THE BUILDING COVERED a city block. Mudd was sure they had walked at least that far, probably more, all at a breakneck pace. He was as eager as Lebrun to get away from the scene of the crime, but there were limits.
"Slow down," he gasped as he puffed his way down the hallway behind her. "We don't…look nearly…nonchalant enough at this pace."
"Sorry," she said, not slowing any that Mudd could detect. They were approaching a cross-corridor that looked as if there were a strong light source off to the left, and sure enough, as they turned into it they saw a door with a frosted window, illuminated unmistakably by bright sunlight.
"All right, look happy," Lebrun said, pushing open the door.
"I'm afraid 'worn out' is the…best I can manage at this point," Mudd gasped. He clutched the doorframe for support while he paused on the threshold to catch his breath and look at their surroundings. The rushing, banging, active sounds of a busy city grew apparent when his heartbeat slowed enough to allow him to hear it. They seemed to be in the back of the building, apparently at an employees' entrance. Just a few yards from the door stood a little kiosk that looked at first like a bus station, except there was no street or even a landing pad for a bus to arrive on. A stone path linked it to the building, and other paths fanned out from it to buildings across the commons. It must be a transporter station, Mudd thought, and he nearly went over to investigate it, but Lebrun set off across the commons toward one of the other buildings and he had to hurry to keep up with her.
Lollipop-shaped trees alongside the paths provided shade for the few pedestrians who used them. Nobody paid any attention to Mudd or Lebrun; everyone else seemed to be hurrying just as fast, and all of them were looking nervously off to the left. Mudd glanced over to see what they were worried about, and nearly tripped when he saw bright lances of disruptor fire spear out from around the corner of the building. People were fighting right out in front.
A man and a woman appeared in the transporter station and ran off toward the battle, drawing their own weapons from shoulder holsters as they ran. Mudd watched with horrified fascination as they reached the corner, took immediate aim at something out of sight, and fired five or six shots each. Return fire suddenly speared past them and one bolt hit the man, who fell backward, twitched once, and vanished. The woman yelled something unintelligible and leaped forward out of sight, firing her disruptor as she went.
"That way," Mudd said, pointing off in the other direction.
"Right," said Lebrun. They rushed off across the grass to the right of where they had been heading, intending now to put another building between them and the battle, but a loud roar split the air from above and they stopped again, looking up to see what had caused it.
A Federation shuttlecraft was landing just a few hundred feet away, between them and the battle.
"All right!" Lebrun shouted. "They came for us!" She ran toward the shuttlecraft, and Mudd took a few steps after her, but when the door slid open and he saw who stood there, he skidded to a stop. His feet slipped on the soft fern and he landed on his butt, no doubt getting an embarrassing grass stain in the process, but that was the least of his worries.
"Harcourt!" the Stella android shouted. "Harcourt Fenton Mudd, you come here this instant!"
Mudd hesitated. Much as he hated returning to her clutches, for once he believed he might be better off following her advice. He stood up, brushed off his pants, and took a few steps toward the shuttle, but the sight of dozens of blue-clad Distrellians running around the corner of the building brought him to a halt again.
Lebrun didn't see them; she was close enough to the shuttle that its bulk hid them from sight. And Stella didn't see them, since the door opened on the wrong side of the shuttle for that. Harry made a split-second guess whether he could beat the Distrellians to the shuttle, and realized that he could not. And to them, he was no doubt a blazing red beacon of a Prastorian target.
He turned toward the transporter station. Maybe he could beam away, if he could figure out how to operate it before the Distrellians caught up with him. Or failing that, maybe he could make it back inside the building.
He ran as hard as his feet would carry him. From behind he heard the shouts of his pursuers, and Stella screeching, "Harcourt, come back here! You can't get away from me that easily."
The ground vibrated with the sound of something massive pounding after him, undoubtedly the android.
Dear God, let the Distrellians get me first, Mudd thought.
The gods—or perhaps just random chance—obliged him. Mudd felt the white-hot pain of a disruptor blast strike him square between the shoulder blades, and he pitched forward into darkness.
"Dammit, I was kidding!" he shouted as he fell.
The immigration instructor was no match for four Starfleet officers. The moment Kirk grabbed his right arm, Scotty took his left, Sulu slipped behind him and locked a forearm around his windpipe so he couldn't cry out, and Chekov snatched his disruptor from its holster. Kirk yanked his shirt up over his face so he couldn't see, then tore one of the wall hangings into strips to tie him up and gag him with. Within three minutes he was an immobile bundle hidden between two rows of seats, and Kirk was leading the way out the door.
He could hear voices off to the right, so he turned left. A short hallway led to a set of wide double doors, which let them out into a drizzly wet afternoon rain shower. Kirk wasn't too excited about walking in the rain, but he wanted to get a little distance from the immigration building.
Maybe they could do even better than that. Walkways converged on a small, hexagonal glass and stone building that had to be a public transporter station. It was open on three of its six sides; Kirk crossed over to it and stepped in through one of the open archways.
Then again, maybe it was just a shelter from the rain. Or a receiving station only. There was a hexagonal grid on the floor and ceiling, but no controls that Kirk could detect. "Scotty," he said, "see if you can figure out how this thing works."
"Aye, Captain," Scotty replied.
There were, at least, maps of the city on the three walls. While Scotty examined the hardware, Kirk stepped up to one of the maps to see if he could spot the spaceport. All the labels looked like little squiggly lines to him, but there was one boxed-in area near the center of the map that had to be YOU ARE HERE.
There were no main streets. In fact, there were very few streets at all, by the looks of it. Just buildings and parks and lakes and so forth, if he was interpreting the symbols right. Apparently most traffic was carried by transporter. Or maybe hovercraft, though the sky seemed pretty free of anything but rain at the moment. Kirk looked on the map for an open area big enough to land a spaceship in. It would probably be on the edge of the city, since people wouldn't want to live too close to a military target—though that might not be true of Nevisians, he realized.
Sulu and Chekov had come up on either side of him. "Do you see anything that looks like a spaceport?" he asked them.
"Hmm…" said Chekov, leaning closer to the map.
"Captain," said Scotty, "it's a transporter all right, but I'll be blessed if I can see any activation mechanism for it. People must carry some kind of personal control device, as near as I can figure."
"Which we didn't stick around to be issued," Kirk said. It looked like they might have to walk the whole way, or rob an innocent bystander of his bus pass—but that wouldn't help a bit if they couldn't figure out which direction to go.
"What about this?" Sulu asked, tapping at the map. Kirk looked to see what he had found, but a sudden change in the lighting made him flinch back and look out.
They had moved. They were now in one of a long row of transporter stations on the edge of a wide stone courtyard. Across the way were hundreds of stores, and thousands of people carrying packages under their arms or in wheeled carts. It wasn't raining here, and though the sky was still cloudy it was much brighter.
"You touch the map!" Scotty exclaimed. "Brilliant!"
"This isn't a spaceport," Sulu pointed out.
"No, but it's a good start," said Kirk. "Excuse me." He leaned out of the transporter station and called to an older woman walking past. "We're trying to reach the spaceport, but we've gotten a bit lost. Could you show us where it is?"
She looked him over carefully, then nodded. "You look like the type, all right. It's up here." She stepped up to the edge of the station and pointed high up on the map. "That green spot there."
"Ah, thank you," Kirk said.
"Any time."
He waited for her to back away from the door, then reached up and tapped the spot, just as Chekov asked, "I wonder what green means?"
The light changed again. Kirk looked outside and saw row upon row of wedge-shaped fighter craft, painted black and streamlined for atmospheric flight. "Jackpot," he said. "Come on."
But the moment he stepped out of the transport station, a jangling alarm went off.
"That's what green meant," he said, stepping back up. "We evidently need security clearance to get through. Quick, get us out of here."
Sulu thumped the map at random, but nothing happened. Kirk pressed his finger more deliberately against the spot that had taken them to the shopping center, but that did nothing either.
"Control lockout," Scotty said. "We're trapped."
"Not yet we aren't," Kirk said, pulling from his waistband the disruptor that Chekov had appropriated from the immigration instructor and charging out across the pavement toward the closest row of ships. He didn't see any fences or forcefields; if they could make it across the first fifty yards or so of open space it looked like they could hide among the ships themselves.
He heard shouts from off to the right and turned his head to see soldiers pouring out of a guard shack a few dozen yards away. The guards didn't fire immediately, perhaps reluctant to shoot someone wearing their own colors, and by the time they decided to, Kirk and the others were too far away to present good targets. Disruptor bolts zipped past and blew chips of rock out of the pavement, and one struck a wingtip that jutted out toward them.
"Chekov, Sulu," Kirk said as all four of them raced into cover behind the first fighter ship, "you and I will draw off the pursuit. Scotty, you hot-wire one of the ships and beat it for the Enterprise. We'll try to hide out here at the spaceport until you can beam us aboard, but if we're not here you'll just have to scan for us wherever they send us."
"Aye, Captain," Scotty said grimly, acknowledging the unspoken thought that they might be back on Prastor by then if what they had been told about the rules of war around here was true.
Kirk led the way farther down the line of fighters, dodging out into the open a couple of times to make sure the guards saw him. Disruptor bolts lanced out at him each time he did, one of them singeing off most of his hair on the right side of his head. Too close, he thought, ducking back into cover and firing a few shots back at their pursuers to slow them down.
He was just turning to put some more distance between them when he saw someone else materialize out in the open only a few yards back the way he had come. Someone wearing Prastorian red and flailing wildly for balance.
"—was kidding!" the man shouted, and Kirk recognized the voice and his ample outline at the same moment.
"Harry," he shouted, "take cover!" He fired past Mudd at the spaceport guards and sent them skittering for cover themselves, but the blue energy bolts whizzing past made Mudd freeze rather than jump behind one of the ships. That split-second hesitation cost him; one of the guards hit him in the left leg with a lucky shot and Mudd fell, howling, to the pavement.
Kirk fired a couple more times at the guards, then tossed the disruptor to Sulu. "Cover me," he said, then jumped out and raced toward Mudd. Disruptor bolts zipped past all around him, but Kirk ran straight for Mudd, grabbed an arm, and strained to drag him behind one of the fighter ships' landing skids.
"Ow, my shoulder!" Mudd yelled. Then, when he saw who had grabbed him, he said, "What are you doing here?"
"Saving your worthless hide," Kirk told him as he heaved Mudd's massive bulk closer to safety. Just one more tug would do it. "For the second time. You owe me one, Har—" Kirk said, but he never finished the sentence. The disruptor bolt must have caught him in the head; he never even felt this one.