaned
forward to match her backing away, and he gave her his
catlike glare. "Who are you?" he demanded. "And
what are you doing in my past?"
  

Chapter 27
  THE PRISONER blinked at him, enthralling and
savage in her saurian way. Her tail moved
slowly one way, then the other, clawed fingers hanging
down. "Oya." The translator seemed to have an
easier time with her vocal inflections than it had with the
Klingons', which, given the shape of her mouth,
didn't make any sense at all. "I am a
scientist. No soldier." Kirk almost jumped
into her lap, so relieved was he to hear a real
language. Not just paint on a face or a harness
or energy weapons, but the most critical trait
of the civilized: communication. "Oya..."
He glanced at McCoy. "Is that a greeting?"
Before the doctor had a chance to postulate, the
dinosauroid rippled, "It is my name." Kirk
licked his lips. "What are you doing here?"
  "Research."
  "Why did you choose this planet?"
  "A good jungle." Straightening, Kirk backed
off a step as he felt his legs going numb. He
didn't want to fall on a prisoner. Wouldn't
look right. "Captain, talk to you a minute?"
McCoy came out of Kirk's periphery, clearly
troubled, holding his medical tricorder with both
hands. "I have a partial result here... enough to risk
a conclusion."
  "Over here. Spock, you too." Dragging a
menacing pall like a security blanket, Kirk led
the way aside. "G." McCoy didn't like what
he had to say. "Well, the medical tricorder
hasn't got the capacity of the ship's computer, that's
why running these sequences are taking SO long, but the
DNA sample from the... from her... It's just like the
other one." Kirk popped an eyebrow at him.
"From Earth$9" Like a guilty man, McCoy
nodded. "Unless I've made a grievous error."
  "Have you?"
  "No, I haven't." Beside him, Spock was a
pillar of sobriety, and that was damned annoying right
now. "Captain, this is a disturbing incongruity."
  "Thank you, I thought of that. What are we going
to do about it?"
  "Further tests*."
  "We don't have time for that. We either have a
million years or ten minutes, and we don't know
which. There she sits, an advanced being with weapons like
ours and a language and the whole bucket of brass,
as out of place as we are. She's our answer,
gentlemen. We just don't have the right questions yet."
  "Perhaps we do, sir." Spock folded his arms and
lowered his voice, his tone grimly hopeful. "We
have encountered races in parts of the galaxy where
logically they earmot have evolved, on planets where
they live out of context with the indigenous life. I
submit that Oya may not be quite the incongruity we
believe she is." He looked at Kirk with that
brow up and those eyes sparkling, and though he said
nothing more, he was still talking. Kirk kept looking
at him, just to make sure they were thinking the same thing
He swung around. Well, he clunked around.
"Analysis, Bones. Do you have a record of this
species anywhere in our known galaxy?"
Feeling left out, the doctor raised despairing
hands. "I'm telling you, Jim, like it or not, she's
from Earth!"
  "I don't accept that. Give me a new
analysis or I'll order you to grow a mustache so
I can pull it out."
  "Well, there's a command you don't hear every day.
I'll do my best, Captain."
  Kirk circled the dinosauroid prisoner,
scanning her harness and her reposing form, avoiding her
resting tail. She followed him with her eyes, her
large head turning almost completely around on that long
neck to look straight behind her. As he continued
pacing, she whipped the head back around to catch him
on the other side.
  He had a specific question to ask, but it would get
him either the truth or a lie, and he wouldn't be able
to tell the difference. He had to be smarter than that.
  "Starfleet has been watching you," he handily
lied. "We followed you through the Guardian of
Forever."
  Except for a flicker of recognition, the lady
didn't react. She wasn't curious or
surprised, and Kirk grabbed that as a clue. She
knew what the Guardian was and what it
did. Somehow, she and her team had found it. Maybe
through spies, maybe by following a trail of
folklore.
  Damned few knew about that place, classified
since Kirk and his crew had discovered it.
Starfleet maintained an outpost there, but the
machine's existence was kept secret as a
potentially dangerous mechanism.
  Now he understood even more than he had the time before,
when tampering with history had almost destroyed everything
they knew.
  That time, it had been an accident. It had seemed
complicated then, but suddenly he realized how much
harder the fix would be now, to alter not an accident, but
a deliberate sabotage of time.
  He hated this. He hated playing with time.
  "Who are you that you want to inflict so much damage
on everything you've ever known?"
  She didn't respond. Those big brown eyes
blinked at him, incongruous with her bony face and
yet somehow beautiful there, like a set of onyx stones
set in snakeskin.
  "I know who it is."
  They turned.
  Bannon stood at the back of the cave,
his face pasty,
  revealing an unmistakable flicker of giving a
damn.
  Kirk took a pace toward him. "Well?"
  "I think I know... I did a paper...
junior year..."
  "Snap out of it, Lieutenant. What's the
bottom line?"
  Bannon's chin tucked and his eyes were still heavy with
turmoil. "I think she's one of the Clan Ru."
  "Clan Ru," Speck repeated as he turned
and looked at Oya. "Yes... possibly..."
  "Clan who?" McCoy asked.
  "I've never heard of them," Kirk said, insisting
with his tone that he shouldn't have to ask. He looked at
Oya and got at least a partial answer when she
glared at Bannon with those wide yellow eyes as
if he'd opened her safe. "Speck?" he urged.
  Gazing at Oya, Speck came toward them.
"Translated originally, Ru simply means
"all." The Clan of All. Their culture is
like Orion sects and some original American
Indian tribes who consider their Own tribe to be
the only life with a soul."
  "In other words, if you're not the chosen
'oids," then you don't exist morally. Laws and
rights and any supernatural
  consideration don't extend beyond their own species?"
  "Correct."
  "So they wouldn't lose any sleep over
eradicating the rest of US."
  Bannon took a few steps forward. "They never
wanted to participate in the Federation, even though
they're well inside our space. They've gotten
most of the benefits of membership anyway.
Protection, emergency supplies,
technology..."
  "The Federation had to make an unfortunate
choice," Spock said. "The Ru planet was so
deeply embedded inside UFP space that we had
to surround them. They were offered membership and could have
claimed it at any time. Still they refused
to participate. They have been left alone but have never
mixed with us."
  In a sideward gaze riddled with anger, Kirk
watched Oya's face. "Well?" he prodded. The
female turned her ovoid head slightly to one
side, and suddenly it was as if the two of them had
known each other for years. Millions of years.
After all, they had been playing a bizarre
game of tag for many dangerous hours now, and each
knew only haft of the rules. He paced in
front of her, then stopped. "Are you going to talk
to me?" "Our place in the galaxy is
providential," Oya said, her long lips moving
against the grain of the sounds that came out of the
translator, and there was a coo and hiss behind the
words. "We were thriving before humanoids came.
Nature wanted us. Predators are critical
to natural health. You have seen on your own planet
what happens when only the prey flourishes.
You... held us down."
  "You're talking about primitive existence,"
Kirk punctuated. "We've not only beaten down
the blatant predator, but the shivering of the prey. This
way, intelligence flourishes in both. That's what
you're. trying to destroy, don't you understand?"
Provoked, he pressed closer, his eyes intense.
"We didn't hold you down in order to hold you
back. The Clan was welcome to flourish with the
Federation. Exclusion has been your own choice.
Only the lazy blame someone else for their
inferiority."
  "Lazy!," the Ru scientist tlared, tail and
all, and the stripe of color down her back
surged reddish brown. "Is that what you think of us?"
  "Maybe." Kirk refused to flinch. "And what
do you think of us?" She looked at him, then scanned
Spock, McCoy, the Klingon. Finally she
looked back at Kirk. "You are meat," she said
  He had his answers. He even had some of the questions.
An asteroid deflector dragged into the deep past
to murder the greatest murderer of all time, the mindless
rock that had changed the history of the galaxy. The
realization was 11ing that someone with a plot and
purpose had changed the past deliberately. Most
planets had their upheavals and cataclysms, but
seldom was there one remarkable event to which the
development of a whole new set of species could
cling. The dinosaurs rumbled over Earth for
hundreds of millions of years to be snuffed in a
relatively short passage by the smothering dust of a
once-in-a-billion-years event: the impact of
an asteroid that swung too close and was sucked in
by the planet's own gravity. Space was big, too
big for things like that to happen very often. Entire
galaxies had been cataloged passing through each
other, virtually without impact. Yet there had been
impact here, right here. And now there was tampering, A
race that wanted to change everything, botch
up the future so they could take charge of it.
Bloodcurdled and feeling discarded, Sames Kirk
leaned on his cane and absorbed the incomprehensible.
"They want a future without humanity," he said,
"because humanity started the Federation." Spock nodded.
"Her attitude explains why the Clan has
resisted contact."
  "Yes, it does," McCoy agreed. "Would you
want to have W make small talk with your lunch?
Jim, what if we try negotiating with her landing
party? Maybe they want to live through this as much as we
do." Kirk scowled at Oy "They want
possession of something that isn't theirs. They want
supremacy that they don't deserve. I won't
negotiate on those terms."
  "Then tell me this" the doctor challenged. "If
the Guardian shows the native past of whoever is
l1looking at it... I mean, if the Klingons
would see the past of their planet, and the Argelians
would see the past of theirs, then how did the Clan
Ru landing party jump through into Earth's past instead of
their own planet's?"
  "Good question." His mouth screwing up with frustration,
.kirk glowered at him. "I hate good questions.
All hands, prepare to break camp."
  "Where are we going?" The captain gzed north
into the gauze of dawn. "Up the mountain. We're
going to knock out that launcher before it knocks out
humanity."
  

Chapter 28
  "Tracking the microscopic residue of complex
metals, Captain. This is the correct path."
The killing ground lay beneath them on the plateau,
nearly saturated into the landscape now. Large
pterosaurs and small ones, as well as scavengers
of other types, and even a few of the troodonts who
had done the killing were clustered around the
much-decimated corpses of the animals now known as
Oya's Clan Ru conspirators in the sabotage
of time. Behind him, Emmendorf and Roth brought the
unconscious Vernon along on a makeshift
stretcher, while Bannon held a phaser on
Roth, just in case. Oya slogged up the path under
Reenie's phaser but did not look down to the
plateau. Another clue. Or at least a kind of
confirmation. Treading the soft ground of a haywire
universe, Kirk was thinking about ways to get information
out of Oya when he went down on one knee for the
fifth time in twenty minutes. Emmendorf plunged
in to catch him. "I'll help you, sir!"
  "Ensign," Spock said smoothly and managed
to tactfuller take over. "Scan the peak of this
incline for metallic residue."
  "Oh," Emmendorf said, backing off and taking
Spock's tricorder. "Aye, sir." Kirk
leaned into Spock's support and levered himself to his
feet, but he could barely fall his lungs. Maybe
it was the altitude. Before he could take a step, his
insides convulsed. He locked his knees, but the
pain crushed his eyes closed and he wouldn't get far
that way. "Take it easy, Jim. Let us sit you
down." That was McCoy on the other side from
Spock. Kirk didn't want to sit down, not in
front of two potential enemies. That could work to the
wrong advantage, and right now he needed all the
advantages to himself. He forced his eyes open a
fraction, saw brown dirt, and spore-matted
stones below. were his legs moving at least? He
didn't want to be carried. The movement stopped.
The angle of his spine changed, the balance of his
heavy head also. Two Spocks, two McCoys.
Double vision? Great. Two wrecked universes.
He leaned back a little and found support. They'd
put him down on a rock or something and he leaned
back against the mountain. Good thing it was there,
sea levels rising and all. McCoy, you've got
to do something about this. A hypo hissed in the hollow of
his shoulder, andwitha jolt his head began to clear. He
dared open his eyes. One Spock, standing beside him,
holding him up... one McCoy in front of him,
holding a hypo and waiting. One haywire
universe. Fine. He could handle one. He
pressed a hot hand to his forehead, then pressed his
hair out of his eyes. "Better," he said. "Take
over the scan, Spock. I'll be all right."
Spock looked at McCoy, who nodded and waved
him away. Vernon's stretcher was on the ground.
Reenie and Bannon held Roth and Oya under
guard a few yards away. Emmendorf was looking
over the incline, fascinated with the scene of day-old
mutilation down there. On the upper end of the incline,
Spock fanned his tricorder across the ground. "We
should be able to track them, assuming they do not raise this
equipment off the round or veer into the deep
jungle."
  "I will not help you," Oya said when Kirk
looked at her. "I don't need your help," he
said. It was all he could do to push out the statement without
giving away that he was on the edge of collapse.
He had been slogging along in the middle of
his team, careful to keep away from the prisoners, because
an injured captain could very easily become a
helpless hostage and his crewmen didn't need any
more problems than they already had.
  "Jim." McCoy crouched beside him with that
gohdarnit concern on his face that he reserved for
moments when he had some data but didn't believe
it.
  Softened somewhat by the humanizing sight of a bit of
moss clinng to McCoy's dusty brown hair,
Kirk asked, "Something?"
  Disarmed, McCoy's animated features
accepted the damnable. He patted the medical
tricorder. "It's confirmed. I've been through the
DNA sequences three times, I've run the
palcoanatomical data up against the information I have
about the Ru from our own time. It doesn't make any
sense, but the apparently alien species calling
themselves Clan Ru are almost assuredly an
Earthborn race. I don't know how they got to where
they ended up, Captain... but they started right here."
The doctor pointed at the ground beneath them like a farmer
poking a cow to get into the barn.
  "If this is true," Kirk said, "then what we
were looking at down the mountain... Those were
intelligent, advanced, scientific individuals
being slaughtered by--"
  "By their own prehistoric ancestors," McCoy
confirmed. "Direct evolutionary line. I'll
bet I could trace it as completely as we've
traced the evolution of the modern horse."
  Under the flurry of new thoughts, Kirk mumbled,
"I like horses..." Hearing hirnff, he gripped
his cane with both hands and pushed to his feet.
  With McCoy's steadying hand on his elbow, he
limped between Reenie and Bannon to where the prisoners
were being held.
  He forced himself to stand there, immutable, as Spock
came down the incline to his side. Little glances were
worth a good strong yell anytime.
  With his two most trusted companions at his
sides, he squarely faced the Ru scientist and
steeled himself to do the best he could at the strangest
story ever told.
  "Oya," he began, "listen to me. I don't
know how, I don't know when, but some time in the past
many millions of years, there was a... crossover
between your past and mine. You are Clan Ru, I know,
with your own past. But in the deep beginning, Clan
Ru was spawned not on your own planet...
but on Earth."
  The female dinosauroid blinked at him again in
that way she had. Her head moved backward on that
long neck.
  Kirk drew a breath to keep going and held out
an imploring hand.
  "After the time changes you made," he continued, "the
Clan began on Earth and this time continued on Earth.
The transplantation that we believe happened, this time
never occurred. The Clan evolved here and went on
here, cycle after cycle. But there was never unity.
Your people fought among yourselves eon after eon... to utter
obliteration. By changing evolution," he said, "you
made yourselves extinct millions of years before any
of us would have been born."
  With a flash of panic in her eyes and attitude,
the Ru scientist looked from Kirk to Spock and
back. In the silence the jungle began to sizzle with
insect noises in the extended silence.
  Oya was thinking about what had just been said, combing the
conclusions, the basic premises, walking backward
step by step through the logic, weighing the elements that
took blind trust and could never be proven. They could
tell she did not want to believe what she had been
heard, but this was a creature who had stepped
through the Guardian of Forever to do something that was also beyond
credibility.
  She knew the impossible did exist. She was here
to do it.
  "If I am of Earth," she reckoned slowly,
"how can I have my own planet? My own history?
If I am dead forty million years before you, then
how am I alive?" Kirk stepped back and waved
at the empty space between them. "Mr. Spock...
one scientist to another, would you address the lady,
please?" Spock stepped forward, gazing at the
round, steadied himself and his theories with a pause of
effort, then looked up. He spoke slowly.
"Federation scientists have logged evidence of the seeding of
some species from one plan, et to another by beings in
our distant past. Some have taken to referring to the
source of this seeding as done by an intelhgent
interference by "the Preservers." I find the
phrase somewhat poetic. Federation research has
suggested that there has been conscious intent to rescue
certain cultural and genetic pools and
transplant them to planets where they had a chance
to survive. This theory fits the case of the Clan
Ru. Can you tell me whether there is any genetic
link between your species and the planet on which
you live?" "There is none," Oya said blunfiy,
"because we were placed there by choice of providence. We
were meant to survive and control those around us."
  "Mmm," Spock noted grimly. "As a
scientist, you know that such an explanation is
mythological and incomplete. What we do know for
certain is that your DNA sequences are undeniably
tied to Earth's biosystem. Yet in the normal
scheme of evolution you did not evolve here beyond the
strike of the asteroid. Though we cannot conclude the
method, we know your ancestral line was somehow tagged
as ultimately intelligent, then rescued and
transplanted from this planet to your planet. According
to the accepted scientific evidence, the conclusion
is... quite credible." There was something about Spock, his
simple poise and understated delivery. His hair was
still in place despite what they'd been through, his
tidy blue uniform only had one stain on it, and
he still had good posture. He could be reciting
flapdoodle and it would sound completely plausible.
Oya was staring at him, running over it and over it.
Reeled with respect for her that she didn't flare out
with disbelief at them, Kirk was suddenly flushed with
how silly all that really did sound. Leap after
leap, based on things they'd seen or that had
been recorded by people they trusted, but that she hadn't and
didn't. But she wasn't dismissing what they had
said. She was considering it. Truly advanced... He
had to choke up something, and it had to be fast.
"Doctor," Kirk said, "give her the medical
tricorder. She's a scientist--let her see the
DNA results. Let her look at the
comparisons we've made between her and the animals here.
Let her see for herself... just who she is. And give
her Spock's tricorder as well Show her what
kind of Earth her actions will create." McCoy
handed Oya the tricorder. As she held it in her
graceful prehistoric fingers, he tapped the
display, then stood back to let the magic box work.
History spun by on the tiny screen. No one could
see it but the prisoner and, a few feet behind her,
Roth. Kirk held still and waWhed them, gripping his
cane with both hands until his knuckles went
numb. How many times in his career had he ajoled,
coaxed, begged, taunted someone to cross over to his
way of thinlting for the sake of whatever was on the line
at the time? And when in his career had so much been on the
line? Words weren't enough anymore. He'd used all
he had. Now there would be only the raw candor of
faith in himself and in unimpeachable science, in
Spock, McCoy, and in all the probity they could
t agros8 with the moral strength of their actions.
He hoped the integrity of everything he stood for showed
in his face. Sometimes it just came down to that. Some
latent magnetism fxed him not to Oya as the tiny
lights plastered across the pain on her face, but
to Roth as he watched from behind. A Klingon.
Hostile, angry, suspicious. Did he
believe? No way to know. A guess could be fatal
in a very large sense. But all Jim Kirk felt
he had right now was a sack of guesses and a couple
of seeds of hope. Suddenly, before anyone
expected, Oya looked up from the tricorder. She
looked at Spo then at McCoy, and
lyWill-'lans! her lips to speak, the interpret;
aai thetranslator was hauntingly different disany
sound she had made before.
  She-blinked her eyes. "We have destroyed
ourselves."
  

PART FOUR
  FORK IN THE FUTURE
  "Out here we're the only policemen around. And a
crime has been committed. Do I make myself
clear"
  --James Kirk, Arena
 

 Chapter 29
  THERE iThat WENT. What could stop it now?
Nothing. No phaser could reach out there, no will, no
determination, no command. It was off and flying on the
way to its appointment with the dot in the sky.
  From behind, Oya came to stand on the other side of
Spock, gazing with surprising expression into the
sky. Her arms hung limp. Her tail was down.
  The smoke of blastoff stung Kirk's eyes and
scorched his lungs. Helplessness washed through him.
  On the other side of the platform, Zalt pulled
himself to his feet. His face was seared, his skull
ridge bleeding, his hair wild, but he had
succeeded.
  With a glance at Kirk and Spock and one final,
"Hah!" of victory, he angled into the jungle and
disappeared at a dead run.
  Spock tensed to give chase, but Kirk grasped
his first officer's wrist. "Don't bother," he said.
  The platform was bare now, scorched and littered with
support struts broken during the launch, now lying
blackened and smoldering. From somewhere in the smoke,
Roth came staggering toward them, his face a mask of
bitter anger.
  "Give me a weapon," he demanded.
  Kirk managed to straighten a little but didn't
say anything.
  Roth glared at him and Spock, then shouted,
"Give me a weapon!"
  When none of them moved, and Spock certainly
wasn't going to hand over his phaser, Roth dodged
toward them and yanked a serrated knife from Oya's
harness.
  Kirk had returned Oya's weapon when he
released her. Now, that seemed to have been a
mistake.
  Now Roth had the knife. He waved it before them
and blasted, "I will make one more emotional act!"
  He turned, picked his way past the launcher through
the smoke, then jumped down a slope and charged into the
jungle in the direction Zalt had taken.
  "I'm sorry, Captain," Spock rasped, his
words laden with emotion he would otherwise have denied.
He was watching
  the sky again. He didn't care about the Klingons.
  Kirk didn't either. Failure, failure.
  The biggest failure of all time. Suddenly all
the successes of his career were canceled out. Nothing
mattered.
  Bitterly, he moved away from
Spock, away from Oya. He kept his back to the
lower area where his crewmen were holding the spikers.
He didn't want to look at McCoy. But he
had to turn when a flurry erupted down there. He
looked without really turning all the way around.
  The spikers were breaking up, rushing past Bannon
and the others, who weren't sure whether or not to shoot
them now. Bannon fired and stunned one spiker, but
the others disappeared into the jungle.
  Why not? Their mission was completed. All they had
to do was melt into this environment and survive as long as
they could in a place that was ideal for them.
  Gritting his teeth to keep from bellowing, he stared
into the sky at the fizzling spot that was the deflector
rocket, now very small, off to orbit the Earth and
wait until the asteroid attracted it. They'd
probably see the impact from here.
  "Damn," he murmured. "Oh, damn."
  Nearby, Oya also stared. There didn't seem
to be much else to do now.
  "Captain," she buzzed, "I have never been so
ashamed."
  His jaw working to hold in the rage, Kirk stared
another two seconds, then stepped away. "You should
be."
  It was a simple device according to Oya. It would
orbit the Earth placidly until the asteroid
came close, then the tiny matterstantimatter
container inside the warhead would split the asteroid
into millions of harmless chunks. They would be witness
to one of the prettiest meteor showers of all time, but
that would be all.
  She explained how she had asked the "Forever
Machine" to show her and her team pictures of
Earth's history, and of course it had given them those
pictures, because in the distant past they were from Earth.
They had used their version of tricorders to slow the
pictures, then jumped through at the right moment. Now
the asteroid was less than two days away.
  The Clan team had cut it close to make sure
nothing could go wrong,
  Kirk brooded like a charcoal fire. No
matter how he combed the problem, there was nothing he could
do. They had hand phasers and a few Ru energy
weapons, but there wasn't enough power there to hit the
asteroid from the surface or even hit the
deflector in geosynchronous orbit,
twenty-three thousand miles up. They were sunk without
a trace. Spock appeared and sat beside him on the
bump of snarled roots he was using as a
command chair. "Oya says the orbiter has no
receivers of any kind, no internal command devices
other than its basic control computer, which cannot receive
an incoming signal of any sort. There's no way
to tamper with it or alter its instructions from here."
  "Not even something as simple as changing its
orbit?" Kirk asked. "Maybe we can make it
go to the other side of the planet when the asteroid
comes."
  "Even from the other side of the planet, it has
sufficient time to find the asteroid, sir." Kirk
picked up a stick and cracked it in half, then in
fourths. "There's got to be something we can do,
Spock... something we're not thinking of. If only
my head would clear up--"
  "My head is clear," Spock said quickly,
resisting the twang of guilt in Kirk's voice.
"And I can think of nothing that will reach twenty-three
thousand miles from here." The sticks cracked in
Kirk's hands. His knuckles were swollen. His own
breath roared in his ears. Twenty-three thousand
miles. Twenty-three thousand... "Wait a
minute--" He raised his head suddenly. "Did you
ask her whether or not that thing's in gcosynchronous
orbit?" Spock blinked. "Oyai
Oya, come here!" Kirk hobbled toward the sad
dinosauroid who had been crouching near the useless
platform since the thing blasted off. "How far above us
is your detonator in orbit? Is it in
synchronous orbit around the equator?
Twenty-three thousand miles up?" Oya glanced
at Spock, then back, and waited for the
translator to come through with those numbers in her own
language. "No... it has a small thruster
system. We did not want to take the chance of wide
orbit. It orbits only two hundred miles
above us."
  "Hell!" Kirk swung toward Spock. "We
can practically touch it from here!" He rounded on
Oya again. "Did you bring any spare launching
equipment? Backups? You must have assumed something
could go wrong!"
  "Yes, we have a etude backup launch
system, but it is meant to be used with the detonm"
"Spock! Gather up every scrap of extra
equipment they have, everything we have, and calculate
all the energy left in our phasers and the Ru
weapons combined. Organize all hands and have them
pick up the scattered pieces of the platform and those
antigravs over there and the tools down the
slope. We're gonna shoot that popgun down!"
  

Chapter 30
  "AM-THAT How long will you run? Come and face
me, you low thing! I can go forever! Do you know how long
forever will be today? Step out of the weeds! I will find a
way back, do you hear me? Somehow I'll go back
and tell everyone what you are! If I have to come back
as the spirit of their own disappointment, I'll do it!
I'll tell them all about you, ,oward!" He had
been running, pushing, rattling, through the prehistoric
understory of plants and weeds for a long time. He had
no idea how long. His throat was raw, that was how
long. Shouting insults was a lot of work. Above him
towered silent conifers, standing as they had for
decades, and now as they would for decades more. No,
Kirk would find some way. He was that kind of man.
Somehow there was an answer, another chance, an
alternative, and that man would find it. He wouldn't
give up. And so Roth refused to give up, pushing
unremittantly through the bushes, wild eyed, shouting
anything he could think that might tease Zalt from
hiding. Just when he thought he could conjure up no
worse words than he already had, he would cough up
something else." There was a lot to say about Zalt.
So far he had cursed Zalt, Klingons,
the Klingon home planets, their moons, several
ships and their crews, Zalt again, and when he fell
and bruised his skull, he cursed the rock that had
tripped him. As he scrambled to his feet again,
caked with spores and wet soil and the defecation of some
animal--large--be stumbled out onto an angled
flat slab of ground where the surface had been
worn away and only stone was left. There was much of
that in these mountains, strata heaved up at vaulting
angles as the mountains were pushed up from underneath.
Something about a midocean fault and planetary
surface plates crumpling this part of the continent.
He had heard Kirk and the Vulcan talking about it.
Until now, he hadn't eared. "You smell like a
barn." Roth spun around. Zalt stood a few
paces away, face flushed purple with anger.
Roth stalked toward his commander, his leader, his better,
his tormenter. "I am ashamed to be Kiingon, and before
I die I'm going to do one decent thing. I'm going
to kill you." Zalt smiled. "You're going to kill
me with that little blade?"
  "You are the attitude that has wrecked us,"
Roth said. "Refusal to question what you see,
refusal to question what you want. If you want
to kill, then kill. If you want something
someone else has, then get it. If someone is in
your way, enslave them or kill them. That's all
we are! It's not the Vulcans who embarrass me!
It's youJust" He flung the knife over the
embankment stretching out to one side of them and listened
to it clatter. Without glancing as the knife went
clicking down the embankment, Zalt let his grin
fall away. "These humans... they are more our
enemy than the romuluSngan ever were. All these
turtledoves who say they will not fight, yet in their
'universe" they have imprisoned the Klingous in their
own space."
  "Where they come from, everyone lives better because men
like him insist that everyone behave." what he says?
I'm not surprised, Roth. You're just angry because
you're going to die a bad Klingon." Roth didn't
plunge, didn't run or jump forward, but walked
to Zalt and took him by the collar in a manner so
mellow that Zalt didn't resist or grasp at
Roth's hands. "We are all bad Klingons,"
Roth said. "Kill, eat, and be eaten. So go. Be
with your own kind." With a sudden surge of power,
unexpected and unbalanced, he pushed Zalt
sideways onto one foot and continued pushing. When
Zalt realized this was all the fight would
be, it was too late. Roth cupped the side of
Zalt's head and pushed hard. Zalt spun off the
side of the embankment and rolled roughly down,
tumbling with his legs bent and his arms flung out. At
the bottom of the embankment, caught softly by a
bundle of ragged pollen-bearing catkins, Zalt
bumped to a stop. Dirty and bruised, he fumbled
to his feet and glowered up at Roth, who was watching
without expression. Zalt raised his fists
to emphasize his anger, but movement at his sides
distracted him. He looked.
  Open mouths rowed with serrated teeth snapped at
the air nearby. Five... seven... ten...
yellow eyes narrowed. Long-tailed bodies drew
downward in attack stance. Crescent claws
clicked on the rocks.
  From above, just as the slashing began, he heard one
last insult from Roth as a scream bolted from his own
throat.
  "Cry, victim."
  The launcher was crude. No, it was worse.
  Hardly more than a black tin box six meters
square, a metal hut cannibalized from one of the
spikers' cargo carriers, with eight antigravs
strapped, glued, or fused to it. Four
Starfleet tricorders inside to read four Clan
trioorders mounted outside. There were even two long
skinny "windows" made out of sheets of transparent
ilex-aluminum that Oya's team had brought with them in
rolls.
  The weapons had provided fuel for the launch,
antigrays would keep them two hundred miles
up, and the thrusters would hold them in place while
waiting for the detonator to swing around the Earth. Then,
one phaser would be enough.
  And all the while they were cannibalizing the old
launcher and fitting in standby equipment to do things beyond
intent, the glow in the sky got bigger and brighter.
Overnight, it had set like the sun as the Earth
turned, and this morning it had risen, closer now.
  Twenty-nine hours later, the thing in the sky was
bigger than the moon, glowing and oblong. As if
packed with purpose instead of iron, it was racing
toward the Earth at fifty thousand miles per hour.
When it hit--if it didwit would bore sixty
miles into the planeifs mantle.
  Strange... to be sitting here, wishing with all his
heart for that to happen.
  As Spock circled the strange contraption they'd
built, Kirk watched him and measured off
their chances of success by the look in the Vulcan's
face.
  Well, maybe that wasn't the best idea.
  They hadn't let him do much work, and he was in bad
enough shape not to argue. They worked fast, but that didn't
  ease his frustrations. He was their captain and he
should be working at their sides.
  Oya interrupted his plagued thoughts when she came
to settle beside him like a big chicken on a nest.
  "We are nearly finished," she said. "We have
fueled the launcher with several phasers and all of the
spikers' pistols. After the launcher gives
initial thrust, the antigrays will take the box
up. Then the combined thrusters and antigravs will steer.
At first we thought it would fail, but Mr. Spock
devised a method of combining them. The tricorders
on the outside will serve as sensors and aiming
devices to be read off by someone inside. There is
no navigation equipment, but there are the eight
antigrays and seven of you. Mr. Spock will work
two of them, but it will take all of you to keep the
platform from spinning out of control. I am sorry there
is no way for your crew to be safe. Even if you
manage to shoot the deflector down, there will be no
way to come back or land lightly if you do
come down by mistake somehow."
  "On the surface or in orbit," Kirk said,
"I don't think it much matters. I could let your
machine crack up the asteroid and we'd all have a
savage life of raw survival here, or we can go
up there and probably die, but I'm not giving up this
chance for our handful of lives. That's not why any of us
joined Starfleet."
  "You are a brave man."
  "I'm a desperate man. They're often the
same. After all, you were willing to give up your
life when you thought it would bring your people something better.
You just turned out to be wrong."
  "Most wrong." She lowered her monstrous head,
her eyes surprisingly human.
  "How much air will there be left in that thing?"
  "Perhaps two hours, three--"
  "Did you say seven of us? You're not going with
us?"
  She turned her large toothy head and seemed very
civilized. "I cannot go. There is no room for
me."
  "We'll make room."
  "No, Captain. It is an old story with my
people. We have
  the wrong body for space. Small ships,
corridors, companionways--these are hard for us.
Those of us who have taken to space for a profession, many
have their tails amputated to make them more like
humanoids. Besides, as you say, on the surface
or not, it doesn't matter after tomorrow."
Sympathizing, Kirk fell silent. There were
reasons for some races' success in space. He
couldn't deny it. "If you come back with us," he said,
"assuming we make it back, you could talk to your people.
Explain all this. Show them what we've recorded
on the tricorders..." "I am a scientist," she
told him. "I am the lowest caste. They would not
believe me." Fighting tunnel vision, Kirk
fanned his hot face with a leaf. "Why did you
become a scientist then?"
  "I was injured while in spiker leader training.
While resting, I discovered that I enjoyed reading and
studying. Eventually there was nothing else for me to do
but-follow my true interest. It was the only way
I could be worth anything. You see... I have a
crippled leg." She moved, raised her body enough
to show him her bent limb. "So do I," Kirk said.
The two of them weren't worth much at this point.
Spock knew more about propulsion than
Oya did, so once the launcher was explained to him,
even she wasn't much good over there. Just hoisting and
bolting, phaser fusing and air tightening. Oya's
muzzle bumped up against his arm, and he flinched.
"Sorry," he said. "Did I hit you?"
  "No," she answered. "I was... smelling
you."
  "Smelling me? What for?"
  "You smell good to u" Was she smiling? Her
eyes certainly were. A shiver ran through him. He
got her meaning. Not "good" as in nice, pleasant.
But good as in tast. Suddenly he could empathize with
her people. Mammals probably smelled like a hot
dinner to the Ru. He tried to imagine humans
negotiating with or even taking seriously people who
smelled like warm baking bread. How crushing would it be
to be constantly saddled by instinct? Some things nature
just insists we do. Nature had taken leisurely
millions of years to establish some things, to make
men attracted to women, women in love with their
babies, and make some animals constantly hungry
for others. He inched a little to his left and really
wanted to take a shower and smell like soap. In the
sky, the glowing oblong shape seemed larger than it
had been an hour ago. "Come on,
Spock," he muttered. "How much longer can this
take?" He looked up at the oblong shape in the
sky. "I've only got fifty-three million
aircraft carriers to go..."
  

Chapter 31
  "HE'S DEAD."
  "Are you sure this time?"
  "I have no proof but the satisfaction in my eye,
Captain Kirk. I give you that. I watched him
die. They ripped him and ate him, and it is no
less that the Klingon deserves." Blunt silence
fell between them. Roth looked satisfied and somehow
humble. Kirk studied him, looking for those hints of
vulnerability that he looked for in enemies and
sometimes in friends, but he couldn't read Roth's face.
Roth had described Zalt as "the Klingon." So
something had changed. "We're ready to lift off,"
he said simply. "We're going to put ourselves between the
asteroid and the warhead and blow the warhead."
  "Risky," Roth said. "I like it." He looked
at the tin box, about the size of a spare parts shed.
"All of us in there?"
  "All but Oya. "She's staying behind."
  "Staying behind... And what happens to this wild land
when the asteroid comes?" Kirk glanced across
the plateau to where Oya was working with Spock and the
others. "Nothing very nice," he admitted. "So you
and your Vulcan have talked about it. And he has
told you what such a rock does."
  "Yes. The numbers are mindboggling."
  "The strike itself will boggle a few things too, I
think." Roth was in the fulfilled mood of a man
condemned who had first condemned his rival. "How are
you powering this?"
  "We've drained most of the phasers and all of the
Ru weapons for initial liftoff. Then the
antigrays take over. Spock's phaser and
Ensign Emmendorf's are still operational," Kirk
added, "in case you get any ideas."
  "I have no ideas." Roth chuckled. "I
believe what you--Captain!" Kirk tried
to sidestep, but Roth was faster. He slammed
into Kirk and knocked him to the ground. Tumbling
once, then rolling once, Kirk fought to come up on
his elbows, and looked up in time to see Roth take
a hard attack from one of the troodonts. It came
out of nowhere without rufliing a single bush until this
instant, and suddenly there were attacking troodonts
everywhere. He saw Roth roll backward to the
ground, holding off the snapping teeth of one
of these small, smart things and kicking at the hinds
legs to keep those hacking claws from ripping into his
body. "Spock, trouble!" Kirk pushed off the
ground and tackled the troodont. He and the animal
and Roth tumbled like dancers, rolling down a slight
incline to be blessedly stopped by a palmetto.
Tightening his arms around the animal's neck from behind,
Kirk dragged it off Roth, held its spine against
his chest with its tail slashing at his legs, and dared not
let go. He pitched backward, with an armload of
wild kicking dinosaur. Its spine scratched his
face as the troodont threw its head from side
to side, yanking Kirk along the ground on his
back. The tail bruised his legs, and just as he
thought he couldn't hold on anymore, Roth was on
them. The Klingon got his big hands around the
troodont's muzzle, forcing the animal to scream
through its nostrils like a kidnap victim. He
leaned forward so hard that Kirk's shoulder was pinned
against a scaly trunk without chance of squirming
  Roth leaned harder, and--crack, crack, crack
--the troodont's neck vertebrae snapped. The
animal fell limp on top of Kirk. He
kicked it off and rolled over. "Spock! Fire it
up!" There were phaser shots up there. He
struggled back up the incline, with Roth shoving him from
behind. His friend was back. That rugged troodont with the
crooked arm, chirping orders to his pack. First
flank, rushing in. Second rank, waiting in the
wings. Kirk paused to look at the leader. How
long had this tricky animal stalked them? Tenacity
--a sign of intelligence. As Spock's phaser
crackled through the hot air, taking out two of the charging
troodonts, Emmendorftook out another one before
he was charged from behind and knocked to the ground. Before the
troodont standing on him could rake a furrow in his
spine with one of those claws, Bannon tackled the
animal bare-handed, wrestling it to the side. It
took the two of them to pummel the beast
to unconsciousness. Emmendorf came up bloody,
glancing around for another troodont to defend against.
They were everywhere. "Get in the vohidel", Kirk
shouted. "Let's goPeople' "I'll stay here, sir?
Bannon called, scooping up a discarded piece of
metal. "I'll hold them off!" Though his first
reaction was to order everyone inside, Kirk realized
that Bannon was right. The troodonts were closing in,
sacrificing a few first charges in order to weaken
them, so the second and third ranks could overwhelm
them. It would work, too. There were dozens of
yellow-eyed pouncers all around them, smacking their
chops, clicking their sickle-claws, and waiting for the
order to charge. Suddenly Roth shoved Bannon
toward the tin-box vehicle and snatched the shaft of
metal out of the boy's hand. "Go!" he shouted. "I
will stay!" His mouth gaping, Bannon looked at his
empty hand, then at Roth. Roth shoved him
viciously toward the tin box, then swung around to where
Kirk and Spock were standing off a flank of
troodonts while the others hobbled toward the
vehicle. "Give me a phaser! I will hold them
ofially' When he saw their hesitation, he shouted,
"Kirk! I was willing to risk my life for one more
day's existence for my people! I will do it for you! Give
me a phaser! Let me be the ultimate
sacrifive!" He kicked an approaching
troodont square in the nose and waved sharply at
Kirk "I'll stay and save you," he said. "You go
and save us all." Caught by those words, Kirk
fixed a truth-serum glare on him. The decision was
his and he knew it. "Spock," he said, "give him
a phaser. Roth, you know what to do with the antigravs"
  "I will do everything!" From the far side, another
proclamation came. The buzz of Oya's
translator. When Kirk turned, she was
there. "We will do it, Captain," she said. "G. And
save us all." Emmendorf fired again, blowing
away two more troodonts and somehow encouraging the
others to come forward out of the bushes. They understood
sacrifice. Kirk peered at Roth and Oya.
"All hands," he called, "on board!"
  "We have iguition, sir." Kirk clung to the
steadiness of Spock's acknowledgment as the tin box
jolted and began to quiver. Through the eight-inch-wide,
twenty-inch-long "window" in front of him, he saw
Roth swatting and kicking the troodonts two at a
time, while Oya hurried around the vehicle, firing
the antigrays manually. The troodonts seemed
confused, pwbably because they weren't used to jumping
onto a humanoid and didn't know how to do it. Many
of the troodonts he kicked away were heading Wward
Oya--a familiar body shape. "Everyone stay
coordinated," he said, keeping his tone calm.
"Hold balance wl'dle we lift off." The
squarish vehicle shuddered beneath them. Phaser and
pistol power that had been funneled inWill the launch
mechanism fired' and suddenly the platform puffed
upward and became airborne, wobbling as they
struggled for control. The last thing Kirk saw on the
planet's surface was the top of Roth's
head. Then there was jungle, then mount--mn. There was
no gravitational compensation, and as the craft
accelerated, Kirk felt his body suddenly grow
heavy, crushed to the bench seats they'd hastily
built. He heard his crew moan with strain and
wished he could help them. On the right-angled wall
beside comhm, Spock had one inside tricorder mounted
where he could see it and opposite him the medical
tricorder mounted where Bannon and Vernon could see
it. In front of Kirk was a third tricorder, and
on the far side, where Reenie and Emmendorf worked
their antigrays, the fourth tricorder. Each was
tied into one of the four Clan Ru tricorders
scavenged from the leftover deflector camp, mounted
in protective shells on the outside, which would act
as sensors. For a quick build' it wasn't a bad
little craft. Simple, but serviceable. So far, so
good. "Antigravs taking over liftoff," Spock
reported, his tone professional. "One hundred
meters... one hundred fifty .. two hundred..
Exhaust equalizing... Motive power leVels
rough but stabilizing."
  "All hands, concentrate, maintain balance,"
Kirk encouraged. "Mr. Spock and I will steer
with the thrusters."
  "Jim, how are you going to find the warhead?"
McCoy asked. "Oya gave us calculations of
its orbit. We'll have to get between the warhead and the
asteroid as they approach each other." "We'll do
it, sir," Emmendorf piped up. "Yes, sir,"
Reenie echoed. The Earth peeled away beneath them, a
lovely and savage planet, stuffed with life. From
the sky as they gained altitude, Kirk could see
herds of dinosaurs, a dozen shapes, a hundred
colors. Some he recognized--ceratopians,
torosaurs, alamosauruses, simple beasts,
dumb as dirt, following instinct through the eons. The
pressure of his own weight went away as they came
higher and higher, closer to the top levels of the
atmosphere, closer to weightlesshess. They were
strapped in, but not very tightly. They had to hang
on. A cloud cleared away, and there was a bizarre
map below, deep greens threaded with browns and other
greens as they went high into the atmosphere, wobbling
and straining for control. "Cartography on
automatic," he ordered. The planet below looked
foreign--the continents were completely wrong,
unfamiliar land masses overrun with oceans. If
he looked carefully and used his imagination, he could
make out North America, much smaller
than he was used to, with strange shorelines. There
was a lot of water. "Tracking the warhead,
Captain," Spock reported. "Relatively
simple... It is changing course slightly.
Adjusting trajectory to compensate. Velocity
peak stabilizing."
  "Intercept course."
  "Captain..." Reenie began. Aggravated,
Kirk turned. The girl had her cheek pressed
up against the window slit, eyes straining outward
toward space. "I can see it," she said, her
voice catching in her throat. "Oh, my God,
I can see it..."
  She wasn't talking about the warhead. That was coming from
the other direction. "Ensign," Kirk snapped.
"Mind your post. Mr. Spock, bring us around
to firing position. I don't want to be late coming
about." "Aye, sir. Coming about."
  "Heading?"
  "Heading is south by southwest. We took off
slightly earlier than I had calculated. I'm
attempting a geostationary orbit and to hold position
and wait for the warhead to orbit toward us."
  "That won't do any good if it leaves orbit
to intercept the asteroid. Sacrifice
whatever power you need to get between them."
  "Acknowledged. Of course," Spock added
quietly, "that will also sacrifice our ability to land
safely." Kirk glanced at him. "Doesn't
matter, Mr. Spock." Returning the glance,
Spock paused. "Understood, sir."
  "Prepare to fire phasers."
  "Phasers ready." The drone of order and
response was reassuring. The practicality of
military redundance--it had a purpose. It
kept them calm. One step at a time. Each moment
became a progressive victory. Habit set
fear to second place, and protocol took over.
That which had brought men through uncounted battles in the
midst of choking smoke and mind-numbing terror now
would serve to propel them through this last circus hoop.
As they left the lower atmosphere, the warmth of the
supertropics fell away, and Kirk felt his
sweat turn clammy and his body go completely
weightless. It was dizzying. His hands stiflened on the
crude controls. Frost started to form on the insides
of the walls, and their breath began to steam. "Captain,
I've got the deflector warhead on screen."
Reenie put her nose to the tiny screen. "Unless
it's one of those forty-foot pterosaurs--"
  "Negative," Spock said. "Warhead
confirmed. It's leaving orbit, zeroing in on the
asteroid. Coming into phaser range... "I want
point blank range, Spock. We won't get
a second chance. The warhead's moving faster than
we are. If we miss, we'll never catch it."
He kept one hand on his thruster controls and with the other
he tried to focus his tricorder as the screen
rippled. The tie-in to the Ru tricorders
outside was tenuous and incompatible. He wished
he'd put one of their own tricorders on the
exterior. Too late now. "Reading the asteroid
now, Captain." Spock's eyes were fixed on the
tiny tricorder screen. "Slightly larger in
diameter than we had thought... however, less
dense. Possibly due to some ice content.
Current trajectory will take it to the expected
impact point, lower Gulf of Mexico. Speed
is... forty-seven thousand six hundred miles per
hour, increasing steadily as Earth's gravity
affects it."
  "CaptainI" Bannon flinched suddenly at
Kirk's right. "The warhead--I think I'm reading
it! Coming from the west--it's angling out of orbit!"
  "Hold your course, Mr. Bannon,"
Kirk said. "Mr. Spock, can you zero in on that
thing?"
  "Zeroing in," Spock responded. "Targeting
phasers."
  "Hold course, everyone. I'll do the shooting."
He tried to take his own advice and keep his eyes
on the tricorder screen, which struggled to register the
tiny blip that was the angling deflector warhead.
Another dumb bullet. All it had to do was go to the
right place and hit. No sense of consequence.
"Clearer readings on the asteroid now, sir,"
Reenie reported, her tiny voice like a shiver.
"Confirmed," Spock said. "Asteroid is a
typical bolide ... irregular spheroid with
several broken edges... Content, primarily
iron, nickel, iridium... carbon... ice
... various common ores. Density, roughly
twenty-six thousand kilograms per cubic meter."
Typical. Common. The words pounded in Kirk's
head. In the twists of nature's wind tunnel,
an average space rock with no chance for success
had become evolution's hatchet man.
"Detonator at one hundred kilometers and
closing," Spock readoff."...ationinety...
eighty... seventy... sixty... fifty
--"
  "Firing phasers." Eyes tight and legs
tense, Kirk thumbed the firing mechanism that was
tied into the hand phasers mounted on the vehicle's
exterior. A hand phaser was a mighty child, a
power-packed minireactor that could tear down half a
city. Training for hand phaser handling alone was nearly
a full year's course at Starfleet Training
Grounds, required for everyone who wore the uniform.
He looked up from the tricorder and out the skinny
window and pressed the fLettering mechanism. A thin
thread of phaser fire spewed from the vehicle's
cold hull beneath him and spindled across the outer rim
of the Earth's hazy atmosphere, a red line
dividing the white atmosphere from the darkness of
space. "Slight thermal drift," Spock said
quickly. "Compensate. Maintaining fire."
  "Compensating." Kirk held his thumb on the
firing tie-in, his mind already tangled with
alternatives to try if he was making a clean
miss. There had to be something he could-- "There it
goes!" Bannon had apparently looked up. The
line between Earth and space suddenly blew wide with
yellow light and a plume of silver smoke. Kirk
recognized the chemical reaction and
suddenly felt tied to his own time. His mind went
numb, filled with a crackling noise. The crew was
cheering behind him. That was the crackle. He pressed
forward on the slanted wall, fighting to stay upright,
staring out at the gas jet cashiering across the rim of the
atmosphere and its long blue tail. Strange how
small the detonation seemed against the canvas of
Earth's curvature and the depths of space beyond. A
few moments later, that strike would have split the
asteroid, blown it into splinters, causing the debris
to spiral away from Earth, and the the future would be
consumed. "Warhead is destroyed, Captain,"
Spock quietly reported. They shared one of those
almost-smiles reserved for
  moments when the relief was almost too much to bear.
Kirk's hands were shaking, and the quiver of his muscles
ran all the way from his wrists up his arms and through his
shoulders. His midsection cramped and his legs
throbbed. "@ddim--Jimi" Hiked around on his bench,
McCoy was staring at him. "What?"
  "That was it, wasn't it? That was the thing that changed
history?"
  "Yes, of course." Cheeks pale and eyes
strained, McCoy turned more toward him and held out
an imploring hand. "Then why are we still
here?"
  

Chapter 32
  The CA-PTAAIN was supposed to have all the
answers. Jim Kirk looked at the doctor with
pain in his silence. Finally, as he always did, he
turned to his left. "Spock?" The Vulcan was
gazing at them both, troubled and overloaded, as if
he had forgotten about that, too. "I don't know,"
he said, mild with thought. "We should be pulled back
through the Guardian's portal upon succegs-fully
correcting the error in the flow of time. The
deflector is destroyed... The asteroid must
strike the Earth now. Logically, time should be
repaired." He stopped. They ticked off another
five seconds. Still here. "Could it be," McCoy
pressed, "we've come back too far?
  Maybe the Guardian can't handle years by-the
tens of millions. Maybe it just can't find us!"
Across the cramped cabin, Vernon whimpered, "Oh,
Jesus..." His face clammy, Kirk drew his
brows tight. "Then we'll have to give it time to find
us."
  "Are you kidding?" McCoy prattled and pointed
out the window. "Have you seen the size of that rock?"
  "That's enough, Doctor." Kirk
gripped his controls and shuddered down the weakness in his
body. He summoned his last reserves. A few
more minutes, that was all he needed. "Spock, where's
the safest place to be when this thing hits?"
  "The safest place to be at the moment of impact
would be at the antipode, on the opposite side
of the planet, at least for several hours, until the
shock waves encircle the planet--"
  "We can't get there in time. Where's the second
safest place?"
  "The second safest place is inside the cone
of ejecta, beside the asteroid as it bits, but not
directly above it."
  "Explain that." Spock swiveled toward him.
"When a marble is dropped into a pool of water, it
creates two immediate reactions. One is a cone of
water that is spewed upward around it in the shape of a
paper cup, and the other is a tower that sprays
directly up the way the marble came. Between those two
reactions, there is an area of relative calm."
  "Like the eye of a hurricane."
  "Exactly."
  "Then that's where we've got to be." Bannon's
eyes were hollow as he gaped at them. "I don't
want to be there." "That's where we're going
to be," Kirk sizzled, and everybody turned back
to their jobs. "Spock, calculate trajectory.
Get me a course. Dr. McCoy, record the
patterns of atmospheric turbulence. Miss
Reenie, focus on the asteroid and impact
shrapnel."
  "Ejecta, sir," Spock said. "You call it
what you want; I'll call it what I want."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Mr. Bannon, you record geophysics
and--"
  "Why?" Shaking like a wet lamb, Bannon was
nearly in tears. "Why bother?"
  "Because we're explorers and scientists. People have
died willingly for much lesser sights than we're
about to witness. We're going to do our jobs until the
last possible second. Is that understood?" Part of
McCoy's mouth twisted up in a sorry grin. The
Security men shared a glance and Emmendorf gave
up a silent thumbs-up. Spock was looking at
him, too. Bannon's narrow face lost its
panicked expression. Somehow the younger man screwed
up his resolve as he gazed at his captain. His
voice cracked. "Aye aye, sir," he said. Like
survivors in a life craft on a
wide empty sea, feet soaked, lips parched,
they steeled themselves to get through the next minute, then the
minute after that. "lira." Spock's face was
occult with shadows. "It's coming." He wasn't
looking at his tricorder anymore. He was looking
out the window of the tilted craft as it struggled to hold
itself in place over the gulf of what someday would be
Mexico. Kirk felt his chest tighten and his feet
get suddenly colder. He had to look, too,
to see eternity's superstar with his own eyes. Back
on the planet's surface, seen through the
atmosphere, the asteroid had been a glowing orb in
the sky. That was what Roth and Oya were seeing now if
they were still alive. From here, above most of the
atmosphere, it was a dull spacial body
glittering on one side from the sun's reflection.
It seemed not to be moving at all. But it was. It
sang through space toward them at forty-thousand-plus
miles per hour, accelerating every second. Femme
fatale Earth had whispered into the night with the perfume
of her gravity and caught the unsuspecting passer-
36O
  by cantering by without a thought. Now this crude peddler,
insignificant dot in the mob of space debris,
would have its chance to swashbuckler. Its
incendiary kiss would pivot history. This was its
day. Kirk squinted out the narrow window. "Spock,
do you know what month this is?"
  "It's early June, sir."
  "What day is it?" Spock looked at him.
"I don't know."
  "All right. You know, I wish that thir could understand
what it's about to do. I resent its ignorance
somehow." "That... makes no sense at all, sir.
The asteroid is nothing more than an amalgam of
silica."
  "I don't care. Everyday I have the power of that
disthin..in my hands and I keep control over it.
What s the aeptla o! me ocean at the point of
impact?"
  "Zero to two hundred feet, sir. On its
current trajectory, it will hit the continental
shelf."
  "Will this thing go through the Earth's mantle?"
  "It's believed to have cracked the mantle to a
depth of roughly fifty miles but did not
penetrate to create a volcanic site." Roaring
in at hypersonic speed, the oblong ball seemed
to be swelling a little each second, as if they were
watching any other space vehicle come
toward them--no sense of the actual speed. It was a
piece of some other cataclysm, a lackluster stone
determined to make something of itself. The big bang had
oome and gone, the crash that had made the moon was
long forgotten, the birth of life a past
accomplishment. Now this chunk of dirt wanted
to dwarf the fame of those and give itself primacy. And the
plan would work The Federation and all its member worlds,
the KlinlOnSo, the Romulans, the Orions, the
Tholians, the Clanthey were all wrapped up in that
rock. was rain--" Reenie gulped "It's--it's--
was
  "Understood, lnsign. Spock, altitude, we
need altitude. "Thrust at maximum,
Captain."
  "We have to be inside that cone. This thing's gonna
rattle
  Bannon pulled out of his straps, jerked away from
his seat, and stumbled to the window on the other side of
Spock. "Here it comes!"
  "Lieutenant, get back in your seat? Kirk
broiled. "All hands, secure for collision!"
  

Chapter 33
  "Herre it COMES!" In a blur as big as
Manhattan Island, the asteroid shot
past them at 138.8888 miles per second,
slightly over a hundred miles to the west of them,
pulled in by the beckoning Earth. What they saw then
was a forbidden sight wisely done in the shadows of
deep time, so violent that mass spectrometers had
been needed to discover the secret that it had happened
at all. In his fever and the terror he couldn't push
away, James Kirk fought himself through the temptation
to put his thumb to his phaser and keep that
kill-crazy stone from erasing billions of years of
life. Earth had called out for this, as if saying this was
the time to smash the canvas and start again. He had
stewardship over the future. He had prevented
cataclysms--today he needed one. His hand quivered
as he drew it toward his chest and held it against his
ribs. A few more seconds... In extravagance
that only bold, brainless nature could manage, the
asteroid blew past them, causing only a dismoment's
shadow to fall inside the baubling little vehicle.
He pushed up against his restraints, nauseated
by weight-lesshess, put his face to the window, and
looked down at the Earth. He'd seen stars
explode. But those were only stars. Below their little
vehicle, bucking in the swarming upper atmosphere,
the asteroid spun in at hypersonic
speed, too fast for the atmosphere to blow out of the
way. Kirk watched, mind numbed, as the kinetic
explosion opened up beneath them. For an instant there was
a flash of heat energy being released, a wall of
brightness reaching all the way down and all the way up
as high as the atmosphere. A trumpet-bell
plume of white-bright fire vomited back upward
past them and back over their heads, expanding into a
vacuum that couldn't stop it, a violent seismic
upheaval of molten rock, shock-modified
minerals, and fine hot dust. In fifteen years in
space he had voyaged countless light-years through the
galaxy, yet he had to come home to witness the most
spectacular event of his career. As the force equal
to two hundred million hydrogen bombs went off
under them, the vapor cloud impelled upward toward
them like the head of a rising jellyfish. "Shield your
eyes! Cover your eyes!" McCoy's shouts were
drowned by the concussion from all around them. Kirk
managed to bury his face in the crook of his elbow as
the white-hot firebail of vaporized matter shot
back out into space in the biggest mushroom cloud
any tyrant could dream of on any drunken night.
He'd seen death coming before but never with bailistics on
this scale. He held the thruster lever and
hoped the vehicle didn't go into a spin. If
Spock could hold his
  "The asteroid vaporized!" Reenie sobbed.
"It's a fireball!" The curtain of blistering
molten rock and pulverized planet shot back
upward past them, some moving fast enough to reach escape
velocity and rocket out into space, never to return.
"Hold on!" It might have been Bannon.
"Shock waves!" The vehicle spun like
Dorothy's house in the twister. Much of the ejecta
curtain was curling into orbit in what would become the
smothering ashfall of days to come. The sun would be
blocked out. Asteroid winter would chill the planet.
Chunks of molten matter pummeled the vehicle.
Precision was thrown to the wind as the giant blowtorch
shot by on one side and the ghastly wreckage on the
other. Kirk wanted to look at his crew, give
them his last glance of inspiration, smooth out the
malignant eruption with his confidence, see their sober
faces as they gave each other the final gift of
noble silence. But his arms, his neck, his chest, were
frozen still. His eyes fixed on the mushroom tower of
fire retching into space, and his eyes burned. With his
last thought he wondered about the tricky troodont
with the crooked arm. Was it intelligent enough
to be afraid as the sheer mile-high wall of
displaced water and the incandescent curtain of debris
as high as the atmosphere expanded out of the Gulf and
swallowed part of North America? Did it have its
last thought for its young? And Oya... Roth. He'd
left them behind at ground zero. Someday he would find
a Kllngon and tell him who he owed his existence
to. The tin box around them began to crack. Beneath
them, he saw Earth begin all over again.
  

Chapter 34
  "I'm SORRY, SiRather..." Montgomery
Scott sank into the sounds of the bridge for one last
moment, those peaceful twitters and beeps that in a
second would be ripped out of his head, ,buried in
explosions of machinery and the cracking of the ship's
heavy hull. He'd put his life into this one ship,
out of all the others, and never looked back. His
heartbeat and this ship's were the same. Had been for
years. Some ships could do that to a person. "Sorry,
lass," he murmured. "Mr. Scott, the incoming
has disappeared!" Sulu's voice had a squawk
of disbelief. "Mr, Scott!" Chekov choked at
the navigation station. "No sign of hostile
vessels! They're gone, sir! They disappeared!"
Scott blinked and held his breath. No
hit. No savaging of his lady. The viewscreen was
free of all but stars and Earth's moon as it came
lazily around them. "The captain!" he rasped.
"Have y'got contact with the planet's surface?"
He swung around to Uhura and gripped the red
rail. "Lieutenant?"
  The tin box around them was gone. Had it been
shattered by the plume ofejecta? Was this the split
second between destruction and death? Everybody said that
second was there, but how could anyone really know? Jim
Kirk stared into the white heat of the vampire
fireball. It was as if he had poured pepper
into his eyes and put his hands on a pilot light.
His body was blistered, his mind bedlam. Hard ground
came up under his feet, and he staggered. He wished
he hadn't looked out the little window, but some sights
really were worth dying for. We were there on the day a
cold rock became a star. One tree, one'og, enough
will live now to start over. Incorrigible nature--
"Captain... Captain. We are being signaled.
Your communicator..." That was Spock's voice.
were the two of them in hell together? It figured. In
hell with a communicator? Blinking his eyes as they
watered and stung Kirk shook his head and let out a
small cough. "That was . some ride." "
" He shook off the frigidity of orbit and tried
to set aside the tantalizing blowtorch he'd just
witness. "Sixty-four million years,"
McCoy grumbled beside him. "Jim, the shiprathe
shipst" They were standing on stone, not metal. Kirk
looked down. Rocks. His feet were braced on
pebbles. But not Earth. He blinked up at dusty
ruins and a glum pastel sky, then at the doctor
beside him and realized the buzzing in his head was the
communicator on his belt. He pawed for it,
failing, until McCoy got it and placed it in his
hand. The ship! He raised the communicator.
"Kirk here..."
  "Captain/y did it, sirst"
  "Scotty?"
  "You mu/ye done it, sirst" Well, at least
Scotty had a grasp on what had happened.
Yes, the ship's engineer had been here the last time.
He understood this place, this smart-aleck monument
over Kirk's shoulder. Turning to look at the
Guardian of Forevermhe'd always thought there should be a
really bad poem under that title--he took a
shuddering breath. "It got us back... all the way
from there." Suddenly he turned and started counting
heads. "Did we aget back? Is
everyone here?" "All accounted for, sir." Spock
appeared at his side, his tone much less severe
than the words. He gazed at Kirk with
undisguised sympathy. "The tricorders"
  "All four of ours came through with us." The
Vulcan held one of them up for him to see. Near
him, their rattled crew picked at the other three,
clinging to them as if clinging to the past. Now they had more
than fossils and shocked
  quartz to use as a peek into the past. Now they had
the past recorded. And the Enterprise was up there,
orbiting this forsaken grotto. She was back, she was
back. Kirk sought for his voice again. "Status,
Scotty." "We were under attack by a bundleit
Romulan bastards when all at once they just
vanished/they were about to melt us alive? "I'm
glad this machine has its timing right. We were
pretty melted ourselves. Either a hell of a
coincidence, or this thiffg knows what it's doing.
Secure all decks and stand by, Scotty."
  "Standing by, sir." Hoisting his shuddering body
around, he scanned his landing party. They were shaken,
doubtful of their surroundings, as if coming out of a long
dream. McCoy and Reenie each had a grip on
Vernon, who had an arm wrapped around his
crushed ribs. So it had happened. He sighed.
"Well, I'd say that was a big splash." The
crew rewarded him with a couple of smiles and a few
huffs of relief. That was all he wanted.
"Let's get a grip on ourselves. Mr.
Emmendorf, Mr. Bannon, secure the area.
Be back here in five minutes. Doctor, make
your patient comfortable. We'll beam up as soon as
we're stable."
  "Aye aye, Sir," Emmendorf said.
Bannon said nothing but hurried after the Security
man. Both were pale with shock and seemed relieved
to have something concrete to do. Being sucked back through the
Guardian's portal had left them all in a
protective state of disbelief. Now he would have
to see if they were back in the correct time. No
Romulan ships up there. He clung to that clue.
He cleared his throat and uttered, "Spock..."
Spock came to his side. "How are you?" he
asked. "Rattled. What's your evaluation?"
  "If our experience with the Guardian is
accurate, and our suppositions about Oya's race
correct--that her race actually began on Earth
millions of years before us--then all
  should be in order. We did see the
asteroid hit, after all."
  "We did, but that's a lot of ifs."
  "I would surmise the key to the change was the
impact itself, not simply our destruction of the
warhead. The Guardian had waited until the
asteroid actually struck the Earth. Until then, the
extinction of the dinosaurs was not guaranteed."
  Kirk nodded. "Had me scared for a minute."
  "More than a minute," McCoy grumbled from behind
them.
  Relieved to hear the smart-ass crack, Kirk
nodded at him but turned to Spock again. "What do you
think happened to Oya?"
  "Unknown. Certainly anyone in the lower North
American area would have been killed by tidal waves
crashing across that area. I am sure," Spock added
gently, "they did not suffer long."
  Realizing he was giving too much away--as if he
could hide his crushing sense of injustice from Spock
--Kirk fought for control.
  "The mass extinction by asteroid impact,"
Spock said, "is no longer a conclusion based upon
bits of evidence. We have just proven it. And we have
a recording of the actual impact. So successful
a species as the dinosaurs, a
two-hundred-million-year species...
destroyed in a matter of months."
  Kirk stepped past him. "Species go extinct
all the time, Mr. Spock. Extinction is part of the
game. Just goes to show you how tough life is once
it gets started." He snapped up his
communicator. "Kirk to Bannon, report."
  "Bannon here, sir. You'd better come this way.
We've got something here."
  "All right, stay where you are. We'll
triangnlate on your
  communicator."
  "Yes, sir."
  The kid didn't sound too good. Kirk turned
to McCoy. "The rest of you stay here. Mr.
Spock, with me."
  Not far, the pterosaur His, but every stp was agony
for
  a man who'd left his cane stuck in a
dinosauroid sixty-odd million years back.
By the time they found Emmendorf waving at them to go
toward him, Kirk was sweat-drenched. He followed
Spock over the crunchy ground and around an upright
slab of ruin.
  There, they found the bodies. Starfleet
bodies.
  These people had put up a fight and lost. And for their
loss they were ripped into parts and horridly
mutilated. A Starfleet research team, who never
intended to fight, who wanted only to do quiet work
here, maybe shed some light on these ruins. Only
tacitly were they meant to guard the Guardian.
  "Captain," Spock addressed, not loud, "these
people were killed, then eaten. And there is one of the
spikers' wrist launchers. Several footprims
also."
  Numb beyond shock, Kirk nodded. He thought about
setting his crew to burying the dead here, but his people were
exhausted and, truth be told, there wasn't much
left here to bury. These bodies were rended to bits and
already sinking back into the dust. They were burying themselves.
  "Emmendorf, Bannon," he spoke up, "go
back with the others."
  The two young men glanced at him as though entranced,
then Emmendorf said, "Yes, sir..."
  And they went away. Nothing to be done here.
  "We wanted proof, Mr. Spock," he said
sadly, "proof that
  it all happened. I guess we've got that
now."
  Silent, Spock watched him.
  "Oya believed in this mission," Kirk went on.
"I'd have done the same thing Let's go."
  Spock reached for him to help him over a boulder,
but the
  communicator chirped and stopped them.
  "Kirk here."
  "Scott, sir. We've got three ships
approaching, no identity yet."
  "Red alert. Beam us up immediately, these
coordinates. And pick up the others at our
previous location."
  Spock's expression was heavy with concern as
Kirk
  watched his first officer's face begin to sparkle with the
transporter effect. Then his mind went numb for the
few seconds the transporter needed to draw him
back... back to his ship. And his heart began
to pound.
  "This is the Starship Exeter--Newman here.
Jim, are you and your crew all right? I've never
heard of any force that could throw a ship this fart"
Jim Kirk settled into his command chair, legs
aching and spine screaming for rest. On the forward
screen, Dong Newman's face was
better than a star on a Christmas tree. The
starship inhaled around him, as vibrant a thing as
any, cupped his aching body in this old chair,
gathered her wings and shook the droplets of turmoil
from them once again, just because he asked her to. Together
they had survived. "We didn't exactly get
thrown. How did you find us?"
  "We thought you were crushed by the accretion disk that
appeared in that blue giant. Then these other people showed
up and they said they knew where you were. We took a
chance, and here you are. They want to talk to you." Off
the Enterprise's gleaming white port bow, three
ships hovered, basking in the light of this system's
thrifty sun. The Starship Exeter, the
Farragut, and another ship, a squatty, squarish
vessel only a few decks thick, with warp
nacelles mounts on the sides that looked like old
wares cannibalized from former Starfleet designs.
The forward screen fizzled, then cleared. Kirk
stared into the faces of six dinosauroids. Well,
well. "Clan Rth" he said. "Welcome out of
your cave. I wish I could say I'm surprised,
but I don't think I am." "Captain Kirk,"
the brown one in the middle said. A heavy female with
four colors paimed on her face.
Probably the captain. '7 am Ozur. We come
to tallc She here will talk for us." Ozur
unceremonially moved aside, and the screen filled
again, this time with a stunning grayish face.
  Kirk's snideness dropped away. "Oya! You
made it back!"
  "Several days ago, somehow," she buzzed through the
ship's translator. Her voice was a little
different, coming through Uhura's system instead of the
portable translator. A little higher. "The science
of the Guardian is unclear. Somehow I was
returned to the Guardian planet only seconds
after l first entered."
  "Yes, we know," Kirk said. "And since we
entered several days later than you did, we only just
returned a few minutes ago.", "I have been
back for many days," Oya said, "and I haven't
been idle. Captain Kirk, I went to my
leaders. I told them about your pictures and what
I saw on the young Earth. We have always known we
did not come from our planet. We assumed everything
there was meant to be food for us and that we were the chosen of
providence, held back by the Federation. Now I
believe as you, and I have told my people. Someone had
respect for our species, enough to move us and
save us. We never had respect for others. Now
we do. Earth is a charmed place to give birth
to two intelligent species while so many planets
are barren. We understand now, Captain Kirk; and
we want to join." Swallowing past the lump in his
throat, Kirk managed a smile. He shifted his
hips a couple of times, trying to thinlc He gazed
at his tidbit of profit from this huge stumble. Some
good was going to come of this after all. They hadn't just
managed to put things right but to put things better.
"We welcome you," he said finally, simply.
"If you'll follow us to Starbase 10, we'll
introduce you to our tleet commander and arrange for an
exchange of ambassadors."
  "Our thanks to you We will come happily."
  "I'm looking forward to hearing your account of the
impact from the planet's surface." '7 have it
recorded. It is a revelation for science."
"TII bet it is. Oya..."
  "Yes?" Pressing his hands to the command chair, the
vital core of his universe, past and future,
Jim Kirk leaned forward as if the two of them were
having a private conversation. "I thought you said they
wouldn't believe you."
  Oya moved her lips around those
massive teeth, and her eyes grew narrow and
gleamed.
  "They did."
  PART FIVE
  WELCOME ABOARD
  A pennon whimpersrathe breeze has found
  A headsail jumps through the thinning haze. The
whole hull follows, till--broad around
  The clean-swept ocean says: "Go your ways!"
  gRudyard Kipling
  

Chapter 35
  A STARSHIP'S auxiliary monitor is a
high-resolution contraption, darned good at doing what
it was designed to do.
  The screen was small, but it communicated the
enormity of the impact with a valiance that made Jim
Kirk proud and humble. He lay in his diagnostic
bed in sickbay, head resting back and medication
pumping through his shell-shocked body. Tricorder
recordings of the impact were traveling the ship's
decks almost as rapidly as the vapor fireball
had
  reached the outer atmosphere all those millions of
years ago. Millions of years?
  But it had been only this morning.
  Stretched out before him, his body was covered with a
thermal blanket, and he could barely feel his
feet. Saw them, but didn't feel them.
  Scratched by ancient thorns and bruised
by ancient blows, his hands rested on his chest.
  Before him, several department heads from the ship's
labs had gathered to hear Mr. Spock's
explanation of what they were seeing on that
half-meter-square screen. A couple of interns,
one other doctor, and two nurses stood at the
perimeter of the briefing. This was only the tip of the
iceberg of research that would come from their voyage.
  "The cataclysm very quickly became worldwide,"
Spock said, watching the sprawling white-orange
event shudder and balk on the screen. "Only hours
for the first shock wave. As we saw, the impact
displaced most of the water in the Gulf of Mexico,
causing tidal waves in all directions. Of
course, there would be a rebound tidal wave as the
water rushed back in. Within one day, no part of
Earth's surface would be unaffected. A layer of
soot found in the K-T layer suggests that molten
ejecta raining upon the planet touched off
firestorms that burned millions of miles of
growth. Excess of carbon-12 in the
biomass indicates that fires consumed as much as a
quarter of Earth's plants. For a decade or more
after, simple lightning would have touched off more fires
until finally all the dead plant life was burned
away."
  "A burning planet," McCoy murmured from
Kirk's right side. "Not a pleasant place
to live."
  Spock nodded. "And a difficult place
to live. Only animals of small adult body
weight survived. Those that could burrow, hybernate,
or otherwise hide and find enough food among the ruined
ecosystem. The sun was blocked out for months by a
global cloud of soot, sulfuric acid, and
debris, possibly thrown outward at the equator
by the Earth's rotation. It is speculated that Earth
may have been a ringed planet for quite a while."
  Through his comfort, Kirk uttered, "Another
Saturn..."
  "Yes. There would have been a total collapse of
terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The
supergreenhouse conditions in the Cretaceous were too
warm for coral reefs, but the loss of sunlight after
this event killed all of the Earth's clam reef
ecosystem. Reefs are extremely
sensitive and delicate and took ten million
years to regenerate."
  "And ten or twelve million years for
mammals to evolve to any appreciable size,"
Chief Barnes assisted. "Recovery wasn't
exactly the next day."
  Spock glanced into the crowd of officers. "The
expanding curtain of ejecta spread four thousand
kilometers, pushing the atmosphere out of the way and
leveling everything in its path."
  "it's possible the vacuum of space may have been
in contact with the molten crater center, Mr.
Spock," one of the newly transferred earth science
technicians burst in. "It's incredible! To blow
the atmosphere awayw"
  "Possibly," Spock allowed. "It produced
the melt-ejecta layer of fused bedrock blasted out
of the site. The melt-ejecta layer was overlain
by worldwide fallout from the fireball, which preserved the
iridium layer. The northern Yucatan at the time
was covered with roughly a thousand feet of limestone,
or Cretaceous reef rock--calcium
carbonates and back-reef evaporites, mainly
calcium sulfate. This evaporized over the
crater, resulting in high acid rain and
enriched CO2 in the atmosphere. A ring of this
debris formed all the way around the planet. Fine
dust caused a nuclear winter phase, which
volcanoes can never produce, because their dust never
leaves the stratosphere. This cloud cut off ninety
percent of the sunlight. Trees soon dropped their
leaves. Phytoplankton died within a few days.
On land, small animals and birds would have found enough
food in the cracks to survive, but only species
that reproduced quickly and abundantly would have
survived. When the cloud cleared, it cleared on a
planet with no more giant animals."
  His deep voice fell away with a professional
finish.
  On the screen, a gauze of gray dust begn
to spread over the planet as the last moments were
recorded by the tricorders, seconds before the
Guardian snatched them out of hews bullet hole.
  It was hard to believe, even now, that they were watching
the real thing and not just a computer-generated animation.
  Several members of the starship's officer corp
glanced at their captain and first officer with
unmitigated awe and
  Waxen and drained, Kirk felt inadequate to that
respect. The mission had been a success
but too close to disaster at every step. He began to comb
every detail, now that his head was clear and his pain
recedin looking for ways he could have done a better
job.
  The officers acceded to McCoy's shooing them out of the
  captain's recovery chamber. They didn't even
excuse themselves to'the commanding officer. Already they were
muttering to each other about research they couldn't wait
to dive into. Physics lab, bio lab, nuclear
science, earth sience --they all wanted their hands on
that tricorder data. It would shoot through the ship, then
through Starfleet, then the whole Federation almost as fast
as the killer dust cloud had enshrouded the
prehistoric Earth. The room gradually emptied,
and there was some comfort for Kirk to see the lights coming on
in his officers" eyes. They had something to work on,
to be proud of. All across the Federation, their work over
the next few months would be famous. Everyone would be
talking about the Enterprise and her scientists and their
fantastic findings. When they were alone, Spock
turned to him, hands clasped easily behind his back as
if none of this had happened, as if declaring that they had
come full circle and everything was all right. Pretty
much. "A lot of information to distill," Kirk said.
"It'll take years to analyze it all.
Makes me glad I'm not a scientist, I
think."
  "I understand," Spock said. "What was your
recommendation to Starfleet regarding the Guardian?"
  "That we keep our mouths shut about it, as usual;
keep its location classified so this kind of thing
doesn't happen again. We have the data--but we
don't have to tell how we got it." "Assuming the
Clan government agrees?" "The Clan government
doesn't know the location. Oya refused to tell
them."
  "Indeed?"
  "She's a smart girl."
  "Apparently." Spock fell silent
briefly, then quietly added, "An interesting
place... the other universe." Kirk managed a
misty grin. "We met some good people in a bad
place, didn't we? Temron... Roth...
especially Roth. I'm sorry he had to die that
way." Spock canted his head and gazed wisely
at him. "He was not sorry, Captain."
Returning the gaze with a touch of gratitude,
Kirk finally nodded. "You did a good job," he
rewarded. "I know that wasn't as easy for you as you
let on." Spock pretended not to understand that
and skillfully ignored it. "The asteroid collision
with Earth is a rare event in the galaxy. Now we
have the opportunity to know what really happened. In
effect, we shall be confirming sixty-four million
years worth of detective work." The Vulcan's
dark eyes gleamed. Under that paragoric mask, he
was content as he sighted down his reclining captain,
whoin he did not have to bury on a world of monsters.
He raised a hand to the diagnostic panel and
turned off most of the lights in the room, like a father
wordlessly instructing a child to get to sleep. "As you
said, Captain," he added, "it is a genuine
wonder that life survived at all on Earth." With
fired eyes Kirk gazed up at the angular
shadows on the face over him. "Life's stubborn
once it gets going, Mr. Spock," he
appraised. "Life hangs on."
  

Epilogue
  "LIEUTENANT."
  "Captain!"
  "As yOUT were." The quarters were cool.
Appreciation of ship's air-conditioning after a
sweltering hothouse planet. "I said, as you were.
Sit down."
  "Sir..."
  "Just sit down, because I'm going to." Jim
Kirk limped to the bare study desk and pulled out the
chair, proud that he'd come far enough to get all the way
down the corridor and slide into the chair without
wincing. "Not bad," he sighed as he leaned back,
"for a man who's been lame for sixty-four
million years." Pale and bruised, Dale
Bannon looked as if he were ready
to hyperventilate, but he managed to sit down on his
bunk. "Well?" Kirk asked. "Got anything
to say?" Bannon swallowed, blinked at the
floor, shrugged. Then suddenly he looked up, and
his eyes were ringed with emotion. "You got us back,"
he sputtered. "You did everything you said you would do.
Even me... even Vernon, after we got hurt...
You didn't leave any of us behind. Sir, I'll
never doubt you again!" The words bumbled around the room,
failing in their loftiness and certainly falling on
unimpressed ears where the captain was concerned. It was
his job to bring everybody back. There shouldn't be such
astonishment when he managed to do that. Kirk glowered
at the boy until it hit Bannon that he wasn't
going to get anywhere and was trying too hard. The
lieutenant fizzled like a match in a glass of
water. "I'm up for court-martial. I
understand, sir." Kirk shrugged. "Court-martial's
a pretty stiff penance for a bareknuckled swipe,
I've always thought." Bannon's brows shot together.
"I took a swing at you, sir.. At a senior
officer!"
  "I asked for it..besides, that was a long time
ago." The younger man stared at him and shook his head
"Sir... how can you joke about it?"
  "I've always thought that two men, even two
servicemen, ought to be able to punch out their disagreements
now and then."
  "Oh, my God!" Bannon choked. He shot
up. "You can't just let me get away with it!...
Striking a crewmate... That's the lowest act in the
whole... universe!"
  "All right," Kirk allowed. Straightening up,
he made for the door. "Someday, when you're a
captain, you can do what you want. And so can I.
Besides," he said, glancing back as the door panel
skidded open, "a little doubt's a good thing now and
then." At the entrance he put his hand on the edge of the
door to keep it from closing behind him and looked back
at Bannon with the same glint he had given the
dinosaurs a few million years ago. "But not
too much," he said.
  "Good morning, Captain. Welcome back to the
bridge. I am pleased you're well."
  "Thank you, Mr. Spock, I'm pretty
glad myself. Status?" "We're expected at
Starbase 10 in fourteen hours. The Federation will have
emissaries waiting to meet the Clan, and
Starfleet will take jurisdiction of the assassination
of the science team on the Guardian planet."
  "Good. I'm glad we won't have to be the ones
to sort it out. Now, what else is bothering you?"
  "Why would you believe something is bothering me?"
  "Instinct. Like the dinosaurs. Well?"
  "Yes, sir... the paradox of time travel is
troubling me somewhat."
  "Specifically? "The Clan Ru, sir.
Since the Clan exists here and now, and we know they
went back in time to stop the asteroid, then you must have
been in the past also to keep them from stopping it. The
drofiarity of time suggests that time cannot actually be
changed. However, since we have been in the changed
time, and we have experienced this kind of anomaly before,
we know that it can be. Therefore, is the Guardian of
Forever a danger, or is it part of the pattern of time
itself? For instance--"
  "Mr. Spock, hold on. You know,
you're a fine first officer, an exceptional
scientist, and by all definitions a decent man."
  "Why, thank you, Captain."
  "But you're giving me a headache."
  "Sir, I fail to see how the extrapolation of
theoretical premises can inflict physical
pain." "Easily. If you don't drop the
subject, I'm gonna step on your toe. Mr.
Sulu, gO to warp factor five."
  "Warp factor five, aye, sir."
  "Steady as she goes."