HARRY WASN'T SMILING. He mopped the sweat from his forehead with his silk handkerchief, then peered cautiously around the corner and down the dimly lit stone hallway. Nobody there, though by now he would be hard pressed to say where there was. The Grand General's palace was a veritable honeycomb of corridors and levels, leading deep underground and far past the outer walls of the compound on the surface. Mudd had spent the last half hour exploring ever farther downward, looking for secret passageways or locked rooms that might indicate hidden treasure beyond, but he had found everything here depressingly open and mundane. Storage rooms filled with old tax records, ancient furniture stacked haphazardly to the ceilings, dusty paintings of rulers deceased for millennia, but not a hint of anything more exotic.
What was it with these Nevisians? Had they no imagination? These were the cellars of the Grand Palace; surely there must be some planetary secrets stowed here.
If so, they were well disguised. And the one secret that Mudd most wanted to find seemed best hidden of all. He had found absolutely no clue that it even existed, much less where it might be, and he had already spent far too much time searching for it. Fortune had smiled on him in making the android Stella resemble the Grand General's first concubine, killed years ago in one of this hellish planet's incessant battles, but even the Grand General's infatuation with her could only distract her for so long. She would eventually come to check on Harry, and he didn't want her to find him here.
It would be embarrassing enough if someone from the palace found him. Fortunately the vault was on the ground floor where the Grand General could show off his riches to visitors without inconveniencing them on stairs, so nobody could accuse Mudd of going after the family jewels. Also, the party upstairs was winding down and most of the Prastorians had gone home, so the staff was busy cleaning up the detritus of the week-long bacchanalia, but there might still be guards protecting whatever was stored down here. And Mudd had trespassed far beyond the point where he could reasonably claim to have just taken a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom. He would have to feign drunkenness, or even total dementia, if he were accosted now.
And all for what? Tax records and a few antique chairs? This was ridiculous. Worse than that; it was downright insulting. He hadn't stopped a war and set up an interplanetary distribution system just to start a fruit-sales network. He was after much bigger game here.
He'd had plenty of time to study the androids' records during his incarceration with them. They had been in this sector of the galaxy for over a million years; even though they weren't programmed to explore on their own, they had amassed considerable information about people who had visited them. And one of the most intriguing records concerned a group of Nevisians who had visited the androids over thirteen thousand years ago. A thousand years before they had gone to war with each other. They had been a younger, more exuberant race then, swaggering out into the local region of space with every expectation of founding a galactic empire. They were proud, cocky, ambitious—and unfortunately undergunned. The androids had no record of who finally chased them back to their home system, but the Nevisians had quickly become minor players in local interstellar politics, then no players at all. They had pulled home their explorers, withdrawn their ambassadors, and dropped out of sight. Some time later, probably for something to do, they had begun to fight among themselves.
The kicker was, they had done all this without starships. According to the androids, they had simply beamed themselves where they wanted to go, even across interstellar distances. That was a trick nobody in the Federation knew how to do, and Mudd figured he could name his own price for it if he came up with the technology.
The trouble was, the Nevisians had apparently forgotten it. They still had fairly respectable transporter capability—they beamed back and forth between Prastor and Distrel as easily as most people beamed from starship to surface—but Mudd had seen no sign of interstellar travel in the entire time he'd been here. He had already examined the transporters in the palace, and even bribed one of the operators into selling him the schematics for them, but they were obviously not what he was looking for. Now he was reduced to skulking about in the shadowy catacombs in search of ancient clues. It was enough to make an entrepreneur weep.
Worse, now that Kirk was here with the Enterprise, Mudd had to move fast. It wouldn't take that pointy-eared pet Vulcan of his very long to grow curious about the level of technology here, and if he discovered the long-range transporter before Mudd did, Mudd could kiss his profit on it goodbye. The Federation might not mind if he sold exotic fruit to the rest of the galaxy, but technology like that would be confiscated "for galactic security" or some such excuse within a heartbeat. Mudd's only chance was to make a swift escape with it and sell it to as many races as possible before anyone could hoard it for themselves.
Provided he could make an escape at all. By pretending to take an interest in interstellar politics and proposing to stop the Nevisians' twelve-millennium war, he had managed to win his release from the android planet and reduce his number of keepers to one of the Stella harpies. He had assumed that she would be easy enough to shake when the time came, but now he wasn't so sure. Without a working interstellar transporter he would have to leave by ship, but hers and the Enterprise were the only ones available. Mudd was certain she had disabled hers just to thwart him should he try to liberate it, and while he was sure he could eventually find whatever she had done and repair it—he was good at bypassing lock-outs and the like—he suspected she wouldn't allow him the time. The Enterprise would be even harder to hijack, though Mudd wouldn't rule out the possibility. The larger the ship, the larger the crew, and the more weak links for a sufficiently gifted operator to exploit.
However, all that would have to wait until the time was ripe, and unfortunately it was nowhere near that stage yet. In fact, it was time to retrace his steps and put in another appearance upstairs before bedtime, lest his disappearance arouse suspicion in that infernal mechanical Stella.
A noise from below made him pause just as he was about to step into the stairwell and begin the tedious ascent. It had been a high-pitched whine, followed by a whoosh of displaced air. Almost certainly a transporter. Could he have finally stumbled upon his quarry? He took a cautious step forward and peered down to the next floor, but he couldn't see anything from that angle and he didn't want to reveal himself by openly descending the stairs.
Another transporter sounded, then another and another. And now Mudd heard voices whispering softly. That answered one question: someone had beamed in rather than out. And from the sounds of it they had materialized in the open corridor directly below him. That seemed an odd place for someone to arrive, unless they were interested in the same thing Mudd was.
Could it be Kirk already? Damn the man for meddling—he always managed to arrive at the most inconvenient moment. It had taken all Mudd's self-control to smile and welcome him to the peace celebration, and it had been a stroke of sheer luck that an opportunity had arisen to kick him back off the planet before he could do any more damage than he had. Mudd suspected he wouldn't be so lucky a second time.
But on the other hand, maybe he had just been handed Kirk's head on a platter, for if it was Kirk and his crew sneaking into the Grand Palace to steal the silverware, Mudd just might be able to get them kicked right on out of the Nevis system.
Taking from his pocket the miniature tricorder that he had intended to use to probe the secrets of the interstellar transporter, he knelt down, supressing a grunt, and peered around the edge of the stairwell. All he needed was one clear scan of them that he could show the Grand General, and the game would be up.
But what he saw instead made him nearly drop the tricorder. They were Prastorians. Dozens of them in deep red battle armor, armed with disruptors, gathering for a sneak attack on the palace.
Mudd had seen disruptors in action when he first arrived here. They were directed energy weapons, something like phasers, but considerably messier. They had no niceties like a "stun" setting; they were for killing, nothing else. And they had a very, very long range.
Not even waiting to scan the Prastorians with his tricorder, Mudd crept slowly backward, stood up, and turned to go. He had to get upstairs and spread the alarm. But as he started upward with exaggerated caution to avoid making any noise, he momentarily lost his balance, and when he reached out to steady himself against the banister his tricorder clicked against the wood and the sound echoed in the stairwell.
He immediately heard a shout from below, and the footsteps of many people running toward him. Mudd glanced down the corridor, looking for cover, but it was too far to the nearest doorway. His only chance lay in outrunning the soldiers on the steps, or at least keeping one flight between them so they couldn't get a clear shot at him.
He took the first few steps two at a time, heedless now of the noise he made, but he only made one flight before he had to slow to one step at a time. It was no contest and he knew it. Of his many skills, running was probably his least impressive.
There was no reason now to remain silent. It was highly unlikely that anyone in the palace could hear him, but it was even less likely that he could outrun trained soldiers, so Mudd shouted at the top of his lungs "Help! Attack! Help!" as he ran. The footsteps below paused, and voices hurriedly conferred in whispers, but that only gained Mudd a few seconds before they were after him again.
The fact that they paused at all, however, gave him another idea. As he rounded the corner and began to ascend yet another flight, he slapped the walls repeatedly with his hands, hoping it would sound like more footsteps, and he shouted, "Thank God you've come! They're right behind me! Prastorian soldiers. Get ready to shoot!"
"How many of them?" he asked in a deeper voice, then answered in his own, "Only ten or twenty—you can take them easily."
He continued to stagger up the stairs, panting now from the exertion, but his fake dialogue had earned him a reprieve. He made it up two more flights before he heard pursuit behind him again. As soon as he was sure they were gaining on him he resumed screaming "Help! Attack!" and he made two more flights before he slipped on a step and fell heavily to his knees. He was only three or four flights from the ground floor, but that was as far as he was going to make it; his left knee could barely hold him when he stood up. Running on it was out of the question.
So he shouted upward one last time, "We're under attack!" Then he turned and stood on the landing, arms at his sides, to await his doom.
But just as the Prastorians burst into view, he heard a door slam open above him, and a familiar voice screeched, "Harcourt? Harcourt Fenton Mudd, what are you up to now!"
Oh joy, Mudd thought. Of all the people who could have come, it had to be her. "Now we're in trouble," he said to the surprised Prastorians.
Spock's call caught Kirk in the shower. Could Admiral Tyers have responded already? She'd been out of her office when he'd filed his report; he didn't expect to hear back from her until tomorrow. He switched off the ultrasonic beamer, stepped out of the cubicle, and padded across the soft carpet to the intercom. "Kirk here," he said.
It was impossible to detect emotion in his first officer's voice, but Kirk had known Spock long enough to hear the urgency there as he said, "Captain, I am detecting widespread disruptor fire on the surface of Distrel."
Kirk felt his heart skip a beat. This was worse than a call from Starfleet, and he'd expected that to be bad. "How widespread?" he asked.
"There is significant activity in all inhabited areas of the planet."
"Who's doing the shooting?"
"Both sides are fighting heavily now, but it appears to have been initiated by Prastor."
Kirk looked out his window at the planet below. By naked eye, it looked as peaceful as ever. No flashes of weapons fire, nor even spaceships, could be seen on this scale.
But the Enterprise had better sensors than eyesight. "Why didn't we see them coming?" he asked.
Spock said, "I detected a large number of focused tachyon transmissions only moments before the disruptor fire broke out. I can only assume that the Prastorians beamed directly to their Distrellian targets from their own planet."
"Planet-to-planet transporters?" Kirk asked.
"That is correct. I have raised our shields to block any attempt to beam aboard the Enterprise, but the Prastorians have so far shown no interest in us."
"That could change without warning. Go to yellow alert; I'll be right up." Kirk switched off the intercom, donned a regular duty uniform from his closet, and as the alert klaxon began to sound throughout the ship, he headed for the turbolift. On the ride up to the bridge he pondered his options. The Enterprise couldn't intervene directly because of the Prime Directive, and if the battle was being fought hand-to-hand all over the planet there was very little a starship could do to prevent it anyway. A Federation starship carried enough weaponry to sterilize the entire world, but it was powerless to stop a surface war without destroying that surface and everyone on it as well.
What had triggered this, anyway? Kirk wondered if his and Mudd's altercation at the Grand Palace had struck more sparks than had been apparent at the time. It seemed unlikely, but he supposed it was possible. It was far more probable that the Prastorians had simply used the peace treaty as an opportunity to prepare for a full-scale assault and catch the Distrellians with their defenses down.
The turbolift doors opened onto the bridge. It had been staffed at minimum, since it was evening and the ship was in orbit around a friendly planet, but the yellow alert had already brought Sulu to the helm and Lieutenant Uhura to communications. Spock was at his science console. Kirk strode across the bridge to his side and asked, "Situation?"
"Unchanged, Captain," Spock said. "Fighting continues all over Distrel. Interplanetary transporter activity is still high, and beams are traveling in both directions, but so far fighting has not broken out on Prastor."
Kirk turned to Uhura. "See if you can reach the Padishah. I want to ask him what he's trying to pull here."
Uhura turned to her communications console, but after several attempts to hail the Prastorian leadership she shook her head and said, "No response, Captain."
"Try the Grand General, then."
"Yes, sir." She was more successful in that; a moment later she said, "On screen."
Kirk turned to face the main viewer, from which a harried Grand General peered out. His hair, normally standing straight out, was matted on one side, and his clothing was rumpled. He looked to be in a private sitting room or library, and in the background, slightly out of focus, Kirk saw at least four armed bodyguards.
"Grand General," Kirk said. "We're monitoring intense combat on Distrel. What is your situation?"
"Under control, for the moment," said the Grand General. "We had a tricky moment with a squadron that attacked the palace before we got our shields up, but we won't get caught unguarded again."
"I meant the planet as a whole. Can you repel this invasion?"
"Repel it?" asked the Grand General, as if that was a completely foreign concept. "Whatever for?"
"What for?" Kirk asked, equally incredulous. "To stop them from killing your people."
"Ah, yes, the way your doctor did with my footman. No, thank you, that won't be necessary."
"But—" Kirk stopped himself. Much as he hated the situation, the Prime Directive prevented him from arguing. "What caused this?" he asked instead.
"Prastor attacked us, of course," said the Grand General in the tone of voice reserved for answering dumb questions. "Why should you care, anyway?"
"Because if our presence here contributed to the situation in any way, we have a moral obligation to help set things right again."
The Grand General shook his head. "Things are right again. Now if you will excuse me, I have a traitor to execute." He reached forward as if to switch off his communicator, but Kirk stopped him.
"Wait. Who is the traitor, and what did he do?"
The Distrellian leader peered at Kirk for a long few seconds before he said, "Harry Mudd, of course. As for what he did, he lured us away from the teachings of our ancestors, just as you are trying to do. Would you care to come down and join him in the firing squad?"